Introduction

“Instantly absorbing, suspenseful, romantic, and stylish—like binge-watching a great British drama on Masterpiece Theater.” —Lee Child, New York Times bestselling author

Winner of the Agatha Award for Best Historical Novel, the Macavity Award for Best Historical Novel, and the Left Coast Crime Award for Best Historical Mystery.

World War II comes to Farleigh Place, the ancestral home of Lord Westerham and his five daughters, when a soldier with a failed parachute falls to his death on the estate. After his uniform and possessions raise suspicions, MI5 operative and family friend Ben Cresswell is covertly tasked with determining if the man is a German spy. The assignment also offers Ben the chance to be near Lord Westerham’s middle daughter, Pamela, whom he furtively loves. But Pamela has her own secret: she has taken a job at Bletchley Park, the British code-breaking facility.

As Ben follows a trail of spies and traitors, which may include another member of Pamela’s family, he discovers that some within the realm have an appalling, history-altering agenda. Can he, with Pamela’s help, stop them before England falls?

Inspired by the events and people of World War II, writer Rhys Bowen crafts a sweeping and riveting saga of class, family, love, and betrayal.

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Excerpt

Chapter 1

Bletchley Park,

May 1941

Lady Pamela Sutton stared at the dreary government-issued posters on the wall of her small cubicle in Hut Three. Some of them cheerful exhortations to do ones’ best, to soldier on, stiff upper lip, and other dire warnings about letting the side down. Beyond the blackout curtains that covered the windows, dawn would be breaking. She could hear the chorus of birds in the woods behind the hut, still chirping madly and joyfully as they had done before the war began and would keep doing after it ended—whenever that would be. It had already gone on too long and there was no end in sight. Pamela rubbed her eyes. It had been a long night and her eyes were stinging with tiredness. According to civil service regulations women were not supposed to work on night shift with men, in case their morals were compromised. She had found this amusing when the shortage of male translators meant that one of the girls had to do night shift work. “Frankly I don’t think my honor is in danger from any of the chaps here,” she had said. “They are more interested in math problems than girls.”

But she had come to regret her bravado many times since. Night work was brutal. Thank God her shift was soon coming to an end and she could go to bed. Not that she could ever sleep properly during the day with trains rattling past her window.

“Bloody war,” she muttered and breathed onto her hands, trying to induce some warmth into her fingers. Although it was May the huts were cold and damp overnight. The coke ration had been stopped on May 1st. Not that that was entirely bad as the cast iron stove smoked badly and spewed out noxious fumes. Everything was so horrible these days. No decent food to eat. Meals consisting of powdered egg, canned corned beef, sausages that were more sawdust than meat. Her landlady obviously hadn’t been much of a cook before the war but what she cooked now was quite inedible. Pamela envied those on the day shift. At least they could take their main meal in the dining room, which was supposed to be quite good. She could go across and get some breakfast before she went off duty but she was always too tired to eat by the end of a long night.

At the outbreak of war she had been anxious to do something useful. Jeremy had joined up on the first day, welcomed into the RAF with open arms. He’d been one of the most decorated pilots at the Battle of Britain but then in typical Jeremy fashion he’d strayed too far into France chasing a returning German plane and been shot down. Now he was in a Luft Stalag somewhere in Germany and nobody had heard from him for months. She didn’t even know if he was alive or dead. She squeezed her eyes shut so that a tear couldn’t form. Stiff upper lip at all times—that was what was expected these days. We must set an example, her father had said in his normal thundering manner, pounding on the table for better effect. Never let anyone see you are upset or afraid. People look up to us and we have an obligation to show them how it’s done.

It was for that very reason that she had been selected for this job. Her friend Trixie Radcliffe, fellow deb in the spring of nineteen thirty nine, had invited her for tea in London, back in the early days of the war when civilized things like tea at Brown’s Hotel still existed.

“I say Pamma, this chap I know introduced me to another chap who might want to give us a job,” Trixie had said in that enthusiastic way of hers. “He’s looking for girls like us. From good families. No nonsense. Nor prone to hysterics.”

“Goodness. What kind of job is he offering—deportment classes for the WAACs and WRENS?”

Trixie had laughed. “Nothing like that. I gather it’s something rather hush-hush. He asked me if I could be trusted to keep my mouth shut and never gossip.”

“Golly.” Pamela looked surprised.

Trixie leaned closer. “He seems to think that we are brought up to do the right thing. Hence will not let the side down and give away secrets. He even asked me whether I drink a lot.” She laughed. “I gather people are apt to spill too many beans when drunk.”

“So what did you tell him?”

