by Don Jacobson
“You see, Kitty wrote them and hand-delivered them to me in 1811, the morning after Jane and Lizzy’s weddings. She had returned from 1932 to place this commission, as well as the creation of the Trust, in my hands. You cannot fail to recognize the significance of that date just eighteen years ago.
“Kitty could not possibly have known of any occurrences after 1932 which she then could have memorialized in a Founder’s Letter.
“What you found clearly came from a letter I wrote sometime in our—yours and mine—future, Fanny.
“But to whom—Lydia or Kitty—and for what reason, I am, as of yet, unsure.”
Fanny looked slightly disgruntled and spoke up, “I do understand that our daughter returned to conduct important business with you, Mr. Bennet. What I fail to comprehend is why you did not include me.”
Bennet sadly looked at his wife before dropping into the armchair opposite her and, shaking his head as if he had only at that moment begun to see the injury he had caused Mrs. Bennet over the years, replied to her, “Fanny this is not an excuse, only a plea for mitigation. You need to recall that this was the day after the weddings in 1811. I had yet to begin my journey. Can you recall how many months t’was before I found a way to join you for tea in the parlor rather than hiding myself away in Longbourn’s library?
“T’is painfully true that I, deep in my old attitude, might have been inclined to conceal Kitty’s visit from you. However, t’was our daughter herself who insisted that I not reveal her return to you or any other member of the family.
“One of her conditions of that visit was that neither you nor Mary could encounter her in her aged form—she was sixty-three at the time. She feared she could not leave once she had re-established deep ties in Hertfordshire.
“Beyond the longings of her heart, she was concerned that the Wardrobe would not allow her to rejoin Tom, Ellie, and the grandchildren if she re-immersed herself too deeply in our Meryton family. She begged me to never tell you that she had returned to Longbourn.
“From all that we now know, her cautions were successful. The Wardrobe allowed her to transit to the future, to the where/when in which she had made her home.
“Now you understand why I tried three years ago to bring you to her: somewhat nearer to this here/now. Each time you asked about her or lamented her absence was a knife to my heart.
“Little did I know that the Wardrobe must have determined that our reunion would not forward its purpose, although I have yet to learn what that may be. It seems to have decided that we were better employed in a world where Kitty was no longer.”
The two parents now descended into a deep silence, each lifting their daughter’s memory in trembling hands.
Fanny broke the silence, “I will leave the inner workings of the Wardrobe to you and the sages of the Trust.
“However, what can we do, Tom, to learn the meaning of this fragment and why Lydia salvaged a nearly burned piece of an already ancient document and then carried it back to a time close to its original creation?”
Bennet paused, shrugged, brushed his hands down his now-dried trousers, and said, “I will do what you seem to excel at. I will ask some questions.”
He grunted and hauled himself to his feet. He marched back to the desk where the library telephone was to be found. Fanny followed behind, moving to protect her mother lode as Bennet lifted the handset. As all calls from Oakham House were routed through the Trust’s switchboard, he ordered an unseen voice answering to connect him to Mr. Reynolds in Research.
A momentary wait ensued as the call was put through, and the telephone at the other end rang a few times. Bennet did not move a muscle. His wife, hands folded over her middle, was equally motionless.
Then Bennet was alert, and his entire posture changed.
At the sound of the other party’s greeting, Bennet instantly replied, “Ah, Reynolds. Glad I was able to catch you before you left for the evening.”
He paused, listening to Mr. Research Reynolds.
Then he fired his question, using his Founder of the Trust voice, “Mr. Reynolds…I have what may seem to be an unusual request. I assure you that I am seeking a simple ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ at the outset. I will then have two follow-up questions.
“First, can you please advise if there have been any Founder’s Letters delivered between 1932 and 1945?
Then Bennet, “Yes, I can wait whilst you check your records.”
Placing his hand over the mouthpiece, Tom whispered to Fanny, “I have learned that you first ask the question to which you already know the answer.”
