‘Let’s go out somewhere tomorrow night,’ he said. ‘Get a drink and have dinner. We’ll stay out of public parks.’
‘I’d love to,’ I said, ‘but I have to go to my knitting circle.’
‘Can’t you skip it once?’
‘I can’t.’ I tried to think of a good reason. ‘I’m supposed to get a coffee afterwards with one of the women.’
‘Saturday night, then?’
‘Yes, that would be wonderful.’ My first – and only – ‘espionage’ operation would be over, I hoped, and I could relax and enjoy myself.
We heard Ada and Phoebe coming down the hall to the lounge, so we scurried to opposite ends of the couch. In unison we picked up sections of the evening newspaper.
Ada went upstairs, but Phoebe brought her cup of tea into the lounge. Phoebe was a kind woman. She was worried sick about her sons, she’d brought strangers to live in her home, and she was considerate of Dellaphine and Madeleine. Would she really disapprove if Joe and I enjoyed a discreet affair in her house? Ada wouldn’t care, and to hell with Henry.
Phoebe stirred her tea with a silver teaspoon monogrammed with an elaborate H, the initial of her last name. Earl Grey tea swirled around the rim of one of her bone china teacups. We never used either in our daily meals.
I guessed Phoebe was near fifty, but she seemed older to me. She wore her pre-war styled skirts below her knees and crimped her hair like she was still living in the thirties. She complained about all the changes brought about by the war, everything from married women leaving their children in day nurseries and going out to work, to servicemen wearing uniforms in church. She wanted her world to return to the way it was before the war. Most of us did not.
No, Phoebe was not a modern woman. She would be horrified if Joe and I did anything more than hold hands under her roof. Most likely she’d evict us if she caught us. And then where would we go? Share an apartment? It would be impossible to find a decent one without producing a marriage certificate to a potential landlord. I doubted we could afford it, anyway. A two and a half room apartment ran to about ninety dollars a month. And I didn’t know any woman who survived the damage to her reputation if the word got out she was shacked up. Some women thrived despite a non-conventional lifestyle, like Dora Bertrand, a lesbian who lived openly with her lover, but they were rare exceptions. Dora was a brilliant anthropologist critical to OSS’s work in the Pacific. I wasn’t.
Betty was at her accustomed place at her typewriter when I arrived at the office Friday morning. She looked like her old self. She’d repaired and polished her fingernails their usual bright red, and her hair was shiny, clean, and styled. But a different woman inhabited her body, a somber one, with her eyes hooded, concealing her feelings.
Ruth and Brenda weren’t in the office yet.
‘Hi,’ I said. ‘I’m so glad you’re here. How do you feel?’
‘Tired,’ she said. ‘And a little scared. But I’m OK.’
‘You follow the plan, and everything will work out. Myrna and Lil will help you.’
‘Myrna’s moving out,’ she said, ‘getting her own apartment.’
I bet she was. And I wondered again what Myrna’s ‘job’ with OSS was.
‘And, listen, thanks,’ she said. ‘Thanks for everything. I was too upset to think. I’ll do my best to keep myself together.’ Resolutely, she inserted a dictation tape into her Dictaphone and settled the earphones over her head. She pulled paper, onion-skin, and carbon paper from her drawer and rolled it into her typewriter.
Don Murray appeared at my office door. ‘Could you come down to my office, please, Mrs Pearlie, and bring your notebook with you?’
‘Of course,’ I said, grabbing my stenographer’s pad and a pencil.
I knew the instant I walked into Don’s office that something terrible had happened. Melinsky, in uniform, Don, and Max Corso, the head of the Italian desk for Special Intelligence, were all waiting for me.
‘Sit down, please, Mrs Pearlie,’ Corso said. He pulled the only comfortable chair in the office out for me. Don handed me a cup of coffee, a first. I steeled myself.
‘Our operation has been cancelled, Mrs Pearlie,’ Melinsky said.
‘Why?’ I asked, knowing they didn’t have to tell me. I gripped the arms of my chair so hard that my knuckles turned white with the effort. I was determined to behave professionally, even though my mind churned and my stomach cramped into the size of a walnut.
‘Alessa Oneto is dead,’ Corso said.
