The Alice Network

In 1915, 22-year-old Eve Gardiner works as a typist in a law office. She seethes at the fact that women can’t join the war effort and resents the menial work she performs: “File girls, after all, were a kind of office furniture, more mobile than an umbrella fern, but just as deaf and dumb” (24).

Because of her troubled childhood, Eve has learned how to look completely innocent yet lie easily. She possesses a slight stammer, which causes many people to assume she is simple-minded. On this particular morning, Eve is asked to type a letter in French for a gentleman named Captain Cecil Cameron.

At her boardinghouse that evening, Eve is surprised to receive a visit from Cameron. He explains that he’s been studying her behavior: “It is my job to find people with certain skills—the ability to speak French and German, for example. The ability to lie. Outward innocence. Inward courage. To find them and put them to work” (32). Cameron recruits Eve on the spot as a government spy. 

In 1947 London, Charlie spends the night in Eve’s house. She is startled to be awakened the next morning by a young Scotsman named Finn Kilgore. He explains that he’s Eve’s man of all work. Because Eve’s hands are deformed, Finn performs odd jobs and does the cooking. He makes breakfast for Charlie and says that Eve won’t remember kicking her out the night before. Charlie feels a surge of morning sickness and can’t eat. When Eve wakes, she doesn’t seem to mind Charlie’s presence. Over breakfast, she volunteers to make some calls to get information about the missing Rose.

After calling to reassure her mother, Charlie has Finn drive her to the bank. Even though she’s legally of age and can claim her trust fund, the bank doesn’t want to disburse her money without her father’s approval. Charlie then visits a local pawn shop instead to raise some cash from her grandmother’s pearls. The pawnbroker first tries to cheat her and then demands some proof of the necklace’s value.

At that moment, Eve sweeps in: “She looked entirely different from the drunk old bat of last night, with her teacup of whiskey and her Luger. For that matter, she looked entirely different from the hungover crone of this morning” (52). Dressed like a dowager duchess, Eve convinces the pawnbroker to give Charlie the full value of the pearls. Outside the shop, she says that she will help Charlie find Rose for a fee. They will get their first lead in Folkestone and then move on to France.

Eve meets Cameron in the town of Folkestone, where she will receive her initial training in spycraft. Eve speculates that there must not be very many women working as spies, but Cameron tells her that his most successful recruits are female: “They frequently have the ability to pass unnoticed where a man would be suspected and stopped” (57).

The author writes, “The Folkestone course lasted two weeks […] Rooms full of students who did not look like spies, learning strange and sinister things from men who did not look like soldiers” (58). Because Eve is the only female in the class, her instructor, Major Allenton, doesn’t think she needs to learn how to shoot a gun, so he excludes her from that segment of training.

Cameron disagrees and takes Eve to the beach to shoot bottles with a Luger, rather than the Webley that the other students use. He explains she will develop accuracy much faster with the German gun. Noticing her time away with Cameron, Allenton warns Eve that Cameron may not be completely trustworthy. He has been convicted of fraud and spent time in prison.

At the end of her training, Eve will be sent to Lille in German-occupied France. Her name will be Marguerite Le François: “In English it would translate to something like ‘Daisy French,’ and Eve smiled. A perfect name for an innocent girl, a girl to be ignored and talked over. Just a harmless little daisy, lurking fresh-faced in the grass” (64).  

Charlie, Finn, and Eve are crossing the English Channel in May 1947. During the entire trip, Charlie experiences morning sickness, which the others think is seasickness. The trip is costing Charlie a fortune because Eve insists that they bring Finn’s Lagonda to drive. Charlie plans to take them to meet Rose’s mother in Rouen. The old woman won’t be able to avoid answering questions about her daughter when Charlie is face-to-face with her.

Once the boat docks, Eve and Charlie wait while Finn’s Lagonda gets unloaded. Eve speculates that he got the car by doing something illegal. She tells Charlie, “You think he works for a bad-tempered bitch like me for fun? Nobody else was about to give him a job. I probably shouldn’t have either, but I have a weakness for good-looking men with Scottish accents and prison terms” (75).