All Clear

“No, you’re not,” Elspeth said. “We’re off duty tonight.”

“But it’s getting late, and I have to find a place to stay. I don’t suppose you know of any rooms that are available?”

“In Bletchley?” Elspeth said, as if he’d asked for an apartment on the moon.

“I’m afraid everything’s filled up for miles around,” Mavis said. “We’re three to a room here.”

“Did I hear someone say we’re getting a new roommate?” a female voice called down from upstairs. “Tell her there’s no room.” A young woman came running down the stairs. She was very buxom and very blonde. “We’re crammed in like pilchards as it is—oh, hullo,” she said, coming over to meet Mike. “Are you going to be billeted here? How lovely!”

“He’s not billeted here, Joan,” Mavis said. “Even if we weren’t full up, Mrs. Braithewaite only lets to girls,” she explained to Mike. “She says it saves complications.”

I can imagine, Mike thought, looking at Joan.

“Have you been to the billeting office yet?” Elspeth asked.

Billeting office? “No,” he said. “I just arrived.”

“Well, when you go,” Elspeth said, “tell them it’s essential you live close in, or they’ll put you up in Glasgow.”

“And you must insist on seeing your billet first,” Mavis added. “Some of them are dreadful. WC at the bottom of the garden, and bedbugs!”

He was still thinking about what they’d said about a billeting office. He should have thought of that. Of course the administration at Bletchley Park would be in charge of assigning lodgings. He’d been thinking he could rent a room and hint to his landlady that he worked out at the Park, but if everyone who worked there got lodgings through the billeting office—

“He might try the Empire Hotel,” Joan said to Mavis.

“It’s full up,” Mavis said, and to Mike, “Everything’s full up. Even closets. Our friend Wendy’s sleeping in the pantry at her billet, in among the bottled peaches.”

“It’s full up,” Mavis said, and to Mike, “Everything’s full up. Even closets. Our friend Wendy’s sleeping in the pantry at her billet, in among the bottled peaches.”

“The billeting office isn’t open on a Sunday,” Joan said. “We could sneak him upstairs for tonight.”

“No,” the other two said in unison.

“What about the Bell?” Elspeth asked.

Mavis shook her head.

“Well, maybe they’ll let me sleep in the lobby,” Mike said, and went to the door.

“You’re certain you can’t stay a bit longer?” Joan asked.

“Afraid not. Thanks for all your help. Do any of you happen to know—” But before he could ask whether they knew a Gerald Phipps, they began giving him directions to the Bell. “And if it hasn’t any rooms, the Milton’s two streets down—”

“Watch out for Turing on your way there,” Joan cut in.

“And for Dilly,” Elspeth said. “He’s even worse about not watching where he’s going, and he has a car! Whenever he comes to a crossing, he speeds up.”

“Dilly?” Mike said hoarsely.

“Captain Knox,” Mavis said. “We work for him. He has some sort of mathematical theory that by going faster he’ll hit fewer people, because of being in the crossing a shorter time.”

My God. First Alan Turing and now Dilly’s girls. He was smack in the middle of Ultra, and he’d only been in Bletchley half an hour. “I refuse to accept lifts from him anymore,” Elspeth was saying. “He forgets he’s driving and takes both hands off the—are you all right? You’re pale as a ghost.”

“Turing did injure you,” Mavis said. “Come sit down while we phone for the doctor. Elspeth, go put the kettle—”

“No!” he said. “No. I’m fine. Really.” And he left before they could protest. Or Dilly Knox showed up.

“But we don’t even know your name!” Mavis called after him.

Thank God for that at least, he thought, pretending he hadn’t heard her. And thank God he hadn’t asked about Phipps. He hurried off toward the Bell. What next?

Would there be an Enigma machine in his room?

If you can find a room, he thought. But surely they’d have saved a hotel room or two for people passing through, billeting or no billeting.

Wrong. The desk clerk hooted when he asked.

“You don’t know of anywhere?” Mike asked.

“In Bletchley?” the clerk said, and turned to the young man who’d just come up to the counter. “Yes, Mr. Welchman?”

Gordon Welchman? Who’d headed up the team which had broken the German Army and Air Force Enigma codes? Christ, he thought, retreating hastily. At this rate he’d have met all the key players by morning. He headed for the Milton, wondering if he should go back to the station right now and catch the first train going anywhere.

No, with his luck, Alan Ross would be on it with Menzies sound asleep in the luggage rack. But it didn’t look as if he could stay here either. Neither the Milton nor the Empire had a room, and going back to the Bell was out of the question. “You might try one of the boardinghouses on Albion Street,” the clerk at the Empire said,

“but I doubt you’ll find anything.”