Joan

Joan is Hugh Legat’s assistant and covert minder in Munich, where she protects the memorandum that Legat has brought to the conference. Introduced through practical office work, she proves to be more than a typist: her discreet intervention preserves the document until Legat can recover it, turning an apparently ordinary colleague into a crucial guardian of his mission.

Office Work and Discretion

In the London office, Joan carries in a folder containing a telegram from Berlin. Sir Alexander Cadogan has been waiting for the message and reads it with mounting urgency; after he says the Prime Minister needs to see it straight away, Legat confirms that he is returning to Downing Street. Joan’s brief appearance places her within the office’s fast-moving routine of receiving and carrying sensitive communications.

Later, in Munich, Legat asks Joan to arrange supper for the returning party and to send word to Sir Alexander Cadogan that he has the memorandum. She agrees to handle both requests. The exchange again presents her as a reliable organizer, but the message about the memorandum also connects her practical duties to the document at the center of Legat’s mission.

The Munich Assignment

At the airport after the party’s return, Joan approaches Legat carrying a suitcase and a portable typewriter. She explains that Colonel Menzies is related to her through a second cousin and sometimes gives her errands. Her typing skills were one reason for sending her to Munich, she says, but not the only one: she had also been instructed to watch over Legat. What he had taken for an ordinary working arrangement therefore included a concealed security role.

Joan reveals that she removed the memorandum from Legat’s room the previous night, after he went off with Paul von Hartmann, and kept it for safekeeping. She had hidden it inside her suitcase, beneath neatly folded underwear, still in its original envelope. The contrast between the document’s grave importance and its unassuming hiding place makes her protection both practical and quietly comic. She tells Legat that she is glad she took it; by then, he has returned to the airport exhausted and is guarding the red boxes while wondering whether to telephone Pamela Legat.

Safeguarding the Memorandum

The document had already shaped Legat’s conduct in Munich. Alone in his dark hotel room, he locked the door, opened the envelope, and read the memorandum; he concluded that the Prime Minister needed to know its contents before signing an agreement. Joan’s earlier removal means that, when she produces it at the airport, Legat can regain the document and continue to pass on its existence to Cadogan. The evidence establishes the sequence of concealment and return, without explaining precisely what danger Joan expected the memorandum to face.

Her disclosure also changes Legat’s understanding of her presence. He has been weary and puzzled by her teasing manner; she calls herself something of a guardian angel before revealing the assignment. Her warm aside that she likes the name Hugh softens the revelation, but does not diminish its seriousness. Joan’s significance lies in this double function: she is both the efficient aide who handles messages and arrangements, and the unseen safeguard whose independent action keeps a politically consequential document in Legat’s hands.