Chapter 14

London

Marry for friendship, not love, ” Osla had heard her mother quip. “Friends listen better than lovers! ” So what did it say when you got engaged to a friend and he didn’t listen a whit?

“Darling, ” Osla said, trying to keep her voice even. “I’ve asked you repeatedly not to call me kitten. I’ve told you nicely that I dislike it; I’ve told you firmly that I despise it; I’m telling you now that I loathe it with every fiber of my being. ” Even more than she loathed being called a silly deb.

“Claws in, kitten! ” He chuckled down the telephone line, still in bed by the sound of him. “Why the early call? ”

Osla gave a measured exhale. “I’ll be out of town for a few days. Old friend in a bit of a flap. ”

“I thought you were coming over tonight. ” His voice lowered. “Staying over. ”

I’m sure you can find someone else to fizz your sheets while I’m gone, Osla thought. He certainly hadn’t given up other women since their engagement, and Osla supposed it didn’t matter. They had an understanding, not a great love. Let’s give it a go, Os, had been his marriage proposal. Romance is for bad novels, but marriage is for pals—pals like us.

Why did I say yes? she sometimes wondered when she looked at the emerald on her finger, but a scolding reply always followed fast on that thought’s heels. You know perfectly well why. Because it had been July, the whole world positively kippered over Princess Elizabeth’s recently announced engagement to Philip, and Philip’s wartime girlfriend had turned overnight to an object of pity. Suddenly it didn’t matter that Osla wrote for the Tatler, loved her work, and splashed out at the Savoy every Saturday night with a different beau—all that mattered after the royal engagement was that she was a pathetic ex-debutante, jilted by the princess’s future husband and still unmarried. A week of pitying glances and sheet-sniffing journalists, and Osla had quite simply crocked up. She’d walked into the next party wearing a black satin frock slashed practically to the waist, ready to say yes to the next halfway suitable man who took a dead set at her, and an old friend had sidled up and said Let’s give it a go.

And really, it was all going to be fine. They wouldn’t be like those deadly old-fashioned couples who lived in each other’s pockets. They weren’t in love, and who needed to be? It was 1947, darling, not 1900. Better to marry a friend, even one who called her kitten, than expect some grand romance. A friend whose presence at the royal wedding would assure all onlookers that Osla Kendall was a radiant fiancé e, not a bitter old maid.

“Sorry to snaffle your plans, darling, but I’ll be back before you miss me. ” Osla rang off, then whisked downstairs with her traveling case. A taxi screeched to a halt, and soon Knightsbridge fell behind her. The thought of her fiancé ’s eyes was replaced by the memory of a woman’s serious blue gaze—the eyes of the woman who had disappeared three and a half years ago into Clockwell. The last time Osla had seen those eyes, they’d been wide and bloodshot as she simultaneously wept and laughed, rocking back and forth on the floor. She’d looked utterly on her beam ends, like she belonged in an asylum.

The cipher message crackled in Osla’s pocket. You owe me.

Maybe I do, Osla thought. But that doesn’t mean I believe you. Believed the other half of that desperately scribbled message, the very first line, which Osla had read and reread in shock.

But she remembered those blue eyes, so painfully earnest. Eyes that had never lied.

What happened to you? Osla wondered for the thousandth time. What happened to you, Beth Finch?

Inside the Clock

“Into the garden, Miss Liddell! We want our exercise, don’t we? ”

Beth caught herself rocking again, back and forth on her bench, as she wondered what was going on in the world outside. At BP she’d been better informed than anyone outside Churchill’s cabinet. Living here in this wool-padded ignorance—

With an effort, Beth stilled herself. Only madwomen rocked back and forth. She wasn’t mad.

Not yet.

“Miss Liddell—” The matron hauled her up, voice dropping from sugary to sharp as the doctors bustled out of earshot. “Outside, you lazy bitch. ”

The thing Beth hated most here: anyone could touch her whenever they wanted. She had never liked to be touched unless it was on her own terms, and now every day there were hands: at her arms to steer, at her jaw to pry her mouth open, touching, touching, touching. Her body was no longer her own. But she moved out into the garden, because if she didn’t she’d be dragged.

