Which created a whole new problem. If they left now, they’d run straight into the troupe, and Miss Laburnum would almost certainly say something about the five fatalities.
“We need to wait here till everyone’s gone so they don’t see us leaving the emergency staircase,” she said. “Once they realize it’s not locked, all sorts of people will want to use it. And we should let Eileen sleep, poor thing. I doubt if she’s had a good night’s rest since she came to London.”
“All right,” he said, and agreed to let Eileen sleep another half hour, during which Polly hoped he’d fall asleep and she could go find out alone. But he didn’t, and after they’d walked Eileen home and Polly had got her safely upstairs without seeing anyone, he insisted on going straight to Padgett’s, even though it had begun to rain again. And there was nothing for it but to go with him and hope a rescue crew was digging, or Mike might insist on going down into the pit himself.
But a crew was there, at least a dozen men hard at work with picks and shovels in spite of the rain, and the incident officer had just come on duty and didn’t know if they’d recovered any victims or not. “But they must think there are some of them under there,” he said when Mike told him he’d seen three people going in. “Or they wouldn’t be working like that.”
Which seemed to satisfy Mike, at least for the moment, and when Polly said they needed to go now or they’d run into people on their way to church—which was true, even though St. George’s was no longer there; the rector was conducting services at St. Bidulphus’s—Mike agreed to leave the dig and let her take him to the drop.
She felt guilty over it—it was raining harder than ever, and even with the Burberry Miss Laburnum had got him, he’d freeze sitting on the cold steps. But she had to have time to find out the truth about the fatalities.
And Mike didn’t seem dismayed by the rain. “At least there won’t be many contemps out in this,” he said, “so there’ll be less chance of the shimmer being seen.”
He was right about no one being out in the rain. The streets were deserted. Polly led Mike through the partially cleared rubble to the alley and over to the passage which led to the drop. The rain had washed away the chalked messages she’d scrawled on the walls and the barrels, but the ones on the door were still there, and she was glad to see that the overhang had largely protected the steps and the well.
“It seems fairly dry in here,” she said. But it was also untouched. The dust, leaves, and spiderwebs were all still there.
“You put this ‘For a good time, ring Polly’ here?” Mike asked, pointing at the door.
“Yes, and I put an arrow on that barrel,” she said, pointing, “and Mrs. Rickett’s address and the name of Townsend Brothers on the back, though I imagine the rain’s washed them away. I thought if the retrieval team came, it could help them find me.”
“It was a good idea,” he said. “I had one like it when I was in the hospital.”
“You were going to put messages on your gun emplacement?”
“No, in the newspapers. We could put an ad in the personal column.”
“An ad? What sort of ad? ‘Stranded travelers seek retrieval team to come and get them’?”
“Exactly. Only not in those words. They’ll have to look like all the other personal ads, but be worded so someone from Oxford would recognize them as being from us and know what they mean.”
“ ‘Wounds my heart with a monotonous languour,’ ” Polly murmured.
“What?”
“That was the coded message they sent out over the BBC to the French Resistance the day before D-Day. It’s from a Verlaine poem. It meant ‘Invasion imminent.’ ”
“Exactly,” Mike said. “Coded messages.”
“But that could be dangerous. If they decide we’re German spies—”
“I’m not talking about ‘The dog barks at midnight’ or ‘Wounds my heart with’—whatever the hell you said. I’m talking about, ‘R.T. Meet me in Trafalgar Square noon Friday, M.D.’ ”
Polly shook her head. “Meetings in public places are nearly as suspect as ‘The dog barks at midnight.’ ”
“All right, then, we’ll make it ‘R.T. Can’t wait to see you, darling. Meet me Trafalgar Square noon Friday. Love, Pollykins.’ ”
“I suppose that might work,” Polly said thoughtfully. The personal columns were full of messages to and from lovers, and from people who’d gone to the country or been bombed out, notifying their friends and relations of their new addresses. “But there are dozens of London newspapers. How will we know which one to put the message in?”
“We’ll work that out later,” he said. “In the meantime, we need to replace the messages you wrote here that have washed off.”
“They’ll only be washed off again.”
“Then we’ll have to buy some paint.”
“And hope this rain stops,” Polly said, looking up at the rain dripping from the overhang. “Do you want me to bring you an umbrella?”
“Not if it’s that bright green one of Eileen’s. It can be seen for miles. I’m trying not to be seen, remember?”
“Mine’s black. I’ll bring it,” she promised. “And something to eat.” And a thermos of hot tea, she thought.
But not till I see Marjorie.
Visiting hours weren’t till ten, and in spite of everything they’d already done this morning, it was still only half past eight. But if she went back to Mrs. Rickett’s, Eileen might be awake and want to come with her. And perhaps this early the stern admitting nurse who’d refused to answer her questions wouldn’t be on duty yet.
She wasn’t. A very young nurse was. Good. “Have you a patient named James Dunworthy here?” Polly asked her. “I was told he was brought here night before last. From Padgett’s?”
The admitting nurse checked the records. “No, we’ve no one by that name.”
“Oh, dear,” Polly said anxiously, calling on the acting techniques Sir Godfrey had taught her. “My friend was certain he was brought here. She works at Padgett’s with Mr. Dunworthy, and she asked me to find out for her. She was a bit banged up and couldn’t come herself. She’s terribly worried about him. Mr. Dunworthy would have been brought in early in the evening.”
“I wasn’t on duty that night. Let me see what I can find out,” the nurse said, and went off. When she returned, she said, “I spoke by telephone with the ambulance crew who handled the incident, and they only transported one”—a fractional hesitation—“injured victim to hospital, and it was a woman.” And the pause meant the
“injured victim” had died on the way to hospital, just as Marjorie had said.
“But if he wasn’t brought here, then that means—” Polly said, and clapped her hand to her mouth. “Oh, no, how dreadful.”
“You mustn’t worry,” the nurse said sympathetically, and looked quickly round to make certain no one was in earshot. “I asked the ambulance crew about fatalities, and they said both the others were women, too.”
Three fatalities, not five. “Did they work at Padgett’s?” Polly asked.
“No. They haven’t been identified yet.”
So there was still a possibility that they might be the retrieval team. If it was Polly’s or Eileen’s, they’d almost certainly have sent women to blend in at a department store, though they usually only sent two historians to retrieve. But what if they were Polly’s and Eileen’s teams?
At least it wasn’t a discrepancy. “Oh, my friend will be so relieved!” Polly said truthfully. “There must have been some sort of mix-up.”
She thanked the nurse profusely and hurried out of the hospital and down the steps, where she nearly collided with a pair of young nurses in dark blue capes coming on duty. “Last night I went to an RAF dance and met the most adorable lieutenant,” one of them was saying. “He’s a pilot. He’s stationed at Boscombe Down. He said he’d come to see me on his next leave.”