Message For Hitler Read online

  But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember. I was four years old at the time and my ma already taught me some numbers, none of which came out in the right order. I stayed overnight, meaning I missed out on a trip to the soda fountain. But a candy-striper brought me an extra portion of green Jell-O with fruit cocktail floating inside, which helped make up for it. Lucky for me, the hemorrhage stopped all on its own and they didn’t have to cut open my head.

  Daphne came up to me with a mop in her hand. Her hair was in a sloppy bun, beads of sweat dripped from the tip of her nose. She blew hair from her face. “I do so hate nursing,” she said.

  “Looks more like maid’s work to me.”

  “It might look that way, but I’ll have you know—sanitation is the most important aspect of modern nursing.” She didn’t look convinced. “Truth be told, that’s one of the reasons I gave up on the profession. I so hated cleaning bedpans.”

  “Then put the mop down and help me uncover a plot to undermine the Royal Air Force.”

  She looked at me cock-eyed, about to make a wisecrack. But just then, Ringo squatted down and left a puddle on the floor. We watched as the yellow stream moved across the floor Daphne’d just mopped, puddling against the wall.

  “That does it,” she said, resting the mop against the bed. “Let me powder my nose first.”

  I waited on Sel’s empty bed, thinking about recent events and hitting immediately upon two clues:

  1. The blindfold was white.

  2. It was made of silk.

  It was just a flash of memory, but I was sure about these two details. The scarf must’ve slipped from my face as I struggled to break out of the Frigidaire. Come to think of it, it might be there still.

  Daphne returned looking like a pin-up poster; amazing what a little powder can do. She was counting on Jack arriving at any minute. Her hair was rolled to the back of her neck the way my brother liked it: a Victory roll, it’s called. She said, “I’ve earned a lunch break. Let’s find a spot of grass and have our picnic. I’d wait for Jack to return, only—” She rubbed her tummy. We agreed to save Jack’s vegetable pastie, plus a pickle, an apple, and a bottle of homemade ginger beer.

  “Let’s return to the scene of the crime,” I said once we finished eating. Daphne kicked my shoe. She wasn’t taking me seriously, thinking it was all a hoot. She sounded like a radio laugh-track. As we made our way to the mess hall, Geraldine came running up to us. Recovered from food poisoning from the look of it.

  “Lieutenant Mooney is on the line wanting to speak with you,” she said, “Jack, I mean.”

  We hurried over to a brick building, the one used for headquarters. It was on top of an underground room housing the RAF station Sector Control plotting department. That’s where the WAAFs received messages from radar operators and then moved blocks around a gigantic map of Europe. The blocks stood for squadrons of German bombers headed over the English Channel. RAF Command would then figure out where to intercept with fighter squadrons. I tried to get into the room once, but was stopped by MPs. Sad to say, but everything I knew about plotting came from watching The First of The Few.

  Geraldine took us into an office where a phone sat on a desk, the receiver next to the base. I ran for it. “Jack!” I shouted into the phone.

  Daphne came next to me and pressed her ear to mine. “Darling, are you safe?”

  “What’s the meaning of this?” said a voice oddly like Winston Churchill’s.

  “Is this the prime minister?” I asked.

  “I say, is this some sort of prank?” said the voice. “To whom am I speaking? Is this RAF Rochford on the line?”

  Another WAAF came into the room and took the receiver from my hands. “Sir, I’m sorry, sir, there’s been some sort of mix-up with the telephone.”

  Geraldine bit her lower lip and apologized to us. “Lieutenant Mooney was on the phone,” she said. “Someone must have rung off by mistake. Or maybe Jack ended the call. He did say he was calling from a phone booth. He might have run out of coins.” She tut-tuted: “One would think the operator would have placed a call at no charge, given the circumstances.”

  I knew that when pilots went on missions they took along a kit with French francs and Reichsmarks in it, in case they crash landed in occupied Europe. But francs wouldn’t fit into an English coin slot.

  “Good God,” said Geraldine. “I ought to have asked for his exact location. Had I been, well…I might have sent around a driver to fetch him. He first asked to get patched over to Squadron Leader Kennard, but we knew that he was out on a Rhubarb. After that, Lieutenant Mooney insisted upon speaking with you.”

