Winter of Discontent

by Jeanne M. Dams

  “Or at least,” I said slowly, “worked out enough of it to be very suspicious. If he’d been sure of what he’d found, I would have thought he’d go to the authorities. The police or the Home Office or someone.”

  Jane nodded. “If he was sure. But if not—wanted to see fair play. Probably ask whoever gave it to him to explain.”

  “And of course they couldn’t, because there was no explanation that wouldn’t condemn them. So—let’s see. They’d say they wanted to come and talk to him, because there was a perfectly simple explanation, but they didn’t want to talk about it on the phone. At least that’s what I would do, if I had written or received that letter, I mean.”

  I paused to think myself into the skin of a traitor, someone who’d thought himself safe for fifty or sixty years. He would be shocked beyond measure that this piece of damning evidence had come to light. He would be desperate.

  “And then—well, then I’d try to figure out a way not to get caught. I could leave the country, maybe. Except the person involved in this is old, perhaps frail. And there aren’t many places in the world where one can’t be found nowadays, at least not places where a person eighty years old or more would be comfortable. So what are my other options? I could try to steal the letter, of course, or get someone to steal it for me. But Bill still knows, or has suspicions. If the letter goes missing, he’ll be even more suspicious, even if I’ve managed to spin some convincing tale. Was Bill gullible at all, Jane?”

  “Most men are,” she said with the experience of eighty years. “Most good men. Bill no more than most. Less than some. Some hard times behind him.”

  “So if he wasn’t satisfied with the explanation of—whoever, the villain of the piece—he’d—well, what, do you think?”

  “Mull it over,” said Jane instantly. “Great one for mulling over. ‘Better safe than sorry,’ he’d say. ‘Less haste, more speed.’ Drove one mad.”

  “But he was an historian,” I went on. “He wouldn’t want anything to happen to that very important piece of paper. And no matter how gullible he might have been, he certainly wasn’t stupid. I could see that for myself. He would have known that keeping such a thing lying around was asking for trouble. So he would hide it, and knowing the museum better than anyone else, he’d know about the one hiding place that no one would think of looking, that most people wouldn’t even know existed. He would take the letter down to the tunnel. And it wasn’t an easy place to reach, and he was upset about the whole thing, and so he had a stroke. And because Bill had the letter with him down there, whoever was so anxious to get it had to search the museum, and had to hit Walter over the head so he could do it. Search, I mean.”

  I finished on a note of satisfaction. I had wrapped everything up in a neat little package, and was very satisfied with myself Only one trifling detail was missing: the actual identity of the malefactor. And surely that could be discovered easily enough, now that we knew what had happened and why.

  Alan frowned. “My dear, I’m sorry, but I can’t buy it. There are too many holes, too many loose ends. You said yourself that anyone who received such a letter would certainly destroy it, if it were in any way incriminating. Therefore the very existence of the document would seem to argue that it is not incriminating. Therefore why should it be the focus of the trouble?”

  “Oh.” I thought about that one. It was annoying to have my own argument used against me. I tried again to put myself in the place of a spy, a turncoat, a quisling who would sell out his own country. “Well. It’s in a kind of code. Unless the person who received it knew Indiana well, better than I do after living there for sixty-odd years, he would have to keep the letter long enough to look up the references. And then—then I suppose something must have come up, someone came into the room or whatever, so he had to hide the letter quickly and for some reason never got back to dispose of it. It was wartime, after all. Maybe there was a bombing raid or something, and he—she—whoever it was couldn’t get back to the hiding place for a while.”

  “Still,” said my loving husband in a maddeningly logical tone, “you’d think he’d have disposed of it as soon as he could. No matter what emergencies befall, one doesn’t easily forget that one has a lighted stick of dynamite hidden about the house.”

  “No, you’re right. I have to admit that. It had to have been something quite desperate that kept him from destroying the letter. I just can’t think what, at the moment.”