TWENTY-THREE
I struggled so hard to appear professional and controlled that I bit my tongue. I tasted the drop of blood in my mouth and pulled my handkerchief out of my sleeve to blot it quickly, so the men wouldn’t see.
‘What happened?’ I finally asked.
‘Here’s what we know,’ Melinsky said. ‘Our man at Union Station reported that Alessa and her husband’s secretary, Rossi, arrived from New York yesterday afternoon and took a taxi to the Mayflower. As we discussed earlier we kept our distance and didn’t tail them any further.’
‘Our agent in the DC Police called me this morning,’ Corso said, ‘to tell me that a Sicilian national killed herself at the Mayflower Hotel. It was Alessa Oneto.’
Impossible. Alessa would not kill herself, I thought, but I didn’t say so out loud. I didn’t want the men to think I was another hysterical woman.
‘How do they know it was suicide?’ I asked instead.
‘When Count Oneto woke up, Alessa was dead in their bed; had been for several hours, apparently,’ Don said. ‘The DC Police haven’t gotten much information out of the husband, he’s been distraught. But the mother-in-law said much of her laudanum and Nembutal was missing. The two women shared a bathroom, so Alessa could have taken a handful of pills as she was preparing for bed. And the secretary, Rossi, said that Alessa seemed depressed on the train ride home.’
I didn’t believe a word of it.
‘There will be an autopsy and an inquest, of course,’ Melinsky said. ‘The police have searched the crime scene and lifted fingerprints from the medicine bottles. We’ll find out the results from our agent.’
I framed my words so I’d seem unemotional about Alessa’s death. ‘Colonel Melinsky,’ I said, ‘it seems unlikely to me that Alessa Oneto killed herself. She was dedicated to this operation. If she came back from New York with the information promised by her asset, couldn’t that have had something to do with her death?’ I allowed myself to use the word I had been thinking all along. ‘Couldn’t she have been murdered? What about the FBI? Aren’t they involved in this, since Alessa was a refugee?’
‘Murder is unlikely,’ Don said. ‘An FBI agent was on the scene with the police, but he concluded Alessa’s death was a suicide and left the case to the police to wrap up.’
‘How could he be so sure?’
‘Louise,’ he said gently, ‘laudanum tastes vile in an amount large enough to kill. She wouldn’t have swallowed anything that tasted of it by accident. And if she’d been forced, there would have been evidence of it on her body or at the scene. The FBI concluded she took the laudanum willingly and went to bed as she usually did.’
‘There’s nothing OSS can do?’
‘We have no authority to conduct a domestic murder investigation,’ Corso interrupted. ‘And we can’t allow the police to know that Alessa was involved in an OSS operation. Police headquarters leaks like a sieve, and crime reporters would crawl all over it. If we tell the police that Alessa was involved with OSS, we might as well broadcast it on the radio. We have no choice but to turn over the file to the Office of Naval Intelligence. The Port of New York is their territory. Without Alessa OSS has no dog in this hunt.’
Melinsky nodded to the other two men and they left the room, leaving me with my handler – if he was still my handler.
‘I know you had a personal relationship with Alessa Oneto,’ Melinsky said.
‘I did. We were friends before all this.’
‘You do unders
tand that OSS involvement must stop now?’
‘Yes, I see that.’
Melinsky leaned back in his chair and pulled out his cigarette case.
‘I would like one of those,’ I said. ‘I don’t usually smoke, but . . .’
‘Of course,’ he said, handing me a Sobranie, and then lighting it for me.
I inhaled. The cigarette had more depth than a Lucky Strike; the smoke carried exotic flavors. I could see why people who could afford it splurged on them.
‘But,’ Melinsky continued, ‘we need to wrap up a couple of loose ends.’
So Alessa’s death was a loose end.
‘You will need to go on to your knitting circle tonight,’ he said. ‘How you’ll behave will depend on whether the news of Alessa’s death makes the afternoon papers. We will meet here before you leave work today. If her death is in the papers, with a picture, you will of course discuss it this evening. If not, you will simply wonder where she is.’
I wished acting were included in my training at ‘The Farm’. This was going to be challenging, to say the least.
