Gladys started and a scowl crossed her face. She threw her cigarette butt into an empty flowerpot. ‘What is this about, Ben?’ she asked.
Williams started around the house.
‘I’m looking for Frank,’ Long said.
‘He’s not here. I told these two that. He’s working at the base.’
‘Can we come in?’
‘Does it matter what I say?’ she said.
Once inside, Long glanced at me and then nodded at the staircase. ‘Mrs Pearlie, would you be so kind as to search the second floor? There are three bedrooms and a bathroom. Don’t worry, Frank won’t harm you.’
‘Ben, I told you …!’
‘Enough, Gladys, I know he’s here somewhere. You might as well tell me where, before Agent Williams gets all FBI on us and shoots him.’
I was halfway up the stairs when Gladys answered Long.
‘Oh, all right! I warned him, I did!’
Frank was hiding in the kitchen pantry, seated on the floor between a tub of flour and a butter churn. Long hauled him to his feet. Williams joined us in the kitchen, shoving his gun back in its holster.
‘What is going on here, Frank?’ Long asked.
‘I was taking a nap,’ he said, ‘’til Gladys woke me up and told me you were coming up our hill, and not alone.’
‘That was stupid,’ Long said. ‘Makes you look guilty.’
‘Guilty of what?’ Frank said.
‘Of whatever you and Leroy Martin were doing down at your old tobacco barn last night,’ Long said. ‘Reckon that’s why you needed a nap.’
‘Weren’t doing nothing wrong,’ Frank said, sullen.
‘So why did you conceal yourself from us this morning?’ Williams asked.
‘Because I didn’t want to talk to you, that’s why. Government people, you got to poke around in everyone’s business! I got two days off because I worked on the weekend at the base, and I don’t want to spend it with you!’
Gladys stood by, not saying a word, with her arms crossed. She was annoyed, but I couldn’t tell if it was with us or with her husband.
‘Lying to the FBI is a bad idea,’ Long said.
Frank shrugged.
‘Mr Cooke,’ Williams said, ‘there was a lot of fresh blood in that tobacco barn. It looked like there was murder done.’
Frank acted as if he’d been shot. His mouth gaped open in shock. He grabbed onto the back of a kitchen chair to steady himself.
Gladys gasped. ‘Frank, what are they talking about!’
‘Murder!’ he said to Long. ‘Are you crazy?’
‘You and Leroy Martin carried something bloody, the size of a person’s body, wrapped in sailcloth, out to Leroy’s truck and drove off with it,’ I said, ‘and crossed the Patuxent on Dennis Keeler’s ferryboat, which had no business out on a frozen river at that time of night.’
Frank’s face had frozen into the shape of an ‘O’. He seemed physically unable to speak. Gladys had collapsed into a chair and was fanning herself with a kitchen towel.
Long turned to Williams and me. ‘Agent Williams, Mrs Pearlie, would you kindly excuse us? I’d like to speak with Frank and Gladys alone.’
It was time for Agent Williams to be shocked. ‘Absolutely not!’ he said.
‘I might remind you, Agent, that you are a guest in my county. You are out of your jurisdiction. I’d appreciate it very much if you and Mrs Pearlie waited for me in the car.’
I took Agent Williams by the arm and pulled him toward the front of the house. He was too astonished to resist.
Once outside on the porch he collected himself and turned to go back inside.
I took his arm again, this time more gently. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘Constable Long knows these people. Maybe for their whole lives. Let him talk to them.’
Agent Williams wasn’t stupid. He saw the reason in what I said. We went on out to the car and waited for Long.
He came out alone and slid into the front seat.
‘Well?’ Williams said.
‘Well what?’ Long answered, turning the ignition.
‘Did they tell you anything?’
‘Yeah, they did. But it’s nothing that you need to know.’
‘There might have been murder done!’
‘There was no murder,’ Long said. ‘I promise you that. In fact, I don’t think there’s a thing going on here that an FBI agent would be interested in.’
‘Listen, Long—!’
