A Lesson in Secrets_ A Maisie Dobbs Novel - Jacqueline Winspear [79]
In all, The Dower House had four upper rooms: three bedrooms on the first floor, then another large attic room on the second floor. Maurice had chosen the large bedroom at the back of the house to be his own, as it overlooked the land he had come to love. There was another room of equal dimensions at the front of the house, and smaller rooms along the shorter sides of the house; one of those rooms had been converted to a spacious bathroom some years before, at the same time as part of the large bedroom had been sectioned off to form an en-suite bathroom for the Dowager Lady Jane Compton, when she was an invalid. When Maisie lived at the house as a girl, she had been assigned the smaller bedroom to the side of the house, so that she could attend to the Dowager—Lord Julian’s mother—if she called in the night. Now, lying on her bed for a few moments, Maisie could hardly believe that such a house was hers; it was a thought she pushed to the back of her mind, for when she considered all that she now owned, she became overwhelmed. She had learned to take each day as it came. Though her wealth was considerable, she knew that Maurice had intended her to be a responsible steward of that wealth, so already she had begun to consider the financial arrangements Maurice had made to support the less fortunate, not only through his clinics in impoverished areas, but in providing educational opportunity for young people with talent who might otherwise languish, caught within the boundary of a life with limitations.
“This will never do,” said Maisie to herself as she swung her legs off the bed. She slipped on her shoes and went downstairs to the library, where she switched on the light above a mound of boxes she had left there on her last visit. With her head inclined to one side, she perused the outside label on each box until she finally came to the one she wanted to start with: London, 1914–1916.
Maisie had known Maurice since she was thirteen years of age, and for some nine years, until his retirement in early 1929, she had been his assistant. She was well aware of his connections before, throughout, and following the war; however, it was during work on a case that had taken her to Paris in 1930 that she realized how deep and broad his reach into matters of security among the Allies had been. Maurice had received commendations and medals from Belgium, France, and Britain for services rendered, and she knew his influence extended from the Secret Service to the army’s Intelligence Corps. He had contacts in Naval Intelligence, and was called upon to advise on the recruitment of agents working in clandestine roles overseas. And he had been involved in liaising with the brave civilians involved in underground resistance to the enemy occupiers in France and Belgium. He had also spent some time in the Netherlands, and she had been aware of the important role that the Dutch had played in intelligence during the war. But little of this had ever been discussed between them, and it was only now that many of his secrets were being offered up. She could never have read through the many papers except as she now approached the task—either on a “need-to-know” basis, or on a quiet Sunday afternoon, when the stillness inside the house seemed to bring him into sharper focus in her mind’s eye. It gave her a sense that she only had to call and he would be there with her, advising her, prompting her, or bringing insight and clarity to a case that had become more opaque as facts, clues, and suppositions clouded the way ahead.
She opened the box, lifted a good handful of papers onto the desk, and began to read, thinking that if there were ever a market for a review of intelligence in the early years of the war, she would have enough background material to write a worthwhile tome. Page after page cataloged meetings, interviews with prospective employees—many of whom, Maisie thought, would have gone on to become agents working on behalf of His Majesty’s government. Then a few sentences took her attention.
To Whitehall again, this time