I wonder why Derek the cook hasn’t poisoned my food yet. Am I really that hopeless?
It’s a clear night, and the moon is up. The little garden outside my room is illuminated. It looks like a fairy tale through my window, with the little white birdhouse with the red roof glowing in the lunar light.
Nurse Anne and another enter my room. They remove the pillows propping me up and lay me down.
Nurse Anne wishes me a good sleep.
I stare at the ceiling. It’s lit up by the glow of the garden.
I can’t sleep. I’m thinking about that nurse. Why did she have to die? What did that fat cook do with her body? It has been four weeks now. That poor girl.
The sun is in my eyes. Nurse Anne is not aware of this. She probably thinks she has done me a favor, wheeling me outside.
She has wheeled me into the garden outside my room. The garden is quite small, just a little patch of lawn, and it is indeed very private. No other windows face onto it other than my own, and for the first time, I see my window from the other side.
I can’t see into my room—the sun is too bright. All I see is a distorted reflection of Nurse Anne, the birdhouse, and me. I know now why no one has taken me anywhere near a mirror. Even allowing for the deformation in the wavy glass, I can see I am scarred.
Nurse Anne sits in a garden chair beside me. She seems upset. She is not herself today. God forbid she should be worrying about me.
I believe I have become her special case. She has given over a great deal of her time to looking after me. She bathes me, she feeds me. She talks to me and tells me of all her dreams. In return, I keep no secrets from her.
I close my eyes.
The sun illuminates my eyelids, and I see a sort of vivid red color.
I do have a secret. There is a secret trapped inside my head that cannot get out. My only fear in my life now is that it will stay there until the day I die.
Nurse Anne moves me. She has realized the sun was in my eyes.
I wish I could put my hand on hers. Something is troubling her deeply. She is trying to hide the fact.
“I had a friend,” Anne says. She is looking at the ground. “Her name was Judy. She disappeared a few weeks ago. She was a nurse here at the hospital. We both trained together in Croydon.”
There are tears in Anne’s eyes.
I try to move my hand, to place it on hers. I try with all my will and with all my strength.
My hand remains motionless.
“We all thought Judy had left,” Anne says. “We thought she had gone back home to Swansea.”
Anne looks at me. I have never noticed how beautiful her eyes are until this moment. Pale blue. Caught in the English sunlight.
“They found Judy’s body in the river.”
Anne looks away.
“There’s a river, it’s about four miles from here. They don’t know if it was an accident, or how she came to be in it.”
Anne puts her hand on mine. “We must value our lives, Joseph. Life can be so short.”
She says no more about her friend.
I wake to the sound of an explosion. I hear aircraft. Many aircraft. I hear volleys of ground fire. I thought I had dreamed of the air-raid siren.
It’s night. I’m on my back, laid down for sleep. I can’t lift my head. I see a pale orange flickering on the ceiling of my room.
The hospital is near an airfield. It’s two miles away. It can only be that. There must have been an attack.
I hear the roar of aircraft scream over the house. Two or three of them. Spitfires. Give them hell, boys.
A doctor drags me off my bed and into my wheelchair. Another doctor gets the mad Scotsman out of his bed. Fulton’s bandages have been off for three days, but he still can’t see clearly. He is led by the hand.
Everyone is taken downstairs into the servants’ area and the kitchen. We are all lined up along the hallways. Nurses and doctors are running and yelling. There are shouts about a dogfight. It’s above the house.
The RAF has engaged a group of Luftwaffe bomber escorts. A wing of the hospital has been strafed by aircraft fire. Theirs or ours? No one knows. There have been deaths.
Oh, how I long to be in the air, to be up there at the controls and fighting. I have no doubt every man sitting on the floor, or in his wheelchair, about me, feels exactly the same way.
You don’t know life until you live on the edge of it, where your every action in the raw heat of the moment determines your fate; where a crazy idea, a sudden instinct, or just sheer dumb luck sees that you live and don’t die.
