by Don Jacobson
Chapter XLI
After the encounter over the worktable, Lizzy had wordlessly signaled Letty that they needed to depart. As if prescient, Denis strode into the library and, after bowing to Frau Weis, advised the ladies that they needed to begin making their way down the mountain before they lost the light. The redoubtable servant immediately forgot the ruckus at the desk amidst a flurry of feminine requests to locate a misplaced glove. Errant hand-wear finally located, the three agents trooped out through the entry doors to join Alois by the already-idling Land Rover. After a final gift to Frau Weis, all climbed into the conveyance and roared out onto the downward track.
Arriving at the small British base at the bottom of the mountain, the Rover quickly cleared the gate and shot across to the communication’s shack.
The coded radiogram exploded into the Anubis signal room, driving away any lingering doubts that success was possible.
Seasonal target has crossed the Line. New happy hunting grounds tango-friendly. Address follows with Anubis Prime through Epsilon.
London, December 14, 1950
“Lizzy, dear, you remind me of your namesake, our beloved second daughter,” said Mrs. Bennet as she admired her great-great-great grand-daughter, “How clever you were to memorize that address.
“How confident that despicable man must be if he feels free to send letters to his old home and not even attempt to disguise his hideout! His arrogance is beyond-beyond!”
Bennet looked up from the after-action report assembled by the Six and smiled at his wife. Her hair positively bristled, reminding him of a polecat expressing outrage over a territorial incursion, spitting at her opponent.
He genially teased her, “I seem to recall, Mrs. Bennet, that you expressed a similar level of ire before you found much to like about our Lizzy’s Mr. Darcy.”
Fanny sputtered back at him, “Mr. Darcy was everything a gentleman should have been…especially after Lizzy worked off his rougher edges. Whatever I may have said—and I was only defending my daughter…barely tolerable, indeed—was tempered by the realization that he was always honorable, however, misguided he may have been.
“This creature has no honor. He makes Wickham’s dealings with Miss Darcy look positively innocent!
“Even as sadly warped and sick as was…oh, I know I cannot say his name…your cousin, he was still a poor soul driven by demons of the mind.
“This slime may be counted among the sane, but he is driven by a malevolence that is frightening. The sooner we remove him from the field, the better!”
All the younger members of the team had come to recognize the by-play between husband and wife for what it was: the give-and-take between two lovers who had once again found each other. Bennet knew how to get a rise out of Fanny, but Mrs. Bennet clearly knew his buttons as well. As with most of their exchanges, this one ended in a draw.
The room dropped into a momentary silence before Bennet refocused his attention upon Richard. A raised eyebrow brought the former colonel to his feet.
Fitzwilliam marched over to the opaque projector, rolled out from its corner once again.
He began speaking, “The fruits of our labors…,” a snort from Lizzy earned that lady a glare, “If I may be permitted a touch of florid speech…because we did pluck a few very choice morsels…pearls from the swine’s lair…,” and now both Denis and Letty jeered at his terrible puns, “…but I will cease before many begin to lament the winters of our discontent.”
Even Schiller, just five years removed from his habitual German, groaned at this.
Bennet allowed the young people to vent some tension as they gibed back and forth. Finally, he tapped his signet ring on the table to bring the byplay to a halt.
All business now, Fitzwilliam made to begin anew, “We achieved remarkable success with our recent operation. Not only did we confirm a highly probable location for Winters…14 Garibaldi Street in the San Fernando section of Buenos Aires…but we also uncovered a possible spark that drives the man.”[cv]
With that, he flipped the switch on the great projector. The image thrown up on the wall was that of a young woman…a painting known to all…Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s study of a youngish Lady Kate, Kitty as she was then known. Actually, t’was not the painting, but rather a black and white photograph of that famous portrait, obviously torn from a newspaper.
What made this clipping unique was that the center of it was riddled with holes that nearly obliterated the center of the photo.
This was the target rescued from Winters’ shooting gallery.
The cutting was no more than five inches by seven. However, the projector magnified it until it covered nearly three feet on the whitewashed wall. The impact of the image upon the eight in the room was equally exaggerated.
Every person—from the Bennets to the Six—could sense the boiling fury behind the finger which had pulled the pistol’s trigger, exhausting the clip with probably a few additional dry fires on an empty chamber. Obsession overrode reason.
That was an exploitable weakness.
Fitzwilliam allowed the feeling to marinate before he continued, “We have determined that this was part of the public relations campaign to support the Olympic Exhibit at the Tate. We think that Winters saw it in a copy of the Stuttgart newspaper which published the photo in April 1948.
“That he used it as a target indicates that he was drawn to Lady Kate’s image, even after he had managed to murder her.
“It also convinces me that he attended the public opening in the hopes of getting close to my grandmother’s image. And, as he was armed with a blade, I think that he may have been planning to slash the painting.
“That he was denied was thanks to chance or fate.”
Bennet spoke quickly, “Or the Wardrobe.”
Chapter XLII
All eyes snapped to The Founder’s end of the table. Fanny reached out and placed a hand on her husband’s arm, supporting and encouraging him.
