Princess Elizabeth's Spy (Maggie Hope Mysteries) - Softcover

MacNeal, Susan Elia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593600541 ISBN 13: 9780593600542

Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

Susan Elia MacNeal introduced the remarkable Maggie Hope in her acclaimed debut, Mr. Churchill’s Secretary. Now Maggie returns to protect Britain’s beloved royals against an international plot—one that could change the course of history.
 
As World War II sweeps the continent and England steels itself against German attack, Maggie Hope, former secretary to Prime Minister Winston Churchill, completes her training to become a spy for MI-5. Spirited, strong-willed, and possessing one of the sharpest minds in government for mathematics and code-breaking, she fully expects to be sent abroad to gather intelligence for the British front. Instead, to her great disappointment, she is dispatched to go undercover at Windsor Castle, where she will tutor the young Princess Elizabeth in math. Yet castle life quickly proves more dangerous—and deadly—than Maggie ever expected. The upstairs-downstairs world at Windsor is thrown into disarray by a shocking murder, which draws Maggie into a vast conspiracy that places the entire royal family in peril. And as she races to save England from a most disturbing fate, Maggie realizes that a quick wit is her best defense, and that the smallest clues can unravel the biggest secrets, even within her own family.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Susan Elia MacNeal is the New York Times bestselling author of the Maggie Hope mysteries and Mother Daughter Traitor Spy. MacNeal won the Barry Award and an AudioFile Earphones award and has been nominated for the Edgar, Macavity, Agatha, Left Coast Crime, Dilys, ITW Thriller, and Nero awards. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and son.

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Prologue

The midday summer sun in Lisbon was dazzling and harsh. But while nearly everyone else was inside taking a siesta, the Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII of England, kept up his British habits, even on the continent.

He and his wife, Wallis Simpson, the woman for whom he’d abdicated the throne and now known as the Duchess of Windsor, sat outside at the Bar-Café Europa, which catered to tourists and British expats. The town square was nearly empty, except for a young American couple walking arm in arm and a few pigeons strutting and pecking for crumbs in the dust.

Wallis, slender and elegant, wore a scarlet Schiaparelli suit, a bejeweled flamingo brooch, and dark glasses. She sipped a Campari and soda, the ice cubes clinking against one another in her tall glass. Next to her, the Duke, slight and fair-haired, toyed with a tumbler of blood-orange juice and read The Times of London. He was only forty-six, but the strain from the abdication, and subsequent banishment from royal life, made him look older.

A shadow passed over his page. The Duke looked up in annoyance, then smiled broadly when he saw who it was—Walther Schellenberg, Heinrich Himmler’s personal aide and a deputy leader of the Reich Main Security Office.

“Shel! Good to see you—sit down,” the Duke said.

“Thank you, Your Highness,” Schellenberg replied in accented English, sitting down on the delicate wire chair. The Duke and Duchess had befriended Schellenberg on their tours to Germany before the war, visiting with Prince Philip of Hesse and Adolf Hitler.

“Hello, Walther,” Wallis said.

Schellenberg removed his Nazi visor hat, with its skull and crossbones, to reveal thick brown hair parted in the center and glistening with a copious amount of Brylcreem. “Good afternoon, Your Highness. May I say you look particularly beautiful today?” he said to Wallis, a smile softening his angular features.

“Thank you, Shel,” she replied, warming to his use of Your Highness, which Hitler had also used when they’d visited him at the Berghof, his chalet in the Bavarian Alps. Technically, neither Hitler nor Schellenberg needed to address her that way, as she’d never been awarded HRH status by the current king, a snub indeed. His wife, Queen Elizabeth, referred to Wallis only as “that woman.”

As she offered her hand to Schellenberg to be kissed, the scent of L’heure Bleue mixed with Mitsouko—a heady mix of carnations and oakmoss, Wallis’s signature scent—wafted around her in the heat.

“They threw a rock at our window last night, Shel.” The Duke frowned. “Shattered the glass. Could have killed us.”

