Read Online All Clear by Connie Willis - Free Book Online

would have come through earlier for that. He’s likelier to have been observing the buildup to the invasion, especially since his return date’s one day before D-Day.”
    “Which means he’ll be here in England,” Mike said. “Where? Portsmouth? Southampton?”
    “Yes, or Plymouth or Winchester or Salisbury,” Polly said. “The buildup was spread over the entire southwestern half of the country. Or he could be observing Fortitude, in which case he’d be in Kent. Or Scotland.”
    “Fortitude?” Eileen said. “What’s that?”
    “An intelligence operation to fool Hitler and the German High Command into believing the Allies were attacking somewhere other thanNormandy. They built dummy Army installations and planted false news stories in the local papers and sent faked radio messages. Fortitude North was in Scotland. Its mission was to convince the Germans the invasion would be in Norway, and Fortitude South in southeast England’s mission was to convince them it was coming at the Pas de Calais.”
    “So Denys Atherton could be anywhere,” Mike said.
    “And if he’s working in Intelligence, he won’t be using his own name,” Polly said.
    “But I know what he looks like,” Eileen said. “He’s tall and has dark curly hair—”
    “Christ,” Mike said. “I hadn’t even thought about names. That means Phipps could be here under some other name, too. Eileen, did he say anything about whether he’d be using his own name or not?”
    “No.”
    Polly asked Mike, “And you didn’t see his name on the letters he was carrying?”
    “No,” he said disgustedly.
    “But you and Eileen both know what he looks like.”
    “If I can only remember the name of his airfield,” Eileen said ruefully. “I
know
I’d know it if I heard it.”
    “It’ll be in the railway guide,” Polly said. “I’ll see if Mrs. Rickett has one in the morning, and if she doesn’t, I know Townsend Brothers has one in the book department. I used it to look up the trains to Backbury. I’ll buy it on Monday. And in the meantime, the best thing we can do is get some sleep. We’ll all be able to think more clearly if we’ve had some rest.”
And I’ll be able to think of a way to keep Mike from going to Padgett’s in the morning
, she thought.
    But how? Telling him that they couldn’t help, that historians couldn’t affect events, brought them back to Hardy. And telling him it had already happened and there were fatalities, and therefore there was no point in trying, not only sounded completely heartless but was too much like their own situation. And hopefully Mr. Dunworthy wasn’t telling Colin the same thing at this very moment.
    She would have to persuade Mike that she should be the one to go to Padgett’s. “Mr. Fetters is less likely to recognize me than Eileen or you,” she could tell him, “especially if I change my clothes and put my hair up. I can tell him I was waiting outside for Eileen and saw people go in just as the store closed.”
    But when she tried to persuade him, waking him up before the all clear so the sleeping Eileen wouldn’t hear, he insisted on going himself.
    “But shouldn’t I show you where the drop is first?” Polly asked. “If it’s working, you can go through and tell Oxford to send a team disguised as rescue workers.”
    He shook his head. “We’ll go to Padgett’s first and then the drop.”
    “But what will we tell Eileen?”
    He finally agreed to take Eileen back to Mrs. Rickett’s, tell her the two of them were going to the drop, and
then
go to Padgett’s.
    Which created a whole new problem. If they left now, they’d run straight into the troupe, and Miss Laburnum would almost certainly say something about the five fatalities.
    “We need to wait here till everyone’s gone so they don’t see us leaving the emergency staircase,” she said. “Once they realize it’s not locked, all sorts of people will want to use it. And we should let Eileen sleep, poor thing. I doubt if