Maisie knew he meant her to smile, but she couldn’t.
“We can perhaps engage one woman for the BBC under the new regime, to broadcast solely to women, guiding them appropriately. An aristocrat, perhaps, so she commands authority and need only volunteer.”
“Ah, they mean to put you out of work, methinks!” said Simon, chuckling. “This is capital.”
“It’s not funny,” Maisie whispered.
“And we will certainly see that the press is more responsible as well. Some of what these so-called journalists are allowed to publish is virtually obscene.”
Rather depends upon how you define the word, I think.
“I think the blighter means to insult me,” Simon whispered, delighted.
Maisie saw a teapot-shaped man in a bowler hat gazing at them with an intent frown. Her heart chilled. People of a certain class knew their own, and a City man might recognize members of the aristocracy. And Simon had a face one remembered.
“We are going to save our country, and we will begin by insisting that the truth be told,” the Lion assured everyone with a warm smile.
The truth. Their truth. So different from the truth as Hilda saw it. As Maisie saw it. As most, she hoped, saw it. But she didn’t know.
Maisie’s fingers twitched. She needed a pencil. She needed to write. It wasn’t going to wait. And that man was still looking at them, with the look of one who wanted to introduce himself.
“I’ve got a merciless headache,” she whispered, reflexively pleased by her first usage of the standard women’s social maneuver. “I think I’ve got to get home.”
Simon promptly proved what it meant to have been inculcated in gentlemanly gallantry since the swaddling stage. Within seconds they were on the street and he had hailed a cab, though she insisted she could manage with the tram.
“I’m grateful to you, Maisie, really. Another minute and they’d have stoned me to death.” He laughed, then took her hand and kissed it, gazing into her eyes.
The treacherous fist in her chest clawed its way to her brain and nearly made her say, “I feel better now. Let’s go anywhere, everywhere, now, forever.”
But she was too dazed to form words, and he skillfully handed the driver some money and her into the cab and, with one lingering look, was gone.
The fist inside settled down and her fingers closed around her pencil. Words flowing across the blue lines in her boxy, conscientious script.
“Could the Fear of Communism Lead to Something Worse? Would the British People Willingly Sacrifice Hard-Won Freedoms for This False Fear? Thoughts from a Canadian.”
She stared at that for a moment and amended:
“A Canadian-American.”
She had no idea where she meant these words to end up. It didn’t matter. She just kept writing, and writing, and was still writing when she got out of the cab, as she walked through the door, and by the dim light in the sitting room, not noticing that her fingers were growing cramped and she hadn’t even taken off her hat.
THIRTEEN
Maisie was pacing outside Savoy Hill when Hilda sauntered up.
“I’ve got to speak with you. Can we go inside the chapel a minute?”
“My goodness, Miss Musgrave, how very cloak-and-daggerish!” Hilda, always delighted with novelty, was glad to accommodate. They were as alone as Maisie hoped; the chapel’s only other occupant was a red squirrel, genuflecting over an abandoned sandwich.
“Miss Matheson, I’ve been reading the Radio Times every week, cover to cover—”
“Oh, and here I thought you liked yourself,” Hilda said, eyes dancing.
Maisie refused to smile.
“The thing is, I’ve been noticing these, well, adverts of sorts, for meetings. I’ve typed them all up so you can see.” Hilda glanced at the notes and back at Maisie, encouraging her to go on. “And I went along, and it seems to be a branch of the Fascists. Or a splinter, perhaps. Anyway, the DG’s friend Mr. Hoppel was there, and he works for Siemens, and you had once thought . . .”
Hilda exhaled heavily and leaned against the baptismal font.
“Well, well, well. You’ve been having quite an extracurricular time of things.”
“What do you make of it?” Maisie asked.
“What do you make of it?” Hilda countered.
“Oh, don’t do that, Miss Matheson, not this time, please!”
“I certainly shall! You’ve not taken up spying as a lark. You know there’s likely something afoot. So? What are your instincts suggesting?”
“They were your instincts. They came from that German pamphlet you had.”
“I’m well aware. Go on.”
“All right. Well, last night, I was out with, well, a fellow—”
“The Honorable Mr. Brock-Morland?”
Maisie nearly toppled into a pew. “How on earth did you know?”