The receiver rattled back to life, and Bennet crammed the earpiece up to his head.
Then he said, “I see, there was one…and only one? Um-hmm. When was it set to be delivered and to whom?”
A long pause ensued before Bennet urged, “Come now, Reynolds, I am not asking for the contents of the letter, simply the timing and the recipient.”
Another pause, briefer now, before the receiver crackled.
Bennet nodded, bade Reynolds a good evening, and rang off.
He turned to his wife and, in a cloudy voice, somberly stated, “The Founder’s Letter was transmitted through a Family cut-out in Bern, Switzerland. T’was sent to Kitty, scheduled to be delivered on August 19, 1944.
“That was the day of her death.”
Chapter XXXIX
The second telephone call made by Bennet was briefer, but none-the-less just as momentous…at least when the history of the Anubis operation was considered.
The wires from Oakham to Selkirk Houses hummed for no more than a minute. Then an entire call tree lit up, demanding the presence of the Anubis team at the Trust.
Matlock and the Bennets arrived almost simultaneously, expecting that they had beaten their younger associates, caught up as they were in Tuesday evening activities. Yet, when the three elders trooped into the conference room, the other six were already there. A cold collation had been laid out on a side table. Schiller, Robard, and young Fitzwilliam clearly had used their soldiers’ caution as they were tucking into full plates while their wives were content to satisfy themselves with cups of steaming coffee or tea.
Mrs. Bennet pointed to a seat, wordlessly commanding Bennet to sit.
Then she prepared a plate for him and set it on the brown plywood tabletop in front of his place commenting, “You haven’t eaten a bite all day. We have a long evening ahead of us if I am not mistaken.
“The same goes for you, young Tom…and Lizzy, Leenie, and Letty…girlish figures are all well and good, but I am not going to be responsible for picking anyone from the floor who, daintily or not, has fainted from hunger. That especially goes for the two of you who are increasing.”
With that, she looked pointedly at first Lizzy and then Letty.
Seeing her attention focused upon their wives, both Alois and Denis shot to their feet to first learn if their wives were well and then to prepare brimming plates. Richard led the masculine queue building serviceable sandwiches.
After a series of “Yes Grandmothers” and appropriate foot shuffling, the nine settled down to silently eat.
Until Mr. Bennet rapped his heavy gold signet ring on the work surface to gain the group’s attention.
He cleared his throat and began the session that would send the investigation down new channels.
“The gentlemen in the room…Young Tom, I am including your absent Annie in this next…must concede that our ladies are our greatest treasure. They keep our lives interesting, always surprising us with remarkable tidbits that we had ignored in our masculine habit of blindly forging ahead.
“Tonight, we have Mrs. Bennet to thank for giving new life to what has become a truly wearying and, at times, moribund exercise.”
With that, Bennet strode over to the wheeled cart holding an opaque projector, its bulk having sat nearly unused in the corner of the room for three years. He muscled it into position, slipped the scra
p onto the platen, and flipped the light switch.
Which threw a foot-high image of his penmanship onto the wall.
All motion ceased in the room. More than a few creased eyebrows appeared. Furrowed foreheads dominated more youthful features as curious minds tried to decipher the meaning and evaluate the importance of the three words scribed upon the tiny shred of parchment.
Only the Bennet couple and the elder Fitzwilliam seemed unperturbed by the item dominating the screen, although, truthfully, Matlock did experience a thrill at seeing the handwriting of the Founder once again. He had received a Founder’s Letter himself shortly after his father’s death in 1930. Even after twenty years, the distinctive hand jumped off the page, bringing the Earl back to the turbulent days when he had been forced to set aside the habits and mannerisms of a young aristocrat, relics of his “life before.”
Mr. Bennet resolved some of the confusion, “For those of you in this room who are unfamiliar with my hand—you are viewing a tiny section of a Founder’s Letter discovered this day by the redoubtable Mrs. Bennet.”