“That I’d only just come out before the war and since rationing I hadn’t really had a chance to prove how well I hold my liquor.”

Pamela laughed too, then her face grew serious again. “I wonder what he could possibly want us for? Sending us as spies into Germany?”

“He did ask if I spoke German. Actually he said did I have the German, which I first took to mean a German chap. I’m afraid I broke out in a fit of giggles. I told him we’d both been to finishing school in Switzerland and that you were a whiz at languages. He seemed really interested in you, by the way. Really perked up when I said I knew you.”

“Golly,” Pamela said again. “I don’t think I can see myself as a spy, vamping German officers. Can you?”

“No, my sweet. I can’t see you vamping Germans. You always were too pure. I, on the other hand, might be quite good at it. Unfortunately my German is spoken with a decidedly English accent. They’d detect me as a phony in an instant. But I don’t think it’s spying. This chap also asked how good I was at crossword puzzles.”

“What a strange thing to ask,” Pamela replied.

Trixie leaned even closer until she was whispering in Pamela’s ear. “I rather think it may be something to do with breaking codes and things.”

And so it had proved to be. The two girls had taken the train from Euston Station to Bletchley Junction in the wilds of Buckinghamshire. It was almost dark when they had arrived. The station and the town were both unprepossessing. A pall of dust hung over the air from the local brickworks. There was nobody to meet the train and they had carried their own suitcases up a long path beside the railway line until they came to a high chain link fence topped with barbed wire.

“Crikey.” This time even Trixie was alarmed. “It certainly doesn’t look very inviting, does it?”

“We don’t have to do this,” Pamela had said.

They stared at each other, each willing the other to bolt.

“We can at least find out what they want us to do and then say “no thank you very much but I’d rather be a land girl and raise pigs.”

This put them both in better spirits.

“Come on. Let’s face the music.” Trixie nudged her friend and they walked up to a main gate. The RAF guard on duty in the concrete sentry box had their names on his clipboard and they were directed to the main house where they were to report to Commander Travis. Nobody offered to carry their bags which more than anything told Pamela that they were now in a very different world from the one she was used to. The driveway passed rows of long drab-looking huts before the main house came into view. It had been built by a nouveau-riche family at the height of Victorian excess and was a sprawling mixture of styles with fancy brickwork, gables and oriental pillars, and a conservatory, sticking out of one end. New arrivals from lower down the social scale were often impressed but to girls raised in stately homes it produced the opposite effect.

“What a monstrosity!” Trixie exclaimed, laughing. “Lavatory gothic, wouldn’t you say?”

“But the view’s pretty,” Pamela said. “Look—there a lake, and a copse and fields. I wonder if there are horses and one can go riding.”

“It’s not a house party, darling,” Trixie said. “We’re here to work. Come on. Let’s get it over with and find out what we’re in for.”

They entered the main house and found themselves in the sort of impressive interior they were used to—ornately carved ceilings, paneled walls, stained glass windows and thick carpets. A young woman carrying a sheaf of papers came out of a side door and didn’t seem surprised to see them. “Oh, I suppose you’re the latest lot of debs,” she said, regarding Trixie’s mink collar with disdain. “Commander Travis is upstairs. Second door on the right.”

“Hardly the warmest welcome,” Trixie whispered as they left their suitcases and ascended a rather grand carved oak staircase.

“Do you think we’re making an awful mistake?” Pamma whispered.

“A bit late to turn back now.” Trixie squeezed her hand, then stepped forward to knock on a polished oak door. Commander Travis, the deputy director, looked at them with clear skepticism.

“This is no joy-ride, young ladies. In fact it’s bloody hard work. But I hope you’ll find it’s rewarding work. You’ll be doing your part to stop the enemy—just as important a job as our boys in the service are doing. And the first thing we stress here is absolute secrecy. You will be required to sign the official secrets act. After that you are not permitted to discuss your work with anyone outside your unit. Not even with each other. Not even with your parents or boyfriends. Is that clear?”

The girls nodded then Pamela got up the courage to ask, “Exactly what will our work be? We’ve been told nothing so far.”

He held up a hand. “First things first, young lady. “ He produced two sheets of paper and two fountain pens. “Official secrets act. Read this and sign here please. “ He tapped a finger on the paper.

“So you’re saying that we have to promise never to divulge what goes on here before we know what goes on here?” Trixie asked.

Commander Travis laughed. “You’ve got spirit. I like that. But I’m afraid once you came in through that gate you became a security risk to the country. And I assure you that your work here will be a damned sight more interesting and rewarding than other jobs you could do.”

