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black hair that curled up in a flounce just above her shoulders and dark brown eyes and was gesticulating with her right hand as she enumerated the advantages of the flat she was describing. He listened carefully to her accent. He doubted it would pass muster with any Corkman, probably not sing-song enough, but it was hard to place.
    She paused to listen to something on the phone and then began to describe another flat. He picked up a typed list from the table and glanced down at it. The Adelaide Agency’s market was immediately clear to him: larger flats in the better southern suburbs, suitable, as one said, ‘for two ladies (Protestant)’. The prices looked expensive, £60 a year for a two-bed.
    She finished on the phone and he turned to her, unsure which name to call her by.
    ‘I’m Paul Duggan,’ he said, showing her his identity card. She looked at it carefully and put her hand out and said, ‘Pleased to meet you’.
    ‘I understand you’re willing—’ he began but she put a finger to her lips.
    ‘We must speak quietly,’ she said, dropping her voice and pointing over her shoulder to the door behind her.
    Duggan nodded and continued in a quieter tone, ‘—that you’re willing to help us.’
    ‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘I will spy for you.’
    ‘It’s not exactly spying,’ he said, taken aback by her directness. Then, realising what he had said, he added, ‘I mean, not like that. It’s not dangerous.’
    She shrugged. ‘I’ll start on Saturday, after lunch. We’re open here only for the morning and I’ll go to the café at two o’clock.’
    ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘That’s great.’
    The door behind her opened and a middle-aged man came out with his overcoat on and his hat in his hand. He glanced at Duggan and immediately dismissed him as a client.
    ‘I’ll be about an hour, Gertie,’ he said to her, ignoring Duggan.
    ‘Yes, sir,’ she replied. And to Duggan, ‘If you decide which area you prefer we’ll identify the best places for you.’
    Duggan looked after the man and dropped the list he realised he still had in his hand, on the desk. ‘Your boss?’ he asked.
    ‘Mr Montague,’ she said.
    ‘Does he know your real name?’
    ‘My real name is Gertie,’ she gave him a defiant look. ‘Gertie Maher.’
    ‘I mean, where you come from?’
    ‘Sprechen sie Deutsch?’
    He nodded.
    ‘He doesn’t know anything,’ she continued in German. ‘We don’t have conversations.’
    Duggan nodded. ‘You know the arrangement with Frau Lynch?’ he asked in German.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And you know what we want?’
    ‘Yes. I’m to listen to what they talk about and see who they meet and report to you. I’m not to talk to them about politics or the war. They must not know I understand German.’ She rattled it off like a lesson she had been taught.
    ‘Good. That’s what we want. Nothing dangerous.’
    ‘Can I flirt with them?’
    Duggan laughed and then wondered if he had understood her German correctly. ‘Only in English,’ he said, in English.
    She nodded, as if she was merely accepting another instruction.
    ‘I’m sorry they won’t pay you,’ Duggan continued, not specifying who ‘they’ were. ‘Since you’re giving up your Saturday afternoons.’
    ‘It’s nothing. Maybe I’ll get some tips,’ she gave a hint of a wintry smile. ‘Take some money back off the Nazis.’
    ‘I hope the work won’t be too hard.’
    ‘I don’t think so,’ she shrugged. What was there to serving tea and coffee and pastries? ‘Are you the spymaster?’
    ‘Me?’ Duggan laughed in disbelief at the idea. ‘No. Do I look like a spymaster?’
    ‘Who do I report to?’
    ‘Oh,’ he realised what she meant. ‘To me.’
    ‘I will see you there?’
    ‘No, I won’t go there. I will call here on Monday.’ He took a fountain pen from the desk and wrote his phone number on a sheet of paper and added his first name only. ‘If there’s anything urgent you can call me at that number. If I am not there