Louise's Blunder

by Sarah R. Shaber

  ‘You are Mrs Louise Pearlie,’ he said.

  ‘How did you know that?’ I asked. He knew my name and had intercepted me walking up the steps to an OSS divisional office. Again I had a sense of apprehension. I was wary that a stranger, even a policeman, knew my name and where I worked.

  ‘I’m the detective who was called to the scene of Paul Hughes’ drowning,’ he said. ‘Last Monday. And you’re the woman who visited his landlady, Mrs Nighy, the following Wednesday, to question her about Hughes’ absence from work, long before the Metropolitan Police even knew who the man was. I want to talk to you about that visit.’

  Oh my God! I had given Mrs Nighy my real name! And identified myself as coming from Hughes’ office! What had I been thinking! That was a beginner’s mistake. No matter how casual I thought the inquiry was, I should never have given anyone a way to trace me back to OSS!

  ‘How did you find out where I worked?’ I asked.

  ‘An FBI agent owed me a favor,’ he said. The FBI kept secured files on all government personnel. Mine was a little thicker than most. ‘Oh, and I know Paul Hughes worked here too.’

  I feigned innocence as best I could.

  ‘Of course, Detective, I would be glad to help, but I don’t see why you need to talk to me. Poor Mr Hughes drowned accidentally. At work we couldn’t have known that, we only wanted to know where he was. I’m just a file clerk. My boss sent me to his boarding house to ask about him.’

  ‘Did he?’ Royal asked. ‘Did Hughes drown accidentally? Are you sure of that?’

  Stragglers from the reception came hurrying up the hill, glancing at me curiously as they went by. I had to get away from Royal before he attracted any more attention to me.

  ‘I don’t think my superiors would want me to talk to you,’ I said. ‘I’d have to ask permission.’

  ‘Ma’am,’ he said, ‘if you don’t meet me for breakfast at seven a.m. tomorrow at the café on the corner of Twenty-first and “H”, I’m going to get in my police car and drive right here. Then I’m going to limp right up those stairs and tell your boss I need to speak to you and I’m going to be cranky because those steep stone steps are going to make my knee ache. And at the end of all this your boss will learn that you made a mistake that is going to damage his good opinion of you.’

  I couldn’t take the chance that Major Wicker would find out I had done something so stupid as to give Mrs Nighy my real name. I’d be doing nothing but filing index cards until the war was over and then be grateful to find work as a shop girl.

  ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’ll be there.’

  ‘Smart girl,’ he said. ‘Don’t be late.’

  ‘I’ll have two eggs over medium, bacon, and biscuits with butter and jelly, and plenty of coffee,’ Royal said.

  ‘Adam and Eve on a raft,’ the waitress repeated. ‘But we ain’t got no jelly.’

  Royal showed her his badge, and she shrugged. ‘OK. Maybe we got a little jelly. Ma’am?’ she asked me. ‘Are you ready to order?’

  ‘Toast and tea,’ I said. The waitress ripped the order off her pad and took it behind the kitchen counter where she clipped it to the rotating order rack.

  ‘Off your feed?’ Royal asked.

  ‘I didn’t sleep very well last night,’ I said. I hadn’t been able to eat anything except crackers since Royal introduced himself to me yesterday. I was so fearful that my bosses at OSS would discover that I was too careless to be trusted with my Top Secret clearance.

  It was early and the café wasn’t as crowded as it would be in half an hour. Royal pulled a chair over from an empty table and propped a leg up on it.

  ‘Bad knee,’ he said. ‘Second Battle of the Marne. It was a miracle I didn’t lose the leg. Sometimes I wish I had.’

  ‘Detective,’ I said. ‘What is it you want to ask me? I’m happy to cooperate. But I have to be at work at eight thirty.’

  The waitress brought our food. Royal tucked into his and I nibbled at my toast.

  ‘Mrs Pearlie,’ he said, ‘I want you to help me find out who murdered Paul Hughes.’

  ‘What!’ I said. ‘What do you mean?’ I felt like the tiny bit of toast I’d swallowed was choking me. ‘Hughes drowned.’

  ‘That he did,’ Royal said. ‘But not until someone knocked him unconscious and tossed him into the Tidal Basin.’

