Louise's Dilemma

by Sarah R. Shaber

  I let her lead me into the lounge. A fire was crackling away, and Henry’s bottle of bourbon sat open on the cocktail table with Phoebe’s best highball glasses. I was right, Joe wasn’t in the room.

  ‘You look white as a ghost,’ Ada said. ‘Here, sit by the fire.’ She relinquished the fireside chair, and I sat down. Henry handed me a glass of whisky, neat. After I had a big swallow I did feel better.

  I couldn’t help myself. ‘Where’s Joe?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, he’s gone.’

  NINE

  I was thunderstruck. I saw in my head clear as day Joe on a train or a ship heading somewhere far away. I’d never see him again.

  ‘For the weekend,’ Phoebe said. ‘A friend of his lent him his houseboat on the Potomac. He said he just wanted a change of scene.’

  Ada took my hand in hers. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked. ‘You just went white as a sheet.’

  ‘No, I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Just tired.’ I took another gulp of whiskey.

  ‘I think the President made a mistake,’ Henry said. Henry thought everything Roosevelt did was a mistake. ‘Ordering a forty-eight-hour workweek. Exhausted workers make mistakes and become ill.’

  I had an opening. ‘Phoebe,’ I said. ‘I was wondering. Could I borrow your car for the weekend? I know it’s a lot to ask. I want to go away myself, to a guesthouse on the western shore of Maryland a friend told me about. I’m a good driver.’

  I wasn’t sure what Phoebe would say. It was one thing for a woman of her generation to let Henry and Joe borrow her car, but might be another to allow me.

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ Phoebe said. ‘Just promise to be home by dark on Sunday? Or I’ll worry.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I promise.’

  I called Lenore Sullivan before dinner.

  ‘Yes, dear, of course,’ she said. ‘I’ll be glad to have your company.’

  That night, spooning with my hot water bottle in my bed, I planned my strategy. I’d stop at the courthouse in Prince Frederick on my way to St Leonard and verify that Leroy and Anne’s marriage license listed her birth date.

  Then I’d check in at Lenore’s. I planned to stay away from the town itself. I expected it was in an uproar over Leroy’s murder and Dennis’s arrest and I didn’t want to be the center of that kind of public attention. I would go out of town to eat. If I ran into anyone from St Leonard I’d do my best to convince them I was just on a weekend trip because I’d found their town so charming.

  When I returned to Washington I’d have the information I needed to complete the Martins’ file at OSS and prevent Collins, or anyone else, from criticizing my work.

  Then perhaps I could relax in Mrs Sullivan’s deep, hot bathtub with my book and try not to think about Joe.

  It felt good to be behind the wheel of a car again.

  My Daddy taught me to drive his truck when I was fourteen, and of course I drove it back and forth to work when I got my first job at the Wilmington Ship Factory. Here in Washington trying to get anywhere, with the traffic and scarce buses, was a daily frustration. Just putting Phoebe’s car in gear and driving out of her garage and turning onto Pennsylvania Avenue was exhilarating. Someday, I swore, I would buy a car of my own.

  The streets were still icy in shady spots, and traffic was heavy, since so many people worked on Saturday now, but I had no trouble getting out of town. I had to give Henry some credit. He took very good care of the car for Phoebe, even to the chains he’d carefully fitted to the back tires.

  The Calvert County courthouse was busy, as Linda Sundt had said it would be. I found the Records Section in the basement of the courthouse. I felt at home there immediately. It was lined with file cabinets.

  I found Linda Sundt behind the service counter, knitting and listening to the radio. She got to her feet immediately, laying the prettiest knitted blanket I think I’d ever seen on the counter. The blanket was a deep periwinkle color with honeycomb cables.

  ‘That is stunning,’ I said. I’d tried knitting. I was dreadful at it. I doubted I could even edge this one properly.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘My church group makes them for the children’s hospitals in England.’

  I fingered the thick wool. England was just as cold this winter as we were, but with fewer resources to combat it.

  ‘It was so sad,’ Linda said, ‘but the last box of blankets we sent was on a ship that was sunk by a Nazi U-boat. It seems like a small thing amongst all the other supplies, and lives, that were lost, but still. It broke our hearts! We’re making sweaters now, too, for sale, so we can send money to Great Ormond Street Hospital.’

