The Queen's Accomplice (Maggie Hope Mystery #6)(70)

“Of course we’re going!” Sarah exclaimed. “We’ve worked too long and hard not to!”

“Indeed,” echoed Hugh.

“All right then, it’s settled—you’re going to Paris.” Miss Lynd gave a half smile. “Oh, and there’s one more thing we need to take care of, before you go. Your codes. Mr. Philby tells me he’s gone over it with you and you know your codes will be given to you on silk. You’ll use each one once and then burn it. If you can’t remember the code, they can’t get it out of you.”

The unspoken word torture hung in the air.

“And, in case you’ve had to destroy your silks, you’ve both chosen poems to memorize. But remember, if the Nazis can’t find any codes on you, they will know you have destroyed them. They know about the memorized poems, and they’ll do everything in their power to get you to tell them. And it’s imperative you do not. Remember, if they learn your poem, they can transmit back here as you. Such an ability compromises us and all the agents coming into Paris after you. You’ll need to hold out for at least forty-eight hours. That will give your network time to scramble.”

“One of the reasons we have our cyanide pills, I gather.” Hugh said it quietly.

“Madame Severin,” Miss Lynd said, “I will now need to you to tell me your poem.”

“I’ve chosen William Butler Yeats’s ‘Among School Children.’?”

“Well.” Miss Lynd raised a plump, ringed hand. “Let’s hear it, my dear.”



Sarah closed her eyes and recited the poem, stiff at first, but then warming up, until she reached the last stanza:

“O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,

How can we know the dancer from the dance?”

There was a moment of silence, and then Miss Lynd sniffed, her eyes moist. “Quite appropriate. And you, Monsieur Taillier?”

Hugh looked out the office window, the breeze stirring the bare black branches, took a breath, and began Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”:

“They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.”

There was a loud sniff. “Well, that’s done then.” Miss Lynd rose. “I’ll be seeing you both soon, to take you to the aerodrome.”

She smiled, a kind one this time, and genuine. “And I do believe there’s a dance at the Domus tonight. Why don’t you two take a break from all”—she fluttered a hand—“this…and go have some fun?”

—

At Scotland Yard, Maggie and Durgin went through book after book of fingerprints on cards, but they found no matches to the one he’d lifted from Olivia Sutherland’s eyeball. Still, they’d covered only a small fraction of the fingerprints in the books. “I’ll get some men on this,” Durgin said at last, closing the one in front of him. “But there are walls of these books. What you saw in the evidence room is really the tip of the proverbial iceberg. And we just don’t have the manpower right now.”



“And even if every single record is checked, he might not have committed a crime?”

“I’m sure he’s committed any number of crimes,” Durgin replied gruffly. “But either he’s been smart enough to get away with them, or he’s posh enough to talk himself—or buy himself—out of an arrest.” His expression was one of utter disgust. “Our august British class system at work.”

“Although if—when—we catch the Blackout Beast and fingerprint him, the evidence linking him to all the murders will be absolute.” Maggie took a sip of tea, long grown cold. “You know, regarding the original Jack the Ripper case, there were all sorts of conspiracy theories: that Jack was a Mason, that he was a Royal, that he was related to Queen Victoria. Some theorize Jack could have been a woman. If we can only figure out what narrative our Beast’s using…”

She sighed. “But theorizing isn’t going to help. Would Sherlock Holmes have theorized? No, he would have stuck to the evidence. The facts.” She looked up from the book to Durgin. “He would have loved your fingerprinting system.”

“Holmes is a fictional character.”

“Yes,” Maggie agreed, “but Holmes—or rather A. C. Doyle—changed the way we look at and treat evidence.”

“As you know, I’m more of a Detective Blake man.”

“Isn’t it funny,” Maggie mused, pulling at her scarf, loosening it, “how Jack the Ripper was a real person and Sherlock Holmes wasn’t—and yet we talk about them the same way? In some ways they both feel simultaneously real and fictional.”

“When I talk about my gut, you know, I’m not talking about emotion—I’m using years of experience. And, of course, the facts.” As he spoke, Durgin took in the bruises on Maggie’s neck.



“I understand. I just don’t have that experience—and until I do, I think it’s best to stick with the facts. I will be Holmesian.”

Durgin stared her in the eye. “All right, Miss Tiger—now tell me what happened to your neck—go a round with the Queen?”