Trixie looked at Pamela, shrugged and said, “Why not? What have we got to lose?” She took the pen and signed. Pamela had followed suit. It was then she discovered that she was to be sent to Hut 3 to translate decoded German messages. Pamela didn’t know what Trixie was doing as they were only allowed to share information with members of their own hut, but she knew that Trixie was annoyed she hadn’t been given a more exacting and glamorous job. “Filing and typing in the index room. Can you imagine anything more boring?” she had said. “While one gathers the men in the huts have all the fun working on strange machines. I’d never have come if I’d known I’d be doing boring, menial stuff. How about you? Is your job going to be menial too?”

“Oh no, I’m going to be chatting daily with Herr Hitler,” Pamela said, then burst out laughing at her friend’s face. “A joke, darling. One has to keep up a sense of humor at all times. And yes, I’m sure my job will be utterly menial too. After all, we’re not men, are we?”

And she had never told Trixie any more than that. She was horribly conscious of the importance of her job and that a failure to translate or a mis-translation might mean hundreds of lives lost. She realized that she was usually handed the lowest level priority decodes and that the priority intercepts went to the men, but just occasionally she had the satisfaction of coming up with a hidden gem.

The task had been challenging and exciting at first but after a whole year she had become tired and jaded. The unreality of it all, the discomforts and the constant stream of bad news from the battlefields was beginning to wear down even a cheerful person like Pamela. The huts were horribly basic, freezing in winter, sweltering in summer, always gloomy with inadequate bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. And at the end of long shifts she had to return to her billet-- a dismal boarding house room backing onto the railway line. As she rode back into town on the ancient bike she had acquired she found her thoughts turning to Farleigh in the spring—the woods a carpet of bluebells in this first week of May. Young lambs in the fields. Riding in the early morning with her sisters. And she found that she really longed to see her sisters. And she realized that she had never really been close to any of them, except for Margot, whom she hadn’t seen in ages and missed terribly. They were all so different—Livvy, five years her senior, had been born prissy and grown-up, and had always telling the others how to behave properly.

Pamela realized with regret that she hardly knew Phoebe, the youngest daughter. She had seemed a bright little girl and had the makings of a splendid horsewoman but spent most of her life in the nursery, away from the rest of the family. And then there was the annoying Dido, two years her junior, fiercely competitive, and desperate to be grown up and out in society—to have everything Pamela had. But Dido saw her as a rival, never a partner in crime as Margot had been and they had never shared the same intimacy.

Pamela turned back to her work as a basket of transcripts was placed in front of her. The early morning messages were beginning to come in, which was good news. It meant that the brainy chaps in Hut 6 had got the Enigma settings right and the resulting print-outs were in real German, or at least vaguely understandable German. She picked up the first card. The Typex produced long strips of letters divided into groups of five. Xs were periods, Ys were commas and proper names were proceeded by a J. She looked at the first one.WUBY YNULL SEQNU LLNUL LX This was something that came through every day. Wetter uberricht. The morning weather forecast for sector six. And null meant nothing important was going on. She wrote out a quick translation and dropped it into the out basket.

The next one was equally routine. ABSTI MMSPR UCHYY RESTX OHNEX SINN. A test sending from a German command to make sure the day’s codes were working. “Thank you, Hamburg, they are working very nicely,” she said with a smile as she dropped this one into the basket. The next one had come through badly corrupted. Half the letters were missing. Messages were often received like this and required the skill of a crossword puzzle as well as a good knowledge of the German terminology of war. Pamela managed to deduce that the subject of the message was the twenty first panzer division, part of Rommel’s desert force. But the following letters --FF-I----G had her flummoxed. Was it two words or even three? In which case the first one might be auf, meaning on. She stared harder until the letters danced in the poor light. She longed to remove the blackout curtains but only the warden was allowed to do that at his appointed hour. Her eyes stung with tiredness. Rest, she thought. I need to rest.

Then she was alert again, a hopeful smile on her face. She tried the letters. Auffrischung. The twenty-first panzer division needed to rest and refit!

She jumped up and almost ran through to the watch room. Wilson, the older man who was watch chief looked up with a frown. He didn’t approve of women on his night shift and ignored Pamela as much as possible.

“I think I’ve got something interesting, sir,” she said. She put the Typex in front of him with her translation underneath. He stared at it, frowning for a long time before he looked up. “Rather a stretch of the imagination, wouldn’t you say, Lady Pamela?” He alone always insisted on addressing her with her title. To the rest of them she was P.

“But it could mean that the twenty-first panzers might be withdrawn. That’s important, isn’t it?”