“Wait until I get back up there,” Fulton grunts. “I’ll fuck them bastards up and no mistake.”
I see Anne. She’s at the other end of the hall. She’s bandaging a doctor. He’s kneeling on the floor. It appears he has been hurt. It looks like blood on his face.
The cook is handing out cups of coffee and keeping everyone’s spirits up. Jovial is the fat man. Always cheerful is the fat man with the short red hair.
Eventually, he settles near me. He sits next to the Scotsman. He lights a cigarette. He shares it with my foulmouthed friend. They chat quietly while we listen to the fighting above the house.
I learn that Fulton is a gunner stationed at Duxford. His bomber was attacked over the channel by a Messerschmitt and he took shrapnel in the face. He was lucky to have survived. Damn lucky.
My Scottish neighbor talks about Cambridgeshire, where Duxford airfield is. He likes it there, but the airfield is soon to be transferred over to the USAAF.
“Fucking Yanks,” he says. He grins at me and then passes the cigarette back to the cook.
It occurs to me that the Scotsman is talking a lot, and that the sympathetic ear of the cook is doing a lot of listening.
The cook asks a question about the Scotsman’s barracks. The Scotsman answers. It’s a vague question, nothing significant.
It’s all surface conversation, idle talk while waiting for the fighting to finish. But underneath it, the cook is drawing out a reasonable understanding of the layout and floor plan of Duxford air base.
My God, is the cook a spy?
I close my eyes.
Of course he fucking is.
George is looking older. He’s twenty-four, like me, and he looks forty-five. He looks old enough to be my uncle. George is my good friend. I’ve known him since high school.
He doesn’t know what to say.
He looks at me and then away. He talks about the weather. He talks about the weather in New York and drums his fingers on the armrest of his chair.
George is a drummer. He’s stocky and looks as if he should be in pro football. Back in Manhattan, he plays in a swing band. Here in Europe, he’s a navigator. I bet he hasn’t seen a drum set for over a year.
George adjusts his collar. He dressed up for the visit. He’s not casual. His hair is combed. He really doesn’t know what to say.
It is subtle.
The cook makes his rounds with tea and cake in the games room. He is a happy, friendly face and always ready for some conversation. He is a fat, jolly man. He is your friend, and for a moment, he can make you forget about your pain.
This is not a battlefield, this is the drawing room of Lord So-and-so, and we’re all friends here. We’re all fellow combatants. We’re all on the same side. Our guards are down.
A young English boy—barely eighteen, shot down on his first mission and lost a leg—tells the cook about a tricky flight path he encountered.
An Australian talks about his aircraft. He’s proud of it.
Someone mentions that Hatfield airfield over in Hertfordshire has been patched up and reopened since it was bombed three months ago.
It goes on.
The cook doesn’t ask for any of this. He doesn’t solicit a word. But he is there, attentive, and ready to mop it all up, to wring it all out in his bucket.
The penalty for spying is a bullet in the head. That’s why Derek the cook killed Judy the nurse. He is a spy. She
found out about him. She had said, “I know.” This was what she knew.
I will get that fat son of a bitch.
I am screaming inside.
I have spent every moment for more than a week trying to move. I have tried to move every part of my body. My legs, my arms, my toes, my fingers.
I have tried by sheer force of will to induce my throat to make a sound, any sound, so as to be led back into speaking words.
My brain is in chaos.
I can’t move. I can’t speak.
I will not surrender to this. I will not give in. I have no idea if I will ever walk or talk again, but I will not surrender. This secret must come out. It has to come out. It cannot stay buried inside my head for eternity.
Nurse Anne looks at me.
She probably wonders why I am crying.
I close my eyes.
The only part of my body I can move is my eyes. The only part of me I can feel is my eyes.
I open them.
Nurse Anne has gone. I’m in the garden and staring at the birdhouse. The sun is directly overhead, and the birdhouse looks radiant.
