Murder in the O.P.M.

by Leslie Ford

  After a moment, she said, “It’s very cold outside, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And you don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.”

  I looked at the clock. It was twenty-five minutes past eleven. She must have been there some time already. Her shoes were quite dry. I began to wonder if her mother knew where she was, but I hesitated to ask her. We just sat there in silence. She started a little as the French clock over her head on the mantel daintily struck the half hour.

  “It’s such a mess at our house,” she said.

  There was something wistfully matter-of-fact about the way she said it that was rather shocking.

  “Everybody is always in a stew about something,” she went on after another little pause. “My sister and her husband came for dinner and sat like a couple of—of accusing images all through it. My father’s upset and my mother’s upset and the servants are upset. Finally they all went in the library and shut the door.”

  She drew a long breath, picked up her other shoe and started putting it on.

  “I don’t know what I’ve done now. It’s always something I’ve done, when they have these family conferences. I thought I’d finally done something to please them, but I guess I was wrong.” She looked up from her shoelaces. “Did you ever have everything you did be wrong?” she asked earnestly.

  I shook my head as soon as I got the sentence unscrambled and saw what she meant. She sat there for a moment looking at me.

  “Did you have an older sister?” she asked calmly.

  “I had a lot of brothers,” I said. “No sisters.”

  “You were lucky. Mother says I’m just spiteful and—and jealous, and maybe I am—I don’t know. But my sister’s always done everything right. She never tore her clothes or fell down when she skated. She always liked the proper people and wrote her bread-and-butter letters on time. All her teachers liked her, so she never had to study. She married the proper young man and she dresses properly and has the proper people to dine. She’s a great comfort to her parents and a pain in the neck to her sister Diane.”

  She giggled suddenly and her eyes, as dark as sapphires in the glow from the fire, lighted up irrepressibly for an instant.

  “I’m horrible, really. Unnatural, mother says. And I suppose I am.” She faded out again like the sound on the radio. “When I couldn’t stick it any more at home, I used to go over and talk to Agnes Philips. She said you’d let me come here when we came to Washington. I didn’t really mean to come tonight, but I couldn’t stand it another minute, with all of them acting like cannibals. I had to get away. I went to a movie, but—well, it was about a girl marrying a man her father wanted her to, and—well, I couldn’t stay any longer, so I thought you might be home—”

  “I’m glad you came,” I said. “I hope you’ll always come. It doesn’t matter whether I’m here or not. Lilac’s always around somewhere.”

  “She’s nice. I wish we had somebody like her at our house.” She got up and picked up her coat. All of a sudden she sat down on the sofa. “You don’t like Stanley, do you?” she asked abruptly.

  “I . . . don’t dislike Stanley,” I answered. By this time I was prepared for her rather startling statements, so I wasn’t taken aback at all. “I’ve known him a long time.”

  “I’m going to marry him. Did mother tell you? She’s telling almost everybody she talks to.”

  I shook my head. “Is it . . . his idea, or yours?”

  “Mine,” she said calmly. “I suppose that’s what the row’s about tonight. My sister’s mad as hops. She heard he’d borrowed some money so he could take me around.”

  I looked at her with amazement. It seemed to me that any girl would have hotly resented either the fact or the accusation, and especially this girl.

  “And he did,” she went on coolly. “That’s what I like about him. He’s perfectly honest. He hasn’t any money and he’s never worked in his life. His car didn’t break down in front of our house. He wants to marry a girl with money, and he’d heard about me. He told me so himself. He borrowed some money from a woman he knows, just the way people borrow from banks to conduct other kinds of business.”

  “But, Diane!” I began.

  “I know it sounds awful,” she agreed placidly. “But, you see, the only difference between him and my brother-in-law is that Stanley’s perfectly open and aboveboard about it. Do you think Carey would have fallen in love with Joan if her father had—had owned a filling station?”

  She picked up her hat and put it on the back of her head; her pale gold hair stuck up like a cherub’s halo around the narrow brim.

