A Jewel in the Crown

Book 1: Secret Churchill Files

by David Lewis

Genres: Historical Thrillers; Thrillers; Spy Thrillers

Synopsis

James Bond meets Maisie Dobbs in this riveting new historical caper series featuring a gifted young socialist-turned-counterespionage spy on a World War II mission orchestrated by Winston Churchill himself…

1940: Weeks after the evacuation of Dunkirk, Germany is poised to invade a near-defenseless Britain. To safeguard the Crown Jewels from the Nazis, Winston Churchill devises a daring gamble to have them shipped overseas. The priceless artifacts will be secretly removed from the Tower of London and driven north to Scotland by two operatives posing as a young married couple, to be taken from there to Canada.

Caitrin Colline—a Welsh coalminer’s daughter and an ardent socialist—will play the wife of Lord Marlton, Hector Neville-Percy. A less likely couple is at first difficult to imagine. Yet Caitrin’s bold, streetwise confidence and sharp wits complement Hector’s social ease and connections, essential to a second part of their mission: uncovering Nazi sympathizers within the highest ranks of Britain’s aristocracy.

Battling enemies within and without, Caitrin wonders if anyone in their circle can be trusted—even her partner. And when unexpected events catapult her into a life-or-death chase across the continent, the morale of a nation and the fate of Europe itself in the balance.

Release date: July 23, 2024

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

London, 1939. Police Constable Caitrin Colline did not like walking the beat along Ryers Road on Friday nights, and neither did her partner, Florence Simmonds. Florence, with her shambling gait and apologetic face, was a worrier by nature and would perhaps have been much happier as an undertaker than a policewoman. Apart from her unease at being on Ryers Road, Florence was concerned because Hannah, her Czechoslovakian pen pal, had recently stopped writing. Months earlier, Magrit, her pen pal in Vienna, had stopped writing too. Magrit’s last word was Anschluss. Florence did not understand German—they usually wrote in English—and only learned what Anschluss meant when she read about the Nazi annexation of Austria in the Daily Mail. It did not sound good.

Ryers Road, like all the other slum streets in London’s Docklands, was narrow, with rows of pinched houses on either side. There was no color, even on the brightest of days, and sanitation was rudimentary. Smoke from innumerable coal fires made the air sulfurous, and soot coated the walls and windows. The street gaslights cast disheartening, bilious puddles on the pavement that only made the shadows deeper.

Each house, with two rooms up and two down, was just big enough for a small family, as long as no one tried to be expressive or gained too much weight. There were few fat people on Ryers Road, and how the fecund Irish with their restless, swelling broods managed to fit into such confined spaces was a refutation of the laws of physics.

Only poor people lived on Ryers Road, along with their poor diseases and stunted horizons. And although Caitrin was not as uneasy as her partner, Florence, about being there, it was still not the best place for a woman, even a policewoman, to be, especially on a Friday night.

A rat skittering toward a drain made Florence gasp; a baby cried upstairs in number 14; the door to number 16 crashed open, and a middle-aged woman in a torn nightdress and with blood streaking her face stumbled past them to sprawl face down in the street. An instant later, a man—broad, shirtless, braces flapping around his knees—roared out of the house, pushed between the police officers, and stood over the woman.

Florence shrank back into the shadows as Caitrin approached him and shouted, “Stop that!”

He swatted her to the ground with King Kong ease and swore at the woman lying at his feet. Stunned, Caitrin rolled and cracked her truncheon hard against the man’s shin. He shrieked in pain, and she struck at his other shin, sending him to his knees as she rose to her feet.

“Don’t move.” She pinned his arm behind his back to hold him down. “Simmonds!”

“What?”

“What?” Caitrin glared at her. “Handcuffs.”

Florence edged out of the shadows and at arm’s length offered Caitrin her handcuffs. Caitrin shot her an astonished look and said, “You can see I’m perhaps a little busy here, no? A little help, maybe?”

Florence handcuffed the man’s wrists as if she were stroking a cobra and jumped back.

“There’s a call box at the end of Jubilee Terrace,” Caitrin said. “Get someone to come and pick him up.”

