Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
Ginevra had often reflected on the funny nature of communication.
Even when two people spoke the same language, meaning could be lost because of translation errors through the lens of personal experiences or missing context.
Now, Sidney’s subtle signal jogged something in her memory that cast the message from Leland’s pocket in an entirely new light, and Gin saw what she’d missed in one cold, horrible moment: the reversal of the pen strokes, the subtle differences in line thickness from what the eye usually saw.
Whoever had written it used their left hand—and Leland was most certainly right-handed, a fact Ginevra could attest to from his fondness for autographs.
Sidney’s brilliant mind for details had recognized this in an instant, and his earlier comment about everyone being so diligent for justice was not a wry dig—it was a warning.
Someone wasn’t there for justice. Someone had been working all this time to frame Leland for a second round of treason, and they had shoved this note on the professor at the party as insurance.
And someone had come to the cottage that night to ensure Leland didn’t blow up the plan they’d so carefully orchestrated to entrap him.
It was then Ginevra realized she had set down her gun on the counter to tie up Leland, and the gun was now missing.
A slow, strangling feeling twined around her breastbone.
The real culprit might have been satisfied enough by Leland’s unmasking as the Vosburg traitor to dissolve the Kremlin connection and leave the leak an unsolved mystery.
But Ginevra had revealed her hand by pressing Leland on his business with the Russians, and the second traitor likely now realized it was only a matter of time before the authorities looked elsewhere.
With Ginevra’s gun, they could tie up loose ends tonight.
Her eyes locked with Sidney’s, and his twitching foot stilled.
Even in the dim kitchen light, she could translate the shifts in his countenance easier than any textbook exercise.
He still hadn’t worked out the correct answer, but he understood her safety was compromised. They needed to sort this out fast.
Neville and Watkins still fussed with the recording case while Marion kept up an undercurrent of invective toward Leland that he accepted with his chin slumped to his chest. No one appeared to be plotting a murderous accident meant to silence her.
But one of them was a very fine actor indeed.
Ginevra squeezed her clammy hands against her trousers, willing her pulse to remain steady as she studied them.
It was nothing more than retrograde analysis of a chessboard: If she could see the steps that had led everyone to this night, she could work out which moves someone had tried to hide.
Justice was the ostensible reason for everyone’s presence, and it was difficult to find fault with that.
But Leland’s ruination of Robert Crowne’s life, both blaming him for the student’s death as an undergraduate and framing him for treason in Vosburg, had stained Marion’s family with a shadow that had shaped her life.
The Communist literature in her bedroom indicated Soviet sympathies, and Marion openly railed against the class hierarchy she felt had destroyed her uncle’s life.
Even if she believed Robert had been innocent, vengeance might have prompted her to commit treason for a cause of her own choosing—in for a penny, in for a pound if your family’s reputation was already tarnished.
On the other hand, Leland had abused his friendship with Dr. Neville for decades.
He’d exploited Neville’s insecurities while at Oxford to keep him quiet about their involvement in the boy’s death and influenced Neville’s testimony that condemned Crowne as a traitor.
Recognizing Leland’s manipulations might have been enough impetus to make meek Dr. Neville snap under pressure and seek to right the balance of lies.
And with a sweetheart trapped in a KGB family, any information funneled to them might have helped his cause as a suitor, killing two birds with one stone.
As for Dr. Watkins, she clearly needed funds if she were selling stolen books to Olenev, and turning informant was probably good money.
Her manner toward Leland lacked the warmth of her friendship with Dr. Neville, but Gin well knew his belittling ways with women.
He was probably a dreadful colleague, and his dismissal might also give Watkins more opportunity for promotion among her peers.
Personal animus could certainly have motivated her to bait such a trap if she’d uncovered Leland’s secrets while snooping about his office as she had Neville’s.
Yet with every passing moment Hughes hadn’t reappeared, Gin wondered if her intuition about his honesty had been wrong.
He might very well be a double agent, working for both the Americans and Soviets, and agreed to help to protect his own operation.
