Louise's Dilemma (17 page)

The waitress cleared our plates and poured us fresh coffee.

‘But Dennis says he didn’t kill Leroy?’

‘He put on a damn good show of being shocked by the course of events,’ Williams said. ‘Outraged that we suspected him just because he and Leroy had argued.’

‘Were there any fingerprints on the oyster knife?’

‘Nope. Wiped clean. But we’ll get the goods on him. Dennis is not a bright man. He will have made mistakes, and we’ll find them.’

We finished our coffee and turned down refills.

‘So you see,’ Williams said, ‘that French postcard of yours meant nothing at all. I’m surprised your office bothered, actually. But then they didn’t send a real agent.’

I kept my mouth shut. I needed Williams out of my life. I could take no chances that he would find out about Joe.

Williams threw a few coins onto the table for the tip. ‘You’re very competent, Louise. But I expect you’d rather work in the office than get mixed up in something this disturbing again, wouldn’t you?’

I shook hands with Williams, praying this would be the last time I ever saw the man, and turned down the street towards OSS. Before I got there I stepped off into an alley I knew ended in a tiny park to have a good cry.

I wasn’t the only one looking for a private spot.

Seated on a stone bench was a middle-aged man with his head in his hands. He heard my footsteps and raised his head from his hands. His face was streaked with tears.

I didn’t know what to do. Should I pretend I hadn’t seen him and walk away? I had my own problems. But how could I do such an unkind thing as walk away from his distress!

He smiled at me wanly, and I pulled my own ravaged heart together and went over and sat down next to him. The stone seat was ice cold.

The man wore a checked wool cap and a heavy duffel coat. A hand knit scarf kept his neck warm. His hair was an ordinary dirty blond with grey around the temple and ears. In one of his calloused workingman’s hands he held a black-rimmed telegram.

Oh my God.

‘I’m so terribly sorry,’ I said. ‘Can I help in any way?’

He shook his head. ‘Too late for any of that, Ma’am. I’m sorry you had to come upon me like this. I thought I was all right, but then, well, I felt myself giving way and ducked down the alley to compose myself.’

‘Your son?’ I whispered, feeling my heart clutch.

His eyes welled up again. ‘You’d think so, the way I’m carrying on. No, my dog Bonnie.’

For a minute I thought I’d misunderstood him.

‘She was such a good dog. My grandchildren adored her.’

‘I don’t think I understand.’ It sure looked like the black-rimmed paper the man held in his hand was an official Army telegram. Perhaps he wasn’t quite right in the head.

‘When the war started – my name’s Alec Newton, by the way – the Army needed more military dogs than they could possibly raise and train from puppies. So they asked citizens to give up their pets, as long as they were healthy and under four years old. They called it “Dogs for Defense”. If the dog did well in boot camp, it was in the Army. The washouts went home.’

‘So Bonnie …?’

‘Did real good. Graduated at the top of her class! ’Course, I’d trained her already. She rode with me on my milk truck every day. I couldn’t do anything else for the war effort, I’m too old to enlist, got no skills especially. So I gave Bonnie to the Army. Other people willingly sacrificed their sons. The least I could do was donate my dog.’

‘She’s dead?’

‘Yeah, in Greenland. So far away! She patrolled the perimeter of one of our bases there. Here …’ Newton pulled a crumpled photograph out of his pocket. It showed a young soldier, bundled up like an Eskimo, in a frozen landscape, kneeling next to a small mostly black German shepherd with one floppy ear.

‘I got her for free because of that ear,’ Newton said.

Bonnie was clothed just as warmly as her soldier. Fur and canvas boots laced up to her knees. A heavy padded canvas coat encased her small body.

‘Bonnie’s soldier sent me this picture when they first got to Greenland. I hope he’s going to write and tell me what happened to her. The telegram just says “in the line of duty”.’

The man burst into tears. I put my arm around his shoulder, and before I knew it I was crying uncontrollably with him. The two of us sat together on that cold hard concrete bench and just plain sobbed our eyes out. Not just about Bonnie, of course. About everything else that was so tragic about this awful war.

Newton dried his eyes with his scarf. ‘Now I got to tell my wife and daughters and the grandkids.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, gulping back my own tears. ‘You should be so proud of Bonnie.’

‘I am,’ he said, tucking the telegram and photo away into his pocket. ‘I hear the dogs that die in action get a special medal. I hope so.’

