Winter of Discontent

by Jeanne M. Dams

  I wasn’t pleased about that, but there was nothing to be done about it. Nothing the police would do, anyway.

  “I’m going over to talk to Jane, if she’s back from the hospital,” I said with determination. “If she hasn’t already figured out that Walter might be in danger, she needs to know.”

  But Jane hadn’t returned. Her house was locked up, and when I knocked at the back door, I was greeted only by a mournful chorus of lonely dogs. They did their best to convince me that they had been permanently abandoned and required rescue, but I ignored them. Stopping only to tell Alan where I was going, I drove to the hospital.

  I had to stop to find out Walter’s new room number, and the functionary at the desk was inclined to be starchy. “He is in a private room,” she informed me, “but he has a visitor. He mustn’t see too many people, he still needs quiet recovery time—here! Where are you going?”

  I didn’t know I could still trot at that speed. I didn’t know exactly where I was going, but the hospital wasn’t large, and I found the right room before the indignant doorkeeper could stop me. I burst in, my heart pounding, ready to do battle with anyone who was trying to smother Walter.

  Jane looked up from the chair by his bedside. “Been doing your morning jog?”

  There was no other chair in the room. I leaned against the wall, panting and feeling a fool. “Thank God it’s just you!”

  I didn’t need to explain myself. She could read my mind. But Walter was another matter. He was wide awake, looking pink and healthy despite the bandage on the back of his head, and his face was full of questions.

  “I was escaping the nurse, or whoever, who didn’t want me to come up. Said you shouldn’t have too many visitors. Am I too many, do you think? I’ll leave if you’re tired.”

  “Tired of being treated like an invalid, is all. I want to get out of here. I’m perfectly fit, and God knows what’s happening at the museum, with Bill still missing.”

  So they hadn’t told him yet. Well, one step at a time. “I think it’s in good hands, actually. The police want to find out who attacked you, and they’re keeping a close watch on the place. Have they told you when they’re going to let you go home?”

  “Well, that’s the problem, you see.” He shifted restlessly. “They don’t want me to be alone, and of course Mrs. Gibbs gives her boarders their privacy.”

  I exchanged a glance with Jane. From what I’d heard of Walter’s landlady, the word wasn’t so much privacy as neglect. That would be a fine place for a murderer to get at the boy.

  Jane cleared her throat. “No need to be alone,” she said in her gruffest voice, sounding exactly like Winston Churchill. “Plenty of room at my house. Was just going to tell you.”

  Walter’s face lit up. “Would you really? That would be super! Oh, but …” His voice lost its color. “I forgot, though. When they find Bill—I mean, you won’t want a stranger around—”

  “Changed plans,” said Jane with a warning look at me. Well, heavens, I wasn’t about to break the news of Bill’s death to the boy! Let her handle it her own way. “Could use the company. Some things to do about the house, as well, when you’re fit.”

  I could almost see words of gratitude hovering on Walter’s lips. Gratitude embarrasses Jane mightily. I broke in before he could get a word out. “That sounds like an ideal plan, then. You can earn your keep as general factotum, and Jane’s a marvelous cook. You’ll be close to the museum, too, and there’s a bus to the university that stops at the end of our street.”

  A nurse bustled in. She was cross. It was a pity she wasn’t wearing the starched uniform of yore; they crackled so nicely to express irritation.

  “I’m sorry, but one of you will have to leave. My patient is absolutely not to have more than one visitor at a time, and not for more than five minutes. Actually, you should both go. I’m sure you”—she looked severely at Jane—“have been here far longer than five minutes.”

  “I was just leaving,” I said. “Jane, do you want me to talk to someone about discharge arrangements?”

  “Discharge?” said the nurse. “There can be no question of discharge until suitable housing—”

  “That’s what we’re talking about.” I let a bit of schoolteacher creep into my voice. Not the full she-who-must-be-obeyed intonation, but enough to let the nurse know that I, too, was irritated. “I take it Walter is ready to leave as soon as he can receive reasonable care at home?”

  “I can discuss that only with his family or some other responsible person.”

