Chapter Fourteen

The flowers are dying.

I didn't know what that cryptic bit of information meant. It seemed to be a code within a code. What was more, I didn't know who or what this Chambers was, but this seemed to prove that my father had, indeed, been involved in some sort of dangerous scheme that had cost him his life.

The question became: What did I want to do now?

I kept turning all the possibilities round and round in my head until I was nearly dizzy, but I didn't know what I should do.

I supposed it all came down to the same thing it had before: Did I want to know the truth?

It was an automatic impulse to insist that I did, but then I hesitated. I had been determined to learn the truth about my mother at all costs, and now it turned out that the cost had been rather more than I'd expected. What other unpleasant secrets might I uncover if I continued to pursue this?

As it turned out, I didn't have much time to contemplate the matter that evening because the Germans returned. Uncle Mick had been home for only a short time, the entirety of the day having been spent plotting with Major Ramsey, when the air-raid sirens sounded.

When this war was over, I would never be able to listen to the sound of a plane the same. For the rest of my life, I would remember that slow, creeping dread as I heard the low, almost indistinguishable buzz of the engine coming closer and closer.

There was a strange sort of feeling it created in the pit of your stomach, the dull ache of uncertainty. The body tensed with waiting, knowing what was coming and being completely powerless to stop it.

You knew that if it didn't hit your house, it was likely going to hit someone else's. Even if no one died—and no doubt many people would die—there would still be untold damage by morning.

I tried not to resent the time spent in the cellar. There were people who had no shelter available to them and some who were choosing not to go into one. I was glad, at least, that my family had a cellar and that they were persuaded to use it.

Uncle Mick might have been mistaken for a man with the sort of bravado that would keep him from retreating to the cellar. Thankfully, he was also a man with a good helping of common sense.

"No sense in being blown to bits if it can be helped," he said cheerily as we gathered up an armload of blankets and made for the stairs.

There was a certain sort of hominess down there in the cellar. I didn't know if I should be sad or glad that we had become accustomed to spending nights in our shelter.

During the worst of it, there had come to be a terrible sort of routine. Before sunset, Nacy would fill the thermos with hot tea and put whatever baked goods she made that day or the day before into a paper sack. And when the siren sounded, we'd descend and settle in for the evening, Nacy with her knitting, me with a book, and Uncle Mick with his pipe.

We had tea, we had biscuits, we had one another.

Tonight, Uncle Mick smoked his pipe placidly and said little about his meeting with Major Ramsey. I didn't want to ask, not after I had been purposefully excluded.

He noticed my avoidance of the topic, as I should have known he would. Uncle Mick knew me better than probably anyone else in the world, and he was never one to let me stew. He'd rather things be out in the open and dealt with.

"You'll be wanting to know what Ramsey and I discussed," he said.

"Didn't he forbid you to tell me?" I asked lightly, though I couldn't quite keep the edge from my tone.

Uncle Mick smiled. "He said you'd still be angry with him. He knows you well, it seems."

"I'm not that difficult to figure out," I said, dismissing the little hint of satisfaction I felt that Ramsey had been thinking of me.

Nacy looked up from her knitting. "You can deny it all you like, Ellie, but the major understands you. That's not something to be taken lightly."

I could think of nothing to say to this, so I didn't respond. Thankfully, Uncle Mick picked up the conversation.

"He caught me up on what happened, showed me the list of stolen items. It's a bit odd, all right. That was quick thinking, Ellie girl. If you hadn't called it to the major's attention, it might have slipped through the cracks unnoticed."

"We might not even have connected them ourselves, except for the fact of Lisbon. The major is the one who put that together."

He nodded. "If I had paid attention as you had, I might have noticed that these fellows seem to be from somewhere else. It's odd that we haven't heard even a whisper about these robberies within our own circles. Granted, I'm not in the thick of things like I used to be, but something of this scale usually makes the rounds."

"And so you're to meet these men the day after tomorrow," I said, unable to keep from asking.

"So it seems. That fellow Kimble brought Dugan back to the major's, once he'd cleaned him up a bit."

"Was he badly hurt?" I asked, still unable to keep from feeling sympathy for the man.

"Pony's boys had roughed him up good, but nothing that won't heal. And I think he'll be pleased to help us for the chance to keep himself from being charged as a spy."

"But can you trust him?" I asked.

Uncle Mick took a thoughtful puff of his pipe. "That's always the question when dealing with criminals, isn't it, love? But I suppose Dugan would rather see this through than meet the hangman."

I sincerely hoped so.

"He's going to introduce me to the men at Red's on Tuesday. With any luck, they'll give me the lowdown on the job and we can move from there."

I still didn't like the idea of Uncle Mick walking into the lion's den, but if anyone could pull it off, I knew he could.

As I always did when the worries seemed to be piling up around me, I forced myself to focus on the moment. In this moment, we were safe, and we were together.

And so I settled under my blanket on my little cot in the corner, and I fell asleep to the sound of distant explosions and the rumbling of the earth around me.

I went to case Varney's flat Tuesday morning. Julia had given me the address, and I needed to case the place before I did the job, to get some idea of his routine and the routines of the others who lived there.

