Lily lifted her brows. She knew for a fact Miss De Wilde had come here from Belgium at the start of the war—and that Barclay had been born and raised in the streets of London.

Not that such facts could ever move that grin of his. “My sister married her brother. Ergo, she’s my sister.”

“Ah.”

“Mr. Pearce.”

Barclay snapped straighter at the voice, though his salute somehow looked more satirical than military. “DID. On my way out now.”

Lily cast a panicked glance down at the note Admiral Hall had left for her with her current assignment. He hadn’t mentioned a time he needed it by, but he rarely checked up on her unless there was a strict deadline.

“Sorry to interrupt you, Miss Blackwell.” Hall strode into the room and closed the door behind him, a sure signal that whatever he held in his hands now was sensitive.

But she breathed a sigh of relief at seeing he carried something new and that she hadn’t missed a deadline. “Not a problem, sir. It’s coming along well.”

“Excellent.” He held out the paper in his hands. “Would you take a look at this for me?”

“Of course.” She took it, not bothering to ask what she was looking for. Whenever he asked her to examine a photo, he gave no information on it. Nothing to bias her, he always said.

“Well, first off, it was clearly taken with an inexpensive camera. The whole thing is out of focus—not badly, but a bit. Enough to tell me the user was either a novice or in a hurry.” She reached for her loupe and traced it over the edge of each figure—two German officers. “It’s genuine, I think. No edges to indicate a scalpel has been at work. Even if it had been reshot out of focus to cover such tampering, I can usually see a slight line under magnification.”

The admiral took a seat in the second wooden chair. He made no effort to look at it over her shoulder. He never did. “Very good. That covers the physical photograph.”

“So now the subjects.” She set down her loupe again and sat back to study the image as a whole. She saw more photographs by far than anyone else in the intelligence division, so Hall often called on her to identify objects, locations, even people. It was why that pin-studded wall behind her proved so useful. “Looks like France, based on the scenery. The Lorraine region, perhaps?”

“That was my thought. Though it could as easily be Belgium or the Rhineland.”

“Mm. It could be, of course. But . . .” Setting that photo down, she spun for her filing cabinet and pulled open a drawer. It only took a minute or two of riffling through her files to come up with the one she wanted. “There.” She set it down beside the new one. “If you look at those hills in the background . . .”