A Lesson in Secrets (15 page)

And then there was Stratton—Stratton who had burned a torch for Maisie at one point, who had shown interest again when she parted from Andrew Dene, but who now seemed subdued in her company since it was known she was walking out with James Compton. MacFarlane had seen Stratton looking at Maisie and had known of his hidden affection. As far as Maisie could see, MacFarlane exploited that knowledge, with a comment here, a prod there. He was not an unkind man, but he was not above using another person as a source of fun—as Maisie knew only too well.
“Staid, indeed,”
she said aloud.

Parking outside the Groom’s Cottage, Maisie was surprised when her father did not immediately appear at the door. Though she had not telephoned in advance—she had thought to surprise him—Frankie was always there at the door when she arrived, as if he had one ear to the wind, waiting to hear the crunch of the MG’s tires on the graveled lane that extended from the main driveway to his cottage. There was no sound of a bark from Jook, his dog, so she wondered if he was at the stables. She went to open the door, and was surprised to find that she felt as if she should knock.
But this is my father’s house,
she thought. Instead she walked around the house, towards the back door. The sound of laughter caught her ears even before she came alongside the kitchen window. She stopped. There was her father’s throaty laugh, the laugh she remembered from her childhood.
Has it been so long? Surely he has laughed like that since Mum died.
It was the laugh she’d heard as a girl, after he’d told a story of something that had happened at the market. She could see him now, sitting at the kitchen table at the little house in Lambeth, she and her mother listening, waiting for the next tale
. “What do you think of that, my Maisie, what do you think of that one?”
And he would tickle her ribs, then lean across and pull her mother to him.
“My girls, my girls . . . ”
And he would laugh and laugh, a man who loved and was loved in return by wife and daughter both. How much it had changed their lives when her mother died. Was that when the dragon first raised his head and was subdued, controlled so that he could not cause havoc? Maisie felt she might weep when the hearty laugh echoed from the kitchen again.

“And you should have seen that horse take off with him, Brenda, I tell you, he fair launched himself around that track, took the stable boy right across the road. Well, I’d never seen the like of it. Bill Webber, the trainer, he just walked up to that horse when he was done—munching away in a field while the jockey tried to get himself out of the hedge—he took that bridle and I swear, he got that horse by the end of the nose and looked as if he would twist it off. ‘Do that again, my lad, and it’s the glue factory for you,’ he said. And I saw him wait there like that, him and the horse, standing there, looking at each other, until the horse dropped its head. Old Bill let go, and rubbed the horse’s neck. Followed him all the way back like a pup, did that stallion. And the jockey was still stuck in the hedge.” He laughed again.

“More tea, Frank?”

Maisie felt her eyes widen.
Mrs. Bromley.
Her housekeeper.
Brenda?
She stepped back to the gate, unsure of what to do, then shrugged. She’d come down from London to visit her father, a drive of almost an hour and a half. This was no time to turn back. She coughed twice, then again for good measure as she approached the back door. She cleared her throat again before reaching for the handle.
I cannot believe I am doing this,
she thought. As she was about to turn the handle, the door opened. Her father stood in front of her, his cheeks bearing a faint pink blush.

“Maisie, what a surprise—a lovely surprise, mind.”

“It was a good morning for a drive, so I thought I’d come down—where’s Jook?”

“Oh, sleeping under the table. Mrs. Bromley’s here—she came with some leftovers for Jook, and then—well, come on in, love.”

Mrs. Bromley was clearing the table when Maisie entered. It seemed to Maisie that color was heightened all around when Mrs. Bromley turned to greet her—after all, Maisie was now her employer.

“Miss Dobbs, I thought I’d bring down a spot of cottage pie for Mr. Dobbs—I made it fresh this morning, and it was too much for one. I really didn’t expect you today.”

“I should have telephoned, I’m sorry.” Maisie smiled, anxious to bring a sense of calm to what was obviously a very pleasant lunch—until she arrived. She reached down and ruffled Jook’s ear; the dog had emerged from slumber to greet her. “Well, if there’s any left, I wouldn’t mind some myself—though if it puts me to sleep like Jook, I will be out for the count for the rest of the day.”

“Here you are, love.” Frankie pulled out a chair. “Bren—Mrs. Bromley made a fair old pie there, and even though I came back for more, there’s plenty for another helping or two.”

