They looked around for a key but couldn’t find one. Milly tried the door again but it wouldn’t yield. Nipper began to bark excitedly.
‘I think we should turn back now,’ said Lena. ‘We don’t want Seebold to get overtired.’
Also concerned that the sound of the dog barking might bring someone from the house, the three of them turned around and headed back to the cottage.
Inside the ice house, Freddie let his breath out slowly. Hell’s bells, that was close. What a good job he’d bolted the door, and how fortuitous also that he’d heard them coming before he’d fired up the radio. If he’d had the earphones on, he might not have done so, and the sound of his voice would have given the game away. He could still hear the people outside, but their voices were becoming faint. He threw the monkey wrench back into the toolbox. As soon as he’d heard voices he’d snatched it up, knowing that if they had come into the ice house he would have had no hesitation in using it as a weapon. He waited a while to calm his breathing before he reached up and slid back the bolt. Opening the door silently, he stepped outside and looked down the lane. There they were. They all had their backs to him but he recognised them at once: his sister-in-law, the man he’d seen off the premises that time and the gypsy girl. He hurriedly pressed himself into the overhanging ivy as he saw one of them begin to turn around. What should he do? They were a danger to his plans and much too close for comfort. He slipped back inside the ice house. From now on he would have to be more vigilant. For the first time in his life, he was doing something very important. Nothing and no one must be allowed to get in the way.
Chapter 36
Worthing was in a state of organised chaos. People were being kept well away from the centre of town because Captain Bailey of the Worthing Home Guard had instigated a full-scale exercise using personnel from Air Raid Precaution Group 2. The exercise area was between George V Avenue and Heene Road, up as far as the railway station at one end and down to the beach at the other. One hundred and sixty men and women gathered at 2.30 p.m. to play-act a major disaster. Imitation mustard gas bombs were set off at regular intervals. Fire engines raced to the scene and special constables patrolled the streets. On Goring Road, the pavement outside the newly built Sainsbury’s food store was littered with ‘corpses’ while, a little further up the street, living ‘casualties’ with realistic-looking injuries were slumped at the bus stop and on the grass verge in various agonising-looking poses.
Along with several other employees from Hubbard’s, Milly had volunteered to be a victim. A girl from Worthing Connaught Theatre had created a terrible ‘open’ wound on her leg and she was supposed to be in shock. Another girl had a ‘broken arm’ with the bone sticking through the skin. It was all cleverly done with nothing more than plasters, plasticine and cochineal, but everybody’s injuries were so horribly realistic that – for the first time – Milly was confronted with the reality of what they all faced. God forbid, but if the Nazis should invade Poland and Britain declared war, she and the other inhabitants of Worthing might experience this for real, and most likely a lot worse.
‘It’s all a bit scary, isn’t it,’ said the girl with the ‘broken arm’. ‘The thought of going to war, I mean.’
Milly nodded grimly. ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Hitler could still make peace.’
The girl from the Connaught snapped her make-up box shut. ‘And pigs might fly.’
Just after one o’clock, Milly and her companion were taken to an area near the end of Heene Road where they were told to lie on the edge of the gardens opposite Heene Terrace and wait to be found. ‘A warning will sound.’ The parting words of the officer who dropped them off were vague. Did he mean a warning would sound when the exercise started, or would it come when it ended? And did they still have to wait to be found if no one had come by that time?
As she lay in the shrubbery by an upturned seat, she rehearsed the rhyme which had been issued by the Home Office to help residents to understand what was going on.
Wavering sound – go to ground
Steady blast – raiders past
If rattles you hear – gas you must fear
But if hand bells ring – then all is clear.
But Milly had no idea which one to listen out for. She had the feeling it was going to be a long afternoon. A few passers-by paused to stare, and some people on the top deck of the bus waved but, apart from that, she was alone. The other girl had been left further up the road beside the pavement, next to an upturned pram which, fortunately, had no baby in it. At one point a man on a bicycle, alarmed to see the awful state of her ‘broken arm’, stopped to ask if he could help her to hospital. Milly heard the girl explaining that she was part of an exercise and the man rode off. Sometime later, the same girl was bundled into an ambulance, but still no one noticed Milly.
It was a little while later when Milly saw him. Pearl’s husband. He was strolling along the walkway between the beach huts and the road. There weren’t many people walking about today because there was a stiff offshore breeze which made it chilly. At first, he appeared to be just another visitor to the town, except that every now and then, he stopped to write something in a little notebook and then he’d put it back into his pocket. How strange. What was he doing? She frowned as a vague memory resurfaced. When she’d first met Eustace at Lady Verity’s party, hadn’t he said something about Freddie scribbling things into a notebook? Come to think of it, Eustace had a little rant about the same thing when they were out walking. So what did Freddie do all day? As far as she knew, he didn’t have a job, and he certainly wasn’t part of the exercise, and yet there he was, writing quite a lot into that notebook of his.
