Murder in the O.P.M.

by Leslie Ford

  There was a silence in the room. Colonel Primrose said, “Did he feel responsible for the present shortage?”

  “He did, and without any rational foundation for it. The plant is working twenty-four hours a day. . . . The civilian supply has been completely cut off hasn’t it, Bartlett?”

  Bartlett Folger nodded. “If we could make promethium out of air, we’d do it gladly, colonel. In our own interest as well as the country’s.”

  Captain Lamb got to his feet. I glanced at Diane. She was watching him, the corners of her red lips drawn down a little, fine crystal tears burning along her lower lashes.

  Colonel Primrose got up too. I knew he was watching all of them like an old cat watching half a dozen mice on the pantry shelf.

  Mrs. Hilyard rose. “I’m sure, Captain Lamb,” she said quietly, “and painful as it is for me to say, that my husband would never have taken his gun and gone out without a hat, in the middle of the night, if he’d been in possession of his normal faculties.”

  It was as if a bombshell had dropped. I heard Diane’s breath break sharply in her throat. Her whole body became as tense and taut as a violin string.

  Captain Lamb stopped and looked at her. “Without his. . . hat?” he said blankly.

  “His hat is still in the hall closet,” Mrs Hilyard said. “He never leaves the house without it, even to go out into the garden.”

  Captain Lamb’s eyes moved slowly past her and rested on Diane. “Where is the hat you said was your father’s, Miss Hilyard?” he said.

  CHAPTER 8

  “I’LL HAVE TO HAVE THAT HAT, MISS HILYARD.” It was all illusion, of course, but Captain Lamb seemed enormous just then, towering grimly above us. Diane had shrunk deeper into the down cushions, a frail little orchid of a thing, looking up at him with blank, wide-eyed innocence. The molehill of the hat had assumed the proportions of a mountain, and I was sitting on it.

  Carey Eaton was completely himself. “She must have left it out in her car. She didn’t have it when she came in.”

  Diane turned what Agnes Philips had called “those incredible hyacinth eyes” on him and said, “Thank you, dear.” As she looked up at Captain Lamb then she was utterly childlike and disarming.

  “I threw it in the canal on the way home. I thought it was my father’s old golf hat until I looked at it again. Then I realized I’d made a mistake. I threw it out of the window. Why? Did you want to keep it?”

  Captain Lamb controlled himself with an extraordinary effort. “Yes, Miss Hilyard,” he said. “Yes. We did want it. We wanted it very badly. Where did you throw it over?”

  “It must have been at the foot of Foxhall Road,” she said. “There was a lot of traffic. I suppose it went in. I’m really awfully sorry. Would you like me to go look for it?”

  Captain Lamb drew a deep breath. The kind that takes a count of ten before speech can be trusted.

  “No, Miss Hilyard,” he said heavily. “We’ll find it ourselves.”

  It was fine, of course. At least it would have been if somebody except me had had the hat. Or if I’d been lumpy enough so that a bulge amidships wouldn’t be noticeable. But I’m not. I just sat there, wondering whether I could keep on sitting there or if I’d have to get up, and then whether Colonel Primrose would spot it first or that objectionable young man, Mr. Carey Eaton.

  Colonel Primrose got up himself. “You’d better get on with it then, Lamb,” he said placidly. “It’s important to find it. The entire question of suicide or murder hangs on it. If Miss Hilyard believes her father did not take his own life, I’m sure she’ll be anxious for us to find it. . . . Do you think you could identify it?”

  “I think I could,” Diane said helpfully. “Yes, I’m sure I could.”

  “Did it have initials stamped on it, or the name of the store?” Captain Lamb put in.

  “Oh, dear, I didn’t notice,” Diane said. I thought she was going to turn and say, “Did you, Grace?”

  But it was Captain Lamb instead. “Did you, Mrs. Latham?”

  I don’t like to tell a deliberate lie when Colonel Primrose is looking at me, so I said, “They were very blurred.” Which was true enough, and I could have been shaking my head for other reasons.