I did, too.

I was wrung out when I got home. What had gone on that day had knocked me to my knees more than once. I was on my feet now, but teetering. What I wanted to do was slip upstairs and climb into bed under my covers with my bottle of gin. But I couldn’t do that, after what I had done to Joe – I had to face him.

I stripped off my coat, scarf, gloves and hat and threw them over the chair in the hall. Behind me I could hear Phoebe, Ada, and Henry in the lounge. But not Joe’s accent. Maybe he wasn’t home yet, or was brooding in his room.

Phoebe came out into the hall. ‘Louise, I’m so glad you’re home! What an awful week it has been. Come sit down by the fire with us. I made cheese straws today, and Henry brought home a bottle of Buffalo Trace. We are determined to be gay!’

I let her lead me into the lounge. A fire was crackling away, and Henry’s bottle of bourbon sat open on the cocktail table with Phoebe’s best highball glasses. I was right, Joe wasn’t in the room.

‘You look white as a ghost,’ Ada said. ‘Here, sit by the fire.’ She relinquished the fireside chair, and I sat down. Henry handed me a glass of whisky, neat. After I had a big swallow I did feel better.

I couldn’t help myself. ‘Where’s Joe?’ I asked.

‘Oh, he’s gone.’

I
was thunderstruck. I saw in my head clear as day Joe on a train or a ship heading somewhere far away. I’d never see him again.

‘For the weekend,’ Phoebe said. ‘A friend of his lent him his houseboat on the Potomac. He said he just wanted a change of scene.’

Ada took my hand in hers. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked. ‘You just went white as a sheet.’

‘No, I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Just tired.’ I took another gulp of whiskey.

‘I think the President made a mistake,’ Henry said. Henry thought everything Roosevelt did was a mistake. ‘Ordering a forty-eight-hour workweek. Exhausted workers make mistakes and become ill.’

I had an opening. ‘Phoebe,’ I said. ‘I was wondering. Could I borrow your car for the weekend? I know it’s a lot to ask. I want to go away myself, to a guesthouse on the western shore of Maryland a friend told me about. I’m a good driver.’

I wasn’t sure what Phoebe would say. It was one thing for a woman of her generation to let Henry and Joe borrow her car, but might be another to allow me.

‘I don’t see why not,’ Phoebe said. ‘Just promise to be home by dark on Sunday? Or I’ll worry.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I promise.’

I called Lenore Sullivan before dinner.

‘Yes, dear, of course,’ she said. ‘I’ll be glad to have your company.’

That night, spooning with my hot water bottle in my bed, I planned my strategy. I’d stop at the courthouse in Prince Frederick on my way to St Leonard and verify that Leroy and Anne’s marriage license listed her birth date.

Then I’d check in at Lenore’s. I planned to stay away from the town itself. I expected it was in an uproar over Leroy’s murder and Dennis’s arrest and I didn’t want to be the center of that kind of public attention. I would go out of town to eat. If I ran into anyone from St Leonard I’d do my best to convince them I was just on a weekend trip because I’d found their town so charming.

When I returned to Washington I’d have the information I needed to complete the Martins’ file at OSS and prevent Collins, or anyone else, from criticizing my work.

Then perhaps I could relax in Mrs Sullivan’s deep, hot bathtub with my book and try not to think about Joe.

It felt good to be behind the wheel of a car again.

My Daddy taught me to drive his truck when I was fourteen, and of course I drove it back and forth to work when I got my first job at the Wilmington Ship Factory. Here in Washington trying to get anywhere, with the traffic and scarce buses, was a daily frustration. Just putting Phoebe’s car in gear and driving out of her garage and turning onto Pennsylvania Avenue was exhilarating. Someday, I swore, I would buy a car of my own.

The streets were still icy in shady spots, and traffic was heavy, since so many people worked on Saturday now, but I had no trouble getting out of town. I had to give Henry some credit. He took very good care of the car for Phoebe, even to the chains he’d carefully fitted to the back tires.

The Calvert County courthouse was busy, as Linda Sundt had said it would be. I found the Records Section in the basement of the courthouse. I felt at home there immediately. It was lined with file cabinets.

I found Linda Sundt behind the service counter, knitting and listening to the radio. She got to her feet immediately, laying the prettiest knitted blanket I think I’d ever seen on the counter. The blanket was a deep periwinkle color with honeycomb cables.