Florence hurried away. The woman sat up, swiped blood from her cheek, pulled her nightdress around her, stared at Caitrin as if she were some demonic apparition, and said, “What the hell are you doing to my poor Cyril?”

“If this is your poor Cyril, I’m arresting him.”

“Arresting him? What for? What’s he done?”

“For impersonating King George VI?” Caitrin stared in amazement at the woman’s bloodied face. “For assault and battery. On you.”

The woman sniffed and waved away her answer. “Oh, that’s just my Cyril. He’s had a hard week, he has, and it wasn’t him, it was the drink what did it. When it gets into him like that, it takes over. Changes his character, it does.”

“He also assaulted me.”

“Probably thought you was one of the Beezer Boys. They’re always hanging around here causing trouble, doing a bit of thieving like, scuffling with the men. Let him go; he’s all right. It’s my fault. I answered back when I shouldn’t have and forgot to stay out of his way.”

Caitrin could not believe what she was hearing. “You’re not pressing charges?”

“On my poor old Cyril? No, never, not in a month of Sundays. Let him go. With a good cuppa tea inside him he’ll be fine in the morning, and he’s got to go to the docks early. I hope you haven’t hurt him too much; we can’t afford for him to miss work. C’mon, missus, let him go. He’ll be all right.”

Caitrin freed Cyril from the handcuffs, and the woman helped him hobble back into the house. The front door closed with a bang, leaving Caitrin standing alone in the middle of the street. She stifled her frustration, dusted herself off, and hurried away to catch Florence before she could call for the Maria. And stopped.

A man stood underneath the street lamp just a few feet away, watching her. He wore a long greatcoat and a trilby that cast a deep shadow over his face.

“Miss Colline,” he said in a dry, accent-less voice.

“It’s Constable Colline.”

“We have been watching you.”

“We?”

In reply, he thrust out a hand and offered her a pasteboard card. “I was asked to give you this. Call first thing tomorrow morning.”

Caitrin took the card and half-turned away from the man to catch the light. On it was a handwritten telephone number and a name: Goodman.

“Who is this Goodman?” Caitrin said as she looked back, but the man had vanished. It was another Friday night on Ryers Road. But this one was just a bit different.

The next morning, Caitrin called the number from the police station. It was answered on the first ring by a woman’s soothing voice. “Good morning, this is Bethany Goodman.”

“Why have you been watching me?”

“Thank you for calling so promptly, Caitrin.”

“How did you know it was me calling?”

“Shall we have tea?”

“Tea?”

“Why not? It’s a civilized way to get to know each other.”

“You can be civilized by leaving me alone, and if I see your amateur detective skulking around again doing his bad American gumshoe act, I will arrest him. Then I will come and arrest you. No tea.”

She slammed down the receiver, left the room, and was almost through the front door when the phone rang again. The duty sergeant answered and called after her, “It’s for you, Caitrin.”

She returned and put the receiver to her ear to hear Bethany say, “Coffee, then?”

“You are persistent.”

“I have to be to keep things running smoothly, but I am also quite harmless, I can assure you. Shall we say ten tomorrow morning at the ABC Tea Shop on Rathbone Place? It was a favorite tea shop for Bernard Shaw and his Fabian lectures—which were often enlightening, sometimes pretentious—and we won’t be noticed because it’s always busy.”

“Why should I meet you?”

“Because we desperately need you, Caitrin.”

“Who’s we?”

“England.”

The ABC Tea Shop was crowded, as Bethany said it would be, but Caitrin arrived early and found a table in a far corner. From there, with her back to the wall, she could survey the whole room and watch who entered. She had no idea what Bethany Goodman looked like but sensed she would know her. And she would see Goodman first.

Sitting alone at a table away to her left was a young vicar—ascetically slender, curved, already balding, and wearing a new dog collar a few sizes too large for him—who blushed whenever he caught Caitrin’s eye. She imagined that by controlling the length of eye contact it would be possible to make him blush in Morse Code: short short short, long long long, short short short. SOS. I wonder how long it would take to make him blush out “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam”?

