Chapter Twenty-Three

“Really. How did you find out?”

Fiona laughed. “I locked myself out one day. Sarah used her key to let me in. We discovered our keys were identical, and she suspected there was really only one key pattern and it fit every lock on our floor.”

“Makes me feel really safe with a murderer about,” Rosalie said.

“Sarah went out to meet him. We’re safe enough in here,” Helen said. “Just don’t go wandering about outside in the dark the way she did. I grew up south of the Thames in London, not in the nicest neighborhood, but I know I’d be safer there.”

“Sarah had one boyfriend she was meeting by going out a door from the kitchen into the main house. Does it make sense she was meeting a second one on the same night?” I wondered, more to myself than to the others.

“Where did you hear that?” Fiona asked. The scowl on her face told me I’d better answer carefully.

“I heard a couple of the men talking.” I sighed. “And after I carried on about Simon spreading tales, I certainly shouldn’t do it.”

Helen raised her eyebrows at me. She was the one who told me about Sarah’s boyfriend, but hadn’t wanted to admit any involvement.

Rosalie seemed to be considering something else. As the two other women began to walk off, she said, “Did anyone else have anything stolen? Money, perhaps?”

“I lost a ten-shilling note,” Helen said. “But that was a while back. And you lost something, too, didn’t you, Fiona?”

“A few shillings. And I admit I was hot about it, too. I planned to buy more yarn with that money.”

“How’s the scarf coming?” As a fellow novice knitter, I sympathized with Fiona’s struggles to improve with more help than she could use.

“Fairly well, but you’d not know that from the way the twins keep at me.” Fiona knew Marianne and Maryellen weren’t twins, but she called them that when she was annoyed with them.

Rosalie took Fiona’s scarf and held it up. It was the second time recently I’d been able to see it stretched out. “It’s coming right along. Good for you, Fiona. It almost looks as if you’ve got a pattern going with all your little knots,” she said, studying it closely.

“Don’t say that too loudly,” Fiona said, taking her work back, “or the twins will tell me I’m doing that wrong, too.”

“I’m sure it’s well appreciated.” There was something about Fiona’s scarf that reminded me of something. I had no idea what. If I didn’t think about it, it would come to me.

I hoped.

“It’ll keep somebody warm. That’s what’s important.” Fiona sauntered off with Helen, chatting about Ngaio Marsh’s newest story, Overture to Death.

Rosalie opened her door and nodded to me to enter. When we were settled, Rosalie on the bed and I on the straight-backed chair, she said, “All those thefts took place a while ago. Before Sarah’s death.”

“Did she have a need for money? Well, more than the usual?”

Rosalie studied the floor. “Apparently, her family wasn’t well off, and she said she felt obligated to make enough money to help them since they’d gone without so she could attend university. Her young man’s family was struggling, too, since both fathers are fishermen, and she needed money if they were to marry.”

“I can’t see someone murdering her because she was a thief.”

“No, thieves just get their hands cut off, or some such thing,” Rosalie replied.

“Except Sarah was strangled, after sneaking out through the storeroom. This changes my thinking,” I told her.

Rosalie studied me for a moment. “I won’t ask you why you are so interested, because I’m certain you can’t tell me. I also won’t ask if Simon is also interested in Sarah’s murder for the same reason, because I’m sure you can’t tell me that, either.”

“The bus comes awfully early in the morning. It’s time we both get to bed,” I said, rising from the chair. Rosalie was right. I couldn’t tell her anything. I wasn’t completely convinced she wasn’t the killer. She was certainly smart enough, but she didn’t have the temperament to murder, nor did she have a motive.

I was almost certain I could trust her.

“Thorpe likes you,” she said as I reached the door. “He told me to keep you as a friend and look out for you, because you’re much cleverer than most of the people we know. However, he thinks your cleverness may put you in danger.”

I turned and said, “I like Thorpe, too. He’s more clearsighted and generous than just about anyone I know.”

* * *

I didn’t sleep well that night, thinking about the hidden door and the possibility that Sarah Wycott was a thief and where that left the investigation. I had finally dropped off when I awoke, sitting upright in the bed.

After a moment, I realized the door to my room was beginning to open. I turned on my lamp, blinking my eyes to adjust to the light and trying to chase the sleep from my brain.

The door silently shut.

It took a moment for me to believe the door had ever opened, but I was certain I hadn’t dreamed it. I jumped out of bed and hurried across the icy floor to the door in bare feet. When I opened the door and looked out, no one was there.

