The american agent, p.33
The American Agent, page 33
When I began writing The American Agent, I was aware of the position of Joseph Kennedy, who took up the role of ambassador to Britain in 1938, and left England in October 1940. He had a reputation for supporting appeasement, and predicted that Hitler would be in Buckingham Palace within two weeks of war being declared. He was an isolationist and was believed to have Nazi sympathies, likely as a result of his anti-Semitic rhetoric and business relationships he had forged in Germany—relationships he was loath to lose. I decided to “invent” a situation where he was being investigated by a special agent—mainly because I wanted to bring back Mark Scott, a character in Journey to Munich. While writing the novel, it therefore came as a surprise to read a press article pertaining to the declassification of reports filed by an unnamed agent sent to London to monitor Kennedy’s activities during World War II until his resignation in October 1940. When he first took up his post, Joseph Kennedy and his family landed in London to the sort of fanfare accorded movie stars—and it is known that his daughter, Rosemary, who had learning difficulties, fared particularly well while living in England, and even more so after her siblings had been sent back to America at the outset of war, and she had more of her father’s attention. But by the time he left Britain, Kennedy’s rhetoric and activities had—according to some accounts—rendered him an unpopular figure. Others—especially those US correspondents who liked the ambassador, and who were regular visitors to his home—suggested that the British were sorry to see Kennedy go. He was most certainly also being investigated by the British Foreign Office. Personally, speaking to family members and friends who were in London during the war, it appears people didn’t really care either way—whatever might be lost during a given night’s blitz was of greater importance than the arrival or departure of an ambassador. Kennedy’s successor, John Gilbert Winant, had much ground to make up when he arrived in London in March 1941 as the new ambassador, yet became much admired for his willingness to go into the streets to talk to and try to help ordinary people suffering the effects of constant bombing. He remained in office until March 1946.
There is sometimes confusion regarding use of the word wireless in historical fiction set in Britain, especially as the word has a quite different meaning today. In 1930s Britain, a radio was referred to as the “wireless” simply because it did not need wires. Many homes were still without electricity well into the 1960s, so in the early days of radio—which became a popular entertainment and communications tool—a type of battery known as an “accumulator” was used. The accumulator had to be taken to a local garage or similar shop on a regular basis to be “topped up.” There are still people of a certain age who refer to listening to the wireless, and not the radio—though whatever name the device is known by, the importance of the wireless as a means of social influence in the twentieth century cannot be underestimated.
Finally, a word about “Don” to whom this story is dedicated. On the one-year anniversary of my grandfather’s death, my parents, brother and I visited his grave in London, taking with us armfuls of flowers brought from our garden in Kent. I was almost twelve years of age, my brother four years younger. When we arrived, the grave was already overflowing with flowers left by other family members, but we added some of ours, and walked away still carrying a massive bouquet of bright magenta Alexander roses. As we walked among the gravestones, my father stopped alongside one that was overgrown with weeds. The inscription was simple, indicating that the deceased was a twenty-two-year-old RAF pilot killed during the Battle of Britain, in June 1940. His name was Don. There was no surname, and nothing to indicate that his parents had been laid to rest in the same place. Without a word spoken, the four of us began to clear the weeds, and working together we made Don’s resting place worthy of him again, finally placing the Alexander roses at the head of the grave. As we walked away, those roses seemed to take over the whole cemetery—we could see them from the gates as we left. Decades later, I used the idea of a grave with only a single name in my first novel, Maisie Dobbs, so it seemed only right to dedicate a novel set during the most terrible months of 1940 to Don, and with such deep gratitude for his service.
Acknowledgments
With each new novel published, it is in these pages that I express my gratitude to many of the same people I thanked the last time a novel was published—and will do so again here. I am extremely fortunate to have worked with the team at HarperCollins in the US and with Allison and Busby in the UK for some years now, and I have forged relationships that I have come to cherish.