“George Orwell has become rather grumpy since he was shot in Spain,” a woman said, sitting directly across the table from Caitrin. One moment the chair was empty, the next she was sitting there, and Caitrin had not seen her enter. She was a neat, middle-aged woman, dressed in a dark tweed suit; someone who could easily be overlooked at first glance. She continued, “It was not unexpected. After all, George is six feet two, and standing in a trench dug for shorter Spanish soldiers he must have stuck up a bit. I’m surprised he wasn’t shot to smithereens much sooner. I am Bethany Goodman. Good morning, Caitrin, I am so pleased to meet you.”

A little confused and struggling to catch up, Caitrin took her offered hand. “Good morning.”

“George loathed this place.” Bethany leaned forward, her voice adopting a masculine tone as she puffed out her cheeks and growled, “The Aerated Bread Company Tea Shops are a sinister strand in English catering, the relentless industrialization in which everything comes out of a carton or a tin or is squirted from a tap or squeezed out of a tube.”

She sat back and grinned, her head making a little rocking motion. “Poor George. Born into a well-off family and forever yearning in vain for the pious virtue of poverty.”

“Some have poverty thrust upon them. But we’re not here to drink tea and talk about poor George Orwell, are we? That’s not why we’re here,” Caitrin said. She had caught up.

“No, we surely are not. Would you like tea or coffee?”

“Tea, please.”

Bethany waved to a waitress, ordered, and inspected Caitrin as she stirred her tea. First there was the hair; a mass of glowing red, shining wild curls, completely at odds with the current fashion of obedient waves. Beneath the hair was a pair of fiercely blue eyes, a generous, relaxed mouth, and a precise nose graced with a spattering of freckles. And hidden under that appealing exterior lay a keen intellect and a steely determination.

“All right, here goes the background information,” Bethany said. “The Germans will invade Poland, we are bound by treaty with France to defend them, and a war spreads across Europe. That means we women have to fight.”

“The armed services don’t want us, unless it’s to be jolly good sports and whip off our knickers on request.”

“That’s not for us. We have to fight a different enemy, one that lives among us. Germany has for years infiltrated England with agents and saboteurs who will do great harm if they are not checked.”

“And how do you intend we stop them?”

“We women have had the vote for over ten years but are still considered the weaker sex. Outside our traditional roles we are invisible to most men. We can use that disdain and invisibility to our advantage. Join us, Caitrin, and you will be taught the skills needed to combat Nazi infiltrators.”

“What kind of skills?”

“Everything we know about the enemy and everything necessary for your survival, under all conditions. I guarantee it will not be safe or easy. Will you join us?”

“Who exactly is us?”

“We are 512, an all and only female counterespionage unit.”

“Why 512?”

“We had to be called something, and I didn’t want a glorious or masculine name,” Bethany said and looked a little embarrassed. “And 512 happens to be the birthday of my Dandie Dinmont.”

“Do you have a cute Dandie Dinmont?”

“I do.”

Caitrin sat back in her chair, sipped her tea, noticed the young vicar leaving with a parting radiant blush, and said, “In that case, how could I possibly refuse?”

“Splendid. Then you can take the Duchess.”

“The Duchess?”

Caitrin, along with nineteen other young women, stood waiting at the corner of Marloes Road and Lexham Gardens in London’s West Kensington. A sharp-eyed woman with eye-watering mint breath and a black coat that smelled of mothballs sidled up to Caitrin and asked, “Are you here for the Duchess?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Me too.” The woman, impatient, glanced at her watch. “Then where the bloody hell is she?”

“That would be her over there, don’t you think?” Caitrin said as she pointed to a Bedford pantechnicon that had pulled up on Marloes Road. It was battered and dirty, with the faded words DUCHESS REMOVALS stenciled across the side. She saw the address was from the East End, didn’t recognize it, and guessed it was probably fictitious. She also noticed there was no telephone number.

The driver—a middle-aged man with a tooth-challenged smile, a flat cap, and a shabby suit—leaped from the cab, scurried to the rear of the pantechnicon, threw the doors open wide, bowed, and grandly announced, “Trevor’s the name, ladies, and your carriage awaits.”

