Louise's Blunder

by Sarah R. Shaber

  Joe and I had come very close to becoming lovers while he lived here. But we were afraid Phoebe would discover us and be so shocked she’d send me away and I couldn’t afford an apartment on my own. Washington was just too crowded. And I was worried about my job.

  Having an affair with a foreign refugee was not a good way for an OSS employee to keep her Top Secret clearance and her job.

  So Joe’s transfer was at first a relief to both of us. But when we discovered that an old friend could lend Joe his flat in Williamsburg we realized that I could travel to New York for weekends and could enjoy our affair in anonymity. Of course I had agreed. I just didn’t know when I could go. I felt a hot flush spread from my groin upward until my face burned. Misery, indeed!

  I shoved the letter into my pocket just in time.

  ‘Louise,’ Ada said. ‘What on earth are you doing standing under the staircase? And in your bare feet! It’s so damp. You’ll catch a cold.’ Ada had just come home from playing clarinet for a tea dance at the Willard. She was still wearing a silk dress and heels.

  ‘Don’t be silly, city girl!’ I said, wiggling my toes in the cool earth. ‘It feels good! And I am going into the basement to check on the baby chicks.’

  ‘You can get into the basement from the kitchen.’

  ‘I went to look at the garden first.’

  Henry, our male boarder, and I had dug up every last bit of the back yard that got enough sun to grow vegetables. We’d already eaten spring greens from it – early lettuce and spinach – and the tomatoes, corn, squash and potatoes were coming along nicely.

  ‘Come see the chicks with me, they’re so sweet,’ I said to Ada.

  The previous winter had been too severe for last year’s flock of chickens to survive outside in their coop. We’d had no choice but to sacrifice them to Dellaphine’s cast-iron skillet. This spring Phoebe and I had bought twenty baby Plymouth Rock chicks to replace them. I loved the adult Plymouth Rocks’ black and white stripes. Right now they were just soft fuzzy black babies.

  As soon as Ada and I went into the basement I heard the chicks peeping. We were raising them in a cage near the boiler until they were large enough to go outside into the chicken coop. They had plenty of food and water. Henry had rigged up a light bulb to keep them warm.

  ‘God, do they ever stop peeping?’ Ada asked.

  ‘Not until they’re grown,’ I said. I scooped a tiny bit of chirping fluff up into my hand. Its peeping ratcheted up a couple of notches. ‘Just touch her,’ I said. Ada reached out a hand and patted the chick’s head. ‘She’s so soft and tiny,’ she said.

  ‘I think we got a healthy batch,’ I said, placing the frantic chick back in the cage with her sisters. ‘We’ve only lost one. And there’s just one rooster.’ We’d requested all hens but it was difficult to sex baby chicks and the seller couldn’t guarantee every chick was a female. We’d have the rooster for Sunday dinner once he began to crow and annoy the neighbors.

  The pathologist lit a cigarette after he pulled a sheet over the victim’s head.

  ‘So, doc, what’s the scoop?’ Detective Royal said. ‘Did he drown, or what?’

  ‘Oh, he drowned all right,’ the pathologist said. ‘His lungs and airway are full of water. But I can’t say for sure it was an accident.’

  Royal stubbed out his own cigarette on the steel examining table before pulling a narrow notebook and pencil from his topcoat pocket.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ he asked.

  ‘Well,’ the pathologist answered. ‘It’s the lump on the back of his head that concerns me. His skull was fractured. Now he could have fallen and hit his head on a rock and rolled into the water. The shoreline of the Tidal Basin is sloped and lined with rocks. Or he could have been blotto, there’s some alcohol in his bloodstream. But it could also be that he was intentionally hit on the head and thrown into the water.’

  ‘You can’t tell if he got the head injury before or after he went into the water?’

  The pathologist shook his head. ‘That’s not within my power. Sorry.’ He flicked off the bright examining light and flung the stark morgue into dimness. The only natural light in the room came from a tall glass window with a red stained-glass cross embedded in it. The red shaft of light lit up the long room of refrigerated metal drawers that lined the morgue wall opposite the window.

  Royal stopped taking notes. ‘Seems to me that this can’t be an accident since his pockets were empty. Where was his wallet?’