  Alan looked at me, and then at Jane, and there was pity in his eyes. “There is, I’m sorry to say, one quite obvious explanation. If the recipient of the letter had been taken prisoner by the Germans …”

  “But the letter was written in I944! By that time Bill was already at Colditz.”

  “Mr. Wilson here says it was written in 1944. I’m sure one could find another expert who would testify that it was certainly written in 1943.”

  Mr. Wilson cleared his throat. “You are forgetting, sir, that the history of the war is involved here. Raids on certain places are mentioned. I know the history of the war rather well, and this particular combination of raids took place in 1944. It is a matter of record. You are welcome to look it up.”

  He and Alan exchanged polite smiles, the sort the English specialize in, that can freeze you solid at forty paces. Charles, who is of a peacemaking disposition, stepped in hastily. “What I don’t understand is why the Germans would part with this information to anyone. Surely this kind of thing is top-secret stuff. If the Brits knew where the raids were going to be, they could muster their forces there and wipe out the German ones.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Mr. Wilson, still frostily. “Look at the Blitz. We knew to a virtual certainty that there would be bombing over London nearly every night, for months, in 1940. We did our best to protect our people, but our best, at that point, was not good enough.”

  “Well, but by ’44 the RAF was in far better shape, more planes, more men. Did they, in fact, defend those places?” Charles gestured to the letter.

  “No more than any other places. Our forces were rather heavily engaged just then, as you recall, following up on Operation Overlord.”

  I must have looked puzzled, because Mr. Wilson said, “The invasion of Normandy D-day?” He sounded like a kindergarten teacher.

  I nodded with some dignity. “Yes, I am familiar with D-day. I had forgotten the code name.”

  Jane spoke for the first time in quite a while. “Point is, Germans did supply information. What did they get in return? Quid pro quo.”

  It was then that I remembered Mrs. Burton’s remarks about how ineffectual the RAF had been in the war. Or at least—I paused to consider—how ineffectual the raids from Luftwich had seemed to be. “I think,” I said slowly, “that I may have an answer to that. I think what they got was a deliberate neglect of duty on the part of someone at Luftwich.” I explained what Mrs. Burton had said. “I think it was no accident that the planes from Luftwich so often missed their targets. I think someone there engineered it. I think that letter we found was only one of many, a steady stream coming into Luftwich in return for preferential treatment. And I can think of only one person who is in any way connected with this business and who had a high enough position in the RAF to see to that.”

  “Merrifield.” Jane’s voice was flat.

  I nodded. “He’d made recent donations of artifacts to the museum, too. That letter could certainly have lain unnoticed at the bottom of some pile until Bill found it. Oh, and he’d been to Indiana, too!”

  “How d’you work that out?”

  “When we talked to him that day. I just remembered! He said I didn’t sound like a Hoosier. Now the only way he’d know that—the only way he’d probably even know the word—is if he’d been to Indiana sometime. Or maybe known someone from Indiana—but anyway, he knew something about the state.”

  “Hmm.”

  Jane sounded unconvinced, but I didn’t bother to follow up the point. I was pursuing my own thoughts. “The thing is, I do
n’t know why Merrifield would have betrayed his country that way, though. He seems like a man of integrity, and this—this is the last word in treachery.”

  “He has property.” Jane again, still in a dead sort of voice. “And family. Here in Belleshire, in Kent, Sussex, all over southern England. If he knew in advance where the raids were going to be, he could take steps to protect anything of his that was threatened.”

  I nodded thoughtfully. “Well, he couldn’t do much about the property. You can’t shield a house from bombs, or not very effectively. But the people—yes, he could arrange to have the people elsewhere if he knew the bombers were coming. Oh!”

  Everyone looked at me.

  “I just thought of something else. You know we’ve always been so grateful that Sherebury was spared any major bombing during the war? No damage to the Cathedral, that sort of thing? And it was a little surprising, because we’re not that far from the coast. And even though there weren’t any military or industrial targets here, the Germans liked bombing cathedrals, because of the damage to morale.”