  “Me or her?” I asked, looking a Daphne.

  “Daphne,” said Geraldine. “I’d mentioned that she was here.”

  “What else did he say? Details are important,” I explained.

  She bit her lip again and said, “He’d bailed out of his plane, then walked some distance to a small village. Near Oxford, I remember his saying. Let me think—he’d mentioned the name…”

  “Geraldine,” I said, “don’t fail us now.”

  “Garsington, that was it! He wanted to find his Spitfire.” She tapped her fingers against the desk, her pink lacquered nails. “I remember now! Jack said that he hadn’t been hit by enemy aircraft. He made a point of that. He said, ‘They didn’t get me this time, Gerl, no siree, it’s all hunky-dory,’ and a host of other Americanisms. ‘No Jerry’s gonna paint a little Union Jack on his fuselage today,’ and other such sentiments. Seemed pleased about that, but worried about something else.”

  Geraldine left the office in search of a map. The other WAAF finished the phone call with the irate Churchill impersonator and introduced herself to Daphne. “I take it you’re Flight Lieutenant Mooney’s fiancée?”

  “That’s right,” said Daphne, puffing her chest out a little. “We’re getting married in January, as a matter of fact.” They shook hands and Daphne said, “I’ve not seen you before, have I? You must be new to Rochford.”

  “My name’s Alice. Just came over from RAF North Weald.”

  “Jack was at North Weald,” said Daphne. “I know another WAAF named Alice who’s stationed there. Alice Skinner—know her?

  “Common name. Wish my mum had given me something more exotic. Like Felicity or Josephine, or perhaps—”

  Before Alice could finish with her wish list, Geraldine returned with a map. She opened it, laying it flat out on the desk. We searched for a small dot and the word Garsington. My extra-sharp eyes were the first to locate it. I consulted the scale chart and used my finger to measure the distance: at least a hundred miles from Southend-on-Sea. Turned out we’d taken the train in the wrong direction. Garsington was near Oxford University. Rumor was they had a set of coffins excavated from the burial site of Theban priests at the temple of Queen Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri. Howard Carter himself worked at the site.

  “Do you have a car we can borrow, Geraldine?” I asked.

  “I wish. I have a rusty bicycle I can loan you. The front tire needs pumping, but it’s otherwise serviceable.”

  “Thomas, neither of us can drive,” said Daphne, incorrectly. “Besides, haven’t you promised to babysit a goldfish and this dog?” Ringo licked the tips of her fingers.

  Geraldine said, “I’ll ring up the Home Guard and ask them to find Jack. I dare say his Spitfire might have crashed miles from where he landed. And why ever does he want to find it? It will be a pile of burning metal. We can only hope it didn’t land on someone’s house.”

  I could only hope that it didn’t land on the exhibition from Queen Hatshepsut’s tomb from Deir el-Bahri.

  “Have to push off,” said Alice. “Good to make your acquaintance, Daphne—Cheerio!” She’d been sorting through a file cabinet and was holding a stack of manila folders under one arm with another stack against her chest.

  “Oh, Alice, you’re invited to the wedding,” said Daphne. “Everyone is—that is, everyone who isn’t on duty that day. I only hope
Jack is free. We’re getting married in Leytonstone.” She took a whiff. “That’s a heavenly perfume you’re wearing, may I ask what it is?”

  Girl talk—I tuned them out and turned my ears toward Geraldine, who was placing a call to the Home Guard headquarters in Oxford. “That’s right—Garsington—I said Garsington—sorry, bad connection—G.A.R—S.I.N.G—exactly right. You’ll send someone around straight away? Shouldn’t be hard to find: flight uniform, leather fleece-lined coat, about six-foot, about twelve stones, black hair, blue eyes, Irish good looking sort of chap—And the Spitfire? What’s that?” Her mouth formed a perfect circle. “You don’t say!” She put her hand to her heart, “That is a relief.”

  She hung up the phone and sighed, “Well, that’s good news at least. They’ve found the Spitfire and no one was hurt when it crashed. It went down frightfully close to a 12th century church, very nearly hitting it. They were having choir practice at the time, so thank goodness the Spitfire didn’t crash into it. Unfortunately, it took down quite a few tombstones in the church graveyard. The parishioners will be dreadfully upset.”

