Brown government-issue envelopes stacked on the hallstand. One longer, creamy thick paper. Hotel Atlantic. Letters from Edith. Edith’s neat, elegant writing, the royal-blue ink she used. Dori put them in order. Dated at different times but arrived all together. She would not be opening them yet, however eager she was for news.
Anton’s tread on the steps. He’d been out for his constitutional. It was a cold, grey, foggy morning but Anton went five times round the square whatever the weather.
‘Are they still out there?’ Dori asked.
He nodded as he hung up his hat and coat.
‘Psy mysliwśkie. Hunting dogs – part of a pack. Sometimes one alone.’ He smoothed his white hair back. ‘Sometimes two, sometimes three. Never the same two days running. Young men standing, smoking, sitting. What are they doing in the square with the babies and the old ladies?’
‘Hmm,’ Dori frowned. ‘Take a look at these will you?’
He picked up the letters one at a time and scrutinized them carefully with the aid of a jeweller’s loupe that he took from his pocket.
‘Cheap brown paper,’ he said as he ran the glass down the sealed edges of the upper flap, then the gummed lower flap. ‘Not so easy to open without leaving some trace.’ The paper was dulled, cockled. There were traces of tears along the edges of the seal, the bottom flap slightly curled, the gummed part convex. Anton picked up a paper knife from the hallstand and slit one of the envelopes along the top and down the sides and reapplied the glass. ‘Traces of gum. This has been steamed opened and resealed in a clumsy way.’
Dori thanked him with a ten-bob note and took the letters down to the kitchen. Flaps and seals. Definitely covert but not very good at it. She opened the letters, slitting the tops as Anton had done. The correspondence might have been read but their code had not been discovered, she was pretty sure of that.
It was hard not to think in cookery terms. Things were hotting up out there, coming to the boil. The Prussian Dish located. Plot thickening with the Balts and with the Germans. Frau Schmidt and what Edith termed the Schwestern, like-minded Nazi fraus gathering for kaffee und kuchen, and then there was American interest to lend savour …
Eye of newt, and toe of frog …
A brew of peculiar potency. A charm of powerful trouble.
Then there was Adams and his gristly Barnsley Chop and his suspicions. The witches’ charm continued in her head: Finger of birth strangled babe, ditch delivered by a drab. Probably tasted similar. Adams alerted by Leo, no doubt, and whoever was making a pig’s ear of steaming these envelopes open. Dispatched to warn Edith off, especially since von Stavenow was due to be Paperclipped – once they found him. Dori fed the papers into the fire. She remembered her grandmother writing notes in the strange symbols of some lost and ancient script, holding them for the flames to take from fingers as bent and gnarled as oak twigs. Blessings or curses? Dori never dared to ask.
The last of the papers glowed then whitened to ash. It was all coming together now. Make the gruel thick and slab.
She started like a guilty thing at the shrill drilling of the front door bell. She wasn’t expecting any callers. She tied on a pinny, to look suitably occupied, and ran up the stairs.
‘Mrs Stansfield?’ One of Anton’s suspicious young men stood on her threshold, the collar of his overcoat turned up, a scarf round the lower part of his face, the brim of his hat shading his eyes. A companion, similarly muffled, stood at the bottom of the steps. ‘Come with us, please.’
‘Says who? Come with you where? What’s this about?’ Dori stood, arms folded, looking suitably put out. ‘I’m busy in the kitchen.’ She indicated the pinafore. ‘As you can see.’
The young man planted his feet more firmly. The other one mounted the steps behind him. ‘Nevertheless. We insist.’
‘Oh, very well.’ Dori removed her pinafore. ‘If you insist. I’ll just get my coat. Won’t be a moment.’
The first young man placed his foot against the doorjamb.
Dori put on her coat and opened the drawer of the hallstand. Under cover of rummaging for a lipstick, she slipped out the little Berretta she kept there and slid it into her pocket. She applied a swipe of Chanel. Police? Unlikely. Expensive shoes and no warrant card offered. We will see what we shall see. She worked her lips together and picked up her keys.
‘I’m ready.’ She stepped out, closing the door. ‘Where are you taking me?’
They didn’t reply. They walked close, one either side of her. She sensed another behind. The two at her side stared straight ahead. Their proximity, their expressionless faces, masks of indifference verging on hostility shown to the already guilty, reminded her of being picked up by the Gestapo, although there was no gun at her back or nuzzling her ribs.
At the end of the square, they turned left and then right, halting in front of a pub on a corner not far from the station. The men stood back for her to enter. The door wheezed back slowly behind her. Dori stood on the threshold, taking in the room. A bleak white light leaked through smeared pebbled windows; cigarette smoke hung in blue drifts below a ceiling enamelled brown by accumulated tar. The walls were lined with button-backed bottle-green leatherette banquettes, torn or slashed in places, horsehair showing. Rickety round-backed chairs clustered about a scatter of scarred and ringed-round tables. The small grate was empty. The sparse clientele were still wearing their overcoats; solitary men standing, elbows on the bar, one foot resting on the tarnished brass rail. The landlord wiped the counter with a towel. Above his head, a line of dusty coloured lights hung in uncertain loops above a row of optics. They looked as though they’d been there since Christmas, 1938.