“That Liddell gives me the shivers, ” Beth heard the matron mutter an hour later, sharing a cigarette in the rose garden with another nurse. “Underneath that empty stare it’s like she’s thinking how to take you apart. ”

Correct, Beth thought, maintaining her vacant look as she wandered the roses.

“Who cares what they’re thinking, as long as they’re quiet? ” The nurse shrugged. “At least we don’t have the dangerous ones like at Broadwell or Rampton. They’re docile here. ”

“They’re docile, all right. ” The matron reached over to the vacant-eyed old woman who had been wheeled out to the garden in her bath chair and tapped hot cigarette ash onto her wrist. No response, and both matrons giggled.

Endure. Beth picked up the discarded, half-smoked cigarette after they wandered away, taking a welcome drag. Just endure.

She left the rose garden and wandered the high outer wall, which had been cleared of trees or shrubs or anything that might provide help climbing upward. A trio of burly orderlies walked the perimeter every hour, looking for knotted sheets or makeshift ropes flung over the walls. Not looking too seriously; it had been years since anyone tried to make a break for it. I intend to be the next, Beth thought. And then I will come for the person who put me here.

Three and a half years, and she still wasn’t entirely sure who that was. She’d told her former friends as much in her cipher message:

Osla & Mab—

There was a traitor at Bletchley Park, selling information during the war.

I don’t know who, but I know what they did. I found proof it was someone who worked in my section—but whoever they are, they had me locked up before I could make my report.

You may hate me, but you took the same oath I did: to protect BP and Britain. That oath is bigger than any of us. Get me out of this asylum, and help me catch the traitor.

Get me out of here.

You owe me.

“Everyone in, now! Exercise over. ” The same hard-faced matron called across the garden, sounding impatient. “Pick up your feet when I talk to you, Liddell. ” Giving Beth’s arm a hard, careless twist as she passed.

Beth lifted the still-smoldering cigarette she’d managed to conceal between two fingers and planted the burning end on the matron’s hand. “Not. My. Name. ”

Two orderlies dragged her to her cell, face stinging with slaps. Beth fought every step of the way, clawing and spitting as they buckled her into the straitjacket. She tried to lie low, oh, she did, but sometimes she couldn’t stop herself. She snarled as she felt the needle’s prick, felt her veins filling with smoke, felt herself heaved like a hay bale onto her cot. The furious matron lingered as everyone else left, waiting until she could spit down Beth’s cheek. It would dry and be mistaken for drool, Beth knew. “You can lie in those sheets till you’ve pissed them, you little cow. Then you can lie in them a while longer. ”

Go to hell, you starched bully, Beth tried to say, but a fit of lung-rattling coughs erupted, and by the time she was done hacking, she was alone. Alone, straitjacketed, drugged to the gills, with nothing to think about but the traitor of Bletchley Park.

Mab and Osla would surely have the letters by now, Beth thought dizzily. The question was, would they dismiss her claim as a madwoman’s paranoid fantasy?

Or would they believe the unbelievable: that a traitor had been working at Bletchley Park and passing information to their enemy?

Six Years Ago

March 1941

BLETCHLEY BLETHERINGS

BP’S NEW WEEKLY: EVERYTHING WE DINNAE NEED TO KNOW!

March 1941

Bletchley Bletherings has it on good authority that some unknown prankster smeared Commander Denniston’s office chair with strawberry jam during night shift. Waste of good jam, says BB!

This month’s Mad Hatters Tea Party is discussing The Great Gatsby. It is officially Giles Talbot’s turn to bring the topper—for all you gigglemugs who have not clapped eyes on this monstrosity, picture a Dickensian stovepipe festooned with false flowers, ancient Boer War medals, Ascot plumes, etc. The topper is worn in dunce cap fashion by any Mad Hatter to propose the Principia Mathematica for the monthly read (that’s you, Harry Zarb), preface every statement with “I’m sorry” (ahem, Beth Finch), or otherwise wet-blanket the proceedings. BB doesn’t see stovepipe toppers catching on any time soon in Vogue. . .

Speaking of fashion trends, London continues to sport 1941’s enduring, classic combination of shattered buildings and bomb craters, topped with eau de Messerschmitt and a dashing plume of smoke. Bomb away, Krauts—the boffins and debs of BP will still flood into London every night off and dance defiant in the rubble. There’s a war on, after all, and tomorrow we might be dead!

—Anonymous

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