  “Why? All the victims were dead already,” I pointed out.

  “True,” laughed Geraldine.

  We stepped out of HQ and I reminded Daphne that she’d promised to come with me to the mess hall. She was one step behind me, blurting out something about a promise she’d made to Jack to keep an eye on me. By then, the kitchen crew was back on duty and in the middle of preparing supper. One man chopped carrots and another sat on a stool with a crate of potatoes in front of him, peeling away. I felt sorry for him—so many ways to serve in the war effort and he was stuck with the spuds.

  I’d borrowed a spiral notebook and pen from the administration supply closet. I tapped the pen on the cover of the notebook, opening to a blank page.

  “Mind answering a few questions?” I said.

  “What are you, BBC?” asked the potato peeler.

  “Seen any suspicious characters around this morning? Anyone Aryan looking—you know the sort: blond, blue eyes.”

  “Since you mention it, there was a bloke sneaking around earlier. But he had dark hair, nearer to black.” He paused to think, and I made a notation in my notebook. “Little black mustache, brown shirt with a red armband—swastika in the middle—asked if we wanted him to autograph a copy of Mein Kampf.”

  “Okay, wise guy,” I said, closing the notebook. “Mind if I take a look in the walk-in refrigerator?” I looked over at the huge stainless-steel fridge, my former prison. It looked like any other industrial fridge.

  “My apologies,” said Daphne, gesturing to the crew. “You know how it is—too many Hollywood films. Too many comic books. He gets excited over nothing. Please, go on with your work.”

  In the Frigidaire, I found what I was looking for. Behind a crate of turnips was a long white silk scarf—the kind pilots wear. Jack had one like it. Fighter pilots had to keep swinging their necks around, always on the lookout for enemy aircraft. So the RAF allowed them to wear a scarf instead of a tie, which rubbed their necks raw. I wondered why one of the pilots would throw me in the refrigerator, why a pilot would want to poison everyone at the base. It didn’t make sense. Pilots were fiercely loyal and dedicated to the cause.

  Unless I could trace the scarf to its owner, I’d be out of luck. Fingerprints didn’t stick to silk. I shoved the scarf into my trouser pocket and told Daphne it was time to go. Once outside, I pulled the scarf from my pocket and showed it to her. “The culprit blindfolded me with this,” I said.

  “It’s one of the pilot’s scarves,” she said, dittoing my thoughts. “Nice quality, that.” She rubbed the fabric between her fingers: “Very fine herringbone weave in a hundred-percent silk… Yes, says here right on the tag. Hand wash in cold water.” She flipped the label, “Dunhill of London, a very posh shop. We’ll have to return it to its owner. I suppose we might put up a notice in the commissary.”

  Dunhill of London—I’d been to the place with Lord Sopwith. He let me pick out a polka dot bow-tie. Looking at the price tag knocked the wind out of me. You could’ve bought a Lionel caboose and a couple of boxcars with that much money.

  “It couldn’t belong to any of the men in Jack’s squadron,” said Daphne. “They’re all tight. You know how little the RAF pays them, and few of them come from wealth. Squadron Leader Kennard might be the one exception.”

  Kennard. I considered him as a suspect, but then ruled him out. For one thing, he’d been out on a mission all morning and wasn’t around to poison the kidneys. For another thing, he was one of my heroes.

  “So, whose scarf could it be?” I asked.

  “I’d say it belongs to a pilot from the Millionaire Squadron.”

  The Millionaire Squadron! I knew all about them: RAF Squadron Number 601. It was made up of rich kids. England’s top of the heap. Or, as Lady Sop would put it, “the cream of the crop.” One Squadron 601 pilot was so rich, he bought a local gas station just so’s he’d have an endless supply of petrol for his supercharged Alvis Silver Crest. They had their uniforms lined with red silk. Lady Sop said they were a hit at Ascot, that horse race. She went wearing a hat that made her look like the base of a lamp.

