From time to time, the duchess liked to speak to me in French, in order to polish her fluency. So while it’s been some time since I picked up a work of French literature, or wrote out a sentence or a paragraph in that language, I find I can read the words pretty well, without stopping to translate in my head. When I come to the woman’s name, I look up.

“Charlotte Kassmeyer? But that’s not a French name.”

“No. They’re German. Look at the children’s names.”

I turn back to the letter. “Ursula, Frederica, Gertrud. How odd.”

“There’s nothing odd about it. Probably some woman he met when he was stationed somewhere, before the war. He arranges for her to live in a nice little flat in Paris, so as to be conveniently nearby. Men, they’re jolly clever, aren’t they?”

“Then why was he paying a lawyer to find her?”

“I don’t know. I don’t especially care. It all adds up to the same sum, doesn’t it?” She blows out a cloud of smoke. “Poor Mama. No wonder.”

“No wonder?”

“No wonder she was so unhappy. All that time, you know, I thought they were in love. I thought—I thought they were like a fairy tale, like the prince and princess in a story for children—”

“You don’t know that. He might have been making arrangements for another officer, someone who was killed. That would explain—”

“Stop.”

“But—”

She whirls to face me. “Stop, damn it. Read me those names again.”

I pick up the paper and skim the paragraphs. “Ursula, Frederica, Gertrud.”

Margaret marches back to the table and snatches up the letter. “Ursula. Ursula Kassmeyer.”

“What’s the matter?”

“It must be a coincidence.”

“Miss Margaret! The cigarette!” cries Annie.

The corner of the page has begun to smoke. Margaret swears and drops the cigarette in the ashtray, pinches out the flame with her fingers. The smell of scorched paper fills the air.

“What’s the matter?” I say. “Who the devil’s Ursula Kassmeyer?”

“It’s got to be a coincidence.” Margaret looks up and meets my gaze, and the gloss is gone from her eyes. They’re a bright, pale blue, animated, sizzling with life. “It’s just that we’ve got an operative by that name in the German section. One of our best. She runs an escape line into Switzerland for downed pilots and Jews.”

Part V

Lulu

November 1943

(The Bahamas)

I have said before that there was more than a little of the American spirit in the Bahamas, the American way of doing things, owing to the fact that Miami lay a trifling distance to the west, whereas London rose from an island on the other side of a notoriously tempestuous ocean. Still. Bahamians clung to certain inscrutable British traditions, and a Nassau courtroom is just about indistinguishable from Old Bailey itself, down to the frizzled gray wigs and the so-called dock in which the prisoner is kept during the proceedings, like an animal in a cage.