Carbon Copy Read online

  “Did it come from Governor Towers’s office?”

  “The contents and the signature point that way.”

  “If you would show me these alleged documents, I could easily confirm if they’re genuine.”

  The major scoffed. “You’d only deny they’re authentic.”

  “I could save you a good deal of time by verifying if they’re real. If they aren’t, your whole case is blown.

  “Point number two, if something is missing, and we have no proof that it is, are the alleged documents really state secrets? Most of what we do in the secretariat is mundane housekeeping and would be of no value to the enemy.”

  “Oh, the contents of these documents are very significant,” said the major. “They’re stamped ‘Confidential’ and ‘Top Secret.’”

  “Really?” replied Frances. A faint smile blossomed that Major Philpott was not adroit enough to pick up. “Thirdly, can you identify the purported thief? They say ‘possession is nine tenths of the law.’ Were these allegedly pilfered documents found in the possession of Bank staff?”

  “Well, no, but . . . ”

  “Then how could you hope to prove in court that members of the Bank staff were responsible for stealing them?

  “Finally, to be considered treason, the documents need to be passed to an enemy agent. Did you take them from an enemy agent?”

  “No, but they could have been heading in that direction.”

  Frances crossed her arms. “Sounds like a pretty shallow case based on hypothesis and circumstantial evidence.”

  “Major,” interrupted Inspector Hollingsworth, “what is to be lost by showing Miss McFadden the documents? Her assessment could help our investigation.”

  “Crown evidence should only be presented in court,” replied the major. “Passing it around willy-nilly could compromise the case.”

  “It seems to me,” put in Commander Evans, “that the charge of treason hinges completely on the authenticity of the documents. We might waste valuable time if we defer verifying that fact until a later date in court. We wouldn’t want this to blow up in our faces during a public inquiry.”

  Under siege, Major Philpott looked angry and unconvinced.

  “Might I suggest a short recess,” said the commander, “so you and I can discuss this in private? We all are vested in moving the investigation along as quickly as possible.”

  After a tense moment, Major Philpott slammed his hands down on the table and jerked himself upright. He wheeled around and marched out of the apartment, slamming the door closed behind him. Following an exchange of glances, Commander Evans stood up and took out his pipe. “Believe I’ll step out for a smoke,” he said.

  Inspector Hollingsworth looked over at Frances and shrugged imperceptibly. He absently dragged his forefinger down the side of his nose and across his lips, so they sat in silence.

  Five minutes later, the apartment door clicked open and the major and the commander returned. The major did not look happy, but then, the major never looked happy. He sat down and pulled a file from his briefcase.

  Inspector Hollingsworth threw Frances a soft ball. “How much correspondence does Governor Towers generate in a week?” he asked.

  “Over a hundred pieces.”

  “Would you remember every piece?”

  “These alleged documents had my initials on them?”

  “They did.”

  “And they have significant security value?”

  “They do.”

  “I’d remember.”

  “Is there any other way they could be authenticated?”

  “Governor Towers has an excellent memory. You could have asked him, but he just left Ottawa on a three-week holiday. We file carbon copies of all correspondence.”

  “But what if these items are actually copies and not the original documents?”

  “We often make more than one copy. We keep a daily correspondence binder where copies of everything that leaves our office are time-stamped and filed chronologically. We also have PDFs — priority destination files. For example, all correspondence to the prime minister would be filed in the daily correspondence binder as well as in the McKenzie King binder. Any person mentioned in a memo would be sent a courtesy copy.”

  “Would someone else in your office type your initials on a document?”

  “No. We all initial our own work.”

  “This is against my better judgement, but Commander Evans insists we expedite things,” said the major, deflecting all blame to the commander. He opened the file and passed it across to Frances. It contained two flimsies — the thin tissues used between carbon paper to make multiple copies.

  “Feel free to check them under the light,” Major Philpott said, nodding towards the tri-light in the corner.

