Disclaimer: Foyle's War was created by Anthony Horowitz, and the characters of Christopher Foyle, Arthur Valentine, Elizabeth Addis, Sam and Adam Wainwright, et al., jointly created by Mr. Horowitz, Mr. Michael Kitchen, Mr. Tim McMullan, Ms. Hermione Gulliford, Ms. Honeysuckle Weeks and all the other brilliant actors. No infringement is intended, only admiration.

Thanks: Gratitude to GiuliettaC for beta-reading and suggesting improvements to the manuscript.

Chapter 10

In the cab, Valentine sat facing Dr. Addis and Foyle. He unobtrusively observed how each had claimed a seat close by a door, leaving an expanse of empty space, and a subtle current of tension, between them.
It was several minutes before Foyle broke the silence, suddenly dropping his hand from his lips and turning towards Elizabeth,
"Forgive me, Dr. Addis, but, when you were abducted in Cairo, did you have the documents with you, outlining the information you intended to present to the Prime Minister's aides?"
"I did. The three men took them from me, examined them in another room, ...and then returned them to me."
"Returned them all?"
"Yes. ...As if they were of no consequence."
Dr. Addis bowed her head and intently examined her hands in her lap.
Foyle understood from this that the men had likely intended to kill her, but had later received other instructions. Which undoubtedly had led to her husband's death.

Valentine lifted his brows,
"That must not have been very—."
Foyle silenced him with a sharp glare.
A chastened Valentine turned away to watch out of the side window, and after a moment discreetly ran a finger under his collar.
Five more minutes of silence and three miles of London passed by before Foyle asked, somewhat more lightly,
"Will Hudson. Does he figure in this at all?"
"Oh, I wouldn't think so."
Grateful for the change of topic, Addis attempted a fleeting smile, and was as dismissive of the man as MacInnis had been.
"He was…, how shall I put it? A soldier of fortune. No particular loyalty to either side, in Yugoslavia. No particular loyalty full stop."
She shook her head in disapproval, rolling her eyes upwards.
"He was on a lark. ...SOE seemed to attract that sort."
Elizabeth glanced apologetically at the man opposite.
"Present company excepted, Mr. Valentine."
He smiled slightly in acknowledgement.
Finishing with a sigh, she allowed,
" ...But I suppose he could be effective, when it suited him."
"Nnnot a candidate for our sleeper agent, then?"
"He was never in a position to wield much influence, and as I said, had no loyalty to a cause greater than himself."
She thought for a moment, then recalled,
"He came to see me in the Spring of '44. Offered his sympathy, carried on as if Thomas had been his best pal. Asked some odd questions."

Foyle filed that detail away, as the cab had now stopped outside the block of flats where Hilda Pierce had lived.
On the pavement, Foyle asked Elizabeth,
"You've been here before?" He retrieved from an inner pocket the copies of Hilda's keys that he'd been given when their owner was in hospital.
"Yes, I have. Not for many, many months."
"I've never been here," Valentine put in, unasked, gazing up at the Art Deco façade.
The three of them entered the building, Valentine leading the ascent of the stairway, murmuring ironically under his breath,
"Cherchez la femme."

Foyle unlocked the door to the flat, stood aside and let Elizabeth walk ahead down the hallway and into the simply-furnished sitting room. She found herself instantly overcome by a deep sadness for its missing inhabitant, her solitary life, and her devotion to a service that would soon forget and carry on without her. Unfastening her burgundy coat, Elizabeth was surprised by Foyle chivalrously helping her out of it. On impulse for his kindness she touched her fingers to his hand on her shoulder, then moved away to begin the search.

For his part, Foyle had noticed her emotion — even, in his own way, shared it — but knew it was important that they all stay focused on the task they'd come here to do. After removing his own coat and leaving it next to hers on the armchair, he set about on his search for the collection of documents, intending to look through every kitchen cupboard, and then inspect the hall closets.

Valentine had paused at the end of the hallway, looking over the sitting room for evidence of his late colleague's off-duty, private persona, but found it disappointingly lacking in artefacts: a few framed prints and photographs; a fussy, old-fashioned little writing desk with a modern typewriter crammed up against its pigeonholes; a wireless cabinet. The wall that featured the ungenerous fireplace was a blank expanse, with only a small bevelled-edge mirror hung above. A drinks stand was placed out of the way, near the semi-circular corner window.