I’m no more than a few feet from where that poor girl was murdered. This garden was the last thing she saw. It was the last place she knew.
There is a wire on the pole.
My eyes are blurred from my tears, but I can see a wire. There is a wire attached to the wooden pole holding up the birdhouse.
The wire runs up the pole out of the ground. It goes up into the birdhouse. It’s painted white, like the white of the pole.
It is certainly a wire. There are two tiny clips holding it in place.
Blink and you would miss it. Stare at the damn birdhouse as long and as often as I have, and you will eventually see it.
A question comes to my mind: Why have I never seen a bird in the birdhouse? Not in it, not on it, not near it?
There are plenty of birds here. I hear them in the trees all the time. Is the birdhouse some kind of radio transmitter, or an antenna?
Is this how the cook transmits his information? Is this why the nurse and the cook were in the garden?
Of course it fucking is.
Nurse Anne returns. She has a handkerchief. She wipes the tears from my eyes and face.
George has brought news from home. My mom and dad send their love. My mom is praying for me every day. My sister is sending me a book, maybe someone can read it to me.
After that, George doesn’t know what else to say. He drums his fingers on the arm of his chair.
He looks at me more today. This time, he is more relaxed.
I wish I could drum back. Maybe get up a rhythm along with him. I used to be able to pick out a reasonable tune on a piano.
I get a sudden, crazy idea.
I blink.
I blink in a rhythm.
George stares at me as if I am nuts.
I keep blinking.
He keeps staring.
Finally, he gets it.
“SOS?” George says. “You’re blinking SOS?”
I blink the Morse code for YES.
He nods. He understands.
Eyes closed short for dots. Eyes closed long for dashes.
I ask him how he is.
“I’m fine,” he says. “Thanks for asking.” He looks incredulous. He laughs with amazement.
I wish I could cheer and leap from my bed. I wish I could hug and kiss the great oaf.
Wait until he hears what I have to say next!
THE HONOUR OF DUNDEE
BY CHARLES TODD
Southwest England, 1920
Alice Miller came home from the churchyard after her husband’s services and walked directly into what he always called his study, the small room where he kept his memories and his books.
The box was on a shelf in the captain’s chest along the far wall—quickly found and quickly carried away. She held it before her as if it contained something virulent, something that she might breathe in or touch if she were not very careful.
It wasn’t enough to set it at the bottom of the garden. She walked through the small orchard to a copse of trees beyond it, close by the lane that went to Manor Farm. She had no shovel, not even a spoon to dig a hole. The ground was wet enough in this marshy country to serve her purpose. Scuffing in the thick layer of leaves, she made a shallow pit and put the box in it.
She had asked Harry to get rid of it as he lay dying, but he’d shaken his head and said it would stay in the chest as long as he drew breath. She would have taken it away as soon as she heard his death rattle, but there was the doctor, one of his nurses, and a neighbor come to comfort her. She hadn’t been alone since.
Dusting off her hands, as if to rid herself of contamination, she turned her back on the box and strode away, her eyes on the distant roofline of her cottage.
It was more than a week later that the children from the tenant farm discovered the box, the covering of leaves blown away and one corner standing higher than the other three.
Running to it, digging it out of the rotting leaves and muddy earth, they studied it for a moment, trying to decide what might be inside.
Toby tried the hasp. “It doesn’t open,” he said.
Lionel, leaning over his shoulder, said, “I’ll find a rock and bash it.”
“No.” Tim, the eldest, shook his head. “We don’t know what’s inside. It could break.”
“Pa has something in his workbox that will spring it,” Lionel offered.
“Let’s take it home,” Toby agreed. They brushed off the worst of the debris clinging to the box and set out for the farm.
But no amount of prying would force the hasp, and at length, bored with their find, they dropped it in the sitting room and went out to finish feeding the chickens.
