The Murder of a Fifth Columnist

by Leslie Ford

“This is Grace Latham, Mrs. Wharton,” I said.

  She didn’t answer—just waited for me to go on.

  “Is Colonel Primrose there, by any chance?”

  “What makes you think he’d be here, Mrs. Latham?”

  She almost snapped it at me.

  “I just thought he might be,” I said.

  “Well, as a matter of fact, he was.”

  I knew she’d had her hand over the mouthpiece and had been whispering to someone standing there beside her. I could hear the tail-end of a man’s voice as she turned back to speak to me.

  “—He left about fifteen minutes ago. She was perfectly all right when Sam and I left her—we couldn’t tell him a thing. It’s simply incredible. There must be some mistake. Why should he have come to us of all people?”

  “Oh, I’m sure he didn’t—”

  “Well, I should hope not, Mrs. Latham,” Effie said acidly, and I could have bitten my tongue off. “You’ll be interested to know,” she went on, “that Sam has a wonderful offer to go to South America on a lecture tour. Your newspaper friends will be very much interested in it. Mr. Hofmann is making the arrangements. The friend who’s backing his work in this country is anxious for my husband to make the trip. They’re just as interested in staying out of war down there as we are. Mr. Hofmann was so pleased. We’re going down together. It’s such a splendid opportunity.”

  “Is Sam pleased?” I asked.

  She gave a funny sort of laugh, as if Sam had jolly well better be pleased or else.

  “As a matter of fact, Mrs. Latham,” she said, very complacently, “I’ve just this moment told him. Of course, he’s simply delighted. Nobody realizes better than Sam does the fallacy of our present economic policy in South America. Anything that can be done to make people understand has his most vigorous support.”

  I knew all about that already. What she meant, of course, was that anything to keep her from going back to her home town had her most vigorous support. That was so obvious that she didn’t really need to add the next.

  “—Do tell Mr. Villiers when you see him that I’m sorry to disappoint him. I shall continue my Spanish and leave bingo parties for people like him.”

  “I’ll be glad to,” I said.

  I put down the phone and sat there, thinking how appalled poor Sam would be when he found Kurt Hofmann wasn’t going to South America. Not right away, at any rate—not if I could get hold of Colonel Primrose. I tried to think where else I could find him, and finally I picked up the phone book, turned to the “H’s” and called Pete’s number. “Hello.”

  His voice was abrupt and belligerent, as if I’d interrupted him in the middle of something important.

  “This is Grace, Pete,” I said.

  “I’m busy, Grace,” he said shortly. “A great light is just beginning to dawn. What is it you want?”

  “I want Colonel Primrose,” I said. “Have you seen him? I’ve got to find him.”

  There was a silence at the other end.

  “What for, and I’ll tell you,” he answered coolly.

  “It hasn’t anything to do with you,” I said. “And I can’t tell you anyway. Where is he, Pete?”

  “Wait a minute, sister,” he said evenly. “What goes on here?”

  “Nothing, Pete. It’s just something I’ve found out that he ought to know as soon as possible.”

  There was a silence again. “Look here,” he said. “Is it— has it anything to do with ‘Truth Not Fiction’?”

  “No,” I answered. “It hasn’t.”

  “Sure of that?”

  “Of course. It’s something else entirely. But I can’t tell you—honestly I can’t. Anyway, I should think you’d be delighted if it was.”

  “You’d be surprised,” he said bitterly. “In fact, it’s me that writes it, Grace.”

  “What are you talking about!” I demanded sharply. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “No,” he said, very sardonically. “I’ve just found it. One thing more.—Is it about Sylvia you want to see the Colonel?”

  The silence was at my end of the phone this time. I couldn’t believe my ears. If it hadn’t been for the catch in his voice before he said her name I’d have been sure I’d imagined it.

  “Of course not,” I said unsteadily. “What makes you say that?”

  “Forget it, then. Primrose was here. He left about four minutes ago. He’s gone over to your house to see Bliss Thatcher. He was stopping somewhere on his way, but he ought to be there pretty soon.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “What’s the matter, Grace?” he demanded. “You sound as if you had a first-rate case of the jitters.”