Mrs. Bromley put a plate of cottage pie and vegetables in front of Maisie, while Frankie poured tea from a large brown teapot.

“I suppose I’d better be off now—” Mrs. Bromley untied her apron and reached for her basket.

“Oh, no, don’t go—I’m sure you’ve already got a pudding ready, Mrs. Bromley, I know you too well. My father will not wish to miss a sweet. Come on, sit down.”

Frankie poured again, fresh cups of tea for himself and Mrs. Bromley, while the housekeeper placed a bowl with a slice of apple pie with custard in front of Frankie, and the same in the place where she had been sitting before Maisie arrived.

“This is lovely, Mrs. Bromley, just what the doctor ordered.”

“You look a bit drawn, love,” Frankie spoke up, as he often did when he was worried about his daughter.

“Oh, busy, Dad. Busy. Driving a lot, too.” Maisie pushed another piece of pie onto her fork. “Did you tell Mrs. Bromley about the time you caught the stable boy from another trainer putting something in your horse’s feed?”

“Oh, that was a fine to-do. It was the third race of the day at Newmarket . . . ” Frankie leaned forward, and as Maisie tucked into the pie, she smiled, watching him look from her back to Mrs. Bromley as he told the story of a day’s racing when he was a stable lad at Newmarket in the years before he’d met her mother, before he’d become a costermonger, and before the much-wanted child had been born. And as he spoke, Maisie felt a tear in her heart—one she had become so very used to accommodating—begin to mend again, as the glue of her father’s intermittent laughter sealed the jagged edges of unspoken grief.

L
ater, Maisie returned to The Dower House, excusing herself while Mrs. Bromley assured her that she would be up at the house as soon as she’d finished with Frankie’s kitchen. She’d asked if Frankie might be joining her for supper, to which Maisie replied that of course he would—in fact, why didn’t they take supper together, all three of them, in the kitchen? In truth, she was still trying to get used to being at The Dower House, and was now quite thrown when she considered the unusual nature of her domestic arrangements. She had often spent the day at the house, only to return to her father’s cottage in the evening, except when James was at home.

She had, eventually, arranged for the large bedroom at the back of the house to be redecorated in a color that reminded her of smooth buttermilk, and had pale-yellow curtains made to add light to the room. She and Mrs. Bromley had moved the furniture around, though they had summoned a couple of the gardeners from Chelstone Manor to help with the bed and an armoire of some girth that had been brought from Maurice’s house in Paris several years before. The housekeeper had made a skirt of the same yellow silk as the curtains, to surround the dressing table, and soon the room was rendered more feminine, without resorting to frippery.

Now Maisie lay down on her bed for a few minutes’ rest before going down to the library, where many of the boxes containing Maurice’s papers had been consigned. There were still more boxes in the cellar.

In all, The Dower House had four upper rooms: three bedrooms on the first floor, then another large attic room on the second floor. Maurice had chosen the large bedroom at the back of the house to be his own, as it overlooked the land he had come to love. There was another room of equal dimensions at the front of the house, and smaller rooms along the shorter sides of the house; one of those rooms had been converted to a spacious bathroom some years before, at the same time as part of the large bedroom had been sectioned off to form an en-suite bathroom for the Dowager Lady Jane Compton, when she was an invalid. When Maisie lived at the house as a girl, she had been assigned the smaller bedroom to the side of the house, so that she could attend to the Dowager—Lord Julian’s mother—if she called in the night. Now, lying on her bed for a few moments, Maisie could hardly believe that such a house was hers; it was a thought she pushed to the back of her mind, for when she considered all that she now owned, she became overwhelmed. She had learned to take each day as it came. Though her wealth was considerable, she knew that Maurice had intended her to be a responsible steward of that wealth, so already she had begun to consider the financial arrangements Maurice had made to support the less fortunate, not only through his clinics in impoverished areas, but in providing educational opportunity for young people with talent who might otherwise languish, caught within the boundary of a life with limitations.

“This will never do,” said Maisie to herself as she swung her legs off the bed. She slipped on her shoes and went downstairs to the library, where she switched on the light above a mound of boxes she had left there on her last visit. With her head inclined to one side, she perused the outside label on each box until she finally came to the one she wanted to start with:
London, 1914–1916.

