“Yes, unfortunately that was my assessment of the man too,” Helen mutters. Dad’s eyebrows lift in surprise. “It seemed an excellent arrangement at first. Gerard was sending through regular updates via his wireless operators and the circuit seemed to have stabilized and even expanded since his arrival. Obviously, the D-Day landings were a success and our men began to advance across France, but just as fighting began on the outskirts of Paris, a message came through from Turner. There had been a sudden spate of arrests and dozens of additional agents, including Jocelyn, had been executed. It seemed like tragic timing given the city was liberated days later.”
“Gerard Turner came to my house in 1944 to tell me this.” Drusilla sounds exasperated. “I don’t understand why you’ve dragged me in here today to tell me again.”
“One of our agents found Jocelyn’s name carved into a cell at the SD headquarters in Paris which seemed to corroborate the story Gerard told us about her death. He only stayed in Paris for a few weeks after it was liberated—”
“That’s when I saw him,” Dad interjects. “At the apartment there. He’s the one who told me Josie had died.”
“After that, he came back to London to hold up the fort here and to notify various family members of deaths in the field. He also supervised the administrative staff at Baker Street as they began the cleanup of our offices and files.”
“And through all of this,” Read says quietly, “it’s important to note that Helen was still in France. All of the senior SOE officials were, except Turner.”
“Yes, that’s right. As the occupation collapsed, we had hundreds of agents still missing, scattered all over. Even once we’d spread word far and wide that those agents could safely reveal themselves and find help via an apartment we established in Paris, we still had almost 120 agents unaccounted for. They were mostly men, but there was also a group of women.”
“How could you just lose track of that many people?” I ask.
“I call it ‘the fog of war,’” Harry explains. “Europe was in a state of utter chaos. The SOE had scattered, traumatized agents all over the place, and dreadfully disjointed communications to boot.”
“In late 1944, I began a project to search for these agents,” Helen says. “A handful of missing agents resurfaced from the Paris circuit in the months after liberation and I was shocked to find most of those who’d survived had been in hiding. Some were highly suspicious of Gerard, citing lax security procedures once he arrived back in France, but Freddie Booth and I were both certain that the problem was prolonged and intense stress, not disloyalty. It’s no excuse, but my focus was still elsewhere. Most of our agents, especially the women, were designated ‘Night and Fog’ prisoners, which meant the Germans tried very hard to make them altogether disappear. There were no paper trails to follow, so I had to rely on in-person interviews to track people down. I asked a guard at Pforzheim Prison if they’d imprisoned any of our women there, and to my shock, he distinctly recalled Josie. He said she was at Pforzheim for months after D-Day.”
“That’s not right,” Dad says, after a stunned moment of silence. “Gerard said she was executed in Paris before the landings.”
“I know that’s what he said,” Helen says gently. “But it seems that was never the truth.”
“But why on earth would he lie about something like that?”
“It took me a very long time to figure that out, Noah,” Helen admits. “I kept traveling, interviewing people all across France and Germany, searching for all of those missing agents—and now I’d added Josie to the list of women I needed to find. Every one of them mattered, but I especially wanted to figure out what became of her given the situation was so baffling. For a while, I feared I’d never find her trail again, until a guard told me that a handful of political prisoners were sent to civilian prisons in the rush to keep ahead of the advance of the Allied troops.”
“Jocelyn was accommodated at a civilian prison named Karlsruhe for the last few weeks of her life,” Read says quietly. “She was housed in a cell with an agent named Fleur. Noah, you will remember her from Salon-La-Tour.”
Dad nods. His hand is shaking slightly beneath mine. He and Drusilla both seem to be in shock.
“A guard from Karlsruhe told me that Fleur and Josie were as close as sisters,” Helen says. Although she’s a stern woman, her tone has eased and softened, and now she speaks very gently, her eyes brimming with sympathy. “When the transfer order came through and that guard realized these women were to be executed, she did her very best to ensure their last day on earth was dignified. She arranged fresh clothing for them and even bribed a colleague to take them by passenger train instead of a boxcar to Strasbourg. She packed them a special meal for the journey and did her best to hide what was coming so they wouldn’t be scared.”
Beside me, my father makes a sound that could almost be a sob. He withdraws his hand from mine on the table and presses it over his mouth, looking away. My own eyes fill with tears as I gently rub his shoulders.
“Jocelyn was executed just a few hours after she arrived at Natzweiler-Struthof in August 1944,” Helen finally says.
A hush falls over the room, until Drusilla straightens her spine and says flatly, “Did this guard personally witness her death?”
“No, the guard remained at Karlsruhe.”
“You said there was no paper trail.” For the first time, Helen looks uneasy. She shifts awkwardly in her chair. “For twenty-four years I have imagined the entirely wrong scenario for my daughter’s last hours. You need to be completely transparent with me now.” I see the low-key panic in Helen’s eyes as she looks to Read and my stomach drops. There’s more here, and I’m not sure any of us are ready to hear it. Drusilla’s voice breaks as she adds desperately, “Please.”
“I…” Helen is apparently at a loss for words. She clears her throat, then sips again at her water.
“Was anyone arrested for her murder?” Drusilla demands hoarsely. “Was she alone when she died? Did she suffer? I don’t care if the answers are distressing, I just need to know!”
“Jocelyn was executed with three other agents,” Harry says suddenly. “They died by lethal injection.”
“Then what is it you aren’t you telling me?” Drusilla says flatly, staring at Helen, who swallows anxiously.
“Miss Elwood?” Dad prompts uneasily.
Helen looks resigned. “I interviewed an orderly who was there with this group of women until their last moments. He believed that Jocelyn was the only one in the group of women who spoke enough German to understand what was going on—the others believed they were being given an inoculation. He remembered her being incredibly courageous in keeping calm so that the others would not die afraid. But after—” Her eyes have filled with tears. “Jocelyn fought until her last breath. The orderly said her last words were ‘Long live freedom, long live France.’ She made quite a ruckus—many of the prisoners I interviewed from that camp recalled hearing her shout those final words.”