I took one step forward, and then stepped back. No. This was a matter for the police. It was time, and past time, to go and get them. And then my job was to tell Jane.
It seemed to me that I had been gone for hours, but in fact only a few minutes had passed since I left the main room of the museum. No one had missed me. They had taken Walter away, to the hospital, I hoped. The room was a scene of intense, but controlled, activity. Men and women with cameras and measuring tapes and small plastic bags made careful rounds. Lights had been set up, illuminating the scene with a dazzling glare. Alan stood off to one side, conferring with Derek. I wanted to rush to him for comfort, but I knew I mustn’t trample over the crime scene any more than I already had. I stood in the doorway and waved, and when I caught his eye, I beckoned to him.
He came to me at once. “What’s wrong?”
He has always been able to read my face. “I’ve found Bill,” I said, and the tone of my voice told him the rest.
“Derek,” said Alan. His voice was quiet but commanding. I think that for a moment he truly forgot that he wasn’t Derek’s boss anymore. Derek forgot, too. At least he moved to Alan with alacrity and the air, if not the actual gesture, of a salute.
“We have a serious complication, Derek. Tell him, Dorothy.”
I told him. I think I was crying by that time, but it didn’t matter. Alan had put a comforting arm around my shoulders, and I was able to be coherent.
“You’re certain he’s dead?” asked Derek.
I nodded, shivering. I didn’t want to talk about why I was sure. “I left the door open. You won’t have any trouble finding him. And I didn’t go in any farther than I had to. I really did have to, Alan. He might have been alive. I know I might have disturbed something, but—”
“Hush, love. It’s all right. We’ll take over now.”
“Don’t leave me!” It was almost a wail. The instant it was out of my mouth I would have given anything to take it back. Was this any way for a policeman’s wife to act? Where was my much vaunted independence?
Alan tightened his hold. “I won’t. Don’t worry. It’s all right,” he repeated.
I swallowed. “I don’t mean to keep you from what you have to do, but I want to know—well, I guess I want to know how Walter is.” That was a sop to my pride, of course, but I really was worried about him. At least I had been before my discovery of Bill overshadowed other concerns.
“There’s nothing I need do here. Derek has everything under control. I’m a supernumerary anyway. Nothing quite as bad as an old general who won’t quit, eh, Derek?”
“Not at all, sir. You know we’re always happy for your help, but perhaps your place now is with your wife.” He was being very formal, and very careful of Alan’s feelings.
“Oh, get on with it, man!” He gave Derek an apologetic half smile, and led me to a bench on the landing. “Now, as to young Walter. He’s not good, I’m afraid. They won’t know exactly the extent of his injuries until they take a good look, at the hospital.”
I shuddered. “The back of his head looked awful.”
“Yes, he was hit pretty hard. His skull was cracked, I think. But actually that may be all to the good. There’ll be swelling, and that crack may allow the skull enough movement that the pressure on the brain won’t cause too much damage. If not, they may have to open up the crack, or open the cranium elsewhere to relieve the pressure. That’s the real danger.”
“Will he have permanent brain damage?”
“I don’t know, love. Nobody knows yet. If they can minimize the swelling, there’s apparently a pretty good chance for recovery, but the ambulance crew thought he’d been lying unconscious for quite a long time. That could be bad.”
I nodded. It helped to think about Walter and not about poor Bill. “He said he was coming to the museum today to prepare for a meeting with some of the donors. I suppose he could have stayed late last night, working.”
Alan frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“Well, the meeting, the appointment, had been made with Bill, of course. Walter said it was set for a few days from now. He didn’t say exactly when. And Walter couldn’t figure out who all was coming, but he thought he ought to turn up, in case some of the people—whoever was coming—hadn’t heard Bill was missing and kept the appointment. And Walter’s a conscientious boy, if not terribly bright. He probably wanted to try to find out who was coming, learn a little about them, or what they had given, or something. Bill’s filing system isn‘t—wasn’t—oh, dear! I don’t know how to talk about him.”