‘That is stunning,’ I said. I’d tried knitting. I was dreadful at it. I doubted I could even edge this one properly.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘My church group makes them for the children’s hospitals in England.’

I fingered the thick wool. England was just as cold this winter as we were, but with fewer resources to combat it.

‘It was so sad,’ Linda said, ‘but the last box of blankets we sent was on a ship that was sunk by a Nazi U-boat. It seems like a small thing amongst all the other supplies, and lives, that were lost, but still. It broke our hearts! We’re making sweaters now, too, for sale, so we can send money to Great Ormond Street Hospital.’

Sundt lifted a stack of sweaters onto the counter.

Immediately, I pulled one out of the pile. It was a deep blueberry, the same color as my only formal gown. I had to have it. ‘I’ll take this,’ I said.

‘Please don’t feel like you have to buy one,’ she said.

‘I don’t,’ I said. ‘I want it. I’m Louise Pearlie, by the way. I called you yesterday?’

‘I figured as much,’ she said. ‘I’ve got that marriage license you wanted to see. Leroy Martin and Anne Venter?’

‘Yes, please,’ I said, praying it had the information I needed. While she riffled through her desk I wrote a check for the sweater.

‘I’ll wrap up the sweater while you look at this,’ she said, handing me a folder.

The license was suitably embossed with the state and county seals, filled out with a florid script, and notarized. Anne was listed as Anne Venter, birthplace Orange River Colony, South Africa. But where her birthdate should have been filled in a scrawl read:
birth certificate lost during Boer War, see note
. I turned the license application over and deciphered the handwriting on the back.
Miss Venter produced her baptismal record, dated January 3, 1890, as proof of her birth and nationality
.

That was impossible! It must be a mistake. That was almost six weeks before her supposed birthday in February!

‘This can’t be right,’ I said. ‘Anne was born on February thirteenth, 1890. This says she was baptized on January third, 1890.’

Linda took the document from me, carefully reading every word and the handwritten notations on the back of the certificate.

‘I’m sure it’s correct,’ she said. ‘The Clerk of the Court at the time was old Gus Pender. The man never made a mistake in his life.’

‘Can I copy it?’ I said.

‘You make all the notes you want,’ she said, handing me paper and pen and motioning me toward a table in the middle of the room.

I copied down every word, so that any visitor to the French postcard file would see that I had been diligent.

But I’d replaced a big problem with one even larger.

Anne had told me that her birthday was February thirteenth, 1890. Now I knew that couldn’t be correct. Her baptismal certificate, which the Clerk of the Court of Calvert County had inspected before issuing Leroy and Anne a marriage license, proved that she had been baptized on January third of the same year.

And February thirteenth was two weeks ago. All the questions that worried us at OSS about the Martin postcard surfaced again, unanswered. Why spend so much to send such an innocuous letter to a man who barely remembered you? Why mention ‘Mother’ to a couple who didn’t know Richard Martin’s mother? Why refer to Anne’s birthday at all?

I needed to talk to Anne again. Perhaps I misunderstood the date she gave me. Maybe she was born in 1889 and wasn’t baptized until almost a year later. Somehow I thought that without Leroy present, she would answer all the questions I had and put the matter to rest. I could take my notes back to OSS, stick them in the file, file the bloody thing, and put all this behind me.

I luxuriated in the heat radiating from the potbelly wood stove in Lenore Sullivan’s sitting room. Stretched on the lounge, covered with a thick quilt, I managed to read Mary Roberts Rinehart’s
Haunted Lady
without thinking too much about either Joe or the Martins. Lily snoozed at my feet.

I was, however, getting distracted by the wonderful aroma coming from Lenore’s kitchen. Beef stew, I thought.

Returning to reality made me think of Leroy Martin, Dennis Keeler and Frank Cooke. One man murdered and two in jail because of beef profiteering. And poor Anne widowed!

‘I thought you might like to join me in a cup of tea, Louise,’ Lenore said. ‘I hope you can drink Earl Grey.’ She set down a tray with two mugs of steeping tea, a cream pitcher shaped like a cow, a plate of shortbread cookies, and a sugar bowl.

I didn’t hesitate. I took a cookie, and I added plenty of cream and sugar to my mug. I sipped the tea contentedly, alternating a slurp of tea with a bite of cookie.