I hadn't done a great deal of this sort of thing. For the most part, Uncle Mick and my cousins had done the reconnaissance in our past jobs, and I was included in the planning and the execution of the burglaries we had committed. Nevertheless, I was confident I could do this on my own.

I had, of course, thought about asking Uncle Mick for help, but Julia had been adamant she didn't want anyone else to know. She was terribly embarrassed about all of it, so I could understand her reluctance. Besides, Uncle Mick had enough to worry about at the moment. He didn't need the distraction.

Well, no matter. I felt perfectly capable of doing this simple job alone.

I knew I needed to look around a bit before I actually decided to break in, but the longer I spent in the vicinity, the more I risked the possibility that someone might remember me and point me out if the police or anyone else came around asking questions.

Not that I thought he would be likely to call the police, not when I would be stealing only the letters he was using to blackmail Julia.

All things considered, I decided my best course of action would be to get to know as much as I could from the outside and only venture into the building when it was time to do the job.

Mr. Varney lived in a nice building of flats in Knightsbridge. It seemed he did fairly well for himself. Not nice enough for a doorman, though, which worked in my favor.

Julia had mentioned that he worked long hours during the day, so I assumed it would be safe to enter his house in the daytime. I had only to make sure there weren't a good deal of people about at this particular time of day.

I watched for about an hour and saw only two people leave the building. One of them was an elderly man with a cane, who took a slow walk around the block before returning inside. I assumed he would be the sort of man who kept to this daily routine, so I marked the time and decided I would avoid him if at all possible.

The other person to leave the flat was a younger woman who I assumed to be on her way to work, from her clothing. She had a rushed, distracted air about her, and I didn't think that she would pose much of a problem.

All things considered, I thought it would be a fairly easy thing to get in and out of the building without notice. I had no worries about getting into Mr. Varney's flat. There were few doors in London that posed me much of a problem.

I would wait to see how things went with Uncle Mick's mission this evening, and then I would decide on a day to proceed with my plan. Hopefully, I would be able to retrieve the letters easily and have the job completed and checked off my growing list of things that were weighing on my mind.

I went home on a different route from the one on which I had come. Uncle Mick had taught me that, as well.

Not that I expected many people to be monitoring my progress today. People were concerned with cleaning up the damage from last night's air raid.

It occurred to me how strange it was that all of this had become normal: the sight of people picking through the rubble, of children in dirty clothes sitting on the curb while their mothers tried to salvage things from the ruins of their houses. A few months ago, I could not have imagined such a scene. Now it attracted only a sympathetic glance as I continued on my way.

We helped as much as we could, but there was no way to help everyone. I had learned it was impossible to try, that I could not let myself become invested in the plight of everyone I encountered. It was too much of a burden to bear, an impossibility in a city that faced death and destruction on a massive scale.

But that in itself was another of the horrors of war: the way what would have once seemed unfathomable became ordinary, the way we had to allow ourselves to become callous sometimes so that we wouldn't crumble from the weight of it all.

I was walking down a narrow street of mostly destroyed buildings when a noise caught my attention. It sounded like it was coming from inside the pile of debris.

I stepped closer to the ruined structure. It looked as though it had been a business of some sort, but whatever it had been, it was now completely obliterated.

The sound came again from beneath the pile of rubble at the edge of the street. I moved toward it, hoping I wouldn't find someone trapped beneath the wreckage. I could tell from the look of things that these buildings had not been demolished last night. The damage here was from an earlier bombing, so surely no one would be left inside. But I couldn't move on without investigating. There was no one else around, and if someone needed help, I might be the only one able to give it.

"Hello?" I called.

The sound repeated itself, and then I saw a pair of glowing eyes before a tiny bundle of fur moved out into my path.

"It's a kitten," I said to no one in particular.

I wasn't sure how the little thing had survived, but he was clearly not very old. He was a tiny, scrawny calico with unusual markings. He had black paws and a black face. A pair of pale green eyes blinked up at me.

"You poor little thing," I said, scooping him up. "Have you been lost?"

There was no one around, and it would be impossible to find the kitten's owner. If he had one. Besides, there hadn't been a house here. I assumed he'd wandered away from his litter and was trying to survive on his own. Which he certainly wouldn't be able to do for long all alone.

Without thinking much about it, I put him inside my jumper, and I felt him immediately settle against me. A moment later, he was purring contentedly.

I knew I was going to have to keep him. Nacy would grumble about us having to share our milk ration, and then she'd end up giving him extra.

It had been a long time since I'd had a kitten. The boys and I had had a lot of pets growing up. Colm and Toby were always bringing home stray dogs they found, and Nacy would feed them until they wandered off again.

We'd gone through a lot of cats that way, too, strays who were happy to have a short-term home before they went in search of other pastures. There were two cats who had lived long and happy lives with us, but we'd seen the last of them years ago.

Somehow, I felt an immediate connection to the little creature. Perhaps we were both in need of a friend at the moment.

I looked at the little black mask across his calico face.

"Burglar," I said. "I'm going to call you Burglar."

He gave a little meow of approval.