Chapter Three
THREE
‘What’s your name?’ asked Sparks.
‘It’s Evelyn Lowle as far as the two of you are concerned,’ she replied.
‘And the address on the application is where they’ve put me for this assignment.
I don’t have my own telephone there, so you’ll have to use the landlady’s number to reach me.
A girl just out of university coming to London for an entry-level desk job can’t afford her own telephone. ’
Her accent is much less pronounced now, noticed Mrs Bainbridge.
‘What is your ostensible desk job?’ she asked.
‘Oh, it’s real enough,’ Lowle said with a bitter laugh.
‘I’m supposed to be some kind of a resources analyst, but I’m really just a glorified clerk for the Ministry of Food, if you can believe that.
And I actually have to do the work! It’s exactly the sort of thing I was hoping to avoid when I signed up to be an operative.
I sit behind a stack of reports, pounding away at my typewriter, all the while thinking, “Is this how Mata Hari got started?”’
‘She was an exotic dancer and a courtesan,’ said Sparks. ‘How’s your exotic dancing?’
‘Not my forte, sorry to say,’ said Lowle. ‘How’s yours?’
‘Passable when I was at Cambridge,’ said Sparks. ‘But the lads there were just happy to see any woman wiggling about on a pub table.’
‘Ah, he told me you’d bring up Cambridge early in the conversation,’ said Lowle.
‘It’s relevant to your assignment,’ said Sparks, bristling.
‘Not particularly,’ said Lowle. ‘But go ahead and brag about it all you like. At least I got a real degree from Manchester, not the BA tit. they saddle the Cambridge girls with.’
‘You’re really from Manchester?’ Mrs Bainbridge asked quickly, forestalling any retort from her partner.
‘I am,’ said Lowle. ‘And I really went to Victoria University of Manchester, so I can rattle away about that if called upon. They’re adding records there showing me under this name. All part of my new cover. Oh, speaking of which …’
She opened her bag and pulled out five pounds.
‘I’ve now signed up for your service,’ she said, putting it on Sparks’s desk. ‘Is there a contract for me to sign?’
‘Is that necessary, given you’re not really a client?’ asked Mrs Bainbridge.
‘No, she’s right,’ said Sparks, handing over the paperwork. ‘In case someone is suspicious enough to break in here and look her up in our files.’
‘Let me skim this for a moment,’ said Lowle. ‘Yes. That’s fine. I like the paragraph where you promise not to date the clients. Was it like that from the beginning, or was that in response to some incident?’
‘From the beginning,’ said Sparks tersely. ‘Nor has there been any difficulty adhering to it. Do you need a pen?’
‘Got one,’ said Lowle, pulling one from her bag and signing the contracts. ‘Here you are.’
Sparks and Mrs Bainbridge countersigned, then Sparks handed Lowle her copy which she folded neatly and tucked into her bag.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘So who’s my first date?’
‘Excuse me?’ said Mrs Bainbridge in surprise.
‘My first date,’ repeated Lowle. ‘Who are you going to set me up with?’
‘I’m not sure I understand what you mean,’ said Mrs Bainbridge. ‘The whole point of this exercise is to get you into a relationship with Anthony Danforth.’
‘Yes, precisely,’ said Lowle. ‘But if Miss Sparks succeeds in luring him here, and his first date turns out to be someone who has also just signed up, then his hackles will be raised immediately. I need to come into it with a tale or two of the men before him and why they didn’t work out. So who would you recommend?’
‘I did not consent to this,’ said Mrs Bainbridge.
‘I was told that you agreed to the operation,’ said Lowle.
‘I did, but not to inflict it upon our unsuspecting clients. That’s completely unfair to them.’
‘That is so very kind of you,’ said Lowle.
‘Look, I promise that whoever it is, he will have an enjoyable time with me. And after our date, I will tell him that he is a wonderful man and will make an excellent husband for some lucky girl, but he’s not quite right for me.
He will leave with his sense of self-confidence intact, perhaps even enhanced. ’
‘No, I don’t like this,’ said Mrs Bainbridge. ‘We’d be using an innocent—’
‘What about Mr Lonsdale?’ interrupted Sparks.
‘What?’ replied Mrs Bainbridge, turning in her chair to face her partner.
‘Mr Lonsdale,’ said Sparks. ‘He hasn’t made a connection with anyone yet, and it’s been, what, six different dates with him?’
‘Seven,’ said Mrs Bainbridge.
‘Right, Miss Hart said no to him last week,’ recalled Sparks. ‘So one more failed attempt shouldn’t raise anyone’s eyebrows in his case.’
‘That’s rather mean,’ said Mrs Bainbridge.
‘What’s the matter with him?’ asked Lowle.
‘Well, that would be revealing the comments by our female clients afterwards,’ said Sparks. ‘I don’t think that’s any of your business, honestly. But he would meet your criteria for a one-date relationship.’
‘What’s he like?’ asked Lowle, looking apprehensive for the first time in the conversation. ‘Oldish? Youngish? Good-looking? Not so good-looking?’