  I drew a long, relieved breath. Colonel Primrose and Captain Lamb started for the door. Carey Eaton and Bartlett Folger followed them out into the hall.

  “May I see Mr. Hilyard’s hat?” I heard Colonel Primrose ask. “In the hall closet, I think Mrs. Hilyard said.”

  “Of course,” Bartlett Folger said. I saw Mrs. Hilyard give a quick start, and I remembered the broken chair.

  “I’ll take this along if you don’t mind,” Colonel Primrose said. “That’s a beautiful chair, by the way. I hope you’ll get a good man to mend it. I know of one if you’d like his name.”

  Mrs. Hilyard relaxed and closed her eyes a moment. Her daughter Joan had two bright red spots in her cheeks. I’ve seldom seen four more relieved women than we were just then, each pair of us for a different reason. But it didn’t last long.

  Colonel Primrose came back to the door. “Buck’s here with your car, Mrs. Latham.”

  Mrs. Hilyard got up quickly. “My dear, it’s been so kind of you to come,” she said, holding out her hand.

  I could feel Diane’s dilemma, being so acutely conscious of my own. She leaned forward. “Mother I’d like Grace to——”

  Colonel Primrose interrupted. “You have a luncheon engagement, Mrs. Latham,” he said pleasantly. “It’s getting on, and I’d like you to drop me at my house, if you will.”

  There wasn’t much I could do at that point without making a scene, so I got up and said good-by to Diane and Mrs. Hilyard. I didn’t look at Diane. I didn’t have to. I just stuck my hands in my pockets and followed Colonel Primrose out.

  I got to the door of my car. “You’ll have to go with Captain Lamb, colonel,” I said. “I’m going the other way. I’ve got to go out to Cabin John.” It was the only place I could think of in the opposite direction just then. I got in the car and closed the door.

  “No,” he said calmly. “You’re coming with me. Have you forgotten you’re on this case officially?”

  “Officially?”

  He smiled faintly and nodded. “This time, Mrs. Latham, you’re working with the police, and not against them,” he said placidly. “You’ve never been in jail, have you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “All right then. Suppose you drive me back to your house.”

  He went around the car. I hastily jammed my furlined driving gloves into my pocket on top of the rolled-up hat, took an old pair out of the compartment and put them on.

  “For your information, Mrs. Latham,” he said, getting in beside me, “we’re stopping at two places on the way. First at Stanley Woland’s, on Adams Place, and second at Bowen Digges’. It may interest you to know Mr. Digges hasn’t been at his desk at OPM since Monday afternoon. And that Stanley Woland has been suddenly called out of town.”

  “Really?” I said. “Stanley was at the ball with Diane last night. His picture was in the paper this morning.” I looked at him quickly.

  He nodded. “The whole thing, if you’ll allow me to say so stinks to heaven. There are a number of things I want to know. One is: Whose hat is Diane hiding? Another is: Who broke the chair in the hall closet? It was leaning against Bartlett Folger’s overcoat, so it had obviously been put there since he came in this morning. I want to know why Folger changed his mind and agrees that Hilyard committed suicide when he was tooth and nail against it this morning at eight-fifteen o’clock. Also why Hilyard took his gun when he went out, and why he didn’t take his hat. I’d also like to know where all these people were last night.”

  “Why don’t you ask them?”

  “Because I’d prefer to ask them each separately.”

  I turned the car into Adams Place, which is a one-block street running from 33 rd to 34th between Q Street and Dent Place. It’s a charming little street with old-fashioned lig
hts still on it, where the small two-story, red brick houses once occupied by colored people have been converted into two and three-room maisonettes with tiny walled gardens in back.

  Stanley Woland, I knew, was living in one borrowed from a newspaper correspondent who’d gone to China for a couple of months. It was halfway down the block under a gaunt gnarled old oak. As we came up, the curtains in the kitchen window beside the door moved a little and were still again.

  “I’ll wait,” I said. I could at least get Bowen Digges’ hat stowed under the seat while the colonel’s back was turned.

  He shook his head. “I wouldn’t want to have to walk home, Mrs. Latham, and I don’t trust you. Come along.”

