All Clear (30 page)

I should never have underestimated her and her mystery novels
, Polly thought.

All those weeks Polly’d been trying to protect her from the truth, Eileen had been patiently collecting clues and piecing them together.
But she can’t know when
—

“I don’t understand,” Mike said. “When I asked you if you’d been to Bletchley Park, you said no.”

“Not Bletchley Park,” Eileen said. “VE-Day.”

“
VE
-Day?”

“Yes,” Eileen said, her face stony. She turned to confront Polly. “That’s why when I saw you in Oxford, you asked me if that was where I was coming back from. And why, when we asked you who’d gone to VE-Day, you changed the subject. You saw me there, didn’t you?”

As long as VE-Day was all Eileen knew about, it would be all right. She could tell them.

“Is what she’s saying true?” Mike asked. “Were you at VE-Day, Polly?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus.”

“And you saw me there,” Eileen said.

Polly hesitated so it would sound like she was reluctantly admitting to it. “Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Mike asked.

“I … at first, in Oxford, I didn’t want Eileen to be angry with me. I hadn’t known Mr. Dunworthy wasn’t going to let her go to VE-Day. I didn’t want her to think I’d stolen the assignment from her. And then when we found out the drops weren’t working, we were already in so much trouble, and you were both so distraught, I didn’t want to add to your worries.”

“But if we’d known—” Mike began.

“If you’d known, what? There wasn’t anything either of you could do about it,” Polly said angrily, hoping the show of anger would stop them from asking any more questions. “And you already had more than enough to deal with.”

“You say you saw Eileen,” Mike said. “Are you certain it was her? Did you talk to her?”

“No. I saw her from a distance. In the crowd in Trafalgar Square the night before VE-Day. She was standing next to one of the lions. The one whose nose had been knocked off in the Blitz.”

“You were in Trafalgar Square on VE-Day,” Mike said. “When did you come through?”

Polly thought rapidly. They’d never believe she’d only been there for the two days of the victory celebration. “April eighth,” she said. “I was there to observe the winding down of the war during its last few weeks. I posed as a Wren working as a typist in the War Office.”

“A typist,” Eileen said.

“Yes.”

“April eighth,” Mike said. “That gives us four years—”

“Four years and five months,” Eileen said.

“Right,” Mike said. “Nearly four and a half years. And when I was talking about increased slippage, I meant a few months, not years. We’ll be out of here long before your deadline, Polly.”

“Which is what?” Eileen asked.

Mike looked at Eileen in surprise. “She just told us. She said she came through April eighth—”

“She’s lying. That isn’t her deadline.”

There was a silence, and then Mike said, “Is she right, Polly? Are you lying?”

“Yes,” Eileen answered for her. “When I told her about one of the historian’s drops to the Reign of Terror and the storming of the Bastille being switched, she went absolutely white, and they were only four years and two months apart.”

And I’m obviously not as good an actress as Sir Godfrey’s always telling me I am
, Polly thought, cursing herself for not having said she’d gone through earlier than April. “It was Pearl Harbor I was worried about, not—”

“Wait. Stop,” Mike said. “Pearl Harbor? The storming of the Bastille? I have no idea what either of you are talking about. Explain.”

Polly said, “After you and I talked about an increase in slippage possibly being the problem, it occurred to me that Mr. Dunworthy might have been putting all the assignments in chronological order.”

“Chronological? You’re right. He
did
put all mine in chronological order. That’s why you asked me about the order of my drops when you called.”

“Yes.” Polly explained about Eileen’s notes and her concluding that the increase might be much longer than a couple of months. “And I was frightened. Some of the worst raids of the Blitz will be after the first of the year, and we don’t even know when and where they are. And I’m not even certain our boardinghouses are safe from January on.” Which had the advantage of being true.

And let’s hope it convinces them
, Polly thought.

“That isn’t the only reason,” Eileen said grimly. “Ask her why, if she was a typist in the War Office, she knows all about driving an ambulance. When I told her I had to learn to drive that day we talked to you in Oxford, Mike, she offered to teach me. On a Daimler, because that was what all the ambulances were.”

