Chapter Three

My sense of disappointment was somewhat relieved by the fact that there was a letter from Felix waiting for me when I got home.

I took it to my flat, a small building behind the main house that Uncle Mick had given me when he'd thought I could use a bit of independence. I loved having a little place of my own just a walk through the kitchen garden away from my family.

Sitting on the sofa, I slid my finger under the flap without bothering to find the letter opener. I pulled the letter out and unfolded it.

It was only one sheet of paper, and not even completely covered, at that. Felix had always been an indifferent correspondent at best. Even when he had been in the navy, I had never known when to expect a letter.

Felix was gone again on one of his frequent and mysterious trips to Scotland, and the letters were really only short notes he dashed off at sporadic intervals. It was nice, I supposed, that he was thinking of me, but the irregular contact was also frustrating. Felix was the only other person who knew the secret about my father. There was no one else with whom I could discuss the matter, and I wished him home.

I read the letter.

Ellie, my sweet,

I am jotting you a note because there is a beautiful evergreen outside my window, and every time I take a moment to glance at it, I think of your eyes.

There is nothing here to remind me of your lips, but I think of them constantly nonetheless.

I hope to be back soon so that I can do away with remembering and resume enjoying.

You will tell me I am scandalous, no doubt, but I am saving the most scandalous of my thoughts to tell you in person.

Until then, I remain,

Yours,

Felix

xx

Despite my general exasperation at his flippancy, I couldn't help but smile at this rather outrageous letter. Felix enjoyed making me blush. He was flirtatious and provocative, but in a way that was respectful and all in good fun. I missed him, I realized, and not just as a confidant.

I had hoped that he would be with us for Christmas, but he had been away. He'd left me gifts: some expensive and divine-smelling French soap, which I didn't know how he'd managed to acquire; some equally difficult-to-acquire silk stockings, which had caused Nacy to raise her eyebrows; and a lovely silver bracelet. They were not the sort of homemade and inexpensive gifts that most of us had given one another, and I knew they clearly indicated that Felix and I were more than friends.

Oddly enough, he'd not yet formally asked me to be his girl. I hadn't pushed the matter—especially now that I had conflicted feelings. All the same, a part of me wondered why Felix had not tried to make things official. Nor, despite Nacy's suspicions, had Felix pressed for physical intimacies beyond the kissing we frequently engaged in.

Perhaps there was something—or someone—in Scotland that was dividing his attention.

I didn't know what he was up to in Scotland, and the lack of knowledge left me uneasy. Felix was not prone to keeping secrets from me. Even before there had been anything romantic between us, we had shared confidences. But whatever was happening in Scotland was something he refused to speak about.

Whenever I brought up the topic, he always deflected. When deflection didn't work, he outright refused to tell me what it was all about.

I determined that when he returned we must have a serious discussion. I needed to know why he was being so secretive.

I assumed he was working on something of an illegal nature. Felix was a master forger. I had never seen anyone with a more natural aptitude for the craft. He could replicate the handwriting of the king himself and convince him to believe it.

I worried that he was involved in something dangerous. It was the sort of thing he would do as much because it amused him as for financial gain. One thing that could be said of Felix: there was never a dull moment with him.

I let out a loud sigh. Everywhere I looked there were closed doors or more questions.

Well, perhaps, if I really wanted answers, it was time to stop avoiding my father's trunk and see if there was something to be found within it.

Taking a deep breath, I set aside Felix's letter, left my little flat, and walked through the kitchen garden toward the house. It was time to search for some answers.

Nacy was away at the shops, and Uncle Mick was on a locksmithing job, so I was able to venture down into the cellar without calling attention to my activities.

I went slowly down the wooden stairs. Perhaps needless to say, I had mixed feelings about this part of the house these days. It was associated with the terrors of constant bombing, but it was also the shelter that had kept us secure. It was both a safe haven and a place I would like never to visit again when the war was over.