The old Cambridge don softly, but firmly as if a veil had been stripped away, continued, “We now have a wealth of evidence to allow me to make a supposition confirming what my daughter, Kitty, had long-believed.
“The geometry of our world’s three dimensions can be used to understand our situation. Just as geometry describes our world using points, lines, and figures, so, too, can we consider the pursuit of Winters in a similar way: as a triad which, when combined, gives us a solid figure that we can hold before us.
“Consider this as a point, perhaps the first, although occurring between two others: Mrs. Bennet last month received a box of the Dowager Countess’—my Lydia, not your Kate—papers. She was seeking to understand how one of the silliest girls in England could have risen so high in Society.
“Yet, the crate of documents had been in the Trust’s archives for more than a century…and most probably from the organization’s earliest days…on a shelf or in a vault thoroughly untouched by anyone until some nameless clerk had included it in the shipment to Oakham House.
“How did something as important as a trove of Lydia Fitzwilliam’s documents go unnoticed since the days of George IV?
“How did the one box which contained a clue—the Founder’s Letter fragment—vital to our search suddenly arrive on my doorstep?
“Yet, what it confirmed—on the exact day, mind you, that Professor Leopold posited to the Earl that the book code revealed Winters to be the man in the photo—was that single word, ‘winters,’ mis-composed as it was by my hurried hand, was a name not a season. Blanks were thus filled in.”
He paused momentarily and took a sip from the water glass by his hand.
Warming to his topic, his voice strengthened, “The next point which allows us to draw a line came months before Mrs. Bennet’s revelation. My, our dear friend Manfred is the next point in our figure.
“His participation was required to establish conditions needed both before the fragment was uncovered as well as after.
“I
n the days before Liebermann flew into London with the photograph of the man we now know to be Winters, the Nuremburg documents team had uncovered Himmler’s leavings. From all that I have learned from High Commissioner Clay and Professor Leopold, that lead box had been in their possession for almost three years, albeit, as they asserted, well-concealed in a crate in the furthest reaches of the warehouse.
“Again, papers were hidden away only to be recovered at the right moment, to encourage the right reaction.
“T’was as if it had been organized, scripted, to bring Manfred and Winters together. Once he saw the photograph, Liebermann would not have delayed. He would have rushed to London to bring that picture to our attention. Anyone who knew the man never would have considered any other behavior on his part.
“The encounter proved fatal to the Sergeant, but his death created the necessary conditions, I believe, to bring us closer to the end game.
“Aside from Manfred’s death, the events of that afternoon offered two things: the boar’s head neckcloth—which only gained meaning last month, pointing us to Swabia—and the impetus to put Winters to flight.
“Once the phrase was revealed, the significance of the cravat waved like a banner in the breeze.”
Bennet subsided and removed his spectacles, carefully rubbing the bridge of his nose as exhaustion seemed to overtake him as he contemplated the enormity of the game board in front of his mind’s eye.
Then he sighed and resumed, “And now to the final point: the neckcloth, confirmed by the name, sent the six of you to prise information out of that ancient part of Europe.
“Your journey to the Wildschweinhaus was made on the off-chance that Winters had returned to his ancestral home after the murder. However, as experience has shown with other former Nazis, Winters needed virgin territory to go to ground.
“I doubt if anyone—or anything—involved in this enterprise was surprised to learn that he had not been in residence for at least eighteen months. That would put his last appearance in Bavaria in the Spring of 1948, right before Liebermann’s killing.
“He clearly fled to South America within hours of dispatching Manfred. Your visit to his old home confirmed that supposition, and, in the process, learned his most likely hideout, the one to which he had absconded and now, apparently, arrogantly assumes to remain unknown.
“The other diamond of the first water was the uncovering of the motive for all that has transpired since 1944.
“We know that Marius hated the Fitzwilliams…and this was nothing new for his family given that their joint history had stretched back to a certain Joachim von Winterlich who ran afoul of your namesake,” at this he peered up at the Preacher, “General Sir Richard Fitzwilliam.
“Mrs. Bennet and I are well-acquainted with Darcy’s cousin. He has graced our Longbourn table many times, much to our cook’s delight as he never objects to any of her offerings. We have since learned that he will become our son after he marries Lydia.
“However, as genial a dinner guest he may be, I would never wish to cross swords—either literally or figuratively—with Fitzwilliam. He is ruthless and relentless. Joachim underestimated the General and got his neck stretched for his troubles.
“However, Marius’ antipathy for all things Fitzwilliam is more virulent than a feud rising out of the Napoleonic Wars. His loathing is deeper and more personal.
“I would imagine that you, Eileen, with your experience in treatment with Miss Freud, could offer much insight into Herr Winters’ psyche. Perhaps you might do just that when the operational group gathers to formulate our plan. I must forestall your efforts at psychoanalysis, however, until I conclude my own version of that fantastical art.
“Look at who was responsible for Marius’ upbringing. From infancy, our target had been molded by a mind warped by vice as well as a destructive disruption of his self-image, the acid poured upon his face by Colonel Moran. Junius Winters was the being who made the vile creature we pursue. T’is logical that Junius blamed Kitty for his downfall even though the Five Families used the Moriarty/Moran crime ring to engineer his disfigurement.
