“Do you see how much I’ve risked by coming here?” Evelyn muttered. “What this could cost me?”
Julia made no reply. Instead, she stood up and began gathering her handbag, her room key, her coat.
“I’m leaving,” she announced.
“What? No, you can’t!”
Disgust flashed in Julia’s eyes once again and Evelyn shrank back, afraid Julia might actually strike her. It had taken months to build this friendship, for that was what it had been; it had been real to Evelyn. Yet it had been reduced to ashes in minutes. As she watched Julia stride across the hotel room, a line from Corinthians brushed against her memory: Do not be misled: Bad company corrupts good character.
“Don’t you dare tell me what to do,” Julia seethed. “You’re nothing, a nobody, just a bloody shadow creeping around the edges of people. You’ve spent your life clinging to the skirts of those with more power and money and potential than you, hoping some of it will rub off. But it hasn’t and it won’t. It doesn’t work like that. Sally, Elizabeth, even Hugh—they only care about you in relation to themselves. You were only ever a pet project for the Wesleys, an act of altruism like me working at that damn Benevolent Society. They never believed you could rise above your station—and, worst of all, neither did you. You’ll never be one of them, Evelyn, and you’ll never be anyone of consequence. You’ll always be the jumped-up little prig from Lewes. And when people are done thinking that, you’ll be forgotten.”
“And you think you’ll be remembered?” Evelyn retorted. But she could feel tears burning in her eyes as Julia snapped closed her handbag and slung it over her shoulder.
“I’m getting out of this hovel and I’m telephoning Paul.”
“You can’t. Don’t you understand—”
Julia fixed Evelyn with a cold glare. “No, you don’t understand. I told you: I don’t care what happens to me.”
Evelyn moved to stand between Julia and the doorway. This was the last chance—Evelyn’s only chance—to stop her.
“Move,” Julia demanded.
Evelyn shook her head. “I can’t let you go. And I can’t let you speak to Hancock. I came to warn you about MI5 and ask you to come with me. You have a choice. I can bring you in to my handler; he can help you, keep you safe. Then we can approach Hancock—”
She stopped. There was something incredulous in Julia’s eyes as she began to laugh.
“You want to turn me? I don’t believe this. Oh, Evelyn, what a fool you are! All this time you’ve been feeding information back to them, to MI5, betraying Nina and everyone else, and now you think I’ll join you?”
Evelyn could hear noise from the street: some urgent query, followed by the slap of shoes on the stairs.
Julia must have heard it too, because she took another step toward the door. “Get out of my way,” she hissed.
“No.”
“I said move!”
She shoved Evelyn aside, sending her sprawling, and she was already halfway down the corridor before Evelyn managed to climb back to her feet.
Twenty-Three
EVELYN FOLLOWED JULIA along the corridor, wincing at the pain in her side where she’d caught the sharp edge of the dresser. She glimpsed movement in the room next door: two men, one bashing away at a typewriter, the other, headphones on, dismantling a hearing piece fixed to the wall, but she had no chance to wonder what they were doing there.
“Where did she go?” she called to the concierge when she reached the lobby. “The woman—just now?”
“Lass turned right, I think. Cromwell Road.”
The underground was only half a mile away. If Julia got on a train she would disappear. As Evelyn burst out of the hotel, two men in dark suits appeared on the steps, blocking her way.
“Whoa! Steady on.” In a blink, they had her arms pinned behind her back.
“Hey!” Evelyn tried to shake herself loose. “Let go of me!”
“Keep calm, miss. You need to come with us now.”
“I don’t have time for this. Don’t you know I’m one of Bennett White’s agents? We need to stop her!”
She scanned the street. About fifty yards ahead she spotted Julia striding along the pavement.
“Look! There! Can you see her? She’s heading for Cromwell Road. We have to stop her before she makes it to the underground.”
The men glanced at one another, and the taller one took off. He was fast, drawing alongside Julia easily.
“Ouch,” Evelyn cried as the grip on her arms tightened. “What are you doing?”
“Miss Varley?”
She still hadn’t seen either of the men’s faces.