The trunk of family artifacts was stashed in one corner. It had been in the attic until the Blitz had started, tucked away under the eaves and covered with dust and cobwebs. Yet it was one of the first things Uncle Mick had hauled down to the cellar after the first night of bombing.

It held family objects dating back generations, but I knew for a fact that some of my father's things were in it. Uncle Mick had shown them to me once when I was a child.

If there was something in this house that might give me more of a clue as to what my father had been involved in, and perhaps what had led to his murder, it would be inside this trunk.

It was locked, though I wasn't certain why, as the lock wasn't likely to keep anyone in our family out. Perhaps it was just force of habit. I wondered if Uncle Mick even knew where the key was.

Whatever the case, it took only a few twists from a hairpin and it was done.

I knelt down before the ancient trunk and unfastened the straps, lifting the heavy lid. Dust floated up to tickle my nose, and I wiped it on my sleeve before I surveyed the contents.

As I had remembered, there were several objects related to our family history: a worn, faded quilt made by my great-grandmother; a family Bible, too delicate for further use, wrapped carefully in a cloth; a small box that held my grandmother's rosary and my grandfather's pocket watch.

One corner of the trunk seemed to hold slightly newer items, and it was there I spotted a stack of letters. A glance at the envelopes told me they were from my mother to my father. Uncle Mick had never shown these to me.

I opened one envelope and saw the date at the top of the letter. It was dated before my parents were married. Undoubtedly love letters. I set them aside to read later.

It felt like an invasion of privacy, but I realized that this was a part of my history, that whatever was in them involved me, too, now that my parents were gone. I had never had the chance to know either of them. I'd been robbed of my parents by an unknown assailant and a series of injustices. I had to piece together a legacy wherever and however I could.

Toward the bottom of that side of the trunk, I found a short, flat cardboard box filled with yellowed newspaper clippings. I sifted through them and realized they were all related to the case. Uncle Mick had apparently cut them out to keep for posterity but had been disgusted enough with all of it not to bother pasting them in a scrapbook.

I'd seen the articles before, in local papers I'd rummaged through at the library. There had been a phase in my adolescence when I'd wanted to know all I could about my parents and had set about researching on my own. So none of the clippings in the box were a surprise to me.

There were several of them, arranged chronologically, the progression showing how the case had devolved into sensationalism.

HENDON MAN FOUND SLAIN, the earliest of them read. It recounted how my father had been found by his brother, Uncle Mick, dead in his own house from several stab wounds. The crime had been vicious, and even the early articles had speculated that it might be a crime of passion, as it appeared that nothing was missing from the house.

The next headline, HENDON MAN STABBED TO DEATH, WIFE ARRESTED, related how my mother had been found wandering with the knife, questioned, and eventually arrested and charged with the crime.

TRIAL DATE SET IN MCDONNELL MURDER,read the next.

IS BEAUTY A BEAST?an article asked, a large photograph of my mother front and center. It was a photo she'd had taken at some point after her marriage, for her wedding ring was visible. She was wearing a chic silk and lace dress and smiling happily, her eyes bright, her glossy black hair gleaming even in the colorless photo. She really had been beautiful. It was largely the reason the case had aroused such interest.

I reached the final article in the stack: MARGO MCDONNELL FOUND GUILTY, SENTENCED TO HANG.

He hadn't kept any beyond that, not the ones that detailed her appeal, the discovery that she was pregnant with her murdered husband's child, the fact that she had died in prison of the influenza that had decimated the world.

I set the lid back on the box with a sigh. It was all so terribly tragic. But, of course, my tragedy was not particularly noteworthy in this time of great tragedy. People were suffering losses every day.

That didn't mean, of course, that I didn't intend to find out what had happened to my father. It only meant that I wouldn't feel too sorry for myself while I did it.

There was a faded leather photo album beneath the box, and I flipped through it. I'd seen most of these before. Uncle Mick had brought them out for me to look at when I'd been old enough to start asking questions. It was likely he had returned the album to its place in this trunk rather than keep it in the family sitting room because the memories it evoked were more painful than happy. Most of the photos had my mother in them, after all.

