“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.”
Boscombe Down. Could that be the name of Gerald’s airfield? It was two words, one beginning with a B and one beginning with a D. It had to be it.
She’d expected to need to spend the entire day tracking down the information about the casualties, but now that she’d solved both her problems, she could actually do what she’d told Eileen she intended to do and go visit Marjorie. It would mean one less lie she could be caught in.
But it wasn’t ten yet, and at any rate she couldn’t go in the front door when she was supposed to be hurrying off to tell her Padgett’s friend that James Dunworthy was all right.