“Yes, I told you, didn’t I? I work for Bennett White of counterintelligence. You’re not going to . . . Look, will you let go of me, please?”
The agent dragged her a few yards along the street, deeper into the shadows of some ivy creeping across the length of a tall gate. As her eyes adjusted, Evelyn saw the outline of a man standing before her. His brown tweed suit was crumpled, his bow tie askew, a trilby clenched in one hand as he slapped it against his leg.
“Oh, Evelyn.” White was shaking his head. “I wish it hadn’t come to this . . .”
Evelyn opened her mouth. A pounding began deep inside her skull, as if something in her brain was about to burst.
“You haven’t met Jack, have you? Our colleague from Chemley Court?”
For a second she didn’t recognize the man who emerged from the darkness. Tall, well-groomed, younger than he had appeared when she saw him at Sally’s wedding. She knew him as Hancock, and he was smiling, his lips upturned in a cruel twist.
Evelyn shrank back, terrified. He wasn’t handsome, as she had thought, not at all. His eyes were small and almost black.
“Hello, Evelyn,” he said. “So sorry for all this subterfuge. But it seems you haven’t been entirely forthcoming with us, have you?”
“I don’t understand,” she cried. “What are you doing here?”
White stepped forward. “For the past year, Jack has been embedded in the Siemens-Schuckert group,” he said. “This infiltration began soon after the plants closed and ex-workers sympathetic to Germany coalesced, including your friend Colin. Jack joined the group under the guise of Paul Hancock and established himself as the leader, all with the intention of exposing these traitors when the time was right.”
“No,” said Evelyn. “No. There’s been some mistake. Colin had an Iron Cross. I saw it with my own eyes. Only a German could have come by it . . .”
“A fake, of course,” said Jack. “I had to prove to the group I was bona fide; Colin in particular was nervy. I must admit I’m surprised it fooled you, Evelyn.” There was that cruel smile again. “Especially after Bennett had spoken so highly of your intuition.”
“But what about Julia?”
“Jack was introduced to Miss Wharton-Wells a few months ago at a rally,” White explained. “But she had been on our radar long before she came back from Germany. We suspected her of being linked to the Lion Society, but she was careful and never left a paper trail. It turned out she had networks of fanatics everywhere, including in this Siemens-Schuckert group, so we caught up with her in the end.” White shook his head at Evelyn, his mouth downturned. “I told you to stay out of it, didn’t I? I gave you a chance to keep away from Colin and the Raven Inn. But you didn’t listen. It was like a sore that you just had to pick.”
“You set me up?”
“No, I tried to warn you.”
“But Julia . . .” Evelyn turned to Jack Littleproud. “She must have said something about me. You must have known she was my friend.”
Jack shrugged. “Would you believe she never mentioned you? Seems like you weren’t so important to her after all.”
Evelyn struggled against the agent, wanting to scream, as White edged back into the shadows.
“Bennett,” she implored. How odd it felt to use his first name. “Please. I was only doing what you trained me for.”
He
wouldn’t look at her, and a moment later he turned away.
The hold on her arms sent a fresh bolt of pain across her shoulders, and a cool hand covered her mouth. Evelyn managed to glance down the street, where she could see Julia standing on the pavement with the taller agent, some urgent discussion taking place between them. It looked to be calming down when the man patted her shoulder and Julia began to walk with him back toward the Crofton Hotel. Julia was only about twenty yards away, her gait slow and deliberate, when she locked eyes with Evelyn, and though the light was poor Evelyn could have sworn she saw her smile. Then Julia reached down for something by the curb, the agent following her movement, and as she straightened she slammed what looked like a discarded brick into the side of his head. He slumped to the ground, and Julia took off toward the underground once more.
The agent guarding Evelyn dropped the hold on her arms and ran—not after Julia but to his colleague. Evelyn watched Julia’s determined stride and was reminded of how she had been in school, her attention never on those around her, eyes always focused instead on the vanishing point of the horizon. They had both been searching for something no one else could see and, ignoring the tight feeling in her chest, Evelyn began another chase. She was faster than Julia, and within ten seconds Evelyn had reached out and taken hold of her wrist, forcing her to an abrupt halt.