“I know, sir. Terrible, just terrible.” And he did know—Schellenberg himself had arranged the rock-throwing incident in order to frighten the Windsors, leaving false clues to make it look as though British Intelligence were to blame. If the Windsors were scared enough they’d come around to the Nazis’ point of view, he was certain of it.

“It’s terrible,” Wallis said, smoothing her glossy black hair, cut down the middle with a narrow white part. “They hate us. The British just hate us now.”

“Now, now, dear,” Edward said, reaching over to take her hand. “It’s not the British people. It’s Churchill and his thugs. And my brother and that wife of his. Silly old Bertie as King George VI, indeed. It’s as if I’d never been King!”

“You can’t abdicate and eat it too, dear,” Wallis said with a tight smile.

Schellenberg cleared his throat. “I’ve heard from the Führer.”

“Oh, how lovely!” Wallis exclaimed, extracting a cigarette from a gold case and fitting it in a long ivory holder. The Duke pulled out his lighter and lit it for her; she smiled up at him as she drew her first inhale.

“He gave me a number,” Schellenberg said, knowing quite well the two were having money problems since the abdication. He took a small folded piece of paper from his pocket, put it on the table, and pushed it toward the Duke. If fear alone couldn’t persuade them, perhaps money could.

The Duke of Windsor waited, simply looking at the note for a few heartbeats, then reached for it. Slowly, he picked it up and opened it. He read the number and then handed the slip over to Wallis. She examined it, arching one perfectly plucked and penciled eyebrow, then handed it back.

“Quite a bit of money, Shel,” the Duke said, pushing the paper away.

“But it’s not just about the money, sir,” Schellenberg said, placing the paper in one of the ceramic ashtrays and then lighting it, letting it burn away to ash. “Germany has taken Austria, the Sudetenland, and Poland. We’ve taken the Low Countries and France. When Germany invades England—and it’s just a matter of time before London falls—your people will need you.” He looked to Wallis. “Both of you. You know it’s only a matter of time now. We’re establishing air supremacy, and as soon as we take out the Royal Air Force, we’ll invade. Your younger brother, the present king, has aligned himself with Winston Churchill and his gangsters. He won’t be permitted to stay on the throne, of course.”

“Of course,” Wallis murmured. She had no love for either the King or Queen, who had never acknowledged her and, in her opinion, had taken every opportunity to humiliate her. Why her husband couldn’t have simply stayed on the throne when he’d married her, she would never understand—or forgive.

“And his daughter, Elizabeth, raised with the same propaganda her father espouses, can’t reign either, so . . . And then we’ll need you—both of you,” Schellenberg stressed, “to urge the British to accept German occupation. With you as King, and the Duchess as Queen, of course.”

“It’s not about me, Shel,” the Duke said. “We need to end the war now before thousands are killed and maimed in order to save the faces of a few corrupt politicians. Believe me, with continued heavy bombing, Britain will soon be desperate for peace. The people will panic and turn against Churchill and Eden—and the current King, too, of course. Which presents the perfect opportunity to bring me back as sovereign.” The Duke sighed. “Of course, I can’t officially support any of this, you know.”

“What other options do you have?” Schellenberg asked.

There was a long silence. The Windsors knew they were running out of opportunities.

“Bermuda,” Wallis said finally, rolling her eyes and tapping ashes into a ceramic ashtray crudely painted with a bullfighter holding up a red cape. “Churchill and the present royals want to banish us to that godforsaken little territory. Conveniently out of their way.”

“Then don’t go,” Schellenberg urged. “You have the Führer, and the British people, counting on you to step up. To be their King and Queen.”

The Duke and Duchess locked eyes. “What do you say, dear?” he asked her.

The Duchess took a moment for a long exhale, blowing out a thin stream of blue smoke. It had been a long few years for her. First there was her affair with him, when he’d been the Prince of Wales. The unexpected death of his father, King George V, had been both shocking and painful for both of them. Their relationship nearly collapsed when Edward had taken the throne, crushed by the disapproval of the rest of...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Random House Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2023
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593600541
• ISBN 13: 9780593600542
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 416
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchbär; info@buchbaer.de; ; Weberstr. 67; Osnabrück; 49084; Deutschland