  ‘I thought he fainted and hit his head …’

  ‘If Mr Hughes had fainted near enough to the Tidal Basin to land on the rocks he’d be covered with bruises, not just the honking great goose egg he had on his head. I think he was struck from behind with one of those rocks and dumped unconscious into the water.’

  Royal paused to butter his biscuit.

  ‘But the case has been closed,’ I said.

  ‘Ma’am,’ Royal said, ‘what I am telling you is that the minute your friend Mr Hughes was identified word came down from above to close the file on his death. Which means I am forbidden to investigate his death further. Officially Hughes died from an accidental drowning despite all the signs that his death was a homicide.’

  ‘You don’t know he didn’t just drown!’ I argued. ‘Everyone has accepted it.’

  Hughes leaned toward me and lowered his voice. ‘I’m an old policeman,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen everything. When a dead man has nothing in his pockets, no wallet, no pocketknife, no handkerchief, not even a canceled bus ticket, he’s been stripped for a reason. What, you think a turtle made off with his wallet? The man was murdered, that’s all there is to it, and your Oh So Secret friends are hushing it up!’

  I was too shaken to speak.

  ‘And the District Chief of Detectives is too gutless to defy them,’ Royal said, the blood vessels at his temples bulging. ‘And I’m forbidden to investigate a homicide. I’m expected to ignore cold-blooded murder and occupy myself with stolen ration coupons! You know what else? My lieutenant, who can barely shave, thinks I’m too decrepit to do good work anymore! The only reason I was dispatched to the Hughes scene was because it was supposedly just an accident.’ Royal kept his voice to a whisper, but his fists were clenched so that his knuckles were white. I hoped he didn’t have a heart attack.

  ‘If the police did classify Hughes’ death as murder,’ Royal continued, ‘I’d be pulled off the case pronto and some hotshot young fellow who’d been to the new police academy would get the job.’

  I kept my mouth shut. This guy harbored a grudge that predated Hughes’ death and I had no intention of commenting on it.

  ‘Sorry,’ Royal said. ‘I get worked up sometimes. Want some jelly for your toast?’ He pushed the dish of strawberry jelly over to me. The way I felt I couldn’t eat it if my life depended on it.

  But what Royal had said about Hughes’ death made sense. I thought through it all while Royal finished his breakfast and drank his coffee refill. After the waitress took away our plates, mine looking like a mouse with a toothache had been nibbling at the edges of my toast, I got down to business.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ I asked. ‘I’m just a file clerk.’

  ‘A file clerk who was trusted by an armchair general from your three-letter agency to question Mrs Nighy about Hughes’ absence. Mrs Nighy happily told me your name when I called on her after we found out the results of Hughes’ fingerprints. But when I got back to the precinct my lieutenant told me that the case was closed – the coroner had ruled accidental death. I was supposed to go home and take a nap or something. But I had your name. So I tracked you down and found you at your Oh So Social government agency run by college boys. And you know what? I am going to solve this murder if it’s the last thing I do, and throw it in the Chief of Detectives’ face! And you’re going to help me.’

  If OSS had insisted the District police close the investigation on Paul Hughes’ death it meant one of two things. First, they accepted Hughes’ death as accidental and just wanted to keep the story out of the news. Spy agencies liked their privacy. Or, OSS was suspicious, too, and wanted to investigate Hughes’ poss
ible murder themselves, for the same reason, to keep it out of the public eye.

  ‘Tell me everything you learned at Mrs Nighy’s house on Wednesday, and I’ll keep you out of all this.’

  I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t see that I knew much of any importance, not enough to imperil my career. So I told him. How Mrs Nighy didn’t have a telephone. How she got a telegram from Hughes’ mother telling her that he was ill and wouldn’t be back until he was well.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘That’s all.’

  ‘Baloney. I don’t believe it. Hughes’ room is right in the front of the house. Didn’t you go in it? You’re a spy, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Keep your voice down, and I’m not. OK, I searched Hughes’ room.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  So I told him that Hughes’ personal effects were still in his bedroom and that Mrs Nighy told me he never took luggage to his mother’s because he kept a set of clothes and toiletries at her place.