  ‘That’s your area of expertise, not mine,’ the pathologist said. ‘Your fingerprint guy was here earlier by the way, he said he got good prints.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Royal said, ‘we sent them off to the FBI. Their fingerprint girls are the best. If his are on file we should know within a week.’

  Royal was an old-fashioned detective, trained long before the FBI had begun to analyze blood and hair and laundry marks. He knew that once the victim was identified all he had to do was retrace the victim’s previous twenty-four hours to find out what had happened to him. It wasn’t always easy, but it worked.

  ‘Churchill arrived today,’ Henry said, helping himself to a steaming bowl of Dellaphine’s chicken and dumplings. ‘I read he’s staying at the White House, not at the British Embassy with the rest of the delegation.’

  ‘I’m surprised by that,’ Phoebe said. ‘Eleanor Roosevelt cannot stand the man. He drinks all day, and those awful cigars!’

  Churchill and an assortment of British lords, admirals and generals, including Lord Louis Mountbatten, had just arrived in Washington for the Trident Conference to plan an invasion of Europe. In April the American and British navies had driven the Nazi submarine fleet back to its den at Saint-Nazaire for good, clearing the Atlantic for allied transport and supply ships. It was time to make plans to conquer Italy, bomb Germany into dust and take Europe back from the Nazis. That was one reason the Reading Room was jammed with OSS staff. They were answering queries coming in by the hour from the American delegates to the Trident Conference.

  Every single power involved in this war desperately wanted to know what the Americans and British were discussing at Trident, even their allies. Obviously the conference was the target of dozens of spies. Which might be why OSS Security was so interested in the files Paul Hughes had been reading.

  ‘The Washington Post seems quite optimistic about the course of the war,’ Ada said. ‘One of the editorials predicted we’d invade soon.’

  Not for a year at least, I thought. If then. The effort required would be unprecedented.

  ‘Things are looking up,’ Henry said. ‘I just hope Roosevelt listens to Churchill.’

  Looking up only in the sense that planning for the real war could begin. Yes, Rommel had been defeated in North Africa, the North Atlantic shipping lanes were clear, but Germany had an iron grip on Europe. What did they call it? Fortress Europe?

  ‘I heard,’ said Ada, who’d changed into a black dress for her gig that night, ‘that Churchill sleeps until noon and has a scotch and water even before he gets out of bed! And that he wanders around his rooms naked after his bath!’

  I’d been told the same story at work. Apparently President Roosevelt surprised the Prime Minister after his bath, rolling quietly into Churchill’s bedroom in the middle of the afternoon. ‘Well, Mr President,’ Churchill had said, ‘at least there’s nothing coming between us.’

  Phoebe tapped her glass with her spoon and cleared her throat.

  ‘I’d like to tell you all something I’ve been keeping quiet about for a long time.’ she said, ‘because I’m so excited about it I didn’t want to jinx it.’

  ‘Hurry up and tell us, then,’ Henry said.

  ‘Yes, Phoebe, please do!’ Ada said.

  What was this, I wondered?

  Still Phoebe hesitated, as if she couldn’t quite bring herself to say such wonderful words.

  ‘I told you that Milt Junior was injured at Guadalcanal,’ she said. ‘Not seriously. He’s been in a hospital in Ade
laide. Well, he’s coming home! For two weeks leave!’ Phoebe twisted her napkin into a ball and beamed.

  ‘Oh, Phoebe, I’m so happy for you,’ I said. ‘That’s grand!’

  ‘How thrilling,’ Ada said. ‘You must be so excited!’

  Henry nodded, agreeing. ‘I’m looking forward to meeting the boy,’ he said. ‘When does he arrive?’

  ‘I don’t really know yet,’ Phoebe said. ‘I’ll get a telegram in the next few days.’

  Dellaphine brought a tray into the room and began to load up our dirty dishes.

  ‘Did you know about Milt?’ Ada asked her.

  ‘Yes ma’am,’ Dellaphine said. ‘It’s mighty good news.’