The two men walked her over to a booth in the far corner, separated off by a wooden panel topped with stained glass.
Leo was waiting for her. Crombie overcoat buttoned up. Bowler still in place.
‘Thank you, Crowther.’ One of her escort peeled off and made for the door. ‘Burman, could you get drinks? I’ll have a whisky to go with this.’ He indicated a cloudy pint in a dimpled glass. ‘And whatever Mrs Stansfield would like.’
‘Gin. And tonic, if they have it. If not, anything they’ve got.’
Leo moved up into the corner. Dori slid in beside him.
‘Just wanted a little chat,’ Leo said when the drinks arrived.
‘About what?’ Dori tasted her gin. Watered and further diluted by some ghastly cordial. ‘I say, could one of your young men get me a whisky? Whatever they’ve put in here tastes like Jeyes Fluid smells.’
Dori watched Leo as he signalled to one of the young men nursing a half pint at the bar. Leo wasn’t to be trusted, not under any circumstances. As slick as a snake, he could strike just as fast. He’d been attached to SOE from one of the other Secret Outfits. Seconded in 1940. His brief was Strategy, far above Dori in the poor bloody infantry. Those were the days. Set Europe ablaze. Didn’t quite work out like that, though, and when it started going pear shaped there was old Leo, quick as a wink, to conceal and disguise. Hide the cockups. Paper over. Generally cover collective arses. Thick as thieves with Buckmaster, boss of SOE, the biggest arse to cover. Less thick with Vera. Cover-ups meant double agents protected, circuits blown, SOE agents betrayed for whatever reason and that spelt ‘traitor’ in Dori’s book. It amounted to a betrayal of the agents sent to France, the organization that sent them and ultimately the country. She had no proof it was him and whatever evidence there might have been was disappearing by the minute, but Dori went by instinct and she knew it was Leo.
The young man brought over a squat glass of whisky.
‘Better?’ Leo asked as Dori tasted.
‘Oh, much. Now,’ Dori put down the glass. ‘What did you want to chat about?’
‘Oh, this and that.’ Leo took a sip of his beer. ‘Orders come through yet?’
‘Yes, they have as a matter of fact.’
‘Good, good. Off soon to Germany?’
‘Yes. Is that why you want to see me?’
‘Something else entirely.’ Leo pushed his beer away and toyed with his whisky. ‘Won’t beat about the bush. Are you in touch with Edith at all?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what do you correspond about?’
‘Oh, this and that.’
‘Does she send you recipes?’
‘Indeed, she does!’ Dori smiled her surprise that he would know that.
‘Hmm,’ Leo settled himself deeper into his overcoat. ‘I find that odd.’
‘Odd? What’s odd about women sending each other recipes? She sends the same ones to her sister, Louisa.’
‘I know Louisa. She’s a good cook. You, as far as I know, are not.’
‘So what does that prove?’
Leo knew he was on to something and wasn’t quite sure what, so he’d come on a fishing expedition. He looked up, his pale-blue eyes suddenly sharp behind the magnifying lenses.
‘It won’t do, Dori.’ He tapped the words with his fingernail on the side of his glass. ‘It will not do.’
‘What won’t do?’
‘Yes, she sends Louisa recipes, menu cards and so on. Louisa has been kind enough to show them to me, but that doesn’t account for the book references.’
‘Ah, that’s me, I’m afraid. My secret.’ She felt herself growing scarlet. She’d always been able to blush, or cry, at will. ‘I can’t cook, as you pointed out. Edith has been teaching me. She’s going to be in Northern Germany. Cabbage Soup and Spaetzle, Piroggen, Blaubeere Küchen,’ Dori recited. ‘It’s the food of my homeland. I want to know how to cook them myself. Edith directs me to particular recipes in the Radiation Cookery Book and adapts them for me. Odd, I concur, and faintly shame-making for me, but there it is. You must allow us ladies our eccentricities.’
‘Hmm,’ Leo turned his whisky glass round and round between his pudgy fingers. Dori kept silent, letting him mull. ‘It is odd,’ he repeated. ‘Edith has her own oddities, but she’s not one for duplicity. She’s doing a useful job. Wouldn’t want her put off her game. No shenanigans.’ He held his index finger up, moving it in tick-tocking admonition. ‘I know you’re up to something, I just don’t know what. Yet. Whatever it is, I don’t want Edith mixed up in it. How’s it going in Germany?’
Leo threw out the question, a quick cast into a different pool.
‘Vera’s identified the three female agents who ended up in Ravensbrück. She’s still working on Natzweiler.’
‘Good. We need this business cleared up. Some of the parents are kicking up a stink, going to the papers, saying we’re not doing enough. The Express loves that kind of stuff.’ He drained his whisky and stood up. ‘Good luck.’ He offered his hand, the palm soft, slightly sweaty. ‘I hope you didn’t resent our little chat?’
‘Not at all.’ Dori returned his weak clasp with her own strong grip. ‘Best to know where we stand.’
‘Exactly, Dori,’ Leo smiled and touched the brim of his hat in parting. ‘Auf wiedersehen!’
His young men fell in beside him as he left the pub. Alone, Dori finished her whisky and ordered another. She drained it quickly. Leo was right. The sooner she got out to Germany, the better.