Read Chapter 15: The Charwoman's Secret

She was there again.

Evelyn spotted her from the bedroom window—a thin figure in a drab grey coat, loitering beside the lamppost across from the boarding house. The charwoman who had returned the brooch. Except she wasn't carrying a cleaning basket or a dustcloth. She was watching Evelyn's window with the patience of someone paid to wait.

The brooch.

Evelyn's hand moved instinctively to her collar, where the silver lark usually rested against her throat. But it wasn't there. She had stopped wearing it two days ago, after Ashworth's offhand comment about listening devices and how easily a clever jeweller could hollow out a setting. The brooch sat now in a drawer beneath a stack of handkerchiefs, wrapped in muslin, as if that would somehow neutralize it.

If the brooch was a listener, then every conversation she'd had in that room—every thought spoken aloud while dressing, every frustrated mutter over a cipher—had been heard.

And the woman who had delivered it was still watching.

Evelyn pulled back from the curtain. Her heart hammered against her ribs with that peculiar rhythm she'd come to know these past weeks—fear and fury braided so tightly together she couldn't separate them. She had walked into Room 40 believing the war against Germany was fought with codes and intercepts. She had learned it was also fought with lies and traps and women who appeared at your door with poisoned gifts wrapped in sympathetic smiles.

She needed to know who the charwoman was. And she needed to know it now, before the woman vanished back into whatever shadows had spat her out.

Evelyn grabbed her coat and hat. She did not pause to compose her face or plan her approach—planning could come later. The woman was still there, still watching the window, and Evelyn slipped out the back door and around the side of the house, emerging onto the street at an angle that put the charwoman in her peripheral vision.

The woman hadn't moved. Her gaze remained fixed on Evelyn's window.

Evelyn began walking, unhurried, in the opposite direction. She counted her steps. At twenty she reached the corner and turned left. At thirty-five she stopped beside a newsagent's window, examining a display of fountain pens with no real interest, and angled herself just enough to see the reflection of the street behind her.

The charwoman was following.

She was good at it—better than the grey-haired man had been. Her pace matched Evelyn's without seeming to, her attention ostensibly on the shop windows, her posture that of a woman with nowhere pressing to be. But she was there, a grey ghost hovering at the edge of Evelyn's vision.

Evelyn's mind raced. She couldn't lose the woman without alerting her to the fact that she'd been noticed. She couldn't confront her without exposing the depth of her own suspicion. What she needed was to follow the follower—to lead the charwoman into company that would betray her.

The George and Crown. A public house two streets over, known for its dark corners and its willingness to serve anyone whose coin was good.

Evelyn had never been inside. But she knew the sort of establishment it was. Every city had them—places where loyalties grew murky and tongues loosened with enough ale.

She walked past the pub once, making note of the entrance, then doubled back and slipped inside before she could second-guess herself.

The air was thick with smoke and the low murmur of afternoon drinkers. Evelyn ordered a port at the bar—something to justify her presence—and took a seat near the window, her back to the wall, where she could watch the door.

The charwoman appeared three minutes later.

She hesitated at the threshold, scanning the room. Her eyes found Evelyn and lingered a half-second too long. Then she moved to the bar, purchased a small gin, and took a table in the corner with the careful nonchalance of someone who had done this before.

Evelyn sipped her port. The woman sipped her gin. The clock above the bar ticked on.

Twenty minutes passed. Evelyn was beginning to think the woman was merely waiting for her to leave when the pub door opened and a man stepped through.

He was stout and middle-aged, with a heavy moustache and a merchant sailor's rolling gait. He didn't look at the bar. He didn't look at Evelyn. He walked directly to the charwoman's table and sat down opposite her, leaning forward to speak in low tones that didn't carry.

Evelyn's blood went cold.

She knew that man. Had seen his face in a dossier just last week, flagged by an intelligence officer who compiled lists of German sympathizers operating in London. His name was Heinrich Voss—though he called himself Henry Vass to his customers—and he ran a chandlery in Wapping that supplied ships' stores to any vessel willing to pay his prices.

Ships' stores. Provisions. Supplies.

And, according to the dossier, information.

Evelyn watched the two of them speak. The charwoman's face was animated now, no longer slack with waiting. She was talking quickly, gesturing with one hand while the other stayed wrapped around her gin. Voss listened, nodding occasionally, his eyes sharp and intent.

The brooch. The woman who had returned it. A known German sympathizer.

The pieces clicked together with a sickening snap.

The brooch wasn't just a listening device. It was more likely a tracker—something designed to let her watchers know where she was at all times, or to listen for specific voices or keywords, to report back who she met with and what she discussed. The charwoman hadn't been loitering outside Evelyn's flat yesterday or last week. She had only been there since Evelyn stopped wearing the brooch, trying to establish a new pattern, a new way of tracking her.

They were watching her because she mattered. Because someone had realized she was more than a clerk.

Evelyn set down her port glass with a hand that trembled slightly. She forced herself to breathe. To think.

She could confront the woman. March over to that table and demand answers, demand to know who had sent her and why. But that would expose everything—her awareness of the surveillance, her ties to Ashworth, the carefully constructed trap set for Thursday. The charwoman would report back, and the Songbird would adjust, and the net would close around them instead.

She couldn't confront. She couldn't flee. She had to use this.

Evelyn rose from her seat, leaving the port half-finished. She walked past the charwoman's table without looking at her, without giving any sign that she had seen anything unusual. She pushed through the pub door and into the gray London afternoon, and she did not look back until she had turned two corners and ducked into the narrow alley behind a tobacconist's shop.

No one followed.

She pressed her back against the damp brick and closed her eyes, trying to calm the frantic drumming of her heart.

The charwoman. Voss. The brooch.

The woman had been the one to return it—to place it in Evelyn's hands with such innocent solicitude. Which meant the device was never meant to be discovered too late. It was meant to be installed inside Evelyn's own home, inside her own space, where she would keep it close and trust it and never think to question it.

But she had questioned it. And now she knew.

She also knew something else, something that chilled her even more deeply than the revelation of the tracker: the charwoman had met Voss openly, in a public house, in the middle of the afternoon. Perhaps the meeting was routine. Perhaps it was innocent—if any meeting between a woman who delivered wired brooches and a known German sympathizer could be called innocent.

But Evelyn didn't think it was routine. Because the charwoman had lingered outside Evelyn's flat first, watching the window. She had been waiting for something. Waiting to see if the brooch's absence was temporary or permanent. Waiting to see if Evelyn had discovered it.

Which meant they knew.

They—the charwoman, Voss, the Songbird—they knew that Evelyn had stopped wearing the brooch, and they wanted to know why.

And if they knew that, they would also know Evelyn had become a danger.

Evelyn opened her eyes. The alley smelled of coal smoke and wet stone. Somewhere above her, a pigeon cooed from a windowsill, indifferent to the war and its secrets.

She had two days until Thursday. Two days until the false message ran and the trap closed on William Parfitt—or failed to close, and the real mole learned he was being hunted. Two days to decide how to use what she had learned without exposing herself.

But she couldn't wait two days. Not now.

Not when they were watching her so closely.

Evelyn pushed off from the wall and began walking, her steps quick and purposeful, toward Charing Cross. Toward the bookshop. Toward the meeting point that Ashworth had established, where "The Woman in White" would buy her time.

The charwoman had delivered the brooch. But she had also delivered Evelyn a gift far more valuable: proof that the network was paying attention to her.

And that meant she could use that attention to lead them exactly where she wanted them to go.