  Their stares changed to looks of dawning comprehension.

  “Yes. Part of the deal, do you think?”

  “All right,” said Charles, still not convinced, “suppose it’s true, all this elaborate James Bond kind of stuff—”

  “Oh, no,” I said, interrupting. “Much too low-tech for Bond. More Richard Hannay. The Thirty-Nine Steps, and—”

  Charles waved away Richard Hannay. “Whatever. What I started to say was, even given your scenario, which I don’t yet accept, he must be very old, this Merrifield character. How could he have attacked anyone at the museum?”

  “He told me he has a son, Charles. Merrifield’s not very mobile himself anymore, true, but the son could have done everything. Attacked Walter, searched the place … and I’ll bet he would have, too, if he knew what was at stake. Family honor still means something in these parts.”

  A silence fell. At last Alan said, “Well, it’s just possible, I suppose. Far-fetched, but stranger things have happened. It’s all the merest speculation at this point, of course, but it’ll have to be looked into. I confess I don’t know quite who would be responsible for an inquiry like that. International espionage and war crimes are a little out of my line.”

  “And by the time all the ponderous machinery creaks into motion and anything is determined for sure, everyone concerned will be dead anyway,” I said with some bitterness. “I’m sorry I ever brought it up. The whole thing is futile. The war’s been over for nearly sixty years. Why not let the dead bury their dead?”

  “But Walter is alive,” said Jane. “And he deserves justice.”

  “Oh, I suppose, but—”

  The phone rang on Alan’s desk, startling us all. He answered, listened for a moment, said “Thank you, Derek,” and hung up.

  “Well, Dorothy, I think your theory just went up in smoke.”

  “What do you mean? Did Derek find something that makes more sense?”

  “No. He was calling me from Heatherwood House. John Merrifield is dead, and—this information must not be spread about—it looks like murder.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  IT WAS THE NEXT DAY, THURSDAY, BEFORE ANY DETAILS FILTERED through, and then not until afternoon. In the morning, Alan and I went with Jane to Bill’s funeral. It was only a graveside service, kept brief out of deference to Bill’s nebulous religious beliefs. “Wouldn’t have wanted a Eucharist,” Jane said in an undertone as we walked through the Close to the old churchyard. Very few are buried there anymore—there’s no room—but Bill, as a veteran of the war, had earned a place.

  “Didn’t you want one?”

  She shrugged. “Bill was a good man. God doesn’t need a lot of words to tell him so.”

  But funerals are for the living, I wanted to say. For comfort, and support … but Jane had decided what she wanted.

  Yesterday’s rain had diminished to a fine drizzle, against which an umbrella did very little good. We stood and shivered while one of the canons read the service. Besides the three of us, there were only a handful of mourners. Two of the Heatherwood House staff had come, and a couple of elderly men Jane identified in a whisper as friends of Bill’s from the home. That was all. Jane showed little emotion, but she’s so good at hiding her feelings that I had no idea what was going on under the gruff exterior.

  “Would you like some lunch?” I asked after we had trudged back across the Close. “I can whip up some potato soup in no time.”

  “No, thanks. Want to see Walter.” She plodded on. We were through the gate into our street before she turned and said, “Thanks. For coming. A help.” She gripped both our hands for a moment before squaring her shoulders and marching sturdily to her front door.

  Well, for Jane that was the equivalent of a bear hug. Alan and I smiled a little and shook our heads, and went in to dry off and get started on that soup.

  We had just finished lunch when Derek called with a report. Alan repeated it to me almost word for word when he had hung up.

  Mr. Merrifield—or Air Commodore Merrifield, to give him the military title under which he would undoubtedly be buried—had been found dead in his room about six by the aide who brought up his supper. He was in his bed, and had been dead for some time. The aide, who was rather new to Heatherwood House, had nevertheless been there long enough to know that death was not unexpected among the residents, so she simply walked out of the room with the tray and told the nurse in charge.