  “You see, I thought I was in love, once,” she said. Her face was as expressionless as an ivory figurine’s. “His name was Bowen Digges. He was supposed to be in love with me. We had all kinds of the most lovely plans. My family offered him twenty-five hundred dollars to go away somewhere else and never see me again. And he took it. I’ve hated him ever since. And mother and my sister and my father say I’ve got to marry; it isn’t decent to be an old maid. So, very well, I’m going to marry. I decided that a long time ago. I decided I’d marry the first presentable man who came along and who didn’t pretend my father’s money was an obstacle he’d do his best to get over. Anyway, Stanley’s very amusing, and my sister can’t stand him.”

  “And that’s what’s commonly known as cutting off your nose to spite your face, my pet,” I said.

  She got up quickly. “Don’t say that?” She was angry, and pretty close to tears.

  “I think it’s about time somebody said it,” I returned. “After all, your Bowen Digges and Stanley Woland are only two men out of an awful lot of extremely nice ones in the world.”

  “Then why haven’t you ever married again?” she demanded.

  “That’s quite different,” I said. “I’ve got two sons. Stepfathers—”

  “Bowen and I were going to have six children,” she said quietly. “We were going to—we were going to do lots of things.” She went over to the door. “Good-by.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Have you got a car?”

  She shook her head. “I walked.”

  “Then I’ll take you home. Don’t be silly; you can’t wander around the streets alone this time of night.”

  I put on my galoshes and coat and followed her out to the car. It had started to snow again. We sat there for a moment, waiting for the defroster to unstick the snow around the windshield wipers. Diane huddled down in the corner of the seat beside me, a silent furry bundle, her head bent forward in her coat collar, her hands stuck down in her pockets. She didn’t move as I crossed Wisconsin Avenue and went cautiously along P Street as far as the university. I turned left and went along N to 37th, and down to Prospect Street.

  The Hilyards’ house was dark, except for the yellow half circle of the fanlight above the door. A party was just breaking up at a house a little way along, and the people were coming out and starting up their cars. There was no place to park in front of the Hilyards’, so I stopped in the middle of the street, my headlights shining across the sidewalk and up the steps.

  Diane took her hands out of her pockets and raised her head. She sat quite still for a moment. Then she said, “I feel better than I did. Thanks a lot. Good night—is it all right for me to call you Grace?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Good night, Diane. Don’t do anything just to spite somebody—your sister, or your parents, or Bowen. Life’s got too much in it, and you’re much too sweet.”

  She shook her head slowly. “I think it’s a first-class mess, myself. What I’ve seen of it.” She put out her hand and pressed mine. “Oh, I’m not so bad as I sound, actually. Thanks anyway, Grace. Good night.” She opened the door and slid out onto the snowy street.

  “Be careful you don’t slip,” I said.

  A man in dinner jacket and overcoat was coming along, his head down against the snow. He had a darkhaired girl in a long white dress by the arm, and they were laughing and sliding alo
ng the slippery walk, headed for the car in front of the Hilyards’. I waited with my foot on the brake as Diane went over to the sidewalk and stepped up on the curb. And just as she cleared it her feet went out from under her and down she went.

  “Oh, damn!” she said. She was half laughing and half mad, but not at all hurt.

  I got out of the car, but before I got to the curb, the man coming along had dropped the girl’s arm and jumped forward to help Diane up.

  “Upsy-daisy!” he said. They were all three of them laughing, and so was I. He pulled Diane up to her feet. And suddenly he dropped her arms, and they just stood there, staring at each other. I stopped where I was and stared too.

  Diane raised her hand slowly and touched his face with her finger tips.

  “Bo,” she whispered. “Bo.”

  The second time it was a low cry from somewhere very deep inside her. She moved her eyes slowly from him to the girl in the white evening frock standing a little to one side in the bright glare of my headlights. Then she looked back at him, at the starched front of his dinner shirt and the black silk lapels of his jacket. Her face was blank and white and stunned. And so, I imagine, was mine.

  The young man standing there was Bowen Digges. He was also the same young man from OPM that I’d talked to in the corner behind the piano at the party that afternoon—the young man from California who didn’t know Diane’s sister and brother-in-law socially, but knew their names, and whose boss was Lawrason Hilyard, and who’d said—it came back to me in a sudden flash—that he hated Lawrason Hilyard’s guts.