  “I have, I guess. I’m scared out of my wits, to tell you the truth.”

  “Look—do you want me to come over and take you to find him?”

  “I’d love it,” I said. “I’ll be downstairs. Hurry, won’t you?”

  “Right,” he said.

  The phone rang just as I’d put it down. I picked it up quickly. Colonel Primrose might have stopped by his home on his way to my house to see Mr. Thatcher.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “—Mrs. Latham?”

  My heart froze in the pit of my stomach. It was Kurt Hofmann.

  18

  “Are you alone?” he said. His voice over the line was formal and pleasant. “I wonder if I might come up and see you a few moments? I really think you deserve some kind of an explanation, you know.”

  The red warning light inside me flashed on and off and on and off. I tried desperately to keep my voice calm and matter-of-fact. Lady Alicia’s staring eyes were there in front of me, burning into mine.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “There are a lot of people here, and we’re just going out. Couldn’t you come tomorrow?”

  “Thank you so much. I’ll be happy to. Or perhaps later, when you come in, you might give me a ring?”

  “Of course,” I said, pleasantly. “If I’m not too late I’ll be glad to.”

  “Splendid,” Kurt Hofmann said. “And may I count on your heart being as lovely as your face, madame? Will you not mention our little drama until I have had a chance to tell you my side of a rather romantic story?”

  My heart was beating like a trip hammer.

  “And would you like me to keep our proposed rendezvous a secret too, Mr. Hofmann?” I managed to ask demurely.

  “You are as discreet as you are charming, Mrs. Latham. It is a rare gift in a woman.”

  As I put the phone down my hand shook as if I were in the last stages of jungle fever. I grabbed my hat and coat, and if the fire had already spread to the living-room door I couldn’t have got out of that place quicker than I did. I thought the elevator would never come. When it did the boy looked at me seriously.

  “Do you feel all right, Mrs. Latham?”

  “Oh, fine, thanks,” I said. I looked at myself in the mirror. I was as white as a ghost and I looked quite as scared as I was.

  I got out on the main floor and hurried along the arcade to the big lobby. Larry Villiers was there, talking to a dowager in wild mink and diamonds. He excused himself rudely when he saw me.

  “Hello,” he said.

  He stared at me oddly. “What’s the matter? Alicia’s ghost stalking? That’s the most ghastly thing I’ve ever heard of in my life. She was really a pet, you know. Zany as they come, but a real aristocrat.”

  I nodded mechanically. I didn’t want to talk about Lady Alicia, not to Larry, and Pete hadn’t had time to get there yet.

  “I’ve got a message for you,” I said, remembering it. “From Effie Wharton. She’s got Sam a job. Mr. Hofmann’s backers are financing a lecture tour South of the Border.”

  His brows raised. “You don’t tell me,” he said. Then he said, “Well, I’ll be damned. Is Sam going?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “I’ll bet a hundred dollars he doesn’t.”

  He hesitated an instant, looking at me queerly.

&nb
sp; “Sam’s going back home. He didn’t want to come here in the first place. He only did it to please Effie and because the governor appointed him. He wouldn’t ever have come back if she hadn’t told him he was afraid he wouldn’t be elected and the people needed him. Sam likes it back home. He’s one of the people that never had their head turned by being a public figure.”

  “I think he’s swell,” I said. “And he deserves some peace and quiet.”

  Just then a bellboy came up. “Mr. Hamilton is outside, Mrs. Latham.”

  Larry’s eyebrows raised again.

  “Beating Sylvia’s time, Mrs. Latham?” he inquired coolly. “And what’s happened there, by the way?”

  “Weren’t you pleased?” I asked. “I was.”

  “No, I wasn’t,” he said. “If he was too busy, he could take time anyway to call her up and tell her he wasn’t coming. It doesn’t take as long as it does to send a telegram.”

  “What do you mean?” I demanded, staring blankly at him.

