Winter of Discontent (20 page)
Everyone looked at me.
“I just thought of something else. You know we’ve always been so grateful that Sherebury was spared any major bombing during the war? No damage to the Cathedral, that sort of thing? And it was a little surprising, because we’re not that far from the coast. And even though there weren’t any military or industrial targets here, the Germans liked bombing cathedrals, because of the damage to morale.”
Their stares changed to looks of dawning comprehension.
“Yes. Part of the deal, do you think?”
“All right,” said Charles, still not convinced, “suppose it’s true, all this elaborate James Bond kind of stuff—”
“Oh, no,” I said, interrupting. “Much too low-tech for Bond. More Richard Hannay.
The Thirty-Nine Steps
, and—”
The Thirty-Nine Steps
, and—”
Charles waved away Richard Hannay. “Whatever. What I started to say was, even given your scenario, which I don’t yet accept, he must be very old, this Merrifield character. How could he have attacked anyone at the museum?”
“He told me he has a son, Charles. Merrifield’s not very mobile himself anymore, true, but the son could have done everything. Attacked Walter, searched the place … and I’ll bet he would have, too, if he knew what was at stake. Family honor still means something in these parts.”
A silence fell. At last Alan said, “Well, it’s just possible, I suppose. Far-fetched, but stranger things have happened. It’s all the merest speculation at this point, of course, but it’ll have to be looked into. I confess I don’t know quite who would be responsible for an inquiry like that. International espionage and war crimes are a little out of my line.”
“And by the time all the ponderous machinery creaks into motion and anything is determined for sure, everyone concerned will be dead anyway,” I said with some bitterness. “I’m sorry I ever brought it up. The whole thing is futile. The war’s been over for nearly sixty years. Why not let the dead bury their dead?”
“But Walter is alive,” said Jane. “And he deserves justice.”
“Oh, I suppose, but—”
The phone rang on Alan’s desk, startling us all. He answered, listened for a moment, said “Thank you, Derek,” and hung up.
“Well, Dorothy, I think your theory just went up in smoke.”
“What do you mean? Did Derek find something that makes more sense?”
“No. He was calling me from Heatherwood House. John Merrifield is dead, and—this information must not be spread about—it looks like murder.”
IT WAS THE NEXT DAY, THURSDAY, BEFORE ANY DETAILS FILTERED through, and then not until afternoon. In the morning, Alan and I went with Jane to Bill’s funeral. It was only a graveside service, kept brief out of deference to Bill’s nebulous religious beliefs. “Wouldn’t have wanted a Eucharist,” Jane said in an undertone as we walked through the Close to the old churchyard. Very few are buried there anymore—there’s no room—but Bill, as a veteran of the war, had earned a place.
“Didn’t you want one?”
She shrugged. “Bill was a good man. God doesn’t need a lot of words to tell him so.”
But funerals are for the living, I wanted to say. For comfort, and support … but Jane had decided what she wanted.
Yesterday’s rain had diminished to a fine drizzle, against which an umbrella did very little good. We stood and shivered while one of the canons read the service. Besides the three of us, there were only a handful of mourners. Two of the Heatherwood House staff had come, and a couple of elderly men Jane identified in a whisper as friends of Bill’s from the home. That was all. Jane showed little emotion, but she’s so good at hiding her feelings that I had no idea what was going on under the gruff exterior.
“Would you like some lunch?” I asked after we had trudged back across the Close. “I can whip up some potato soup in no time.”
“No, thanks. Want to see Walter.” She plodded on. We were through the gate into our street before she turned and said, “Thanks. For coming. A help.” She gripped both our hands for a moment before squaring her shoulders and marching sturdily to her front door.
Well, for Jane that was the equivalent of a bear hug. Alan and I smiled a little and shook our heads, and went in to dry off and get started on that soup.
We had just finished lunch when Derek called with a report. Alan repeated it to me almost word for word when he had hung up.
Mr. Merrifield—or Air Commodore Merrifield, to give him the military title under which he would undoubtedly be buried—had been found dead in his room about six by the aide who brought up his supper. He was in his bed, and had been dead for some time. The aide, who was rather new to Heatherwood House, had nevertheless been there long enough to know that death was not unexpected among the residents, so she simply walked out of the room with the tray and told the nurse in charge.
The nurse, who knew Merrifield well, was startled. Her patient was strong for his age, with no history of cardiac or vascular problems, and had been perfectly well that afternoon when he took his walk. So she checked carefully when she went into the room. It was she who discovered the rumpled pillow, somewhat damp and with small holes that might have made by teeth. She closed the room then, leaving Merrifield’s body exactly as it was, and told her superiors that the police should be called.
