Winter of Discontent

by Jeanne M. Dams

  The Close was nearly deserted at this time of day. Evensong was long past and the choir and clergy had gone home to their warm firesides, but one or two vergers kept the Cathedral open for the last few visitors of the day. We cut through, leaving by the south choir door (which is very close to our house) and as we walked through the thickening twilight to the gate into our street, I told Alan all I had surmised, the whole story of the Luftwich plot as I had worked it out.

  My husband, bless his heart, heard me out without interruption or quibble, and continued his silence until we were inside the house and had settled in front of the fire, a cat in each lap.

  “Yes, Sam, there’s a good cat. No claws, now.” He stroked the little Siamese for a moment, and then said, “What about Leigh Burton? Where does she fit into this scheme or yours?”

  “She doesn’t. I thought for a while she might be pulling some kind of double bluff, raising the issue of irregular activities at Luftwich so it would make me think she’s innocent, but I don’t think she has that kind of mind.”

  “Hmm. And the Reverend Mr. Tredgold?”

  “I’m worried about him. He’s such a sweet, harmless man. I think he must have felt there was something wrong at the base, because he keeps talking about deceit and treachery. I wondered at first if he’d gone round the bend—”

  “Ah, yes. ’Bats:”

  I ignored that. “Anyway, now I think he was just abnormally sensitive to atmosphere and realized something was wrong, and it got to him. If Barbara Price killed Merrifield to keep him silent, then I hope she doesn’t decide Mr. Tredgold ought to be the next victim. It would be such a waste. Nobody takes him seriously, and he really is a dear.”

  Alan fell silent again. Samantha’s purrs filled the room with peace and contentment. The lights glowed on the Christmas tree; the fire crackled.

  “This room is a drug,” I said. “Sitting here, I find it hard to believe that anyone could do any of the things I’m supposing they’ve done.”

  “Yes, peace can be an opiate. Though mind you, I’m all for it. Peace, that is. However, it’s more satisfactory if it’s the real thing.”

  “Yes, and it won’t be real until we get to the bottom of all this. Alan, what should I do? Tell Derek my ideas and let him take it from there?”

  He stopped petting Sam and ran his hand down the back of his head. “I don’t know. The police can’t act on suppositions. If there were any hard evidence, or any hope of finding some …”

  “I know. By the way, have they given up on the museum? You haven’t been there for a while, and I haven’t heard any reports.”

  “For now they have. The troubles at the museum don’t seem to have a direct connection to Merrifield’s murder, and that’s what must take Derek’s time and attention now.”

  “Of course. Well, tomorrow after church I think I’m going to try to tackle Leigh Burton again. Maybe I can get her to give me more than hints this time, if she’ll let me in the door.”

  “Take her some mince pies. I take it you baked plenty?”

  “Dozens.”

  “Unless she’s positively subhuman, she’ll thaw at one bite of your mince pies. If you can get any solid fact out of her, Derek will have something to work with. And he could use it, believe me. He’s terribly worried about all this.”

  “Poor man. It does seem unfair that he has so much on his plate, and with Christmas just around the corner, too. And that reminds me. I must wrap the things I bought today. Out, love. Some of them are for you. And for goodness’ sake take the cats with you. The mess they can make with paper and ribbon isn’t to be believed.”

  So I wrapped my presents and put them under the tree, hoping the cats would leave them alone, and Alan and I ended the day quietly with some biscuits and cheese and a little bourbon. Before I fell asleep, though, I planned out a strategy for tomorrow’s conversation with the Ice Princess.

  TWENTY-NINE

  I FEAR MY ATTENTION THE NEXT MORNING IN CHURCH WAS NOT entirely on the service. For the second Sunday in a row, too. Doubtless the music was flawless. Doubtless the dean preached a good sermon. He almost always does. But try though I might to concentrate, my mind kept slipping away to Leigh Burton and her beautiful house and her cold, wolfish face.