“What! You expect us to go in there?” the mothballed and mint-breathed woman said as they clustered around the doors. “It’s a lorry.”

“Technically speaking, it’s a pantechnicon, Miss. There are boxes inside to sit on, and the drive won’t take long.”

“There are no windows.”

“That’s the point,” Caitrin said. “They don’t want us to see where we’re going.” She did not know Trevor’s face but recognized the voice. He was the man who had given her Bethany Goodman’s card on Ryers Road.

“Hello, we’ve got ourselves a real bright one here. And I’ll take your watches, if you please. Promise I won’t flog them, but I might keep the prettiest one for the trouble and strife.”

“Watches?” Mint-breath asked.

“He wants the watches to stop us from timing the journey,” Caitrin said before anyone could question why he needed them.

“We’ll definitely have to keep the old mince pies on you, I can tell,” Trevor said to her as he collected the watches, ushered the women inside, and drove away.

Caitrin had mentally counted thirty-five minutes before the pantechnicon stopped and reversed. The doors opened to reveal it was parked hard against a doorway. They were briskly herded through the building and into a classroom. Outside the windows was an anonymous landscape of fields; they could have been anywhere in the southeast of England. They had barely settled into the desks when the room door opened, and Bethany Goodman entered. Her appearance came as no surprise, but what she wore did. Bethany was dressed as a nun, a Mother Superior. She stood at the blackboard, spread her arms wide, and grinned as she said, “Bless you, my children, but fret not; this is only a disguise. I am not a professional nun.”

There was relieved laughter as she continued, “This was once a girls’ school, until the headmaster disappeared one day with the gardener, took all the funds, and left the hollyhocks. Now it belongs to us.”

“Why the nun’s costume?” a woman asked.

“Because, as a cover, this place will now be known as Langland Priory, a church-run home for unwed mothers. For the first months of training, those still with us will be confined to the building and grounds. Later, you may go to the village, but only as either a nun or an unwed mother with a cushion tucked under your skirt.”

“What about an unwed nun?” someone said to laughter.

Bethany did not falter. “As a nun is assumed to be a virgo intacta, her, um, condition would obviously attract a great deal of unwanted attention. So no, certainly no pregnant nuns.”

“You said, those still with us,” a woman said. “What does that mean?”

“I’ll explain. There are twenty of you here, but I would be surprised if more than five complete training. You will learn about the Wehrmacht command, the SS, the Gestapo, and the Abwehr. You will be instructed in survival skills and taught how to shoot and kill. That is the hardest part for many.” She paused, her eyes sweeping the room. “The first test. Does anyone know where we are? If you do, write it down on the paper you will find in your desk, and tell me how you discovered it.”

No one moved, except Caitrin. She raised her desk lid, took out a sheet of paper, and scribbled her answer. Bethany read it and waved for everyone to leave. She waited until the door closed and said, “You wrote somewhere near Gerrards Cross. You are right, and I want to know how you worked out our location.”

“We had no watches, so I mentally counted the minutes as we drove west. Trevor should have made a few turns or driven in a circle to disorient us. I heard several aeroplanes to our left and guessed it was the Great West Aerodrome at Heath Row. I flew there a few times with my brother Dafydd. We turned right and headed north. After a few minutes I smelled a brewery. Would it be Waterston’s? It’s only a guess. And if you don’t mind, I don’t want to be a nun. I’d much rather be thought a wicked and fallen woman who at least had some fun on the way down.”

Bethany laughed. “I hope you make it through.”

“I hope so too.”

The women were assembled outside the priory to meet their trainer. None of them was at all impressed with him; neither was he particularly awed by them. Chopper Jones, so-named because of his habit of punctuating his speech with abrupt chopping gestures, was a little man of intense character and glaring eyes. Chopper never stayed still as he issued instructions. “A moving target is hard to hit, ladies, so always move. Never remain at rest.” He stuck out his hand as a gun. “Move, so I can’t shoot you. Come on, move.”

Feeling more than a little silly, the women moved, a step here, a step back, a little lean to the right and back again as he closed an eye and aimed his hand at them and muttered bang! They bumped into each other, apologized and giggled, and went silent as Chopper cleaved the air, bellowing, “Laugh if you want, but giggles and guffaws will bring the Hun down on your pretty necks. They will hear you. It is a known fact that Germans have bigger ears than the British.”