“Knowing that he could not evade the measures to limit his movement put in place by the Families after his return to Swabia, Junius turned to Marius, much as Marius used Eileen, making him into his spear. Thus, he planned to realize his revenge upon the woman against whom he laid his life’s misfortunes.
“The picture projected on the wall tells us all we need to know of the ardor and energy Marius devoted to his life’s work.
“We painfully comprehend how well his plan to avenge his family worked beginning with that summer day in Deauville.
“Now, though, we have those three points that give us our whole.”
Bennet fell back into his seat’s embrace as Fanny anxiously looked on. He had been tiring much more easily in recent months. She jumped up and bustled over to the sideboard to fill a dish for him. Sliding the salver in front of her man, she leaned close and whispered something to him. He nodded.
Mrs. Bennet drew herself up to her full height, although she barely challenged five feet, and looked each of her grandchildren in the eye before beginning to speak.
“I fear that the efforts of the past three years have worn on my husband. You must allow me to complete his dissertation on things Bennet and Wardrobe.
“What you are hearing from my lips is what you would have heard from The Founder himself. He and I have discussed this next, and he feels that your generation must apprehend what he has deduced.
“I charge you to look at the three points…the Founder’s Letter fragment, Liebermann’s death, and the results of your trip to Swabia…through the lens of three guide words.
“Obfuscation,
“Inspiration,
“and Manipulation
“Not a single soul, living or dead, could have organized matters in such a way so as to bend events and persons in the manner we have seen.
“However, Mr. Bennet has convinced me that there is one entity that spans generations…and worlds…which has the power to channel the very forces of the universe to its ends.
“And that is the Wardrobe itself.
“To this point, as I understand it, students of the Wardrobe have felt that the cabinet is a thing, admittedly a wondrous one, but an inanimate object none-the-less. These scholars have argued that those of the Bennet bloodline may employ the properties of the Wardrobe to skate along the strands of time to learn that which they need, not to fulfill what they want, but nothing more.
“They see it as a train from Victoria Station to Derby rather than a Swiss guide helping you to climb the Matterhorn.
“Mr. Bennet heartily disagrees.”
“As did Kitty,” her husband croaked.
Mrs. Bennet continued, “Thomas is correct. Your Grandmother, my daughter, was of the firm conviction that the Wardrobe was working toward a deeper purpose, one greater than simply alleviating various Bennet character deficiencies.
“That demands a belief that the Wardrobe possess its own consciousness and is capable of a level of decision-making previously unimagined.
“If that is so, then we have to understand that we have not been in this search alone. The Wardrobe has been with us throughout…and has been playing a truly long game, indeed, although we do not yet know what its final objective is.
“Mr. Bennet and I have chewed on this bone for a bit for it explains much.
“Consider how Lydia’s box of papers somehow escaped the watchful eyes of the Trust’s archivists for one-and-a-quarter centuries! Or how the photographs cherished by one of Hitler’s chief lieutenants were not exposed to the light of day until Manfred needed to be placed in the company of Winters. If that is not what the word obfuscation means, I will have to apply to Mr. Johnson’s successors for assistance.
“As for inspiration: why was I moved to examine Lydia’s life and not Kitty’s? Oh, I know she was counted as my favorite child, but Tom brought me here to see Kitty not Lydia. Why d
id I focus upon my youngest?
“I believe that t’was the Wardrobe tweaking my mind, using my Guides—Denis and Lizzy: explain to your spouses about that which I am speaking—to push me toward Lydia so that the Wardrobe could deliver the ‘winters’ shard into my hands.
“For that matter, Denis, what inspired you, when at Winters’ house to go to seek out the gunroom? Did your Guide subtly nudge you below-stairs?
“Yet, of all these forces we believe to be used by the Wardrobe, Manipulation may be the most potent.
“Yes, Manfred’s murder was awful. However, if you consider it in an emotionless sense, as if you were the Wardrobe, what better way to manipulate Winters to break from his pattern of hiding in plain sight and flee to that refuge south of the Equator?
“That the Wardrobe had to sacrifice Manfred tells us just how important its mission may be…although we are once again seeing through a glass darkly when we try to divine its ultimate goal.”
Having made the longest speech of her life that did not deal with the injustice of the Universe blessing her with five daughters to marry off, Fanny Bennet dropped back into her chair. Her husband threw her a look of gratitude for her standing as his interlocutor. He stretched out his hand to her which she lovingly grasped to receive that jolt of energy that recharged them both.
Fitzwilliam, understanding that the meeting had shifted from exposition to planning, stood once again and called each member of the Anubis circle to consider what they must do to gather Winters in. Chairs scraped on the rough concrete floor as they were pushed back. Richard kissed his wife’s cheek, sending her on her way back to Matlock House. Then he dropped into a chair on Thomas’ right.
The older man swiveled his head and addressed the Viscount, “We now know that Winters will brave anything to get close to the painting.
“With that knowledge, we can hope to construct a trap which he will find believable…that will take advantage of what we know of him.