Fanny dipped her head, pink spots blooming upon each cheek. Bennet then explained how his Mrs. Bennet had been undertaking her own examination of the family’s history; particularly the life story of Lydia Bennet Wickham Fitzwilliam, the Dowager Countess (8th).
“T’is a fragment of a larger piece, assuredly lost to us, that had been delivered to Lady Kate on the day of her execution,” he stated, “and had been collected by the elder Dowager Countess, although a young woman at the time, before she had translated back to her own where/when in Regency England.
“I will not attempt to explain more about Lydia’s journey. T’is unimportant to us at this moment. Suffice to say, she played a critical role in the Wardrobe’s plan.”
He then turned to the Earl, urging him to discuss the significance of the crucial words found on the paper.
The Earl shot to his feet and turned off the projector, all the better to focus the audience on his presentation.
Although he was Mr. Bennet’s twin, except for his steel-grey Bennet Eyes, Matlock’s presence, honed to a fine point after years chairing Whitehall meetings, expanded to fill the room: where Bennet had tended to be the stream upon which they floated, the Earl was a tidal wave that overwhelmed all.
“Today is especially auspicious for the Anubis campaign. As per Mr. Bennet’s request of over three years ago, I have remained at arm’s-length. My presence here is not a signal that I have decided to interfere in your efforts.
“On the contrary, Mr. Bennet asked me here tonight to explore what I knew of the significance of the word ‘winters’ which appeared in the piece uncovered by our Grandmother. Of course, that the word was not capitalized necessarily led to some confusion on my part as it would tend to redirect the researcher’s mind to meanings outside of a person’s moniker.
“For instance, might the Founder, Mr. Bennet,” the Earl queried, “have been urging my mother to ‘beware of the winters to come’ in an expression of concern over her frail state?
“There is no apostrophe to turn this into a possessive, but perhaps the author was somewhat challenged,” he smiled impishly at Bennet who scowled back, “when it came to the finer points of grammar.
“I am inclined to think that this small phrase was not truly an error on the part of The Founder. Rather, I believe what we are seeing is a tiny bit of a draft copy that, for whatever reason, was deemed sufficient by Mr. Bennet to be sealed and transmitted to the Trust for distribution to the Countess. Perhaps time grew short, too brief for him to make a true copy. Only he will know, and I imagine that knowledge will be shrouded for some time to come, based upon the singular assertion he has made to me.
“He has utterly no recollection of having composed this Letter before he and Grandmother translated here. As Mr. Holmes would suggest, the only possible reason can be that he has yet to commit his thoughts to paper.
“We must ignore grammatical errors…especially based upon the significance of that final word—winters. That word carries much power and has engendered much foreboding in the halls of the Five Families over the past sixty years.
“While I cannot definitively defend my next conjecture, I believe that one possible framing of this interrupted sentence could be ‘beware the Winters’ revenge:’ a warning rather than a casual comment made by a father to his elderly and failing daughter.”
The addition of that single word sent a chill through the listeners for it cast the murders in la place Deauville in a different light. The Earl had, in one fell swoop, removed the crime from the more mundane forms of Nazi barbarity with which all had become familiar through the lurid accounts of the Nuremburg tribunals and had reset it into something much more personal.
Matlock rapped his own signet on the table top to draw every eye back to him.
He continued, “I can suggest this because I am conversant with what the word winters truly means to the Five Families and particularly the Fitzwilliam and Gardiner lines.
“Yet, some of the more academically-minded in this room may take issue with my construction. I can now lay to rest any such argument.
“Not more than one hour ago, in my daytime capacity as M, I received a message that hardened my interpretation of the word.”
He flipped open a manila folder resting upon the desktop and extracted a single sheet of yellow paper.
