June 1943
Ruby’s exclusive interview with Mrs. Roosevelt, which was greeted with surprise and not a little jealousy by her colleagues at rival publications, quickly led to bigger and better things. On the strength of it, she was granted interviews with Clementine Churchill, who was lovely; Nancy Astor, who was awful; and Dame Myra Hess, the organizer of the classical music concerts at the National Gallery, who welcomed Ruby into her home near Hampstead Heath, performed an impromptu private concert of Beethoven and Schumann, and sent her home with a jar of homemade quince preserves.
Just that afternoon she’d interviewed the Marchioness of Reading, a friend of Mrs. Roosevelt’s and the formidably capable founder of the WVS. While perfectly friendly, Lady Reading had clearly been a woman with a purpose, and that was to talk at length on the mission, current work, and long-term aims of the Women’s Voluntary Service. Ruby had filled nearly an entire notebook with her shorthand scribblings.
She’d do her best to interpret them tomorrow; for now, all she wanted was a quick listen to the nine o’clock news before bed. She had just switched on the wireless when a knock sounded at the front door.
“Were you expecting anyone?” she asked Vanessa.
“No. Perhaps it’s one of the neighbors. Would you mind seeing who it is?”
The knock sounded again, louder and more insistent. Whoever could it be?
She opened the door, feeling more than a little apprehensive, and discovered two men waiting on the stoop. One, overweight and balding, was dressed in civilian clothes. The other, his features blandly unremarkable, wore the uniform of a British army captain.
“Hello,” she said. “May I help you?”
The man in civvies spoke first. “I’m Detective Inspector Vickers of the Metropolitan Police.” He didn’t introduce his companion. “We need to speak to Miss Roberta Anne Sutton.”
“I’m Ruby Sutton,” she said, her insides twisting with abject, piercing fear. They had come to tell her about Bennett. They had come to tell her that he had been killed.
“We need to ask you some questions about your reasons for being in this country.”
Sweet relief—and then apprehension, chill and clammy, began to claw an icy path up her spine. “Wo-would you like to come in?”
The man in uniform took a step forward. “You are being detained under the provisions of the Defense of the Realm Act. You need to come with us.”
“What on earth is going on?” Vanessa had come forward to stand behind Ruby. “I am Lady Tremaine, and I demand to see your warrant card.”
Detective Vickers offered it to her, and once she’d inspected it, accepted the card back without comment.
“What is this all about? Why does Ruby need to come with you?”
“We’re not at liberty to say,” the man in uniform said. “You have one minute to fetch your coat and bag, Miss Sutton.”
“I’ll get them,” Vanessa said. She returned seconds later. “What should I do? How can I help?”
Bennett could be anywhere, and even if he were in London, he might be unable to intervene, constrained as he was by the secrecy of his war work. There was only one other person who might be able to help. “Call Kaz.”
“Where are you taking Ruby? I insist that you tell me.” Vanessa was using her most imperious voice, the voice that made ordinary people freeze in their tracks, but the men ignored her. Already they had taken hold of Ruby’s shoulders and were leading her down the steps.
“If you cooperate, we won’t need to restrain you,” Detective Vickers said. Not wishing to be manacled, Ruby walked obediently between them, and made no protest when they forced her inside the waiting police car. Squashed between the two men, unable to see where they were going, she had no choice but to endure. If she were compliant, if she did as they told her, perhaps someone would decide to explain what was happening.
The faint glow of a police station’s blue light, dimmed for the blackout, eventually heralded their destination. The car turned left into a courtyard, stopped suddenly, and then she was hustled up a dark flight of stairs, in through a pair of double doors, and along a deserted corridor.
A door opened. Her handbag was torn from her arm. She was pushed forward, into a small room made bright by a single, swaying lightbulb. The door clanged shut behind her, a lock clicked into place, and she was alone.
The cell was smaller than her cabin on the Sinbad had been, with no fixtures apart from a narrow bench along one wall. She sat, her knees suddenly unable to bear her weight. Would Vanessa know how to find Kaz so late at night? Did she even have his telephone number?
She’d taken off her wristwatch to help Jessie with the dishes and had forgotten to put it back on, and of course there was no clock in the cell. Time stretched thin, and after a while—it might have been half an hour or half the night—she began to feel very tired. Deciding that she might as well sleep while she could, she took off her coat and cardigan, folded the latter into a pillow, and, stretching out on the bench, covered herself with her coat.
It was cold in the cell, though, and the light was so very bright, and she couldn’t stop her fears from burrowing a poisonous path into her heart. So she sat up again, shivering, and waited for whatever might come next.
The door opened suddenly, swinging wide on screeching hinges. “Get up,” Detective Vickers said. “Come with me.”
Gathering her things, she followed him down the hall and into a larger room. The army officer from earlier was seated at a large table.
“Sit down, Miss Schreiber,” he said, indicating a chair on its opposite site.
Ruby froze. It had been years since she had heard that name.
“Didn’t you hear me? Sit down.”
Detective Vickers took his place next to the unnamed officer. “It has come to our attention that you are in this country under false pretenses. We believe that you knowingly entered Great Britain with the aid of counterfeit documents on the second of July, 1940, for purposes yet to be determined—”
“My passport was genuine,” she broke in. “My employer handled the application process.”
