The 9 by Madalyn Morgan (tools of titans ebook .txt) 📕

have thought she’d been found out, or why would she leave so suddenly for Ireland?’

Ena looked from one to the other of the men standing before her. ‘And the one percent? Freda bought three tickets for the ferry, so presumably she’d have bought three tickets for the train. Doesn’t that mean someone, maybe two members of the spy ring, will be joining her at some point?’

Commander Dalton nodded. ‘It looks that way. There was a lot of conflicting correspondence after you found the ferry tickets. We’re not sure how much of it was real and how much was a smokescreen. MI5 intercepted what they think was Freda’s last letter to Walter. She changed the travel arrangements, telling him that she wouldn’t be on the train, she would see him in Liverpool.’

‘He didn’t receive that letter,’ the security officer said. ‘Whether she telephoned him…’

‘But as far as we know,’ Ena said, ‘Walter thinks Freda will be on the train wearing the red beret he asked her to wear, the last time he wrote to her?’ The three men nodded. ‘And what about Villiers, the man the third ferry ticket to Ireland is for?’

The second intelligence officer looked at the commander who nodded. ‘We’re not concerned about him. If Freda King wrote to Walter telling him to meet her in Liverpool, chances are she’d have written to Villiers too. But we don’t have his address, so we don’t know.’

When the train pulled into the station, Ena shook hands with Commander Dalton and the intelligence officers. They wished her luck. ‘From now on you are Freda King, looking forward to seeing your brother Walter,’ the commander said.

‘If you’re ready, Miss King?’ the officer said, to which Ena smiled and, holding the umbrella as Freda always did, she walked purposefully out of the Ladies toilet and along the platform. She wobbled once on Freda’s high-heels, but recovered immediately.

In case she was being watched by any of Freda’s co-conspirators, Ena kept her head down and boarded the train without looking back. If Freda’s brother, lover, or anyone else was looking out of the train’s window, Ena was not going to make it easy for them to see that the elegant woman in the charcoal grey suit and red beret was not Freda.

Squeezing past several soldiers in the crowded corridor, she finally arrived at the last compartment in the first class carriage. She pulled open the door. There was an empty seat on the right of the compartment, by the window, and two on the left. Ena took the seat nearest the window on the left.

Without acknowledging the other passengers, she stood her umbrella next to the window and put her coat and handbag on the seat next to her.

After a short time, Ena heard the hiss and clunk as the train’s brakes released, and felt the locomotive jerk as it began its journey north. She watched the steam and smoke clear as the train left Bletchley for the Buckinghamshire countryside. She began to feel sick and opened the handbag. There were no pear drops, but there was a thin book that Freda had left at Silcott’s, which Ena took from the bag.

Leaning sideways, so her back was to the door, Ena held the book towards the light from the window and pretended to read.

Some minutes later, she heard the compartment door slide open. Someone had entered. She couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, and daren’t lift her head to look. As the new passenger came further into the compartment, Ena glanced at the floor. Men’s shoes. Giving the book her full attention, she heard him drop onto the seat opposite. She breathed a sigh of relief. The seat next to her was still empty. If he had been joining Freda, he would have sat next to her. She relaxed a little. The chances of anyone entering the compartment before the next station were slim.

The train slowed as it approached Northampton. Ena leant back in her seat. She didn’t want anyone on the platform to see her if they looked into the carriage, in case they saw she wasn’t Freda.

Ena’s heart drummed with anticipation, but no one left the carriage and no one entered. Putting the book back into her handbag, Ena glanced at the man sitting opposite. Ben? Panic struck at her like a hammer. She couldn’t breathe and felt sick.

‘Excuse me, miss? I believe this is yours,’ he said, holding a bookmark in his hand.

Ena took the narrow piece of card and whispered, ‘It must have fallen from my book when I put it in my handbag. Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome,’ Ben said politely.

With her heart pounding, Ena smiled fleetingly at the man she was walking out with, before turning her attention back to the window. As the train sped north and the fields and meadows of Warwickshire melted into the distance, Ena heard someone take a cigarette from a packet, light it, and inhale deeply. Someone else opened a newspaper and a third person left without closing the door.

Conscious that what happened in the compartment was not her concern unless someone took the seat next to her, Ena continued looking out of the window. Her eyes began to feel heavy and she closed them. Aware that she had slumped sideways and her forehead was touching the window, she began to drift off.

Somewhere between being awake and being asleep, Ena felt someone tap her on the shoulder. ‘Hello, darling.’

Opening her eyes, Ena turned towards the voice and gasped with horror.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The man sitting next to Ena, looking at her with blue piercing eyes, was the man who had drugged her and stolen her work, who had attacked Freda, and who Ena had believed for more than two years she had killed.

The colour drained from the man’s face. He was clearly as shocked to see