“I’d learned that from my prep for the Blitz,” Polly said. “I studied the Civil Defence—”

“And ask her why she turned and ran from a group of FANYs we saw on the platform in Holborn. She knew them from her assignment, that’s why. She never tried to avoid walking past Wrens.”

And all the time I was afraid she was fretting over Mike, she was actually playing detective like a character in one of her Agatha Christies
, Polly thought.
I underestimated her. But she can’t have figured it all out
.

“And ask her where she went when she said she was going to St. Paul’s to meet the retrieval team.” She turned on Polly. “When I got to the National Gallery, it was pouring rain and the concert wasn’t till one, so I thought I’d come to St. Paul’s and meet you. But you weren’t there.”

“Yes, I was. We must just have missed each other. St. Paul’s is huge, and there are so many chapels and bays—”

“I saw you come in. I saw you buy that guidebook and spill pennies all over the floor. She was drenched,” Eileen said to Mike, “like she’d been out in the rain all morning. And don’t bother pretending you were up in the Whispering Gallery, Polly. It’s closed. And the sermon wasn’t ‘Seek and Ye Shall Find.’ It was ‘The Lost Sheep.’ You must have picked up an order of service for the early mass by mistake. Where were you?”

At least this was a question she could answer. “I was at Hampstead Heath. That was where my drop for VE-Day was.” She looked at Mike. “When you sent that message from Bletchley about older drops, I went to see if they might have opened mine to use for an emergency exit. And I couldn’t tell you, Eileen, because I didn’t want you to find out I’d been here before.”

“Is that the truth?” Eileen said.

“Yes.”
And please, please, let that be all you know
.

“You swear?” Eileen said.

“Yes.”

“Then why didn’t you know about the bomb at St. Paul’s, but you knew all about V-1s and V-2s?” She turned back to Mike. “She knew the exact date the V-1 attacks began. Don’t you see?
She
was the historian who did the rocket assignment. She drove an ambulance in Bethnal Green. Didn’t you, Polly? That’s why you were so upset when I told you we had to go there to get me a new identity card. Because you were afraid someone in Bethnal Green would recognize you. You were attached to the ambulance unit there, weren’t you?”

“No,” Polly said. “To the ambulance unit in Dulwich.”

THE SHIMMER FLARED. “COLIN’S NOT TO COME THROUGH AFTER ME,”
Dunworthy said again, though the shimmer was too bright—Badri would never be able to hear him. But he tried nonetheless. “He’s not to come. No matter what excuse he gives you.”

It was too late. He was already through. And definitely in St. Paul’s, though he couldn’t see a thing. His words echoed and then died away into the hush of a high, open, vaulted space. He’d have recognized it anywhere, just as he’d have recognized the distinctive chill. It had always felt like the dead of winter in St. Paul’s. He peered into the solid darkness, waiting for his eyes to adjust. It clearly wasn’t four
A.M
. Or if it was, there’d been locational slippage, and he’d come through in the Crypt instead of the north transept.

No, this couldn’t be the Crypt. The fire watch had their headquarters down there, and there’d be lights. But he might be inside one of the staircases. No, the sound wasn’t that of an enclosed space. He wasn’t willing to take chances, though. He’d come through on a flight of stairs one time early in his career and nearly pitched off it and killed himself. He slid one foot forward and then the other, feeling for an edge.

He was on a flat surface. A stone floor, so this had to be on the main floor of the cathedral, which meant it was far earlier than four
A.M
. But even if it were midnight, there should be
some
light. The raids in the early
morning hours of the tenth had been less than half a mile from here, and some of the docks had still been burning from the first two nights’ raids. And there should be searchlights.

And noise. But he couldn’t hear anything—no clatter of incendiaries, the bane of St. Paul’s. No muffled thud of bombs. No droning of planes overhead. No sound at all, except the distinctive hush. What if Linna had got the coordinates wrong in her haste, and this wasn’t 1940? Or what if Dr. Ishiwaka had been right?