“Really? Do you have it in your possession for us to examine?”
“No. It was destroyed in the Blitz. My lodgings burned down at the end of 1940.”
Detective Vickers frowned, and then scribbled something in a notebook he’d pulled from his coat pocket. “I see. Do you have any other supporting documents? A birth certificate, for instance?”
“No,” she admitted. “My birth certificate was destroyed as well.”
“So you have nothing to prove that you are Roberta Anne Schreiber, alias Ruby Sutton, formerly of New York City?”
“Not as such.”
“And the name of Schreiber?” the army officer prompted. “Is it familiar to you?”
“Yes,” she said, although she knew it would damn her. “It was my birth name.”
“So Sutton is your married name?”
“No. I . . . I changed it.”
“Because Schreiber is a German name,” the officer stated.
“No—I mean, yes, it is a German name, but that isn’t the reason I changed it. I changed it long before I came to England.”
Again it was the officer who spoke. “With the intention of implanting yourself at an English newsmagazine? And thereby finding a way to place false information, or possibly encoded information, in the stories you wrote?”
“What? Oh, my God—no. Of course not. I changed it because I thought I’d have a better chance of getting a job if I had a more American-sounding name.”
“Did you change it officially?” Detective Vickers asked. “Presumably there are mechanisms for making such changes in the United States, just as there are here.”
“No. I mean . . . it never occurred to me. And so what if I changed my name? Plenty of people do. You aren’t chasing down Cary Grant or John Wayne, are you?”
“If we discovered they had provided false documents for the purposes of obtaining a passport and entering this country, we would,” said the officer. “Because that’s what you did. Your passport, as registered upon your entry in 1940, was under the name of Roberta Anne Sutton, born in New York City on July 12, 1916. Is that how it was made out?”
She nodded.
“And since you have already admitted your change of name was not formalized in any fashion, you must have obtained your passport by providing the United States government with a false birth certificate.”
He had her there. “Yes,” she admitted.
“And you did so in order to obtain a passport and gain entry into this country.”
“Yes, but only so I might take up the job I had been offered. They’d have given it to someone else if I’d told Mr. Mitchell the truth.”
Detective Vickers and the officer exchanged knowing glances. “By ‘truth,’ do you mean the truth about your name?” the officer asked. “Or were there more lies?”
Detective Vickers leaned across the table, his brow creased in a forbidding frown. “I must warn you, Miss Schreiber, that you are on extremely shaky ground here. Anything less than complete honesty—”
“I lied on my job application to The American. I said I attended Sarah Lawrence College, but I didn’t. And I grew up in New Jersey, not New York.”
“Where in New Jersey, Miss Schreiber?”
“St. Mary’s Orphan Asylum. In Newark.” This provoked a further round of note-taking.
“I only did it so I could get a job,” she added, even though it was clear they weren’t interested in hearing her excuses. “I tried again and again, but no one would hire me. If I’d had a more American name, or if I’d had a better upbringing, they might have considered me, even without a college degree. But all of it, together, put me at the bottom of the list of candidates every time.”
“Is your employer here in England aware of these fabrications?” Detective Vickers asked.
“No—of course not!”
“We’ll have to call him in. See what he knows.”
If this was calculated to break her composure, it was working. “He knows nothing,” she insisted, her voice rising. “He has nothing to do with this, nor do any of my other friends. Am I . . . may I please speak with a lawyer?”
“No,” said the officer.
“So what are you going to do? Keep me here indefinitely?”
“Only until we decide what to do with you,” he said, his tone indicating an utter lack of interest in her well-being. “If you are deemed to be an ongoing security risk, you’ll be sent to an internment camp. If not, you’ll be deported to the United States, presumably to face criminal proceedings there.”
She was done for. Slumping in the chair, Ruby covered her face with her hands and tried to gather together what was left of her dignity. She would not cry. No matter what, she would recover her composure, and she would not cry.
There was a knock at the door, and Detective Vickers got up to answer it. He went outside, shutting the door behind him, and a heated conversation ensued with whoever had been at the door. A minute later, the army officer got up from his chair and joined the others in the hall. The conversation continued, still muffled enough that she couldn’t make out the least part of it.
The door opened again. The officer stood at the threshold, his gaze fixed at a point on the far wall. “You’re free to go,” he said.
“What? I don’t understand.”
“It has been determined that you pose no threat to public safety or to national security. If you will come with me, I’ll have your bag returned to you.”
She got up, still not quite grasping what had taken place. He stood back as she passed him to leave the room, his lip curling in disgust.
“. . . friends . . . high places . . .” he muttered.
“Pardon me? I didn’t hear what you said.”
“Nothing. Come on.”
Someone handed over her bag, which had been rifled through thoroughly, and Detective Vickers, his expression just as disapproving as the officer’s, showed her to the station’s side door.
Not wishing to linger, just in case they developed second thoughts about letting her go, Ruby ran down the steps and away from the station, not stopping until she was at least a hundred yards away. She was free of them—but she also had no idea of where she was.