“Please be seated,” he said grimly.
“I’m disappointed in myself,” she said. “Obviously, I’m not as clever as I thought.”
Pinkerton fell back in his chair. “It seems to me that not only did you overestimate yourself, but you underestimated me. Finding missing things is one of my specialties. In one area, though, I myself am clearly inadequate, namely, the ability to comprehend the female mind. I actually thought you’d keep your word.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice quavering. “I never thought you’d find it.”
Pinkerton lit a cigar. “I’d offer you a cheroot, but I see you’re without your reticule and have no holder. Would you like one anyway?”
She looked down at the gloved hands lying limp in her lap. “My reticule? I didn’t realize I don’t have it. I didn’t even miss it when I bought the omnibus ticket. I carry coins in the palm of my glove.”
“But surely you left your reticule at home on purpose,” he said.
“Why would I do that?”
“Without your reticule, I can’t prove I won the bet. You carry the strongbox in it.”
She froze. For a full minute not even an eyelid twitched. Then, slowly, she drew the veil up and back over the bonnet.
He saw a very different face. A wry lip was curled in amusement. Her ice-blue eyes were filled with triumph.
She rose. “Follow me.” She opened the office door on her own. Pinkerton watched her hoopskirt sway past Harry’s desk before he understood what she had commanded him to do.
She opened the waiting room door and swept in, seeming not to care about the alderman who hid his face behind a newspaper.
Pinkerton and Harry were in close pursuit. “Oh, Mr….” Pinkerton said, before he caught himself. “I apologize. Harry, take the gentleman into my office.”
Kate pointed a gloved finger at the table beside the chair where she had last sat when she visited the agency. On it was a shallow brass strongbox.
“You’ve failed to live up to your side of the bargain, sir,” she said. “Now you must hire me.”
Pinkerton closed the door. “I’d be a fool not to hire so clever a woman,” he said. “Besides, I pride myself on being a good judge of character, and I judge yours to be excellent. I suppose I can live without knowing anything of your background.”
“It may surprise you, but I don’t want you to live without knowing anything of my background.” She reached inside her stiff white collar and extracted a thin gold chain, from which dangled a tiny key. She took off her gloves to unhook the chain, slid the key off, unlocked the box, and opened the lid. “Here.” She offered Pinkerton the contents.
The box held only an envelope. “You won the wager,” he said. “You don’t have to reveal the contents to me. I’m a man of my word.”
“I know you are,” she said. “Take it.” Kate sat down in one armchair, Pinkerton in another.
The envelope he held was fine laid-linen paper. It had once been sealed with red wax, which was stamped with the initial W, but it had been carefully slit open with a paper knife and was now empty. He turned the envelope over. All that was written there was Mrs. Kate Warne.
“You mean to tell me that your only documentation is an empty envelope with your name written on it?”
“Yes.”
“Absolutely nothing else?” he said.
“Nothing. I don’t even know who wrote that name. It isn’t my handwriting.”
“And your husband’s full name? Why is that a secret?”
“Because I don’t know it,” she said. “Frankly, I’m not sure I am or ever was a Mr. Warne’s wife. I’m not sure I am the Mrs. Kate Warne whose name is written there. I assume I am, but only because I have that envelope addressed to Mrs. Kate Warne.”
He studied her calm face. “I don’t understand. You seem to say you dropped from the sky one day, fully grown and with literally nothing to your name but an envelope.”
“You make me sound Olympian. I wish I were,” she said with a sad smile. “But what actually happened was less dramatic. One day I found myself seated on a bench in a train station with a reticule in my lap, which contained a Derringer, a coin purse with a little money, and that empty envelope.” She tapped her left arm. “And I had a flick knife strapped to my forearm.”
Pinkerton tongued his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other a couple of times. “I’ve heard of amnesiacs, but never actually met one.”
“Amnesia,” she said. “That’s what I concluded, too. Although even now I don’t know when I learned the term.”
“Did you have a bump on your head?”
“No.”
“If you can’t remember anything, how do you know you learned to fire a weapon as a child?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just do. The same way I know what amnesia is, and calculus, without remembering a single lesson, and bookkeeping. I also have a feeling I was born somewhere in New York State and that I’m around thirty years old.”
“Many ladies carry a Derringer, but why, do you imagine, do you carry a flick knife?”
“Maybe I’m part of the Underground Railroad,” she said. “You’re an abolitionist. I had hoped it might be a sign you’d recognize.”
“Why in tarnation did you decide to apply for a job as a detective?”
“It isn’t easy to explain,” she said. “But neither is it a long story. Pretty short, actually. It begins in the train station two days before we met. After I had been sitting there awhile, a porter walked up to me and asked if he could help me find the right track. I didn’t know the answer, so instead I asked directions to the ladies’ waiting room.
“It had a full-length mirror on the wall. I looked in it and didn’t recognize my face. It was just a very plain face. No one I knew. Even now I don’t recognize my face in mirrors, no matter how often I look. I even keep a mirror under my pillow to look at first thing every morning.
“Anyway, I knew something was terribly wrong with me. I couldn’t live in a ladies’ waiting room. I needed a safe place to go. So I went back out into the station and asked the porter for directions to the first safe place that came to mind, the nearest bank.
