Louise's Blunder (9 page)

After the guests mingled for a bit Don stood on a chair and began to speak about Hughes. How well liked he was, how hard-working, and how he would be missed. His final words were cut off by a strangled sob. Lots of the girls were dabbing at their eyes, but this was loud sobbing. I turned and saw Peggy Benton crying with a handkerchief pressed to her face. Her husband, Spencer, had a grip on her elbow. He looked quite embarrassed, even angry. I moved toward her to comfort her.

‘Hush, be quiet,’ Benton said to his wife, ‘You’re making a spectacle of yourself.’

‘Paul was a very good friend,’ Peggy answered him. ‘It’s all so sad!’

She buried her face in her handkerchief and sobbed again.

Benton turned to me. ‘Mrs Pearlie, would you take Peggy outside, please, until she gets control of herself?’ he said. ‘I can’t stand her bawling.’

‘Certainly,’ I said, taking Peggy’s hand and leading her outside on to a narrow covered veranda. We perched on a bench. A wisteria vine that twisted around a marble column dangled its blossoms over our head.

‘I know I embarrass Spencer,’ Peggy said, breathing in short gulps, and rubbing her arm where her husband had gripped it. ‘I’m always so emotional.’

‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘If you can’t cry over a friend’s death, what can you cry about?’

‘Spencer thinks I should restrain myself in public. It reflects on him, you see.’

I didn’t comment on that.

‘I didn’t know you and Paul Hughes were so close,’ I said.

‘We were good friends. He came to Rose and Sadie’s apartment several times. He didn’t think that it was stupid for women to talk about serious subjects. Clark’s the same way.’

Peggy’s handkerchief was a sopping mess. I pulled out my own. ‘Let me go dampen this,’ I said. Inside I soaked the handkerchief in a water fountain, but not before I saw Don Murray and Major Wicker go into an office off the hall. Alone.

Peggy wiped her face with my handkerchief, then applied lipstick and powder.

‘I hope I’m presentable enough to assume my role as Spencer’s wife,’ she said. ‘Shall we go back inside?’

More people crowded the reception room, taking time off from lunch to pay their respects. I saw Rose talking to Clark and joined them while Peggy, pale but composed, went to her husband. Both Rose and Clark looked grim.

‘Peggy is terribly upset,’ I said to them. ‘I had to take her outside.’

‘She’s very emotional,’ Rose said. ‘Cries over everything. Not that Paul’s death isn’t sad. And such a freak accident!’

‘Sounds like he tried to come back to the District before he’d fully recovered,’ Clark said.

‘I’m surprised he tried to walk to the streetcar stop,’ I said. ‘You’d think he’d have caught a taxi home if he didn’t feel well.’

Clark shrugged.

‘If he had a fever he might not have been thinking clearly,’ Rose said. She looked at her watch. ‘I need to get back to work,’ she said. We all did.

The reception room emptied quickly and I joined the crowd of people crossing 23rd Street to our building.

Just as I took the first step up the steep stone staircase to the renovated apartment house that housed the Research and Analysis Division a man touched my shoulder from behind.

‘Ma’am,’ he said, ‘can you wait for a minute, please? I must speak to you.’

Startled, I pulled away. ‘I don’t know you,’ I said. ‘What do you want?’

He pulled out a small leather case and flipped it open, displaying a Metropolitan Police badge.

‘Let’s get away from this crowd,’ he said, nodding down the hill to a spot where a bunch of forsythia bushes clustered, blooming bright yellow.

‘I need to get back to work,’ I said.

‘This won’t take a minute. I insist.’

I glanced around. None of my co-workers, scurrying back to their offices, noticed us.

The two of us sheltered behind the thicket of forsythia bushes. I had a powerful sense of foreboding. What did this policeman want with me?

‘I’m Detective Sergeant Royal, Metropolitan Police,’ he said to me, showing me his badge again so I could see the number clearly. ‘Write it down if you like, check me out.’

He was an older man, plenty old enough to be retired. He probably still worked because of the war. He was dressed in a well worn but respectable suit and tie. A dilapidated fedora, which looked like it had repelled a lot of rain in its time, covered grizzled hair. Deep frown lines scoured his face between his eyebrows. Royal leaned heavily on one leg as if the other one hurt him.

‘You are Mrs Louise Pearlie,’ he said.

‘How did you know that?’ I asked. He knew my name and had intercepted me walking up the steps to an OSS divisional office. Again I had a sense of apprehension. I was wary that a stranger, even a policeman, knew my name and where I worked.