  ‘Anything else at all that was suspicious?’

  ‘Not that I can think of.’ There was no way I was going to tell Royal about ‘G’. I was willing to share all the throwaway information I could to save my job, but not something that might actually be valuable to OSS. I had given Hughes’ note directly into the hands of Major Wicker of the OSS Security Office, and I wasn’t going to say anything to Royal about it, even if he held my feet over a fire.

  The café began to fill with government workers in a hurry. Hughes handed three dollars to our waitress and told her to keep the change. He lifted his leg carefully off the chair he’d commandeered, which he shoved back to its spot at a nearby table.

  ‘I have to go,’ I said. Thank God this was over. I’d told the man all I knew and would soon be shot of him.

  ‘One more thing,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve told you everything I know. I’m done.’

  ‘I need you to locate Paul Hughes’ personnel file for me.’

  ‘No!’ I said. ‘Are you a lunatic?’

  ‘No ma’am,’ he said. ‘Stubborn and cranky, but not loony. Find Hughes’ personnel file and take notes on it. You can leave out the secret bits. I want to know the basics – birth, residence, education, parents’ address, all that everyday stuff. If I was assigned to the case I could find it out myself.’

  ‘I can’t!’

  ‘Sure you can. Unless you want me to stroll over to that big building with the columns – the one that used to be the naval hospital – and tell them how I found you. Or get in touch with the FBI. They’re familiar with you, aren’t they?’

  ‘That’s blackmail!’

  ‘Sure it is. You don’t doubt I’d do it, do you?’

  ‘No, you creep!’

  ‘Don’t hold yourself back.’

  ‘You bastard!’ I think that was the first time I’d ever spoken that curse out loud.

  ‘I have no intention of harming you, Mrs Pearlie, but I’ve had a young man murdered in my jurisdiction. I intend to find out who did it. If some important government agency then decides it has to be hushed up, well, so be it. But we’re going to know who the murderer is. Otherwise we can’t pretend to be more civilized than the scum we’re fighting.’

  He drained his cup of coffee. ‘I’ll meet you here tomorrow, same time,’ he said. ‘And you can give me your notes on Hughes’ file. OK?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘This is how it will be. I won’t remove any documents from OSS. I won’t photocopy any documents. I won’t take any notes. I’ll memorize the basics about Hughes, information you might be able to find out for yourself if you hadn’t been taken off the case.’

  ‘All I want is his birth date, his mother’s name and address in Fredericksburg, stuff like that. Something to start with.’

  ‘That’s all you’re getting.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll meet you here tomorrow.’

  ‘No. Wait in front of the Western Market on ‘K’, just past 23rd. I’ll meet you there. We’ll walk to a café of my choice for breakfast.’

  Royal leaned into me and whispered, smiling, ‘You are a spy.’

  I whispered back. ‘This is not a joking matter. Use that word again and I’ll go straight to OSS Security and tell them all about you. I’m sure blackmailing a government employee, especially in time of war, is a seditious act.’

  FIVE

  Give the female employee [ … ] a definite day-long schedule of duties so that she’ll keep busy without bothering the management for instructions every few minutes. Numerous properties say that women make excellent workers when they have their jobs cut out for them but that they lack initiative in finding work themselves.

  ‘1943 Guide to Hiring Women’, Mass Transportation magazine, July 1943.

  I stayed at my desk as lunch hour neared waiting for the number of people in the Registry to dwindle. I wanted as few witnesses to my search for Paul Hughes’ personnel file as possible. By twelve thirty the Registry was as empty as it ever got.

  I made my way to the personnel index files and looked up Paul Hughes’ card. Good, the ‘H’ personnel files were located just one floor up outside a ladies’ restroom, which could serve as my cover.

  There was just one other girl in the toilet and she ignored me, focusing on putting on her make-up and brushing her hair. I didn’t recognize her, so there was a good chance that she didn’t know me either. I washed my face and hands and cleaned my glasses, waiting for her to leave. When I left the restroom I found the hall empty, so I darted down the ‘H’ aisle, opened the correct file drawer and riffled through the contents. Hughes’ file wasn’t there. In its place was a yellow card that read ‘moved to L file’.