  “Good. Fine. Discuss it with Miss Langland. She’s prepared to make herself responsible. Unless of course you really want to keep him here, taking up a bed when he’s well enough to leave.” Now I sounded as if I were addressing a roomful of fourth-graders.

  “Well, of course we always need beds, but that isn’t the question.”

  “I’d have thought it was. Jane, I’m going to round up the social worker, or whoever handles these things in an English hospital. You’ll stay here for now” I didn’t make it a question, and the nurse, accepting a lost battle but not final defeat, glared equally at both of us and huffed away.

  It took me a while to find the proper authority, and then she wouldn’t take my word for anything but had to check innumerable files and make several phone calls and talk to Jane and have her sign papers, and so on. I called Alan in the meantime to assure him I hadn’t encountered anything worse than medical red tape. But finally all the releases were approved and all the discharge instructions given, and Walter was wheeled (much against his will; he wanted to walk) to Jane’s waiting car. I followed in my own, helped Jane install Walter on a capacious couch to wait for his lunch, and went home through the drizzle with the sense of a large burden removed from my shoulders.

  Not that Walter had ever been my problem, really, but I’m one of those women with a regrettable tendency to take on the responsibilities of the world. Regrettable, because it leads to meddling in what’s really none of my business and endless fretting that wears me out without accomplishing anything. I suppose I like to feel I’m indispensable, which nobody is. It’s a form of egotism, a superiority complex, perhaps. I’d like to mend my ways, but I think I’m too old. And darn it all, sometimes my meddling has been useful.

  I prepared an absentminded lunch for Alan and me and sat down, notebook in hand, to meddle some more.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  THE FIRST THING I DID WAS LOOK OVER MY EARLIER NOTES. ALAS, they hadn’t acquired any brilliant flashes of insight since I had written them.

  If there was a likely suspect for the murder of John Merrifield lurking in all that verbiage, I couldn’t find him—or her. Stanley Rutherford, under the thumb of his granddaughter? Barbara Price, fussy old maid? They’d both hated Merrifield, but very few murders are committed only out of hatred. Anyway, if they’d hated him for years, decades, it wasn’t likely that something had suddenly moved them to action.

  Poor old Mr. Tredgold? Impossible. He had neither the strength nor the mobility, nor, I was convinced, the moral blindness to commit murder.

  And Mrs. Burton? I paused the longest over her name. She seemed a ruthless woman, and she, too, had hated Merrifield. Too fastidious, probably, to kill with her own hands. But she had the money to hire it done. Even in this peaceful English backwater it would, I supposed, be possible to hire a killer. And Leigh Burton was just the sort to eliminate someone without a second thought if it were to her benefit.

  But that was the problem. How could Merrifield’s death possibly benefit the wealthy Mrs. Burton?

  If he knew something to her discredit … but what? She might have clawed her way out of poverty and a despised class, but there was nothing illegal about that. It was, in fact, rather admirable in a way, as long as she’d done nothing criminal along the way. Alan didn’t think she had, and Alan was seldom wrong about things like that. He had, after all, over forty years of experience with crime.

  And then there was the fact that it was Lei
gh Burton who’d thought there was something funny going on at Luftwich, that their planes weren’t succeeding in as many missions as they ought to.

  Could that have been an elaborate double bluff? Don’t tell the nosy American woman anything helpful, but hint at part of the truth, so if she finds out the rest she’ll think I must be blameless?

  I didn’t think so. Mrs. Burton struck me as the kind of shrewd, grasping woman who was more direct in her methods. Somehow I couldn’t see her thinking in such a convoluted way. She could, I supposed, have learned the ploy from detective novels, as I had, but I couldn’t remember seeing books of any kind among the valuable ornaments in her expensive house.

  Of course Stanley, come to think of it, had hinted about funny business, too. And I suddenly remembered that he had acted frightened when he heard his granddaughter come in. I’d thought at the time that he was afraid of her, domineering woman that she was, but perhaps …

  I sat and thought for a long time, my notebook abandoned in my lap. Emmy and Sam jumped up on the couch and settled down to purr, one on each side of me, delighted to find me sitting still for a change. Settled comfortably into feline middle age, they were apt these days to prefer a nap to a game, and a nap with their preferred human was pure bliss.