‘“Anne” will be at the knitting circle, too.’
‘My babysitter?’ I said. ‘Why?’
‘Because we don’t know for sure what happened to Alessa. We don’t know if an enemy agent might be watching you, or if you’ve been tailed. For the same reason, Jack will pick you up at the designated rendezvous as usual. Instead of bringing you to me, though, he’ll drive around a bit to make sure no one is following you, and then drop you near your boarding house.’
‘OK,’ I said.
Melinsky rested his elbows on the desk and leaned forward. ‘Louise,’ he said, ‘be careful for a few days. Watchful. When you’re not at work stay at home. Until we see the final police report on Alessa’s death. If you need to talk to me, tell Don and he’ll arrange a meeting.’
‘Certainly,’ I said.
My foray into espionage was over. And I’d never see Alessa again.
I made it to the ladies restroom, thankfully empty, before my bowels turned to water and I permitted tears to form and fall. Afterwards I sat on the toilet seat, coiled into a tight ball with my feet resting on the edge of the toilet bowl, my arms around my knees and my head down. I needed a few minutes to pull myself together.
I was presentable, I thought, when I returned to the office. My girls thought otherwise.
‘Are you OK?’ Ruth asked. ‘You look so pale.’
‘I’m fine,’ I said.
‘Don’t get whatever illness Betty had,’ Brenda said.
Betty stiffened and tears came into her eyes, but she lowered her head over her typewriter and the other two girls didn’t notice.
I went to my desk and sorted index cards with a vengeance. Hours would pass until I spoke to Melinsky again, and more hours until I went to my knitting circle to play my part. I desperately wanted this day to end.
I was sure Alessa hadn’t committed suicide. It made no sense at all to me. I’d never noticed any despondency in her, or fear, which would have led to such a despairing act. She’d been murdered, I knew it, because of the information she’d brought back from New York. I doubted if Melinsky would even tell me what the police concluded after their investigation. Why would he? I was a cut-out. The less I knew, the better.
Melinsky and I met over a weak cup of coffee in the OSS cafeteria after most of the staff had gone home for the day.
‘It’s in the papers,’ Melinsky said, handing me copies of the Herald and the News. ‘There’s a photograph of her, and she’s identified as Countess Oneto.’
I unfolded the Herald. Alessa’s ‘suicide’ was reported below the fold on the front page. This would be all we’d talk about at the knitting circle tonight.
‘Memorize what’s in these articles,’ Melinsky said. ‘You should know nothing other than what’s in the newspapers. And what all the other knitters knew about Alessa from the evenings you spent together.’ Like how Alessa had disguised herself as a poor refugee. I knew that would come up in the conversation tonight.
I committed the brief paragraphs to memory and gave the papers back to Melinsky.
‘Play it by ear,’ Melinsky said. ‘You’re as shocked as anyone and as surprised that Alessa was a countess as the rest of them.’
‘Of course,’ I said.
Melinsky reached his hand over the table, and I took it. I barely felt his grip; I was still numb with shock.
‘It was good to know you,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we will cross paths again.’
Melinsky left, giving me a quick smile before he went out the door. I was alone except for a grizzled colored man mopping the floor. I wanted to throw my coffee cup at the wall and pound the scarred wooden table with both fists, but instead I rubbed my aching temples.
‘Bad day, miss?’ the colored man said as he came near with his mop.
‘Awful,’ I said. ‘Awful.’
He paused, then put a wiry hand on my shoulder. ‘Remember, miss,’ he said. ‘The Good Lord won’t send you nothin’ you can’t handle. You be stronger than you know.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. He patted my shoulder and moved away.
I was only being respectful to him. In less than a year I’d moved so far from my Southern Baptist roots that I well knew He could send me plenty of trouble I couldn’t handle. Look at what horrors went on in this world already! Depression, world war, millions of innocent people dead and displaced. Innocent dreams shattered forever. If God planned to intervene, He was taking his time about it. No, it was up to us humans to cope with this Armageddon all by ourselves. And it wasn’t clear yet that the good guys would win.
Alessa’s death was a tiny pebble cast into a maelstrom of horror, but it was enough to overwhelm me.
