The Consequences of Fear, Jacqueline Winspear [most important books to read TXT] 📗

turned the key on a wall-mounted gas lamp; there was no telltale hissing, so the supply had indeed been cut off. She movedinto the parlor. There was nothing of note to be found. And that, she knew, was a find in itself. The grate had been cleanedof ash, and the floor had been swept. There was nothing in the house to suggest a family had been here and then left in ahurry. Blackout curtains were drawn back. Blackout curtains. Hadn’t Freddie Hackett said the man pulled him in quickly because he didn’t want to get a mouthful from the air raid patrol, because light was visible through the open door? She looked at the long, wide crack across the ceiling and walked around the perimeter of the room once before stepping into the passage. Treading with care across fallen masonry, Maisie again focused her attention on the ceiling above, then the floor beneath her feet. If she were not mistaken, the collapse of part of the ceiling was recent—perhaps last night—and had fallen onto a swept floor.

There was nothing in the small dining room or the kitchen. No crockery left behind—not even broken china. The shelves wereempty, and though she could see marks on the floor left by a freestanding kitchen cabinet, she suspected it had left the housewith the family who lived there before bombs drove them away. She imagined them leaving with their belongings on a hand cart,and wondered where on earth they might be—housing in London and other bombed cities was becoming hard to find.

She made her way upstairs. Beds and wardrobes had been abandoned in the upper rooms, which did not surprise Maisie. If a familywere moving into smaller accommodation, some furniture had to be left behind. There were no sheets, yet on one bed a counterpaneremained. She pressed down on the mattress as if she were in a furniture store, testing it for firmness.

“I feel like Goldilocks,” she whispered, looking around her at the water-stained walls and even more cracks across the ceiling.

She climbed the second staircase to the attic room. Perhaps if the country had not been at war for two years, the gaping hole in the roof above might have delivered a shock. Instead she merely sighed as she picked her way across fallen tiles and beams toward a bed in the corner. The fallen roof was recent—again, it could have come down last night as rain fell, forcing already weakened beams to give way—and there was a musty odor signaling mold growing around the walls. A counterpane had been pulled up, as on the bed in the room on the floor below, but that wasn’t what had drawn her toward the bed. She knelt down and picked up a scrap of manila paper with a small metal clip still attached. It was a fragment from an envelope of the type used in many offices and government departments, the sort secured by two prongs that poked through a hole in the flap and then split apart to hold it in place. It was clear that the flap on the envelope to which the fragment belonged had also been glued to ensure security, as the scrap of manila paper still had the metal fastener in place. It was likely the envelope had been opened in a hurry and the recipient was not aware that a piece had flown off. Easy to miss in the half-light. Easy to miss if you had been tasked with clearing the house of recent signs of life and you didn’t want to venture a second time into a room with a weakened roof whilst it was raining. She knew that even the most experienced criminal or even a highly trained agent could make a simple error. Hadn’t she been told as much during her training when she was first recruited into the realm of intelligence in 1938, when she accepted an assignment that took her to Munich? It was always the minor blunder that could catch you out: the bus ticket dropped from your pocket, or the shred of clothing caught on a nail, or the way you picked up your knife and fork. She slipped the fragment into the handkerchief with the cigarette end and the wallet.

 

“Nice of you to be prompt on a Monday,” said MacFarlane, squinting at his watch. “What time do you call this, eh?”

“It’s now half past two, and I’m still in time for my interviews, Robbie.” Maisie smiled. “And there’s no need to get snippy,just because you’ve lost your spectacles.”

“Still can’t get used to the bloody things.” He shook his head and slid two folders across the desk. “Can never find themwhere I saw them last. And don’t you laugh—you’re not so far off yourself, Maisie. Another few years and you’ll be wearinga glass bike on your nose too.”

Maisie had known Robert MacFarlane for some years, since their paths crossed when she was in search of a madman intent upon causing chaos and indiscriminate death across London. At the time MacFarlane was a senior detective with Scotland Yard’s Special Branch, but was later promoted into a shady area of intelligence when he became the linchpin between Scotland Yard and the Secret Service. Now he was an important cog in the wheel of the Special Operations Executive, the SOE, with a special brief to once again smooth relations with the Secret Intelligence Service, who were none too pleased when the SOE was formed in July 1940, following a clandestine meeting at St. Ermin’s Hotel, where the prime minister, Winston Churchill, had given the order to “set Europe ablaze” with acts of irregular warfare.

Maisie checked her own watch, then opened the first folder, trying not to squint as she read notes in a tiny hand, thereforeavoiding another ribbing from Robbie MacFarlane.

This was the job that Brenda had referred to earlier. She had no idea what Maisie was doing for the government, just that she had a role and that it was part of her national