‘I’m the detective who was called to the scene of Paul Hughes’ drowning,’ he said. ‘Last Monday. And you’re the woman who visited his landlady, Mrs Nighy, the following Wednesday, to question her about Hughes’ absence from work, long before the Metropolitan Police even knew who the man was. I want to talk to you about that visit.’

Oh my God! I had given Mrs Nighy my real name! And identified myself as coming from Hughes’ office! What had I been thinking! That was a beginner’s mistake. No matter how casual I thought the inquiry was, I should never have given anyone a way to trace me back to OSS!

‘How did you find out where I worked?’ I asked.

‘An FBI agent owed me a favor,’ he said. The FBI kept secured files on all government personnel. Mine was a little thicker than most. ‘Oh, and I know Paul Hughes worked here too.’

I feigned innocence as best I could.

‘Of course, Detective, I would be glad to help, but I don’t see why you need to talk to me. Poor Mr Hughes drowned accidentally. At work we couldn’t have known that, we only wanted to know where he was. I’m just a file clerk. My boss sent me to his boarding house to ask about him.’

‘Did he?’ Royal asked. ‘Did Hughes drown accidentally? Are you sure of that?’

Stragglers from the reception came hurrying up the hill, glancing at me curiously as they went by. I had to get away from Royal before he attracted any more attention to me.

‘I don’t think my superiors would want me to talk to you,’ I said. ‘I’d have to ask permission.’

‘Ma’am,’ he said, ‘if you don’t meet me for breakfast at seven a.m. tomorrow at the café on the corner of Twenty-first and “H”, I’m going to get in my police car and drive right here. Then I’m going to limp right up those stairs and tell your boss I need to speak to you and I’m going to be cranky because those steep stone steps are going to make my knee ache. And at the end of all this your boss will learn that you made a mistake that is going to damage his good opinion of you.’

I couldn’t take the chance that Major Wicker would find out I had done something so stupid as to give Mrs Nighy my real name. I’d be doing nothing but filing index cards until the war was over and then be grateful to find work as a shop girl.

‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’ll be there.’

‘Smart girl,’ he said. ‘Don’t be late.’

‘I’ll have two eggs over medium, bacon, and biscuits with butter and jelly, and plenty of coffee,’ Royal said.

‘Adam and Eve on a raft,’ the waitress repeated. ‘But we ain’t got no jelly.’

Royal showed her his badge, and she shrugged. ‘OK. Maybe we got a little jelly. Ma’am?’ she asked me. ‘Are you ready to order?’

‘Toast and tea,’ I said. The waitress ripped the order off her pad and took it behind the kitchen counter where she clipped it to the rotating order rack.

‘Off your feed?’ Royal asked.

‘I didn’t sleep very well last night,’ I said. I hadn’t been able to eat anything except crackers since Royal introduced himself to me yesterday. I was so fearful that my bosses at OSS would discover that I was too careless to be trusted with my Top Secret clearance.

It was early and the café wasn’t as crowded as it would be in half an hour. Royal pulled a chair over from an empty table and propped a leg up on it.

‘Bad knee,’ he said. ‘Second Battle of the Marne. It was a miracle I didn’t lose the leg. Sometimes I wish I had.’

‘Detective,’ I said. ‘What is it you want to ask me? I’m happy to cooperate. But I have to be at work at eight thirty.’

The waitress brought our food. Royal tucked into his and I nibbled at my toast.

‘Mrs Pearlie,’ he said, ‘I want you to help me find out who murdered Paul Hughes.’

‘What!’ I said. ‘What do you mean?’ I felt like the tiny bit of toast I’d swallowed was choking me. ‘Hughes drowned.’

‘That he did,’ Royal said. ‘But not until someone knocked him unconscious and tossed him into the Tidal Basin.’

‘I thought he fainted and hit his head …’

‘If Mr Hughes had fainted near enough to the Tidal Basin to land on the rocks he’d be covered with bruises, not just the honking great goose egg he had on his head. I think he was struck from behind with one of those rocks and dumped unconscious into the water.’

Royal paused to butter his biscuit.

‘But the case has been closed,’ I said.

‘Ma’am,’ Royal said, ‘what I am telling you is that the minute your friend Mr Hughes was identified word came down from above to close the file on his death. Which means I am forbidden to investigate his death further. Officially Hughes died from an accidental drowning despite all the signs that his death was a homicide.’

