Chapter 77

Is she making any headway? ” Osla asked.

“Hard to say. ” Mab shook her head. Watching Beth work over the last two days had been fascinating and not a little disturbing. She’d taken over Dilly’s big oak desk, drawing up cardboard strips called rods and haphazard lists of cribs; she broke endless pencils and drank endless pots of coffee. She held long conversations with her former mentor as though he were actually sitting there—“What if. . . ” “I tried that, Dilly. . . ” “Did you ever try. . . ”—and then fell into hours of abstracted silence.

“Is this how the boffins did it during the war? ” Mab couldn’t help asking dubiously. She’d worked so many stages of the intelligence chain at BP, but she’d never been part of the stage where human brains made the critical initial breaks. As Mab watched, Beth scribbled something, scratched it out, swigged all the coffee in her cup, and started over. She’d been going nearly thirty-six hours.

“I can see why the intelligence swots thought BP people were all loons, ” Osla said, then winced at that particular choice of words. But Beth hadn’t noticed. Mab wasn’t certain if Beth would notice if the house exploded. Her frayed hair had been pushed behind her ears, she had a flare of color in her cheeks, and her eyes glittered like shards of glass. Frankly, she didn’t look sane.

Is she actually doing anything? Mab wondered. Or are we watching a madwoman shuffle paper?

“Sometimes it takes months. ” Beth spoke as if reading Mab’s mind, not looking up from some chain of letters she was diagramming.

“Well, we haven’t got months, ” said Mab. “Even if you get the wheel settings, how can you decrypt it without an Enigma machine or a Typex? ”

“The machines were all shipped out of BP at the end of the war, ” Osla mused. “Broken up for scrap? ”

“With thousands of Enigmas and Typexes and bombes, you’d think at least some would have survived. ” But Mab wasn’t sure how they’d find out. You couldn’t just go round asking where top-secret decoding machines were kept.

“I wonder if my uncle Dickie can turn something up. He’s in India now, but maybe his old Admiralty aides. . . ” Osla turned with a flip of her skirt, heading for the hall telephone.

Beth looked up so abruptly Mab started. It took her a while to focus on Mab’s face. “Coffee? ”

“Coming right up, Your Highness, ” Mab said a little sourly, but she supposed there wasn’t any other way she could help. She couldn’t decrypt Rose; she had no powerful relations who could pull strings; she might as well make the coffee. What am I even doing here? Mab wondered, heading for Courns Wood’s kitchens.

“If that girl doesn’t need more coffee, ” Mrs. Knox said from the kitchen sink, “I’ll eat my apron. ”

The woman certainly knew codebreakers. “She does. ”

“Fresh pot already brewing. Help me with the washing-up? ”

Mab tied a tea towel around her blue-sprigged cotton dress. “You put your feet up and let me do it, Mrs. Knox. It’s the least we can do, after invading your home. ”

“I like hearing the place lively again. ” Mrs. Knox dried a teacup, looking pensive. “It’s been nearly five years since my husband died. ”

“I only met him in passing. . . I worked in another section. But I’ve heard he was a great man. ”

“He was. A great man, but maddening. Most great men are. The way he went through tobacco and pens. . . and dear me, the water bill for all those long hot baths when he was working through some problem! ” Mrs. Knox shook her head, smiling. “I miss him. ”

A memory of Francis pierced Mab, his lathering up at the mirror in the Keswick hotel. She blinked it away with a hard swallow. “Do you have more soap? ”

“I’m afraid that little sliver is it. I’ll be that happy when soap isn’t rationed anymore. ” Dilly’s wife scrutinized Mab, curious. “I keep thinking I’ve seen you before, Mrs. Sharpe. Did we meet at one of the Bletchley Park revues? ”

“Perhaps. I—I was Mrs. Gray, then. ”

“Ah. ” Gently, Mrs. Knox took a cup from Mab’s hand. “My condolences, dear. I’m glad you’ve found happiness again. ”

Mab stared into the water. Eddie, she thought. Lucy. But under the fierce wave of love for her babies welled an ocean of flat, blank nothing. She just didn’t choose to admit it was there, most of the time.

“Dilly was my second love, you know. ” Mrs. Knox’s voice was thoughtful. “I had a fiancé —he died in France, in the first war. My goodness, so long ago. When I got the telegram. . . I’ve never been so certain I was going to die. But one doesn’t, of course. I thought for a while that I’d never let myself grow so fond of anyone again. But one can’t really do that either. Being cut off from life is like being dead. It would have cut me off from a certain very absentminded papyri-translating professor with a gift for codebreaking and a mania for long baths. That would have been a great pity. ”

“Yes, ” Mab made herself say, voice brittle. “There, that’s the last cup. I’ll see what’s keeping Osla. . . ” Escaping into the corridor, Mab stood a moment, rubbing her hands up and down the towel over her dress, and then she saw Osla slumped against the telephone. Mab stiffened. “What is it? ”

Osla looked up, smile grim. “I’m dithering about whether I should ring Giles. Feed him a line or two why I’m away longer than planned. . . I can’t bear the thought of hearing his voice. ” Her finger traced the telephone cord, emerald engagement ring glinting. “I’ve made a perfect mug of myself, trusting him. ”

“You’re not the only one. ” Mab thought of the night she ended up drunk in his bed. “Thank God I didn’t sleep with him. ”

“Lucky you. He’s a thumping bore between the sheets. ”

Mab’s lips twitched. Osla’s did too, and for a moment they were on the verge of laughter. Then Osla said, “No use putting it off, ” and picked up the telephone, and Mab went into the library, where Beth was pacing.

“You look like a gothic heroine about to pitch herself down a well, ” Mab observed, but Beth just shook her head.

“It’s no good. I’ll never crack it in time. I’m too rusty—”

Mab cut her off. “Ring Harry. ”

Beth flinched. “What? ”

“You don’t want to ring Harry, ” Mab said impatiently. “Because you haven’t seen him in three and a half years and you don’t know what you still mean to him and you don’t want to face any of that yet, but we need another brain. Someone to help break those messages and not turn you in. ” Mab folded her arms. “Ring Harry. ”

Beth didn’t have time to answer before Osla stamped into the library, face flushed with fury. “If this doesn’t just take the biscuit, ” she snarled. “An invitation’s come for Giles and me, and I’ve got to run up to London. Mrs. Knox, ” she said as Dilly’s widow came in with the coffeepot, “can the others impose on you a little longer? ”

“By all means, dear. I haven’t had this much excitement since V-E Day. ” Mrs. Knox began passing mugs tranquilly.

“Who on earth called you up to London? ” Mab asked Osla.

“Would you believe the palace? ”

Five Days Until the Royal Wedding

November 15, 1947

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