Mrs. Tasker discovered it as she brought in more wood for the fire. Her first thought was to toss it in with the kindling, dirty as it was, and then she decided against it, because the brass hinges and hasp wouldn’t burn properly. On her way back to the kitchen she dropped it in the dustbin.
There it lay until her husband hauled the dustbins off to the tip.
An ex-soldier, scavenging for anything he might sell, discovered it on Saturday evening, and carried it away with him, trying to open it as he walked. But the hasp wouldn’t give and a good shake indicated it was empty. He gave up. Cleaned and then given a shine with scavenged brown shoe polish, the box was more presentable. He took it to the pub and offered it to the barkeep in return for a pint.
Grumbling, the barkeep accepted the barter, and set the box on a shelf behind the bar. There it lingered for more than a week, until he noticed it one evening and shook it to see if it rattled, as in coins. It didn’t, and he set it on the bar, intending to hand it back to the ex-soldier when next he showed his face, demanding payment for the ale he’d drunk, telling him that he didn’t care to be played for a fool.
Captain Jarvis saw it there, took it over to his table along with his whiskey and sandwich, and studied it for a time before trying the hasp. When it didn’t open, he sat back, gave the matter some thought while he finished eating, and then went back to the bar.
“Where did you get this?” he asked the man, who was busy serving a young couple.
“It’s yours for the price of the ale it cost me,” the barkeep replied sourly.
Without hesitation, Jarvis reached into his pocket and handed over several coins. He had taken the box and walked out the door before the barkeep realized that he could probably have asked a pound or more for the damned thing, and he swore under his breath.
Captain Jarvis went to the hotel down the street and put in a call to Scotland Yard, asking for Inspector Rutledge.
When Rutledge finally came to the telephone, the captain said, “Jarvis here. Did the Yard ever find that box missing from the Dundee Rifles Officers’ Mess?”
“No. It appears to have vanished. Why, what have you heard?”
“I think I have it. Sandalwood. There’s even still a scent abo
ut it. And the hasp, of course. Shall I bring it to London with me?”
“I’ll come to you. Where are you?”
Jarvis looked out the door of the telephone closet. A dozen or so people were coming into the hotel, laughing together as they walked toward the dining room. “I’m just outside Sedgemoor. A village called Worthington. I hadn’t planned on staying the night here, but I’ll wait for you at the hotel.”
He walked back to Reception, still holding the box in one hand. Several people glanced his way as he passed, but he thought it might be because he was a stranger.
A room was to be had, and he went out to fetch his valise before going up.
It was the next morning when Rutledge arrived, driving down the High until he spotted the Monmouth Hotel. The Poldern Hills were a low purple smudge in the hazy sunlight, and a ring around the sun promised rain.
He was given Jarvis’s room number and took the stairs two at a time on his way to number 26. If this box did belong to the Dundee Officers’ Mess, it would be the first fresh clue in nearly two decades in connection with a theft that had ended in two murders.
Rutledge tapped at the door, his mind still on the box. When Jarvis didn’t answer, he glanced into the bath down the passage, then retraced his steps and went into the hotel dining room. But Jarvis wasn’t there, either. Returning to Reception, he asked if the captain had left.
He had not, and Rutledge took the room’s second key from the clerk at the desk, and went back to number 26. The door was not locked after all, and when he stepped inside, he could see that the shades were still down and the lamp had burned itself out. Putting up the shades, he saw that Jarvis was still in his bed. But the sheet covering him was black with blood.
The captain had been stabbed in his sleep, for there was no sign of a struggle. And although Rutledge searched the room thoroughly, he could not find the box.
His first duty was to send for a doctor and alert the local constable. He did neither. Hamish, the voice in his head, a legacy of war and shell shock, disapproved, grumbling about taking matters into his own hands.
Shutting the door behind him and locking it, he went back down the stairs. Jarvis had somehow found the box in the vicinity of Worthington, for he’d called from this hotel. The question, then, was where had he been before he put through that telephone call?
Mystery Writers of America Presents the Mystery Box Page 26