‘That’s Constable Long to you,’ the constable said, shifting into gear. ‘I’m going to find Dennis and question him. You’re welcome to come, but only if you allow me to do this my way.’
I sat in the back seat and listened to the men wrangle. I had my own issues. Whatever was going on had nothing to do with the postcard to Leroy from Richard Martin, and that concerned me.
I leaned forward and touched Long on the shoulder. ‘Constable,’ I said, ‘would you please drop me off at the café?’
‘Why?’ Long said.
Williams turned around and stared at me disapprovingly.
‘Special Agent Williams and I came to St Leonard on a different matter than this,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to lose track of it.’
‘There may have been a serious crime committed here!’ Williams said.
‘I understand,’ I said, ‘but I think that you and Officer Long can deal with that. You’re law enforcement officers, I’m not.’
‘What different matter?’ Long asked.
I wasn’t going to tell the constable about the postcard from France. He had nothing to do with that.
‘I want to talk to Anne Martin again. She warmed up to me this afternoon, and Leroy will be at work. You two deal with Dennis, and I’ll talk to Anne.’
‘You just talked to her.’
‘That was to soften her up.’
I had to give Williams some credit. He looked angry, but didn’t say anything in front of Long.
‘Can I have the keys, please?’ I asked, holding out my hand to Williams.
Now he was startled. ‘The keys?’ he said.
‘The keys to your car,’ I said. ‘I’m hardly going to walk to Anne’s.’
Off the main road, the ice hadn’t melted as much as it had in town. In the woods near the Martin cottage, branches, fences, even individual spears of grass, were coated with a shell of ice that gleamed and sparkled, turning the world into a glistening wonderland. As this was the first time in my life I’d driven anywhere near ice, I proceeded cautiously on the roadbed, the chains on the car’s back tires gripping what gravel and crushed oyster shell protruded from the ice. Even so I nearly slid off the road twice. When I finally arrived at the Martins’ house, I realized my hands were gripping the steering wheel as if it were a lifeline.
Damn it, Leroy’s truck was parked outside the door! Why wasn’t he at work? It was past time for his shift to begin.
I parked the car in a patch of sun, hoping to keep the interior warm, and got out. Stillness surrounded me. Except for the cracks of tree branches breaking under the weight of the ice, I heard not a sound.
I felt the hood of Leroy’s truck as I passed by it on my way to the front door. It was cold, hadn’t been driven today. And there was just a trickle of smoke rising from the chimney. The place felt deserted.
And the front door was ajar. In this weather?
I figured I had two choices. I could retreat to the car and drive away, find Constable Long and Agent Williams and bring them back here.
Or I could check the house myself.
I wished I had a gun.
Instead, I removed my switchblade, the one I’d been issued at the Farm, from my purse and slid it into my coat pocket.
It was impossible to walk quietly on the path, which was crunchy with oyster shells and ice. So I decided to call out, warn whoever might be inside that I was coming in. ‘Anne!’ I called out. ‘Mr Martin? Is everything all right?’
No one answered me. I pushed the door, and it swung silently open. I
left it that way. I might need to run away, quickly. I made sure I had the car keys in my coat pocket, ready to grab.
‘Hello! I’m coming in!’
I stepped through the front door and into the small entryway. Anne’s bicycle leaned up against a wall. So where was she? I called out again. ‘Mr and Mrs Martin?’ A few seconds passed. The place felt empty. I pulled out my knife and flicked the blade open.
Inside the kitchen the stove was barely warm; just a few embers glowed when I opened the oven door. I could see into the back room and out one of the windows. There were no birds on the bird feeders. But I did smell iron.
Blood, and plenty of it, soaked the rug under which the body of Leroy Martin lay. It didn’t take an FBI agent to see what had happened. He must have died very quickly after the second the oyster knife sliced into his throat.
My heart pounded and blood drained from my head, making me feel lightheaded. I forced myself to think. Quickly, I passed through the sitting room and checked the bedroom and bathroom, methodically opening closets and searching under the bed, even opening a trunk that held blankets. There was no one in the house. I went back to the sitting room and touched Leroy’s hand. It was as frigid as the house. He’d been dead a long time.