He added his black overcoat to the armchair, then retreated up the hallway to the bedroom. He went straight in to open the wardrobe, and half-smiled: Dr. Addis was correct. However that didn't stop him from reaching past the clothes, tapping on the back wall and checking for hidden compartments. He couldn't quite bring himself to open the dresser drawers, and saw no point in feeling around the tiny shelves of the bedside table. Nothing under the mattress, and only an empty travel bag under the bed itself.

Dr. Addis had taken on the linen cupboard, bathroom, and a utility closet that held a hoover, broom, mop and bucket and cleaning supplies. It was hard to imagine Hilda using them. Such a prosaic task compared to saving the world from fascism. But perhaps she'd had a woman in to 'do' for her, as the BBC Light Programme put it.

A thorough search had yielded nothing and the three gathered again in the sitting room. Elizabeth had found Hilda's spare walking stick, glossy black with silver tip and handle, and carried it with her pensively.
"...A storage room, perhaps, in the basement or attic of the building?" Foyle suggested.
"Not likely to let such things out of her sight," she mused, then sat down on the worn sofa, Hilda's habitual seat, and studied the room from that angle.
"She would, however, keep them out of a visitor's...or intruder's...sight…"

Elizabeth looked across at the fireplace, the skirting board and floor, and pointed with the cane,
"A chair — perhaps that one at the writing desk — has been moved over here repeatedly, and has scratched the floor in odd places."
The two men saw the marks and nodded their agreement with her observation, though privately each wondered if it had any real significance.
Her eyes travelled slowly up the bare wall to the shallow-coffered ceiling, and fixed with interest on the decorative medallion. Foyle and Valentine, standing at either end of the sofa, followed her gaze. The medallion was bronze in colour, and had been ill-placed above the room, much nearer to the fireplace wall than the wall behind the sofa. Elizabeth's eyes narrowed in speculation.

She got to her feet, tentatively raised the stick over her head and pressed its tip into the medallion's centre. They heard a click, and Valentine jumped back as a large panel of the ceiling swung down silently in a descent controlled by small telescoping pneumatic cylinders. It came to rest against the wall above the fireplace, its stout hinges exposed at the top. The inner surface of the nearly eight-by-five-foot panel, now in view, held a neat arrangement of a dozen shallow file holders, a cork board, a European map, and a thin desktop that would fold down onto two front legs.

Valentine gave a low whistle of admiration.
Foyle, however, was frowning, suspicious that they'd been made to waste time searching the flat.
"You knew this was here?"
She turned her head to look at him, eyebrows lifted in frank disappointment,
"Certainly not. The last time I was here, the ceiling was plain plaster. Hilda wouldn't have given a moment's thought to redecorating."

Valentine tried to suppress a smile, but then positively grinned to see his astute colleague out-performed, and tetchy to boot. To his credit, Foyle conceded that she'd bested him, with a self-conscious shift of his jaw, a nod that might have been a bow, and a courteous,
"Well done."

Valentine stepped forward to have a closer examination, a hand on his hip,
"...So this is Miss Pierce's 'command centre.' What do you make of the items on the bulletin board, Dr. Addis?"

Foyle joined them to discuss the papers pinned to the board, the notes and comments Hilda had appended to them, and discovered a name new to their investigation, a Liaison Officer, Major Kenneth Alderton. Elizabeth was puzzled.
"Alderton...died in April of '42. His entire mission was murdered. It happened a month or so after Thomas and I arrived in Cairo."
"Murdered?" Foyle asked.
"Not 'killed in action'?" Valentine added.
She shook her head,
"His party had landed far from the fighting front, and hadn't yet made contact with either the Chetniks or the Partisans when their signals stopped. After their bodies were found, the two sides accused each other, or blamed it on bandits, but nothing was ever proven."
"Was there anything out of the ordinary about his mission?"
"Not as far as I know. They were bringing intelligence…, support…, ammunition."
They put that anomaly aside for the moment.

Examining the European map, they found it was in fact only the outer one, covering a set of more detailed large scale maps of every Balkan region. Hilda had added small adhesive coloured dots, some of them clustered together, to the maps of Serbia, Dalmatia, Montenegro and Albania. They would need to find the key to the coloured dots to understand their significance, however Foyle reached into an inner pocket and unfolded the chart of field agent movements.
"Think this may be related."
Elizabeth moved closer beside him to study the chart, compared it to the markers on the maps, and slowly turned to him, eyes glowing with admiration.
Foyle blinked and shifted his attention back to the chart,
"Er, can't take credit for this. It was made for us by Charlotte Brown."
Her face brightened even more for his proper recognition of the researcher, and she observed,
"Well, it would appear you and Hilda were thinking along the same lines."

To be continued...