Maisie had known Maurice since she was thirteen years of age, and for some nine years, until his retirement in early 1929, she had been his assistant. She was well aware of his connections before, throughout, and following the war; however, it was during work on a case that had taken her to Paris in 1930 that she realized how deep and broad his reach into matters of security among the Allies had been. Maurice had received commendations and medals from Belgium, France, and Britain for services rendered, and she knew his influence extended from the Secret Service to the army’s Intelligence Corps. He had contacts in Naval Intelligence, and was called upon to advise on the recruitment of agents working in clandestine roles overseas. And he had been involved in liaising with the brave civilians involved in underground resistance to the enemy occupiers in France and Belgium. He had also spent some time in the Netherlands, and she had been aware of the important role that the Dutch had played in intelligence during the war. But little of this had ever been discussed between them, and it was only now that many of his secrets were being offered up. She could never have read through the many papers except as she now approached the task—either on a “need-to-know” basis, or on a quiet Sunday afternoon, when the stillness inside the house seemed to bring him into sharper focus in her mind’s eye. It gave her a sense that she only had to call and he would be there with her, advising her, prompting her, or bringing insight and clarity to a case that had become more opaque as facts, clues, and suppositions clouded the way ahead.

She opened the box, lifted a good handful of papers onto the desk, and began to read, thinking that if there were ever a market for a review of intelligence in the early years of the war, she would have enough background material to write a worthwhile tome. Page after page cataloged meetings, interviews with prospective employees—many of whom, Maisie thought, would have gone on to become agents working on behalf of His Majesty’s government. Then a few sentences took her attention.

To Whitehall again, this time to see Giles Sheffield. I was taken aback to see so many young women working in the offices, and at all levels of seniority. Girl Guides have been brought in to run messages—apparently the Boy Scouts had been tried out but were found wanting when they put play before work. In walking about the building I came upon a room where the Guides awaited the summons to take a message here or there. Some were called upon to go across London, and all had to swear to the greatest levels of secrecy, for they were in possession of the addresses of every secure building used in the array of intelligence services during a time of war. In the waiting room, the girls read or diligently completed their homework. There was no idle chatter, but a clearheaded willingness to wait until called upon, then to execute their duties as befits the uniform of a Girl Guide.

Maisie went on to the next paragraph, where Maurice remained on the subject.

Women and girls are employed in all aspects of intelligence. In observing their work I am convinced they are the most loyal of workers. Not for them a long lunch at Simpsons, or drinks at their club. They remain at their posts until the job is done and it is clear they understand the gravity of their responsibility, from the most lowly girl at a typewriter to the woman who is charged with breaking a code. Increasing numbers of women are being brought into the service, in particular as more men are required to bear arms on the battlefield. However, I have concerns, which I have voiced in my capacity as an adviser on the temperament and character required for intelligence work, though the concern is not directly in connection with the traits necessary to be a holder of secrets, or the ability to withhold the truth of one’s origins when assigned a duty that requires one to live under the enemy’s nose. There has traditionally been a tendency for the recruitment of agents and intelligence staff to be done at random; there is little investigation into the background of a person; indeed, it seems to me that the club a man belongs to has more bearing upon his employment in the service than other, more significant, traits.

I have suggested that there should be deeper investigation into the origins of a person, and therein will be found something of their sensibilities and loyalties. Does the fact that a young woman has a German great-grandmother have bearing on her work? It might. The women and girls recruited are loyal and hardworking, but we cannot rule out the risk of enemy approaches towards an impressionable young person—man or woman. I have also advised that there should be a comprehensive record of the skills of those who work in the service, women in particular. I have discovered a tendency among the men to assume that a woman knows only that which she has revealed in her interview; however, I have pointed out that a man might tell everything, recount every success and any skill, but a woman will not necessarily share her worth. A brief conversation with one young woman revealed that she was fluent in several languages, given her education overseas. Her supervisor was surprised, as were the men who interviewed her for her clerical position. Now she has been placed in a department where her linguistic ability can be put to better use. My prediction is that the Secret Service will be built upon the work of these women and girls—they should be taken on with great care and deep attention to the many abilities they bring to our remit.