  He was standing there quite calmly. I could hear myself that afternoon saying, “There’s another daughter. She’s beautiful,” and hear him answering me, “So I’ve heard.”

  For a minute something odd seemed to happen to his face, as if he had a slow pain inside him. He started to move, and caught himself sharply. A twisted sort of grin came to his face.

  “You’re right, Miss Hilyard,” he said. “I’ve got dinner clothes now. But my mother still used to run a roadside store.”

  Diane stared at him as if he’d slapped her in the face, her jaw dropping a little, her eyes as blankly un-understanding as a child’s.

  “I hope you didn’t hurt yourself,” he said. “May I—”

  She turned and ran. Why she didn’t slip and fall again, I’ll never know. She was up the steps, knocking frantically on the door. It opened suddenly. Her father stood there under the hall light. She stumbled forward arid past him.

  He turned and stared after her, and then looked back out into the street. I saw his hand drop from the knob as he recognized Bowen Digges.

  “Good evening, sir,” Bowen said.

  Mr. Hilyard nodded curtly and closed the door.

  “Well, of all things,” the girl in the white dress said. “Who was that?”

  “That,” Bowen Digges said, “was a girl I used to know. Be careful you don’t slip, and look out for your skirt.”

  I went back to my car. I don’t think he’d even seen me, and I was sure he hadn’t recognized me if he had. He waited till I got my car started and out of his way. I heard his motor go on and race violently for a moment behind me.

  It just didn’t make sense, I thought. He’d never been “paid off” by any two thousand, five hundred dollars. I would have been willing to stake everything I owned on that. There was some ghastly mistake somewhere. I’d as soon have believed one of my own sons had done such a thing. They just weren’t that kind of people.

  That was Monday night at half past twelve. It was on Tuesday night at eleven thirty-five that Lawrason Hilyard’s watch stopped when he fell or was thrown into the Georgetown Canal. And as far as anyone knew or could find out, Bowen Digges was the last person who had seen him alive.

  CHAPTER 5

  LILAC PUT THE WEDNESDAY MORNING papers on my bed and went over to close the windows. I knew by the way she slammed them down that something was wrong. I looked at the clock on the table. It was twenty-five minutes past seven. As I have breakfast at eight, that meant something was very wrong indeed; but since I’m well used to the kind of things that make Lilac revert practically to the jungle, I just took a deep breath, sat up and waited. She came back to the foot of the bed.

  “Did you read what it says in there?” she demanded. I could almost hear the tom-toms beat in the tone of her voice.

  I picked the paper up. All I saw was war and more war.

  “Down at th’ bottom,” she said.

  I glanced down at an item in a box at the lower-left-hand corner. The type was heavy, indicating that it was last-minute news.

  “Well-dressed man believed suicide,” it said. “The body of a well-dressed man was removed from the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal early this morning. The man was five feet, eleven and one half inches tall, had graying hair, wore a gray suit with a gray striped shirt and a green-figured tie bought at a Washington store. No identifying papers were found. The body was removed to the morgue at Gallinger Hospital pending police investigation.”

  I looked up at Lilac blankly.

  “That’s him, all right,” she said.

  “Who?” I demanded. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “Mist’ Hilyer,” she said flatly. “Boston, he’s downstairs right this minute. He says it’s Mist’ Hilyer. He says he ain’ goin’ back to that house. Ain’ nobody goin’ to make him go back neither.”

  I forced myself to be a lot calmer than I was.

  “What makes Boston think it’s Mr. Hilyard?”

  “Boston don’ think, he. know,” she said angrily. “Mist’ Hilyer ain’ come home at all las’ night. He come in jus’ ’fore eleven an’ started raisin’ time’ cause Boston he wouldn’ go out in the dark with that dog they got. He had somebody in his study, an’ they took th’ dog out theirselves. Th’ dog come back wringin’ wet, but Mist’ Hilyer he never come, an’ he ain’ come yet. Boston ain’ goin’ back neither. An’ Ah don’ blame him.”

  I just sat there staring at her for an instant. “Does Mrs. Hilyard know it?” I asked then.