  Sundt lifted a stack of sweaters onto the counter.

  Immediately, I pulled one out of the pile. It was a deep blueberry, the same color as my only formal gown. I had to have it. ‘I’ll take this,’ I said.

  ‘Please don’t feel like you have to buy one,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t,’ I said. ‘I want it. I’m Louise Pearlie, by the way. I called you yesterday?’

  ‘I figured as much,’ she said. ‘I’ve got that marriage license you wanted to see. Leroy Martin and Anne Venter?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ I said, praying it had the information I needed. While she riffled through her desk I wrote a check for the sweater.

  ‘I’ll wrap up the sweater while you look at this,’ she said, handing me a folder.

  The license was suitably embossed with the state and county seals, filled out with a florid script, and notarized. Anne was listed as Anne Venter, birthplace Orange River Colony, South Africa. But where her birthdate should have been filled in a scrawl read: birth certificate lost during Boer War, see note. I turned the license application over and deciphered the handwriting on the back. Miss Venter produced her baptismal record, dated January 3, 1890, as proof of her birth and nationality.

  That was impossible! It must be a mistake. That was almost six weeks before her supposed birthday in February!

  ‘This can’t be right,’ I said. ‘Anne was born on February thirteenth, 1890. This says she was baptized on January third, 1890.’

  Linda took the document from me, carefully reading every word and the handwritten notations on the back of the certificate.

  ‘I’m sure it’s correct,’ she said. ‘The Clerk of the Court at the time was old Gus Pender. The man never made a mistake in his life.’

  ‘Can I copy it?’ I said.

  ‘You make all the notes you want,’ she said, handing me paper and pen and motioning me toward a table in the middle of the room.

  I copied down every word, so that any visitor to the French postcard file would see that I had been diligent.

  But I’d replaced a big problem with one even larger.

  Anne had told me that her birthday was February thirteenth, 1890. Now I knew that couldn’t be correct. Her baptismal certificate, which the Clerk of the Court of Calvert County had inspected before issuing Leroy and Anne a marriage license, proved that she had been baptized on January third of the same year.

  And February thirteenth was two weeks ago. All the questions that worried us at OSS about the Martin postcard surfaced again, unanswered. Why spend so much to send such an innocuous letter to a man who barely remembered you? Why mention ‘Mother’ to a couple who didn’t know Richard Martin’s mother? Why refer to Anne’s birthday at all?

  I needed to talk to Anne again. Perhaps I misunderstood the date she gave me. Maybe she was born in 1889 and wasn’t baptized until almost a year later. Somehow I thought that without Leroy present, she would answer all the questions I had and put the matter to rest. I could take my notes back to OSS, stick them in the file, file the bloody thing, and put all this behind me.

  I luxuriated in the heat radiating from the potbelly wood stove in Lenore Sullivan’s sitting room. Stretched on the lounge, covered with a thick quilt, I managed to read Mary Roberts Rinehart’s Haunted Lady without thinking too much about either Joe or the Martins. Lily snoozed at my feet.

&nb
sp; I was, however, getting distracted by the wonderful aroma coming from Lenore’s kitchen. Beef stew, I thought.

  Returning to reality made me think of Leroy Martin, Dennis Keeler and Frank Cooke. One man murdered and two in jail because of beef profiteering. And poor Anne widowed!

  ‘I thought you might like to join me in a cup of tea, Louise,’ Lenore said. ‘I hope you can drink Earl Grey.’ She set down a tray with two mugs of steeping tea, a cream pitcher shaped like a cow, a plate of shortbread cookies, and a sugar bowl.

  I didn’t hesitate. I took a cookie, and I added plenty of cream and sugar to my mug. I sipped the tea contentedly, alternating a slurp of tea with a bite of cookie.

  ‘I hope you’ll have dinner with me,’ Lenore said.

  ‘I would love to, but I thought you didn’t do meals?’

  ‘It’s just stew; it’s no harder to cook for two than one. And I didn’t think you’d want to go into town, what with the murder and all.’

