The House of Flowers Read online

  About the Book

  It is 1941, and England is at its lowest ebb, undernourished, under-informed and terrified of imminent invasion. Even at Eden Park, the lovely country estate where Poppy, Kate, Lily, Marjorie and her adopted brother Billy have all become part of the rich tapestry that is being woven around them, confidence is at an all-time low. And that is before the authorities discover there is a double agent operating within the MI5 unit based there.

  Lily volunteers to be dropped into France, only to discover that her partner is Scott, Poppy’s fiancé. Meanwhile, Kate’s lover Eugene is in Sicily to sabotage the bombers besieging Malta. As further lines of agents are wiped out and even Billy’s life is threatened, Jack Ward, the spymaster, is forced to take desperate measures to uncover the identity of the traitor in their midst.

  Meanwhile, Poppy, unable to stand idle, leaves Eden Park to train as a pilot. As she closes the wooden shutters at the House of Flowers, the old folly where she and Scott first found happiness, she realises that they were made over a century ago to repel another invader. England survived then; she will again.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Part Two

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Epilogue

  Postscript

  About the Author

  Also by Charlotte Bingham

  Copyright

  THE HOUSE

  OF FLOWERS

  Charlotte Bingham

  To the memory of ‘Aunt Bea’, the inventor of Billy’s famous letter-opener. A fearless agent, one of thousands to whom we owe so much.

  CB, Hardway

  ‘Nothing was heard but the dread of Buonoparte and the French invasion! Beacons, martello towers, camps, Depots and every species of self-defence occupied all minds – and everyone trembled for the safety of old England’

  Humphry Repton (c. 1793)

  Prologue

  As the driver dropped down to an even lower gear, the two men in the back stared out at the snow which had suddenly started falling in a blizzard. Sensing they might not make the rendezvous, the man tightened his grip instinctively round the butt of the revolver that lay in one pocket, warmed by his hand. The passenger next to him turned and raised his elegant eyebrows, putting two fingers of his left hand to his lips to indicate his need for a fresh cigarette. The thickset man beside him stared back at him for a moment, then slowly withdrew a treasured pack of Players from his other coat pocket, inspecting it carefully before taking out one of the two remaining cigarettes single-handed and lighting it himself before handing it over. The driver changed gear yet again, down to first now as the wheels of the large black Austin began to lose their grip on the snow. He glanced in his mirror, catching the eye of the man seated directly behind.

  ‘Keep going,’ his passenger muttered, sticking his pipe back in his mouth. ‘We haven’t got far to go now, and it’ll be a lot easier coming back down—’

  He stopped speaking abruptly as the driver over-corrected the car, preventing it from going out of control, and caught the back of the seat in front.

  The younger man, smoking his freshly lit cigarette, smiled to himself at their increasing difficulties, knowing very well that whatever happened to them during the last part of this particular journey, the outcome was inevitable.

  He turned his handsome head and stared out at the snow that now blanketed the evening landscape. He liked snow. It had always excited him, never losing that boyish delight at seeing the first large flakes falling silently from leaden skies. Now lights shone ahead, torches being swung in the gloom by invisible people standing in the middle of the deserted road, a road he knew well since it bisected a large stretch of moorland that once had been his, an autumn paradise where with gun and dog he had loved to roam. Again he smiled as he considered the irony of the moment, how this time an expert shot would extinguish the life not of some fast fleeing grouse but of a rather easier target.

  ‘You can finish your cigarette,’ the man beside him muttered, tucking his briar pipe away in the top pocket of his jacket before producing a key to unlock the handcuffs that had linked the two men on their long winter journey. In front of them the driver had already half turned round to train the long barrel of a service revolver directly at the head of the prisoner.

  Once again the captive raised eyebrows that appeared to have been carefully manicured, so perfect was their shape. He took one last draw on the cigarette before extinguishing it reluctantly in the ashtray beside him.

  ‘Goodbye,’ he said to the thickset man beside him, whose gaze he had observed seemed seldom given to blinking. ‘I do hope you get home safely.’

  The man slowly took off his heavy-framed spectacles and nodded.

  ‘Goodbye,’ he replied, beginning to clean the lenses of his glasses slowly and carefully before turning to look at the driver, who read the signal at once.

  ‘Time to get out,’ he said to the man beside him, underlying his order with a significant nod of his head towards the snow-covered landscape.

  The passenger hesitated, as if he was about to try to buy time by arguing his cause. But it soon became obvious that this was far from his intention, for he used the delay simply to smile and nod at both men. Finally, after catching the eye of the man to his right, at whom he stared without apparent emotion, he pushed the passenger door beside him open and got out to stand smartly to attention by the snow-covered automobile.

  ‘Heil Hitler,’ he said, all traces of his smile now gone.

  The thickset man, who was sitting quite still in the back seat, stared up at the elegant figure standing to defiant attention in the blizzard. He put one heavy hand bearing a small crested signet ring on the driver’s arm as he was just about to disembark.

  ‘Tell them not to make a meal of it.’

