You have always told me it was Ernest. I have introduced you to everyone as Ernest … You are the most earnest-looking person I ever saw in my life. It is perfectly absurd your saying your name isn’t Ernest.

—OSCAR WILDE, THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST

Kent—April 1944

AT CESS’S QUESTION, MONCRIEFF SLOWED THE CAR, AND Prism twisted around to look at them. “Well, are you a spy?” Cess asked Ernest.

“Yes, Worthing,” Prism said, looking back at them from the front seat of the staff car. “Are you a German spy?”

“If I were,” Ernest said lightly, “I’d be working for our side, like all the other German spies.”

“All the spies we’ve caught,” Moncrieff said, without taking his eyes from the road. “Lady Bracknell evidently thinks there are some we haven’t caught, hence the memorandum.”

“So Bracknell thinks one of us is a spy?” Cess asked.

“No, of course not,” Prism said, “but this is a dangerous time. If the Germans were to find out that FUSAG is a hoax and we’re invading at Normandy instead of Calais—”

“Shh.” Cess put his finger to his lips. “For all we know, Moncrieff here is sending secret messages to the enemy. Or you are, Worthing. You’re always typing up letters to the editor. How do we know some of them don’t have secret codes in them?”

I have to get them off this subject, Ernest thought. “I think the bull’s your man,” he said. “He looked exactly like Heinrich Himmler. Is that Mofford House?”

“Where?” Cess said. “I can’t see anything.”

“There, beyond the trees,” Ernest said, pointing at nothing, and the three of them spent the next quarter of an hour attempting to catch sight of it, after which Cess spotted a turret and then the gates.

“I say,” Cess said as they drove in through them, “one can’t have a hospital without nurses. Have we got some?”

“Yes,” Moncrieff said. “Gwendolyn set it up.”

“Are they the same girls who helped us when we did the oil-refinery opening?” Cess asked. “The ones from ENSA?”

“No,” Moncrieff said. “These are the real thing. Gwendolyn borrowed them from the same hospital that lent us the beds.”

Ernest looked up alertly. “The hospital in Dover?”

“Yes, and don’t get any notions of flirting with them. There’ll be all sorts of higher-ups and Special Means people here. I don’t want any trouble.”

I don’t either, Ernest thought, and the moment they pulled up in front of the manor house, he snatched up his nightclothes and the boxes of bandages and took off for the house.

It was obvious why they’d chosen Mofford House. It had a moat and a distinctive turreted tower that the Germans would recognize, even though his newspaper story would say only, “One of England’s stately homes, whose name cannot be disclosed for security reasons, has been converted to a military hospital.”

He hobbled quickly across the drawbridge, hoping that since today this was supposed to be a hospital, he wouldn’t run into a butler at the door who’d demand to know where he was going.