‘You don’t know he didn’t just drown!’ I argued. ‘Everyone has accepted it.’

Hughes leaned toward me and lowered his voice. ‘I’m an old policeman,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen everything. When a dead man has nothing in his pockets, no wallet, no pocketknife, no handkerchief, not even a canceled bus ticket, he’s been stripped for a reason. What, you think a turtle made off with his wallet? The man was murdered, that’s all there is to it, and your Oh So Secret friends are hushing it up!’

I was too shaken to speak.

‘And the District Chief of Detectives is too gutless to defy them,’ Royal said, the blood vessels at his temples bulging. ‘And I’m forbidden to investigate a homicide. I’m expected to ignore cold-blooded murder and occupy myself with stolen ration coupons! You know what else? My lieutenant, who can barely shave, thinks I’m too decrepit to do good work anymore! The only reason I was dispatched to the Hughes scene was because it was supposedly just an accident.’ Royal kept his voice to a whisper, but his fists were clenched so that his knuckles were white. I hoped he didn’t have a heart attack.

‘If the police did classify Hughes’ death as murder,’ Royal continued, ‘I’d be pulled off the case pronto and some hotshot young fellow who’d been to the new police academy would get the job.’

I kept my mouth shut. This guy harbored a grudge that predated Hughes’ death and I had no intention of commenting on it.

‘Sorry,’ Royal said. ‘I get worked up sometimes. Want some jelly for your toast?’ He pushed the dish of strawberry jelly over to me. The way I felt I couldn’t eat it if my life depended on it.

But what Royal had said about Hughes’ death made sense. I thought through it all while Royal finished his breakfast and drank his coffee refill. After the waitress took away our plates, mine looking like a mouse with a toothache had been nibbling at the edges of my toast, I got down to business.

‘What do you want from me?’ I asked. ‘I’m just a file clerk.’

‘A file clerk who was trusted by an armchair general from your three-letter agency to question Mrs Nighy about Hughes’ absence. Mrs Nighy happily told me your name when I called on her after we found out the results of Hughes’ fingerprints. But when I got back to the precinct my lieutenant told me that the case was closed – the coroner had ruled accidental death. I was supposed to go home and take a nap or something. But I had your name. So I tracked you down and found you at your Oh So Social government agency run by college boys. And you know what? I am going to solve this murder if it’s the last thing I do, and throw it in the Chief of Detectives’ face! And you’re going to help me.’

If OSS had insisted the District police close the investigation on Paul Hughes’ death it meant one of two things. First, they accepted Hughes’ death as accidental and just wanted to keep the story out of the news. Spy agencies liked their privacy. Or, OSS was suspicious, too, and wanted to investigate Hughes’ possible murder themselves, for the same reason, to keep it out of the public eye.

‘Tell me everything you learned at Mrs Nighy’s house on Wednesday, and I’ll keep you out of all this.’

I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t see that I knew much of any importance, not enough to imperil my career. So I told him. How Mrs Nighy didn’t have a telephone. How she got a telegram from Hughes’ mother telling her that he was ill and wouldn’t be back until he was well.

‘Anything else?’

‘That’s all.’

‘Baloney. I don’t believe it. Hughes’ room is right in the front of the house. Didn’t you go in it? You’re a spy, for God’s sake.’

‘Keep your voice down, and I’m not. OK, I searched Hughes’ room.’

‘Tell me about it.’

So I told him that Hughes’ personal effects were still in his bedroom and that Mrs Nighy told me he never took luggage to his mother’s because he kept a set of clothes and toiletries at her place.

‘Anything else at all that was suspicious?’

‘Not that I can think of.’ There was no way I was going to tell Royal about ‘G’. I was willing to share all the throwaway information I could to save my job, but not something that might actually be valuable to OSS. I had given Hughes’ note directly into the hands of Major Wicker of the OSS Security Office, and I wasn’t going to say anything to Royal about it, even if he held my feet over a fire.

The café began to fill with government workers in a hurry. Hughes handed three dollars to our waitress and told her to keep the change. He lifted his leg carefully off the chair he’d commandeered, which he shoved back to its spot at a nearby table.

‘I have to go,’ I said. Thank God this was over. I’d told the man all I knew and would soon be shot of him.

‘One more thing,’ he said.

‘I’ve told you everything I know. I’m done.’

‘I need you to locate Paul Hughes’ personnel file for me.’