  Reaching for the first tissue, Frances’s hand stopped in mid-air. She stood up and dragged the tri-light over beside her seat, then opened her purse and took out a pair of eyebrow tweezers.

  “It’s curious, Major,” she said, “that evidence that I was forbidden to see ten minutes ago I can suddenly handle freely. A cynical person might think that having my fingerprints all over them might enhance their value in a court of law.”

  Using the tweezers, she moved the pages towards her. “It would also suggest that the evidence is currently free of fingerprints, as I’m sure you would have dusted them. That would be very strange for authentic documents, because they’d have been handled in the course of a day’s work by a typist, a proofreader, Governor Towers and a file clerk.”

  The first flimsy was stamped TOP SECRET in bold red ink. It was addressed to the chairman of the US Federal Reserve.

  January 28, 1942

  Dear Marriner,

  Per your request, on February 16th, we will ship twenty million ($20,000,000 U.S. funds) in gold reserves to Fort Knox. It will travel heavily guarded but in unmarked freight cars via Montreal and New York City to arrive at your Kentucky facility by noon on February 19th.

  American officials will be expected to sign for the shipment and take over security arrangements at the border crossing in Vermont.

  Please treat this transaction with the utmost secrecy and confirm security arrangements immediately by cable.

  Sincerely,

  Graham Towers

  Governor

  GFT/fem2

  The second flimsy, a message to the Governor of the Bank of England, was stamped CONFIDENTIAL in bold blue at the top.

  February 2, 1942

  Dear Montague,

  Congratulations on the twenty-first anniversary of your appointment as Governor of the Bank of England. An outstanding achievement, worthy of a knighthood!

  Arrangements to store Bank of England gold and securities in Bank of Canada vaults are almost complete. We need to know the exact breakdown of gold/ silver versus paper products so we can properly assign storage space.

  If you can inform me when these will be shipped, we will have armoured train cars meet them in Halifax to bring the valuables to Ottawa.

  I hope your Sheltie, Cupid, is in continuing good health.

  Sincerely,

  Graham Towers

  Governor

  GFT/fem2

  Carboned traces of a handwritten scrawl were visible above the governor’s typed name. Frances read them through twice before asking, “Does anyone have a magnifying glass?”

  Inspector Hollingsworth reached into his pocket and handed over a small square leather case with a rivet in one corner. Pushing a finger into the case, Frances rotated a small magnifying glass out, leaving the empty case to act as a handle. She examined both letters carefully with the glass, rotated them 180 degrees and examined them again. With the tweezers, she held them up to the tri-light and looked through them from the back. She sniffed the edge of each before putting them down.

  “Forgeries,” she said.

  “Of course you’d say that,” said the major. “Isn’t that Governor Towers’s signature?”

  “A reasonable
facsimile,” replied Frances. “But it wouldn’t be hard to forge. His signature is on every dollar bill printed in Canada.”

  “Do you deny those are your initials in the bottom corner?”

  “GFT are the governor’s initials and “fem” are my initials, but he didn’t dictate these and I didn’t type them.”

  “It took you four readings to decide on that?”

  “No. I knew immediately.”

  “Then why read them again?”

  “I was curious as to who did write them,” replied Frances.

  “How can you be so sure they aren’t from Governor Towers’s office?”

  Frances smiled a weary smile. “Several reasons. I’ll mention two, as I don’t wish to compromise Bank security. First, all the typewriters used by the secretariat are Remington Selects which have a twelve-point font size. That means each letter is 12/72s of an inch high. These documents are typed in a smaller, ten-point font.

  “Secondly, these letters were not done by a professional secretary.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “The key strokes make an irregular imprint on the page. Miss Gilhooly, my typing teacher, would have failed any student with such erratic finger pressure.” Frances picked up the magnifying glass again and scrutinized carefully.