Two other men at the table leaned over to see what the fuss was about.

“She may be right, Wilson,” one of them said. “Auffrischung. Good word.” He gave Pamela an encouraging smile.

“See if you can come up with something else that makes sense then,, Wilson,” the other said. “We all know her German is better than ours.”

“You should pass it along to army h.q. anyway, just in case,” the first said. “Well done, P.”

Pamela allowed herself a grin as she returned to her seat. She had just emptied her in basket when voices at the other end of the hut signaled the arrival of the early day shift. Pamela took her coat from its peg.

“Lovely day out there,” one of the young men said as came toward her. He was a tall and gangly, peering at the world through thick glasses. His name was Rodney and he was the epitome of the studious young Oxford or Cambridge men who had been lured to work at Bletchley Park. “Lucky you get time to enjoy it. Rounders match this afternoon, I gather. If you happen to like rounders. I’m a complete duffer at it myself, I regret. And country dancing tonight, but then you’ll be working, won’t you.” He paused and ran a nervous hand through unruly hair. “I don’t suppose you care to come to the cinema with me on your night off?”

“Kind of you, Rodney, ” she said, “But frankly on my night off I’d rather catch up on sleep.”

“You are looking at little hollow around the eyes,” he agreed, never having shown himself to be tactful. “These night shifts do get to one after a while, don’t they? Still, all in a good cause, so they say.”

“So they say,” she repeated. “I wish we could see that we’re making progress. The country I mean. All the news seems to be bad, doesn’t it? And the poor people in London being bombed night after night. How long can we take it, do you think?”

“As long as we have to,” Rodney said. “Simple as that.”

Pamela looked at his retreating back with admiration. He represented the backbone of Britain at this moment. Skinny, gangly, an awkward bookworm, and yet determined to keep going for as long as it took to defeat Hitler. She felt ashamed of her own depression and lack of faith as she went to retrieve her bicycle and rode into town.

Her digs at Mrs. Adams boarding house were close to the station and a train whistled as it approached the platform. “If my parents could see where I’m living now,” Pamela thought, with a grim smile. But then they had no idea where she was working or what she was doing. Under the official secrets act she was not allowed to divulge anything to anybody. It hadn’t been easy to persuade her father to let her leave home, but she had turned twenty one and come out into society so he could hardly forbid her, and when she had said, “I want to do my bit, Pah. You said it’s up to us to set an example, and I’m setting one,” he’d had reluctantly agreed.

She dismounted from her bike and wheeled it along the pavement. She felt sick with hunger and tiredness, but she sighed as she wondered what breakfast would await her today: the lumpy porridge made with water? Bread fried in the dripping from last Sunday’s scrag end of mutton? Toast with a scrape of margarine and watery marmalade if they were lucky. And her mind drifted to the spread on the sideboard back at Farleigh: the kidneys and bacon and kedgeree and scrambled eggs. How long before she could go home? But if she went home, how would she force herself to come back?

There was a news stand outside the station and a headline read “Hero comes home.” Pamela glanced at the front page of the pile of newspapers. Since the war began and paper was scarce the print had become smaller and more crowded and the pictures tiny. But there, halfway down the front page of the Daily Express she spotted a grainy photograph of a man in RAF uniform and recognized the jaunty grin. She fished in her pocket for tuppence and took the newspaper. Ace pilot flight lieutenant Jeremy Prescott escapes against all odds from German prisoner of war camp. Only survivor of break out. Before she could read any more her legs buckled under her and she sank to the ground.

Instantly there were people around her, arms lifting her up.

“Steady on, love. I’ve got yer,” one voice said.

“Bring her over to the bench, Bert, and someone go in the station café for a cup of tea. She’s as white as a sheet.”

It was the kindness more than anything that produced a great heaving sob from deep within Pamela. All the tension, the long nights, the hard work, the depressing news escaped from her in that one sob, and following it the tears started streaming down her cheeks.

She felt herself carried and placed gently on a seat. She found she was still clutching the newspaper.

“What was it love—bad news?” the woman at the newspaper stand asked.

Pamela’s body was still shaking with sobs. “No, it’s good news,” she managed to gasp at last. “He’s alive. He’s safe. He’s coming home.” view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1.How does the British class system affect the lives of all the characters?
2.The impact of war is different for every character in this book. Discuss.
3.Which Sutton sister do you most identify with? Do you have sympathy for all of them?
4. This book is billed as a thriller? Which is more important to you: the thriller aspect or the recreation of a time and place?
5.Pamela and Ben: do you think there is hope for a future together for them?
6. Your thoughts on Jeremy. Did you suspect him?

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