Code Name Verity(27)

‘This rather small and sodden young person,’ said the squadron leader to the civilian, ‘is the heroine I was telling you about – the German speaker. This other is Assistant Section Officer Brodatt, who took the call and guided the aircraft in. Join us, ladies, join us!’

‘Assistant Section Officer Brodatt is a pilot,’ Queenie said.

‘A pilot!’

‘Not at the moment,’ said Maddie, blushing and writhing with embarrassment. ‘I’d like to join the ATA, the Air Transport Auxiliary, when they let more women in. I have a civilian licence. My instructor joined in January this year.’

‘How extraordinary!’ said the short-sighted gentleman. He peered at Maddie through lenses half an inch thick. He was older than the squadron leader, old enough that he might’ve been refused if he’d tried to join up. Queenie shook hands with him and said gravely, ‘You must be my contact.’

His eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. ‘Must I?’

Maddie said furiously, ‘Pay no attention to her, she’s loopy. She’s been playing daft games all morning –’

They all sat down.

‘Her suggestion,’ said Queenie. ‘The daft games.’

‘It was my suggestion, but only because she’s so utterly rubbish at finding her way anywhere. I told her to pretend to be a –’

‘“Careless talk costs lives,”’ Queenie interrupted.

‘– spy.’ Maddie omitted any damning adjectives. ‘She was supposed to have been dropped by parachute and had to find her way to this pub.’

‘Not just any game,’ exclaimed the gentleman in the tweed suit and thick spectacles. ‘Not just any game, but the Great Game! Have you read Kim? Are you fond of Kipling?’

‘I don’t know, you naughty man, I’ve never kippled,’ Queenie responded tartly. The civilian let out a chortle of delight. Queenie said demurely, ‘Of course Kipling, of course Kim, when I was little. I prefer Orwell now.’

‘Been to university?’

They established that Queenie and the gentleman’s wife had been at the same college, albeit nearly 20 years apart, and traded literary quotations in German. They were obviously cut from the same well-read, well-bred, lunatic cloth.

‘What’s your poison?’ the civilian with a penchant for Kipling asked Queenie genially. ‘The water of life? Do I detect a Scottish burr? Any other languages besides German?’

‘Only coffee just now as I’m on duty later, aye you do, et oui, je suis courante en fran?ais aussi. My grandmother and my nanny are from Ormaie, near Poitiers. And I can do a fair parody of Aberdeen Doric and tinkers’ cant, but the natives aren’t fooled.’

‘The Doric and tinkers’ cant!’ The poor fellow laughed so hard he had to take off his glasses and give them a wipe with a spotted silk handkerchief. He put them back on and peered at Queenie this time. The lenses made his blue-green irises seem so large they were startling. ‘And – how did you manage to find your way here today, enemy agent mine?’

‘It’s Maddie’s story,’ said the enemy agent generously. ‘And I owe her a whisky.’

So Maddie told, to an appreciative audience, how she had played Watson to her friend’s giddy Sherlock Holmes – of the sabotaged tyre at the entrance to the well-stocked farm, and the assumptions about the dogs and the food and the flowers there. ‘And,’ Maddie finished with a triumphant flourish, ‘the farm woman drew her a map.’

The so-called enemy agent glanced up at Maddie sharply. Squadron Leader Creighton held out his hand, palm up, a demand.

‘I’ve burned it,’ Queenie said in a low voice. ‘I popped it in the fire when we first came in. I won’t tell you which farm, so don’t ask.’

‘I shouldn’t have to go to much trouble to deduce it myself,’ said the short-sighted civilian, ‘based on your friend’s description.’

‘I am an officer.’ Her voice was still dead quiet. ‘I gave the woman a royal ticking off after she’d done it, and I doubt she’ll need another warning. But I never lied to her either, and she might have been more suspicious in the first place if I had. It would be inappropriate to punish anyone – apart from me of course.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it. I am agog at your initiative.’

The man glanced at the silent Creighton. ‘I do believe your earlier suggestion is spot on,’ he said, and rather randomly quoted what Maddie reckoned was probably a line from Kipling.