‘Let’s see,’ said Sparks. ‘Thirty-four, five foot ten, thin black hair, receding somewhat. Average-looking overall, I’d say, with kind of a reedy voice.’
‘Is it the voice that irritated my predecessors?’ asked Lowle. ‘You have to tell me something so he can see why you’d be setting him up with me, right?’
‘Well, we’re in a desperate situation with him and you’re new blood, aren’t you?’ replied Sparks with an evil gleam in her eyes.
‘Miss Sparks, please,’ cautioned Mrs Bainbridge.
‘Very well. The main problem he has with women is that he likes to fish,’ continued Sparks.
‘Fish? As in – fishing?’
‘Exactly,’ said Sparks. ‘And when I say he likes it, it’s more like he’s completely obsessed.’
‘He’s from Dunbridge out in the Test Valley in Hampshire,’ added Mrs Bainbridge. ‘From what he told us, it’s a one-pub village but the trout and graylings are abundant. He intends to return there once he’s found a bride.’
‘Trout and graylings,’ repeated Lowle. ‘Does he talk about anything else?’
‘Apart from other species of fish and the various methods of catching them, not that we’ve heard,’ said Sparks. ‘Most of our ladies chose not to return for a second date, and the one who did refused to go back for a third.’
‘What happened to her on the second date?’ asked Lowle.
‘He took her out on a boat,’ said Mrs Bainbridge. ‘There were worms and hooks involved. She didn’t take to the experience, although I’m not certain if it was the bait or the seasickness that did it.’
‘Hah!’ said Lowle. ‘Well, I think I could survive one evening of that. And then I’ll move on to the real target.’
‘What makes you think Mr Danforth will like you?’ asked Sparks.
‘I’m pretty, blonde and young,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Older men coming back from the war like girls like me.’
‘He’s not old,’ protested Sparks. ‘He’s thirty-one.’
‘Yeah, well, that’s old for me, isn’t it?’ said Lowle with a sharp laugh.
Oh, now I truly dislike her, thought Mrs Bainbridge.
‘You do realise that won’t be enough for a man like him,’ said Sparks.
‘And that’s where the two of you come in,’ said Lowle. ‘Once you get him here, you interview him, right?’
‘We do,’ said Mrs Bainbridge. ‘We do that with all our clients.’
‘Of course,’ said Lowle. ‘Only you’ll be a little more thorough with him, won’t you? Then you report back to me, and I will become that woman for our first date. Sound good?’
‘Fine,’ said Sparks. ‘One suggestion, if you don’t mind, from someone with prior experience in this sort of thing.’
‘Sure.’
‘Don’t be a hundred per cent of what he’s looking for. Too much of a good thing will raise hackles as well.’
‘Good point,’ said Lowle. ‘Thanks.’
‘And be careful,’ added Mrs Bainbridge. ‘You may want to be Mata Hari, but it didn’t end well for her. I believe they still have her head in the Museum of Anatomy in Paris.’
She smiled sweetly, and Lowle blanched for a moment. Then she brightened.
‘You’re having me on now,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘All right, got to get back to the desk job.’
‘Tell the Minister to allow pineapples back again while you’re there,’ said Sparks.
‘Will do,’ said Lowle.
She left. Iris walked out to the landing and peered down the staircase to make certain that she had exited the building. Then she came back into the office, shut the door and sat down heavily in her chair.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said to Gwen. ‘That was worse than I had thought it was going to be.’
‘Was it like this for you?’ asked Gwen.
‘I had to do things during the war that went even further than this,’ said Iris.
‘You used the term “honeytrap” when we met with the Brigadier,’ said Gwen. ‘Does that mean what I think it does? A sexual seduction?’
‘Yes,’ said Iris.
‘And you did that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did it work?’
‘For a while,’ said Iris. ‘It’s also what cost me my engagement to Mike Kinsey.’
‘Oh,’ said Gwen. ‘I’m so sorry, Iris.’
‘The worst part is that to this day, I don’t know if it contributed anything of real value to the war effort,’ said Iris.
‘Information was gathered, false information was leaked to the enemy. In the grand scheme of things, who knows? One destroyed relationship amid hundreds of thousands dead didn’t mean much to anyone. ’
‘Except to you and Mike.’
‘Except to us. And we might have broken it off anyway, given it’s me we’re talking about, so maybe there isn’t any weight to that any more.’
‘Well, our Miss Lowle doesn’t seem to possess any real feelings, so this won’t weigh much on her, either.’
‘Not now,’ said Iris. ‘Down the line, it will or it won’t. And if it doesn’t, then she’s clearly cut out for this work. What did you think of her?’
‘She’s interesting,’ said Gwen. ‘Once she dropped the outer layer of lies, she was still lying to us. I guess she has to.’
‘She was very good at irritating me. “I’m pretty, blonde, and young!” Honestly, I suspect a bottle of peroxide was liberally applied.’