  It was a long time before I heard steps on the other side of the door. Stanley’s Filipino servant opened it just enough to show his face.

  “Mr. Woland gone away. Not home today,” he said. He started to shut the door promptly, but Colonel Primrose had established a bridgehead with the toe of his shoe. He took a card out of his case and handed it through the crack. The little Filipino looked at it and opened the door hurriedly.

  “Mr. Woland very sick,” he said earnestly. “He not see people today. You come tomorrow, please?”

  “No,” Colonel Primrose said calmly. “I’ll see him now. Give him that card. We’ll wait.”

  We went through into a rather large room with French doors opening onto the garden. The morning papers were littered about, a cigarette was smoldering where it had been hastily thrown onto the hearth. A half-eaten lunch was on a table. Stanley had left quickly.

  He appeared the same way, in pajamas and a Paisley silk dressing gown, over the banister of the stairs.

  “I feel like the devil, colonel,” he said apologetically.

  He certainly looked it. I stared at him. He had a poultice of some foul greenish stuff over his left eye, and the swollen flesh above and below it was about the same color, perhaps with a little more yellow and purple in it. His other eye was visible through about half its normal channel.

  He came on down, not bouncing and bounding now. He stepped very carefully, as if the floor was covered with soap bubbles that he was anxious not to break.

  “I had too much champagne last night and a door got in my way,” he said. It was a pretty sour attempt to be offhand about it. “Awkward, too, because Mrs. Hilyard called up. It’s a ghastly business, isn’t it? I should have been over there this morning, but I can’t go looking as if I’d been in a tavern brawl. Have you seen Diane, Grace?”

  I nodded.

  “How is she taking it? She was amazingly fond of the old . . . man.”

  “After all, he was her father,” I observed. “She’s taking it very well, on the whole.”

  Stanley sat down gingerly, Colonel Primrose watching him with considerable interest, though I don’t think Stanley knew it.

  “I don’t know what the devil I’m going to do,” Stanley said. “When’s the funeral, do you know? Are they going to take him back home?”

  “The body has not been released yet,” Colonel Primrose said.

  Stanley must have jumped inches. “Oh, mother of——” He held on to his head. “What do you mean, released the body?”

  His face really was the color of surrealist pork. The perspiration stood out in beads from his poultice to the somewhat receded roots of his hair.

  “Is there some question about it? Mrs. Hilyard told me—— Look. Do you mind if I have a drink?”

  “Not at all,” Colonel Primrose said.

  He certainly needed one. The liquor slopped out of the glass and the glass rattled against his teeth. He spilled most of the water he took as a chaser.

  “When did you see Mr. Hilyard last, Woland?” Colonel Primrose asked, very affably.

  “I don’t remember. Let me see. It was——” Stanley looked at Colonel Primrose intently for an instant—or as intently as his condition allowed. “Oh, I might as well be frank.”

  The telephone rang. Stanley said, “Excuse me, please,” started to reach for it, remembered he was out of town, and started to call for his man.

  “I’ll answer it,” Colonel Primrose said. He took it up.

  “Hello,” he said. . . . “No, this is Colonel Primrose. Do you wish to speak to Mr. Woland?”

  He waited a moment and put the phone down. “She hung up,” he said calmly.

  Stanley moistened his lips. They were swollen, too, and dry gray.

  “You were going to be frank, I believe, Woland?”

  I thought Stanley gave the impression of a man who couldn’t swim about to plunge into an icy stream.

  “I saw Hilyard last night when I brought Diane home from the ball,” he said. “It was half past ten. We got there at ten. She got a headache, and I thought she ought to go home. She went straight upstairs. Her father came out of the library and asked me to have a nightcap with him.”

  “He was the door that gave you the black eye?”

  “No, he was not!” Stanley said with some irritation. “He wanted to talk to me about Diane. She has done me the honor of consenting to be my wife. Or maybe you’ve heard?”

  I thought Colonel Primrose’s failure to extend congratulations was marked.

  “I heard it rumored,” he said dryly. “It’s settled, is it?”