“I know, love, I know. It’s a bad thing. Did you get any impression about how Bill died?”
“Alan, there wasn’t a mark on him. Not that I could see, anyway. I’d swear he died a natural death. But what on earth was he doing burrowing around down there in the tunnel?”
“We may never know, Dorothy. The only thing I know for certain right now is that something very odd is going on around this museum, and I intend to find out what. I didn’t know Bill well, but Jane is a friend, and poor Walter is just a kid. They don’t deserve this.”
I got up, stricken. “Jane. Alan, we have to go to Jane.”
EIGHT
JANE TOOK THE NEWS BETTER THAN I HAD FEARED SHE WOULD. She was barely awake, for one thing. It was still early, and the pill I’d talked her into taking the evening before had worked well. She looked a little groggy when she answered my knock on her back door, although she had a cup of coffee in her hand.
Alan was with me. I think that was Jane’s first clue. She looked at us with no expression, and then stood aside and gestured us in.
Alan was marvelous. He waited until she had poured us coffee, unasked, and sat down, and then said, “Jane, it’s about Bill.”
She put down her cup and looked at him. “Go ahead,” she said gruffly.
“I think you have an idea of what I must tell you.”
She sat silent for a moment, and then sipped some coffee, her hand shaking. She cleared her throat. “Dead, isn’t he? Has been all along.”
“I’m afraid so. We don’t think he suffered at all.”
“Exposure?” She was keeping her voice steady.
“No. He wasn’t outside. He’d gone to the tunnel under the museum, and must have had a heart attack.”
“You found him?”
“I did,” I said, my voice cracking a bit. “He looked quite peaceful, Jane.” He’d looked awful, dead and cold and horrid. I wasn’t about to tell Jane that.
“Why’d you go down there?”
“What Walter said about Roman Britain reminded me of the tunnels, and I just thought Bill might have gone there for some reason. I really don’t know why the idea entered my head. It was just that he wasn’t anywhere else, and …” I trailed off. I was babbling again.
“Have to ask Walter.”
I looked at Alan, hesitating. Let him make this call. He’d known Jane longer than I had. “Yes,” he said finally, “we will ask him, but not just now. He’s been hurt, and is in hospital.”
“Hurt how?” Jane’s voice was sharp.
“A blow to the back of the head. We don’t know much more than that. Now,” said Alan, briskly changing the subject, “would you like to come and stay with us for a while? We’ve plenty of room.”
“No.” Jane’s eyes were dry, her face stiff. “Dogs need a run. I’ll be all right.”
I was about to argue, but Alan squeezed my hand and shook his head at me. “That’s a good idea. A brisk walk, and then come over for breakfast. Come, Dorothy.”
He hustled me out the back door. I protested the minute we were out of earshot. “Alan, should we leave her alone?”
“She’s grown up, love. She knows what’s best for her. Remember how angry she was when she was talking about Bill’s caregivers and their smothering kindness. Treat her like a sensible adult”
“You’re right, but—oh, darn it, it’s hard!”
“It is. You note I did shelter her from the details of t
he attack on Walter’s life.”
“You think that’s what it was? Not just some sort of robbery attempt gone wrong?”
“We don’t know, of course. The place was pretty well ransacked.”
I made a shocked noise.
“Yes, I thought you didn’t notice. It was dark when we went in, of course, and then we had eyes for nothing but Walter. In any case, they were subtle about it. Nothing tossed about or broken, but lots of things in slight disarray. It didn’t look like robbery, more like someone hunting for something.”
“And they hit Walter so they could do it”
“They probably thought they’d killed him. Certainly they stayed for some time after he was knocked out, and didn’t try to help him. Dorothy, if you hadn’t had your bright idea, if he hadn’t been found when he was, his brain would have gone on swelling, and he would have died.”