“Julia, please!”
“Why won’t you just let me go?”
The street was eerily quiet; people had scattered from the scene as if they’d been alerted to some impending catastrophe.
“Come in with me,” Evelyn pleaded. “It’s not too late.”
The whites of Julia’s eyes shone bright like an animal cornered in a trap. She was thrashing at her wildly, but Evelyn had her fixed firm in her grip.
“Why does it matter so much to you, Evelyn? What are you so afraid of?”
Evelyn felt Julia jab at her breast, kick her shin, and amid the tussle she saw the agent lying on the pavement stir, a streak of blood through his fair hair. She grabbed Julia by the coat.
“Is it that you found somewhere you truly belonged?” Julia gasped. “Is that what scared you so much—that you found something to actually believe in?”
“Evelyn!”
It was White. He and the other agent were charging down the pavement toward them.
Evelyn turned back to Julia, tightening her grip.
“Let me go,” she heard Julia cry. “Just let me go.”
And when Julia struck her in the ribs Evelyn did, and for a brief moment experienced a feeling of perfect freedom, until she watched Julia tilt, stumble, and then fall from the pavement onto the road—and right into the path of a southbound bus.
August 1940
Twenty-Four
IT WAS LATE summer when Evelyn was told she had a visitor. No one had come to see her in months, not since the solicitor with the plea bargain papers. In the early weeks of her imprisonment she told herself it was because the case had caused such a stir—it had been in all the newspapers and across the wireless. Julia’s father had resigned his peerage, and then there had been the scandal with Wesley Buttons. The firm lost the army contract and Hugh Wesley went bankrupt soon after, having taken out a large loan against the equity of the business.
In the end, White had decided not to bring any of his own charges against Evelyn. It seemed he couldn’t risk the embarrassment of revealing that his agent Jack Littleproud had been posing as a German spy, or that Evelyn had disobeyed him. Jack never managed to expose anyone from the Siemens-Schuckert group with any real connection to the Nazis, but Evelyn supposed that didn’t matter. White had already claimed his big scalps in the Lion Society case and everything else had been tied up nice and neat, just as he liked it to be. In the meantime, the intelligence service had turned its gaze away from London: France had fallen to the Germans, and Britain’s spies now needed to find a way into the Occupied Zone.
But her transgression could not go unpunished, and Evelyn was charged with attempted murder. White had given a witness statement at her hearing, testifying that he couldn’t say for certain whether Evelyn had meant to push Julia in front of that bus—his revenge, perhaps, for her conflicted loyalty. It was the last time she had seen him. Julia hadn’t been called as a witness. She was still recovering in the hospital wing of Holloway with a broken leg after being sentenced to prison for violating the Official Secrets Act and inciting treason. But the Wesley family still had friends in high places: Julia would be incarcerated for just two years.
Meanwhile the judge had sentenced Evelyn to five years. There had been no mention of her work at MI5 in his summary, nor that her testimony in Nina’s trial had been given anonymously in closed court, securing a conviction and a jail term of ten years. No one had spoken in Evelyn’s defense, testifying to her strong character; even her lawyer had regarded her with contempt during their brief meetings in her cell. She had entertained a hope that John Chadwick would make an appearance, but he didn’t. Her good qualities, whatever they may once have been, had been expunged from her record.
Evelyn followed the warden along the metal walkway and down the juddering stairs toward the main block. She had been housed in B Wing with the other political prisoners, though thankfully Nina Ivanov and Julia were kept in a different part of the jail. They were pleasant enough to her, the other women, mostly because they believed she was a fascist like them. Evelyn supposed they could afford to indulge in pleasantries because they knew they wouldn’t be kept in there for long—there was already talk of Churchill releasing certain detainees and allowing other privileges. People of influence like Diana Mosley and Norah Elam. But not me, she thought grimly. Julia had been right: I am not a person of influence.
