Grace
New York, 1946
Grace gasped as the door to the apartment opened. “Marie Roux?”
The woman’s eyes flickered. Her eyes bore a bit of fear, but something more…resignation. “Yes.”
For a moment, Grace was frozen with disbelief. She had spent so much of the last few weeks seeing Marie’s image, first in the weathered photograph and later, after she had returned it, in her mind’s eye. Now the woman was standing before her, come to life. There were little changes since the photo had been taken, faint lines around the mouth and eyes. Her cheeks were a bit more sunken and the hair around her temples bore strains of premature gray, as if she had aged lifetimes in a few short years.
“Who are you?” the woman asked. Her English accent, refined but not overly posh, was exactly as Grace had imagined.
Grace faltered, unsure how to explain her role in the affair. “I’m Grace Healey. I found some photographs and I thought…” She stopped and pulled out the lone photo she’d kept.
“Oh!” Marie brought her hand to her mouth. “That was Josie.”
“May I come in?” Grace interjected gently.
Marie looked up. “Please do.” She ushered Grace inside and led her to a small sofa. The apartment, no larger than Grace’s own room at the boardinghouse, was clean and bright, but the furnishings were spare and there were no photographs or other mementos adorning it. There was a door at the rear and through the opening she could see a tiny bedroom. Grace wondered if Marie hadn’t been here long or, like herself with her own flat, simply hadn’t made the place into her home.
Marie held up the photograph. “Is this the only one?”
“There were others, including yours, but I left them at the British consulate. I’ve been trying to get these photos returned to the right person,” Grace explained. “Is that you?”
“I don’t know.” Marie looked genuinely uncertain. “I suppose I’m the only one left.”
How? Grace wanted to ask. Marie had been listed among those killed as part of Nacht und Nebel. But the question seemed too intrusive. “Can you tell me what happened during the war?” she asked instead.
“You know that I was an agent for SOE?” Marie asked. Grace nodded. “I was recruited by a woman called Eleanor Trigg, because I spoke French well.” Grace considered interrupting Marie to tell her about Eleanor, then decided against it. “After training, I was dropped into northern France to work as a radio operator for a part of F Section called the Vesper circuit.” Marie had a lyrical, looping style of speech and it was not hard to imagine her speaking fluently in French. “Our leader was a man called Julian. We blew up a bridge before D-Day in order to make things harder for the Germans.
“But somehow our cell was compromised and we were all arrested, or at least Julian and I were. They shot Julian.” Marie’s face crumbled at this last part, and she almost seemed to relive it as she remembered. Grace’s heart ached for this poor woman, who had been through so much. “I was interrogated in Paris, then sent to prison. I found Josie again there, but she was too far gone to make it.” The grief in her words poured forth, as though she had never shared it before with anyone.
“Josie was another agent?”
Marie dabbed at her eyes. “And my dearest friend. We were put on a train, bound for one of the camps. Josie managed to detonate a grenade and blow up the railcar. After the explosion, I lost consciousness. I awoke weeks later in a barn. The Germans had missed me, or left me for dead. A German farmer found me under the railcar rubble and hid me. I stayed there until I was strong enough. By then, the invasion had come so I found a British unit and told them who I was.”
“And then?”
“Then I went home. My train arrived at King’s Cross. There was no one to meet me. I wasn’t expecting a parade; no one knew that I was coming. So I went and collected my daughter, Tess. We boarded a boat for America straightaway.”
“So you never went back to SOE?”
“Only once. I asked the Director for help expediting our papers to get to America. There was no one left. Eleanor had been dismissed. The others were all gone.”
There was a sudden clattering at the door to the apartment and a girl of not more than eight walked in. “Mummy!” she said with just a hint of an English accent, throwing herself into her mother’s outstretched arms.
Then she pulled back to look questioningly at Grace. “You must be Tess,” Grace offered. The child looked so much like her mother that Grace had to smile. “And I’m…” She faltered, not sure how to explain her presence here to the girl.
“A friend,” Marie finished for her.
Tess seemed satisfied with the explanation. “Mum, my friend Esther in apartment 5J invited me over to play and stay for dinner. May I go?”
