Heedless, Marie continued, “I need to speak with him. And I need to find my wireless.”
“You’re to follow orders and stay here.” He raised his hand, warding off further questions. “Someone will come for you in the morning.”
He fiddled with the lock on the door, then let her in. There was no light and the thick, warm air was stifling. As she stepped inside, the heavy smell of manure assaulted her nostrils. There was no bed and no toilet.
Not speaking further, the man walked from the shed and closed the door. On the far side, she heard a key turn in a lock, trapping her inside. “You’re locking me in?” she called through the door, not quite believing what was happening. She realized then that she did not know his name. He could be anyone. To place her life in the hands of strangers—how could she have been so naive? “If you think I’m going to be locked up by some courier, you are sorely mistaken. I demand to speak with Vesper immediately!” she insisted, ignoring his warning not to use names.
“It’s for your own good, in case someone should come along. Stay low and out of sight. And for God’s sake, be quiet!” She heard his footsteps growing softer on the other side and then there was only silence.
As Marie turned away from the door, something scurried nearby in the darkness. A mouse or a rat? she wondered, thinking of the decoy she’d almost destroyed in training weeks earlier, how she and Josie had laughed about it afterward. If only Josie were here now. She sank down to the floor, never in her life so alone.
Chapter Ten
Grace
New York, 1946
Grace awoke, and for a second it was just like any other day. Bright sunlight streamed through the lone window of the tiny, fourth-floor walk-up, casting shadows on the sloped ceiling. The rooming house was just on the edge of Hell’s Kitchen, a block too close to the Hudson River for a respectable woman, but not dangerous. Grace had gotten the place on the cheap because of the old man who had vacated the unit by dying in it the previous week. She’d scrubbed the flat before she moved in, trying without success to remove the lingering pipe smoke odor that clung to the walls and the sense that someone else quite nearly still lived here. And beyond that she hadn’t done anything to make it more like home, because that would mean acknowledging she might stay for good—and the hard truth that she didn’t want to go back.
Grace rolled over and saw the envelope containing the photos on the nightstand by the narrow bed, beside the lone photo of Tom in his dress uniform at graduation from basic training. The night before came crashing back: the news story about the woman (Eleanor Trigg; she now had a name) who had been killed in the car accident, and the realization that the suitcase Grace found had been hers. Grace wondered if the series of bizarre events might have been a dream. But the photographs sat neatly on her nightstand like an expectant child, reminding her that it was not.
After hearing the news on the television in the coffee shop the previous evening, Grace had been so surprised that she had left without waiting for her grilled cheese. She hailed a cab, too surprised to think about the cost. As the taxi had woven perilously through crosstown traffic, she had tried to make sense of it all. How could it be that the very woman whose bag she’d rummaged through was the same one who had died in the accident on the street?
It shouldn’t have been such a surprise, really, Grace thought now. The fact that Eleanor Trigg had died explained why no one had come back for the suitcase and it was standing there abandoned in the first place. But why had she left it in the middle of Grand Central? That the woman was English just seemed to add to the mystery.
More puzzling was the fact that the bag had then disappeared. It was possible, of course, that someone had simply stolen the bag, having seen that it was sitting unattended for a long time and decided to claim it for his own. But something told Grace that there was more to it than simple theft—and that whoever had come and taken the suitcase knew something about Eleanor Trigg and the girls in her photos.
Enough, Grace could almost hear her mother’s voice say. Grace had always had an overactive imagination, fueled by Nancy Drew and the other mysteries she liked to read as a girl. Her father, a science fiction buff, found Grace’s wild stories amusing. But he would have said here that the simplest explanation was the most likely: Eleanor Trigg might well have been traveling with a relative or other companion, who retrieved her bag after the accident.
Grace sat up. The photographs lay on the nightstand, seeming to call to her. She had taken the pictures from the suitcase, and now she needed to do something with them. She washed and dressed, then started down the stairs of the rooming house. In the foyer, there was a phone on the wall, which Harriet the landlady didn’t mind the tenants using every so often. On impulse, Grace picked up the phone and asked the operator for the police station closest to Grand Central. If Eleanor had been traveling with someone, perhaps the police could put Grace in touch so she could return the photos.
The line was silent for several seconds and a man’s voice crackled across the line. “Precinct,” he said, sounding as though he was chewing something.
“I wanted to speak with someone about the woman who was hit by a car near Grand Central yesterday.” Grace spoke softly, so that her landlady, who lived in the room just off the foyer, wouldn’t hear.
“MacDougal’s handling that,” the policeman replied. “MacDougal!” he bellowed into the phone so loudly Grace drew the phone away from her ear.
“Whaddya want?” A different voice, with a heavy Brooklyn accent, filled the line.
“The woman who was hit outside the station, Eleanor Trigg. Was she traveling with anyone?”
“Nah, we’re still looking for next of kin,” MacDougal replied. “Are you family?”
Grace ignored his question, pressing forward with her own. “Did anyone recover her belongings, like a suitcase?”
“She didn’t have any bags. Say, who is this? This is an open investigation and if you’re going to be asking questions, I’m really gonna need your name...” Grace set the receiver back into the cradle, hanging up. The police didn’t have Eleanor’s bag, or a relative to whom Grace could return the photos. The British consulate, which she’d considered the previous evening, was the better option. A stop at the consulate would take extra time on her way to work, though, and she’d have to hurry not to risk being late again.
An hour later, Grace neared the British consulate, a bustling office building on Third Avenue uncomfortably close to the hotel she’d found herself in with Mark two nights earlier. At the corner, a boy in worn trousers and a cap was selling newspapers. He reminded Grace of Sammy, who she hoped was managing all right at his cousin’s. She took a copy of The Post and paid the boy. The headline read, “Truman Warns of Soviet Menace in the East.” Not a year ago, everyone still feared Hitler. But now Stalin was spreading communism in countries still too weak from the war to resist and dividing Europe in a whole new way.