The front of the box was a narrow, hinged flap held in place by a hasp on the flat lid, and when the gun hit the catch—it must have been loose—the front flap fell open to lay bare a panel full of holes and wires, each labeled with numbers and letters of the alphabet, like a telephone switchboard.

The inside of the wooden flap was stamped with a brand name: ENIGMA.

The German pilot flipped the front flap back up. He had to raise the lid on top of the case a little bit to fit the catch back into place, and beneath the lid, beyond the wire panel, I saw a keyboard of ordinary typewriter keys.

It looked like a portable electrical typewriter.

He used the gun to make me step back.

Jane spoke suddenly, sharp and scolding, in a language I didn’t understand.

But the pilot did.

He put the gun back into his coat pocket and stepped away from me, holding up his empty hands to show he wasn’t going to threaten me anymore.

“I do speak a little German,” Jane admitted grudgingly.

“I know you do,” said Mrs. Campbell.

Ellen:

That brave young lassie—I’d not spent an hour in her company, and knew not a thing about her but that she had brown skin and was in London during the Blitz. But seeing her in tears at the music, and him stopping to point his gun at her, made me hate him all over again.

Nan’s old auntie was calm as could be. She asked the young man a question in his own tongue. He bowed his head to Mrs. Warner and I heard the name he gave her: Felix Baer.

What was he up to, sly devil? Trying to make friends, just because a body speaks your lingo? Expecting us to behave ourselves just because he was polite? I was fuming.

But the old girl, Jane Warner, just cracked on and gave him an English lesson.

When she finished, he faced Louisa standing there with her brown eyes full of tears. His voice when he spoke was gentle and polite as a lady’s maid. “I am sorry I frightened you.”

“I told him about your parents,” Jane said softly. “So he knows it was German bombs and torpedoes that killed them.”

Her parents were killed in the Blitz? She must have hated the Nazis even more than I did.

“Oh.” Louisa gave a great gulp of a swallow, and just about whispered, “Thank you.”

I could see she didn’t like to talk about it, and I was glad I hadn’t asked.

“My mother played the piano,” she added, getting control of herself. “You can tell him that, I suppose.”