I shut and locked the door and rushed back to bed. After I turned off the light and snuggled under the covers, I realized my door had been unlocked. I always locked it before I climbed into bed, and that night was no exception.

Who had tried to enter my room? Listen as I might, I didn’t hear anyone moving around.

And then in the early hours Simon’s rumor came back to worry me. I knew it was rubbish, but I’d rather have Adam assure me it was a lie. I was certain it was untrue, but Simon had found a way to sneak into my brain with doubts in the dead of night.

In addition, I hadn’t had much sleep the night before since I’d finally had a chance to spend time with Adam. After tossing and turning, short on sleep for two nights running, I was tired the next morning.

“Morning, Gwen,” I said, sitting down next to her with my toast.

She rose and walked away without a word.

Rosalie looked at me, her eyes wide with shock.

I’d never been snubbed that way before, but I was too tired to be angry. I gulped down toast and coffee and hoped it would wake me up.

That and a brisk walk in the cold morning air to the bus stop did the trick. I noticed Aileen wasn’t with us at the bus stop, but it wasn’t until I was seated in our cold office that I realized she really wasn’t there.

“Where did Aileen go this weekend?” I asked.

John came in and looked around the room. “That’s a good question. Anyone know?”

We all shook our heads.

“When was the last time anyone saw her?”

The five women in the room looked at each other. Friday night at dinner, I thought, trying to picture the table. No empty places, so she must have been there. What about after dinner? I could remember her knitting, but which night was that? They all ran together.

And all I was thinking about on Friday night was seeing Adam.

“She was at dinner on Friday night,” I said.

“Aileen was awfully quiet. Not that she wasn’t anyway, but she was particularly silent last Friday,” Gwen said.

“I can’t remember if I saw her knitting in the servants’ hall after dinner,” Rosalie said.

“I can’t remember either,” I admitted. Unlike the others, I was supposed to be paying attention. “You might ask the women in the Registration Room who live at Bloomington Grove. Maybe she said something about where she was going to one of them.”

John nodded and walked out of the room. None of us started working. We glanced at each other, thinking of Sarah Wycott’s disappearance. The two new girls sat watching us, unsure what to do.

John returned a couple of minutes later. “They don’t know where she is, either.”

“You’ll have to notify the police and the admiral,” I said somberly.

“Won’t we feel silly when she turns up with a logical explanation?” one of the new girls, Katie, asked.

“I’d rather feel foolish than not do something that might help her if she’s lying injured somewhere,” I replied.

“You need to get working,” John said and left the room, pulling his coat on.

We set the three wheels on our TypeX machines and began on the messages we had been given. I didn’t feel tired anymore, I just felt a nagging worry, both for Aileen and for Adam. And then I hit a message that was a garbled mess, and I felt the need to scream. I was not in the mood for puzzles.

When I slammed my fists onto my desk and turned my face up to the ceiling, John came over. I hadn’t realized he had returned. “Are you all right?”

“This message starts out all right, and then it just becomes impossible.” I didn’t completely hide a yawn.

John studied it for a minute. “You’re right. Let me hand this over to the Intercept Control Room. They can chase down the original transcript and see what the problem is.”

At that moment, Gwen ran into the same problem. I looked over John’s shoulder and saw the time was nearly identical. “Some sort of interference? That might garble the letters.”

“Well, the dots and dashes. What the listening stations are hearing is Morse code. In German,” John said, not looking up from the cards containing messages we needed to decode. “Yes, if the weather was bad over the North Sea, it could have rendered reception difficult.”

He looked around at us. “Anyone else with messages that become garbled?”

Everyone had at least one. Rosalie and the new woman, Katie, each had two. John gathered them all up and strode from the room.

We went back to work, separating the messages we could decipher from those that were garbled.

John came back a few minutes later and said to continue with what we had. “Yes, there was a storm over the North Sea last night. Do the best you can with these messages. If there’s enough to guess at a word, go ahead with your guess and mark it as such. And if the traffic analysis gives a hint, such as which location was broadcasting, use that information, too.”

He glanced over his shoulder toward the hall and added, “The Intercept Control Room is going to see if they can match messages copied from two of our receiving locations to find the missing words.”

We went back to work, the room completely silent as we redoubled our efforts at figuring out what was missing or garbled. It could be important. It could save lives. And those lives were counting on us.

Aileen still wasn’t there, her empty spot an extra weight at the backs of our minds.

