Free Mr. Churchill's Secretary by Susan Elia MacNeal

murdered in Pimlico.” Mark picked up a piece of paper with a photograph clipped to it. He gave a low whistle. “Too bad—she was a real looker.” He handed the photo to Hugh.
    Hugh replied, “Thought that was a police matter. Open-and-shut case.”
    “Not when it’s someone connected with the Prime Minister’s office.”
    Hugh looked down at the photo again. The girl had a doelike quality to her. Not that it meant anything. “Think it was more than a murder, then?”
    “Frain found a witness—one of the girl’s flatmates caught a glimpse of a man lurking around. Didn’t think much of it at the time.”
    “In the blackout?”
    Mark leaned his bulk back in his chair. “There was a moon that night. Almost full. Said she got a decent look.”
    “Was she able to make an identification?”
    “Not a conclusive one. She picked out a few men from photographs. The other two were decoys. But one was IRA—name of Michael Murphy.”
    “Murphy? That bastard’s still in the country?” Murphy was implicated in a series of IRA bombings in London earlier in the year, which had killed almost fifty people.
    “Apparently.”
    “But if it was Murphy, why her?” Hugh gave Diana’s picture a hard look, as if she could somehow answer him. “And why now?”
    At No. 10, Maggie was learning that Mr. Churchill could often be irritable, incensed, and sarcastic.
    When she made a mistake—and she made plenty—her hearing, her education, and her country of origin were all called into question.
    She single-spaced lines instead of doubling them. She typed
right
instead of
ripe, fretful
instead of
dreadful
, and
perverted
instead of
perfervid
. She made mistakes from anxiety, wanting to please so badly, and also from ignorance—making a mess of foreign names and places until she grew to know them.
    Then there were just plain dumb errors. One day, in a move that reduced David to tears of laughter, she’d typed the Air Minister—as opposed to the Air
Ministry
—was “in a state of chaos from top to bottom.” Needless to say, when the Prime Minister saw the memo, he roared his disapproval, kicking the wastebasket across the room and shouting, “I’ll feed you to Rota!”—the lion from the London Zoo.
    At least the rest of the staff thought it was funny.
    Late one evening, he’d commanded, “Gimme klop!” Klop?
Klop?
Maggie panicked, not knowing what a “klop” was. After searching frantically, she brought in an entire series of books, written by Professor Kloppe, that she’d found in the library. No. Wrong. He’d meant the
klop
—the hole punch—as Mr. Churchill always required things punched and tagged instead of stapled or paper-clipped.
    For “Gimme Prof!” Maggie was expected to know he meant Lord Cherwell, his science adviser. One night, in a vile humor, he bellowed, “Gimme Pug!” She thought he was going to take off her head when she brought in one of the small, wriggling pug dogs who freely roamed the halls of No. 10, along with Nelson, the cat, and a poodle named Rufus. No, no, no! She was a fool, she was an idiot, and he stamped his feet in frustration. No, by “Pug” he’d meant General Ismay, the link betweenChurchill and the Chiefs of Staff Committee, whose face did have certain puggish qualities.
    David watched in amusement as Maggie learned her way around No. 10, looking more like a decapitated fowl than a brilliant math scholar. While nothing could quite extinguish her looks, often her red hair would come free from her tortoiseshell clip, creating a halo of fuzzy curls. On the days when she wore makeup, a smudge of mascara would inevitably land on her cheek or flecks of red lipstick migrate to her teeth.
    An order from the Old Man to “Gimme moon!” nearly sent Maggie over the edge.
    “Why, good evening, Magster,” David said in passing. Then, taking a closer look at her dark-shadowed eyes and slightly hysterical expression, “What’s the Old Man got you running after tonight?”
    “He