  Finally I picked up my notebook again and began slowly, hesitantly, to write a few words:

  Medals

  “Deceit and treachery”

  Bats, or?

  Ops

  Tea tray

  Alan came in just as I made the last entry and looked over my shoulder. “Christmas list, darling? It’s hops, not ops. And surely not bats?”

  “I—oh, yes. Um—for little Nigel Peter. A crib toy, one of those musical mobiles, you know?”

  Alan looked at me thoughtfully. “And I suppose Deceit and Treachery is a newly discovered work by Jane Austen?”

  “Certainly not. It’s the latest mystery by Barbara D’Amato. About Chicago politics.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Of course he didn’t believe a word of it, but still less would he have believed the real meaning of my list. I didn’t believe it myself. “It’s Christmastime, my love. Stop peeking and asking awkward questions.”

  I wasn’t going to confide my ideas to my loving husband until I was a lot surer they weren’t so much hogwash. And I was certainly glad I hadn’t yet written down “blackmail.”

  “By the way,” I said, happily changing the subject, “you’ll be delighted to know that Walter Tubbs has been released from the hospital. Jane, bless her heart, has taken him in.” I stood up, to the dismay of both cats (Samantha’s expressed by loud Siamese swearing). “I think I’ll take them some mince pies. Boys that age are always hungry. I expect I’ll be back for tea, but Jane might be boiling up just about now, so if you get hungry ..”

  “I’ll look after myself. Don’t fuss. And watch your footing. I don’t imagine you’ve noticed, but it’s been sleeting for the last hour. And I suppose I shouldn’t waste my breath saying it, but you will be careful, won’t you?”

  We both knew he wasn’t referring to slippery sidewalks. I groaned, gave him a peck on the cheek, and went to find a jacket and my warmest hat.

  The back door was locked, but Jane was home, of course. She would stay home, or take Walter with her when she left, for the foreseeable future. I didn’t know how she was going to keep him tied to her apron strings, unless she told him the truth, but I had great faith in Jane. Shed manage somehow

  She shushed the dogs before she answered the door. “Asleep,” she said in answer to my raised eyebrows. “I told him. Knocked him for six. Put him to bed to sleep it off.”

  I put my bag of mince pies on the table. “Told him about Bill? Or about Merrifield, too?”

  “Bill. Enough for now.”

  I nodded. “Actually I’m just as glad he’s not downstairs. I wanted to talk to you.”

  “Idea?”

  “Well, I do have an idea, but it’s so fantastic I don’t …”

  “Tea or coffee?”

  Caffeine puts everything, even fantastic ideas, into perspective. Jane does have an instinct for the practical.

  “Tea, I think, but something bracing. Not a delicate tea.”

  She nodded and got out the tin of Prince of Wales. I organized my thoughts while she made some cinnamon toast and we waited for the tea to brew. When it was ready and we sat down I had decided on my first question.

  “Jane, when we went to see Stanley Rutherford, he wanted to show us his medals, but you said you’d seen them. Have you, actually, or were you just trying to get me out of having to admire them?”

  “Seen them,” she said, pouring out.

  “Were there any special ones, or just the sort they give out to everyone in service?”

  “Don’t remember. Some for gallantry, I think. Toast?”

  “Thanks. Mmm, good. Would you know the difference, just by looking at the medals?”

  “No.”

  “Neither would I, even with American ones, let alone British. But, Jane, what I’m getting at is this: You remember I told you that when I talked to Leigh Burton, she thought it was odd that air crews from Luftwich didn’t ever seem to reach their targets or do much to hamper the enemy. Now I can’t quite square that idea with Stanley’s bragging about his medals and how many German planes he shot down and all that. You see the problem. Who’s got the story straight, Leigh or Stanley?”

  Jane sipped her tea with deliberation before she answered. “Don’t know. Could find out, about the medals, anyway. Easy research.”

