“I suppose you’re right,” Percy said reluctantly. “And the ability to invent stories can be useful under interrogation.”
“All right. Let’s get her on board.” Paul called her back in. “I’d like you to be part of a team I’m setting up,” he told her. “How would you feel about taking on something dangerous?”
“Would we be going to Paris?” Maude said eagerly.
It was an odd response. Paul hesitated, then said, “Why do you ask?”
“I’d love to go to Paris. I’ve never been. They say it’s the most beautiful city in the world.”
“Wherever you go, you won’t have time for sightseeing,” Percy said, letting his irritation show.
Maude did not seem to notice. “Shame,” she said. “I’d still like to go, though.”
“How do you feel about the danger?” Paul persisted. “That’s all right,” Maude said airily. “I’m not scared.” Well, you should be, Paul thought, but he kept his mouth shut.
THEY DROVE NORTH from Baker Street and passed through a working-class neighborhood that had suffered heavily from the bombing. In every street at least one house was a blackened shell or a pile of rubble.
Paul was to meet Flick outside the prison and they would interview Ruby Romain together. Percy would go on to Hendon to see Lady Denise Bowyer.
Percy, at the wheel, confidently wound his way through the grimy streets. Paul said, “You know London well.”
“I was born in this neighborhood,” Percy replied.
Paul was intrigued. He knew it was unusual for a boy from a poor family to rise as high as colonel in the British army. “What did your father do for a living?”
“Sold coal off the back of a horse-drawn cart.”
“He had his own business?”
“No, he worked for a coal merchant.”
“Did you go to school around here?”
Percy smiled. He knew he was being probed, but he did not seem to mind. “The local vicar helped me get a scholarship to a good school. That was where I lost my London accent.”
“Intentionally?”
“Not willingly. I’ll tell you something. Before the war, when I was involved in politics, people would sometimes say to me, ‘How can you be a socialist, with an accent like that?’ I explained that I was flogged in school for dropping my aitches. That silenced one or two smug bastards.”
Percy stopped the car on a tree-lined street. Paul looked out and saw a fantasy castle, with battlements and turrets and a high tower. “This is a jail?”
Percy made a gesture of helplessness. “Victorian architecture.”
Flick was waiting at the entrance. She wore her FANY uniform: a four-pocket tunic, a divided skirt, and a little cap with a turned-up brim. The leather belt that was tightly cinched around her small waist emphasized her diminutive figure, and her fair curls spilled out from under the cap. For a moment she took Paul’s breath away. “She’s such a pretty girl,” he said.
“She’s married,” Percy remarked crisply.
I’m being warned off, Paul thought with amusement. “To whom?”
Percy hesitated, then said, “You need to know this, I think. Michel is in the French Resistance. He’s the leader of the Bollinger circuit.”
“Ah. Thanks.” Paul got out of the car and Percy drove on.
He wondered if Flick would be angry that he and Percy had turned up so few prospects from the files. He had met her only twice, and on both occasions she had yelled at him. However, she seemed cheerful, and when he told her about Maude, she said, “So we have three team members, including me. That means we’re halfway there, and it’s only two pip emma.”
Paul nodded. That was one way of looking at it. He was worried, but there was nothing to be gained by saying so.
The entrance to Holloway was a medieval lodge with arrow slit windows. “Why didn’t they go the whole way and build a portcullis and a drawbridge?” said Paul. They passed through the lodge into a courtyard, where a few women in dark dresses were cultivating vegetables. Every patch of waste ground in London was planted with vegetables.
The prison loomed up in front of them. The entrance was guarded by stone monsters, massive winged griffins holding keys and shackles in their claws. The main gate-house was flanked by four-story buildings, each story represented by a long row of narrow, pointed windows. “What a place!” said Paul.