by James R Benn
“Please,” Tadeusz said. “Why can’t I have the laudanum now?” No one answered his pleas.
“Sheila,” I said, thinking out loud, and not taking in the desperate measure in Tad’s voice. “If she lied about getting the drugs, the only reason could be to divert suspicion from her, onto Eddie.”
“And Eddie’s dead,” Big Mike said to Radecki, “by your bayonet. She made it look like there’s a connection between you two and the drugs.”
“Oh no,” Tad moaned, but we were too busy trying to add things up to comfort him.
“Maybe we were right about Eddie outliving his usefulness,” I said. “But wrong about whom he’d been useful to.”
“No, I don’t believe it,” Tadeusz said, shaking his head vigorously. “She was so nice. So was Eddie. He was funny, I liked it when he visited.”
“What did you talk about with them?”
“Nothing special. That is what was so pleasant. They’d ask me about Poland, where I went to school, but I didn’t want to talk about the past. They wanted to know where I wished to live after the war, what my plans were. Sheila told me they’d take me to the shore at Shoeburyness, where Eddie’s family lived, for a visit as soon as I was well.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “She wanted to know when that might be. When you’d be strong enough to travel, to go out and meet people.”
“Yes, she did. She told me she’d write to Eddie’s mother, to let her know when I’d be well enough. When Major Horak would be done with me.” Understanding flashed across his face, the last words coming out slowly, as the terrible truth revealed itself. “She wanted to know how long before she had to kill me. I wish she had.” Tad’s voice trailed off, what was left of his spirit broken by this last betrayal.
“Dear God,” Radecki said. “I nearly helped her do it.”
“What?” I watched Radecki reach for the round tin of Ashbourne biscuits. He opened it, and instead of biscuits, it contained an apple cake, the top liberally sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. It was about the right size for the large cake pan that was in the sink at Sheila’s place.
“She gave me this, early this morning. After I’d told her the day before about visiting, she said she’d bake a cake to cheer Tadeusz up, and could she come by and give it to me. Perhaps it’s been tampered with.”
“Early this morning?”
“Yes, about seven o’clock.”
“An hour before Eddie was knifed,” Big Mike said. “And Sheila told us she hadn’t seen anyone else at the hotel.”
“Are you suggesting Sheila killed Miller with my bayonet?” Radecki demanded. “How could a slightly built girl take a man by surprise, and drive a large knife into his heart?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Whoever did it got it right. There was very little blood; he died instantly.”
“Is the cake poisoned?” Tadeusz said. He got up, pushing himself off the chair with both arms and shuffling slowly across the floor in his slippers. I took the tin from Radecki and sniffed.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Can’t smell anything. Must be sweet, though, this is a lot of sugar, and the stuff ’s hard to come by.” I broke a piece of cake off and sniffed, but got nothing. I resisted the temptation to lick my fingers and wiped the crumbs off on my sleeve.
“Around every corner, there is death,” Tadeusz said. “Everywhere I go, death follows. Eddie is nice to me, and he is dead. Sheila is nice, and wants to kill me. Valerian, Piotr, you both try to help me, and what happens? You are framed for murder. I am a vessel for death.” He paced the length of the room, passing Big Mike, then heading back, muttering to himself.
“Why don’t you give him the laudanum?” I asked.
“No,” Kaz said. “I am very sorry, but no. Tadeusz is a Polish soldier. He must do what is right, even at a cost to himself. We cannot take a chance with any more drugs.”
I didn’t care about other Polish soldiers; I just couldn’t bear to see this kid suffer. I looked away from Kaz, knowing he was right, unwilling to meet his eyes. I stared at the floor, flushed with a sense of shame at what we were putting him through.
Crumbs. There were crumbs at my feet. Just as there had been on the ground where Eddie lay. I thought back to the kitchen at Penford Street in Camberwell. Why were there gardener’s gloves on the counter? Why would anyone use more than a month’s ration of sugar for a single cake?
“What does an oleander flower look like?” I said, bending down to feel the crumbs. They vanished into tiny pieces as I rubbed them between my fingers.
“They can be white or red,” Kaz said. “They look a bit like propeller blades, I always thought. Five petals, I believe.”