“Be home by seven,” Marie replied. “And give me one more hug first.” Tess folded herself into her mother’s outstretched arms for a fleeting second, then bolted for the door. “I’ll never take for granted getting to see her every day,” Marie said to Grace when Tess had gone.
Marie stood up. “I have more photos,” she added, shifting topics abruptly. She walked to an armoire and pulled out a yellowed album. She handed it over hesitantly. Unlike the staid photographs that Eleanor had possessed, these were candid shots and they played out like a movie of the time the circuit had spent together. There was a snapshot of young men playing rugby in a field, another of a group around a table drinking wine. They might have been at Oxford or Cambridge, not on a mission in France. “The boys, they took photos on the tiny little camera we’d been given during training. I pulled the film off Julian that last day. And I kept it in places they would never think to look. Only when I reached America did I have it developed.”
“Wasn’t it dangerous to take these?”
She shrugged. “Certainly. But it’s so very hard to explain what those months in the field were like. It was worth the risk. Someone needed to know.”
In case none of them made it, Grace thought. She imagined the loneliness and terror, how much these bits of camaraderie must have meant. “That’s Julian?” Grace asked.
“Yes. And Will beside him, always. You would not have known they were cousins,” Marie said. Two young men not more than twenty or so. One was fair, with a smattering of freckles and a quick smile. The other was tall with sharp cheekbones and dark, piercing eyes. In another picture, he looked down lovingly at Marie. “He seemed fond of you,” Grace observed.
“Yes,” Marie said quickly, seeming almost embarrassed. “He loved me,” Marie said, her voice full with emotion. “And I, him. I suppose it seems strange that our feelings developed so quickly in such a short time,” she added.
“Not at all,” Grace replied.
“I watched him die,” Marie added. “Held him in my arms. It was all I could do.”
“That must have been terrible.” Grace reflected on how awful it had been, losing Tom. But to have witnessed it, as Marie had, would have been unbearable. “And his cousin, Will?”
“I honestly don’t know. He was supposed to fly back to France and pick me up, but I was arrested. I tried to find out what became of him before I left London. But he had disappeared.” Her face was grave, and Grace could tell the mystery of what had become of Will haunted her as much as losing Julian and Josie.
“When was all of this?”
“May of 1944.”
“Just weeks before D-Day.”
“We did not last to see it.” The work that Vesper circuit had done blowing up rail lines and arming maquisards had surely stopped many German troops from reaching Normandy and the other beaches faster. They saved the lives of hundreds if not thousands of Allied troops who might have had the Germans there waiting for them. But most never knew the difference they had made.
“We were betrayed,” Marie said bluntly. “When I was arrested and taken to Avenue Foch, they had one of our radios and they forced me to broadcast back to London. I tried to omit my true check, the code I was supposed to give to verify my identity, in order to signal to London that something was amiss. But they ignored my signal—in fact, they broadcast back that I had left it out, which was what ultimately caused the Germans to shoot Julian. It was as if the British knew the radio was compromised but wanted to keep transmitting anyway.”
“Do you have any idea who might have betrayed you?” Grace asked. She dreaded telling Marie that it had been Eleanor, and half hoped she might already know or have guessed.
“Before leaving London, I asked Colonel Winslow—he was the Director of SOE, Eleanor’s boss. At first he tried to deny that there was any betrayal at headquarters at all. But when I confronted him with everything I knew from the field, he suggested that it was Eleanor. He showed me a memo from Eleanor’s desk that ordered the radio transmissions to keep going even after London knew the broadcasts had been intercepted.” Marie’s eyes filled with tears. “I could hardly imagine it. It didn’t make sense.”
“So you didn’t believe it was Eleanor?”
Marie shook her head emphatically. “No, never. Not in a million years.” Grace was puzzled. Marie herself had seen the document, which seemed to implicate Eleanor. Was Marie so blinded by loyalty? “Why not?”
