Traitor and the Tunnel (2 page)

“Yes, sir.”

“And tel Potter, too, in case the Earl slips into the pen.” The “pen” – short for “cattle pen” – was the staff nickname for the White Room, where less privileged dinner guests were given their pre-dinner sherries.

“Yes, sir.”

“Quinn, why are you dil y-dal ying there? I expected you back ful y ten minutes ago.”

Mary spun about to see the housekeeper, to whom she official y reported, standing at the end of the corridor, arms akimbo and lips pressed tight.

From this angle, she looked not unlike an awkward reproduction of Mrs Dalrymple. “I’m coming immediately, Mrs Shaw.”

Mr Brooks may have shared Mary’s impression.

His tone was frosty as he said, “You mustn’t blame Quinn, Mrs Shaw; she was charged with a message for me, and I have only just finished giving her further instructions.”

“I am surprised you should so forget the chain of command as to give orders to one of my domestics, Mr Brooks.” Mrs Shaw’s military language was habitual, and seldom failed to inspire eye-rol ing when her back was turned.

“It is a matter of urgency,” he replied. “Quinn wil return the very instant she’s relayed my message.”

Mary seized her opportunity. “Indeed, sir. Thank you for understanding, ma’am.” And she fled.

It was going to be a long evening.

Two

Midnight, the same night

Below stairs at Buckingham Palace

One of the last rituals each night, after al duties had been completed and staff prayers conducted, was the doling-out of hot-water bottles. The servants, weary and eager for their beds, queued in relative silence outside the housekeeper’s room. Mrs Shaw cal ed them in one at a time, inspecting their uniforms and appearances for the last time before permitting them to take a large stoneware bottle fil ed with boiling water and tightly stoppered. The hot-water bottles were heavy, cumbersome and pure heaven in an unheated attic room in midwinter.

This evening, when Mary presented herself, Mrs Shaw had an envelope on her desk. “Quinn, there’s a little note here for you. I don’t know when it arrived.

From your mother again, I presume, though it’s a bit early for her weekly letter.”

Mary tried not to scowl at the housekeeper’s presumption. “It looks like her hand, Mrs Shaw.” Al letters and parcels directed to servants were first delivered to their supervisors. Although this was, in theory, for efficiency’s sake, Mary had heard from other servants that Mrs Shaw occasional y opened and read her underlings’ letters, citing “morals” as her justification.

Mrs Shaw paused before placing the letter in Mary’s open hand. “Have you laid the breakfast table ready for morning?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“How did you fold the napkins?”

“Into fans, as you said I should, ma’am.”

A sniff. “Are there fresh candles in the candelabra?”

“Yes, ma’am.” It had been such a cold, dark winter. And Her Majesty breakfasted early – often before sunrise, during these dark months.

“Your apron is dirty.” This last was in a tone of satisfaction.

Mary looked down at the tiny smear of orange that marred the edge of her apron’s crisp whiteness.

From the lily stamens, she supposed, whose dye was indelible. She ruined an apron every other time she changed the flower-water. “I shal replace it immediately, ma’am.”

“See that you do.” Mrs Shaw dropped the letter into Mary’s hand and nodded; Mary was dismissed.

As she climbed the narrow wooden stairs to the servants’ quarters, a scalding hot bottle tucked into the crook of her arm, she wondered again what she’d done to offend Mrs Shaw. The woman was an exacting housekeeper, an older woman with rigid ways of doing things. But that didn’t account for the angry joy she exhibited when Mary was in error. It was quite possible that she resented Mary’s sudden appointment; perhaps she’d had a favourite in mind for the plum position of upper housemaid. It was rather a change in the Palace, for a newcomer to be placed so high. Of course, Mrs Shaw had no way of knowing just why it was so.

