Hugh peered down at her. “That, my dear, is because your Trevor does next to nothing for most of the time. Take it from me as his commanding officer.”

“Somehow, Hugh, I can’t think of you as a commanding officer,” Mitzi chimed, a playful glint in her eye. “A genial one, maybe, and slightly inept, but not a commanding one.”

Margaret’s hand shot to her mouth to stifle a laugh, which drew an affronted scowl from Hugh.

“Bang goes Trevor’s promotion,” said Max, to more laughter.

A little while later the ladies left together for the far end of the garden. Max fought to ignore the lazy sway of Mitzi’s slender hips beneath her cotton print dress.

“Entre nous,” said Hugh, considerably less abashed about admiring the view, “all the subs will be gone for good within a week or so.”

“Really?”

“Well, you’ve seen the pasting they’ve been taking down at Lazaretto Creek. And since Wanklyn came a cropper …”

The loss of the Upholder a couple of weeks back had rocked the whole garrison, right down to the man on the street. Subs had been lost before, subs driven by good men known to all, men who had once lit up the bar at the Union Club and whose bones were now resting somewhere on the seabed. “Wankers” Wanklyn was different, though. A tall, soft-spoken Scotsman with a biblical beard, he’d been modest in the way that only the truly great can afford to be. With well over one hundred thousand tons of enemy shipping under his belt and a Victoria Cross on his chest, he’d exuded a quiet invincibility that others had fed off, had drawn strength from. Not one of his peers had begrudged him his star status because he’d never once played to it; he’d just got on with the job. And now he was gone, sent to the bottom, a mere human being after all.

As the information officer, Max had been the first to learn of the Upholder’s fate. The announcement had been buried away in the transcript of an Italian broadcast—a brief mention of a nameless submarine destroyed in an engagement off Tripoli. Max had made some discreet inquiries, enough to narrow the field to the Upholder, and then he had sat on the news for a couple of days.