Winter of Discontent

by Jeanne M. Dams

  It had all happened so long ago. Almost everyone who might have remembered anything was dead. And did any of it matter, anyway? The idea that Bill’s death was somehow connected with his war experiences was my own obsession. Nobody seemed to share it.

  Well, maybe Alan would come up with something today at the museum. If not, the document expert who was coming to dinner might discover something interesting. For now, I washed my hands of the whole mess. If I got moving, I could get that stew made and still have time for a little shopping today.

  I pushed Emmy off my lap and headed for the kitchen.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I WAS LATE LEAVING SHEREBURY’S SHOPPING MALL, OUT AT THE edge of town, and the rain that had begun when I was driving out there had started to freeze. By the time I got home and staggered into the house with all my parcels, it was well past the supper hour and Alan, bless his heart, had started preparing a meal. It was only some leftover curry he’d found in the freezer, but it smelled wonderful.

  “Alan, you are a jewel. I’m sorry I’m so late, but you found my note, right?”

  “I did. The shops must have been a nightmare this time of year.”

  “They were, even in our little mall. You wouldn’t believe the crowds! But I managed to do quite a lot. I still have to make the trip to London, though, if for no other reason than to buy chestnuts from the street vendors. I love them. So Dickensian.”

  “Yes, indeed. Did I mention that I encountered them in New York the last time I had to venture over there?”

  “Killjoy. No, no beer for me, thanks. I love it with curry, but I’m so cold all I want is pots and pots of absolutely boiling tea.”

  We ate as if we hadn’t seen food for weeks, and when we’d finished the last grain of rice and crumb of flat bread, we settled down in front of a lovely hot fire.

  “So how did your day go at the museum?”

  “Much like yesterday. A great deal of work to no apparent end. The storeroom is looking far tidier than it did, but I can’t say we learned anything of interest. However, I do have one small piece of news for you. The ME finally completed the autopsy on Bill, and there were no surprises. He died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage. The ME said it must have been instantaneous. He would have had no pain, probably not even any sense of disorientation. He simply died.”

  “Well, that’ll be a relief to Jane, probably. When are they releasing the body for burial?”

  “Anytime. As there’s no family to notify, I suppose Jane will be the one to make the arrangements.”

  “She may have already talked to the dean. She’s very efficient. Let’s see, today’s Tuesday. The funeral will probably be Thursday; that’ll give time to let everybody in Sherebury know. Alan, I’m glad that part of it is over. There’s something about the permanency of a funeral that helps people get on with life. Not that Jane’s been falling apart or anything, but I think she’ll feel better when the funeral’s over.”

  “What the psychologists call ‘closure’?”

  “Well, if they do, they’re wrong. A chapter of one’s life, an important one, is never closed. But it can be set aside, and it must be, eventually.”

  “Yes. And speaking of setting things aside, have you abandoned your sleuthing for the pleasures of commerce?”

  “Only temporarily. I sat down this morning to try to figure out what, if anything, I’d learned, and there was so little of substance I decided to wait until we talk to Charles and his friend tomorrow.”

  “Ah, yes, the letter. I’ve managed to get permission for your expert to look at the actual document, although he’ll have to operate under a few restrictions. We’re no nearer solving the assault case, and the letter is being considered as a piece of evidence. He won’t be able to touch it, for example.”

  “I don’t expect he’ll like that, but I’m eager to see what he’ll make of it. To me it might as well have been written by Lewis Carroll.”

  “A piece of jabberwocky, you think? But it isn’t funny.”

  “No. Well, we’ll see.”

  On Wednesday I suffered no temptation to go anywhere. A slow, steady rain had set in, which was perhaps just as well, since I had plenty to do at home, with guests coming. I got down to some serious housecleaning, a task I’d been neglecting for days, and made a trifle for dessert. The total cholesterol count of our dinner would be enough to clog all the arteries in town, but it was the holiday season, a time when overeating seems almost a duty. We’d return to healthful habits in the New Year.