  I had decided not to phone in advance. It is harder to turn away a person standing at the door, mince pies in hand. So as soon as Alan and I had finished lunch, I pulled a dozen of the pastries out of the freezer and slipped them in the oven to get crisp. When they were hot and fragrant, I put them on one of my nicest plates, complete with paper doily, covered them with a napkin, and took off for the Burton mansion.

  She might not have been at home. Even if she was, she might have decided not to answer the door. But she was, and she did, and the moment I saw her I launched into my prepared speech.

  “Do forgive me for calling unannounced, Mrs. Burton, but I felt we somehow got off on the wrong foot the other day. I’ve baked a peace offering, and I do hope you’ll accept it and my apologies if I have somehow offended you.”

  Well, after that, she’d have had to be downright rude to turn me away, and downright rudeness was not a part of Leigh Burton’s normal repertoire. Chilly politeness that could freeze you out, yes. That’s the proper English way. The only really rude English people I’d ever encountered had been at one extreme or the other of the social scale: one peer of the realm who, when introduced to me by a friend, had nodded and turned his back; and one would-be mugger in London long ago who had failed in his attempt only because of the police whistle I always carried.

  Leigh was in neither the peeress nor the purse-snatcher class. So she opened the door wider, bared her teeth in what was meant for a smile, and invited me in with a murmur of thanks.

  It was too early for tea, and Leigh was no Barbara Price, to make the social mistake of offering it to me anyway. Neither was sherry on offer today. She simply gestured me to a seat in the drawing room and sat down herself, again with that air of fragility but infinite poise.

  “I’m very sorry, Mrs. Martin, if I left you with the impression that I had been offended. You did nothing to offend me. I am quite a busy woman, with charity work and so on, and my time was particularly in demand that day. If I became somewhat impatient, it was because I could not quite discern the purpose for your visit, and you seemed to me to have become somewhat repetitive at a time when I was needed elsewhere. I should at the outset have made clear that my time was limited. If any apologies are due, they should be mine. It seems I was rude. I’m sorry.”

  Whew! There was chilly politeness with a vengeance. If she was sorry, she sure sounded like she could manage to cope. Well, I could do that, too. I smiled. “A misunderstanding, that’s all. I’m glad it’s cleared up. So I’d better ask if you have a free moment now. I confess I did come to ask you something, as well as to make amends.”

  “A moment. Little more. I am expected to chair a committee meeting at the Women’s Institute in”—she glanced at her watch—“twenty minutes.”

  I took a deep breath and tried to match her extremely formal tone. “I’ll try to be quick then. My problem is that when I visited before, you mentioned your sense that Luftwich did not contribute as much to the war effort as might have been expected. That differs so widely from other accounts I’ve been given that I wonder if you can cite any particular instances. There must be a mistake somewhere, and I’m trying to ferret out where it might be.”

  “I see. No, after all these years I certainly cannot be specific. It was only a general sense, Mrs. Martin, and might have been colored by my anxiety about the men, particularly my husband, of course. If your other sources have told you differently, they may be right.” She glanced away from me, then looked back. “Forgive me. I fear I’m a bit distracted. The meeting—”

  I looked where she had looked, probably at a clock. I couldn’t see one, but then I, too, was distracted. The rug had just been pulled out from under me. I’d built a whole elaborate theory on her unequivoca
l statement that Luftwich had been surprisingly ineffective, and now she was taking it back. “Well, the others were pretty definite, I have to say. In fact, they quoted statistics that seemed to prove the Luftwich men had done even more than their share to win the war.”

  “Well, it may be.” Her eyes strayed once more to the fragile, beautiful secretary desk in the corner of the room. “Of course when George was killed, I developed a certain amount of bitterness toward the Air Force in general and Luftwich in particular. Perhaps my memory is at fault.”

  Somewhere in another room, the telephone rang.

  “Excuse me, please.” She stood.

  “It’s time I left, anyway,” I said hastily. “I can see myself out”

  “If you don’t mind. I am sorry.”

  She left the room as briskly as she could, leaning rather heavily on her cane.

