Code Name Verity(108)

He looked quite startled and I am sure I went red as a tomato. OH MADDIE WHAT A WAY TO BEGIN.

‘Sorry – sorry!’ I gasped. ‘Je suis désolée –’ Unbelievable, I am still trying to speak French to people.

‘Not quite out of the trenches yet, are we?’ he remarked softly. With light fingertips against my back he guided me to one of the chairs. ‘Tea, Silvey,’ he directed, and Sergeant Silvey quietly served up and let himself out.

Balliol’s glasses were lying on the desk. He put them on and perched against the edge of the desk holding his teacup in its saucer, and his hands were so steady I had to put my own cup on the floor – couldn’t have bone china rattling in my lap while he stood there pinning me down with those huge magnified eyes. Crikey – Julie quite fancied him. Can’t imagine why. He scares me to death.

‘What are you afraid of, Maddie?’ he asked quietly. None of this ‘Flight Officer Beaufort-Stuart’ nonsense.

I am not going to say it again. There is no one else I need say it to. This was the last time –

‘I killed Julie. Verity, I mean. I shot her myself.’

He put his own cup down on the desk with a clatter and stared at me. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I’m afraid of being tried for murder.’

I looked away from him, at the drain in the floor. This was the place where the German spy tried to strangle Eva Seiler. I shivered, actually shivered, when I realised that. I have never seen such hideous bruises in my entire life, not before or since. Julie was tortured in this room.

When I looked back at Balliol he was still leaning against the desk, his shoulders slumped, spectacles pushed back on his head, pinching his nose between his fingers as though he had a migraine.

‘I’m afraid of hanging,’ I added miserably.

‘Great Scott, girl,’ he snapped, and jammed the specs back down over his eyes. ‘You’ll have to tell me what happened. I confess you have – startled me, but as I’m not wearing my judge’s wig at the moment, let’s have it.’

‘They were transporting her in a bus full of prisoners to one of their concentration camps and we tried to stop it –’

He interrupted plaintively, ‘Must it be the murder first? Go back a bit.’ He peered at me with an anxious frown. ‘Mea culpa, forgive me. Unfortunate choice of words. You didn’t say it was murder, did you? Only you’re worried others might see it that way . . . Possibly a mistake, or an accident. Well, out with it, my child. Start from the beginning, when you landed in France.’

I told him everything – well, almost everything. There is one thing I didn’t tell him about, and that is this big stack of paper I have been humping around in my flight bag – everything Julie’s written, everything I’ve written, all her scraps of hotel stationery and sheet music and my Pilot’s Notes and Etienne’s exercise book – I didn’t tell him there’s a written record.

I’m amazed at what a smooth liar I’ve become. Or, not a liar exactly – I didn’t lie to him. The story I gave him isn’t like a pullover full of holes, dropped stitches that will easily unravel when you start to poke at them. More like – slip one, knit one, pass slipped stitch over. Between Penn and Engel there was enough information that I didn’t need to mention I’d got Julie’s written confession up in my bedroom. Because I’m jolly well not turning it over to some filing clerk in London. It is mine.

And my own notes – well, I need them so I can make a proper report for the Accident Committee.

It did take a long time, the telling. Sgt Silvey brought us another pot of tea and then another. At the end Balliol assured me quietly, ‘You won’t hang.’

‘But I’m responsible.’

‘No more than I.’ He looked away. ‘Tortured and sent off to be used as a lab specimen – dear God. That lovely, clever girl. I may as well – I am wretched. No, you’ll not hang.’

He drew a long, shaking breath. ‘“Killed in action” was what the first wire told us, and “killed in action” the verdict shall remain,’ he said firmly. ‘She was killed in action by this account, and given the number of people who died under fire that night I don’t think we need give out details of who shot whom. Your story shall not leave this building. You’ve not told anyone here what happened, have you?’

‘I told her brother,’ I said. ‘And anyway you bug this room. People listen through the shutters to the kitchen. It’ll have to come out.’