Downstairs was dark. Even in daytime the unlit hall was gloomy, because it faced northwest and had only the one tall, narrow window letting in light opposite the landing at the top of the stairs. The public bar was gloomy too just now, without the fire burning or the lamp lit. I felt like an intruder. I hadn’t ever been there during the day without people about.

I chose a stack of five record albums and laid them on an empty table to come back for. I took the gramophone up to Jane, set it on the floor between her and the bed where she could reach it, and came back down for the records.

As I returned to the shadowy front hall with my arms full, I heard footsteps above me shuffling along the passage from the back of the house.

My heart did its too-familiar somersault of guilt and fear. Had Jane managed to get to her feet and tried to reach the loo without my help? If she was using just one stick and fell again, wouldn’t she likely try to catch herself with her empty hand—the hurt one?

I’d only been gone a minute!

I put down the records to free my arms so I could hold up Jane if she needed it.

Just as I started to climb the stairs, a young man in a flight suit crossed the landing above me and vanished down the dim passage.

I didn’t see who it was, though I didn’t think it was Jamie; it looked like a bigger man. But I wasn’t afraid—there were airmen all over Windyedge. How had he got in, whoever he was? Morag had locked the door behind her. Had he been here all afternoon, since before Nan Campbell left the house?

I went up the stairs after him.

By the time I got to the landing, he’d reached Room Five. I’d left the door open, to make the return trip easier, expecting my arms to be full of records. I heard the airman gently close the door behind him.

I followed him down the passage and stood outside my own shut door, listening.

Jane was speaking calm, matter-of-fact German.

She didn’t sound frightened. She sounded perfectly at ease—interested. Pleasant. Amused.

The man answered her in German.

His voice was hoarse and ragged, a person at the end of his strength and patience. The polite way he spoke to Jane was familiar, and I remembered how the navigator Dietrich Althammer had bent toward her so she could hear him, as if she were his own granny.

Althammer was the one Felix Baer didn’t trust, the one he’d tried to kill, just as they were coming in to land, when Althammer had least expected it.

I heard him say a word I understood, and Jane repeated it.

Enigma.

He was looking for the coding machine.