“When I saw Julian for the last time at SD headquarters, he had just returned from London, where he’d seen Eleanor. He told me before he died that Eleanor had been worried about the radios. She specifically worried that there was something wrong with the transmissions and warned me to be careful. Of course, by then it was too late. But she tried to warn me. That’s how I know she wasn’t behind it.”
“But if not her, then who?”
“I don’t know. Colonel Winslow told me to go to America and find a fresh start, to not look back. So I did. I sent him my address as he asked and he sends a stipend check monthly. I thought I had put it all behind me. At least until the message from Eleanor came.” Marie walked to a closet and opened it to reveal the suitcase Grace had last seen in Grand Central.
Grace was stunned. “You had it all along.”
“Eleanor had wired me that she was coming to New York.”
“How did she find you?”
“The Director, I’d imagine. He knew I was coming to New York and had arranged the paperwork. It wouldn’t be so very hard to find me. And Eleanor was very good.” Grace nodded. Finally she understood why Eleanor had come to New York. “In her telegram, Eleanor asked me to meet her at Grand Central. Part of me didn’t want to see her,” Marie added. “It was a very painful chapter of my life and I had put it away forever—or so I thought.”
“So you didn’t go to meet her?”
“No, I went. I couldn’t stay away. The telegram asked me to meet her at eight thirty. But my daughter, Tess, got sick and was home from school. It was after nine o’clock by the time I could get someone to watch her so I could make it to the station, and by then Eleanor wasn’t there. I figured she would try to contact me again. Eleanor was very persistent that way. But I couldn’t find her, so I left. Later that day, when I learned what had happened, I went back.”
“That’s when you took the suitcase.”
“Yes. I had seen it there that morning, but didn’t get close enough to notice that it belonged to Eleanor. Only later, after I heard the news, did I put two plus two together and realized it was hers. After what happened, I couldn’t just leave it there.”
“Do you mind if I look inside her suitcase?”
Marie shook her head. “I haven’t opened it yet. I couldn’t bear to.”
Grace laid the suitcase down on its side and undid the clasp. Inside, Eleanor’s belongings remained neat, untouched. Grace scanned the contents, taking care not to disturb them. At the back, nearly buried, was a pair of white baby shoes.
“Those are mine,” Marie said suddenly, reaching for them. “That is, they belonged to my daughter. Eleanor had no children. But she had these for my safekeeping.”
“So she brought them with her for sentimental value?”
Marie smiled. “Eleanor had no sentiment. She did everything with purpose.” She turned the shoes upside down and as she did, a metal chain fell out of one of them. Marie retrieved it from the floor. “My necklace.” She held up a chain with a butterfly locket. “Eleanor kept it safe for me after all.” She batted back tears as she secured the necklace around her neck. Then she studied the baby shoes again, a look of realization spreading across her face. She started working at the bottom of one of the soles with practiced fingers. “Shoes are some of the best hiding places.”
Inside the heel was a tiny piece of paper. Marie unfolded it carefully and showed it to Grace. It was a mimeograph of the order Grace had found in the file. Grace reached into the suitcase to see what else Eleanor might have brought. She pulled out a small notebook. “She always had a notebook,” Marie remarked, smiling at the memory.
Grace flipped through the pages. “There’s to be a parliamentary hearing on what happened to the girls. And look…” She pointed to one of Eleanor’s notations: “Need Marie to substantiate the Director’s role.”
“So she wasn’t coming to tell me what happened. She needed my help to prove that she had nothing to do with the radio game.”
“Do you believe her?”
Marie brushed the hair from her eyes. “Absolutely. The Director’s story never made sense. Julian told me before he died that Eleanor was worried about the radios and they wouldn’t let her cease transmissions. Whoever did this, it wasn’t her.” Marie’s face fell. “Eleanor needed me and I failed her. And now it’s too late.”
“Maybe not,” Grace said suddenly, an idea forming. In the end, Eleanor had died fighting for her girls, just as she had in life.
“But of course it is. Eleanor’s dead.”
“Yes. But what did she want more than anything?”
“To learn the truth.”
“No, to make sure the world knew. She died too soon to tell them. But we can do it for her.” Grace stood, holding her hand out to Marie. “Come with me.”