Amy Rennert has been my agent from the very start of my career as a novelist, and in that time has become a very dear friend—I am an incredibly blessed recipient of her wise counsel. And when it comes to being blessed—my longtime editor, Jennifer Barth, is one of a kind, and I am so very grateful for her insight, valuable advice, and direction. An editor who listens is a gift, and Jennifer has always listened and heard. Katherine Beitner has planned my book tours and promotion for some years now, and has been a supporter on every level. Thank you, Katherine—for your friendship, and not least for bringing my attention to the beautiful Hebrew phrase eshet chayil. Thanks must go, as always, to Stephanie Cooper, who is a marketing wizard (and I’m sure I’ve said that before!). She amazes me with her new ideas and sheer enthusiasm for every project.
I’ve worked in sales, so I know how hard sales teams work—and how easily it is for that “behind the scenes” endeavor to go unrecognized. Josh Marwell and his team at HarperCollins have my deepest thanks for everything they do, and for continuing to bring the Maisie Dobbs series to an even broader audience. Thank you, Josh. And for being such a constant Maisie Dobbs supporter—thank you, Jonathan Burnham, publisher and senior vice president at HarperCollins.
Susie Dunlop and the brilliant team at Allison and Busby in the UK have my most sincere gratitude for their infectious enthusiasm for my novels, and their very hard work on behalf of the Maisie Dobbs series in the UK and across the Commonwealth. And thank you all for the welcome I receive every time I cross the threshold of A&B’s London offices.
The covers that grace the Maisie Dobbs series have been described as “iconic”—indeed, they’re just amazing. I have loved every cover, but the artwork for this book took my breath away. Thanks must go to the unbelievably talented artist/craftsman Andrew Davidson in the UK, and to creative director Archie Ferguson in the US. Andrew and Archie, you outdid yourselves on the cover for The American Agent. It is stunning.
My husband, John Morell, is at the head of my A team on the home front, aided and abetted by Maya, the dog sleeping at my feet as I write this.
About the Author
Jacqueline Winspear is the author of the New York Times bestsellers To Die but Once, In This Grave Hour, Journey to Munich, A Dangerous Place, Leaving Everything Most Loved, and Elegy for Eddie, as well as eight other best-selling Maisie Dobbs novels. Her stand-alone novel, The Care and Management of Lies, was also a New York Times bestseller, and a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Winspear has won numerous prizes, including the Agatha, Alex, and Macavity Awards for the first book in the series, Maisie Dobbs, which was also nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel and was named a New York Times Notable Book. Originally from the United Kingdom, she now lives in California.
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Also by Jacqueline Winspear
Maisie Dobbs
Birds of a Feather
Pardonable Lies
Messenger of Truth
An Incomplete Revenge
Among the Mad
The Mapping of Love and Death
A Lesson in Secrets
Elegy for Eddie
Leaving Everything Most Loved
The Care and Management of Lies
A Dangerous Place
Journey to Munich
In This Grave Hour
To Die but Once
What Would Maisie Do?
Copyright
the american agent. Copyright © 2019 by Jacqueline Winspear. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
first edition
Cover design by Archie Ferguson
Cover illustration by Andrew Davidson
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Winspear, Jacqueline, author.
Title: The American agent: a Maisie Dobbs novel / Jacqueline Winspear.
Description: First Edition. | New York, NY: Harper, [2019]
Identifiers: LCCN 2018045423 (print) | LCCN 2018048058 (ebook) | ISBN 9780062436696 (e-book) | ISBN 9780062436665 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780062888037 (large print)
Subjects: LCSH: Dobbs, Maisie (Fictitious character)—Fiction. | World War—1939–1945—Fiction. | Murder—Investigation—Fiction. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PR6123.I575 (ebook) | LCC PR6123.I575 A44 2019 (print) | DDC 823/.92—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018045423
Digital Edition MARCH 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-243669-6
Version 03082019
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-243666-5
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Jacqueline Winspear, The American Agent
