Mr. Churchill's Secretary: A Novel Read online

  Mr. Churchill’s Secretary is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A Bantam Books eBook Edition

  Copyright © 2012 by Susan Elia MacNeal

  Excerpt from Princess Elizabeth’s Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal 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.

  BANTAM BOOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book Princess Elizabeth’s Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  MacNeal, Susan Elia.

  Mr. Churchill’s secretary : a Maggie Hope novel / Susan Elia MacNeal.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-553-90756-8

  1. Americans—England—London—Fiction. 2. Private secretaries—Fiction. 3. Churchill, Winston, 1874–1965—Fiction. 4. World War, 1939–1945—Great Britain—Fiction. 5. Nazis—Fiction. I. Title. II. Title: Maggie Hope novel.

  PS3613.A2774M7 2011

  813′.6—dc22 2011027603

  www.bantamdell.com

  Jacket design: Thomas Beck Stvan

  Jacket Illustraion: Mick Wiggins

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Historical Note

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from Princess Elizabeth’s Spy

  Dedication

  About the Author

  In wartime, truth is so precious

  that she should always be accompanied

  by a bodyguard of lies.

  —WINSTON CHURCHILL

  I read about the guts of the pioneer woman

  and the woman of the dustbowl and

  the gingham goddess of the covered wagon.

  What about the woman of the covered typewriter?

  What has she got, poor kid,

  when she leaves the office?

  —CHRISTOPHER MORLEY, Kitty Foyle

  PROLOGUE

  HALF AN HOUR before Diana Snyder died, she tidied up her desk in the typists’ office of the Cabinet War Rooms.

  She looked up at the heavy black hands of the clock on the wall and sighed. There were no windows in the War Rooms, the underground lair used by the Prime Minister’s staff, reinforced by concrete slabs and considered to be bombproof. The ceilings were low; signs warned Mind Your Head. The once-white walls had faded to a dull yellow, and the floors were covered in worn brown linoleum. Overhead were lines of drainage pipes from the Treasury. While the air was filtered by a special ventilation system, there were still lingering odors of floor wax, chemical toilets, and cigarette smoke.

  The windowless typists’ office was lit by four green-glass pendant lamps and adorned with several gas masks, along with steel helmets and whistles for air-raid drills. It was quiet in the small room, but outside, in the hall, the subterranean air was punctuated with the clatter of typewriters, conversations in low voices, and the piercing ring of telephones.

  The only evidence it was spring was the calendar on the wall. May 1940.

  May 12, 1940, to be exact. Winston Churchill had just been made Prime Minister. Armies of Nazis were marching across Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg—and it looked as though the entirety of Belgium was about to fall. If and when Belgium fell, France would be next. And after France, well, what then? Attacks on England from the air, invasion from the sea? St. Paul’s Cathedral a smoking ruin from bombs dropped from Messerschmitts and Heinkels? Red, white, and black flags with swastikas flying from the Houses of Parliament with Nazi troops goose-stepping down the Mall, through Admiralty Arch, to knock over Nelson’s Column? Would they set up military headquarters at Buckingham Palace, execute high-ranking officials at the Tower of London?

  The people to whom Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had promised “peace in our time” were now trembling on the edge of a terrifying abyss. It was a strange moment in time, a limbo-like state when the horror was fast approaching but barbarity hadn’t yet quite descended.

  Diana sighed again and pushed back a limp wave of pale hair that had held a curl when she’d begun her day, nearly sixteen hours before.

  Pulling the last sheets out of the typewriter—the special noiseless kind Mr. Churchill insisted upon when he’d taken office so that the secretaries could type directly while he dictated—Diana separated the original from the carbon and added each to its respective stack. Then she said her goodbyes to the other typists, pinning on her navy-blue straw hat, the one with the daisies and cherries.

  It was late and the sunlight was fading as Diana made her way to the bus stop. Silver barrage balloons floated high in the sky, turning pink in the slanting sun’s rays, negligible protection against threatened Nazi air raids. No lights glowed against the encroaching darkness—blackout regulations had been in effect since Neville Chamberlain had declared war almost eight months before.