“So maybe I helped him, even if it was too late for poor Bill?”
“Exactly. Now”—as he opened our back door—“suppose you lie down for a bit while I keep an eye out for Jane’s return.”
I did as Alan suggested. I felt as though I’d been hit over the head like Walter.
Well, no, I didn’t, of course. Poor Walter’s life was in danger, or might be, and I lay there in a comfortable bed feeling sorry for myself because I felt tired and discouraged.
And guilty. If only I’d had my bright idea about the tunnel sooner! Bill might still be alive. Walter might not have been hurt.
I turned over and pummeled my pillow, which refused to cooperate. Lying on my front made my knees hurt. And my back. I turned to my side and pounded the pillow again.
If Walter died, it would be my fault. Where did I get off thinking I was some kind of detective? Anybody with an ounce of sense ought to have thought of those tunnels ages ago.
Nobody else did, though, did they?
Well, no, but …
And you don’t know when Bill died. It might have been instantaneous.
True, but …
And punishing yourself won’t accomplish a thing. Your martyr’s hat is getting a trifle threadbare. Throw it out.
I often have conversations with myself, but this time the voice of reason spoke quite distinctly in Alan’s accents. I sighed, gave him a mental salute, and went to sleep.
I woke after an hour or so. I’d had plenty of sleep the night before, after all, and closing my eyes at this hour of the day never did much for me. But I woke somewhat refreshed, and certainly in a better mood.
I went down to the kitchen and started a pot of coffee, and then went in search of Alan. He was in his study, but not, this time, at his computer. In fact, he was just finishing a phone call.
I barely gave him a chance to cradle the receiver. “Have you seen Jane? Is she all right?”
“As well as can be expected. She came back with the dogs about fifteen minutes ago. She wouldn’t have breakfast, just popped in to tell me she was driving to the hospital to see young Walter.”
“Oh, dear! I hope he’s not—I hope he’s better.”
“I rang up. He’s still unconscious, but they’re working on bringing down the swelling. They seem cautiously optimistic.”
“How did you find out all that? I’ve never known a hospital to give anybody any information about a patient except the one-word description of his condition. You know, ‘critical, serious, guarded’—those words that don’t really mean much.”
“A policeman has certain privileges. Even a retired policeman. I’ve learned quite a lot in an hour on the phone.”
“Well, come and have a cup of coffee with me and tell me everything you know.”
“For a start,” he said when we were settled at the kitchen table, “you’ll want to know about that piece of paper that was in Bill’s hand when you found him.”
“Oh!” I sat up straighter. “I’d forgotten all about it, to tell you the truth. I’m slipping.”
“Not surprising, under the circumstances. But I think you’ll be quite interested in what Derek told me.”
“For heaven’s sake, Alan!”
“Yes, well, all right. I could draw this out, of course, but I won’t. Bill was holding a letter, an old letter, by the look of it. There is no date, but the paper is creased and dirty, and somewhat yellowed and chipped and so on. There’s no name of sender or addressee, no return address, and no signature. In fact the last sentence on the page is incomplete, so it looks as though what we have is the first page of two or more. But the text of the letter is of interest, because it contains—are you ready for this?—the place names that Bill marked on that map of Indiana.”
“But—I don’t understand. Was the letter written to Bill? Suggesting some places he ought to go, maybe?”
“It was headed ‘Dear Waffles.’ I asked Jane, when she was here a few minutes ago, whether Bill was ever nicknamed Waffles. She thought not.”
“It’s an awfully old-fashioned kind of nickname, anyway,” I said thoughtfully. “The sort of thing one might find in a Dorothy Sayers novel, or even P. G. Wodehouse. Ever so frightfully public-school, what?”
Alan grimaced at my imitation of an upper-class British accent.
“And Bill wasn’t that sort at all,” I pursued, “and he was just a child in the thirties. On the other hand, what would Bill have been doing with someone else’s letter, down there in the catacombs?”