I located the telephone and lifted the receiver. It was dead. I’d have to drive to town to get help.
But where was Anne?
I called out Anne’s name, but still heard nothing but wind and ice cracking as it melted and fell from the trees. Perhaps she had run away?
It didn’t make sense that she’d been murdered, too. Why would murderers leave Leroy’s body in the middle of the living room floor, but not Anne’s? If she’d run, though, they might have left her where she fell, or she could still be running. I prayed that wherever she was she had a coat!
Out the sitting room window I noticed the shed where Leroy kept his gear. The padlock was hanging from its hasp.
I ran out the back door toward the shed. I’m sure I looked ridiculous, crashing across the icy grass, calling Anne’s name, clutching an open blade, as if I could fight off whoever had killed Leroy, a powerful man with guns and such to hand.
But I was so afraid for Anne that I ignored all that and made for the unlocked shed. If Anne was alive inside, she would be so terribly cold. She could be injured, too.
A few feet from the door I heard the sounds of muffled screams. Opening the door I saw her. Anne was tied to a framing post with heavy rope and gagged with a scarf. But thank God she had on her coat. When Anne saw me come through the shed door she tried to scream again, but little sound escaped the scarf. I pulled the scarf free, and words mixed with tears tumbled out of her.
‘A man came,’ she said. ‘I was adding crumbs to the bird feeders, and he grabbed me and knocked me down and tied me up in here!’
‘Who was he?’ I asked, sawing at the thick ropes that bound her. Her wrists were rubbed raw and black where she’d struggled with the bindings until they were loosened, and bruises on her face were forming.
‘I don’t know. He was behind me. Wearing a scarf, a hat, and gloves.’
Anne gulped in air as I freed her, panting as if she hadn’t been able to breathe properly while the scarf covered her face.
‘Where’s Leroy?’ she asked. ‘He hadn’t left for work yet. Is he all right?’
I pulled her to her feet, where she rocked unsteadily as blood returned to her legs.
‘Where’s Leroy?’ she asked again.
‘I’m sorry.’
Anne did as good a job of calming herself as I’ve ever seen anyone who’d just realized there was bad news. She straightened up and gazed at me with clear eyes. ‘He’s dead?’ she said.
‘Yes, I’m sorry.’
‘We need to call the police.’
‘The phone line is dead. We need to get out of here and get back to town so we can find Constable Long and Agent Williams. And you need a doctor.’
‘Please let me see his body.’
I hated to do that, not because I didn’t think she could bear it, but because I wanted to get law enforcement on the scene as possible. But I let her go inside.
Anne stared down at Leroy’s body. ‘You fool,’ she said to his lifeless corpse. ‘I warned you. I told you something like this could happen.’
Mrs Lenore Sullivan was one of the kindest women I had ever met. She welcomed Anne like a daughter.
‘Honey,’ she said, ‘you can stay here for a few nights. You shouldn’t go back to your house for a while. I’ll go make up a room.’
Collins and Williams had left. I’d come down from my own room, where I’d rested while they questioned her. Mrs Sullivan didn’t leave the two of us until after she’d stoked up the fire in her sitting room and brought us quilts and hot chocolate. Her dog, Lily, sensing the gravity of the situation, lay quietly at my feet, soothing us with her presence.
Anne’s eyes were so ringed with dark circles that it looked like she had two black eyes. She’d spent two hours being grilled by Constable Long in Lenore’s sitting room, with Agent Williams in an advisory capacity. And elderly and kind as Long was, I didn’t think I’d want to be interrogated by him.
I didn’t take part in the FBI’s search of Leroy’s house or Anne’s interrogation. I spent the time in my room napping and taking a long hot bath. We had turned up nothing that indicated any relationship between Leroy’s activities or death and Richard Martin’s postcard. Richard was a distant relative of Leroy’s who just happened to write him about the time Leroy got mixed up in whatever local shenanigans had led to his death. What those shenanigans were no one had explained to me yet.