“You recall that our dear Sergeant Liebermann was earlier tasked to work with the documents team in Nuremburg. When Himmler’s Flash Cards were uncovered, Manfred was stunned to see the visage of the man he knew to be responsible for the outrage in Deauville amongst the Reichsführer’s collection. That triggered his urgent mission here. That journey indirectly led to his death.
“He saw this man in the flesh at the Tate that afternoon. How or why such a notorious criminal was in the country are questions that demand more attention.
“I can say without question that we now know our man!” he said, electrifying the room.
In response to the clamor, he lifted his hands, quelling all questions before adding, “I received a rather lengthy telex cable from Chicago, from one of Liebermann’s boys—a Professor Richard W. Leopold of Northwestern University.
“Leopold, apparently, made it part of his work as a historian, and as a memorial to his and our old friend, to decode the cryptic markings made by the Nazi schoolmaster.
“When the lead casket was opened, Himmler’s SS dagger was laying atop the man’s personally inscribed copy of Mein Kampf. While this could have been understood as an expression of Himmler’s loyalty to his master, Leopold considered this to hold a different significance. He supposed that Himmler, who likely personally sealed the case, specifically had placed the knife atop the book before adding enough dunnage to prevent the contents from shifting.
“Leopold felt that Himmler used his dagger as a pointer, and that is why he carefully entombed the weapon atop the book. Himmler was a mystic, and he likely blended the Nazi’s bible with the runic imagery of the SS and its heraldry. Perhaps another knew of the symbolism…perhaps not.
“However, in a flight of scholarly fancy, Leopold imagined Himmler hunched over his desk in the wee hours of the morning, using his dagger to pick out words and letters. Leopold, although a non-observant Jew, found it especially ironic—and he posited in this message the horror Himmler would have felt if his profound ignorance had been relieved by an exposure to fact—that he was using his dagger to follow Mein Kampf much as a reader at synagogue services would have employed a yad with his shul’s Torah.
“The professor’s theory is something with which we, in our business, are familiar. He writes that Himmler’s inscriptions on the back of the photographs are a book cipher where the numbers written align with pages, lines, and words found in a specific publication. That volume could only have been the particular edition of Mein Kampf given to Himmler by Hitler, something we know was holy to both men.
“The trick of this cipher is t
o learn if it is leading to a specific word or a certain letter within the target word. It has taken Leopold over two years to arrive at a possible answer.
“What he has written here is what I know to be a true solution. His conclusion conforms with everything I know and have known since I was a child.
“Marius Winters is our man, and his family has had a long history with the Fitzwilliams and, by extension, the other four Families.”
He turned behind himself and pulled the photograph and the neckcloth from the wall before continuing, “If my own wife was present now, she would chide me for being long-winded. I will not put you through the trial of listening to over 130 years of Fitzwilliam history. Instead, I have tasked Mr. Reynolds from Research to provide a precis of dealings which various Ms have had with the Winters—or more properly the von Winterlich—clan over the decades. On the table outside of the door you will find folders—one for each of you—filled with tedious research which will, I fear, prove to be soporific.
“T’is odd how the pieces of the puzzle, which now appears to have been in our possession for quite some time, refused to come together. Now, reading the name for the first time, and being on the receiving end of Mr. Bennet’s query, it all seems so obvious.
“In brief, this conflict has spanned the entire arc of modern Europe beginning in the earliest post-Napoleonic Days. The Old General, back in 1815, dealt with a deep ancestor of the current object of our attention.[ciii] My mama and papa both faced his uncle, a thoroughly slimy specimen by the name of Junius Winters.
“It appears that his venom was passed on to his nephew. We must conclude that the elder imposed his own obsessive hatred of all things Fitzwilliam on the impressionable mind of his sister’s babe, Marius, whom he raised from infancy.
“Junius was always at the center of our attention and, thus, could never act on his desires. What is clear is that he trained Marius—Grandfather Bennet will appreciate this—to be akin to his namesake, the remorseless Roman general and dictator of Rome.