“With long, narrow, shiny green leaves?”
“Yes, why?”
“The plant at Sheila’s place,” Big Mike said.
“Yeah. I’m not much on flowers, but my dad once arrested a florist for murder. He used the sap from an oleander plant as poison. He found out that his wife was having an affair, and that the guy would come over while he was out making deliveries. He began to notice that his single malt Scotch was down about an inch or so every Wednesday, so he put two and two together and figured the guy was enjoying his liquor and his wife. So one Tuesday night, he takes the sap he’d harvested from his hothouse oleanders and adds it to the Scotch. Wednesday afternoon, he comes home expecting to find a dead body and a hysterical wife. Instead, he finds both of them dead. Gave himself up right away. Said his wife never drank a drop that he’d known of, but that she must’ve kept more than one secret from him.”
“Oleander?” Tadeusz said. He’d come to a halt at one of the windows, leaning on the casement, his face resting on the wood frame.
“A flower,” Radecki said. “Apparently very poisonous.”
“It is,” I said. “Fast acting, and very bitter. Which is why the florist added it to the whiskey, to disguise the taste. And why Sheila used so much sugar. She must’ve baked up something for Eddie, and he keeled over in the alleyway. Then all she had to do was kneel and drive the bayonet between his ribs.”
“Is it a beautiful flower?” Tadeusz said, as he opened the handle on the window and took a deep breath of the fresh air.
“Beautiful and deadly,” I said, thinking of Sheila and her earnest tears, her ingenuous and believable abandonment. My man’s dead, I’m alone, and a killer may be after me. Just the right words to get a couple of flat-footed GIs to feel sorry for her, give her a few pounds and a ride to the train station. The air flowing into the room felt good, as if it were washing away the shock of how duplicitous even an innocent-looking young girl could be.
“How long would I have until you take me to see the general?” Tadeusz said to Kaz, without looking away from the open window.
“It will be in a week.”
“I think not,” Tadeusz said, hoisting himself onto the narrow sill, holding each open window with one hand. The hinges creaked, the breeze blew his white robe back, and for a second it looked as if he’d grown wings. Then he was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY
It had only been four stories, but four was enough with a flagstone terrace at the bottom of the drop. Tadeusz had put an end to his torture, and as much as I had wished he could see things through, I couldn’t blame him. The only thing worse than being executed and buried in the Katyn Forest was to witness the executions and burials, then be thrown into a secret police prison, where fear and memories ate away at your mind until reality and sanity decayed beyond repair. Then to be sent back out into the world through a bureaucratic mistake, silent and withdrawn, adrift among people who wanted only to draw you out, stand you up, use you, and watch you relive the nightmare visions at their bidding. For the greater good.
Funny, but with all the sacrifices in this world for the greater good, I had to wonder where it had gotten to. That greater good. Just around the corner, like prosperity? Hoarded somewhere, stockpiled in a warehouse for after the war? Or had it been spent in payoffs, kickbacks, bribes, s
weetheart deals, promotions for the incompetent but well connected? I don’t remember seeing any greater good in Sicily, at Salerno, or along the Volturno River. Just death, snafus, and suffering. So good for you, Tadeusz.
All this ran through my head as I stood at attention in front of Colonel Harding’s desk the next morning, Kaz and Big Mike a step behind me. I kept my mouth shut, which I had learned the hard way was the best defense when Harding had that look: lips compressed, jaw muscles clenched, the vein above his temple throbbing. It was like waiting for a hand grenade to go off.
“You,” Harding said, pointing a finger at Kaz, “were supposed to be lying low somewhere.”
“I-,” Kaz began, drawing a dark look from Harding.
“When I want to hear from you, Lieutenant Kazimierz, I will let you know. You,” Harding said, moving the accusing finger in my direction, “were supposed to be in Dover, talking to the Russians while they had their tour. And you, Corporal, were supposed to be driving him there. Instead, the three of you end up north of London, at a top-secret facility, standing by while a valuable asset jumps out a window. That wouldn’t have had anything to do with your presence there, would it?”