  Like most Londoners, St. James’s Park was looking unkempt around the edges. The metal gates had been dug up and taken away to be melted down for munitions. Most of the grassy lawn had been turned into victory gardens. Men with pale faces and black bowler hats, carrying gas masks over their shoulders, walked with tense and hurried steps. They were leaving Whitehall or Parliament, or whatever government building covered in thick barbed wire and sandbags they reported to. There were women, too, in their gray-and-brown uniforms, carrying on with their work as secretaries and nurses and drivers.

  Diana groaned inwardly as she saw the queue for the bus that she usually took to her flat, a third-floor walkup in Pimlico.

  “Damn,” she muttered as she eyed the long line. Her mother, back in Kent, would have been aghast. No umbrella, hat pinned at a rakish angle, heels just a fraction of an inch too high. Her mother always complained about t
he way Diana dressed. Sweaters too tight, lipstick too bright, curfew too late—and this was before Diana had moved to London. That was the last straw. No respectable young woman went to London to work, even for the P.M. Especially for this P.M. Better to stay in Kent, playing tennis and bridge, rolling bandages and knitting socks for soldiers, until the right young man from a proper family came along. Of course, these days, any so-called “proper young man” was going to be in the army, navy, or air force.

  Diana stood still for a moment, contemplating her options, her delicate features momentarily creased with worry. She had her mother’s face, she’d have to admit—the sparkling eyes, the high cheekbones, and the tiny, pointed chin. Normally, despite the war and threat of invasion, she wasn’t one to worry. She was well-off financially. She had a large circle of what her mother would call “the right sort” of friends. She had a number of “the wrong sort” of beaux—which were just right for the present moment.

  “Damn,” she repeated. She looked up at the darkening sky, then back toward the bus stop. She’d never get on the next bus; she’d be lucky to get the one after that. So she decided to walk, a good half-hour to forty-five minutes, in the dark.

  Her mother would be appalled, of course.

  Diana took off at a brisk clip, heels tapping smartly on the pavement. The sun gave its final golden explosion and then sank past the horizon, leaving a few clouds of rosy gray. The winds picked up, and she shivered, ducking her head down and keeping a firm grip on her pocketbook.

  After the sunset, blackout swallowed her. Her mother, terrified of the city, was always ringing to warn her about rapists and muggers. Diana had laughed and told her not to worry. London was her city; she’d be fine. More than fine, in fact. Still, she shivered again in the damp darkness. She thought of the small flat she shared with two other girls. With work and parties and dates, they all kept irregular hours. No one expected her home at any particular time.

  Her killers knew this.

  She heard the heavy footsteps behind her and walked just that much faster in the inky darkness, her heels making a delicate staccato rhythm on the pavement. Instinctively, she pulled her twill coat around her and gripped her handbag even tighter.

  She heard the heavy pounding of the man’s boots as they hit the pavement, faster now. Diana sensed it—the primal smell of danger. He was the hunter, and she was the prey. She tried to search the gloom for a policeman or an air-raid warden. But there was nothing and no one. She began to run, her breath burning in her lungs, feet squeezed by her pumps.

  Diana turned around, her heart drumming, ready to scream—when she heard a car’s engine rattle behind her. The Humber coupe’s large, round headlights were covered by blackout slats. As it passed, she nearly choked on the noxious exhaust fumes.

  The car pulled up to the curb in front of her, liberally covered with thick, white paint visible in the blackout, and stopped.

  “Are you all right?” came a breathy voice through the car’s window.

  In the faint gleam of the rising moon, Diana could see that the driver was female, a young girl like herself. She breathed a sigh of relief.

  She looked behind her for whoever had been following her—and saw nothing in the shadows. You silly ninny, she thought, imagining ghosts and goblins at your age. Probably just some poor man trying to get home to his wife and children. Serves you right for not waiting for the bus.

  “Fine, thanks,” she said, approaching the car. “Just a bit spooked there for a moment.” In the murky darkness she could now see that the girl was in her early twenties, with a blue Hermès silk scarf tied smartly around her neck.

  The girl assessed the skies. “Need a lift? I’m heading to Pimlico—you’re welcome to ride along if you’d like.”

  Without hesitation, Diana ran to the passenger’s side and got in. “Oh, thanks so much. There was such a long queue at the bus stop, and then there’s the blackout—”

  The driver smiled as Diana settled herself in the leather seat. “Not to mention high heels.”

  “Well, you know, a girl’s got to make some sacrifices for beauty during this damn war.”

  “And don’t we all know it.” They laughed together as the car wound its way through the shadowed streets.

