Daughters Of Eden: The Eden Series Book 1 (42 page)

When Marjorie returned after her lunchtime break she found Jack Ward in Major Folkestone's office, together with a short, wire-haired and bespectacled man she recognised as Nigel Greene from C Section. Seeing there was some sort of conference in progress Marjorie excused herself and went to leave the men alone, only to be summoned back immediately by Major Folkestone.

‘It's all right, Marjorie,' he said. ‘We're nearly finished. Not that there's any cause for privacy, because we seem to have drawn a bit of a blank here.'

Marjorie glanced at Jack Ward who was too busy to take any notice of her since he was carefully studying a leather-bound journal he had in his hand, turning over page after page as if in search of some solution.

‘As I said' – Nigel Greene took off his glasses and cleaned them on the end of his tie – ‘I thought it was some really, really smart code – that he'd invented some sort of impenetrable screen through which we couldn't pass. At least I must say I did hope so.'

Jack frowned, looking up now first at Nigel Greene then round at Major Folkestone.

‘No,' he said after a thoughtful silence. ‘No, I don't think lightning ever strikes the same tree twice, as the old saw has it.'

‘You see all these strokes, do you?' Nigel continued, pointing out the markings on the page that Jack Ward had been examining. ‘They all go in slightly different directions, which made us think that it had to be coded – and that all these various strokes at their various angles represented the next layer, the first level of the code if you like. But they don't. It's a red herring. Devised to put us off – or waste our time.'

‘Or both,' Jack added, looking up at him briefly. ‘But then why go to all that trouble? To fill a journal – what is it? Two hundred odd pages? With thousands and thousands of these lines – all painstakingly done. No fudged work this – it would have taken Tetherington hours and hours. Yet you say it's a marsh light. A device to throw us – or whoever got hold of this journal when they shouldn't have done – but why? If the book
contains nothing of any sense at all, if it is just a mass of meaningless hieroglyphics, what's the point? Why lock it away in a safe – and why should all hell break loose when it was nicked? Tell me that, somebody, if you will.'

Major Folkestone frowned deeply, thought for a long time then raised his eyebrows and shrugged hopelessly.

‘Haven't the faintest, sir,' he said. ‘Not a clue.'

‘Maybe there was something else in the safe, sir,' Greene suggested. ‘And when this book was stolen they thought the real prize had gone.'

‘No,' Jack Ward replied immediately. ‘Before they set off after us they had time to look into the safe and see what was gone. If there had been anything else there they'd have seen it then. But since this was
all
that was taken – and since all hell followed on hard – we have to assume this book was and still is the real prize.'

‘Yes, I think you have to be right, sir,' Marjorie ventured carefully, earning a look of slow surprise from Jack who had barely been aware of her presence.

‘Marjorie?' he wondered. ‘You have something to say on the matter?'

‘Don't think this absurd—'

‘We won't,' Jack interrupted. ‘In this job the absurd is more often than not the answer. So go on.'

‘It's just I remember reading a story to Billy once, when he was a bit younger – it was in one of his comics, as I remember it.'

‘A comic?' Major Folkestone snorted lightly.

‘It was a Sexton Blake adventure, as I also remember it,' Marjorie went on with her usual
stubbornness, because when it came to theories she was a dog with a bone, and would never let go.

‘As a matter of fact I like Sexton Blake,' Jack admitted, staring with sudden interest at Marjorie. ‘Good stuff, actually.'

‘Well, in this story, they were looking for some vital clue – or evidence, I can't remember what precisely, and I don't suppose it matters. The point is there was this old volume – a large heavily bound book – it played some vital role or other, and Sexton Blake I think it was – or it might have been his assistant …'

‘Go on,' Jack encouraged her, as she tailed off, feeling suddenly embarrassed as she realised everyone was staring at her. ‘The point being?'

‘Whoever it was had this idea that what they were looking for might not be in the book but in the – um – cover. And that is rather thick, sir. Bit like me, eh?'

She had hardly finished before Jack had started to search his pockets for his precious penknife.

‘It was actually a priceless drawing, which they'd concealed in between the front board and the binding, but you know a lot of these tales are based on real facts,' Marjorie finished lamely.