  ‘I’d planned to go out of town to eat.’

  ‘No need to do that.’

  ‘So St Leonard is still talking about the murder?’

  ‘Honey,’ Lenore said, pouring a healthy dollop of cream into her mug, ‘this town is abuzz with talk about Leroy Martin’s murder, Dennis’s arrest for murder and Frank’s arrest for smuggling. I’m afraid what might happen if you go out.’

  I felt my pulse begin to race. ‘Why?’

  ‘The town is split over all this. Some say Dennis has always been a bad one and they’re not surprised he killed Leroy. Some say Dennis would never have killed Leroy – they grew up together, and Dennis has never hurt a fly, despite all his bluster and shooting off shotguns when he’s drunk and such. And some, I’m sorry, dear, blame you, and that FBI man who treated us so arrogantly.’

  ‘Why on earth?’

  ‘They say that if you two hadn’t come nosing around Frank and Leroy wouldn’t have gotten scared and Dennis wouldn’t have killed Leroy.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Anne told Constable Long that Leroy wanted out of the beef smuggling business because of all the government people snooping around here because of price controls. He was afraid they would get caught. So the FBI’s figured that Dennis and Leroy argued and Dennis killed him so he could keep on with the smuggling business.’

  ‘So the town either believes the FBI is wrong about Dennis, or they blame the government for Leroy’s murder in the first place!’

  ‘They’re just human.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘More tea?’

  ‘I would love some.’

  Lenore took my mug into the kitchen.

  Lily rose from the rug and came over to me, tail wagging, and put her paws and head on my knee.

  ‘Come to comfort me, girl?’ I asked, rubbing her head.

  Her tail wagged so hard that it thumped the floor, and I realized I had half a cookie in my hand. Lenore was still in the kitchen, so I slipped the cookie to Lily, who was so deliriously happy that she dropped to the floor and rolled over so I could scratch her belly.

  ‘Lily!’ Lenore said, returning with my tea. ‘Leave Louise alone!’

  Lily ambled back to her rug by the stove and lay down on her rug, but she kept an eye fixed on me. We shared a secret, she and I. We’d been naughty.

  ‘Then,’ Lenore continued, ‘you did find the body. Everyone will want to ask you about it.’

  Of course. In a town like this a murder would be sensational. I knew I might testify at Dennis’s trial and could not talk about the murder beforehand. I was right to stay away from all the townsfolk.

  Except Anne. I had to clear up the birthday question for the Martin postcard file, just in case Lt. Collins reviewed it. If he noticed my error he would be bound to point it out to Egbert.

  I would visit Anne after dinner. Then I could enjoy the evening and tomorrow morning here in this cozy room with my book before I drove back to Washington.

  Over our dinner of stew and crusty homemade bread, eaten at a scratched and stained kitchen table that I figured had been in Lenore’s family for a couple of hundred years, I asked Lenore about Anne’s state of mind. I wanted to be prepared for what I might find when I went to see her.

  ‘She’s doing all right,’ Lenore said. ‘She’s always seemed real strong – emotionally, I mean. When she was just fifteen her grandmother died and she had to leave school. But she went to work at Bertie Woods’ café and met Leroy there. And she put up with a lot of nonsense from people about her accent and being foreign and all. Of course, once she married Leroy she became an American.’

  ‘She lived through the Boer War,’ I said. ‘Most of her family died. That would toughen anyone up, if it didn’t destroy them.’

  Lenore sliced another thick chunk from the loaf of hot bread for me. ‘I reckon so. Do you know, I went with another woman from my church to sit with Anne for a while after Leroy’s funeral, and we found her on her hands and knees, scrubbing Leroy’s bloodstains out of the floor, calm as she could be!’

  Solomons Island Road was nearly empty of traffic, which pleased me under the circumstances. I had pulled my hat low over my eyes and wrapped a scarf around my neck, and I was driving a car unfamiliar to the denizens of St Leonard, but still I feared being recognized. I didn’t want anyone but Lenore and Anne to know I was here. I could count on their silence, I believed.