  The moment she was out of sight I stole across the room to the secretary, blessing the thick carpet. It could be that she was worried about her meeting, and thinking about some presentation that was outlined in that desk. On the other hand …

  She answered the phone. I heard her speak, though I couldn’t distinguish words. I lifted the lid of the desk.

  Right on top, neatly centered, was a small black-leather-covered book. On the lower right-hand corner of the cover were the initials WF, in gold.

  My ears straining for her voice as she continued to talk, I opened the cover. It was an engagement book. And under it, I saw now, was a road atlas of the United States of America.

  I was out the door before she hung up the phone.

  I drove off very quietly and turned a corner at random. There I pulled up to the curb and sat while my heart slowed down to normal.

  She stole them. Bill’s diary and his atlas. That must mean she was the one who attacked Walter.

  But she was a frail old lady.

  With a cane, a fine, expensive, heavy ebony cane.

  I took a deep breath. It was possible. With the diary and the atlas in her possession, it was even likely. But why?

  Into my mind came Jane’s succinct explanation of Leigh Burton’s bitterness. “Bill lived. George died.”

  It was true, then. It was all true, the fanciful, elaborate story I’d built out of bits and pieces. There had been a fifth-column cell at Luftwich. And Merrifield and Price and Rutherford had all been part of it. The lies I’d heard had been an attempt to steer me away from the truth. But I wasn’t the danger. Leigh Burton was.

  But what had set her off? If she’d known about the treason all along, and had blamed the people responsible for George’s death, why had she waited until now to do something about it?

  No, it didn’t quite hold together yet, but one thing was certain. Leigh had Bill’s belongings. She had stolen them from the museum. She had almost certainly attacked Walter Tubbs.

  That was enough to take to the police.

  I went straight home. This was a matter for Alan. He could get hold of Derek, and command his attention, far more quickly and easily than I could.

  I burst in the door to find him napping on the couch with two cats on top of him. They jumped down in alarm, and he sat up, blinking.

  “It’s Leigh, Alan. She’s the one who attacked Walter, and maybe the one who killed Merrifield.”

  He was wide awake in an instant. “Tell me.”

  “She has the diary, Bill’s diary, and his atlas. They’re in her desk. I saw them. And she’s going to the Women’s Institute in a couple of minutes, so Derek needs to know right away!”

  He asked nothing further, but went to the phone. When he came back he said, “Derek’s on the way. Now tell me the whole story.”

  “There isn’t much to tell. I went over there to try to sort out the difference between her story and the others. She said she must have been mistaken and took the wind out of my sails. But she kept looking at her desk—the most gorgeous little Hepplewhite secretary, Alan!—and I wondered why. So when she had to answer the phone I—well, I snooped. And there they were. And I can’t think of any way they could have got there unless she stole them. Only I don’t know why.”

  I ran out of steam abruptly.

  “I think, after that, you need a cup of tea. Or something stronger?”

  “No, tea is just right. I have to regroup. Some of my ideas are right, but the others must be dreadfully wrong, and I have to think.”

  “Derek won’t rest until he gets the truth out of her, you know. He’s very, very good at questioning suspects, and he wants badly to catch this one.”

  “I know, but I want to figure out where I went wrong.”

  So while Alan was getting the tea, I marshaled my thoughts, and when he came back with a tray I was ready to think out loud.

  “Okay, how about this?” I said when I’d taken a few heartening sips. “Let’s go back to the beginning. Bill finds the letter, the coded letter, in a pile of stuff up in the storeroom. He’s in the process of organizing, but he’s not done yet. He’s not sure who donated this particular letter, but he’s pretty sure, because it’s in a pile of Luftwich memorabilia, that it was from one of just a few people. Merrifield, Rutherford, Price, Tredgold, or Burton. They all donated things to the museum, by the way. They told me so.

