Chapter 68

Inside the Clock

Even the inmates of Clockwell had celebrated V-E Day and V-J Day. Hitler’s suicide, the German surrender. . . happy tears had been shed among staff and inmates alike. And then a few short months later, news came of the great bombs that brought Japan to her knees, and cheap wine was doled out in paper cups so everyone could toast to victory and peace.

To Bletchley Park, Beth had toasted silently. Without BP, there would be no victory or peace.

She had wondered then—and she wondered now, wandering the rose garden looking to see if her Go partner was back yet from surgery—what became of Bletchley Park after the war was finally over. She imagined the Typex machines falling silent, the huts emptying. No more rounders played on the lawn, no more canteen kidneys on toast at three in the morning, no more Mad Hatter Tea Parties of bread and marg and library books by the lake. Where would they all go, that collection of strange and remarkable people assembled by wartime desperation? Go back to your old lives, Beth imagined everyone being told. Go back to your old lives, and never speak of this to anyone.

Had Bletchley Park fallen into ruin, once the gates closed behind the last codebreaker? Would anyone ever know what had happened there?

I’ll know, Beth thought, fighting off a fit of coughing, brass key to Dilly’s safe nestled in its customary hiding place in her shoe. If I’m locked here until I’m a hundred and three, I’ll remember what happened at BP. They can take everything else, but never that.

She thought she knew who the traitor was, too. Something else that couldn’t be taken away.

She’d had three and a half years, after all, to ponder the question. Three and a half years to hide her key and sift her memory. Over the last few days, in the agony of waiting for Osla and Mab to respond to her cipher message, she’d kept herself occupied by weighing every possibility over again, even the names that hurt. And her conclusion was the same.

It came down to one very simple question: who had told Mab that Beth cracked the report about the Coventry raid?

Because the timing had been too neat, too pat. The one piece of information that would turn her billet-mates against her, delay her, and strip her of supporters who might defend her against accusations of instability—who had dropped that perfectly timed nugget?

Beth remembered herself whispering, How did you find out? Mab spitting, Your friend Peggy.

Peggy, who had been on shift in ISK the afternoon Beth cracked Rose. What’s that? as Beth hammered at the Typex. Let me see.

Peggy, go away.

Heels clicking off into the distance. . .

“It was you, ” Beth whispered. Sometimes she had doubts, but most of the time she was certain.

The traitor was Margaret Rock.

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