  The driver did not respond, simply getting quickly out of the car, slamming his door shut and disappearing into the snowstorm. His superior remained sitting in the back of the car, taking the last of the Players cigarettes from the battered pack and lighting it with a small gold lighter. He sat back, inhaling deeply, staring ahead at a windscreen now completely covered with snow.

  In the bleak, dark and bitter winter evening outside, the tall, elegant man turned up the collar of his still immaculate cavalry coat.

  ‘This is what I would call a blizzard,’ he remarked. ‘Typical moor storm. Used to toboggan down here as a boy.’

  ‘Rather than toboggan, why don’t you take a hike, chum?’ a voice to match the wintry conditions wondered from behind him. ‘To make it fair, I’ll give you thirty seconds’ start.’

  ‘Not the most appealing of ideas,’ he replied. ‘Too easy to get lost up here.’

  ‘Go on,’ he was urged. ‘Be a sport.’

  The man turned to try to identify the voice behind him, but thanks to the severity of the storm he could see even less than before.

  ‘Even better,’ the voice suggested, ‘why not go for a little run?’

  He won’t run, the man still sitting in the back of the snow-covered car thought to himself. He’s not the type.

  He took another pull on his cigarette, clearing the condensation off the inside of the window beside him with the back of one glo
ved hand as if to try to get a sight of the events taking place somewhere in the darkness outside. A flurry of snow falling against the glass immediately deprived him of any view, so, giving a deep shiver against the cold, he pulled the collar of his overcoat up round his neck and slumped further down in his seat in an effort to keep warm.

  Even if there was a chance it would save his life, he still wouldn’t run, he concluded. He wouldn’t even run to save his skin.

  ‘At the command – run.’

  ‘And make it easier for you?’ the man wondered in return, staring up into the invisible skies above him as if at a starlit summer sky. ‘No – no, I don’t think I’ll bother, if it’s all the same to you.’

  At the back of his mind he toyed with the thought that if he just stood his ground somehow he might be able to bluff his way out of it, until he heard the tell-tale sound of a safety catch being released, at which he changed his mind. Clearing his throat, he sunk his hands in his coat pockets and began to stroll off across the snow-swept moors for all the world like a gentleman taking an after-lunch constitutional.

  They let him go a surprising distance, so far in fact that his heart gave a small leap as he realised that, given the distance he had covered in such appalling conditions, his executioner might actually have lost sight of him.

  His attitude changed now that he thought he had a chance to outwit his enemies, people whom in comparision to himself, and those he admired, he considered to be stupid, slow and without imagination. The thought brought a sudden smile to his frozen features, and as he smiled he found himself running. Faster and faster away from the gunman who must surely now be marooned in an impenetrable wall of snow. As he ran he threw back his head and laughed, just as the man many yards away behind him fired several shots in quick succession.

  The body fell forward into a drift of snow, the blood from it staining the white that surrounded it with surprising rapidity. The marksman went up to it, turned it over, and stared down. The cap had fallen from the head revealing thick blond hair, and such a startlingly handsome face beneath it that it seemed in death to have returned to a state of peace that was almost enviable, as if, in the ultimate mercy of its end, a life had been finally unravelled and returned to a childlike innocence.

  ‘Fool,’ the man in the back of the car remarked to himself, hearing the shots and then noting the flare the marksman put up. ‘You poor misguided, stupid fool – what in heaven’s name possessed you?’

  Taking a last pull on his cigarette he opened the car door, and, with a sigh and a slow sorry shake of his head, walked off into the blizzard to help bring back the traitor’s remains.

  Part One

  ENGLAND, 1941

  Chapter One

  Major Folkestone frowned and shuffled the papers at which he was pretending to stare so hard. On the other side of his desk Cissie Lavington stood with her trademark long cigarette holder stuck jauntily out of the side of her mouth while she regarded him with her one good eye, the other hidden as always behind her other trademark, a handmade black silk eye-patch. Even though the matter before them was of a serious nature, as always Cissie’s expression was one of benign indifference, as if she had only a passing interest in what the world might throw at her.

  ‘You’d rather I told her?’ Cissie volunteered, finally growing impatient with the way Anthony Folkestone was hiding behind his paperwork.

  ‘I don’t see why you would think that,’ Anthony Folkestone muttered, pretending to find the latest sheet of paper in his hand of particular interest. ‘But it does have to be done.’

  ‘I expect you feel, Major, I expect you feel that – well,’ Cissie replied, tapping the end of her cigarette into the tin ashtray on the desk, ‘that this sort of stuff comes a lot better from a woman.’

  Cissie took one last draw on her cigarette, removed the stub and inserted a fresh smoke deftly in her holder, while never taking her eye off the man on the other side of the desk. As she had noted over the past few weeks spent training agents in H Section of what was discreetly described in Top Secret documents as ‘the War Office’, jobs involving the breaking of bad news always seemed to come a lot better from a woman.

  ‘The point is I’d do it myself if I had the time. But just at the moment, all this paperwork . . .’

  Folkestone shook his head sadly, at the same time collecting the loose pages up and tapping them into a tidy pile.

  ‘I understand Lady Tetherington’s in lodgings in Benton,’ he added, handing Cissie a sheet of paper bearing the address. ‘Taking some leave.’