  “I suppose there are records of that kind of thing, who got what.”

  Jane snorted. “Miles of them. I meant, research what the medals look like and then go see Stanley again.”

  “Oh, of course. And I imagine our library would have books about British military decorations. Though”—I glanced at my watch—“it’s probably closed by now.”

  Jane shook her head pityingly. “Twenty-first century, Dorothy. Find it on the Web.”

  It’s downright embarrassing to be made to feel an old fogy by someone who’s more than ten years older than I. I slapped my forehead. “You’re right, of course. There’ll be nice big pictures and descriptions, I’m sure. Why don’t you come over after supper and we’ll look at them together? You might recognize some of Stanley’s.”

  But Jane shook her head. “Better stay here.”

  “Oh, yes, of course. I forgot for a minute. How is he, really? You said he was upset about Bill, but is that all?”

  “Didn’t tell him much,” said Jane obliquely. “Just that Bill had a stroke, died in the tunnel. Didn’t want to worry him just now. Enough time for that later. Meanwhile, he’s safe here with me.”

  I wondered about that. Jane was sturdy and active, but she was at least eighty. How much protection could she provide against a determined murderer?

  Then one of the bulldogs nuzzled my hand and whined for some cinnamon toast and I had my answer. Anyone who went for Jane or for someone under her roof would be set upon by a pack of furious dogs. Yes, Walter was safe enough as long as he stayed here.

  “You do the searching,” Jane went on. “Ring up Stanley tomorrow and say you want to see his medals.”

  “Oh—well—yes, I could do that. I will do that, if you’ll give me his phone number and remind me how to get there.”

  I could have sworn my tone of voice hadn’t changed, but Jane knows me very well.

  “Wouldn’t ask if it weren’t for the boy,” she said. Her embarrassment lowered her deep voice so far as to be almost inaudible.

  “I know. It’s all right. I don’t really think Stanley has murdered anybody. His granddaughter wouldn’t let him.”

  “Hmph,” was Jane’s only answer to that. And indeed, what answer was there?

  There was a performance of The Nutcracker on television that night, and Alan wanted to watch. Well, I wouldn’t have minded seeing the Royal Ballet myself, but I had work to do. As soon as Alan was s
ettled and engrossed, I excused myself, went to his study, and turned on the computer.

  It didn’t take long. There were a good many Web sites devoted to British military medals, and I soon figured out most of the important ones for World War II. There were, of course, all the routine ones handed out broadcast to all who served, but I found a couple of special ones, too, the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal for fliers, and the Distinguished Flying Cross for officers. I wondered if that distinction, officers versus enlisted men, was made with American medals. I rather thought not, but what did I know? I’d never had much to do with military personnel in America.

  At any rate, armed with information, and taking my courage in both hands, I called Stanley the next morning and expressed an ardent desire to see his medals. He was thrilled, as I’d expected. I only hoped it wasn’t the thrill of a spider sensing vibrations along its net.

  As I finished clearing away the breakfast dishes, I glanced at the calendar next to the back door. Good grief, December 19! Less than a week till Christmas, and I had yet to make that trip to London. The shelves would be half empty by now; some of the stores would be starting their after-Christmas sales. America may begin its Christmas celebrations before Halloween, but England truncates the season at the other end, as if the sole purpose of the holiday were commerce. As, perhaps, for most people nowadays it is.

  Well, the day would come and we would celebrate, and somehow I felt I could celebrate more devoutly if I had helped to catch a murderer. Presents could be bought later.

  TWENTY-SIX

  ALAN, A LARGE MAN WHO EXCELS AT BEAR HUGS, GAVE ME A PARTICULARLY lingering one as I was ready to leave the house. I had told him where I was going, of course, and he didn’t care for it much, but he has long since stopped trying to protect me from my whims. He knows I hate to be cosseted. But he can’t help his instincts, any more than I can help mine. I was grateful for his concern, and grateful, also, that he chose to express it silently. I was actually a little scared and didn’t care to be reminded that I might be doing something dangerous.