German agent?
I think most people would have given up at that point. After all, what could we do?
But the people in that room were made of stronger stuff than that. The major, Uncle Mick, Felix, Kimble, and I were a motley group, but we all had one thing in common: dogged determination. We weren’t going to go down without a fight.
“There’s got to be some way,” I said.
No one answered.
My mind was whirling, a thousand thoughts coming all at once. There was something, something important, nagging in a corner of my brain. I tried to recall what Matthew Winthrop had said to me that night at the party. There was something he had said, some little thing that had lodged itself in the back of my mind, something that had seemed familiar.
And then suddenly I realized what it was. I looked up, triumphant. “He’s going to Torquay.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Major Ramsey looked at me sharply. “Why Torquay?” he asked. There was no doubt in his tone, just that professional voice he used when he was being a commanding officer. I imagined he probably gave that same look to whomever had done reconnaissance in the desert or whatever sort of stuff he had done in North Africa.
“Sir Nigel has a beach house there, called Larksong,” I explained, putting the pieces together. “I saw it in a newspaper once. Then, at the party, Matthew Winthrop was telling me about a poem he had written. ‘Lark’s Song in the Evening,’ I thought he said. But it wasn’t about a bird. It was about a place. He’s been to Larksong and probably plans to go again.”
“It makes sense,” the major said. “I’ve thought from the beginning that there was someone bigger than Winthrop behind this, someone more powerful.”
I nodded. “Sir Nigel is the obvious option. And his nephew was killed in a car crash coming back from a stay in Torquay. Now I think the nephew must have discovered something he wasn’t meant to and was killed.”
How horribly callous to have killed his own nephew. I supposed, though, that he had got Jerome Curtis to do the dirty work.
The major was looking at me, wondering, I imagined, just how I had come by all this information.
“I did some research at the Newspaper Library,” I said.
“Did the papers say where the beach house is located, Ellie?” Uncle Mick asked, pulling my attention away from the major’s searching gaze.
I shook my head.
“It’s actually on a cliff just past Torquay,” Kimble said. “A secluded spot on the coast.” Apparently, he was up on the details of Sir Nigel’s life as well.
“Just the sort of place for a drop, I should think,” Felix said.
The major paused for just a moment, as though running the options through his head. Then he nodded. “All right. We’ll go to Torquay.”
He opened a drawer and pulled out his service revolver. I blinked. The gun was necessary, I supposed, but it was startling to see the easy way he handled the weapon. It was a reminder that there was an experienced military man, toughened by desert service, that lay behind the major’s polished exterior.
I wasn’t the only one who had an eye on the weapon.
“Are you still going to try to switch out the papers, lad?” Uncle Mick asked, wondering if violence was now our only option. “Or is it too late for that?”
“I don’t know,” Major Ramsey said. “It depends on whether we get there in time.”
“He can’t have much of a head start on us,” Felix said. “If we beat him there, we may be able to find a way.”
“He’s likely to have taken the train,” Kimble added. “If we take the car, we might be able to get to Torquay before he does.”
“I don’t think there need be a rush,” Uncle Mick said easily, and we all turned to look at him. “If he’s bringing handwritten papers as proof, he’s going to have to pass them off directly to a German agent, am I right? And in a seaside town, that’s most likely to be by boat. And no German agent’s going to row to shore in broad daylight.”
“Yes,” Ramsey said. “You’re right. We should have until nightfall.”
Silence fell for just a moment as we waited for the major to issue his orders. It didn’t take long.
“Kimble, you’ll come with me,” he said. “Lacey, I’ll need you to come along to write the letter if we can somehow manage to get our hands on it. McDonnell, I think you should come, too.