And if he’d been looking for dirt on someone in Oxford to become the patsy, Leland was a perfect mark.
Gin’s pulse raced as she processed through the catalog of evidence.
Sidney was studying her like a bomb that needed defusing, and she didn’t want to alarm him.
With a few more minutes to think, she was sure she could work it out.
And if there was one area in which she excelled, it was blathering on her feet.
Slowly, Gin turned toward the people gathered around Leland. “Professor, I think I should apologize.”
Leland’s eyes were bleary with despair. “For what?” he said dully.
“For insisting you held further secrets.” Gin hesitated, waiting for the others’ attention to shift toward her. “I see now I was fooled by a very clever plan to implicate you in a new round of treasonous activity.”
Leland’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“Someone has been sharing sensitive information with the Kremlin,” Gin said evenly. “They’re feeding it through a KGB man named Grigor Olenev, and the trail of breadcrumbs leads to you.”
At the name, the three people around Leland stiffened. The kitchen fell silent, but the steady beat of rain against the window pattered as fast as Ginevra’s heart.
“What?” Leland spluttered. “Why?”
“I think you have more enemies than you realize, Professor.”
Leland paled at this, his mouth falling ajar, and he sank lower beneath Ginevra’s withering gaze. “Well, I don’t know who the devil this Olenev person is.”
“He owns a bookstore in south Oxford,” Gin said, studying the honest confusion in the professor’s face. He was a terrible liar and had likely only escaped the truth of Vosburg for so long because his version had been so swiftly accepted. “Everyone else here does know him.”
“Everyone here?” Leland blinked as though trying to fit incompatible puzzle pieces, but then his eyebrows shot up in alarm. “Good God—are you suggesting—”
“Yes,” Gin said. “Someone here is very determined to see you imprisoned for your crimes and went to the trouble of forging new ones if the old ones couldn’t be proved. Which means someone knew the truth about Vosburg before you confessed and has been feigning ignorance…”
Her breath hitched, for there it was: the simple lie woven into the elegant plan framing Leland. It was so subtle that she might have missed it without comparing the whole sweep of the pattern. But with one tug, she could now unravel the entire scheme.
Gin crossed her arms and surveyed them all, until a thick, uncomfortable silence had settled over the room. When Sidney caught her eye this time, the message was clear: The endgame was in her hands.
“Everyone,” she continued, measuring her words, “has insisted they didn’t know about your lie in Vosburg. But for one person, I have observed evidence to the contrary. Indeed, they’ve lied on several points.” She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. “Isn’t that right, Dr. Watkins?”
Watkins, still kneeling beside Neville and the recording case, startled. She stared at Gin like an animal caught in the headlamps. “I beg your pardon?”
“Last night in the Foxley Hall drawing room, you told Marion Kirk that you didn’t know Robert Crowne nor any details about Vosburg, and you reiterated that again tonight,” Gin said.
“And yet, at Leland’s book party, I heard Donald badgering you to ask the professor again about the German error in the book.
That wasn’t the first time you’d heard of it.
You’d had plenty of time to realize the truth and devise a plan to use it against Leland. ”
“That’s absurd,” Watkins protested. “You are mad, Miss Bishop, if you think I have the time or energy to care about every student’s petty crusade.”
“A fair point,” Gin said. “As someone who did make the fatal mistake of ignoring Donald’s grumbling over this error, I could see how you might have also ignored him—if that information were not extremely precious to you. Because despite your protests to Marion, I think you also knew Robert Crowne.”
“What?” Marion straightened, her head whipping toward Dr. Watkins. “How?”
Gin studied the lines of the older woman’s face, searching for any sign of yielding, but Jacqueline Watkins was far too disciplined.
Tolliver’s hidden documents had revealed her time as a nurse before coming to Oxford, how beloved she was at Ellesmere Cottage Hospital—that sort of dedication in two different, difficult fields spoke to a resilience and determination that would not easily surrender at the first hurdle.
If Gin had only connected Ellesmere to the Shropshire town where Marion’s aunt lived, this whole thing might have been much simpler.