  There was once an American pilot in the squadron—a fella named Billy Fiske. He was a two-time Olympic gold medal bobsledder and then a New York stockbroker before joining up. He married a girl listed in a book called Burke’s Peerage. Lord and Lady Sopwith had a copy of the book in their library and I’d looked her up. In a dogfight over the Channel, a Messerschmitt shot up Billy’s fuel tank and his Hurricane caught fire. He stayed with plane long enough to land it on English soil. Billy was so burnt his flight gloves were fused to his hands. His obituary was splashed all over the front pages in America, his being the first American flyer killed in the war. He was another one of my heroes.

  “Is the Millionaire Squadron stationed at RAF Rochford?” I asked.

  “Not as far as I know,” said Daphne, “but they move the squadrons around so often, maybe they are here and I just don’t know it. We can ask Jack when he gets back. Meanwhile, Geraldine has invited us to have dinner. She and some of the other WAAFs will be cooking up something back at their billet. The rule is no men allowed. But since you’re under thirteen, they’re able to make an exception.”

  I stood up straight. “Maybe I don’t wanta be an exception. I’ll eat back at Jack’s mess with the other pilots. With the men, that is.”

  “Oh, get on. It will be great fun. And most men would die for a chance to get inside that house.” (She did have a point. I’d have something to brag about.) I let her go on: “The house is quite far, but we can ride over on Jimmy’s bicycle. He has a broken leg and says he won’t be needing it for a while.”

  “Only if I’m at the controls and you sit on the fender.” I looked down at Ringo. “What do we do with her?”

  “The basket, of course.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  WE WERE SEATED around a large dinner table. The ladies insisted I take the head. Man of honor, so to speak.

  “It’s not every day we have a gentleman over for supper,” said one of the WAAFs. Her name was Blanche. She wore thick glasses that kept slipping down her nose. Her tweed jacket was too tight around the armpits, so that she had to hold her arms out like a penguin. She turned to Geraldine, “Pass the margarine, would you, dear?”

  I wanted to know what each of them did. Blanche was a bit cagey, I thought: “Can’t say. Official Secrets Act and all that.”

  “I’m in charge of food requisitions,” said Corporal Elizabeth Herbert, who everyone called Beetle. “Top secret stuff—can’t let the Germans know how much marmalade we consume, might tip the scales against us.”

  “If the Jerries win the war, there shan’t be any jam. It will be bread and water for us, and the workhouse,” said Blanche, who sat at the opposite end of the table.

  Alice, who we’d met already, joined the dinner party late and took the seat next to mine. She said, “So s
orry. Just off duty.” She’d changed into a green wool sweater and a pair of wool trousers—herringbone, I noticed, just like the pilot’s scarf. She was wearing a string of pearls, but I could tell they were fakes—the shiny paint was clipping off the beads.

  “Your turn,” I said looking at her. “Whatta you do in the WAAFs?”

  “This and that. Nothing that would interest you. Secretarial pool mostly.”

  “And all this time I thought you were a plotter,” said Beetle. “Or, rather, liaison assigned from… Oh, I suppose I shouldn’t say.” She put a hand over her mouth, but then went on, “To be a plotter seems ever so exciting! Dread as German bombers head towards us, and then relief when they’ve been turned back. I heard that during the Battle of Britain, Sir Winston Churchill sat in a plotting room with tears welling in his eyes”—she brushed a tear from her own eye, she was so emotional—“realizing that the RAF had averted an invasion.”

  “That’s right,” said Geraldine. “It was then he said those immortal words…”

  “‘Never was so much owed by so many to so few,’” said Daphne, doing an imitation of the prime minister. Everyone laughed.

  “It does make one proud to be working with the RAF,” said Beetle, “Even if all one does is help nourish the aircrews.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Blanche, and everyone joined in, lifting their water glasses and clashing them against each other. Alice was a beat behind. She looked like her head was about to fall into her plate, she was so bushed. I figured plotting was an exhausting job; during the Blitz, she’d probably been on her feet night and day.

  “Makes me proud to be marrying a Spitfire pilot,” said Daphne with that dreamy look in her eye. Her eyelashes fluttered, thinking about Jack in his dress blues and her in a white silk dress. She began hyperventilating.

  “When is the wedding, dear?” asked Blanche. “I do so want to be there to cheer you two on. There’s nothing I like better than a wedding. Don’t neglect to provide a box of tissues for each pew, for those of us who get teary-eyed.”