  “All right. He works out enough of the meaning of the letter—and we know he did because of the marked atlas—enough to be very worried. It looks to him as though someone, someone he knows, someone he served with at Luftwich, has been involved in something very peculiar, if not downright criminal. On the other hand, there could be another explanation. He hopes there is. Now, what would Bill do?”

  “He would ask them,” said Alan positively.

  “Right. That’s what I think, too. He wouldn’t go to the police, or the military authorities, or anyone like that, until he was sure. He wasn’t the kind of man to get a friend into trouble unless he absolutely had to.

  “So he phoned them all, told them what he had found, asked for an explanation. And then when he didn’t get a satisfactory answer from any of them, he asked them to come and see the letter. Oh! That was what that ‘donors’ meeting’ was all about. Walter said there were no names written down, and I’ll bet you anything you like it was because he was so sensitive about incriminating anyone. He probably set aside a block of time and asked them to come in one at a time.”

  Alan nodded.

  “Now. How would they all react to that phone call? I know enough about them that I think I can guess. Mr. Tredgold would go off into one of his fits of remorse over the war. He didn’t have anything to do with the plot, of course, but he’d go crazy, as he does at any mention of the war. Merrifield would smoothly deny all knowledge and phone the others to tell them to do the same. But at least one of them would agree to come. To look at the letter, they’d say, and see if they—he—she—whoever—couldn’t figure out what it meant. They, of course, would want it kept covered up. Stanley would hug his medals and the stories he’s almost begun to believe. Barbara might contemplate some drastic action, but before she could make up her mind to do anything (she’s rather muddle-headed), Bill dies and she thinks the problem is solved. How am I doing so far?”

  “I’m following you.”

  It wasn’t exactly an endorsement, but I plowed on. “But Leigh—Leigh is different. Bill tells her enough about the letter that her suspicions are confirmed. She agrees to come and look at the letter, and boy, does she want to! She knew something was going on, all those years ago, and now it’s proven. And her bitterness, the bitterness over the death, not only of her husband, but of all her hopes for wealth and position, rise to the surface, stronger than ever.”

  “But Leigh Burton is wealthy. What does she want that she doesn’t have?”

  “Position. A country estate. The respect due the wife of a country squire. All the things she would have had as George Burton’s wife. His family left her some money—I don’t know how much—but not, of course, the estate. The estate was presumably entailed. If her child had li
ved, and been a boy, even with George dead she would have had all that. And in her mind, I suspect both George’s death and the death of their child could be laid at the feet of the Luftwich traitors. I don’t think she’s very rational on the subject.”

  “One can understand why she might not be. But go on.”

  “Well, then. Leigh knows now that she’s been right all along. But she still doesn’t know who’s involved, and she wants to know, needs to know. She wants them exposed, wants to avenge her long-dead husband and the child she never had. She wants reparations for what should have been hers.”

  “Objection. If she wants them exposed, why did she tell you so little when you first came to the house?”

  That set me back. “I don’t know. Why didn’t she? Maybe—maybe it’s because I’m American.”

  “English by marriage.”

  “Yes, but Leigh is a snob. She’d think of me as an American, and would she wash her—or anybody else’s—dirty laundry in front of a foreigner? I don’t think so! Oh, and not only that, by that time she had attacked Walter, when she was trying to find the letter and other proof at the museum. She knew she was in for criminal prosecution if that was discovered, and that wouldn’t suit her at all. She’s not the stuff martyrs are made of, and besides, if she were put in prison she couldn’t continue with her research and, ultimately, her revenge.”

  “Sounds positively Greek. Ancient Greek.”

  “A little like that, I think. Leigh Burton is a single-minded woman, and she’s not in the least intellectual or well educated. It’s a frightening combination. And do you know, I think in a way my visit to her might have been a catalyst of sorts. She hinted something of what she knew, perhaps in hopes that I might learn the truth without it coming from her. But I also started her thinking, and she must have come up with the same conclusion I did: that the man behind the sabotage had to be an officer in charge, had, in fact, to be John Merrifield. And I had further stirred up all her old memories. So she killed Merrifield.”