As I continued to read, my interest further piqued over Charles Fraser-Smith, who it is said—together with Hutton—inspired the gadget-supplying character known as “Q” in the James Bond film series. Equally intriguing was a description of professional magician Jasper Maskelyne, a British army officer who used his unique skills to not only craft such devices as map-rigged playing cards but also to lead the Camouflage Experimental Section in Cairo—albeit largely unsuccessfully, according to reports. (Only after I added RAF Tempsford to my story, by the way, did I learn Maskelyne was the person responsible for cleverly designing it to look like a disused airfield turned farm.)

Upon my finishing the article, the Monopoly tale suddenly merged in my mind with the Calumet tragedy, as a driving backstory, for the journey of a fictional illusionist with MI9. Like watching a movie at double speed, I envisioned a rush of scenes from what would become The Ways We Hide. In hindsight, the foundation of the novel (and oh my goodness, the research) was really only beginning. Armed with a dose of blissful ignorance, I dove right in.

My subsequent research showed Hutton to be an eccentric man who defied bureaucracy and military protocols to serve the war effort, even employing a woman he called Mrs. Bote as a “temporary civil servant” to discreetly assemble escape-and-evasion packs—that is, until (as conveyed in my story) her stout-induced boasting at a local pub ended her duty. Hence, despite Hutton’s lackluster views on women’s driving skills and the “undignified, unnatural, and unwomanly” act of ladies’ saluting—the latter of which he spouted upon first meeting his driver, Private Jill Warwick (the inspiration for the fictional Lenora Walsh)—I imagined he might very well have found appeal in recruiting a character like Fenna Vos, specifically due to his long-time fascination with Houdini.

As with most of Hutton’s true accounts that made their way into the fictionalized scenes of my book—including his proud defeat in a crate challenge against Houdini, the related letter he carried in his wallet that led Crockatt to assign him to MI9, his surreal cemetery-based bunker, and on and on—the more I researched, the more I uncovered pieces of history so extraordinary, they bordered on stranger than fiction. Certainly, the designation applies no less to an astounding claim by biographical authors William Kalush and Larry Sloman. In The Secret Life of Houdini, they make a fiercely compelling case that Harry Houdini—born Erik Weisz, son of a Hungarian rabbi—regularly used his European tours to serve as a spy against the Germans, reporting to Scotland Yard in the days leading up to World War I. Given that Fenna would undoubtedly idolize the legendary magician and escapologist, the theory felt destined to further bind my story.