I stood in the hallway, relieved to see the familiar flowered wallpaper, the kitchen door open at the end of the passage, the smell of a casserole wafting around.
“I’ve come to see the Colonel,” I said boldly. “Is he here?”
Mrs. Tilling looked surprised for a moment, then shrugged. “Come on into the living room,” she said. “He’s eating dinner. I’ll make a pot of tea, and he can come when he’s ready.”
The Colonel was enormous. I’ve seen him in the village and at the choir competition, but being so close to him, in Mrs. Tilling’s living room, made me inch back in fear of suffocation. He was easily the tallest man I’d ever met, heavily built, with broad shoulders and a chest as big as a bear’s.
“Gosh, you’re frightfully big,” I blurted before I could stop myself.
He smiled. “Yes, I’ve been this way since I was a little older than you. Mrs. Tilling said you needed to see me about something.”
“Yes,” I stammered. “I’m Kitty Winthrop, from Chilbury Manor, and I think I have found a”—I glanced around and hushed my breath—“a spy in our midst.”
He smiled briefly before quickly coughing and adopting a more serious expression, sitting down on the floral sofa and beckoning me to sit on the armchair opposite. “Why don’t you tell me all about it.”
“Well, when we were in Peasepotter Wood, Silvie—that’s our evacuee—and I saw a black marketeer called Old George, and he has a bush that he uses to store all the black-market goods he has, and he was there with Mr. Slater, the artist who moved into the house on Church Row next to Hattie, and I’m sure they were doing business, and then Silvie told me she keeps seeing Proggett, our butler, in Peasepotter Wood, too, and I saw him once there as well, and I wonder if he’s a spy or has anything to do with Mr. Slater and the black market, too.” I stopped and looked at my hands, clasped together on my skirt.
“Goodness,” he said slowly, coughing slightly into his big, rolled-up hand. “You are definitely the type of open-eyed civilian we need around here!” He looked at me a moment, taking in my height and age. “Mrs. Tilling tells me you have your head screwed on properly, which means that you’ll take good care of what I’m about to say, won’t you?”
I nodded briskly, quite pleased that Mrs. Tilling had said that I had my head screwed on, as I most definitely have.
“I want you to carry on being observant wherever you go, but not to go out of your way to find things out. You have to trust me when I say that we have a number of highly trained people keeping an eye on this, and I don’t want you to put yourself in any danger. All right?”
I nodded, disappointed.
“Now, this is a very dangerous underworld we’re speaking about, so I need to have your word of honor not to tell a soul about this.”
“Definitely,” I said crossly. “I am completely trustworthy.”
“I’m certain that you are.” He smiled and his entire face lit up, making him look quite normal and even rather nice. “You know I have a girl of your age. You must be twelve?”
“No,” I snapped. “I’m nearly fourteen.”
“Of course you are! My daughter is twelve. She’s my youngest, staying with her aunt in Oxford with her two older sisters. I think she’d keep a secret, too, although she’d find it enormously hard work.” He let out a snort of a laugh, and I had to smile as he suddenly looked funny and friendly, like a big, unkempt St. Bernard or a beaten-up old teddy.
“Can she come and visit sometime?” I asked.
“Hopefully,” he said quietly. “I’d like them all to come one day and see where I live, this beautiful village with the rolling hills behind us.”
“I never think of our village as being beautiful. I’ve lived here all my life, and it’s just home to me. Do you really think it is?”
He paused, and I wondered if he’d heard me properly, but then at last he answered. “There’s a way of life here that I don’t believe any war can crush, that will endure long after we’re gone.” He snapped out of his thoughts and stood up. “I’ll let her know you want her to come. Her name is Alexandra,” he said, putting his giant hand forward to shake my small, slender one. “If you come across anything else, please tell me, Kitty. And don’t go to Peasepotter Wood. It’s dangerous. I know you’re a clever, mature sort of girl and can keep it to yourself, but especially don’t let Proggett suspect that you know anything, all right?”
“Yes,” I said, pleased that finally someone was acknowledging me as mature.
Mrs. Tilling came in and asked for a word with me in the kitchen. The Colonel bid me good night and asked Mrs. Tilling if he might use the telephone. I wondered if he was calling HQ to tell them what I’d reported. That I was a hero after all.
Mrs. Tilling began clearing up the tea things. “Does your mother know you’re here?”
“No.”