“Tadeusz Tucholski,” Kaz said. When Harding didn’t snap at him, he continued. “That was his name. Tadeusz was very valuable, it is true. He was also very, very fragile. I don’t think we understood how fragile. If we hadn’t gone, he might not have killed himself, not that day. But some other day, certainly.”
“It’s true, Colonel,” I said. We’d agreed that it didn’t make any sense to reveal Radecki’s use of his laudanum. He’d had the best of intentions, and it had nothing to do with what happened yesterday. Unless you counted the fact that we’d withheld it from Tadeusz. All around, a truth better not told.
“He was in real bad shape, Colonel,” Big Mike said. “It’s a wonder he held together this long.”
“That may be, but it still doesn’t tell me why you two went up there, when you should have been on your way to Dover.”
“I came by here early yesterday morning, to read the file on Topper Chapman that Cosgrove had sent over. I called Scotland Yard to check something and heard that Scutt wanted me over at the Rubens, where a body had been found. It was Eddie Miller, the kid I saw with Sidorov. Apparently Kaz had been seen handling the murder weapon, a Polish Army bayonet, the day before, and Scutt was suspicious of him. Thought he might be taking his revenge on the Russians by killing one of their informers, something along those lines.”
“Especially after that comment at the Russian Embassy,” Harding said.
“Yes, sir,” I said, eager to display the proper military courtesy, which sometimes had a calming effect on Harding. “We went to search Eddie’s flat, and ran into a girl from the hotel, Sheila Carlson. She gave us a sob story about getting married to Eddie, and how she’d found Eddie’s body but ran away because she thought the killer might be after her.”
“But she was the killer?”
“Yes,” I said, thankful that Big Mike must’ve filled him in last night. And now I knew what the smaller cake pan had been for. “She used poison, from an oleander plant. Left a note for Eddie, met him in the alley, gave him a piece of cake that he was probably happy to eat. That poison is fast acting, and in no time he was on the ground, with Sheila thrusting a blade into his heart. But first she’d given Captain Radecki a poisoned apple cake to take to Tadeusz.”
“And you think MI5 put her up to it?” Harding said, in a tone of disbelief.
“We know she was an informant for Scotland Yard. And we know that the British government wants this Katyn Forest affair hushed up.”
“We, Lieutenant Boyle? Do you mean SHAEF, Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force? General Eisenhower? How about FDR?”
“Sorry, sir. I mean Lieutenant Kazimierz.”
“Suspect it, you mean,” Harding said. I glanced at Kaz, unsure if I should mention the stolen memo.
“We-I mean the Polish Government in Exile-have a memo from the British Foreign Office, stating that the investigation into the Katyn Forest Massacre should not be allowed to succeed,” Kaz said.
“Let’s see it then” Harding said.
“It can’t be released,” Kaz said. “It would endanger the person who obtained it.”
“Oh,” Harding said, throwing up his hands. “So we have two lieutenants with absolutely no proof, accusing His Majesty’s Government of murder.”
“Two lieutenants and a corporal,” Big Mike said. “And only MI5, not the whole shebang.”
“Well, then, let’s call in the press. The fact that there’s three of you clinches it.” He fumbled with a pack of Luckies, struck a match, and lit one. He threw the wooden matchstick in the general vicinity of an ashtray, but it missed and fell at my feet, trailing a thin line of gray smoke.
“I was worried about Kaz, Colonel Harding,” I said as I leaned down to pick up the burned-out match. I laid it in the empty ashtray and couldn’t get the image of Tadeusz at the window out of my mind. Harding swiveled in his chair and stared out the window, toward a small patch of St. James’s Square, blowing blue smoke that curled against the window and came back at him.
“Understood, Boyle. And you lucked out, once again. The whole Home Guard tour for the Russians got put off by a couple of days. The Germans lost two bombers near Dover, the new Heinkel 177 type. Home Guard units from Maidstone to Dover have been out hunting for survivors. The RAF is eager to interrogate them, so it’s top priority. Get down there today and see what you can find out. The Russian delegation is already at Dover Castle. Big Mike has the details. Now get going and don’t stop until you hit Dover.”
“Sir, I need to stop at Scotland Yard. I still have some evidence I need to deliver to Inspector Scutt.”
