“Yes. I was wondering if you had learned anything more about Eleanor Trigg.” Though Grace had come to return the photos, she could not help but be curious.
The receptionist hesitated, as if unsure whether to answer. “The police returned Miss Trigg’s personal effects to us.” Grace had been so focused on the suitcase and its contents, she hadn’t considered any possessions Eleanor might have had on her when she died. “We’re still looking for a next of kin.”
A flicker of hope rose in Grace and she tried to tamp it down. She should go. It was time to walk away. But she had come this far; she needed to know. “Can I see them?” she asked in spite of herself. “Her effects, I mean.” She expected the receptionist to refuse.
“Why? These are her personal belongings. You aren’t a relative.”
“Because I’ve spent the past several days trying to find out more about Eleanor. I’m not asking to take them, just to see what she was carrying.” The receptionist looked unmoved and Grace was certain she would refuse. “Please. It will only take a minute. Perhaps I can help you figure out where they should go.”
“Fine,” the receptionist relented at last. “I suppose if you find someone, it will save us a lot of paperwork for the death certificate, that sort of thing.” To her, Eleanor was still nothing more than a bureaucratic hassle. She produced a large envelope. “Put everything back just as you found it.”
Grace opened the envelope. There were a few dollar bills and some reading glasses, shattered into pieces from the impact of the crash. A dark blue passport was nearly bent in two. Grace picked it up and paged through it carefully. The passport, despite the damage, looked relatively new. It bore entry stamps for France and Germany just weeks prior to Eleanor’s arrival in America. Eleanor had been traveling in the days before she came here. But why?
“Thank you,” Grace said, and returned the passport to the envelope. She pulled out the photographs and started to hand them to the receptionist. But something made her pause.
“Do you want to keep them?” the woman asked, noticing Grace’s hesitation.
Grace shook her head. “They aren’t mine anymore.” But then she thought better of it. She handed over all but the picture of the dark-eyed girl, Josie, a souvenir from the journey she had never expected.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Eleanor
London, 1946
The knock came unexpectedly at the door to Eleanor’s house before dawn. “There’s a car here for you,” her mother called. Eleanor’s mother had said mercifully little about her daughter’s departure more than a year and a half earlier from the government job she’d never thought suitable in the first place. Surprised, Eleanor peered out the window. At the sight of the familiar black Austin, her heartbeat quickened. She was being summoned back to headquarters. But why, after all this time?
Eleanor dressed carefully and quickly, fingers trembling as she buttoned the crisp white blouse that, along with her navy skirt, had served as an almost-uniform during her days at SOE. She approached the black Austin that idled silently at the curb outside her flat. A thin finger of smoke curled from the driver’s-side window, mixing with the low fog. “Dodds,” she said, using his name as greeting. She smiled at the familiar silhouette, black bowler hat drawn low over his white fringe of hair that she had not seen in more than a year and a half. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“The Director,” he said simply, and that was enough for Eleanor. She climbed in the back seat and closed the door. The summons was a refrain of the last time Dodds had come unexpectedly for her. But the women’s unit was gone now, relegated to a footnote in the history of SOE. She could not fathom what the Director might want.
Dodds put the car into gear. As ever, he did not speak, but kept his eyes squarely on the road, turning smartly at the red phone booth on the corner. The car wound silently down the shuttered streets of North London, deserted except for the occasional lorry driver packing his load for the early morning deliveries. Though the blackout had ended months ago, the streetlights were still dimmed, like a habit not easily shaken. It was January 4 and a few Christmas decorations still hung in the windows. The holidays had been a dismal affair—as though no one remembered how to celebrate in peacetime. Hard to feel festive, Eleanor supposed, when basic staples like coffee and sugar were still in such scarce supply—and when so many were observing the holidays without the loved one who had never come home.
It wasn’t until they reached the corner of Baker Street that she saw it: Norgeby House had been destroyed in a fire. The slate roof was peeled back like an open can and the window frames stood hollow, spectacle rims charred with flame. Stone and wood smoldered on the ground, seeming to give off heat even through the closed window of the car.
“What on earth?” she said aloud, wondering when the fire had started, calculated whether the story would make the morning newspapers and decided it would not. Though Eleanor didn’t know exactly what was going on, she had a keen understanding that it had to do with why the Director had summoned her so unexpectedly.
Eleanor desperately wanted to get out and have a closer look, but Dodds did not stop the car. Instead, he drove her down Baker Street to Number 64, the main headquarters building for SOE. He ushered her through the door of the building, which, although only slightly larger than Norgeby House, felt infinitely more austere. Inside the foyer, a cluster of senior army officers brushed by. Though some of their faces were familiar to Eleanor, none of the men acknowledged her.
Dodds led her up three flights of stairs to the anteroom of an office and closed the door behind her without a word, leaving her alone. Eleanor did not hang her coat on the stand in the corner, but folded it over her arm. A furnace hissed menacingly and a cigarette not quite extinguished gave off an acrid smell from an unseen ashtray. Eleanor walked to the window, which overlooked the rear of the building. Over the lip of the rooftop, she could just make out the remains of the burned house, the war room where they had met daily. Tattered bits of their maps and photographs, once closely guarded secrets, now fluttered through the broken window like confetti.
Had it really been a year and a half since she had last been here with her hat in her hand, asking to go find her girls? So much had happened since then, D-Day, victory in Europe and, finally, the end of the war. The last time she had been here, the Director had dismissed her, turned her out callously from the place that had once been hers. Even now, it made her insides ache to remember, the pain as fresh as though it had happened yesterday.
The click of the door jolted Eleanor from her memories. Imogen, the receptionist, eyed her coolly, as though they had never met. “He’ll see you now.”
“Eleanor.” The Director did not stand as she entered. But there was a warmth in his eyes behind the businesslike exterior, acknowledging the bond they had once shared. The distance he had shown the day he’d dismissed her was gone, as if it had never existed. Eleanor relaxed slightly.