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By Root 474 0

from James. Usually, she would have torn open the envelope, anxious to read his news, but this time she looked carefully at the postmark, again smudged across the Canadian stamp. Was it London? It was barely legible. She went to her bedroom and gathered other letters from Canada that she kept in a cabinet alongside her bed; she laid them out on the dining room table along with the newest letter and inspected the postmarks. She could not be sure; if James were duping her, if James were duping her—she could barely think it without the tear across her heart growing—there would definitely be something amiss in the letters. She took up the new letter, tore open the envelope, and unfurled the pages. James wrote in a deliberate hand, the pen pressed so deeply onto the page you could detect where the two halves of the nib had separated by a hair’s width. The ink was indigo black, and the fountain pen had required refilling halfway through.

He spoke of missing her, of completing his work, and of how much he looked forward to being home in England. “I never thought I would say that, Maisie. Canada has always been the place that lifted me. I felt free of so much weight whenever I came back here and dreaded returning to London, even Chelstone. But now I ache to be home, ache to hold you in my arms again, darling Maisie.” She caught her breath. Tears filled her eyes again. How she despised herself, how she wished she did not doubt him so; it was her fault, she knew. In truth, what had he done to cause her to have such feelings? She looked at the postmark again, then went back to the letter. “I think some letters might have gone astray, so in case you have not received one or two along the way, I have also sent a letter for you in the bag that is sent to our office—it was shipped last week. There’s something else for you there, though you will have to collect it from our office. You can telephone Miss Robinson, my secretary. She’ll have it for you when you come in, though she must know when to expect you.”

Something was amiss. No, no, she would not let imagination run wild. Surely she was dealing with enough subterfuge at the moment.

She woke with a start at six o’clock, her head sore from resting on the table in front of her, her hand, cramped, still holding James’ most recent letter. She wiped moisture from her mouth and rubbed her eyes. The meeting. She would be late. Scrambling to her feet, she gathered the letters, and returned them to the cabinet alongside her bed. In her bathroom, she splashed water on her face, brushed her hair, patted some powered rouge on her cheeks and ran lipstick across her top lip before pressing her lips together and checking her appearance in the looking glass above the sink. She opened the window, felt the air outside, and pulled a heavier black linen jacket from the wardrobe, then removed her cream shoes in favor of a black leather pair. The cream skirt and blouse would do. Whenever Maisie dressed, it was hard not to hear Priscilla’s voice in her head. Her friend could have been a couturier’s mannequin; she spent a good deal on her stylish clothes, and always had an opinion on whatever Maisie was wearing. “Ivory and black, Maisie? Tell me, do you really have that much of an aversion to color? For heaven’s sake—you’re not a nurse anymore! And what happened to that red dress?” She grabbed a red silk scarf from a drawer and tied it around her neck. Oh dear, I look like a bus conductress, thought Maisie. But she would be late, so she banished the voice of her fashion-plate friend from her head and left the flat. All being well, she would be at the address in Cleveland Terrace in time to observe the comings and goings of members of the Ortsgruppe.

She drove past the address and parked along the street. The Georgian terrace comprised flats with shops below, with the entrance to the flats a doorway between two of the shop fronts. There were some pedestrians on the street, but Maisie did not want to be conspicuous; she moved the motor car closer to the building, so she could remain in the MG to observe the