Page 77 of The Undercover Bookshop

She waggles her fingers down the alley to a farm lorry. “The clutch is a disaster, but it’s good cover, yes?”

I step back and let her precede me up the stairs. She’s dressed in dark wool slacks, a brown sweater, and a quilted navy jacket. She still looks like a film star, but while she may dress like one, she certainly doesn’t act like one. In addition to driving a farm lorry, she digs into my rooms, and the last bits I had yet to pack are sorted within minutes. And to keep my nerves at bay, she chatters on the entire time.

“We’re not entirely sure what Ursula’s been up to the last couple of years. Hence it was decided to let her slip away. Part of me believes she’s grown weary of the game and has truly found satisfaction in being a wife and a mother like she told you. It certainly is a new role for her. Poor Michael, her eldest, was shuttled all about when he was young. We even discovered she left him with his grandparents, the Hamburgs, for almost an entire year while she trained in the Soviet Union.”

Frustration rises within me because I’m the one moving now. “You knew all this and still let her come live here? Why?”

Lady Marchmont lifts her shoulders in a light shrug while continuing to wrap several errant teacups in packing paper. “As I said, it’s a game at some level or another. But often mistakes are made, too, and I believe granting her a passport in 1940 was a clerical error. But for the last several years, it hardly seemed to matter. She was barely a threat, passing along mere tidbits rather than the main course. So we watched, and at first we thought good data wasn’t coming her way once Fuchs went to America, but in the last year that hasn’t been the case.”

Lady Marchmont stares at me. “So, what’s our next guess?”

“How should I know?” I huff.

“Think.”

Embarrassed that I’ve lashed out at a viscountess, I obey and think. A thought comes to me. “She’s not as loyal to the Soviets as you thought?”

She taps her nose as if to say “righto’” and finishes wrapping the cups. “More news is slipping out of the Soviet Union lately too. It seems ‘Uncle Joe’ may be losing his grip. We knew he purged the country of millions in the thirties, murdered anyone and everyone he suspected, but now something else is going on in the countryside, outside the cities as they collectivize farms, that bears investigating. Reports of millions more dying now. All of that death and murder does tend to shift one’s ideology.”

“Seems like an awfully great risk to trust Ursula had some change of heart.”

“Don’t misunderstand me.” Lady Marchmont laughs. “She’s not ready to sing ‘God Save the King,’ but she has withheld the goods from Moscow for some reason these past couple years. That makes us curious. Did she say anything to you?”

I duck my head as Ursula’s “favor” immediately comes to mind. “Why would she?”

“Because she let you in. She cared about you.” Lady Marchmont’s voice is soft and probing.

I merely shrug and shove Christie’s The Hollow into the top of a box. A noise captures our attention, and we both step to my front window. A butcher’s van drives towards us down High Street. It slows beside the shop to turn into the alley.

“Are you ready?”

Tears fill my eyes.

Lady Marchmont pulls me into a hug. “My dear, it’s not going to be that bad. You’ll start a new vibrant and rich life in London. I promise.”

I snuffle into her sweater, which is the softest wool I’ve ever felt. “It was pretty horrid before. The boardinghouse was always cold an—”

I hiccup as she pushes me away. “Is that what you think we’re doing to you? That we’re going to drop you off and let you fend for yourself?” She uses the pad of her thumb to press away a tear. “That’s not how this works. You’ll see.”

Her voice lifts as if a great surprise is coming, but I don’t have time to ask what it might be as footsteps sound up the stairs and five young men file into the room.

Lady Marchmont nods to them and starts pointing around the room, rapidly firing instructions. “Everything goes but the furniture. All the boxes. Put the bed linens in that box there and get going. I want your van pulling away in ten minutes.”

“Yes, m’um.”

The men set to work, racing up and down, while Lady Marchmont and I stand against a wall. She checks her watch as the last young man—he can’t be any older than I am—stops in front of her, the last box in hand. “I believe we have everything.”

She surveys the room. I do the same. I nod, and she flicks her wrist up to check her watch. “Eight minutes. I’m very impressed. Thank you.”

He offers the broad grin of the successful and lopes down the stairs. After a few seconds, we hear the engine start and the van pull away.

It’s still dark outside.

Lady Marchmont turns to me again. “I should go. Gerald believes I interfere too much.” She waves a hand. “Not that he could ever say anything as my clearance is higher than his, but one doesn’t like to flaunt privilege unnecessarily. He’ll be here within the half hour to take you to your new home.”

I look to the window. “Since Monday, when Ursula left, Char—PC Charles never stopped by the store. I haven’t seen him. I know I can’t say goodbye, but—” I stop. Tears clog my throat and eyes, and I find myself pulled into another hug.

“He was ordered not to, my dear. This is hard on him, too, but he understands.”