Spying on Miss Muller by Eve Bunting Read Free Book Online Page B

the carriage with Sarah, because sometimes there are bad men that get in with you and say things, and show you things. I asked Mummy what things, but she wouldn’t tell me.” Hillary gave me a hopeful look, but I just shrugged.
    â€œWhich maid is Sarah?” I asked, bringing Hillary back to the present.
    â€œShe’s the one that has all the pimples on her face. They’re all over her shoulders, too. She let me see them on the train one time. Well, Sarah saw the photo herself. It’s on Miss Müller’s dressing table but hidden behind another one. The maids found it. Sarah says the maids find everything. She says you wouldn’t believe the things the maids find in the boys’ rooms under their mattresses. She says the maids have great giggles over them.”
    They probably knew about the picture of Ian McManus in my emergency case, I thought. And oh.
    My heart chilled. What about my diary? The one I wrote in about Daddy. The one I cried over.
    Hillary was going on. “The maids all hate us, except Sarah likes me. They think we’re spoiled brats. Imagine! I’d rather be a maid here than a boarder any day.”
    I nodded. There was a muffled squeak from the dispensary, and then Nursie’s no-nonsense voice. We couldn’t hear the words, but Hillary said, “Nursie’s telling her to be a brave soldier. That’s what she always says.”
    I stood thinking about Miss Müller and the Nazi photograph. Was it true? Maybe the maids had lied, just to create a sensation. Miss Müller hadn’t told me her father had been in the Nazi army. But she wouldn’t tell any of us that. And after all, I didn’t tell everything about my father either.
    I hunched my shoulders and looked at the archway, half expecting to see Marjorie’s ghost there. I always half expected to see Marjorie’s ghost, but I never had. Not yet. If I went up on the roof, would there be any clue to what Miss Müller had been doing last night—just before the Nazi planes came and bombed Belfast? Should I look?
    â€œHold my place,” I told Hillary, and went slowly across to the archway.
    â€œIt’s out of bounds up there,” she called out to me, as if I didn’t know.
    I peered up the spiral staircase. Damp, dark, curving into the darkness.
    Behind me Hillary pressed herself against the wall and gasped with excitement.
    I went up. My shoes thumped on the stone steps that curved round and round. My heart thumped, too, as I moved past the coffin room. Usually, when I had to come up here on a dare, I edged as far from the coffin-room door as I could. I forced my toes to cling to the narrow steps, reached out to tap my fingers against the paneled wood, and croaked, “Marjorie, are you there?” We always had to do that on a dare.
    This morning, though, I forced myself to grab the door handle and turn it. The hasp was chained and padlocked as usual. The long, thin, shield-shaped window beside the door let little light through its dirty leaded glass. Gray morning light filtered down from above. I went round and round, up and up, till I came to the opening and stepped out onto the roof.
    Rain misted around me and puddles pocked the concrete roof. Above me the sky was dark and thick. I moved forward. Red-brick battlements, like rows of gappy teeth, protected the roof’s edges. They were knee high where they joined, waist level at their tops. A person could hide behind one of these if he—or she—wanted to.
    I looked around, searching for something. I wasn’t sure what. All I saw were the wet Union Jack hanging up on the flagpole and the red buckets that the Air Raid Precaution people had filled with sand. Other buckets overflowed with water in case of fire. I stared over the battlements in the direction of downtown Belfast. A signal from this roof could have been seen anywhere in the city. When it wasn’t misty or rainy you could see City Hall from