  “My name’s Diana, by the way.”

  “And mine’s Claire,” the other girl replied. “Pleased to meet you.”

  At last, they reached Diana’s flat, a brick terrace house. She looked up at the building—one of her flatmates had a light on—and had forgotten to close the blackout curtain. There’ll be a fine for that, Diana thought absently. “By the way,” she asked Claire, “how did you know I lived here?”

  Those were her last words.

  There was the sound of heavy boots on the pavement, and the car’s door opened with a sudden jerk.

  Diana turned and looked up at a tall man wearing a black woolen mask. The only part of his face she could see were his eyes, cold and unblinking. He was muscular but lean and wore leather gloves on his hands. “Get out,” he said.

  Diana did as she was told, in a fog of shock. “Turn around,” he barked. “Hands on the roof of the car.”

  Diana looked to Claire and saw that her face was set; she was part of what was happening. Heart in her throat, breathing shallow and labored, her armpits damp with fear, she turned and placed her hands on the roof of the car.

  Without preamble, she felt the hot shock of the metal blade as it pierced through her flesh and could hear the tearing as it went through cloth and skin and muscle.

  There was pain, more pain than she’d ever thought possible, and she fell to the street, her cheek lying against the hard pavement. She gave a few gasps.

  And then a cloud of benevolent black velvet closed around her.

  ONE

  “I WOULD SAY to the House, as I’ve said to those who have joined this Government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and suffering,” intoned Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill to the House of Commons and the British nation in his first speech as the new Prime Minister.

  There must have been complete silence in the House, although there was a burst of static over the airwaves as Maggie leaned forward to listen to the BBC on the wireless. She and Paige sat at the kitchen table and clasped hands, listening to the address. Charlotte, better known as Chuck, entered the kitchen quietly and leaned against the door frame.

  “You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim?

  “I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. Let that be realised; no survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages, that mankind will move forward towards its goal.”

  Chuck nodded her acknowledgment of both girls. Together they all listened to the speech’s conclusion in tense silence.

  “But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say, ‘Come then, let us go forward together with our united strength.’ ”

  The three girls were perfectly still and silent for a moment, as the words’ gravity washed over them.

  “Well, at least it’s the truth,” Maggie said, pushing back a stray lock of red hair. “He didn’t try to pretend everything’s all right and fob us off with easy comfort and lies.”

  “I just don’t know,” Chuck said to both girls as a tinny version of “God Save the King” played, and she walked over to click off the wireless.

  �
��Look what happened in Poland. Look what’s happening in Belgium and Holland and France,” Paige said. “Maybe Ambassador Kennedy was right. He said Hitler doesn’t want England. And if we’d just—”

  Chuck gave a snort. “Oh, right. And then they’ll stop? You really believe that?”

  “This is a different kind of war,” Maggie said. “A people’s war. It’s not just soldiers on the front line, it’s civilians. We are the new front line.” As she said the words, her chest constricted a bit. It was true. England might still be in the “Bore War,” where nothing dangerous was really happening, but things were about to change. Nazis had invaded most of Europe and were undoubtedly moving toward England. Would troops try to invade by sea or parachute down from the sky? Either way, the scenario was grim.

  “Yeah,” said Chuck. “We’re as likely to be bombed here in our own home as the soldiers over in France.”

  “Stop it!” Paige said, covering her ears. “Just stop!”

  Chuck frowned and pulled her bottle-green cardigan sweater around her, rather like a general settling his uniform before going once more unto the breach. “Tea,” she stated in her deep, booming voice, deliberately changing the subject. “We all need tea. There’ll be no blood, toil, tears, or sweat until I have some goddamned tea.”

  That was Chuck, practical and pragmatic. More handsome than beautiful, with rich chestnut-brown hair, strong features, and thick black eyelashes, Chuck McCaffrey had worked for U.S. Ambassador Joseph Kennedy, along with Paige Kelly, before the war had started.

  Maggie Hope had come to London for another reason altogether—to sell her late grandmother’s great leaking, creaking pile of a Victorian house. But when Britain declared war, and Joseph Kennedy began being quoted in the papers spouting pro-Nazi sentiments, both Paige and Chuck both quit their jobs with the Ambassador—and lost their Embassy housing. Maggie, admiring their resolve, invited them to move in, and they gratefully acquiesced.