By the time last lunch was held, Rosalie and I rose, stretching, from our hard seats. I was so stiff from the cold in the room and sitting hunched over for hours concentrating on the messages that I could barely move.

I couldn’t remember ever working so hard, but it was so necessary. In the short time I’d been there, I’d had drilled into me that what we were doing mattered. That what we were doing would save lives. It might be the very thing that saved our country.

And then I thought, nothing would save Sarah Wycott’s life now. I wondered, was that why Aileen disappeared? Was she the killer, or another victim?

I pulled on my coat and hat, pushed my gloves over fingers sore and stiff from typing, and followed Rosalie out of the building. We rushed through the rain to the main building and our lunch.

“I thought it was supposed to be dry today,” Rosalie said once we were safely undercover. “If it gets any colder, it’ll snow.”

“I wish it would warm up so we don’t freeze while we work,” I replied as we walked into the dining room.

Today’s lunch was a meat and vegetable stew, meat variety unspecified, and since neither of us got any in our portion, unknown. The room was crowded, so we shared a table with Marianne and Maryellen. Maryellen was her usual chatty self, mostly about Aileen’s vanishing act. I was struggling to force myself to eat. I noticed Rosalie was unusually quiet, too.

We were partway through our meal when Simon came over. “Olivia, may I speak with you? Outside?”

“When I finish my lunch, I’ll talk to you in the corridor.” I sounded haughty, and it earned me a dark glance from Maryellen. She was definitely sweet on him.

He nodded and walked out of the room.

“You weren’t very nice to him,” Maryellen said.

“He’s been spreading gossip and lies about me and my marriage. If he were doing this to you, you wouldn’t like it,” I told her.

“He’s not lying,” she protested.

“It is gossip,” Rosalie said, “and quite possibly untrue. It certainly brings him no credit to spread tales about others that are painful and embarrassing whether or not they’re true.”

“She’s right,” Marianne said.

Maryellen shot her sister an angry look and walked out of the dining room in the direction Simon had gone.

“She’s sweet on him,” Rosalie said. “You can’t hold that against her.”

“Oh, I don’t. I just wish she didn’t repeat every stupid story he tells to anyone who will listen.” I was angry at Simon, not Maryellen. “It’s not true, and it’s embarrassing. Divorce, indeed.”

“Gwen is giving Livvy the cold shoulder because of this gossip,” Rosalie told Marianne.

“You can’t hold that against Maryellen,” her sister argued. “And it might be because Livvy’s questions led us to find out Gwen had an aunt in service at Bloomington Grove. In service, of all things.” Marianne might warn her sister not to gossip, but she’d defend her against all criticisms.

“For making up the stories, no, I don’t hold that against Maryellen. For spreading them, yes, I do.” I finished my lunch and rose from the table. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to talk to Simon.”

As soon as I reached the doorway, I saw Simon at a distance down the corridor with Maryellen standing in front of him, looking up into his face with rapture. He glanced over, saw me, smiled, and brushed Maryellen aside as he hurried toward me.

She watched him walk away from her, glowering in my direction.

Simon walked up to me, took my arm, and headed us toward the front door. “I’m sorry if what I said has put you in a bad position. I did hear him say something about divorce, and I really believed he was talking about the two of you, but if I misunderstood, I’m sorry.”

“You misunderstood, and now your malicious gossip is all over the facility.” I stopped and glared at him with my arms folded across my chest, letting him know I couldn’t be talked around that easily.

“I should have known better than to say anything to Maryellen.” He glanced in her direction with a sour expression. “Anything that goes in her ears comes out her mouth. Not a characteristic I’d want in someone working here, but that’s not my decision.”

“We could also say that about you. You thought you heard something, misunderstood, and talked about it, making me the subject of pity and scorn. Not a characteristic I want in someone I’m working with.”

“All right. I messed up. I’m sorry. Now, can we please get back to the subject at hand?” He sounded more annoyed than contrite.

“And what is that?” I was curious as to why he wanted to talk to me despite my anger at his foolish stories.

“We both know we have a traitor in our midst, and the secret of BP isn’t safe as long as this person can let the Nazis know how far we’ve come toward breaking their codes.”

“You believe a traitor killed Sarah Wycott?” Actually, after eliminating Charlie Adler and Peter Watson, I thought so too. I didn’t believe she’d been murdered for some petty thieving.

“There’s nothing else. And BP isn’t safe as long as we might have a spy in our midst.”

I raised my eyebrows. “‘Might’? Who do you have in mind? And Aileen is missing. Is she a traitor or a victim?”