Read Chapter 18: The Double Agent

The pencil point snapped against the ledger page, and Evelyn stared at the broken graphite as if it had betrayed her. Ashworth had commandeered a back room above a chandler's shop off Wapping High Street—a space that smelled of tar and lamp oil and secrets. He stood at the window now, watching the street below through a crack in the grimy curtain.

"You're certain it was her handwriting?" he asked without turning.

"Certain enough." Evelyn pushed the ledger across the scarred wooden table. "I compared it against the minutes Lady Fenmore dictated at her last charity committee meeting. The same slant. The same flourish on the capital S."

Ashworth finally turned. His face was drawn, the lantern light carving hollows beneath his cheekbones. "Songbird. The woman who runs an officers' refuge. The woman who swears she suspects Griffiths."

"The woman who sent me a note using Thomas's private names for me." Evelyn's throat tightened. "She knew them because Thomas told her. Because he trusted her. And she used that trust to bring me into her orbit."

Ashworth crossed to the table and stared down at the ledger page. The message was innocent on its face—a list of donations from charitable ladies for the refuge's winter coats. But Evelyn had learned to look past the surface. Cross out every third word, read the remaining letters in reverse, and a different message emerged.

*Bird flies Thursday. Caged ones sing no more.*

"Thursday." Ashworth's jaw worked. "The trap we set. She knows."

"Or she's telling her German handlers exactly when to strike the refuge and make it look like a British failure." Evelyn's finger traced the cipher. "If they raid the refuge, capture the officers recuperating there, and pin the blame on our security services—"

"Then the public loses faith in our intelligence apparatus. In the middle of a war." Ashworth shook his head slowly. "She's been feeding them everything. Every officer who's convalesced at that house. Every bit of pillow talk she's coaxed from exhausted men. Griffiths suspected her, didn't he? And she killed him for it. Made it look like an accident."

Evelyn thought of Margot de Vries, whose death Ashworth had begun to doubt. "Margot must have discovered her. Lady Fenmore's little maid. She didn't fall from that window—she was pushed."

"And her earlier confidences to you—the warning about Griffiths, the list with Edward Hartley's name—were designed to muddy the water." Ashworth's voice was bitter. "To make you chase your own brother-in-law while she prepared her escape."

The room felt suddenly cold. Evelyn pressed her palms flat against the table. "We have to move. She's fleeing to Germany. If we don't stop her—"

"We will." Ashworth was already reaching for his coat. "I'll wire the port authorities in Dover. She'll need a boat, papers, a route through the Channel. She'll have arranged it in advance."

Evelyn caught his arm. "No wires. If she has contacts inside the Admiralty—and she must, to have worked this long—every telegraph goes through their hands. William Parfitt filters the port traffic."

Ashworth stopped. His eyes met hers, and she saw the calculation there, the shifting of pieces on a board she could only partly see.

"Then we go ourselves," he said. "She'll be at the refuge tonight, making her final preparations. We can intercept her before she reaches the coast."

They moved through the blackout-darkened streets, two shadows among a thousand. Evelyn had her service revolver tucked into her coat pocket—a weapon she'd never fired in anger but had trained with until her hands stopped shaking. Ashworth walked ahead of her, his stride measured, his attention fixed on every doorway, every alcove.

Lady Fenmore's refuge occupied a Georgian townhouse off Belgrave Square, its windows dark, its wrought-iron gate locked. Evelyn had expected guards, watchers, some sign of the network she'd accused. But the street was silent.

"Too quiet," Ashworth murmured.

"Or she wants it that way." Evelyn's hand found the revolver's grip. "She knows we're coming. She wants us to enter."

They scaled the gate together, Ashworth boosting her over the spikes before vaulting after. The front door yielded to his picks with a soft click. Inside, the house smelled of beeswax and lavender—the same scent that had clung to Lady Fenmore's gloves when she'd handed Evelyn the list of suspects.

The drawing room was empty. The dining room was empty. The kitchen was empty, though a kettle still sat steaming on the stove, as if someone had abandoned it mid-visit.

Ashworth swore under his breath. "She's gone."

Evelyn moved past him, up the stairs, her boots silent on the carpet runner. She reached Lady Fenmore's private sitting room and stopped.

The desk lay bare. Drawers hung open, emptied of their contents. But on the velvet cushion of the window seat lay a single object—a silver letter opener shaped like a cormorant's head.

Ashworth appeared in the doorway behind her. "What is that?"

Evelyn picked it up. It was heavier than it looked, weighted at the base. And beneath it, a scrap of paper, one line in that same distinctive hand.

*The song continues. You have only silenced one bird.*

"She knew." Evelyn's voice came out raw. "She knew about the ledger. About our plan. She walked out with time to spare."

Ashworth took the letter opener from her, examining the base. His fingers found a seam, twisted, and the weighted end came away. Inside lay a tightly coiled slip of fine paper, covered in a cipher Evelyn had never seen before.

"A list of neutral ship names," Ashworth said slowly. "Ships used for German resupply."

Evelyn stared at it. The implications bloomed like ink in water. She had been waiting for Thomas to show his hand, to prove his loyalty or his guilt. And now, in this final room of a fallen enemy's house, she had found his answer.

"Thomas left this for me," she whispered. "He knew she would escape. He knew I would find this."

Ashworth's hand closed over hers. "Then your fiancé wasn't her agent. He was hunting her."

And somewhere in the night, on a road leading south toward the Channel, the woman called Songbird was already singing a new song to handlers who waited in the dark.