It was a slim, dark shape – a human shape – dressed in a long black raincoat and carrying a lantern. Its face was covered with something that in silhouette looked like a dragon’s muzzle, something I should have recognized immediately. It was a gas mask. There was another long hiss as the figure drew its breath through the mask. Then it reached up with a black-gloved hand, and pulled the gas mask from its face.

Chapter 43

43

Mrs Baron. It was my headmistress, the local magistrate and ARP warden. She was dressed in black from head-to-toe, and she was staring straight at me with her red-rimmed, falcon’s eyes. ‘It’s you,’ she said, and she almost laughed, dropping the gas mask on the floor. ‘I was worried for a moment that your grandfather had come home. I should have known it was only you. He’ll still be stuck in Dover – furious by now that I’ve sent him on a wild goose chase. He will have been waiting outside my office for hours and hours this afternoon – long enough to miss the last bus home – and then the air-raid sirens will have started . . .’ She tutted sarcastically. ‘Such unfortunate timing!’

I wrapped my arms tightly around myself, trying to make sense of what was happening. Mrs Baron had deliberately lured Grandpa Joe away from the Castle so that she could come here – but why?

‘I’ll put you to sleep in a minute – just like your sister,’ Mrs Baron said softly. ‘Just a drop of chloroform – it won’t do any harm. I was planning on having the two of you evacuated to get you out of the way permanently, but this will have to do for now. It will buy me enough time to finish my work here.’

‘Work?’ It came out as a croak.

Mrs Baron had found the crank handle for the optic. She fitted it and started turning it with both hands, winding up the mechanism. Her nest of salt-grey hair nodded crazily back and forth. The optic started spinning in the darkness like a ghostly merry-go-round. What was she doing? She couldn’t possibly be planning on lighting the lamp – not when there were German planes in the sky.

‘It’s going to be tonight,’ she said, breathless with emotion. ‘The invasion! The U-boat will need a bearing to avoid the sandbanks.’

The U-boat? I thought about the shadow I had seen, lurking out there in the water. Oh, God . . .

‘This bit is particularly important,’ she gloated, nodding at the spinning optic. There was a manic spark in her eyes. ‘The light has to be flashing to give a positive signal. A steady light is the agreed signal to abandon the landing.’ She cackled then. ‘When we practised the signal with the Luftwaffe, I had to make do with an oil lamp, up on the clifftop – but this lamp! What could be better than this? My husband would have been so proud of me.’