“Blimey!” said Gus.
“It’s not that exciting, I’m afraid.” Uncle Peter shrugged. “It’s probably just a shopping list from some poor chap in Berlin, reminding himself to buy toothpaste… ”
“You speak German?” said Gus. He looked shocked.
Uncle Peter nodded. “I taught myself after the last war.”
“That’s amazing,” said Edie. But Gus took a big step back. He scowled as if Uncle Peter had said he was Hitler himself, and Greta gave a funny squeal. Surely they didn’t think Uncle Peter was some sort of terrible monster, just because he spoke German. He wasn’t a Nazi in disguise. He was just using his language skills to help the war effort.
Gus had gone white as a sheet. He turned his back on Uncle Peter completely as if he couldn’t even bear to look at him. Greta, on the other hand, seemed suddenly excited. She ran forward and shook Uncle Peter by the sleeve.
“What is it, mein Liebling?” He smiled.
“You can talk real, real German?” said Greta. “Like… ” But before she could say another word, Gus grabbed her arm.
“Quick,” he shouted. “We’ll miss the 9.15 if we don’t hurry.”
In an instant, Uncle Peter’s German skills were forgotten. “See you later,” cried Edie.
The three children sped away across the field. Gus was practically dragging Greta with him as they ran. He seemed to be hissing something in her ear. Probably another brother and sister row. Edie left them to it. She ran fastest of all, desperate to reach the train in time. They’d been so busy settling the Twiglets in and doing their other chores, it had been days and days since she had last sent her love to Fliss by the Green Dragon.
That afternoon, the three older children met at HQ whilst Greta stayed at home with Maisie, who had brought her knitting bag from the village and promised to help make Mr Churchill a scarf. Maisie had also baked a delicious bread pudding from a leftover loaf and allowed Gus and Edie to take a thick slice each away with them on their adventure, and one for Perky too.
When the cake had been eaten, and every precious sultana savoured, Edie and the boys agreed to take turns to sit at the far end of the old dining carriage with the binoculars trained on Boar’s Head Farm.
Perky was on duty first. While he was on watch, Gus took a brown post office notebook out of his pocket. Perky had given them one each, just as he had promised. There had been a leak in the storeroom last winter and the covers were a bit water-damaged and some of the pages stuck together, but other than that they were as good as new.
“Make do and mend!” as Edie had said, gratefully echoing the familiar wartime motto, when she had been given hers.
Gus pulled a stubby pencil out from behind his ear. He was clearly excited about something. “We know for sure the Snigsons were responsible for smuggling the Twiglets into the village,” he said. “And I’ve been keeping track of their activities ever since.”
Edie glanced over his shoulder at the page. All she could see was a lot of squiggles. “What’s all that gubbins?” she asked.
“It’s not gubbins.” Gus sounded very insulted. “It’s code! If my notebook falls into enemy hands, all they’ll see is a secret cypher. My father uses code all the time when he is on top-secret missions, you know.”
“Ah!” said Edie, frowning at the funny mixture of symbols and letters: NN → 2p RS = X.
“Don’t you see? NN is Len Snigson,” explained Gus. “I used the last letters of both his names. And the arrow means he collected something.”
“2p?” Edie scratched her head.
“Two piglets,” sighed Gus. “From the RS.”
“Railway station!” cried Edie. At least that bit was simple. “But what does the cross mean… ?”
“It means: Len didn’t collect the two piglets because Greta took the pram away.” Gus tapped his pencil on the page. “Do you see that now?”
“Sort of,” said Edie, sending a cloud of dust into the air as she flopped down on one of the long seats by the window. All this code seemed to be an awful lot of fuss and bother for something they already knew.
“What about the conversation we overheard by the railway line when we saw the Dark Demon?” she asked. “Do you think that was about the piglets too?”
“I’m not sure,” said Gus. It was his turn to look awkward now. “I hadn’t actually come up with my code back them. So I didn’t note it all down. Not word for word, I mean.”
“I did,” cried Edie waving her own little post-office book in the air.
“In code?” groaned Perky, peering at her over the top of the binoculars. He’d only used his book to make paper aeroplanes and to leave a note for Aunty Patsy saying he’d be back in time for tea.
“It’s more like a story, actually. A chronicle of our adventures,” said Edie grandly. She liked the way that sounded. It was becoming clear she wasn’t really cut out to be a spy. She thought perhaps she’d rather write books when she grew up.
“A hunched figure came out of the mist… ” she began.
“There wasn’t any mist that morning,” said Gus.
Edie ignored him. “A hunched figure came out of the mist… It was Len Snigson.”
“Len doesn’t have a hunched back,” said Perky.
“Do you want to hear what he said or not?” snapped Edie. But she could tell the boys weren’t going to listen properly, so she skipped on to the part where Len actually spoke: “‘Listen, Donny, I’m telling you, it’s somewhere here,’ he told his brother. ‘From this telegraph pole, all the way back to the mouth of the tunnel.’ The railwayman’s rasping voice was as clear as a snarling dog in the morning air… ” Edie was especially proud of that last line.
“Hmm,” said Perky with a cheeky grin. “It isn’t a patch on the tale of the Ghostly Signalman…