‘Always worth a try,' Jack nodded, sticking his pipe back in one corner of his mouth. He glanced at Nigel as much as to indicate that it might have been a good idea if his section could have come up with the same sort of solution, while Major Folkestone fingered his dapper moustache in hope of concealing his own embarrassment.

‘It was just a thought.'

‘Might even prove to be more than that,' Jack
replied, as, penknife in hand, he began to cut the leather cover.

It took some time, during which they all stared at the hands that were carrying out the painstaking task, until finally the front and back board of the journal had come free. Between the hide and the board was a piece of white paper, which Jack now carefully removed.

‘Film, by George,' Major Folkestone exclaimed as he leaned over to take a closer look.

‘In miniature—' Jack smiled fleetingly, before wandering out of the room at his usual unhurried pace followed closely by a sheepish Nigel Greene.

‘As a matter of fact,' Major Folkestone nodded after them as they left, ‘I don't mind admitting I'm a bit of a Sexton Blake fan myself. Well done, Marjorie.'

He smiled at Marjorie, who turned away. Poor old Major Folkestone. He really was no hero, not like Robert Maddox.

Billy was late home. Marjorie went in search of him as she had often to do, finally finding him sitting on one of his favourite perches, a length of the park railings that ran around the home paddocks. From there he had a clear view of the skies, and more interestingly the seemingly endless battle being carried on above them. Even as Marjorie arrived by Billy's side there was the buzz and throb of aeroplanes overhead, and looking up to where Billy was pointing she could see a stream of incoming enemy bombers being attacked by a wing of RAF fighters.

‘Hurricanes,' Billy said. ‘Even better than Spitfires,
I think. They're getting cleverer too – see? They're coming in over Jerry now – usually out of the sun and coming down bang! on his tail. See?'

Marjorie watched as the planes sparred as if in some make-believe airborne ballet. They looked for all the world like some sort of graceful birds, swooping down on to each other, except for the deadly streams of lead that poured from the guns in their wings.

Marjorie could see it was somehow magical to Billy.

‘Billy – time to come in.'

‘Not just yet, Marge – look – fantastic!'

Marjorie looked up at the sky feeling more than a sense of dread as she fell silent, watching this time in pity. Despite the fact that the men in the dark planes with Swastikas painted on their sides were the enemy, as she saw one diving to earth before finally bursting immediately into flames she felt a sense of utter desolation, and it seemed to her that she could hear Aunt Hester's voice murmuring, ‘There is nothing worse than losing one's son, do you know that, Marjorie?'

Now, suddenly, thousands of feet above them another Messerschmitt exploded, turning from a plane into a fireball in a second, a huge orange and red and yellow ball that spun in the sky before falling in hundreds of fragments on the countryside of Kent far below.

‘Yeah!' Billy cheered, jumping down off his railing and raising both fists in the air. ‘Yeah! Yeah!'

‘Don't, Billy, don't!' Marjorie pulled him by the arm. ‘That wasn't a nothing – that was somebody. A human being.'

‘That was Jerry, Marge! That was our enemy!'

‘One of them. It was also someone's son.'

‘Don't be so soppy, Marge!' Billy called back over his shoulder as he ran off down the edge of the paddocks. ‘We've got to kill them before they kill us.'

Marjorie followed him down the fields, looking around her at the great park with its myriad fine trees, some of which had been planted many hundreds of years before. Now it seemed somehow that they appeared to be reproaching the mayhem in the skies above them, as if all the leaves were turning brown in protest at the death and destruction they could sense.

She knew from Aunt Hester that an early autumn was meant to presage a hard winter, and despite the earlier success in finding the film, something which must have cheered up Major Folkestone's section no end, Marjorie felt low, as if there was nothing much to look forward to now, as if she had realised, too late, that really killing the enemy was no solution, only an admission of some kind of past failure, that something which should have been stopped years before had finally blown up in their faces.

And that was it really, she realised slowly, that was what was making her feel low, something Aunt Hester had always been on about, way back when, something which Marjorie had never really understood at the time.

