A Season of Secrets (66 page)

The waiter gave a discreet cough and there was a judicious pause in the conversation as they gave him their orders.

When they were again left in privacy, Zephiniah said, ‘And Thea? Is it true she’s standing as a Labour Party candidate in a North Yorkshire by-election?’

‘It is. And as I can’t apply for a position as a junior hospital doctor until Violet is safely home and the tangle of how I entered the country is sorted, I’m going to help her
with her electioneering.’

Zephiniah stared at her, aghast. ‘But she’s standing as a
Labour
Party candidate!’

‘I know – and yes, I also know that Gilbert is a Conservative government minister, but he’s fully supportive of Thea, and he’s fully supportive of my wanting to help her.
He’s a quite extraordinary man, isn’t he?’

There was no way, after Gilbert’s actions when she had told him of Judith’s existence and situation, that Zephiniah could disagree with her.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He is.’ But as she reached for her wine-glass, it wasn’t Gilbert she was thinking about. It was Roberto, a man not at all extraordinary in the way
Gilbert undoubtedly was, but a man she had come to realize was her soulmate.

The funeral of Lord Hubholme was taking place in the church that stood in the grounds of his Suffolk country estate. Gilbert had been at Eton with Henry Hubholme and had
counted him a good friend for well over thirty years. It was a funeral he couldn’t possibly have avoided attending, but it was one he was finding it difficult to bear, for reasons other than
Henry’s far too early death.

From the moment he had decided to marry Carrie he had known that the social consequences would be profound. What he had not expected was that he would be made aware of them so soon.

He had travelled down from Gorton especially for the funeral, and it had been immediately obvious to him that news of his Christmas engagement was already common knowledge.

The reactions, though subtle, were just as he had anticipated. He could sense people’s unease at being seen in conversation with him – especially because at his death Henry had been
an equerry, and the King and Queen were fellow mourners.

Social ostracism was something his broad shoulders could easily bear, but he had no intention of exposing Carrie to it. Rather than do that, his plan was that the minute it became necessary he
would resign from the Cabinet, close up the Mount Street house and retire to Yorkshire. None of which he would mind doing, not if it meant his own and Carrie’s continuing happiness. He knew
that Carrie, though, would mind for him, and that her unhappiness at being the cause of his changed lifestyle would be deep.

The thought of Carrie being caused unhappiness on his account was an agony to him, but as he fled out of the church with the rest of the mourners he couldn’t for the life of him see how it
was to be avoided, not when, among the upper classes, snobbishness and sense of caste were so deeply ingrained.

It was the Queen who, with great sensitivity and inborn kindness, removed all his anxieties.

‘How nice to see you, Lord Fenton,’ she said as, on the way to the royal Rolls, she paused to exchange a few words with him, ‘though I must say I would rather have run into you
at a wedding than a funeral.’

‘My feelings entirely, Ma’am.’

She shot him her sweet, still-girlish smile. ‘Speaking of weddings, I understand you are newly engaged?’

‘Yes, Ma’am.’ He hesitated, his tension showing. Did Elizabeth know the identity of his fiancée? Was she about to congratulate him, in ignorance of who it was he’d
become engaged to?

Elizabeth adjusted the collar of her fur and tilted her head a little to one side. ‘When, some years ago, I was taken ill at Gorton, your fiancée was extremely kind to me. I seem to
remember asking her to let me know when she married, in order that I could send her my best wishes.’

‘That was very kind of you, Ma’am.’

Periwinkle-blue eyes held his. ‘I would hate to think of a girl as sweet-natured and kind as Miss Thornton meeting with social difficulties, and so I wonder if I might suggest something to
you?’

‘Please do, Ma’am. I would be grateful for anything you have to say.’

Even though Bertie and Elizabeth had now been King George VI and Queen Elizabeth for just over two years, Gilbert still found formality when speaking to them in public a little difficult to
maintain.

The affection in the Queen’s eyes showed him that she often had the same problem.

‘I’m sure,’ she said, ‘that under the circumstances you felt a quiet engagement was more suitable than one celebrated with a large party – and a party in London,
not at Gorton – but I think it a mistake.’ Her gloved hand touched him lightly on the arm. ‘A large party, with absolutely everyone you know in public life in attendance, would be
much the best thing. The King and I will propose ourselves and, by being guests and so conspicuously giving your coming marriage our blessing, there will be none of the social unpleasantness the
two of you might otherwise meet with.’

‘Thank you, Ma’am.’ The words came from the bottom of his heart, and were it not that clusters of other people were only yards away from them – and that she was now his
queen – he would have given her an enormous hug and a smacking great kiss.

Elizabeth removed her hand from his arm, adjusted her fur one more time and said, before continuing to make her way to the waiting Rolls, ‘And we shall propose ourselves to the wedding as
well – no matter whether it be a London wedding or a Gorton Hall wedding.’ Her blue eyes danced with laughter. ‘Though a Gorton Hall wedding, with all of the very interesting
Outhwaite friends Carrie told me about when we exchanged shared reminiscences, could very well prove to be far the most interesting option!’

With a fast-beating heart Violet strolled into Berlin’s most fashionable cafe, the Romanische. Able to hold more than 1,000 people, it was frequented by the famous and
so had been her cafe of choice for years. Every fellow movie actor she knew – and by now she knew absolutely everyone employed at Babelsberg – could, at one time or another, be found
there.