“Search me. That, of course, is what Derek is trying to find out. One of the things. Do you want to hear the rest of my news?”
“I haven’t had time to deal with this bit yet, but go ahead.”
“Well, you remember I said the museum looked as though the intruders were looking for something?”
“Intruders? There was more than one?”
“Plural for convenience. We don’t know yet how many there might have been. At any rate, Derek and his people have been searching through the mess, trying to work out what ought to be there and isn’t. And so far, two things seem to be missing. One is Bill’s diary. Sorry, ‘engagement calendar’ to you Yanks. They can’t find it anywhere.”
“But that could be really important! If we knew who Bill had seen on that last morning—”
“Exactly. That’s why Derek put particular emphasis on finding it. Now it’s still possible they may find it. Walter might have taken it home with him, or it could be in that rabbit warren of an office upstairs. They’ll keep looking.”
“It’s certainly suggestive, though. That it’s missing, I mean.”
“It is. And the other thing that’s missing—care to hazard a guess?”
I thought hard, and then looked at Alan with dawning comprehension. “The atlas?”
“Got it in one. The atlas. That carefully marked atlas with all the place names—the same place names that are in the letter. Now what do you make of that?”
NINE
WELL, I COULDN’T MAKE ANYTHING OF IT AT ALL. So ALAN AND I sat over our coffee, brewing another pot, until we had ingested enough caffeine to keep a grizzly bear awake all winter. We got ourselves thoroughly wired, but we didn’t come up with anything very useful.
We began hopefully enough. “All right,” I said briskly, stirring sugar into my coffee, “let’s start with the missing stuff. Why would someone steal an appointment book and an atlas? Maybe—maybe Bill kept his address book in the back of his calendar, as I do. Maybe—um—someone wanted to look up addresses in the atlas.”
“In a road atlas of the American states.” Alan’s tone was carefully neutral.
“Oh. And most of Bill’s addresses would be around here, I suppose. Or in the UK, anyway.”
“In any case, if there were addresses in the diary, they were copies. Bill kept an address book in his desk. Quite a nice one, leather bound.”
“Okay, scratch that idea. Wait! Maybe Walter took them home himself. I don’t remember when he said he saw it—before or after Bill disappeared. He might have wanted to try again to figure out who was supposed to be coming to that meeting.
And he said he wanted to study the atlas, to get an idea of why it was marked.”
“Yes, but you gave him the atlas yesterday. And the paramedics don’t think he was attacked this morning—more like yesterday afternoon or evening. That means he never left the museum last night. When would he have taken the things home?”
I shook my head. “Poor Walter. Lying there for all those hours in that cold place—well, at least he wasn’t in pain, I suppose. Not if he was unconscious the whole time. Well, so probably he didn’t take the things. Anyway, I just remembered—the museum was ransacked, and the calendar and the atlas are the only things missing. So they must have been stolen. Which gets us right back where we started. More coffee?”
“Please.” He held up his cup. “You’re going too fast, my dear. We don’t know for certain what’s been stolen. We won’t until Derek and his crew have made an exhaustive inventory.”
“Which,” I said, pouring myself another slug, “will be extremely difficult to do with Bill gone and Walter unconscious. Almost impossible, really.”
“A nasty job, certainly. There is a catalogue of acquisitions, but it won’t list every single paper clip and pencil in the place. The diary and the atlas won’t be in there, for example.”
I sighed. “I must say I don’t envy them the job. Reminds me of cleaning out a gigantic attic, except worse, because nothing can be thrown away. You know, Alan, eventually somebody’s going to have to sort through all the piles up there in Bill’s storage area. I suppose the job officially belongs to Walter, now that Bill’s gone, but the poor boy won’t be up to it for a long time. If ever. I wish I knew how he was doing. Do you suppose you could call the hospital again?”
“It’s only been an hour or so since I called,” Alan pointed out.
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