  “He’s out there—ask him.”

  I went on out.

  “I got here as quick as I could,” Pete said.

  In the bright light over the portico he looked haggard, as if he’d been through a private hell all his own and wasn’t by any means clear of it yet. I got in his car.

  “What’s the matter, Pete?” I asked when he turned off Calvert Street into the park.

  “Nothing. Why?”

  “Has anything happened to you and Sylvia?”

  His eyes were fixed straight ahead of him. “Did she say so?”

  “I haven’t seen her. Larry seemed to think you’ve been pretty rough on her.”

  He didn’t say anything until he slowed down to go under the arch of the new bridge they’re building on Massachusetts Avenue.

  “Let’s skip it, shall we?” he remarked.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought you were in love with her. And she’s been in love with you so long that… oh, well, it’s none of my business.”

  “What do you mean, she’s been in love with me for so long?” he said shortly. “I’m the one that’s been in love with her, only I wasn’t smart enough to know it. I thought the reason I was always getting sore at her was because I had— ideals, I suppose… about the job, and all that. It was just because I was in love with her, and thought she was hunting a rich husband.”

  “Didn’t you know this morning that that wasn’t fair?”

  “I thought I did,” he said bitterly.

  “Pete!” I said. “What on earth’s happened to you?”

  He stopped the car by the side of the road.

  “I’ve got to tell somebody this, or I’ll get drunk and God knows what I’d do. Do you tell that retired beau of yours everything you hear?”

  “If you mean Colonel Primrose, the answer is no,” I said.

  “Well, I’ll tell you something. Keep it to yourself, and don’t be surprised at anything you hear. There’s nobody else I can tell.”

  “Go on, then.”

  He sat there hunched down over the wheel, grim and bitter, and with something else in his face that I didn’t know how to describe. I felt horribly sorry for him.

  “I told you I wrote ‘Truth Not Fiction,’ ” he said evenly. “Well, that’s right. I do.”

  “I suppose you’ll explain,” I said.

  “That’s what I’m doing.—I take it you’ve heard I’ve been collecting stuff for a contemporary history of Washington?”

  “Colonel Primrose told me so,” I said. “I asked Sylvia about it, and she almost snapped my head off.”

  He made some kind of sound at that. If it didn’t sound melodramatic and stupid I’d say it was more of a sob than a laugh.

  “Well, I thought it was important. I mean, really a contribution. You hear all sorts of inside stuff that makes all the outside of this crazy place have some kind of sense when you know about it. It makes you believe in democracy. I don’t mean lip service. It makes you see the country’s sound, on the whole, and—well, it’s something I believe in like hell. And I believed in this book, and…”

  “Go on,” I said. “I know what you mean.”

  “Well, I told you I had a system of shorthand,” he said. “I thought I could take all the dope down verbatim, and I’d have it someday. I wouldn’t have to depend on memory. And a lot of it was the sort of thing you couldn’t risk letting get in anybody else’s hands.”

  He stopped again. I waited.

  “I told Sylvia about it. She was as excited as I was. We talked about doing it together, then. She’d do the social comedy, and it would be a complete picture of Washington. There was none of her stuff she couldn’t keep in her own notes, but we were doing it all together and I taught her my system of shorthand.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “And I keep it all under lock and key except the current record—about a week at a time.”

  He stopped again, and went on quietly.

  “Well, that’s it. That’s what comes out in ‘Truth Not Fiction.’ Word for word. I told you I didn’t read it at first, and that’s right. I’ve been checking the last two months of it with my own notes—got ’em out of the bank this noon. Well, they’re right. I’m the guy, and that’s all. They can’t prove it, but they don’t have to. And I’m—well, I’m washed up, Grace. And I don’t care about that. It’s—oh, hell, I didn’t think she’d let me down. I really—had my heart in this thing.” We sat there on the roadside, the cars coming slowly by, their chains clank-clanking rhythmically on the snow-covered drive.

  “It just can’t be, Pete,” I said at last. “It just can’t.”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying all day. I’m going crazy saying it.”