It had been someone high up – Mary wasn’t permitted to know who, for her own safety – who’d first approached the Agency about the delicate matter at the Palace. Smal ornaments and trinkets were going missing. The first, a tiny tortoiseshel snuffbox that had belonged to Queen Victoria’s uncle, the Duke of York, might have been gone for some time before it was missed in the densely ornamented White Drawing Room. But the second, a Dresden shepherdess, had been prized by Her Majesty’s mother. Its disappearance inspired a spring-cleaning and general inventory of the Palace’s domestic decorations. Yet despite the heightened safety measures instituted by the Master of the Household – locking of drawing-room doors at night, for example – the thefts continued. No obvious suspect emerged. There was, apparently, no trail to fol ow.

Cal ing in the Metropolitan Police was impossible, of course: much too sensational, and inclined to stir high-society gossip. And without clear evidence, the Master of the Household declined to sack individual employees. And so, for this pettiest of crimes, Mary found herself posing as a seasoned housemaid in the Queen’s own household. It was her first assignment as a newly elevated ful member of the Agency; she’d completed her training just before Christmas. And while she stil dreamed of complex assignments, a hint of danger and a twisty problem to puzzle out, she accepted this staid little case philosophical y. She was content to pay her dues.

It was a soft landing, as far as domestic service went. Food was plentiful, uniforms provided and some upper servants even had their own tiny bedrooms in the attics. It didn’t prevent them from grousing, however. The food was too plain: Her Majesty was suspicious of French sauces and pungent herbs. The evenings were dul : Her Majesty had abstemious ways, and so fine wines and spirits were served only to guests. And gossip was forbidden. It was this last stricture that Mary found most frustrating. After nearly six weeks at the Palace, she’d heard nothing of use about the thefts.

The servants were banned from even mentioning the fact, and so Mary’s weekly report to the Agency –

i.e., her mother – was very thin indeed.

With a sigh of relief, Mary entered the chil y bedroom and closed the door behind her. It hadn’t a lock. Amy, her new roommate, would be up soon, but the current silence was a rare pleasure. The envelope was stil sealed. Unless Mrs Shaw had taken the time to re-gum it, her “mother’s” words were stil private.

My dear Mary,

I had a letter from my cousin Alfred, who you recall was married last year. He is now father to a little boy called Edwin. The birth was difficult but now all danger is past and the baby is, by the midwife’s own report, a healthy babe. Will you travel down to Wimbledon this Sunday to help out?

Your loving Mama

They’d agreed to use the simplest of codes, for speed: every eleventh word contained the Agency’s real instructions. What she read now – recall; little danger; report Sunday – was utterly surprising, and perplexing.

The Agency seldom recal ed its undercover agents. If it did, it was usual y because of grave personal danger: a disguise gone wrong, or a new and volatile element of risk. But this message was the inverse of what she’d been trained to expect. If there was so little danger, why not permit her to stay and achieve what she could?

A new and humiliating thought struck her: perhaps her employers, Anne Treleaven and Felicity Frame, had tired of her lack of results. Five ful weeks with nothing to report, and she could only say the same again tomorrow. Mary was too reasonable to think that it was her fault. There had been no subsequent pilferings; nobody gossiped about the original rash of thefts; nobody had behaved suspiciously under Mary’s watch. And yet the total absence of results shamed her. She felt, in some obscure way, responsible for producing answers – even if they were provisional.

Or it might be the client. Perhaps Buckingham Palace thought that after more than a month’s lul , the thief had moved on. Her Majesty was notoriously frugal. Perhaps Mary’s work was simply another unjustifiable expenditure, if the thief was disobliging enough to have gone on holiday. Yet an uncaught thief almost never retired satisfied. After another month, the thefts would begin again, and then where would the Palace be? Yet it was impossible to think that Anne and Felicity wouldn’t have explained this careful y to their client.

Mary scowled about the Spartan room. It wasn’t that she’d miss this place, or this rather dreary little assignment. And she hadn’t much to pack, or long to wait: she could ask permission to visit her “mother”

tomorrow, while the family were at church. Even so, failure stung. Especial y as this was her first proper case.

The door handle clicked, and almost immediately the barrage of words began. “Oh, my good lord, what a night! What is that Mrs Shaw like? Thinks she’s the queen of al us girls, don’t she? I were that close –” Amy gestured with vigour – “that close, I swear, to tel ing her where to stick her blooming feather duster.”

