The Queen's Accomplice (Maggie Hope Mystery #6)(104)

In memory of Violette Szabo

June 26, 1921–February 5, 1945

Posthumously awarded the George Cross

and the Croix de Guerre, and among the

117 SOE agents who did not survive

their missions to France





Acknowledgments

Thank you to Noel MacNeal and Matthew MacNeal for their support and patience.

Thanks to editor extraordinaire Kate Miciak at Penguin Random House, as well as Julia Maguire, Allyson Lord, Maggie Oberrender, Kim Hovey, Victoria Allen, Vincent La Scala, and Dana Blanchette, a.k.a. Team Maggie. Special thanks to deputy copy chief Dennis Ambrose. I am, as always, grateful to the intrepid Penguin Random House sales force.

I’m always appreciative of Victoria “Agent V” Skurnick, Lindsay Edgecombe, and Stephanie Rostan at Levine Greenberg Rosten Literary Agency.

Special thanks to readers Idria Barone Knecht; Scott Cameron; historian Ronald Granieri; Meredith Norris, M.D.; police officer Rick Peach; and Blitz-suvivor Phyllis Brooks Schafer. As well as Rebecca Danos and Michael T. Feeley for probability theory and Rossmo’s formula. Thanks to Caitlin Sims for the French and Tom Gold for ballet help. A special thanks to Lily Peta for knowledge of pointe shoes.

And cheers to fellow Jungle Red Writers: Rhys Bowen, Lucy Burdette, Deborah Crombie, Hallie Ephron, Julia Spencer Fleming, Hank Phillipi Ryan. Thanks to you all.





Sources



One tool…men and women have for displaying power is some degree of control over the narratives about sex and gender.

—CATHERINE R. STIMPSON, FOREWORD TO CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT: NARRATIVES OF SEXUAL DANGER IN LATE-VICTORIAN LONDON, BY JUDITH R. WALKOWITZ

Alas, I didn’t have to go far to find “inspiration” for a misogynistic murderer, even today. (Especially today?) If you’d like to know more, look up Anders Behring Breivik, Marc Lépine, Elliot Rodger, the anonymous posters of “Gamergate”—all fearful of women and women’s increasing public power.

There really was a serial killer (sequential murderer) in London during the Blackout. His story is different from that of Nicholas Reitter and May Frank, but you can read about it in Simon Read’s In the Dark: The True Story of the Blackout Ripper.

—

Books consulted on Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother:

Behind Palace Doors: My True Adventures as the Queen Mother’s Equerry, by Colin Burgess, with Paul Carter Elizabeth: The Queen Mother: A Twentieth Century Life, by Grania Forbes My Darling Buffy: The Early Life of the Queen Mother, by Grania Forbes



H.M. Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, by Ian A. Morrison The Queen Mother, by Ann Morrow

Queen Mother, by Penelope Mortimer

The Private Life of the Queen: By a Member of the Royal Household, by C. Arthur Pearson Backstairs Billy: The Life of William Tallon, the Queen Mother’s Most Devoted Servant, by Tom Quinn Counting One’s Blessings: The Selected Letters of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, edited by William Shawcross The Queen Mother: The Official Biography, by William Shawcross

Books about crime, forensics, and serial killers:

The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime, by Judith Flanders Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris, by David King Dr. H. H. Holmes and the Whitechapel Ripper, by Dane Ladwig The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America, by Erik Larson Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA and More Tell Us About Crime, by Val McDermid A Serial Killer in Nazi Berlin: The Chilling True Story of the S-Bahn Murderer, by Scott Andrew Selby The Complete History of Jack the Ripper, by Philip Sugden City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London, by Judith R. Walkowitz

SOE Books:

Women Heroes of World War II: Twenty-six Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Resistance, and Rescue, by Kathryn J. Atwood The Women Who Lived for Danger: The Agents of the Special Operations Executive, by Marcus Binney



Nancy Wake: SOE’s Greatest Heroine, by Russell Braddon SOE Agent: Churchill’s Secret Warriors, by Terry Crowdy The Beaulieu Finishing School for Secret Agents, by Cyril Cunningham SOE in France: An Account of the Work of the British Special Operations Executive in France 1940–1944, by M. R. D. Foot A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII, by Sarah Helm Flames in the Field: The Story of Four SOE Agents in Occupied France, by Rita Kramer Christine: SOE Agent and Churchill’s Favourite Spy, by Madeleine Masson A Cool and Lonely Courage: The Untold Story of Sister Spies in Occupied France, by Susan Ottaway Violette Szabo: The Life That I Have, by Susan Ottaway My Silent War: The Autobiography of a Spy, by Kim Philby How to Be a Spy: The World War II SOE Training Manual, by Denis Rigden Odette: World War Two’s Darling Spy, by Penny Starns

Spymistress: The Life of Vera Atkins, the Greatest Female Secret Agent of World War II, by William Stevenson Odette: The Story of a British Agent, by Jerrard Tickell

About World War II Germany and Ravensbrück camp:

Priestblock 25487: A Memoir of Dachau, by Jean Bernard; translated by Deborah Lucas Schneider The Blessed Abyss: Inmate #6582 in Ravensbrück Concentration Camp for Women, by Nanda Herbermann; edited by Hester Baer and Elizabeth R. Baer; translated by Hester Baer The Dawn of Hope: A Memoir of Ravensbrück, by Geneviève De Gaulle Anthonioz; translated by Richard Seaver Four Women from Ravensbrück: Five Stories from the Shoa, by Roberta Kalechofsky