  ‘Rather well earned, considering. The top brass are very pleased with what we did – apparently it cheered the Old Man up no end. Not that we expect it to be the only attempt on his life, by any means, but there you are. One down, that’s something at least. Quite apart from anything else it would have been invaluable propaganda. Although I understand the Old Man has a few doubles waiting in the wings for that moment, if it ever comes.’

  Major Folkestone nodded. H Section had done brilliantly to thwart the assassination attempt on Churchill, but for the moment they had other matters on their minds.

  ‘You could always ask the WVS,’ he offered, his thoughts returning to Lady Tetherington.

  Cissie shook her head, standing by his office door, already impatient to leave.

  ‘I think not,’ she replied in a firm voice. ‘A factory was hit near Benton last night. We can’t take anyone away from much needed work.’ She opened the door. ‘I’d rather do it myself, Major, since I helped train Lady Tetherington. Only right really.’

  ‘Very well,’ Folkestone agreed. ‘So be it. And perhaps you’d be so good as to ask Miss Budge to come back in on your way out? My wretched intercom is on the blink yet again. Thank you.’

  Cissie did as asked, after a thankfully brief exchange of observations about the weather with Major Folkestone’s new assistant, the plump and smiling Miss Budge, who was only too happy to bustle into Major Folkestone’s office, notebook at the ready.

  Poppy watched Cissie strolling up the garden path towards the front door of the small suburban house in the back street of Benton. Cissie’s eccentric way of still dressing in the vaguely flapper style of the late nineteen twenties meant that against the drab background of the privet hedge that ran along the side of the front garden she now seemed to stand out like some exotic foreign bloom.

  In the kitchen at the back of the house Poppy’s landlady, all too appropriately named Mrs Bellows, was listening to a radio that crackled and boomed at full volume, so much so that if Poppy had not noticed Cissie walking up to the door it was perfectly possible that neither occupant of Number 24 The Gardens would have heard the bell.

  ‘Shall I answer it?’ Poppy wondered academically, putting her head around the kitchen door after Cissie had rung for the third or fourth time. ‘I think it might be someone for me.’

  ‘It’s just as I said!’ Mrs Bellows shouted back over the radio. ‘What I was telling you all over breakfast! Ministry of Food says we’re all to go carefully with the tin-opener!’

  ‘I’ll answer the door, Mrs Bellows,’ Poppy said, nodding backwards as she heard yet another long ring of the bell. She closed the kitchen door in order to try to shut out some of the radio’s din, hoping that her visitor was coming to tell her that her leave was over, and she wasn’t going to have to spend much longer under Mrs Bellows’s roof eating watery oatmeal and paper-thin fried bread for breakfast, with tea so weak it might have come straight from the hot water tap. But as soon as she saw Cissie’s face she knew that her visit was nothing to do with ending her leave.

  ‘I imagine you can guess why one’s here,’ Cissie stated at once, when Poppy had shown her into the front room, an over-neat apartment furnished with heavy square furniture with rounded feet, and arms draped with lace antimacassars that matched the freshly washed nets at the front window.

  ‘I would say, judging from your expression, that it has to do with my husband,’ Poppy replied, sitting dow
n on one fat arm of the chair behind her. ‘And if it is, it can’t be good news.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’re quite correct, and it’s not, my dear,’ Cissie sighed, expertly loading her cigarette holder before accepting a light from Poppy. ‘Don’t know how up to date you are?’

  ‘The last I heard they were changing his hotel,’ Poppy said, attempting a joke to lighten the atmosphere. ‘They were sending him somewhere up north.’

  ‘Yes, they did change his hotel. Sent him to a top security one, especially designed for the likes of him. Point is – point is someone made a gaff of it and the blighter tried to make a run for it, d’you see?’

  ‘That can’t have been good, I imagine.’

  ‘Absolutely not. Chaps with him took a very dim view, I’m afraid. An extremely dim view. Hence my visit.’

  There was a short silence while Poppy stared at Cissie Lavington, searching deep to try to find her feelings which at that moment seemed to have deserted her.

  ‘I see,’ she said finally. ‘That is, Basil’s dead, I take it?’

  ‘’Fraid so. Lord Tetherington was shot while trying to escape.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I rather thought that might happen.’

  Cissie nodded and drew on her cigarette. ‘A better thing altogether, if one considers it. Better than the alternative, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘Of course,’ Poppy replied quietly, imagining that given the choice anyone would prefer the bullet to the rope.

  ‘Absolutely no doubt,’ Cissie agreed. ‘Much better thing all round. Besides – it’s always a major worry that blighters like that might get sprung, and then one’s back to square one again.’ She stared at Poppy, wondering how she would take the implication. Poppy met her gaze and nodded.

  ‘Agreed.’

  Cissie could not help feeling relieved that Poppy had obviously decided on a practical, no-nonsense approach, but as a woman she was also curious. Having known Poppy from her early days at Eden Park, when she had helped turn the shy bespectacled young ingénue into a confident, courageous and bright young woman, she was well aware that Poppy’s brief marriage to Basil Tetherington had been unhappy to say the least, but this did not necessarily mean that Poppy had never loved him.