Mary rol ed her eyes. “I wish you would.”

Amy’s outrage dissolved and she giggled. “Aye, that would be a sight to see. Maybe I’l save it for my last day.”

“Got that planned, have you?” Despite Amy’s volubility, Mary didn’t know her wel . They’d begun sharing this room only a few nights ago, after a fal ing-out between Amy and her previous chamber-mate.

Amy kicked off her shoes and winked. “Wel , a girl can’t stay in the same place for ever. Even if it’s quite a nice one.”

“I didn’t know you were ambitious.”

She smiled broadly. “Oh, aye. My ambition’s to stop being Miss Tranter, and to become Mrs Jones.”

It was a common enough ambition and Mary nodded, folding up her letter. Amy was wel -nigh unstoppable on the subject of her beloved Mr Jones.

“What’s that, then?” asked Amy. Her voice was muffled by the dress she was pul ing over her head.

“Love-letter?”

“It’s from my mother.”

“Lordamercy. Anything juicy?”

“Not real y, but I’l ask permission to go and see her tomorrow.”

“Dearie me, you’re but a babe unborn. Here, give us a hand with this corset.” As Mary obediently began to unpick the fiercely knotted strings, Amy asked, “Why haven’t you got a beau? You ain’t ugly.”

“Thank you.”

“You know what I mean, sil y. Don’t you want a beau? No, daft question: every girl wants a beau.

But you’ve got to be sharp about these things, y’know – not just any beau wil do. Them footmen –

waste of time, al of them. What you want is a gentleman friend. Somebody with a bit of class, a proper gent.”

Mary nodded mechanical y. She’d heard this before – each night, in fact, as they got ready for bed. It was the Gospel According to Amy.

“No sense in wasting your time with some poor cove in service. What’s he got to offer, eh? A life just like this one. No, you want a gent what can set you up in your own home. You want to be the mistress.”

She prised off the corset and plucked at her crushed, rather damp chemise. “Ooh, that’s better! I were like to die in that. Now, you take my Mr Jones: nice office job – late hours sometimes, but his time’s his own, when he ain’t there. And so soft and clean, his hands are, when he comes round! Never any black under the fingernails. It half makes me ashamed of my own.”

Mary hadn’t heard exactly this variation before, and her ears pricked up. “He comes round here?”

Amy’s mouth opened and shut soundlessly, and her cheeks flushed pink. “Er – not round here, exactly…” she final y managed to say. “I mean, only of a Sunday, when he cal s to take me for a strol in the park.”

Mary stifled a smile. “Oh, I see. Wel , he sounds very nice.”

“He’s better than nice,” smiled Amy. “Tel you what, I’l ask him tomorrow if he’s got any friends what might like to meet you.”

“Oh, there’s no need,” said Mary immediately.

“Honestly. I don’t want a beau. Not right now, that’s certain. Maybe one day…”

Amy looked at her with genuine pity. “A babe unborn,” she muttered, shaking her head. “A babe unborn.”

Three

The early hours of Sunday, 12

February

Buckingham Palace

Mary woke with a start, as from a nightmare. She lay in the bed, trembling slightly, trying to think why.

She couldn’t remember what she’d been dreaming of, but its residue troubled her in an unusual fashion.

As she retreated further from sleep, she became aware of Amy’s serene snores, quiet and steady, and the relentless clatter of rain on roof shingles. It was stil black outside – not that blackness indicated a great deal, during a London winter.

She shivered again, now from cold rather than fright. Her hot-water bottle was frigid. She forced herself to sit up and pul on her dressing-gown. The Palace was completely silent, below and around her.

Mary nestled deeper into the bedclothes, wil ing her tense limbs to soften back into slumber. And yet, what did it matter? She was being recal ed from her assignment today; she’d likely be back in her own bed at Miss Scrimshaw’s Academy tonight, if she knew Anne and Felicity. She waited another minute for sleep to take her – then grimaced at her own foolishness.