  The nurse, who knew Merrifield well, was startled. Her patient was strong for his age, with no history of cardiac or vascular problems, and had been perfectly well that afternoon when he took his walk. So she checked carefully when she went into the room. It was she who discovered the rumpled pillow, somewhat damp and with small holes that might have made by teeth. She closed the room then, leaving Merrifield’s body exactly as it was, and told her superiors that the police should be called.

  “She had quite a job convincing them,” said Alan, telling me the story. “Murder is not featured in the prospectus of Heatherwood House. Fortunately, Nurse Ames is a stubborn woman who reads crime fiction and has a lively imagination. She insisted, and threatened to go to the press if the police were not called. Well, publicity of that kind would be absolutely ruinous, so the powers-that-be gave in. Of course, Nurse Ames was quite right. Merrifield had been smothered while he was napping. Poor chap, he’d tried to struggle, but his heart was ninety-two, after all. It gave out quite soon, the ME thinks. Of course nothing is certain until the autopsy.”

  “And if the nurse hadn’t been vigilant, it would have gone down as natural death.”

  “Probably, given Merrifield’s age. In fact, so far as the general public is concerned, that’s what it was.”

  “I suppose they’ve checked the surveillance tapes?”

  Alan sighed heavily. “There are no surveillance tapes. It turns out that the cameras are used only at night, mostly as a measure against burglary. They feed into a monitor in the security guard’s room, and are taped then, but not during the daytime.”

  “But that’s ridiculous! A resident could wander off—”

  “The superintendent was emphatic that they have no residents who are at all likely to do such a thing. He refused even to say the word ‘Alzheimer’s’and acted as though senility were a loathsome disease.”

  “Fine man to be in charge of an old people’s home!”

  “My opinion precisely. He’s a self-important cretin, but the fact remains that the security arrangements at Heatherwood House are far from ideal.”

  “Visitors have to check in at the front desk, though.”

  “And genuine, well-meaning visitors do just that. I have found, my love, over a long and I may say somewhat distinguished police career, that criminals don’t always obey all the rules.”

  “You don’t say!” I forgave him the sarcasm. He was tired and upset. “How do you think whoever it was got past the checkpoint, then?”

 
; “We don’t know that he or she did get past. There were a number of visitors that afternoon. No one asked to see Merrifield, but then they wouldn’t, would they? Visitors who act as if they know where they’re going are not escorted to the resident’s rooms. And the receptionist doesn’t make a record of the names of visitors—who might not give their right names, anyway.”

  “No. It isn’t the sort of place where they check passports. So you really have no idea who was there that afternoon?”

  He sighed again, rather elaborately this time. “They’re checking, Dorothy. Some of the visitors were regulars, family members who visit every day. The receptionists know them. We’re talking to them, hoping they may provide other names or at least descriptions. And of course there’s the staff, and the other residents. We haven’t much hope. Most people aren’t particularly observant. And why should they be, when they’re going about their business and nothing unusual is happening?”

  “Nothing unusual except the little matter of a man being smothered to death. Wouldn’t he have made noise? Cried out, or at least made noises thrashing around?”

  “You forget that he was almost certainly napping when the attack came. He would have had only a few seconds of awareness that anything was wrong, and one can’t make much noise through a pillow. In any case, the killer would have closed the door, and those doors are good sturdy oak. No one we’ve talked to so far heard a thing besides the routine sounds.”

  “It comes down to routine slogging, then. Poor Derek. Dozens of people to talk to with almost no hope of getting anything out of them. And all sorts of other work to carry on with in the meantime. Oh! Alan, do you think they’ve put a guard on young Walter, in the hospital?”

  “Not yet.” Alan looked unhappy. “I did suggest it, but there’s no obvious connection between Merrifield’s death and the attack on Walter. I know, there’s your theory that this all has something to do with the war, and I think you’re right. But there’s no proof, and the force is too shorthanded to send a man off to guard a theory.”