In the tranquillity of the garden, Milly started going over a few things in her mind. For a start, there was that business when he was chased by the swan. Eustace thought Freddie might have been photographing butterflies but the more she thought of it, the more Milly was convinced that his interest lay elsewhere. When he emerged from the undergrowth and headed for his bicycle, he had thrown something into the saddle bag. It had to have been a camera. Why else would he be making threatening gestures while she was giving evidence in court? Then there was that ice house. As they had walked away, she’d had a feeling they were being watched, though she hadn’t mentioned anything to the others. The door was locked but somebody could have been inside and as she had glanced back, she thought she’d seen movement. At the time, she convinced herself she had imagined it, but now she felt differently. Milly cast her mind back to the first time she’d met Freddie at that party. She’d been impressed by his physique; even though he was covered by his shirt, she could tell that he exercised regularly. Could that mean that he was a member of some military movement? He was too old to be one of the Hitler Youth, but there were plenty of other Nazi groups. She frowned crossly. There was something else. Something niggling away at the back of her mind but she struggled to remember. What was it? And then it dawned on her. He’d clicked his heels, military style. She shivered. Surely that must make him . . .? No, she was being ridiculous, over-dramatic. He was just a polite German. They all did that, didn’t they?
She forced herself to calm down. Things were bad enough between her and her sister. It would only make things a whole lot worse if she waded in with a half-baked idea that Freddie might not be all that he seemed. Perhaps she should speak to her mother first? She lay perfectly still as her brother-in-law turned from the seafront and walked up Heene Road. Where was he going? Milly was dying to get up and follow him, but she couldn’t, could she? She was supposed to be a casualty.
Finally, after a long, cold wait, a car drew up and a man climbed out. ‘Has anyone seen to you, love?’
Milly felt a bit of an idiot because she was in the middle of groaning with pain and holding her leg. The way he spoke made her sit up. ‘No. I’ve been here for ages.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Hop in. We’re done now. They’re all having a cup of tea in Marine Gardens.’
Freddie dropped his wife at the junction of Oxford Street and Regent Street.
‘I’ll be back in a couple of hours,’ he told her. ‘Don’t be late.’
Pearl gave him a perfunctory wave and disappeared into the crowd. Freddie set off down Regent Street towards Piccadilly Circus. From there he headed towards Carlton House Terrace and Prussia House, which was close to Pall Mall. As he parked the car, he couldn’t help noticing the smell of burning, and that the air was filled with small pieces of charred paper. It seemed to be coming from one of the chimneys. He mounted the steps and rang the bell twice before he pounded on the door.
It was several minutes before anyone opened the door, and even then the person on the other side only opened it a crack. ‘Yes, what do you want?’ he said in German.
‘It’s me,’ said Freddie. ‘I’ve come to see Christoph.’ The door opened fully and he stepped inside. ‘And you might like to know that the whole street is covered with burnt paper. I think your chimney is on fire.’
‘It isn’t,’ said the man, whom Freddie recognised as Gunther, one of the junior secretaries. ‘We are getting rid of papers.’
‘But why?’
‘You know how it works,’ said the man. ‘The British tell their people to leave Germany and then we tell ours to get out of the UK.’
Puzzled, Freddie followed him down the corridor. As he opened another door, for a second or two the people in the room froze. One of them was Christoph. The room was filled with smoke and the floor was covered with files. As soon as they saw it was only Freddie, the men continued to systematically empty the files and rip up the papers inside. The ripped-up documents were then piled next to the fireplace, where Christoph was throwing them onto the fire and stoking it, but the flat pieces of paper were reluctant to burn. Busy with their tasks, no one looked round at him. Freddie started coughing.
Christoph snapped his neck around. ‘What do you want?’ he asked irritably. ‘Can’t you see we’re busy?’
‘I need to talk to you,’ Freddie spluttered. Christoph gave him an impatient glare. ‘In private,’ Freddie insisted.
His handler rose to his feet and another secretary took his place. The two men walked from the room and went next door.
‘Well?’ Christoph demanded as he helped himself to a whisky.
‘I need to get away,’ said Freddie. ‘I must have diplomatic papers.’
‘Don’t be an ass,’ said Christoph. ‘I can’t give you that.’
‘But you have to,’ Freddie cried. ‘I’ve put my life on the line for you. If I stay here and they find out what I’ve been up to, I shall be arrested, put in prison – perhaps executed as an enemy agent.’
Christoph shrugged. ‘You knew what you were doing,’ he said coldly. ‘Just sit tight. You’ll be fine.’
