Kent—April 1944

AT CESS’S QUESTION, MONCRIEFF SLOWED THE CAR, AND Prism twisted around to look at them. “Well, are you a spy?” Cess asked Ernest.

“Yes, Worthing,” Prism said, looking back at them from the front seat of the staff car. “Are you a German spy?”

“If I were,” Ernest said lightly, “I’d be working for our side, like all the other German spies.”

“All the spies we’ve caught,” Moncrieff said, without taking his eyes from the road. “Lady Bracknell evidently thinks there are some we haven’t caught, hence the memorandum.”

“So Bracknell thinks one of us is a spy?” Cess asked.

“No, of course not,” Prism said, “but this is a dangerous time. If the Germans were to find out that the First Army’s a hoax and we’re invading at Normandy instead of Calais—”

“Shh.” Cess put his finger to his lips. “For all we know, Moncrieff here is sending secret messages to the enemy. Or you are, Worthing. You’re always typing up letters to the editor. How do we know some of them don’t have secret codes in them?”

I have to get them off this subject, Ernest thought. “I think the bull’s your man,” he said. “He looked exactly like Heinrich Himmler. Is that Mofford House?”

“Where?” Cess said. “I can’t see anything.”

“There, beyond the trees,” Ernest said, pointing at nothing, and the three of them spent the next quarter of an hour attempting to catch sight of it, after which Cess spotted a turret and then the gates.

“I say,” Cess said as they drove in through them, “one can’t have a hospital without nurses. Have we got some?”

“Yes,” Moncrieff said. “Gwendolyn set it up.”

“Are they the same girls who helped us when we did the oil-refinery opening?” Cess asked. “The ones from ENSA?”

“No,” Moncrieff said. “These are the real thing. Gwendolyn borrowed them from the same hospital that lent us the beds.”

Ernest looked up alertly. “The hospital in Dover?”

“Yes, and don’t get any notions of flirting with them. There’ll be all sorts of higher-ups and Special Means people here. I don’t want any trouble.”

I don’t either, Ernest thought, and the moment they pulled up in front of the manor house, he snatched up his nightclothes and the boxes of bandages and took off for the house.

It was obvious why they’d chosen Mofford House. It had a moat and a distinctive turreted tower that the Germans would recognize, even though his newspaper story would say only, “One of England’s stately homes, whose name cannot be disclosed for security reasons, has been converted to a military hospital.”

He hobbled quickly across the drawbridge, hoping that since today this was supposed to be a hospital, he wouldn’t run into a butler at the door who’d demand to know where he was going.

He didn’t—only two soldiers attempting to wedge a hospital bed through the door. Beyond them he could see an entry hall and, off to the side, the room which was posing as the ward today. Inside it stood a cluster of older men in officers’ uniforms and several white-clad nurses.

He squeezed past the wedged bed, keeping out of their sight, down a corridor, and into the nearest unoccupied room, which turned out to be the dining room. He shut the door, wedged chairs against it, and, using the mirror above the sideboard, began winding bandages around his head.

He emerged ten minutes later in pajamas, robe, and slippers, his head and both hands swathed in bandages. “Where have you been?” Prism asked. “And what are you doing in that getup? You look like an escapee from an Egyptian tomb.”

Ernest pulled him off to the side. “You said they’d be taking photographs, and my picture was already in the newspapers from the opening of Camp Omaha. If the Germans see me in more than one photo, they’ll spot a fraud.”

“You’re right. Good show. Was Cess in the photo?”

“He wasn’t there. He was off doing dummy landing craft.”

“Good, then he can be the broken foot. Go help bring in the wheelchairs.”

Ernest did and then carried two oil paintings, three watercolors, and an antique writing table upstairs for Lady Mofford, made up the hospital beds, bandaged several other “patients,” and helped lay out tea in the library.

The tea included sandwiches, and he ate two, hid four more for Cess inside the bandages on his hands, and went to find him. Cess said, “You look like Boris Karloff in The Mummy. And don’t try to convince me you did it to keep from being recognized in the photo. I know the real reason.”

“You do?” Ernest asked cautiously.

“Yes. You didn’t want to be stuck in an itchy plaster cast all afternoon.”

