Enigma

lark. For love, even. But she wasn't a traitor.'
    'Lord, no.' Wigram sounded shocked. 'No, I'm sure; Pukowski never even told her for one minute what he: was planning to do. Consider it from his point of view. She was the weak link. She could have given him away at any moment. So imagine how he must have felt when he saw you walk back through the door from Cambridge on that Friday night.'
    Jericho remembered the look of horror on Puck's face, that desperate attempt to force a smile. He had already seen what must have happened: Puck leaving a message at the cottage that he needed to talk to her, Claire hurrying back into the Park at four in the morning—click click click on her high heels in the darkness. He said quietly, almost to himself: 'I was her death warrant.'
    'I suppose you were. He must've known you'd try and get in touch with her. And then, the next night, when he went round to the cottage to get rid of the evidence, the stolen cryptograms, and found you there . .. Well. . .'
    Jericho lay back and stared at the ceiling as Wigram rattled through the rest of the story. How, on the night the convoy battle had started, just before midnight, he'd been called by the police and told that a sack full of women's clothing had been found. How he'd tried to find Jericho, but Jericho had disappeared, so he'd grabbed Hester Wallace instead and taken her down to the lakeside. How it had been obvious at once what had happened, that Claire had been bludgeoned, or maybe bludgeoned and strangled, and her body rowed out into the lake and dumped.
    'Mind if I smoke?' He lit up without waiting for a reply, using his saucer as an ashtray. He examined the tip of his cigarette for a moment. 'Where was I exactly?'
    Jericho didn't look at him. 'The night of the convoy battle.'
    Ah, yes. Well, Hester had refused to talk at first, but there's nothing like shock to loosen the tongue and eventually she'd told him everything, at which point Wigram had realised that Jericho wasn't a traitor; realised, in fact, that if Jericho had broken the cryptograms he was probably closer to discovering the traitor than he was.
    So he had deployed his men. And watched.
    This would have been about five in the morning.
    First, Jericho was seen hurrying down Church Green Road into the town. Then he was observed going into the house in Alma Terrace. Then he was identified boarding the train.
    Wigram had men on the train.
    'After that, the three of you were just flies in a jam jar, frankly.'
    All passengers disembarking at Northampton were stopped and questioned, and that took care of Raposo. By then, Wigram had arranged for the train to be diverted into a branch line where he was waiting to search it at leisure.
    His men had orders not to shoot unless they were shot at first. But no chances were going to be taken. Not with so much at stake.
    And Pukowski had used his pistol. And fire had been returned.
    'You got in the way. I'm sorry about that.' Still, as he was sure Jericho would agree, preserving the Enigma secret had been the most important objective. And that had been accomplished. The U-boat that had been sent to pick up Puck had been intercepted and sunk off the coast of Donegal, which was a double bonus, as the Germans probably now thought that the whole business had been a set-up all along, designed to trap one of their submarines. At any rate, they hadn't abandoned Enigma.
    'And Claire?' Jericho was still staring at the ceiling. 'Have you found her yet?'
    'Give us time, my dear fellow. She lies under at least sixty feet of water, somewhere in the middle of a lake a quarter of a mile across. That may take us a while.'
    'And Raposo?'
    'The Foreign Secretary spoke to the Portuguese ambassador that morning. Under the circumstances, he agreed to waive diplomatic immunity. By noon we'd taken Raposo's flat apart. Dreary place at the wrong end of Gloucester Road. Poor little sod. He really was only in it for the money. We found two thousand dollars the Germans had given him, stuffed in a shoe box on top of his wardrobe. Two grand! Pathetic.
    'What will happen to him?'
    'He'll hang,' said Wigram pleasantly. 'But never mind about him. He's history. The question is, what are we going to do with you?
    After Wigram had gone, Jericho lay awake for a long time, trying to decide which parts of his story had been true.
    'Behold, I show you a mystery,' said Hester.
    'We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
    'In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at