“But when I reached the bank I realized I needed an address in order to establish an account, so I bought a newspaper to find a decent boardinghouse. On the same page as the ad for the LaSalle Boarding House for Ladies was yours for detectives. It struck me that if anyone would be interested in a lady who carried a Derringer and a flick knife, it would be you, and if I could interest you in hiring me, you’d conduct a thorough check of my background.
“I never imagined Allan Pinkerton wouldn’t be able to figure out who I am.”
THE BIRDHOUSE
BY STEPHEN ROSS
He strangles her.
There is nothing I can do.
The man is in a white shirt and brown pants. He is big. He has short red hair and a face that smiles. The woman is a nurse. She is young, thin, with blond hair tied up.
He strangles her on the lawn on a beautifully sunny afternoon.
She is dead.
I see this through the window. The panes of glass are old and wavy. It’s the only window in my room, and it’s open by an inch.
The man is standing over the nurse’s body. He is looking at her. I don’t think he had planned to kill her. He seems to be thinking: What to do next?
Outside my window is a small garden. It’s flanked by a hedge. It must be a private place. He must have thought he was alone when he put his hands to her neck.
There had been an argument, a heated exchange. The nurse had pointed her finger at the man and had made threats. He had struck out, taking her throat into his grip. It had happened fast. He killed her quickly, in silence, and with efficiency.
The man walks away.
I can’t see where he has gone.
I am left sitting to stare at the lifeless body of the nurse on the lawn.
What can I do? Should I watch the soft br
eeze gently move the leaves of the hedge? Should I listen to the sound of the robin, or whatever it is, I can hear singing in the tree?
Should I admire the birdhouse?
At the rear of the garden stands a little white birdhouse. It stands about seven or eight feet from the ground at the top of a pole. It is a grand miniature house with a red roof. It has a little balcony for birds to promenade upon, and a little hole for them to step through, to go inside to hide from the storm.
I couldn’t hear clearly what the man and the nurse had been arguing about. They had spoken in whispers. Hers had been a sharper voice, with an accusatory tone. I had heard her say: “I know.” I had heard her say it more than once.
The man has come back.
He has brought something with him. It’s dirty white in color. It’s some kind of bag and he is lifting the girl’s feet. He is dragging the bag up around her legs. I think it’s a laundry sack. He is putting her into it.
Within seconds, the man has hidden the nurse’s body in the sack. He ties the rope at its opening and seals her in.
He looks at my window.
He stares.
I can’t read his mind, but I know what he is thinking. I see the change in his expression. He is concerned.
He walks up to my window.
Outside, the garden is drenched in afternoon sunlight. With the contrast in light, I imagine that the view through the window into my room is not immediately obvious.
He presses his face to the glass, and he looks directly at me.
I can do nothing.
He looks about my room.
There is nothing I can do.
He returns to the nurse.
He lifts up the laundry sack and hauls it over his shoulder. He walks away, out of my view.
I hear my breath. It’s racing. My vision has begun to blur. I must relax. My heart must be pounding. I can’t feel it, but it must be turning over like a motorcycle engine.
I stare at the birdhouse.
I focus on it.
It is a pleasant little house. A craftsman has spent many hours fashioning its shape and design. If I were a bird, I would be very pleased by it. I would seek refuge there.
I stare at that birdhouse until it’s all that exists.
The door to my room opens, and I’m brought back. The door is behind me. I can’t see who has opened it.
I hear soft footsteps. It’s the sound of one pair of shoes on the wooden floor.
It’s the man.
He stands at the foot of my bed. He looks at me. I’m sitting up, propped up by pillows, looking back.
The man is older than he appeared through the window. Now that he’s closer, I can see lines and wrinkles on his face. His red hair is flecked with gray. He is easily taller than six feet. He is big. He is fat. He is still smiling. His smile is infectious. I would almost like to smile back.
He studies me.
I dare not close my eyes.
He picks up the clipboard that is hung on the end of my bed. He reads it. As he reads it, he begins to nod to himself.
“Is someone there?” a voice asks.
The voice shocks me. It’s loud after the quiet of the afternoon.
The voice is from Fulton, the man in the bed next to mine. The big man glances over at him. His smile becomes a grin.
Fulton’s head is wrapped in bandages. I’ve heard that his sight will return, but for the present, he is blind.
“There is someone there, isn’t there?” Fulton demands. “I heard footsteps. If you’re trying to play a game, you can fuck off. I’m in no mood.”
Fulton is a Scotsman. That’s about all I know about him.
The big man with the short red hair places my clipboard back on the hook on the end of my bed. He quietly walks out of the room.
I am not a bowl of fruit. I am not a vase standing on a table with a selection of flowers sticking out of me. I am not an ornament. I am not a decoration. I am not a damn objet d’art.
The three doctors stand at the foot of my bed. They have the same looks on their faces as they did yesterday.
They talk about me as though I am not there. They know I can hear them. They know I can see them. They talk about me as though I am little more than a chest of drawers and incapable of perception or understanding.