  “That said, this is not the work of a “two-finger typist.” Only a touch-typer would cause the keys to jam up and become misaligned like the ‘j’ and ‘k’ or the ‘s’ and ‘d’. These were probably done on a portable typewriter which has less sturdy mechanical parts than our desktop Remingtons. So, it’s someone who learned to type, but was not professionally trained.”

  “Like who?” asked the commander.

  “Maybe a journalist or someone who’s required to regularly type up files. Perhaps an insurance agent or a quartermaster’s clerk.” Frances smiled at Inspector Hollingsworth. “Are police officers required to type reports?” she asked.

  “At the junior level that’s all we did.”

  “Care to type a short passage for us, then, Inspector? Just to clear your name?” Commander Evans smiled and the inspector laughed.

  “For God’s sake!” erupted the major to bring them back to order.

  “I would say,” continued Frances, “that these were typed by a left-handed man.”

  “Because . . . ?” queried the Commander.

  “The keys on the left side of the keyboard have been struck more fluidly than the keys on the right, suggesting a coordinated left hand.” Frances held one of the flimsies to her nose again with the tweezers. “This man used Old Spice aftershave lotion.” She sniffed again. “There’s another aroma I can’t identify.”

  “Quite familiar are you, Miss McFadden, with the shaving rituals of men?” deadpanned the major. He might just as well have called her a whore.

  “My father used Old Spice,” Frances replied with level eye contact that dared him to go further. “I often got him some for Christmas.”

  “Inspector? A word if you please?” said Major Philpott, standing up suddenly and leaving the room. Inspector Hollingsworth gave a helpless smile and followed. When the hall door closed, Commander Evans took two pieces of high-quality paper out of a manila folder and placed them in front of Frances. He used the file folder to cover the tops of the pages. “Would you say, Miss McFadden, that these two items were typed on the same typewriter by the same person as the others?”

  Frances picked up the magnifying glass again and examined them. “I don’t claim to be an expert, Commander.”

  “Fair enough. Would you hazard a guess?”

  “I’d guess yes. The same irregular pressure on the ‘b,’ ‘i,’ ‘l’ and ‘o’, and the same off-centre ‘s’ and ‘h’.” She passed the magnifying glass over to the commander. He nodded silently, before replacing them in his file.

  The inspector and the major returned. The major’s face hid none of his anger. “We’ve run overtime without getting anywhere and I’m late for a meeting at headquarters,” he said, slamming his briefcase shut. “We will reconvene tomorrow night at seven sharp.”

  As he stood, he added, “I find your attitude neither helpful nor credible, Miss McFadden. I do not for one moment believe your contention that these documents are forged. It’s ludicrous! Who would go to the trouble to counterfeit a Bank of Canada memo, for God’s sake?”

  -6-

  Quid Pro Quo

  Frances lashed her wool scarf around her neck and stormed home in a fury, giving Miles’s welcoming smile the curtest nod when she stomped into the lobby of the Balmoral Arms. “Sorry Miles! My apologies. Long day. Bad day. A hot bath might just save it for me.”

  Closing the door on her apartment, she sagged back against it, barring the outside world. Her clothes felt tainted by the inquisition and she shed them quickly while filling the tub. Naked, Frances extracted the Macallan from the dining room credenza and poured herself three fingers of Scotch over ice. Then the doorbell rang.

  God! Nine o’clock at night! Who would be so rude?

  Frances feared ignoring it lest some emergency was brewing with one of her neighbours — Betsey Knowles’s maid or one of Senator Wilson’s girls. She wrapped herself in a flannel dressing gown and scurried to dispatch whomever before the tub overflowed. Cracking open the door, she peered out through the oak crevice into . . . an empty hall? Then she glanced down to see the bald pate of Inspector Hollingsworth’s head bowed before her from a kneeling position, arms outstretched like an idol worshiper. “Forgive me Frances! Forgive me!” the plaintive voice of the near-prostrate inspector intoned towards the hall carpet. “I knew Philpott was an idiot. I did not know what an overbearing bully he could be as well.”

  “Get up, for goodness’ sake. You look like an idiot.”