  I was busy polishing silver spoons when Alan came home from another day of slaving at the museum. This time, however, he had something to show me.

  “Look at this, my dear.” Still in his coat and hat, he pulled out of his inside pocket two plastic envelopes and handed them to me.

  The first was the letter we were to examine tonight, the letter found clasped in Bill’s dead hand. “What?” I said.

  “Look at the other one.”

  I did as he bade me, and gasped. It was, without a doubt, the missing second page.

  “Where did you find this?” I demanded. “Was it in a family stack?”

  “Unfortunately not. It was buried at the bottom of a box of old financial records, bank statements and that sort of thing, for the museum itself.”

  I looked at the paper more closely. The signature was “Pickles,” as nearly as I could make out. The text was brief and no more informative than the first page had been. It simply finished the sentence from the preceding page with “to greet them” and went on with routine wishes for good health and prosperity and then that infuriating signature.

  “Well, if Charles’s expert can make anything of this, I take my hat off to him.”

  “Considering some of your hats, my dear, that’s a handsome offer.”

  Anyway the waiting was almost over. I barely had time to tidy away the mess in the kitchen and get the pie in the oven before the doorbell rang and there were Charles and a desiccated little man whom he introduced as James Wilson. Alan poured drinks while I made the salad and put the potatoes on to boil, and then I went back to the parlor to sip a little bourbon and enjoy Mr. Wilson.

  If I had been inventing an M15 expert on documents, I couldn’t have come up with anyone more perfect than James Wilson. He was shorter than I and weighed a whole lot less. His hair was gray and somewhat sparse in front, but very neatly combed. His toothbrush mustache was gray, too, and his tweeds were oh-so-correct. His speech was dry and precise, and I somehow got the impression that Charles had taken him out of a cupboard and dusted him off before bringing him to dinner.

  It was a relief to find some amusement, but I didn’t dare catch Alan’s eye, or I would have giggled and disgraced myself.

  Jane arrived in a few minutes. We introduced Wilson and then, in proper English fashion, discussed through drinks and dinner everything under the sun except what was on all our minds. James Wilson grew drier and more precise with every word he uttered, though he displayed an unexpected sense of humor. His nutty little jests were in character, though, so deadpan and British that they went right over my American head. If Alan hadn’t chuckled, I wouldn’t have known they were meant to be funny.

  Jane, who has little time for niceties, grew more and more restive, and finally, over trifle and coffee, Alan took pity on her and cleared his throat.

  “Mr. Wilson, we’ve very much enjoyed your company, but I imagine Charles told you he was bringing you here for a purpose.”

  “Er—yes. A questionable document, I believe he said.”

  “Questionable in several ways, but our immediate concern is to fix an approximate date to it. Before I show it to you, I should tell you something of the circumstances in which it was found.”

  He sketched them out, baldly, with detachment, studiously avoiding any mention of Jane’s connection with the dead man. “Some particulars, which I won’t go into, lead us to believe there might be something slightly odd about the man’s death. That is why the police took possession
of the letter. As a former chief constable, I was able to borrow the letter, but I promised I would keep it in the plastic envelope. I happened to find the second page today, but I fear I must treat it in the same way.”

  Mr. Wilson’s face crumpled in distress. “Oh, I’m afraid that won’t do at all. I must touch it, smell it, look at it closely. I can’t give you even an educated guess otherwise, oh, dear, dear, no. In order to be definitive, I really should have a sample of the paper and ink for analysis.”

  Alan considered, then compromised. “Very well. I will take it out of the envelope, with tweezers. You may smell it, and certainly you may have all the light you wish to examine it. I can’t allow you to touch it.”

  “My dear man, you’re putting blinkers on me! However, needs must, I suppose. Lead me to it, and I’ll do what I can.”

  “Then shall we adjourn to my study? At least, you don’t all need to come if—”

  Of course we all wanted to come, and though it was a tight fit, we squeezed in. Mr. Wilson was given the place of honor at Alan’s desk, the bright reading light focused on the letter.