I don’t know why they bother. I have been in this room for five days now, and each day in the afternoon, they visit, and they stand at the end of my bed with the same faces.
Hopeless.
They don’t say that out loud, but I hear it in their pauses. They think I am hopeless.
Nothing is hopeless. I refuse to ever accept that. I can’t feel or move an inch of my body except my eyes—I can move them, and open and close them. I will not surrender to this. It is not hopeless.
What did that Churchill fellow say? We shall never surrender.
That’s me. Me and Churchill.
I wish they would put me near a radio, or by a gramophone.
Nine days, and I’m bored.
Fulton talks a lot. He sings songs with dirty lyrics. He tells obscene jokes—the vilest, most disgusting of jokes—and he swears a lot. And all in that Scottish accent of his. Glasgow, I believe. His accent could cut a glass bottle in half.
Fulton knows I’m there. He’s never seen me, but he’s been told I’m in the bed next to his. My name is Joseph. At home I get Joe. Fulton calls me Fucking Yankee.
Fulton talks a lot. He talks a lot about his family.
I can’t talk back.
I can’t do anything.
Nurse Anne is my guardian angel. She talks to me and understands that I can’t answer. She talks to me as though I’m part of the conversation.
Nurse Anne visits several times a day. She feeds me, and she cleans me. She is intimate with me. She deals with me in a way no other human being ever has had to since I was a baby.
I’m completely immobile, but my body still functions like that of a normal man. I would happily climb aboard another aircraft for another mission with a near-certain threat of death rather than do what she does. If I ever get out of this mess, I will tell her how very grateful I am.
What I really wish I could tell her is what I saw in the garden. I saw a man in a white shirt and brown pants murder a nurse.
A murder seems so out of place during a war.
I am no innocent. I have killed. I have fired upon countless aircraft, and many have erupted in flames and spiraled to the ground. Enemy aircraft are not piloted by ill wishes and bad intentions. I have killed men. But I have not murdered a single one of them.
Those men were willing to die, as was I. Whoever takes to the air and engages is prepared to meet the end of his life. It was just my bad luck to live.
We took flak over France. I was flying escort to a bombing raid in a Mustang. The B-17s had dumped their payloads over Koblenz, and we were homeward bound, and then we got it. It was like the Fourth of July. The big bombers were getting hammered. One got it bad, and I flew through a shard shower of red-hot metal. It gutted my fuel tank and took out most of my flight controls.
By the time I saw England, I had no fuel and no play left at all in the tail. I crash-landed in a farmer’s field. Crippled. Hopeless.
A nurse does not ask to die. She is there to comfort and heal us madmen. Who was that fat man with the short red hair? Why did he murder that poor girl?
I can see my father sitting there in his armchair, smoking his pipe, listening to news of the war on his radio and clawing at his newspaper as he reads of casualties and deaths. I can see my little sister lying on her stomach on the floor, reading a book and asking questions, or talking to herself. I can see my mother, in the kitchen, worrying.
I wonder if they have heard. I wonder how long it has taken for news of my accident to travel from Britain, across the Atlantic, and to my home in Hartford.
When I was younger, I couldn’t wait until I got out of there. Now I simply can’t wait until I get back. But what will be waiting for me?
I am not a man anymore.
I don’t know what I am.
Maybe I’m just a bowl of fruit after all?
He is a cook!
Nurse Anne has found a wheelchair for me. She has taken to wheeling me about. After three weeks in that room, I was beginning to lose my senses.
Nurse Anne has parked me in the games room. I, the bowl of fruit, can watch people move and play, and talk and laugh.
The hospital isn’t really a hospital. It’s a grand house that has been commandeered by the military for the duration. It’s the country house of Lord Somebody-or-other. The good lord isn’t here. He has moved out and taken his family, his servants, and probably his good silver. He’ll be back at the end, I would say. If we win.
The games room is probably what had been the good lord’s drawing room. A table has been set up for table tennis. Men sit about, playing cards, reading, engaging in casual banter. The atmosphere is convivial. There is a gramophone. Someone likes Al Bowlly. I hear him a lot.
We are all airmen here, all with our wings clipped, all resting from the storm. It is mostly British pilots, with a couple of Poles, a couple of New Zealanders, and a couple of fellow flyboys from back home. No one I know.
The fat man with the short red hair is a cook. He works in the kitchen. He is still smiling. He has smiles for everybody.
He moves about, dressed in a white apron, with a pot of coffee and a plate of small, thin sandwiches, probably cucumber. The Brits like those.
He chats with everybody.
Everyone likes the fat man. People respond warmly to him. A Brit with a ridiculous moustache and voice remarks that he does a good job on the grub.
The fat man doesn’t smile at me. He doesn’t even bother to look at me. I am of no interest. I am no threat. He has read my clipboard. Hopeless. Can’t move. Can’t talk. Just eats and sleeps.
I overhear the cook’s name. Derek.
I stare at him.
The words are on my tongue, ready and waiting. But I can’t even open my mouth. Nurse Anne has to wedge a small piece of wood between my teeth to keep my mouth ajar so as I can breathe comfortably.
Mystery Writers of America Presents the Mystery Box Page 25