  She opened the door and directed him to the liquor cabinet. By the time she turned off the tub and threw on slacks and a sweater, the inspector had collapsed into a wing chair in the living room. He lifted his drink in salutation. “Off the record?” he asked.

  “Quid pro quo?” Frances replied, toasting him with her Macallan.

  “Quid pro quo. Major Philpott came across those letters last week. You’d think he’d discovered the Rosetta Stone. He’s confident that this espionage breakthrough will earn him a Distinguished Service Cross. However, he only gets bathed in glory if the letters are the real McCoy. You have rained on his parade. The thought that a spy would be so duplicitous as to forge a document has left him dumbstruck.”

  “How did you ever get tangled up with the likes of Major Philpott?”

  The inspector sighed. “It’s one of those interdepartmental nightmares that bureaucracies, especially in wartime, invite themselves into. Before the war, a special unit of the RCMP looked after what one would generally call ‘national security.’ Now, however, the Canadian military needs high-level security exchanges with MI6, the foreign intelligence service in the United Kingdom. The Brits were reluctant to share files with a civilian agency — how they view the RCMP — so we had to quickly set up a Canadian Military Intelligence office. There are two sections. One is for the navy, to protect our shipping from peril on the high seas, and the other for everything else. Major Philpott is in charge of the ‘everything else’ file. I’ve been assigned as the liaison officer to help keep channels open and squabbling in check.”

  “And this highly sensitive task was entrusted to Major Philpott?”

  “I had never heard of the fellow until I was sent to meet him two months ago. He’s career army. Stayed active after the last war and has plodded slowly upward ever since. Seniority is everything in the army. Did most of his service in Victoria with several officer exchange secondments to Fort Irwin in California. Loved California. Loathes Ottawa winters and hopes to be posted to a more hospitable climate as soon as possible.”

  “Is tonight soon enough?” asked Frances.

  “Be soon enough for me. He has somehow deluded the powers that be into thinking he’s competent. In their defence, the military
brass has a hundred items on the front burner, given how unprepared they were for war.”

  Inspector Hollingsworth took a deep draw down on his whisky glass. “In my experience, the officer class falls into four categories based on brains and work ethic. The smart and hard-working are a treat to serve under. Smart and lazy men are fine, too. They’re shrewd enough to assign important tasks to competent underlings. Dumb and lazy are better than you’d think, because they keep their heads down and don’t interfere. However, dumb and hard-working . . . ”

  “Let me guess who you have in mind.”

  “Indeed, we log long hours slogging around in a hopeless morass. The major never asks for an opinion and is hostile to offers of advice. If German counter-intelligence ever found out about him, he’d get the Iron Cross for services rendered to the Reich.”

  “And where does Commander Evans fit in?”

  “Evans is a British officer loaned to us from MI6 to help set up Canadian operations. Has an exemplary record from the last war. Distinguished Service Cross, mentioned in dispatches, et cetera. Had two brothers killed on the Somme. His main task is to ensure that any sensitive information shared by MI6 is secure over here. He bites his tongue a lot. He’s technically a guest with Major Philpott as officer-in-charge.”

  “So how did your merry band end up with those forged letters?”

  “You’re sure they’re forgeries?”

  “Absolutely. I mentioned two reasons earlier, but there are more that I didn’t mention. We have security protocols at the Bank that I was not willing to share with the likes of Major Philpott.”

  “How about me?”

  “Off the record?”

  “Quid pro quo.”

  “To begin with,” said Frances, “we never use ‘Top Secret’ or ‘Confidential’ stamps in the governor’s office.”

  “Really? Nothing is confidential?”

  “Au contraire — everything is confidential, for the eyes of the recipient only. Why state the obvious? Far too theatrical for Governor Towers. Looks very impressive in a forgery, however. And, do you think for one minute that the Governor of the Bank of Canada would send chatty missives, uncoded, through the public mail, about the movement of large gold shipments?”