  “Boston ain’ said nothin’. He ain’ seen her. He got th’ paper an’ he come straight over here. It don’ surprise him none.”

  “All right, Lilac,” I said. “Now just be quiet and put my breakfast on a tray downstairs. I’ll get up.”

  I waited until I heard her going down the stairs, and then I reached over and dialed Colonel Primrose’s number. He answered the phone himself.

  “This is Grace Latham, colonel,” I said quickly. “They found a man’s body in the canal this morning; it’s in the paper. Boston say it’s Mr. Hilyard.”

  I caught a kind of sharpened silence at the other end of the line.

  “He’s their butler. He’s over here now with Lilac.”

  “What makes him think it’s Hilyard?” Colonel Primrose asked calmly. It’s wonderful never to be jolted out of the even tenor of your way.

  “The description,” I said. Having asked the same question myself, I suppose it was silly of me to be irritated by Colonel Primrose’s asking it. “Plus the fact that Mr. Hilyard didn’t come home last night. The body’s at the morgue. I gather Mrs. Hilyard doesn’t even know he’s not home. You might do something about it.”

  “I will, at once,” he said imperturbably. “Thanks for calling. I’ll let you know about it as soon as I can.”

  I took a shower and got dressed quickly. I was really much more upset about it than actually I had any cause to be, or than I would have been if Diane hadn’t dried her shoes in front of my fire, or if the young man at the cocktail party hadn’t turned out to be Bowen Digges, After all, people have to die, and if they choose to commit suicide, it’s their own business. The idea that it was murder didn’t enter my head.

  All the time I was dressing I kept seeing Mr. Hilyard standing in the door under the fanlight, looking first at his daughter stumbling along the hall and then back at Bowen Digges standing there on the sidewalk in the glare of my headlights, and I
kept hearing Bowen Digges say, “That was a girl I used to know.” And it was all very puzzling. Hilyard had known for three months that the man they’d said he’d paid to get rid of was there in Washington, sitting in the same office with him. He must have realized that sooner or later he and Diane couldn’t help but meet. Washington has got awfully big, but it’s not that big yet. And then it struck me suddenly. Maybe that was why he was going to resign—if his wife had been telling me the truth. But if that was the reason, he would never have let Diane come on in the first place. It didn’t make sense, I thought.

  Agnes Philips had said that Lawrason Hilyard was a ruthless man. Ruthless men don’t resign major jobs just because old beaus of their daughters unexpectedly turn up in responsible positions owning dinner jackets. And they certainly don’t kill themselves for that reason.

  Nevertheless, I thought, I’d like to have known what went on in the Hilyard household the day after Diane met and recognized Bowen Digges. She had come over, as a matter of fact, when I was out, and stayed a couple of hours. I managed to phone her before I went out to dinner, but she was out then, so that I hadn’t even talked to her since the street scene of Monday night. I regretted it now much more than I had before.

  I sat down at my breakfast tray, picked up the paper again, and settled down to wait for Colonel Primrose’s call. I glanced at the item at the bottom of the front page, and turned to the inside. RUMORS OF OPM SHAKE-UP was the first thing that caught my eye. I read through the story carefully.

  “As a result of recent airings of the promethium situation in the House of Representatives, the corridors of the Social Security Building are rife with speculation as to a possible shift in control,” it said. “The best bet as to a likely successor to Lawrason Hilyard, present branch chief, is Bowen Digges, now assistant to Mr. Hilyard. He is regarded as an exceptionally able addition to the younger ranks of the Office of Production Management, and also considered highly acceptable to the congressional bloc that has been a thorn in the side of the dollar-a-year men. Digges came directly from the California Institute of Technology and has a broad knowledge of war needs and the available supply of the critical so-called ‘magic metal.’ Only twenty-eight years old, he has had experience in the practical as well as the academic and theoretical field of metallurgy. He is energetic and likable, is given much of the credit for the speed with which the limited supply of promethium has found its way into military essentials, and is said to have been responsible for the vigorous curtailment of nondefense use of the metal and a generous absence of red tape and delay. If a shake-up comes, his appointment will meet with enthusiasm, especially in Army and Navy procurement circles.”