‘Dearie,’ Phoebe said, ‘are you all right? You look ill.’ She and Dellaphine had The Boston Cooking School Cookbook out, poring over recipes at the kitchen table, planning menus for the week ahead. Including Thanksgiving.
I’d learned at OSS to tell as close to the truth as possible when lying was necessary. The fewer falsehoods to get caught in, the better.
‘I’m terribly upset,’ I said. ‘A friend of mine has died, and the police are saying it’s suicide. I can’t believe it.’
‘A good friend? Someone we know?’ asked Dellaphine.
‘No,’ I said. ‘A woman from my knitting group.’
‘I’m so sorry, Louise,’ Phoebe said. ‘Let me fix you some tea.’ I would have liked a shot of Mr Holcombe’s bourbon, but figured it would be unwise to ask for it.
‘That would be lovely,’ I said.
The kettle came to a full head of steam quickly. Phoebe poured hot water into her china teapot – no newfangled tea bags for her – and let it steep. Soon I was sipping strong Earl Grey with honey and milk while watching Phoebe and Dellaphine sort through recipes. I felt calmer now that I was home.
Funny how I’d lived here at ‘Two Trees’ for less than a year, but I already thought of it as home.
We were a solemn group that gathered in the women’s club room of the Union Methodist Church that evening. The sexton had stoked the coal fire in the pot-bellied stove for us, so at least our bodies were warm, if not our spirits.
Our group was small, too. Me; Laura; Pearl of the gorgeous mink coat; another regular, Miriam, an older woman who rarely said much; and Anne, my babysitter.
‘Hi, everyone,’ she said. ‘I’m Anne. I heard about this group from my landlady. I hope you don’t mind if I join you tonight?’
‘Of course not,’ Laura said. ‘The more the merrier.’ Then she checked herself. ‘Though I’m afraid we’re not very merry tonight.’
‘Oh, why not?’ Anne said as she pulled her project out of a deep carpet-bag, a heavy khaki sweater and a tangle of knitting needles and yarn. There’d be a standard issue .45 caliber Colt revolver in the bottom of that bag, too. It would be much more effective than my knife, which I still carried in my pocketbook. So silly for me to have made so much of my ti
me at ‘The Farm’. My assumption of the title ‘agent’ embarrassed me now. I’d accomplished nothing and wouldn’t have the chance again.
‘One of our regulars died,’ Pearl said.
‘Oh no!’ Anne said. ‘How?’
‘It was in all the afternoon papers,’ Laura said. She was working on a pair of the fingerless gloves from the pattern she’d given us last week. ‘She killed herself!’
‘How awful,’ Anne said.
‘She was a refugee from somewhere in Italy,’ Pearl said, pulling off her wide gold bracelet with the diamond clasp so she could knit without impediment and dropping it carelessly into her pocketbook.
‘You knew her the best,’ Laura said, turning to me. ‘You lunched together a few times, didn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘She was a very sweet woman. I’m shocked that she’d do such a thing.’
‘Perhaps she couldn’t bear being away from home any more,’ Anne said.
‘You know the really crazy part?’ Laura said.
Here it comes, I thought.
‘She was a countess! And rich! She and her husband lived in a suite at the Mayflower. The picture in the paper showed her wearing a ball gown and a tiara!’
‘She pretended to be poor when she was with us,’ Pearl said. ‘She must have bought the clothes she wore at some thrift shop. Why do you think she did that, Louise?’
‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘But I can guess. So she could be herself, not get special attention?’
‘It was a disguise,’ Miriam said.
My heart began to pound. Surely this mousy woman had no idea of Alessa’s plan.
‘A disguise?’ Pearl asked. ‘What do you mean a disguise?’
‘She didn’t want to be herself,’ Miriam said. ‘She was ashamed.’
‘What on earth of?’ Laura asked.
‘Of being a wealthy foreigner, with nothing to do but live in a fancy hotel safe and sound, while our boys are fighting for her country. It would shame me, I can tell you.’
I exhaled slowly in relief.
‘It’s a sad story,’ Anne said. ‘I’m sorry for her.’
‘And I just dropped a stitch,’ I said. The silence that followed told me we were all remembering how Alessa always repaired my mistakes.
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