  I found myself at the turn-off to the Martin house and drove carefully over the rough road, crossing the rickety bridge at Perrin Branch, now free of ice and flowing sluggishly. It was about a mile from the bridge to Anne’s quaint cottage on the Chesapeake Bay, but it might as well be fifty, it was so isolated.

  I slammed on my brakes, forewarned by instinct before I actually registered the deer that leapt across the road in front of me. I felt a bump, but the deer – scrawny and small, it must have been starving in this cold winter – continued leaping, vanishing into the woods to the left of the road. My madly pumping heart slowed, and I got out of the car with my torch. Please don’t let Phoebe’s car be damaged, I prayed. I could afford to fix it, but I didn’t want her to think I was an unreliable driver. She might not let me borrow the car again.

  I couldn’t find even a mark on the car. Thank goodness.

  Then I heard it. Music. I could swear I heard music.

  The wind was blowing from the bay. Could it be coming from Anne’s house? I doused my torch and listened, bending into the wind. It was music, all right, orchestral music. It must be quite loud for me to be able to hear it. How odd.

  Listen to your gut, my instructors at the Farm told me over and over again. Don’t be sanguine about anything.

  I got back into the car and maneuvered it into the sheltered spot in the woods across from Anne’s cottage that Williams and I had discovered on our stakeout.

  When I got out of the car I listened for the music again. Not a sound, except for one optimistic bird song. I felt foolish. So what if Anne was listening to her record player?

  But the music had seemed so loud, and, frankly, it sounded German. No one these days played anything by German composers. Stupid, really, what did Bach or Beethoven have to do with the war, but still it made people feel patriotic to eschew all things German.

  I cautiously made my way through the copse. I didn’t want to fall or switch on my flashlight. When I got to the edge of the woods I saw Anne’s house. It was completely blacked out. The wind changed, and I could hear music again. I’m not an expert on German composers, but it sure wasn’t Aaron Copland. I hesitated, still feeling ridiculous; what did it matter if Anne was listening to Bach?

  To my left was the head of the Martins’ inlet. I didn’t see the mast of the skipjack at the pier. That was odd.

  I found the path that led along the bank of the inlet to the head of the pier. A long black low-lying vessel was tied up there, floating gently, silhouetted against what little light there was.

  It was a submarine.

  TEN

  I duc
ked behind a tree, propping myself up against its rough trunk to support legs that threatened to collapse under me.

  Like Saul when he received the Holy Ghost, the scales fell from my eyes. The postcard from Richard Martin in Nantes did refer to a Nazi covert operation. Named ‘Mother’. That would commence around February thirteenth, Anne’s ‘birthday’.

  This sub was German. Had to be. Why would an American submarine be hidden in an oysterman’s cove in Maryland?

  Why was I so shocked? This had happened before.

  On May twenty-eighth, 1942, last summer, a team of Nazi saboteurs left the submarine base in St Lorient, France on U-202 bound for the South Shore of Long Island, near East Hampton.

  The team was led by George John Dasch. Dasch had served in the German army during World War One, then emigrated to America, where he had worked as a waiter. When war broke out in September 1939, he impulsively went home, where he was recruited as a saboteur because of his fluent English and American mannerisms.

  Dasch’s four-man team was assigned to destroy the hydroelectric plants at Niagara Falls, the Aluminum Company of America factories in Illinois, Tennessee and New York, as well as the Philadelphia Salt Company’s cryolite plant in Philadelphia, which supplied raw material for aluminum manufacture. They were also instructed to bomb locks on the Ohio River between Louisville, Ky., and Pittsburgh, Pa.

  The four saboteurs in Dasch’s team carried thousands of dollars for living expenses, bribes and travel. They were supplied with four waterproof wooden crates, each about twice the size of a shoebox. Three were filled with dynamite, some pieces disguised as lumps of coal. The fourth box carried fuses, timing devices, wire, incendiary pen and pencil sets and sulfuric acid.

  U-202 made the 3,000-mile-plus trip across the Atlantic in fifteen days, traveling underwater during the day, on the surface at night. At eight o’clock Friday evening, June twelfth, U-202 came within sight of the American coast. She submerged and slowly crept closer, grounding about fifty yards off the shore at eleven p.m. Because of the fog, visibility was terrible.