The waiter who, after her frantic telephone call to the safe number of her American contact, had been told to expect her, weaved his way towards her between tables thronged with the cafe’s
late-afternoon clientele.

A table alone, as it is Wednesday?’ he asked in English, as she had been told he would ask.

‘Yes.’ She didn’t correct him by pointing out it was a Friday.

He seated her at a table placed discreetly against one of the far walls, and she ordered a coffee and a slice of chocolate Herrentorte.

In all the years she had been passing on information this was the first time she had done so in the Romanische, and it was the first time she wasn’t passing information by word of mouth,
but was handing over tangible top-secret evidence.

She glanced down at her watch. It was a minute or two after five o’clock and as dark as night outside. How long would it be before Goebbels realized that carbon paper had been removed from
a memo he’d had with him on his visit to Babelsberg only an hour and a half earlier? If he did realize the carbon paper had been removed, he would know immediately who had taken it. His
briefcase had been left in her dressing room when he had gone to look at uncut footage of propaganda film. Never before had he been so careless, and if there was in his briefcase documentary proof
of Hitler’s intentions towards Poland as well as Czechoslovakia, then she’d known that never again would she have such an opportunity of obtaining it.

If
such a document was in the briefcase.

If
the briefcase wasn’t full of unimportant material that it was not worth her risking her life for.

It hadn’t been.

On official stationery, with carbon paper still attached, there had been a handwritten memo to Goebbels signed by Hitler. Dated two days earlier, it was short and to the point.

She had read it at speed, translating it with ease:

The German word Hitler had used for ‘living space’ was
Lebensraum
. She’d stared at it, momentarily bewildered. What further ‘living space’ could there
possibly be for the Reich further east? Further east from Poland and Czechoslovakia there was only Russia . . .

Russia.

She’d sucked in her breath, knowing that – whatever the risk – she had to get the document into American, and then into British, hands.

When Goebbels returned to her dressing room and found her gone he would assume she was on one of the film sets working, and as he’d made no arrangement for her to travel back into Berlin
with him, or to have dinner with him that evening, he would, if luck was on her side, merely pick up his briefcase and continue on to wherever it was he was next going. And if God as well as luck
was on her side, he wouldn’t notice the carbon paper was missing until she had passed it on to the Americans and until, with the false passport already given to her, she was well out of
Germany and halfway to Ostend and a ferry home.

The waiter returned with her coffee and slice of cake.

Neither of them made eye contact with the other.

The waiter carried on serving other tables. Violet unfolded a serviette, picked up a cake-fork and turned her attention to the sickly-sweet Herrentorte.

When she had finished the cake and her coffee she raised a hand, signalling for the bill, then reached into her handbag for her purse. She had folded the flimsy carbon paper into a neat, small
square and withdrew it from her bag along with three Reichsmark banknotes.

When the waiter breezed up to her with the bill on a salver, she slid the carbon paper onto it, under cover of the banknotes.

Two minutes later he had disappeared into the kitchens and she was walking out of the Romanische and into Auguste-Viktoria-Platz, dizzy with relief. The deed was done. All she had to do now was
retrieve the passport from her Gartenstrasse house and shake the dust of Berlin from her heels.

She’d parked her little Roadster in an alleyway off the square and she hesitated beside it. If Goebbels already realized what she had done, then it was quite possible the Gestapo were
already in Gartenstrasse, waiting for her. If they were, she’d stand more chance of successfully escaping the area in a taxicab than she would in a car known to be hers.

She flagged down a cab, feverishly calculating what the odds were of Goebbels not realizing – of his never realizing.

When a carbon copy of any document had been taken, the most usual thing was for the flimsy, messy blue carbon paper to be removed and destroyed. Goebbels was fastidious about his personal
cleanliness. He certainly would never want to risk getting carbon ink on his fingers, and it was more than likely he was accustomed to carbon paper being scrupulously removed from documents before
he received them.

If he didn’t remember that the carbon paper had still been attached to Hitler’s memo, then she was in no danger whatsoever. However, if he did remember . . .

As the taxicab neared Gartenstrasse she sat on the edge of her seat, ready to shout instructions to the driver if, when they rounded the corner, there was even one sinister black Mercedes in
sight.

There wasn’t.

‘
Warte auf mich
,’ she said to the driver.

Feeling in his pocket for his cigarettes and a lighter, he nodded, quite happy to wait for as long as she wanted him to.

She raced down the path, ran up the steps to the front door, fumbled with her key in the lock and sprinted into the house

‘Irmgard!
Irmgard!
’ she shouted, taking the stairs to the first floor two at a time.

Once in her bedroom, she yanked open her bedside drawer and snatched up the passport, then wrenched open her wardrobe doors and grabbed a small travel-bag from a top shelf.

‘Was ist los?’
Irmgard demanded, rushing into the room, her eyes wide with fright.

As she slammed open drawers, throwing personal possessions into the travel-bag, Violet didn’t tell her what was the matter. There wasn’t time. What she did tell Irmgard was that she
was to leave the house immediately and never come back to it.

She paused at that point, taking money out of the wallet she kept in her underwear drawer and stuffing it into Irmgard’s hands.