The Queen's Accomplice (Maggie Hope Mystery #6)(30)

She held out her hand. “Sarah.”

He shook it, smiling warmly. “Welcome back to Beaulieu. The car’s this way, please. And let me help you with those bags.”

—

Philby drove them in his russet Lagonda through winding hills, passing cow pastures, braking frequently for wild ponies and donkeys meandering across the road. At one juncture, while a shaggy brown horse seemed to deliberate which way to go, he made a full stop in the middle of the road. “They rule the roads here, and they know it,” Philby told Sarah and Hugh. “The land is theirs—we’re all merely passing through.”

“When I was here last, I learned to give them a wide berth,” Sarah agreed, staring out the car’s passenger window as a line of silvery gray donkeys with dark, limpid eyes and large ears passed by the car without so much as a sideways glance.

“Of course, they’ve been here for over a thousand years or thereabouts, so I suppose seniority does confer certain rights.”

“They’re quite handsome,” Sarah remarked as Philby shifted the car into third gear, and they continued on their way in the slanting afternoon sunlight.



“They are, but they’re wild creatures.”

“I know—I tried to pet one of the donkeys once, and he nearly bit my hand off. So, you two know each other?” Sarah asked. “From London?”

Philby and Hugh exchanged a look. “Right, right—” said Sarah. “?‘Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.’?”

“Indeed,” Philby agreed, “as we all learn how ‘to stoop to conquer.’?” He pulled the car into the gravel drive of a thatched-roof cottage and stopped, turning off the engine. “Here we are! A regular chocolate box, isn’t it?”

The house did look like something out of a storybook, with diamond-paned windows, thorny vines of climbing roses, whitewashed cob walls, and a red-brick chimney. A shaggy tan and cream pony nibbled on the grass of the front garden. The only indication of a military training camp nearby was the sound of Range Rovers backfiring and gunshots in the distance.

“I thought we’d be back at the dormitories?” Sarah asked.

“We’ve requisitioned lots of the houses around here. Most of the trainees stay in the big houses on the Beaulieu estate, as you did—but since you two will be working closely together, we thought we’d give you some privacy.”

“Privacy? Why on earth would we need privacy?” Sarah’s pumps crunched on the gravel driveway as she sidestepped a mound of horse excrement.

“Miss Lynd didn’t tell you?” Philby grinned. “You’re being sent over as a married couple.”

Sarah and Hugh exchanged an astonished look.

“You didn’t know? Well, you do now. Think of this as your honeymoon cottage.” Philby winked at Hugh. “Of course, what goes on behind closed doors is up to you.”





Chapter Five


The rest of the day and a night passed before Elise Hess woke.

When she did, she thought she might be in heaven.

She was warm.

No one was screaming at her, no dogs snarling at her.

She could think of—nothing.

In fact, words seemed to have left her completely. She looked around at what she would have, in another lifetime, called a bed, a pitcher, a glass. She knew the objects—the thing people sleep on, that which holds water, the thing we drink from—but the words wouldn’t come. Maybe I’ve died and I’m in eternity? she thought. Limbo?

Or maybe I’ve lost my mind.

She considered her hands. They were mottled with bruises, the nails filthy and torn. Pain radiated from her shoulders.

She looked to the wall next to the narrow cot. The wood was scarred with initials, full names, and occasional phrases. Eva, my child, you are 9 years old, who will tell you the truth? Try to grow up the way I hoped was scratched in tiny letters and dated June 1939. A heart with initials and an arrow slashing through. A crooked single word: REVENGE.

Out the window, the sunrise was incandescent. In her other life, the one before camp, Elise had slept through sunrises or, if she was up, didn’t take the time to notice their beauty. We miss so much, she thought, watching the sun change from red to rose to gold. I have missed so much.



The word came to her: infirmary. She was in the infirmary. The pressure of her bladder made her move. Ach! The pain! But she managed to stand on her bloody and swollen feet, and shuffle down the row of beds to the toilet she glimpsed through an open door. Afterward, she cleaned and washed herself the best she could, shoulders, arms, and hands burning with pain.

She shuffled back, blocking out the wails and moans of the other prisoners. Back at her cot, she eased her aching body down, and once again slipped out of consciousness.

Minutes passed, or maybe hours. A nurse came, a fellow political prisoner with a red triangle, who brought her food and helped her sit up. Elise tasted the first spoonful of lukewarm soup—turnip broth with a bruised potato floating to the top—and thought nothing could be more delicious.

She had swallowed one spoonful when one of the guards entered.

“Attention!” the guard called.

Elise knew her—Hilda Jaeger. In reality, she was quite an average-looking middle-aged woman, with tightly braided light hair, the black buttons of her gray uniform straining against her ever-increasing bulk. But in the eyes of the prisoners, her actions had transformed her into a creature neither human nor animal, more like a she-devil in a painting by Hieronymus Bosch.