At this point I was positive there wasn’t an ‘h’ in the word ‘St Leonard’ after all. The French and British censors had passed the postcard on, and they would know better than us anyway.
I would go back to Washington with Williams early tomorrow and back to work. In the files.
I went into the kitchen for more hot chocolate and found Mrs Sullivan shoving a chicken surrounded by vegetables into the oven to roast.
‘You and Anne and Agent Williams are eating here tonight,’ she said. ‘If you show up at the café it will turn into a circus. The entire town is riled up.’
‘Do you think Anne will be all right?’ I asked.
‘She’ll be fine. Think what she’s been through already.’
SEVEN
A lot had happened in the two days I’d been away from ‘Two Trees’ and my job at the OSS Registry.
When I dropped off my suitcase at home before going to work Wednesday morning I found Dellaphine and Phoebe poring over ration books and recipe pamphlets, trying to unravel the complexities of the new food rationing system.
‘Hello there,’ Phoebe said to me, when I went to the kitchen to see her before I caught my bus. ‘Is your friend better?’
My friend? Oh, of course, Joan, who had a fever, whom I’d been nursing for the last couple of days. My cover story.
‘She’s fine,’ I said. ‘Is everything okay here?’
Phoebe gestured at the pile of ration books. ‘Trying to make our first grocery list,’ she said.
‘I don’t know how I can be expected to feed you all with two pounds of beef each per week,’ Dellaphine said. ‘It ain’t healthy to eat all that chicken and fish and beans and such.’
‘It’s so much worse in England,’ Phoebe said. ‘We’ll get by. Do you have time for a cup of coffee, Louise?’
‘Yes, please,’ I said. ‘A quick one.’
The café where Agent Williams and I had stopped for breakfast when we left St Leonard at the crack of dawn had been out of coffee. Retail grocery sales had been suspended until ration books were distributed, and the café owner hadn’t planned for it. The tea we’d ordered to accompany our pancakes hadn’t cleared my head the way coffee did.
Williams and I had left St Leonard early in the morning so he could file a report with the FBI and request to be assigned to Martin’s murder case. Officer Long could
not possibly handle it himself, and Williams knew all the principals.
But I’d have nothing to do with finding out who had killed Leroy Martin. I was OSS, and we had no jurisdiction over domestic crime. I hated it. I wanted to know the answers to all the questions I still had about Leroy and Anne.
Williams had told me what he could about the inquiry into Leroy’s murder. Anne Martin, questioned by Long and Williams while resting in the lounge of Lenore Sullivan’s guesthouse while I was upstairs napping, had implied that Leroy was involved in criminal activity of some kind that had ended in his murder. Wisely, she professed not to know what that criminal activity was, or who Leroy’s accomplices were.
Our inquiry into the meaning of the postcard that Leroy Martin received from France was now closed, according to Williams. I had to agree with him. Leroy’s death made that moot. The postcard was addressed to him, and from his relative, and if it meant more than it actually said we would never know what that was.
So I had been unceremoniously dropped at my corner with my suitcase.
Before I’d left, Anne had thanked me for saving her life. Which I had, I supposed. If I hadn’t gone out to the Martin place, Anne might have frozen in that shed later that night, coat or no coat.
Mrs Sullivan had suggested I return to St Leonard for a nice weekend when the weather was better. I wondered how she would feel if I brought Joe? Just thinking about Joe caused my spirit to lift. Was it the coming weekend we would be together on the houseboat?
My stomach muscles clenched, and a flash of dizziness made me grasp at the kitchen doorjamb for support. I was nervous. How silly! I was a grown woman. I could do as I pleased.
As long as certain people didn’t find out about it.
My inbox was stacked inches high with reports and intelligence that needed to be evaluated and filed. I’d expected as much, but I hadn’t anticipated the air of overwork and anxiety that permeated the aisles and reading rooms of the Directory. My co-workers barely greeted me as I entered the vast cavern of file cabinets, just nodded and went back to their work.
Ruth passed by my desk with her trolley full of paperwork.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked. I felt that I needed to whisper, it was so quiet.
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