somehow a sign: time to move on. She needed to put the matter of the girls behind her and focus on her job and her life here. Nothing to do but move forward.
She would return the photos to the consulate, Grace decided. She pulled them out to look at them a final time. She knew that the girls had been killed and that Eleanor had betrayed them. She would never know why, and she had taken the matter as far as she could. Her part in it was over. It would have to be enough.
* * *
On Monday morning at nine, Grace stood in front of the British consulate once more. Time to return the photos and get to work. Inside, the same receptionist sat at the desk. “Ah, Ms....”
“Healey,” Grace finished for her, not at all surprised that the woman did not remember her name.
“You’re back,” the receptionist noted, sounding none too pleased.
“Yes. I was wondering if you had learned anything more about Eleanor Trigg.” Though Grace had come to return the photos, she could not help but be curious.
The receptionist hesitated, as if unsure whether to answer. “The police returned Miss Trigg’s personal effects to us.” Grace had been so focused on the suitcase and its contents, she hadn’t considered any possessions Eleanor might have had on her when she died. “We’re still looking for a next of kin.”
A flicker of hope rose in Grace and she tried to tamp it down. She should go. It was time to walk away. But she had come this far; she needed to know. “Can I see them?” she asked in spite of herself. “Her effects, I mean.” She expected the receptionist to refuse.
“Why? These are her personal belongings. You aren’t a relative.”
“Because I’ve spent the past several days trying to find out more about Eleanor. I’m not asking to take them, just to see what she was carrying.” The receptionist looked unmoved and Grace was certain she would refuse. “Please. It will only take a minute. Perhaps I can help you figure out where they should go.”
“Fine,” the receptionist relented at last. “I suppose if you find someone, it will save us a lot of paperwork for the death certificate, that sort of thing.” To her, Eleanor was still nothing more than a bureaucratic hassle. She produced a large envelope. “Put everything back just as you found it.”
Grace opened the envelope. There were a few dollar bills and some reading glasses, shattered into pieces from the impact of the crash. A dark blue passport was nearly bent in two. Grace picked it up and paged through it carefully. The passport, despite the damage, looked relatively new. It bore entry stamps for France and Germany just weeks prior to Eleanor’s arrival in America. Eleanor had been traveling in the days before she came here. But why?
“Thank you,” Grace said, and returned the passport to the envelope. She pulled out the photographs and started to hand them to the receptionist. But something made her pause.
“Do you want to keep them?” the woman asked, noticing Grace’s hesitation.
Grace shook her head. “They aren’t mine anymore.” But then she thought better of it. She handed over all but the picture of the dark-eyed girl, Josie, a souvenir from the journey she had never expected.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Eleanor
London, 1946
The knock came unexpectedly at the door to Eleanor’s house before dawn. “There’s a car here for you,” her mother called. Eleanor’s mother had said mercifully little about her daughter’s departure more than a year and a half earlier from the government job she’d never thought suitable in the first place. Surprised, Eleanor peered out the window. At the sight of the familiar black Austin, her heartbeat quickened. She was being summoned back to headquarters. But why, after all this time?
Eleanor dressed carefully and quickly, fingers trembling as she buttoned the crisp white blouse that, along with her navy skirt, had served as an almost-uniform during her days at SOE. She approached the black Austin that idled silently at the curb outside her flat. A thin finger of smoke curled from the driver’s-side window, mixing with the low fog. “Dodds,” she said, using his name as greeting. She smiled at the familiar silhouette, black bowler hat drawn low over his white fringe of hair that she had not seen in more than a year and a half. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“The Director,” he said simply, and that was enough for Eleanor. She climbed in the back