At the entrance to the main block, they didn’t turn into the visitors’ room, as Evelyn expected. Instead, she was led around the side of the ancient kitchen and through the wooden door near the bins. They came out into the dining room, a large hall at the south end of the prison. In the far corner stood Sally Wesley—Sally van der Hoort now, Evelyn reminded herself—next to a table on which were tea and biscuits.
Evelyn ran a hand over her unkempt hair. She looked around for the warden, but he had disappeared; only the guard stood at the door, his back to them. Evelyn sat down and, after pouring them each a cup of tea, Sally nudged the plate toward her and took a seat.
Evelyn had not seen Sally since the wedding. In June, three months after her arrest, she’d read an obituary for Hugh Wesley in The Times. He had died suddenly in Shropshire. Evelyn had written to Sally but received no reply, though she hadn’t really expected one, and with no one to talk to about it the news hardly seemed real—Hugh had always been so present in the world, so corporeal. How was it that he was now gone? She had wept over the newspaper until one of the guards came into her cell and took it away.
Sally pulled out a silver case and handed a cigarette to Evelyn. They sat smoking for a few minutes, Sally picking strands of tobacco from her lip.
“You must think it strange,” she said. “My being here.”
Evelyn shifted her weight against the bench. After her cool cell, the dining room felt oppressively warm. She drank some tea and said, “I was sorry to hear about Hugh. I wrote, but . . .” She trailed off, staring at the table. “How is your mother?”
Sally shrugged. “She’s at the manor. She’s not very well. It hit her hard. She found him, you see . . .”
“Oh, Sal.” Evelyn swallowed. “How awful.”
“Yes, it was rather. Dr. Kitchen thinks it was a heart attack. He’d been warning of it for some time. Daddy’s diet was never good, and he always drank too much—more so after the scandal with Julia and the factory . . .” She took a quick breath. “Anyway, one day he went out for his early walk with Tortoise, like he did every morning, but when he wasn’t back for breakfast Mummy went looking for him. He was at the bottom of the lawn . . .”
Evelyn pictured Hugh keeled over, hand gripping his chest, those dark woods l
ooming behind him.
Sally gave a brisk shake of her head. “I can’t stand the manor right now. Everything in boxes, paintings removed from the walls to be sold.” She raised her eyes, squinted. “Still, at least we can keep the Mayfair house. Daddy put that in my name, thank goodness.”
“And Jonty?”
“He’s flying his planes.” Sally’s smile was hard. “I hear you won’t be going to trial after all. That your lawyer made an early plea.”
There was no malice in her voice. She tapped ash into the saucer, her expression inquisitive but unguarded. They could have been back by the stream in the manor grounds.
“He says with good behavior I might be out by Christmas after next.” Evelyn didn’t say how unlikely that would be, or that since she’d been in prison time had become elastic. Two years, ten years. She was still trapped inside her own head. These past months had felt like a nightmare, but none she had ever experienced before. Buried alive was the feeling that most often came to mind, for its slow suffocation and the endless nights alone in her cell.
Sally nodded. Her hands weren’t quite steady as she lifted a cup to her lips.
Dust motes drifted through the air, caught in a shaft of light from the high windows. Evelyn’s eyes felt raw in the brightness—she had cried so much since arriving at Holloway, she often wondered if she’d ever be able to produce tears again.
“Why are you here, Sally?”
Sally’s gaze skimmed the outline of Evelyn’s face, trailing down to her prison-issue long-sleeved woolen blouse and white smock, which Evelyn thought made her look like she worked for the Red Cross.
“Daddy was so fond of you,” she said quietly. “He once said that he saw something of himself in you. At the time, this made me love you even more, but now I must confess I’m not sure why he said it. Perhaps it was how you could shape yourself as you needed to. He always thought you were clever, we all did, and he admired your aloofness. Not something he ever really mastered. Always said it was the Irish in him; that we talk too much at the dinner table. That was his weapon, of course—other people’s assumptions. I know how many people thought my father was a buffoon, and perhaps even more so now. Lovable, like a teddy bear, but not too bright. Rather like me, non? Still, he always believed that we could rely on you. That if we ever needed it, you would help us.”
An Unlikely Spy Page 28