  “Mmm, yes.” Wilson whipped a jeweler’s loupe out of his pocket and peered at the letter through it. He held the paper up to the light, using Alan’s tweezers and a pair of his own that he had dredged from the same pocket. He put his face close to the paper and sniffed delicately. He looked up at Alan. “Fingernail?” he asked.

  Alan looked dubious, but nodded.

  Mr. Wilson turned the letter over and scratched, very carefully, at the paper, and then studied his fingernail under the loupe. Finally he sat back and very deliberately read the letter, moving his lips in and out rather like a goldfish.

  When he had finished, he turned to me. “I believe you are an American, Mrs. Martin. Can you tell me anything about these places mentioned in the letter?”

  “Only that they are very small and of little interest to any visitor. I was born in Indiana, and even I hadn’t heard of most of them before seeing this.” I pointed to the letter. “But when Alan and I consulted an atlas, we discovered the fact that each of them is near a place with an English or a European place name.”

  “Ah,. Tell me those names.”

  I tried to think. “New Carlisle, I remember. Versailles.” I didn’t shock his sensibilities by pronouncing it the way Hoosiers do. “Um—Rochester, I think, and Richmond. There were others, but I’ve forgotten. Oh, Edinburgh, I know. Frankfurt, only we spell it with an o.”

  On a less wooden face, Mr. Wilson’s expression would have been a beam of satisfaction. He pushed the letter away, put down his tweezers, and rubbed his hands together with a dry little rustle. “Yes. Well. Not much trouble there. The paper, the ink, the handwriting, all consistent, what?”

  Jane opened her mouth, but Alan shook his head slightly. We waited.

  “My dear Mr. Nesbitt!” Mr. Wilson looked pained. “Do you mean to tell me you really could not put a date to this letter?”

  I bit back the remark I wanted to make. Alan said mildly, “My wife and I had some very tentative ideas, but we thought it best to consult an expert.”

  “But—oh, very well. I can’t give you a precise month or day, but this letter was certainly written in 1944, probably toward the end of the year. Who wrote it, and to whom?”

  Alan shook his head. “Those are things we don’t know. We were hoping that a date would help us pin it down.”

  “I’d think you’d want to find whoever they are, then, because there’s not a doubt in my mind that this letter is written in code.”

  “In code!” I burst out. I couldn’t help it. “But it makes perfect sense! I mean, if it were some sort of letter substitution, even a very sophisticated one, wouldn’t it at least sound peculiar? It’s just boring.”

  “Ah, my dear lady, you are making the common mistake of confusing ‘code’ with ‘cipher.’ A cipher substitutes letters, numbers, or symbols for the plain text. It is relatively simple to break if one has an adequate sample. Ciphers are often so simpleminded that any child with a rudimentary knowledge of the alphabet can solve them. Even with more sophisticated attempts, the consultation of a frequency table—a list of which letters appear most frequently in the English, or indeed in other languages—”

  “Right,” said Jane, her patience at an end. “So this is a code, not a cipher. Substitution of words, not letters. Grasped that. Why d’you think so?”

  “I do not think so, madam,” said Mr. Wilson, a hint of frost in his voice, “I know. Given the age of the paper and ink, and the general tenor of the letter, combined with the decisive particulars, there can be no question.”

  “What ‘decisive particulars’?” Jane’s voice was dangerously near a roar.

  “Oh, dear me, didn’t I say? This. And this.”

  He pointed to the salutation of the letter and then a little farther down. “Charles, here, will have told you that I worked with M15 during the war. I may be old, now, but I have forgotten nothing from that terrible time, nothing. I believe that I am revealing no closely held secrets when I say that ‘Waffles’ was a code name given to a number of fifth columnists in this country. And ‘Sam Smith’ was used for the Luftwaffe. Of course, what you have told me, Mrs. Martin, about the place names makes it perfectly clear. This letter is a piece of information about bombing raids.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  IF HE HAD DROPPED A BOMB RIGHT THERE IN ALAN’S STUDY, WE wouldn’t have been much more shocked. For a moment I thought I actually heard the rumble of a distant mortar, but it was only the sullen growl of some halfhearted thunder.