“Are they bigger anywhere else?” asked a brave lass, anonymous in the group.

Her remark had no effect on Chopper, who was a married man with six daughters and eight sisters and knew some, but not all, of the intricate ways of women. He chopped the air, this time with both hands, and said, “The invading Hun slaughtered innocent vicars, raped nuns, and killed their poor babies in Belgium.”

“That was the Great War,” Hermione Richards, a solicitor’s well-educated daughter, said with a barely concealed trace of condescension. Unlike the rest of the women, she had been to Belgium and had no recollection of ever seeing a pregnant nun there. “I don’t wish to appear contrary, but when I was in Knokke le Zoute—”

A stabbing chop cut her off, and he answered, “That war was nothing but practice for this one. The Jerries are cunning blighters who passed their evil knowledge down from father to son, and so they’re even better at it now. Line up—tallest on the left, shortest on the right.”

They did as instructed, although it took some awkward measuring and there were questions about three women who seemed to be the same height. Chopper solved it by arranging them alphabetically, according to their first names.

Satisfied, or at least accepting their attempt to sort themselves out, Chopper strode up and down the line. “Your body, your person, is sacrosanct, and yes, I do know what that means.”

He stopped, facing Caitrin. “Step forward.”

She did as she was ordered.

“In combat you must decide where the border of your person is, and if it is trespassed, you must strike instantly. Once the enemy has a grip on you, all surprise is lost, and it becomes a battle, which you, being the weaker sex, will lose, or at least be damaged. And a wounded soldier is of no more use than a dead one. Worse, because he needs looking after. Name?”

“Caitrin Colline.”

“Reach for me, Caitrin.”

She put out her hand, he bellowed at her, and she shrank back. “Not like you want my smashing body for your physical pleasure. As if you want to attack and maim me.”

Her hand shot out to grasp his sleeve, but before she could touch him, his right hand whistled past her ear. She froze.

“My sacrosanct border is three inches away from my body. If this had been actual combat, Miss Colline would have a broken and bloody nose before she touched me. But it wouldn’t hurt for long because I would have killed her before she fell to the ground.” He wagged his finger. “Decide what’s sacrosanct, and act immediately to defend it.”

“What if it was a mistake and he was just being friendly?” Hermione said.

“Then, if you haven’t already killed him, you apologize, buy him a pint, and tell him a broken nose looks appealing on a man. Adds a wicked air of danger. Back into line.”

As Caitrin stepped back into line, Chopper pointed to a low hill in the distance. “Even with me war wounds, I can walk there and back, double-time, in twenty minutes. I expect you to do so in fifteen.”

“Why?” Hermione asked.

“Why? Because I said so.”

“When?”

“Now.”

“Shouldn’t we change into our gym clothes first?” Hermione said. Caitrin stayed silent because Chopper was the man in charge who knew things that they did not, which meant there were times, like this one, when anonymity was a good and wise thing to practice.

“Step forward if you will, please, Miss,” Chopper said, and Hermione took a reluctant step out of line. He inspected her with his glaring eyes—front, back, and both sides. “Do you speak French?”

“Oui.”

“Speak it well, do you?”

“Naturellement.”

“I don’t speak a bloody word of it,” he said. “Why not? Because it’s foreign.”

“It’s beautiful.”

He faced her, rocking on his heels. “So’s my beloved Phyllis, a beautiful woman who is the pomme of me eye and the light of me life. But she’d never survive being dropped into France. And do you know why?”

“She’d bounce?” Hermione said and by his reaction instantly saw she had made a grievous mistake.

“Because she’s never been outside Wapping is why, and wouldn’t go to France, or any other foreign country, even if the king said pretty please Phyllis, just for me. But if she had to go abroad, say to save her beloved hubby’s life, she’d be smart enough not to worry about her gym clothes. Now, Miss, you, with your perfect French. Let’s imagine you’ve been dropped into France at night, and as luck would have it, land a hundred yards a. . .