  He put his hand out and squeezed mine hard for an instant.

  “There’s no two ways out of it, Grace. And it’s okay. Maybe she needed the money for something. Maybe she just thought I was too smart. It doesn’t matter. I’ll just pack up and take my carcass somewhere else. Now let’s go find your Colonel.”

  “No,” I said. “This isn’t fair, Pete. You can’t do it this way. You’ve got to tell her—see what she says.”

  “No, sister,” he said. “It’ll just stop, you see. She’ll be O.K., and nobody’ll ever know the difference. It’s finished—”

  “It’s not,” I retorted. “What about Corliss Marshall? Colonel Primrose is sure that’s why he was killed. Captain Lamb is sure Sylvia did it.”

  “I thought it was me,” he said shortly.

  “It was Sylvia’s dress and shoe that—”

  I stopped. If he thought she wrote it, I was telling him she was a murderess too.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Finish it,” he said curtly.

  “Blood, that’s all,” I said.

  He looked at me, his face turning paler in the glare of the snow under the park light. Then he let out the clutch without a word. The chains caught and the car moved slowly under the Q Street bridge and then the P Street bridge, and up the hill to Georgetown.

  “I don’t believe it,” he said as we stopped at the top to let the cars come by.

  I suppose that being a woman makes me volatile and unstable. At any rate, by the time Pete and I got to my house and rang the bell the terror that had brought me there was dim in the background.

  Bliss Thatcher opened the door himself.

  “My dear Mrs. Latham, you’ve come to—”

  He stopped abruptly, seeing Pete behind me on the steps, his smile vanishing as if someone had wiped it off with a cloth.

  “Good evening, Hamilton.—Will you come in?”

  It’s always odd seeing your own house being lived in by somebody else. Even Colonel Primrose standing in front of the fire in the back sitting room was one of those familiar things become suddenly unfamiliar. He glanced from me to Pete and back at me again, his face a little troubled.

  “I’m glad you’ve come, Hamilton,” Bliss Thatcher said.
“It saves me the trouble of coming to you.”

  He turned to my desk that he’d had moved in front of the garden windows, and picked up the folded salmon-yellow sheet lying there. His face was hard and his eyes steely. Pete’s jaw tightened. I knew, of course, inside of me, that he didn’t know exactly what was coming—but he did know the nature of it.

  “I’ve refused to believe you were connected with this thing, Hamilton,” Bliss Thatcher said grimly. “I told you this—last week—in order to see. I told no one else, and no one else could have got it from any other source… because I made it up. And here it is. My name included.”

  He held the folded sheet out. Pete took it and read it. I thought his jaw went a little tighter, as if this came as a shock in spite of his being ready for it. He handed it back silently.

  “What have you got to say, Hamilton?”

  “You’ve proved it, sir. I have nothing to say.”

  Colonel Primrose took a step forward.

  “You can say you didn’t write it, Hamilton.”

  Pete looked at him. “I obviously do write it, Colonel,” he said coolly. “If I said I didn’t, earlier, it’s because I’m apt to forget these things I just tear off in my spare time.”

  He turned back to Thatcher.

  “I’m sorry. It was a low filthy way to repay you for all your kindness. There’s nothing else for me to say.—If you’re all right now, Grace, I’ll leave you.”

  I held out my hand. He gripped it hard for a moment.

  “Good-night.”

  “Good-night, Pete,” I whispered.

  I stood there, and so did Bliss Thatcher and Colonel Primrose, until the door closed quietly and he was gone. And then none of us said anything—for hours, it seemed to me.

  “What does this mean, Colonel?” Bliss Thatcher said at last. “I still don’t believe that man writes it. I’m damned if I do.”

  He tossed the salmon-pink sheet down on the desk while Colonel Primrose was giving the impression of a man nodding his head and shaking it at the same time.

  I picked it up and opened it. I didn’t read all of it. The first sentence was enough—something to the effect that Bliss Thatcher had admitted to this correspondent that he had used his present position to ruin at least two small competitors. I put it down quickly.