  Jane was the first to recover. “Don’t believe it,” she said flatly. “Bill Fanshawe was not a traitor.”

  “My dear woman,” began little Mr. Wilson, but I interrupted. I had recovered at least a part of my wits.

  “You’re quite certain this was written in 1944?” I asked him.

  “Quite certain.”

  “Then don’t you see, Jane? This couldn’t have been written to Bill, because he was in prison at Colditz from the autumn of 1943. And—does it look like his handwriting to you?”

  “No.” She was still angry and terse.

  “Well, then, it isn’t from him either. So it must be something he found at the museum, just as Alan found the second page today.”

  “But—”

  “That doesn’t take into account—”

  “You’re forgetting—”

  There were protests from all sides except Jane, who remained stubbornly silent. The rest apologized, deferred to one another, and finally spoke one at a time.

  “Handwriting can be disguised, you know,” said Mr. Wilson, with a nervous glance at Jane, who outweighed him by a good fifty pounds.

  “Mr. Fanshawe might well have hidden the two pages of the letter himself, perhaps in separate places.” That was Charles, who had no official qualifications as a sleuth, but who had done enough esoteric research to be an old hand at educated guesses. “Then when something, or someone, threatened his secret, he made off with only the first page, the critical one.”

  “I’m afraid your theory does have a few other holes, as well, love,” said Alan, looking at me regretfully. “For one thing, if he was a collaborator, there’s no reason to suppose he couldn’t have received communications in the prison camp. For all we know, that’s why he was taken there—to make the lines of communication easier.”

  “All right. I accept that nothing is proven. But I’m with Jane in this. She, after all, knew him very well, and none of us did. And she has a habit of being right about people. She’s one of the best judges of human nature that I know. If she says Bill wasn’t a traitor, then he wasn’t. And I think all your theories have a few holes as well. For one thing, if this was a document from Bill to someone else, why would he have gotten it back? Letters generally stay with the recipient, don’t they? And if he had received it from someone, under whatever unlikely circumstances back in 1944, surely he would have destroyed it immediately. Colditz would ha
rdly have been a safe place to keep this sort of thing. I thought spies ate letters, or flushed them down the toilet, or burned them, or something!”

  I was getting heated.

  “Simmer down, darling,” said my loving husband, laughing. “This isn’t a court of inquiry. No one is trying to pillory Bill’s memory.”

  I was not appeased. “Well, it certainly sounds that way! And how convenient to make Bill the villain of the piece. He’s dead and can’t defend himself. And if it was Bill trying to hide his wicked past all along, will you please explain to me how he managed to cosh Walter over the head when he, Bill, had been dead for two days?”

  “Obviously someone else assaulted Walter. It could still be related to this letter.” Alan’s voice was becoming elaborately patient.

  “Of course it has to do with the letter! Now that we know what the letter is, it’s perfectly obvious why someone was extremely eager that it not be found. A Nazi collaborator could still be tried for war crimes, even now. At least I think he could. And even if I’m wrong, he would certainly be tried in the court of public opinion, and—what’s the old expression?—‘sent to Coventry.’

  “Now suppose Bill came across this letter when he was sorting through the stuff in the storeroom. What would he do?”

  My dubious listeners shrugged shoulders, or shook heads, or both. Except for Jane. She took the question as a question. “Work out what it meant,” she said without hesitation. “Loved a puzzle. Did the Times crossword puzzle every day. Best time twenty minutes.”

  I was impressed. I have never been able to finish even one of the crossword puzzles in the London Times. They rely on word plays, anagrams, puns, and virtually every other sort of fiendish clue. I feel a surge of triumph when I work out a single word.

  “Knew history,” Jane went on. “Knew the war from experience. Looked up the places on the map, worked it out.”