‘By applying the principles of hygiene, disinfection, and so on, and so on,' she used to say proudly of her heroine Florence Nightingale, ‘which now seems such a basic nursing principle,
but which was certainly not then, Florence Nightingale proved that you not only saved the necessity for amputations, you saved lives. Same with politics. Clean out the political wounds, make sure your disinfectant is working, and you won't have to amputate the limbs.'

Nevertheless, on their way back to the cottage, as much to cheer herself up as to encourage Billy, and despite the fact that she knew she was breaking all the rules, she told Billy about finding the true content of the mysterious journal.

‘I say, not bad, Marge.'

Billy shook his head in admiration, not of her, but of Sexton Blake.

‘Funny though, don't you think, Billy? Getting a solution out of a comic. I mean that is funny.'

‘Yeah,' Billy agreed. ‘But then whoever wrote the story in the first place – I would say he could well have been a spy himself, because a lot of those writers were, Aunt Hester said. Remember that story when he caught the bloke who was dressed up as a woman?'

‘I don't think so, Billy. Remind me.'

‘You remember. They were in this railway carriage, and Sexton Blake suspects this woman of not being a woman, so he throws him-her a box of matches?'

‘Yes, of course. And the woman puts her knees together and catches them like a man,' Marjorie finished for him.

‘Yeah. 'Cos if he'd been a woman she'd have opened her knees and caught them in her skirt. It was brilliant. So the bloke what wrote Sexton Blake—'

‘Who wrote Sexton Blake,' Marjorie corrected him.

‘Yeah. I don't know,' Billy replied in all innocence. ‘Anyhow – he must know a thing or two. See what I mean? I say, I wonder what's in the films, Marge? Could be something vital. Could save England. Imagine.'

Overcome with excitement, Billy turned a cartwheel in front of Marjorie.

‘German War Secrets Cracked By Top British Agent!' he cried like a news-vendor. ‘Read All About It! Read All About It! German War Secrets Cracked By Top British Agent!'

Marjorie laughed, and, lifting her hand as if to give Billy a smack, gave chase. But Billy had got too quick for her now, and easily out-sprinted her back to the cottage, while overhead the now victorious Hurricane fighters dipped their wings and wheeled down out of the blue skies to head for home.

Locked away in his attic flat at Home Farmhouse, Eugene Hackett sat waiting for the call that for once was late in coming. They were usually so punctilious in calling. He glanced at his watch, worried that the deadline was now five minutes old.

He waited another thirty seconds then tried once again to establish contact. This time he was successful.

He listened to everything that was said intently, noting down certain important details in a language few could read or understand. Even so, once the call was ended and he had digested all the salient
facts, he carefully burned the piece of paper containing his notes, lighting a fresh cheroot with the end of the taper before watching it annihilate itself finally in a curl of blackening ashes that rose and fluttered out of the ashtray in which he had ignited it.

So it was definitely on
.

He sat back smoking his thin black cigar.
After all the initial difficulties and setbacks the game was finally afoot
. He smiled, sitting back in his wooden rocking chair at the window and watching the first of the leaves fluttering from a giant chestnut tree that stood at the end of the garden path. He couldn't help feeling excited at the daring of the plan, the madness of it, let alone at what might be achieved if they pulled it off. It could be perfect. It could be more than perfect. It could be just what was needed.

Less than half a mile away one of the girls listening in Section H suddenly stiffened, sitting up straighter than usual. Adjusting her earphones more from force of habit than necessity, she quickly and accurately took down everything she had heard in shorthand, hurrying off to quickly translate her words into longhand once the air had gone dead again.

‘Sir?' she said, after she had finished and been admitted to Major Folkestone's office. ‘A fresh intercept into the section, sir, and judging from the content I thought you should see it at once, sir.'

Since it was such a fine, warm evening, Eugene decided on a stroll, knowing that provided he kept
to his side of the park the chances of bumping into anyone who knew him would be remote. Not that he needed to worry about his presence there; he had a perfectly good and valid reason to be living where he was. It was just that he didn't want any interruption to his train of thought. He wanted to concentrate his mind and all his mental energies on the task ahead.