“She had quite a job convincing them,” said Alan, telling me the story. “Murder is not featured in the prospectus of Heatherwood House. Fortunately, Nurse Ames is a stubborn woman who reads crime fiction and has a lively imagination. She insisted, and threatened to go to the press if the police were not called. Well, publicity of that kind would be absolutely ruinous, so the powers-that-be gave in. Of course, Nurse Ames was quite right. Merrifield had been smothered while he was napping. Poor chap, he’d tried to struggle, but his heart was ninety-two, after all. It gave out quite soon, the ME thinks. Of course nothing is certain until the autopsy.”
“And if the nurse hadn’t been vigilant, it would have gone down as natural death.”
“Probably, given Merrifield’s age. In fact, so far as the general public is concerned, that’s what it was.”
“I suppose they’ve checked the surveillance tapes?”
Alan sighed heavily. “There are no surveillance tapes. It turns out that the cameras are used only at night, mostly as a measure against burglary. They feed into a monitor in the security guard’s room, and are taped then, but not during the daytime.”
“But that’s ridiculous! A resident could wander off—”
“The superintendent was emphatic that they have no residents who are at all likely to do such a thing. He refused even to say the word ‘Alzheimer’s’and acted as though senility were a loathsome disease.”
“Fine man to be in charge of an old people’s home!”
“My opinion precisely. He’s a self-important cretin, but the fact remains that the security arrangements at Heatherwood House are far from ideal.”
“Visitors have to check in at the front desk, though.”
“And genuine, well-meaning visitors do just that. I have found, my love, over a long and I may say somewhat distinguished police career, that criminals don’t always obey all the rules.”
“You don’t say!” I forgave him the sarcasm. He was tired and upset. “How do you think whoever it was got past the checkpoint, then?”
“We don’t know that he or she did get past. There were a number of visitors that afternoon. No one asked to see Merrifield, but then they wouldn’t, would they? Visitors who act as if they know where they’re going are not escorted to the resident’s rooms. And the receptionist doesn’t make a record of the names of visitors—who might not give their right names, anyway.”
“No. It isn’t the sort of place where they check passports. So you really have no idea who was there that afternoon?”
He sighed again, rather elaborately this time. “They’re checking, Dorothy. Some of the visitors were regulars, family members who visit every day. The receptionists know them. We’re talking to them, hoping they may provide other names or at least descriptions. And of course there’s the staff, and the other residents. We haven’t much hope. Most people aren’t particularly observant. And why should they be, when they’re going about their business and nothing unusual is happening?”
“Nothing unusual except the little matter of a man being smothered to death. Wouldn’t he have made noise? Cried out, or at least made noises thrashing around?”
“You forget that he was almost certainly napping when the attack came. He would have had only a few seconds of awareness that anything was wrong, and one can’t make much noise through a pillow. In any case, the killer would have closed the door, and those doors are good sturdy oak. No one we’ve talked to so far heard a thing besides the routine sounds.”
“It comes down to routine slogging, then. Poor Derek. Dozens of people to talk to with almost no hope of getting anything out of them. And all sorts of other work to carry on with in the meantime. Oh! Alan, do you think they’ve put a guard on young Walter, in the hospital?”
“Not yet.” Alan looked unhappy. “I did suggest it, but there’s no obvious connection between Merrifield’s death and the attack on Walter. I know, there’s your theory that this all has something to do with the war, and I think you’re right. But there’s no proof, and the force is too shorthanded to send a man off to guard a theory.”
I wasn’t pleased about that, but there was nothing to be done about it. Nothing the police would do, anyway.
“I’m going over to talk to Jane, if she’s back from the hospital,” I said with determination. “If she hasn’t already figured out that Walter might be in danger, she needs to know.”
But Jane hadn’t returned. Her house was locked up, and when I knocked at the back door, I was greeted only by a mournful chorus of lonely dogs. They did their best to convince me that they had been permanently abandoned and required rescue, but I ignored them. Stopping only to tell Alan where I was going, I drove to the hospital.
I had to stop to find out Walter’s new room number, and the functionary at the desk was inclined to be starchy. “He is in a private room,” she informed me, “but he has a visitor. He mustn’t see too many people, he still needs quiet recovery time—here! Where are you going?”
I didn’t know I could still trot at that speed. I didn’t know exactly where I was going, but the hospital wasn’t large, and I found the right room before the indignant doorkeeper could stop me. I burst in, my heart pounding, ready to do battle with anyone who was trying to smother Walter.
