Princess Elizabeth's Spy
Read Princess Elizabeth's Spy Online
Authors: Susan Elia MacNeal
Tags: #Fiction, #Historical, #Mystery, #Adult
Advance Reader’s Copy—Not for Sale
PRINCESS ELIZABETH’S SPY
A Maggie Hope Novel
Susan Elia MacNeal
Bantam
This is an uncorrected eBook file.
Please do not quote for publication
until you check your copy against the finished book.
Tentative On-Sale Date: October 16, 2012
Tentative Publication Month: October 2012
Tentative Print Price: $15.00
Tentative eBook Price: $15.00
Please note that books will not be available in stores
until the above on-sale date.
All reviews should be scheduled to run after that date.
Publicity Contact:
(212) 782-8678
Bantam Books
An imprint of the Random House Publishing Group
1745 Broadway • New York, NY • 10019
PRAISE FOR SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL AND
Mr. Churchill’s Secretary
“Susan Elia MacNeal perfectly captures the spirit of wartime Britain in
Mr. Churchill’s Secretary,
a delightful mystery that follows the adventures of an appealing heroine who is both secretary and spy. This wonderful debut is intelligent, richly detailed, and filled with suspense.”
—S
TEFANIE
P
INTOFF
, Edgar Award–winning author of
In the Shadow of Gotham
“Chock-full of fascinating period details and real people, including Winston Churchill, MacNeal’s fast-paced thriller gives a glimpse of the struggles, tensions, and dangers of life on the home front during World War II. A terrific read.”
—R
HYS
B
OWEN
, author of
Royal Blood
and winner of the Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards
“Think early Ken Follett, amp it up with a whipsmart young American not averse to red lipstick and vintage cocktails, season it with espionage during the London Blitz. Add to that her boss Churchill and War Room intrigue, and you’ve got a heart-pounding, atmospheric debut in
Mr. Churchill’s Secretary.
I loved it.”
—C
ARA
B
LACK
, author of
Murder in Passy
Also by Susan Elia MacNeal
Mr. Churchill’s Secretary
This is an uncorrected ebook file. Please do not quote for publication until you check your copy against the finished book.
Princess Elizabeth’s Spy
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,
and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination
or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
A Bantam Books Trade Paperback Original
Copyright © 2012 by Susan Elia MacNeal
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Bantam Books,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
B
ANTAM
B
OOKS
and the rooster colophon are
registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
[standard history notice:]
[Permissions acknowledgments, if any, go here. Pick up from previous edition as applicable.]
eBook ISBN 978-0-553-90757-5
[or]
[CIP Information: pick up from hardcover edition, as applicable, change ISBN only]
Book design by Dana Leigh Blanchette
Title-page images: ©iStockphoto
To Judith Merkle Riley, 1942–2010,
mentor, friend, and the real Maggie Hope.
Thank you.
“Be a governess! Better be a slave at once!”
—Charlotte Brontë,
Shirley
Cryptogram: Message written in a cipher or in some
other cryptic form which requires a key (qv)
for its meaning to be discovered.
—
A Lexicon of Cryptography
(“Most Secret,” Bletchley Park)
The midday summer sun in Lisbon was dazzling and harsh. But while nearly everyone else was inside taking a siesta, the Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII of England, kept up his British habits, even on the continent.
He and his wife, Wallis Simpson, the woman for whom he’d abdicated the throne, sat outside at the Bar-Café Europa, which catered to tourists and British expats. The town square was nearly empty, except for a young American couple walking arm in arm and a few pigeons strutting and pecking for crumbs in the dust.
Wallis, slender and elegant, wore a scarlet Schiaparelli suit, a bejeweled flamingo brooch, and dark glasses. She sipped a Campari and soda, the ice cubes clinking against one another in her tall glass. Next to her, the Duke, slight and fair-haired, toyed with a tumbler of blood-orange juice and read
The Times
of London. He was only forty-six, but the strain from the abdication, and subsequent banishment from royal life, made him look much older.
A shadow passed over his page. The Duke looked up in annoyance, then smiled broadly when he saw who it was—Walther Shellenberg, Heinrich Himmler’s personal aide and a deputy leader of the Reich Main Security Office.
“Shel! Good to see you—sit down,” the Duke said.
“Thank you, Your Highness,” Shellenberg replied in accented English, sitting down on the delicate wire chair. The Duke and Duchess had befriended Shellenberg on their tours to Germany before the war, visiting with Prince Philip of Hesse and Adolf Hitler.
“Hello, Walther,” Wallis said.
Shellenberg removed his Nazi visor hat, with its skull and crossbones, to reveal thick brown hair parted in the center and glistening with a copious amount of Brylcreem. “Good afternoon, Your Highness. May I say you look particularly beautiful today?” he said to Wallis, a smile softening his angular features.
“Thank you, Shel,” she replied, warming to his use of
Your Highness,
which Hitler had also used when they’d visited him at the Berghof, his chalet in the Bavarian Alps. Technically, neither Hitler nor Shellenberg needed to address her that way, as she’d never been awarded HRH status by the current king, a snub indeed. His wife, Queen Elizabeth, referred to Wallis only as “that woman.”