  “Yes, it’s settled.”

  “Her father was agreeable?”

  “Certainly.” Stanley even managed a kind of smile. “With my usual modesty, I can even say he was delighted.”

  “Well, where did you get the shiner, then?” Colonel Primrose asked.

  “I told you once.”

  “I heard you,” Colonel Primrose said. “My patience is infinite, Woland, but I haven’t a lot of time.”

  Stanley looked at him for an instant. “All right. I’ll tell you. There was another party present. He and I had a little argument. That’s all.”

  Colonel Primrose nodded. “What’s his name?”

  “You can find that out for yourself,” Stanley said coolly. “I’m not saying.”

  Colonel Primrose got up. “An icebag would probably help. I hope we haven’t disturbed you too much.”

  I thought Stanley started to give us a distinctly malevolent glance and changed his mind.

  “I’ll appreciate it if you’ll both keep quiet about this . . . eye of mine,” he said. “I don’t want it all over town.”

  He gave us, instead, what I suppose was meant to be an ingratiating smile. Actually it was the most horrible, decadent-hued leer you could imagine.

  CHAPTER 9

  “WELL, WELL,” COLONEL PRIMROSE SAID, AS WE got back into the car. “I don’t know why it always seems funny when somebody hangs one on somebody like Mr. Woland. It isn’t, really.”

  “I know,” I answered. “Nevertheless——”

  “You and Buck,” he remarked. “You’re just alike. Romantic and uncivilized, both of you.”

  I changed the subject. “Who did it?”

  “What’s your guess?”

  “Mr. Carey Eaton,” I said. “What’s yours?”

  He shrugged. “I can’t afford to guess, Mrs. Latham. It was Mrs. Hilyard at the phone, by the way. He’s probably calling her back now.. She——”

  When he stopped I said, “Look, colonel. You don’t really think she——”

  “Shot her husband?” he finished for me.

  “Something of the sort.”

  “I wouldn’t say at this point. Somebody did. I think she knows it. She was deliberately lying about that beggar.”

  “And the hat?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer for a moment. “I don’t know about it. The hat was a mistake. I think she genuinely wanted us to believe it was suicide.”

  “Why?”

  He smiled. “Didn’t your mother teach you it was unattractive for women to ask a man questions he can’t answer? Bowen Digges lives with three other bachelors in a tenant house on the Folsom place across the river. Do you know where it is?”

  �
�I know where the Folsom place is,” I said.

  “Will you take me there, please?”

  “I thought I had a luncheon engagement,” I answered. “I’m going to be awfully late to it. What’s the matter with your car?”

  “It’s not mine, it’s Buck’s,” he said imperturbably. “He’s using it. He’s taken that cigarette pack and Lawrason Hilyard’s hat down to the laboratory at headquarters. If he had the hat that Lamb’s dragging the canal for, he could have taken that too.”

  “Whose do you think it was?” I asked, as calmly as I could.

  “It was a young man’s. Not Woland’s, unless he changed before he took Diane home. It could be Eaton’s. It could belong to a man named Duncan Scott—a young lawyer Hilyard had an appointment with last night.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Scott told me so yesterday afternoon. He has two clients he’s trying to get priority ratings for. He came down for one and picked up the other—a fellow named Ira Colton—down here. He and Colton met Digges at a party. Digges agreed to lunch with them yesterday and talk it over, but he didn’t show up. They ran into Hilyard as they were leaving. He said they could come and see him at his house at nine o’clock.”

  I remembered something. “Mr. Colton’s the gadget manufacturer from somewhere near Cleveland, isn’t he?” I asked. “Bowen Digges was talking about him Monday afternoon. They must have got together after I left. I suppose that’s why he was invited. Digges, I mean.”

  We’d come to the Key Bridge. I could see a couple of policemen in a boat, rowing slowly down the canal, poking around among the water hyacinths and irises along the bank. I felt my cheeks getting unnaturally warm. It occurred to me that he hadn’t mentioned Bowen Digges as a possible owner of the hat, which could mean a lot.