“What kind of evidence?”
“An envelope full of money. What Sheila and Eddie had been supposedly saving up, from what she got from MI5 and what he got from the Russians. She had it on her when we ran into her at Eddie’s place.”
“How much money?”
“I haven’t counted it, sir.” I pulled the envelope from my jacket pocket, and Harding nodded in Big Mike’s direction, so I handed it over. Maybe he thought Detroit cops were a less sticky-fingered bunch than their Boston brothers.
“Lieutenant Kazimierz, you stay away from Scotland Yard. I don’t want you thrown in jail unless I order it. Big Mike, you are responsible for getting Boyle here to Dover today. Got it?”
“Sure, Sam,” Big Mike said, heaving a sigh. He’d taken a seat on one of the chairs facing Harding’s desk, counting out pound notes between licks of his thumb, while Kaz and I still stood ramrod straight. Harding looked at him, tapped his ashes, shook his head, and returned to his paperwork. Big Mike was a bluecoat down to his bones, and he’d never be a real soldier, not the spit-and-polish type anyway. Harding seemed to know it wasn’t worth his breath trying to make him one, and I think part of him liked Big Mike’s lack of proper military formality. It gave him a chance to let his guard down, to be human behind the closed doors of his office. Big Mike knew when to toe the line, but at any time he could tire of the whole thing, take a load off, and call the colonel by his first name. He did it with such sincere innocence that Harding never took offense. Or did Big Mike do it on purpose, to defuse a tense situation, and draw Harding’s ire away from his intended victim? He finished counting, whistled, and gave the envelope back to me. “One thousand one hundred and ten pounds.”
“That much?” I said. With everything that had happened, I hadn’t given the envelope a second thought. Loose cash usually focused my attention, but it had been a helluva day.
“Yeah. You gave her the five-pound notes from the top, but the rest were all tens, twenties, and fifties. Over forty-four hundred bucks, Billy.”
“That’s a lot of dough. I don’t think Eddie gave Sidorov anything worth half this much, and Sheila sure didn’t get rich snitching for Scotland Yard.”
“Maybe it was a down
payment on an apple cake,” Kaz said.
“You think that money came from MI5?” Harding said. “And stand at ease, both of you.” Kaz shrugged, not wanting to get into another discussion of proof versus suspicions.
“Listen, Colonel,” I said, leaning on his desk. “All we know for sure is that somebody paid Sheila to kill Tadeusz. There’s no personal motive we know about, and no other explanation for her making a getaway with this much cash.”
“You’ve spoiled her payday, Billy,” Big Mike said. “If that was the down payment, she’s got to get the rest of it quick, and disappear.”
“We could make that difficult for her,” Kaz said. “I called Major Horak last night, but he was unavailable. I decided not to leave a message about Tadeusz, and that I would tell him in person this morning.”
“So no one else knows,” Harding said.
“No. I spoke to the doctor at St. Albans, whom I’d met when we arranged for Tadeusz to be admitted. He will submit a written report, but I expect that since I was there in person, he has no need to inform anyone else directly. So I will go to the Rubens Hotel and tell Major Horak, and everyone else, that Tadeusz is much better and is ready to return.”
“She’s bound to have friends at the hotel who will pass that information on to her,” I said.
“Lieutenant Kazimierz,” Harding said, “are you prepared to lie to your superior officer?”
“Only since he is my former superior officer, Colonel.”
“All right. Try to flush her out, as long as you stay clear of Scotland Yard, and as long as Big Mike gets Boyle to Dover by nightfall. Dismissed.”
We went to the motor pool, where I had to sign out a jeep for an extended trip outside of London. Then we dropped Kaz off at the Rubens on our way to Scotland Yard, to spread the rumor of Tadeusz’s impending and vocal return. Big Mike drove along the Embankment, where a cold breeze churned the fog rising from the Thames, creating an eerie, gray wall of nothingness. He parked the jeep as I grabbed my musette bag and went inside. I found Inspector Scutt at his desk, on the telephone, nodding his head and mumbling, Yes, sir and No, sir in a way that told me his boss was on the other end. Or his boss’s boss.
