“The more coming and going there is, the greater the chance someone will see us,” he argued.
“Won’t you at least let me bring you another blanket and something to eat?”
“No, I’ll be fine. Where are the raids tonight?”
“The East End, the City, and Islington.”
“Good. Then there won’t be firemen or rescue workers around here to see the shimmer. Were you able to find out anything about the casualties at Padgett’s?”
“Yes.” She told him about the three dead charwomen.
“So it wasn’t the retrieval team. And there wasn’t a discrepancy. Good,” he said, sounding relieved. “What about Phipps’s whereabouts? Were you able to get hold of a railway guide?”
“Not yet, but I’ll look at the one at Townsend Brothers tomorrow, and I should be able to find out some more airfields at Notting Hill Gate tonight,” she said, thinking of her troupe mates Lila and Viv. “Is there anything else you want us to do?”
“Yes, buy some newspapers for us to use for our personal ads. And keep pumping Eileen about what else Gerald said. You haven’t figured out what his joke about getting her driving authorization meant, have you?”
“No. The only thing I’ve been able to think of is that RAF pilots carried their papers in a waterproof wallet in case they had to ditch in the Channel, but the wallet wasn’t red, and I don’t see what—”
“But at least that tells us we’re on the right track about his being at an airfield,” he said. “You’d better go. When are the sirens supposed to go tonight?”
“I don’t know.” She explained about having left before Colin got the siren data to her. “The raids begin at 7:50. Here, take my coat. I can borrow one for tonight,” she said, draping it over his knees. “And if it begins to rain again, go home. Don’t try to be a hero.”
“I won’t,” he promised, and she hurried back to the boardinghouse, got Eileen, took her to Notting Hill Gate, then sent her off to Holborn to see if the lending library had an ABC.
“If they don’t,” she said, “borrow some newspapers.” She told Eileen about Mike’s ideas of using personal ads to tell the retrieval team where they were.
“I know where we can find examples of the right kind of ads,” Eileen said eagerly. “A Murder Is Announced.”
“What?” Polly said.
“It’s a mystery novel. By Agatha Christie. It’s full of personal ads … Oh, no, that won’t work,” she said glumly.
“Why not? The library at Holborn has several Agatha Christie novels, and if they don’t have it there, I’m certain one of the bookshops in Charing Cross Road—”
“No, they won’t. It wasn’t written till after the war.” She cheered up. “But I think there’s one in The Dawson Pedigree that we could use.” She started toward the Central Line.
“Wait,” Polly said. “You need to be back before half past ten. That’s when the trains stop.”
“Yes, Fairy Godmother,” Eileen said. “Any other instructions?”
“Yes. Keep a close watch on your belongings. There’s a band of urchins at Holborn who pick people’s pockets.”
“Of course. It’s my fate to be surrounded by horrible children no matter where I go. But at least it’s not the Hodbins,” she said, and went off to catch her train. Polly went out to the District Line platform, where the troupe was rehearsing, to talk to Lila and Viv.
They weren’t there. “They went to a dance,” Miss Laburnum reported.
“On a Sunday night?” the rector said, shocked.
“It’s an American USO dance,” Miss Laburnum explained. “I don’t know what Sir Godfrey will say when he gets here. He so wanted to rehearse the shipwreck scene.”
What Sir Godfrey said, when he arrived a moment later, was, “ ‘False varlets! How all occasions do inform against me. They hath outvillained villainy!’ Their foul perfidy leaves us no choice but to rehearse the rescue scene. We shall begin at the point at which the castaways have heard the ship’s gun and have all rushed down to the beach.”
Polly and Sir Godfrey were the only ones in that scene, which meant she had no chance to look through Sir Godfrey’s Times for more airfields. And after rehearsal was over, when she asked Mrs. Brightford if she knew the names of any, Sir Godfrey said dryly, “Does this mean that you, too, will be abandoning us to ‘foot it featly here and there,’ Lady Mary?”
“No,” she said, hoping Holborn had had an ABC.
“It didn’t,” Eileen reported on her return. “And it only had two newspapers. The librarian said children keep taking them for the scrap-paper drive. But she had heaps of Agatha Christies.
“Look,” she said excitedly when they reached the emergency staircase, showing Polly a paperback book. “Murder in the Calais Coach!”
“Is that the one you thought had a personal ad in it?”
“No, that’s not by Agatha Christie, it’s by Dorothy Sayers. At least I think that’s what it was in. It might have been in Murder Must Advertise instead, and at any rate, the library didn’t have either one. But”—she produced another paperback—“it did have The ABC Murders.”
Which was not quite the same as an ABC. But, as Eileen said, it was full of place-names, which might help her remember. Eileen had also retrieved a wadded-up edition of the Daily Mirror from a dustbin.
She handed it to Polly, and Polly began looking through it for the names of airfields and any references to the afternoon raid. There was nothing about bombing—
which was a relief—but nothing about a false alarm either, or an aeroplane crash.
There was a story about the Battle of Britain, which said the RAF’s efforts had “changed the course of the war,” and which listed several airfields.
“Bicester?” Polly asked.
“No.”
“Broadwell?”
“No.”
It wasn’t Greenham Common or Grove or Bickmarsh either. “Have you had any luck remembering what else Gerald said?” Polly asked her.
“Nothing useful. I remember Linna was speaking on the phone to someone who was angry that the lab had changed the order of their French Revolution assignments.”
Let’s hope they’re not trapped there like we are here, Polly thought. They might end up being guillotined.
“I feel so stupid, not being able to remember,” Eileen said.
“You had no way of knowing it was important,” Polly reassured her. “We’ll find the name of the airfield tomorrow when I buy the ABC.”
“Or your drop might have opened,” Eileen said, cheering up. “And Mike will be waiting for us outside the station so we can all go through together.” But when the all clear went at five, he wasn’t there or at Mrs. Rickett’s.
“He very likely went back to Mrs. Leary’s to sleep when the raids ended,” Polly said.
“Should we go to the drop to check?” Eileen asked.
“No, there are too many people about in the morning. And we need to get you a ration book before I go to work, so you can begin eating at Mrs. Rickett’s.”
But applying for a new ration book required an identity card, which had also been in Eileen’s handbag, and since she’d been living in Stepney, she couldn’t apply for a new one at the local council office. She had to go to the one nearest to where she’d been living.
“Which is where?” Polly asked the clerk at the Kensington council office.
“In Bethnal Green.”
“Bethnal Green?”
“Yes,” the clerk said, and told them the address.
“Are there raids in Bethnal Green today?” Eileen whispered as they left the counter.
“No,” Polly said.
“But you looked so—”
“I thought it might be where Gerald had said he was going. It begins with a B and has two words.”
“No, I’m almost certain the second word began with a P.”
Polly sent Eileen off and hurried to work and up to the book department, but the railway guide was no longer there. “A man from the Ministry of War came in last week and took it,” Ethel said.