Jane looked up from the chair by his bedside. “Been doing your morning jog?”
There was no other chair in the room. I leaned against the wall, panting and feeling a fool. “Thank God it’s just you!”
I didn’t need to explain myself. She could read my mind. But Walter was another matter. He was wide awake, looking pink and healthy despite the bandage on the back of his head, and his face was full of questions.
“I was escaping the nurse, or whoever, who didn’t want me to come up. Said you shouldn’t have too many visitors. Am I too many, do you think? I’ll leave if you’re tired.”
“Tired of being treated like an invalid, is all. I want to get out of here. I’m perfectly fit, and God knows what’s happening at the museum, with Bill still missing.”
So they hadn’t told him yet. Well, one step at a time. “I think it’s in good hands, actually. The police want to find out who attacked you, and they’re keeping a close watch on the place. Have they told you when they’re going to let you go home?”
“Well, that’s the problem, you see.” He shifted restlessly. “They don’t want me to be alone, and of course Mrs. Gibbs gives her boarders their privacy.”
I exchanged a glance with Jane. From what I’d heard of Walter’s landlady, the word wasn’t so much privacy as neglect. That would be a fine place for a murderer to get at the boy.
Jane cleared her throat. “No need to be alone,” she said in her gruffest voice, sounding exactly like Winston Churchill. “Plenty of room at my house. Was just going to tell you.”
Walter’s face lit up. “Would you really? That would be super! Oh, but …” His voice lost its color. “I forgot, though. When they find Bill—I mean, you won’t want a stranger around—”
“Changed plans,” said Jane with a warning look at me. Well, heavens, I wasn’t about to break the news of Bill’s death to the boy! Let her handle it her own way. “Could use the company. Some things to do about the house, as well, when you’re fit.”
I could almost see words of gratitude hovering on Walter’s lips. Gratitude embarrasses Jane mightily. I broke in before he could get a word out. “That sounds like an ideal plan, then. You can earn your keep as general factotum, and Jane’s a marvelous cook. You’ll be close to the museum, too, and there’s a bus to the university that stops at the end of our street.”
A nurse bustled in. She was cross. It was a pity she wasn’t wearing the starched uniform of yore; they crackled so nicely to express irritation.
“I’m sorry, but one of you will have to leave. My patient is absolutely not to have more than one visitor at a time, and not for more than five minutes. Actually, you should both go. I’m sure you”—she looked severely at Jane—“have been here far longer than five minutes.”
“I was just leaving,” I said. “Jane, do you want me to talk to someone about discharge arrangements?”
“Discharge?” said the nurse. “There can be no question of discharge until suitable housing—”
“That’s what we’re talking about.” I let a bit of schoolteacher creep into my voice. Not the full she-who-must-be-obeyed intonation, but enough to let the nurse know that I, too, was irritated. “I take it Walter is ready to leave as soon as he can receive reasonable care at home?”
“I can discuss that only with his family or some other responsible person.”
“Good. Fine. Discuss it with Miss Langland. She’s prepared to make herself responsible. Unless of course you really want to keep him here, taking up a bed when he’s well enough to leave.” Now I sounded as if I were addressing a roomful of fourth-graders.
“Well, of course we always need beds, but that isn’t the question.”
“I’d have thought it was. Jane, I’m going to round up the social worker, or whoever handles these things in an English hospital. You’ll stay here for now” I didn’t make it a question, and the nurse, accepting a lost battle but not final defeat, glared equally at both of us and huffed away.
It took me a while to find the proper authority, and then she wouldn’t take my word for anything but had to check innumerable files and make several phone calls and talk to Jane and have her sign papers, and so on. I called Alan in the meantime to assure him I hadn’t encountered anything worse than medical red tape. But finally all the releases were approved and all the discharge instructions given, and Walter was wheeled (much against his will; he wanted to walk) to Jane’s waiting car. I followed in my own, helped Jane install Walter on a capacious couch to wait for his lunch, and went home through the drizzle with the sense of a large burden removed from my shoulders.
Not that Walter had ever been my problem, really, but I’m one of those women with a regrettable tendency to take on the responsibilities of the world. Regrettable, because it leads to meddling in what’s really none of my business and endless fretting that wears me out without accomplishing anything. I suppose I like to feel I’m indispensable, which nobody is. It’s a form of egotism, a superiority complex, perhaps. I’d like to mend my ways, but I think I’m too old. And darn it all, sometimes my meddling has been useful.
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