  Hughes’ personnel records had been sent to the Limited file, which was only available to authorized personnel. It was created to house the Special Intelligence Branch documents, but the big men at OSS could stamp any file they wanted with the ‘L’ designation.

  Who would send Hughes’ personnel file to the Limited file room? Perhaps Major Wicker or Don Murray wanted to keep Hughes’ personal information away from prying staff. Like me!

  I slid the file cabinet door closed and made my way back to my own desk. Lunchtime was over. The returning file clerks were clustered around the coffee cart that was parked in the middle of the Registry aisles. I got my cup and joined a few of the girls standing around the cart. I was glad to see Ruth, who’d worked with me in the early days. She was a Mount Holyoke graduate who wore pearls every day, even under a denim jumpsuit.

  ‘I haven’t seen you on the bus recently,’ I said. ‘Have you been coming in early?’

  She shook her head. ‘Jack picks me up almost every morning now,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know when we started dating how convenient it would be to have a beau with a motorcycle and sidecar.’

  She drained her cup and grasped the handle of her file cart. That’s what Ruth did. She filed all day long, pushing her cart down long aisles, A to Z, until her cart was empty, then filling it up again at the return tables in the Reading Room. She wore gloves to protect her hands and a leather apron to cover her clothes.

  ‘Want to have lunch today?’ I asked.

  ‘Can’t,’ she answered, ‘I’m meeting Jack. I made a picnic lunch. We like to eat outdoors when it’s pretty.’

  She expertly maneuvered her cart in the narrow aisle and headed toward the elevator.

  I went back to my desk with my cup of coffee and mulled over Hughes’ personnel file.

  I had Top Secret clearance so I could go into the Limited file room. There was an ‘L’ return table just outside the door to said file room, and the guard knew who was authorized to pick up those files and take them inside. I just had to wait until there were files stacked on the table that needed to be returned, collect them, take them inside to put away and locate Hughes’ file. Simple.

  I walked over to the Reading Room. Almost every chair was full already. The Trident Conference was in full swing and the J
oint Chiefs needed answers to dozens of questions. The ‘L’ return table was empty. I’d need to wait until it was stacked with files to pull off my plan.

  On my next trip to the Reading Room the return table held enough files for me to look like I was working when I picked up an armful. The guard at the door to the ‘L’ room recognized me but he did his duty and checked my tag – which displayed my picture, employee number and security clearance, but not my name – and nodded for me to go inside.

  Once inside the dim room I breathed a heavy sigh of relief. I turned on the bank of overhead lights. The only window let in little light, but that was compromised by the heavy bars that criss-crossed it, and drawn blinds. A notice read ‘Do Not Open the Blinds or Window’. I felt almost as if I were in jail.

  I quickly filed the folders I had picked up from the return table. I paused in front of the ‘H’ drawer, suddenly nervous. I could sense my heart pounding and feel the sweat gathering in the small of my back. I had to do this, I told myself. I couldn’t take the chance that Sergeant Royal would tell OSS that I’d made such a basic mistake when questioning Mrs Nighy. Besides, I had the clearance to be here and I wasn’t going to reveal any secrets. It would be OK.

  I found Paul Hughes’ personnel file. ‘Analyst, Europe/Africa Section’, stamped ‘L’ and ‘Top Secret’. Why Top Secret? Swiftly I opened it. And my hope for a quick exit from this messy business vanished.

  Paul Hughes’ parents were both dead. His father, Samuel Paul Hughes, had died in 1937. His mother, Mariella Hodgson Hughes, died the following year. Hughes’ next of kin was a sister, Mary Hughes Perkins, who lived in Knoxville, Tennessee. A mortuary receipt showed that Hughes’ body had been shipped to a funeral home in Knoxville.

  Hughes’ home address was listed as the boarding house where he lived. His death certificate was signed by a District medical examiner that listed the cause of death as ‘drowning incidental to head injury’. I flipped through the autopsy pictures. Years of cleaning fish had given me a strong stomach. The photo of Hughes’ head showed a very substantial bruise behind his right ear. He would have had to fall from a great height to have had a lump like that. And if he had, why weren’t there more bruises on his body, as Royal had suggested?