  We could all only guess at the worry Phoebe had experienced since her sons had been in the Pacific. She’d lost weight in the year and a half I’d been living here. And it seemed she took more and more Nembutal as the weeks went by. Sherry evenings were more frequent too. Dellaphine was concerned, I could tell by the way she looked when the Peoples Drug Store van delivered Ada’s prescription. Phoebe must be so relieved. Tom, her younger son, was safeguarding military supplies on some remote Pacific island behind the lines. And now Milt was coming home on leave.

  Dellaphine brought in the dessert, green grapes suspended in red cherry Jell-O. I ate it because I was hungry, but Jell-O was on my list of foods never to eat after the war ended, ever!

  After Phoebe and Henry went into the lounge Ada caught me up in the hall. She took me by the arm.

  ‘My taxi’s waiting, I have to get to work,’ she said. ‘I hate to sound selfish, but where is Milt going to sleep?’ The same question had crossed my mind. Surely Phoebe wouldn’t want Milt to sleep up in the attic bedroom with Henry. That left our rooms.

  ‘It’s just for a couple of weeks,’ I said. ‘We could take turns sleeping on the sofa.’

  ‘I have a friend I might be able to crash with for a while,’ Ada said. ‘I would hate to lose my room here.’

  ‘Me, too,’ I said.

  ‘Do you think we could share an apartment?’ she said. ‘Our different hours might drive us both loony, though.’ If Ada and I shared a two-and-a-half, which would be all I could afford, it would have one living room, one bedroom and a kitchenette. We’d have to share the bedroom. Ada could afford an apartment of her own, but the District Housing Authority wouldn’t be likely to approve it.

  ‘Let’s just hope it works out so we can stay here,’ Ada said. ‘It’s hard to imagine living somewhere else now.’

  Ada went out the front door to her waiting taxi and I went into the lounge to join Phoebe and Henry. The sherry service was on the table and Henry and Phoebe were already raising glasses to toast Milt’s homecoming. I was happy to join them.

  When I got to work the next morning Pat, the messenger, was sitting on the corner of my desk waiting for me.

  ‘Mrs Pearlie,’ he said, ‘Don’t put down your things. You’re wanted in Mr Lewis’s office right away.’

  I glanced over at Jesse Shera, my boss, who stood nearby. He nodded his OK to me.

  Once more I walked across the street into the main OSS compound and up the wide stairs of the former naval hospital to the top floor hall where the OSS big shots had their offices. Lewis’s secretary barely acknowledged me as she waved me into his office.

  Lewis wasn’t there. Instead Major Angus Wicker waited for me in one of the leather chairs. His uniform was even more wrinkled than it had been yesterday.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Pearlie,’ he said. ‘Please sit down.’

  I sat, feeling oddly uncomfortable with my hat and pocket-book in my lap.

  ‘I need your assistance again today,’ he said.

  Oh goody. Making lists of files was only slightly more interesting than cataloguing and filing and would lose its appeal to me very soon.

  ‘Mr Hughes isn’t at work again today,’ he said. ‘And he hasn’t called us.’

  ‘What do you think has happened?’ I asked.

  ‘We have no idea,’ Wicker said, ‘and it concerns us.’

  He uncrossed his legs and leaned toward me.

  ‘You saw yesterday that some of the files he checked out of the Reading Room were, shall we say, not in Mr Hughes’ area of study. We don’t suspect him of anything yet, not at all. But with the Trident Conference in town, let’s just say that allied intelligence is a valuable commodity.’

  I could feel the pulse beating in my temple. Was Hughes passing OSS intelligence? If so, to whom? Ally or enemy?

  ‘I need a jolly girl such as yourself to drop by Mr Hughes’ boarding house,’ he said. ‘Talk to his landlady. Just say he’s been missed at work and there’s concern about his whereabouts. You can pretend to be a secretary sent by his boss. You won’t need to say what office you’re from, no one expects that these days.’

  ‘There’s no telephone at his boarding house?’

  ‘The landlady doesn’t have one.’ That wasn’t unusual. It took months to get permission from the War Production Board to buy a telephone.

  ‘All right, of course,’ I said. ‘Right now?’

  ‘Right now. As if you’d gotten to work and your boss sent you out right away. Here’s the address.’ Wicker handed me an index card. It read ‘905 25th Street’; that was in Foggy Bottom, a neighborhood north of OSS headquarters and west of my own. I tucked the card in my pocketbook.