“You’re right. You can have my wheelchair, and I’ll do the crutches,” he offered, then regretted it. The crutches dug into his armpits, the afternoon turned beastly hot, and he began to sweat under his bandages.

And the Queen was three-quarters of an hour late. “She’s royalty,” Moncrieff said when Ernest complained. “She can keep us waiting, just not the other way round. Why don’t you spend the time writing up those articles you said were due?”

“I can’t.” He held up his bandaged hands.

“That’s not my fault. You were the one who decided to come as the ghost of King Tut. I don’t know why you felt it necessary to use so much bandage.”

Neither do I, he thought. Especially since it had turned out to be a false alarm. The hospital in Dover hadn’t been able to spare any nurses. These were from Ramsgate. He considered taking the facial bandages off, but just then the Queen—a stout, sweet-faced woman in pale blue—arrived along with a half dozen photographers from the London papers, and the affair commenced.

“You never did tell me how to address her,” Ernest whispered to Prism, who was in the bed next to him as they proceeded down the row.

“You don’t say anything unless she asks you a direct question,” Prism whispered. “And then it’s ‘Your Majesty.’ Shh. Here she comes.”

He should have asked him if she knew this was a hoax or not. It was impossible to tell. She spoke to the “patients” as if they actually had been injured in battle, asking them what unit they were with and where they were from. If she did know, she was doing an excellent job of acting. We could use her in Special Means, he thought.

The entire thing was over by half past two. The Queen declined to stay to tea and left at a quarter past, and the photographers took a few more pictures and departed. He could still make it to Croydon if they left now.

He put the case to Moncrieff. “All right,” Moncrieff said. “We’ll leave as soon as we’ve loaded the beds back onto the lorry.”

“And got me out of this plaster,” Cess said.

The former was no problem—they had the lorry loaded and off by three. But Cess’s plaster cast was another matter. Both tin snips and a hacksaw failed to work.

“Can’t we do this back at the post?” Ernest asked, but they couldn’t get Cess through the door of the car with the cast on. A servant had to fetch a hammer and chisel.

It was nearly seven before they got home. “We’d better not have to blow up any more tanks tonight,” Cess said, limping inside.

They didn’t, but Ernest had to write up the hospital event for the London papers and then phone it in, and it was past ten before he was able to start in on his own news articles. It was much too late for Croydon, but he’d made Moncrieff feel guilty enough about it on the way home that he’d promised to let him drive them over to Bexhill to meet the Village Gazette’s deadline, which meant he’d have an entire afternoon to do what he needed to do unobserved.

He rolled a new sheet of paper in the typewriter and typed the letter he’d thought up about the bull, and then an ad for a dentist in Hawkhurst. “New patients welcome. Specializes in American dental techniques.”

Cess leaned in the door. “Still at it?”

“Yes, and if you’re here to ask me to go blow up an aircraft carrier, the answer’s no,” he said, continuing to type in the hope that Cess would take the hint and go away, but he didn’t.

“I think I’m permanently crippled,” Cess said, coming in and perching on the desk. “It was worth it, though, to get to meet the Queen. D’you know what she said to me? She thanked me for my bravery in battle. Wasn’t that nice?”

“It would have been if you’d actually been in battle,” Ernest said, continuing to type.

“I was, when they were trying to get that plaster off my foot. And in that pasture with that bull last night. What did she say to you?”

“She asked me to elope. She said The Mummy was her favorite film and asked me to run off to Gretna Green with her.”

“All right, don’t tell me,” Cess said. “I’m off to bed.” He left and then leaned back in the door. “I’ll get it out of you eventually, you know.”

No, you won’t, Ernest thought, though Cess wouldn’t know what it meant if he did tell him, and she had probably told hundreds of soldiers the same thing. But it had cut a little too close to the bone.

He waited five minutes, typing up the fictitious wedding of Agnes Brown of Brixton to Corporal William Stokowski of Topeka, Kansas, “currently serving with the 29th Armored Division,” till he was sure Cess had really gone to bed. Then he took the manila envelope from the bottom drawer of the desk and rolled the story he’d been writing yesterday into the typewriter. But he didn’t begin to type. Instead, he stared at the keys and thought about the Queen and her words to him.

“Your King appreciates your sacrifice and your devotion to duty,” she’d said. “He and I are grateful for the important work you are doing.”