“Mrs. Minchin?”

“Yes?” She was very guarded.

“I’m sorry to disturb you Mrs. Minchin. I’m researching a book, and I wanted to talk to you about your husband’s time during the war.”

“I can’t help you there, I’m afraid,” she replied, “because I married him in the 1960s. All I know is that he was in a POW camp.”

At first I didn’t believe her, supposing that she was in denial of her husband’s treachery. But after a few minutes it became clear that she had no inkling of her Alfred’s membership in the SS. I was tempted to tell her, thinking of a photograph of him in his SS uniform that I had left in the car.

But there was no point. If she did know, then it was clear that she didn’t want to talk to me anyway. And if she didn’t know, then I had nothing to learn. Perhaps she might have done—her husband’s membership of the SS was a matter of public record. So I left, apologizing for wasting her time.

As I drove out of town in a slight daze, I saw something in my mirror that made me stop. It was almost too good to be true, I thought, so good that I couldn’t possibly put it in my book. It was some lettering below the town’s name board that had made me halt.

“Weston-super-Mare,” it read. “Twinned with Hildesheim, Germany.”

Hildesheim was the town where the BFC was based. Every time Alfred Minchin went in and out of his hometown, he would have been reminded of his wartime treachery.