—EDWARD R. MURROW, RADIO BROADCAST,
29 December 1940

St. Paul’s Cathedral—29 December 1940

THE DOOR CLANGED SHUT BEHIND POLLY.

It was pitch-black inside the cathedral. There was supposed to be a light under the dome for the fire watch to orient themselves by, but she couldn’t see it. She couldn’t see anything. She couldn’t hear anything either, except the still-reverberating echo of the door shutting behind her. Not planes, not the sputtering incendiary, nothing, not even the sirens.

But the warden had been just below her on the steps. He would come through that door any moment. She had to hide.

She paused a second, willing her eyes to adjust, trying to remember what lay on this side of the cathedral. Not the Wren staircase—it was blocked off—and The Light of the World was too small to hide behind. She should have paid more attention when Mr. Humphreys was showing her around.

She still couldn’t see anything, not even outlines. She groped for the wall, arms outstretched in front of her, like a child playing blind man’s bluff. Stone and then open space and narrow iron bars. The chapel’s grille. She ran her hand hurriedly along the bars, anxious to get past the chapel, and felt the gate open under her touch.

She was through it instantly and into the chapel, feeling her way. The chapel had had an altar with a tall carved reredos behind it. She could hide behind that.

She crashed into something wooden, banging her knee. The prayer stalls, she thought, reaching down to feel their waist-high fronts. They had lined either side of the chapel, which meant the altar was—

A door opened somewhere. Polly dove down behind the prayer stall and crouched there, holding her breath, listening.

A voice, too soft and too distorted to make out, and then a second, answering, and then footsteps. The warden? Or a member of the fire watch making the rounds?

It must be the fire watch. She heard more footsteps, quicker this time, and walking away, and then a door—too quiet to be the heavy door she’d come in through—shutting.

She waited a bit longer, hoping Mike or Eileen—or both of them—would have got away from the warden and come back. They both knew what John Bartholomew looked like, and Mike could pretend to be a volunteer on the fire watch. There hadn’t been any women on it, and it was unlikely they’d let one up on the roofs to look for someone, even if she knew how to get there.

But she did know how to get to the Crypt. She could ask the officer in charge to take a message to Mr. Bartholomew.

She crept cautiously out from behind the prayer stall, checked to make certain there was no sweep of a pocket torch in the aisle or in the nave beyond, and felt her way toward the gate.

Light flashed suddenly in her face, blinding her. Polly dived for the haven of the stall, cracking her knee again, and then realized what she’d seen. A flare. A rattling clatter overhead like someone tossing a handful of pebbles made her look up. Incendiaries on the roofs. And then voices from the direction of the dome and more banging of doors and footsteps running up stairs.