As she offered her hand to Shellenberg to be kissed, the scent of L’heure Bleue mixed with Mitsouko—a heady mix of carnations and oakmoss, Wallis’s signature scent—wafted around her in the heat.
“They threw a rock at our window last night, Shel.” The Duke frowned. “Shattered the glass. Could have killed us.”
“I know, sir. Terrible, just terrible.” And he did know—Shellenberg himself had arranged the rock-throwing incident in order to frighten the Windsors, leaving false clues to make it look as though British Intelligence were to blame. If the Windsors were scared enough, blaming British Intelligence, they’d come around to the Nazis’ point of view, he was certain of it.
“It’s terrible,” Wallis said, smoothing her glossy black hair, cut down the middle with a narrow white part. “They hate us. The British just hate us now.”
“Now, now, dear,” Edward said, reaching over to take her hand. “It’s not the British people. It’s Churchill and his gangsters. And my brother and that wife of his. Silly old Bertie as King George VI, indeed. It’s as if I’d never been King!”
“You can’t abdicate and eat it too, dear,” Wallis said with a tight smile.
Shellenberg cleared his throat. “I’ve heard from the Führer.”
“Oh, how lovely!” Wallis exclaimed, extracting a cigarette from a gold case and fitting it in a long ivory holder. The Duke pulled out his lighter and lit it for her; she smiled up at him as she drew her first inhale.
“He gave me a number,” Shellenberg said, knowing quite well the two were having money problems since the abdication. He took a small folded piece of paper from his pocket, put it on the table, and pushed it toward the Duke. If fear alone couldn’t persuade them, perhaps money could.
The Duke of Windsor waited, simply looking at the note for a few heartbeats, then reached for it. Slowly, he picked it up and opened it. He read the number and then handed the slip over to Wallis. She examined it, arching one perfectly plucked and penciled eyebrow, then handed it back.
“Quite a bit of money, Shel,” the Duke said, pushing the paper away.
“But it’s not just about the money, sir,” Shellenberg said, placing the paper in one of the ceramic ashtrays and then lighting it, letting it burn away to ash. “Germany has taken Austria, the Sudetenland, and Poland. We have taken the Low Countries and France. When Germany invades England—and it’s just a matter of time before London falls—your people will need you.” He looked to Wallis. “Both of you. You know it’s only a matter of time now. We’re establishing air supremacy, and as soon as we take out the Royal Air Force, we’ll invade. Your younger brother, the present king, has aligned himself with Winston Churchill and his gangsters. He won’t be permitted to stay on the throne, of course.”
“Of course,” Wallis murmured. She had no love for either the King or Queen, who had never acknowledged her and, in her opinion, had taken every opportunity to humiliate her. Why her husband couldn’t have simply stayed on the throne when he’d married her, she would never understand—or forgive.
“And his daughter, Elizabeth, raised with the same propaganda her father espouses, can’t reign either, so … And then we’ll need you—
both
of you,” Shellenberg stressed, “to urge the British to accept German occupation. With you as King, and the Duchess as Queen, of course.”
“It’s not about me, Shel,” the Duke said. “We need to end the war now before thousands are killed and maimed in order to save the faces of a few corrupt politicians. Believe me, with continued heavy bombing, Britain will soon be desperate for peace. The people will panic and turn against Churchill and Eden—and the current King, too, of course. Which presents the perfect opportunity to bring me back as sovereign.” The Duke sighed. “Of course, I can’t officially support any of this, you know.”
“What other options do you have?” Shellenberg asked.
There was a long silence. The Windsors knew they were running out of opportunities.
“Bermuda,” Wallis said finally, rolling her eyes and tapping ashes into a ceramic ashtray crudely painted with a bullfighter holding up a red cape. “Churchill and the present royals want to banish us to that godforsaken little territory. Conveniently out of their way.”
“Then don’t go,” Shellenberg urged. “You have the Führer, and the British people, counting on you to step up. To be their King and Queen.”
The Duke and Duchess locked eyes. “What do you say, dear?” he asked her.
The Duchess took a moment for a long exhale, blowing out a thin stream of blue smoke. It had been a long few years for her. First there was her affair with him, when he’d been the Prince of Wales. The unexpected death of his father, King George V, had been both shocking and painful for both of them. Their relationship nearly collapsed when Edward had taken the throne, crushed by the disapproval of the rest of the royal family.
They’d thought, perhaps foolishly, that once the family got to know her better, they’d accept her. But no. The Royal family, in particular the newly crowned George VI and Queen Elizabeth, had made it overwhelmingly clear Edward would never be able to marry her, a two-time American divorcée and a close personal friend of Joachim von Ribbentrop’s, Foreign Minister of Germany, and still stay on the throne.
Edward had chosen her and abdicated—but it had nearly killed him. And it broke her heart to see him made to choose. Their love had survived, but only just. Even in the bright sunshine of Portugal, they had their good days and bad.
“We’re going to enjoy ourselves at the villa of our good friend, Ricardo do Espírito Santo Silva, for now,” she replied, finally. “If—and only if—Germany invades …” She shrugged her narrow shoulders.
“—you can count on us to do the right thing,” the Duke finished. “For the British people, of course.”
The three of them nodded.
“Excellent,” said Shellenberg, rising. “That’s what we hoped you’d say.
Heil
Hitler!”