  ‘And this,’ he said, handing me another slip of paper, ‘is my direct telephone number. If I don’t answer it, my secretary will. Memorize it.’

  I did, and gave the paper back to him.

  ‘And,’ he said, giving me an envelope and a form, ‘some cash for the bus and lunch. Please sign the receipt.’ I did so and began to feel my heart rate surge. An adventure loomed!

  Maybe few people would think that taking the bus to a boarding house and asking a landlady the whereabouts of a boarder was exciting, but I did! As the bus wound its way through the streets of Foggy Bottom I found myself picturing wild scenarios about Hughes for which I had no evidence whatsoever.

  Hughes could be a German mole, planted in the United States years ago, who’d mined the OSS files for intelligence, slipped it to the Nazis, and now had fled. Maybe to Mexico. I had previous experience with an embedded Nazi spy, so I knew it wasn’t impossible. Or perhaps Hughes had gone underground, with a new cover story, and was hidden in a closet at the Federal Reserve Building where the Trident Conference was being held, tuned in to several listening devices, ready to sell his information to the highest bidder. No one could say I didn’t have a vivid imagination.

  I got off the bus at 25th Street and went down the street, stopping in front of a tiny cottage, part of a short row of similar cottages that I suspected were once servants’ quarters for the double row house on the corner. I double-checked the address. This place was way too small for a boarding house. But I had the right place so I walked up to the front door and knocked. I could hear a radio playing classical music inside.

  I was just about to knock again when the front door opened revealing a little elderly woman wearing a pink apron studded with embroidered strawberries. She used way too much bluing in her hair.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘can I help you?’

  ‘Mrs Nighy?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My name is Louise Pearlie,’ I began.

  ‘Do come in,’ she said, ‘the sun is making my eyes water.’

  Entering a dark hallway I glimpsed a lounge off to the left where Mrs Nighy had set up her ironing board. Two cats, one black and one a tabby, regarded me lazily from a davenport. The house was so small I could see all four rooms from where I stood. A half-closed door at the back of the house, opposite the kitchen, showed a slice of what had to be Mrs Nighy’s bedroom. Lots of pink flounced across the window curtains and a knitting project lay across the bed. In front of the house, across from the lounge (this door ajar too), I saw Hughes’ room. The embroidered white curtains at the window were feminine, but the trousers thrown across
the foot of the bed belonged to a man.

  I heard a kitchen timer sound off.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Mrs Nighy said, ‘let me get my biscuits out of the oven and I’ll be right back.’

  When she turned toward the kitchen I slipped into Hughes’ room. I hoped Mrs Nighy moved slowly.

  Hughes’ dopp kit sat on his dresser. His desk held a map of Europe secured by a glass with a quarter inch of brown liquid in it. It smelled like bourbon. A battered leather briefcase, a narrow one secured with a flap that buckled, rested on the desk chair. Holding my breath I flipped open the satchel flap. There were no OSS files or documents inside. In fact there was nothing in the satchel except a half-sheet of notepaper that read ‘G. Sunday 9th’. Quickly I stuffed the note in my pocket.

  I was waiting, a little breathless, for Mrs Nighy when she came back into the hall.

  ‘Do come sit down,’ she said, leading me into the lounge.

  I sat in a faded pink wing chair, one of a pair on either side of a petite fireplace meant to burn coal, and she took the other.

  The black cat jumped off the davenport and meandered over to us, lying down on the rug between us as if to protect her owner.

  ‘I’m doing my ironing,’ Mrs Nighy said. ‘I just have the one boarder, and the laundries are so busy, it’s no bother to wash and iron his things.’

  ‘Speaking about your boarder,’ Louise said, ‘I’m calling to ask you about him. Paul Hughes?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Such a lovely man. No trouble at all. I was lucky to draw his name. He’s quite tidy and so quiet. He reads in his room every evening after dinner. Rarely goes out except to visit his mother on the weekends.’

  ‘As I was saying,’ I said, ‘I’m from his office. He hasn’t been to work for two days, and we haven’t heard from him. You don’t have a telephone, I suppose?’