They’ll be here any moment, she told herself. Stop fretting over things you can’t do anything about, and do something useful.

She wrote out a list of the times and locations of the upcoming week’s raids for Mike and Merope—correction, Eileen—and then tried to think of other historians who might be here besides Gerald Phipps. Mike had said there was an historian here from some time in October to December eighteenth. What had happened during that period that an historian might have come to observe? Nearly all the war activity had been in Europe—Italy had invaded Greece, and the Royal Navy had bombed the Italian fleet. What had happened here?

Coventry. But it couldn’t be that. It hadn’t been hit till November fourteenth, and an historian wouldn’t need an entire fortnight to get there.

The war in the North Atlantic? Several important convoys had been sunk during that period, but being on a destroyer had to be a ten. And if Mr. Dunworthy was canceling assignments that were too dangerous …

But anywhere in the autumn of 1940 was dangerous, and he’d obviously approved something. The intelligence war? No, that hadn’t really geared up till later, with the Fortitude and V-1 and V-2 rocket disinformation campaigns. Ultra had begun earlier, but it was not only a ten, it had to be a divergence point. If the Germans had found out their Enigma codes had been cracked, it clearly would have affected the outcome of the war.

Polly looked over at the lifts. The center one was stopping on third. They’re here—finally, she thought, but it was only Miss Snelgrove, shaking her head over the negligence of Marjorie’s nurses. “Disgraceful! I shouldn’t be surprised if she had a relapse with all her running about,” she fumed. “What are you doing here, Miss Sebastian? Why aren’t you on your lunch break?”

Because I don’t want to miss Mike and Eileen like I missed Eileen when I went to Backbury, but she couldn’t say that. “I was waiting till you got back, in case we had a rush.”

“Well, take it now,” Miss Snelgrove said.

Polly nodded and, when Miss Snelgrove went into the stockroom to take off her coat and hat, told Doreen to send word to her immediately if anyone came in asking for her.

“Like the airman you met last night?”

Who? Polly thought, and then remembered that was the excuse she’d given Doreen for needing to know the names of airfields. “Yes,” she said, “or my cousin who’s coming to London, or anyone.”

“I promise I’ll send the lift boy to fetch you the moment anyone comes. Now, go.”

Polly went, running downstairs first to look up and down Oxford Street and see if Mike and Eileen were coming, and then going up to ask the shop assistants in the lunchroom about airfields. By the end of her break, she had half a dozen names that began with the correct letters and/or had two words in their names.

She ran back down to third. “Did anyone ask for me?” she asked Doreen, even though they obviously hadn’t come.