But when Dunworthy put his hand out, it connected with canvas and a yielding weight, which could only be a sandbag. He patted around it. More sandbags, and when he felt his way around them to the wall and along it, he came to a carved wooden doorway. The north doors. Which meant he was exactly where he was supposed to be, and the sandbags meant he was in the general vicinity of when.

There should be two steps leading down to the doors. He felt his way carefully down and tried to open them. They were locked. Locked? John Bartholomew had said they kept the cathedral unlocked. But he wasn’t here yet. He wouldn’t arrive till the twentieth, and perhaps St. Paul’s hadn’t unlocked the doors till later, after the necessity of getting fire hoses in became apparent.

It should have been apparent from the beginning
, Dunworthy thought irritably, groping his way back up the steps. Now he’d have to go all the way down the nave to the west doors. Which would take him an hour at this rate.

Perhaps he should sit down and wait for it to grow light enough to see, but it was too cold. His teeth were already chattering. And the longer he waited, the more likely he was to run into the fire watch and have to explain what he was doing here. He could always tell them he’d come in looking for shelter when the sirens went and had fallen asleep, but if he and Polly were seen when he brought her back here, there could be complications. Worse, they might decide they needed to make a sweep of the cathedral every night. Or lock the west doors.

He needed to get out now, before anyone saw him. And if he was lucky, and it was as early as the darkness and the lack of raids suggested, the trains would still be running, and he could make it to Notting Hill Gate before they stopped. He could spend the night searching that station, search High Street Kensington and the others on the list as soon as the trains began again in the morning, and find Polly before nightfall and have her back in Oxford before breakfast. And he could stop worrying over what might happen to her if Dr. Ishiwaka was right.

He patted his way cautiously back along the wall, around the sandbags. Wall, more sandbags, pillar …

His foot hit something metal, and it fell over with a terrific, echoing clatter. He dived to silence whatever it was, and his hand came down in a bucket of freezing water and nearly knocked it over. He felt frantically for the thing he’d banged into.

A stirrup pump. He could tell by the metal handle, the rubber hose. He straightened, clutching the pump in both hands and peering anxiously into the blackness, listening for running footsteps or a shouted “What was that?”

Neither came, which meant the entire fire watch was still up on the roofs, thank heavens, and if he could just reach the nave with its high windows, there should be a bit more light and he’d be able to see where he was going.

There wasn’t any more light. The wall he’d been patting his way along ended and the quality of the hush changed, so that he could tell he was in a wider, higher space, but it was still pitch-black. Bartholomew had said they’d kept a small light burning on the altar at night for the fire watch to orient itself by, but when he looked toward where the choir and the altar should be, there was nothing but a black blankness.

And I will have a few things to say to Mr. Bartholomew on the accuracy of his historical reporting when I return to Oxford
, he thought, feeling for the angled and fluted pillars that formed the corner of the wall. He didn’t dare go out into the middle of the nave. It was full of wooden folding chairs to crash into. He’d best keep to the north aisle.

He felt along the aisle’s wall, one hand on the cold stone and the other hand in front of him, attempting to remember what lay along it.
Lord Leighton’s statue
, he thought, and promptly stumbled over it, the sandbags breaking his fall.

I’m too old for this
, he thought, getting to his feet again and working his way past it, past an alcove, a rectangular pillar, another alcove. And another bucket, this one full of sand—which he nearly broke his toe against but, thankfully, did not knock over.

Colin was right, I should have brought a pocket torch
, he thought, feeling his way around another pillar. And up against what was unmistakably a brick wall.

There aren’t any brick walls in St. Paul’s
, he thought.
Could I be somewhere else altogether
? Then he realized what it was. The Wellington Monument, which they’d bricked up because it was too large to move. He worked his way quickly along its face to the next pillar. After this there
should be only the All Souls’ Chapel and then St. Dunstan’s Chapel before he reached—

A door slammed somewhere behind him, and footsteps hurried down the nave toward him. Dunworthy ducked behind the pillar, hoping he was out of sight. “I’m certain I heard something,” a man’s voice said.

“An incendiary?” a second voice asked.