Mrs. Maynard, the friend of my mother's who had told me about my father's espionage, had given me a different photo of my parents, a photo my mother had sent her for safekeeping. It was a picture of my father and mother in front of a cottage with mountains behind them. I had failed to see the significance of the photo or why my mother would want to hide it, but Mrs. Maynard's other revelation had made that clear.

The photo had apparently been taken in Germany. But when had my parents been there? And how was it that my father had got entangled with the German cause? My father had been born and raised in Ireland, and, like Uncle Mick, I'd assumed he'd been a County Galway man, through and through.

I supposed Uncle Mick might know about the visit to Germany, and it would make the most sense to ask him. He'd even told me, when he'd discovered that I'd written to Mrs. Maynard, that he would tell me anything I wanted to know about my mother. But I couldn't ask him, not yet.

Not when it might mean revealing to him what his brother had been involved in. I knew how much Uncle Mick had loved my father. Knew it as certain as I knew he loved me. And to find out that his brother had been an enemy spy would be to break his heart all over again.

There was a book of Greek mythology at the bottom of the trunk. I wondered why it had been left here, among my parents' things, rather than put on the shelf with the other books. I had a few of my mother's mythology books already. They were great favorites of mine.

My mother had named me Electra, and it had always felt like a connection to her, like something valuable passed down along with her collection of books. After I was old enough to understand the character of Electra, how she had avenged her father's murder, I had begun to see it as a sign, as a message from my mother to me, that perhaps someday I would be able to avenge my father's death.

I wasn't sure what to believe about that now.

I flipped open the cover of the book. There was an inscription handwritten on the title page:

Niall,

κλε?νω τα μ?τια μου και βλ?πω το πρ?σωπ? σο.

Σ?αγαπ?,

Margo

I hadn't known my mother knew Greek. I wondered what the words meant.

I traced my finger over the elegant, unfamiliar swirls. I'd seen few samples of her handwriting, and when I came across them I felt closer to her somehow. I wished for the millionth time in my short life that I had known her.

I had been taken from her at the prison when I was a few months old and given to Uncle Mick and Nacy's care. I'd had the best upbringing a girl could ask for—family of thieves or no—and I had never wanted for love or affection or familial support.

But one always misses one's parents, doesn't one?

I flipped through the pages of the book. I saw now that there were notes in the margins. They weren't my mother's handwriting, so perhaps they were my father's? I had seen less of his writing. It seemed that, like Uncle Mick, he had not been much of one to keep written records of things. It had been up to me almost since I could form neat letters to keep records straight for Uncle Mick's locksmithing business.

So why had my father been interested enough in this book of mythology to write in the margins? I leaned close to look at the notes and realized suddenly they weren't definable words—not English words, anyway. And not Greek either. Nor German, for that matter.

I flipped through a few more chapters to see if it was all the same and stopped when I came across a folded sheet of paper. I took it out and opened it.

It was more of the same but written in a different hand. A note my father had received, perhaps? But from whom?

I looked down at the book and felt a sharp stab of surprise at the chapter heading: "Electra."

Did this mean something? It had to mean something, didn't it?

It must be a code of some sort. And perhaps my name was part of the key.

A wave of various emotions hit me all at once: elation, consternation, worry at what it meant.

But I already knew the worst, didn't I? My father had been spying for the enemy. If it were this war, we would have been working for opposite sides.

How deeply had my mother been involved in it all? It seemed there must have been some reason she had decided to keep the secret, that she had felt it was worth her life to protect my family.

But, if my father had been dead when I was born, who had she named me to pass a message to?

"Ellie?"

I jumped at the sound of Nacy calling my name upstairs. I'd been so engrossed I hadn't even heard her come into the house.

"In the cellar, Nacy!" I called. "I'll be right up."

Setting the things I'd removed carefully back into the trunk, I closed the lid behind me and relocked it with my hairpin.

Everything was as I'd left it—well, almost everything.

I slipped the Greek mythology book with the letter inside it into the pocket of my jumper before going upstairs to greet Nacy.