Murder in the O.P.M. Read online

  Table of Contents

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 1942, 1970 by Zenith Brown.

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Wildside Press LLC.

  wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

  CHAPTER 1

  FOR ALL THE PEOPLE WHO THINK IT improbable, not to say improper, for a woman to be involved with—at the least—more than one murder and still be invited out to dinner, I would like to say that this time it was entirely Colonel Primrose’s fault. I would also like to point out that my capacity was quasi-official—or was until the morning the headlines screamed across the whole top half of the Washington papers BODY OF OPM CHIEF FOUND IN GEORGETOWN CANAL. After that it would have been difficult to keep me out.

  I’ve sometimes had a sneaking suspicion that Colonel Primrose’s activities are not so unofficial as they pretend to be. I thought it, I suppose, largely because of his rock-ribbed, viscid-eyed alter ego, Sgt. Phineas T. Buck. In spite of the fact that Colonel Primrose’s card reads“ 92nd Engineers, U. S. A. (Retired),” and that Sergeant Buck’s would read the same if he had one, nobody could have resisted the softening influence of retirement and retired pay as effectively as Buck did without some kind of military sanctions. It’s true they weren’t on the active roll of the 92nd Engineers, but I haven’t any doubt now that the two of them had never really, at any point, been inactive or unofficial in that curious limbo of the interlocked intelligence services, and would have known the password if a sentry had held them up anywhere.

  But that’s probably afterthought. The day Pearl Harbor was attacked I was sure I’d seen the last of Sergeant Buck for the duration. Not even a democratic Army could be guilty of such colossal waste. I even bought some wool and started to knit him a pair of socks, which was a mistake. In the first place, he wouldn’t have sold his colonel down the river to any woman for a pair of socks—not if he’d worn them, anyway—and, in the second place, he didn’t go. He stayed right on with Colonel Primrose, in his old capacity of guard, philosopher and friend, in the yellow-brick house on P Street. On that winter morning when Colonel Primrose came in to see me, he was standing at such rigid attention by the door of their car that his black overcoat took on a definite cast of olive drab. His only concession to what he once called the “amendities,” as I looked out, was a wooden jerk of his hand upward to the brim of his black hat. I could see the plethoric darkening of his ironbound visage, and as I closed the door behind Colonel Primrose I saw him turn and spit over the fender into the icy gutter as accurately as Nazi artillery fire. If I ever do manage to marry the colonel, I haven’t the slightest doubt he’ll picket the church, and I hate to think what his sign will read.

  It was the first time I’d seen either of them for several weeks. Even before Pearl Harbor, their mysterious junkets out of town had become more and more frequent, and the secrecy around them more and more impenetrable. I could always tell how successful they’d been by the way Colonel Primrose sat down in the leather wing chair in the safe haven of the garden sitting room of my Georgetown house, not far from his own on P Street. But this morning he didn’t sit down at all. He went over to the fire and held his hands out to it a moment. Then he turned around.

  “You’ve heard of Washington’s so-called social lobby, haven’t you, Mrs. Latham?” he asked with a smile.

  “Don’t tell me you’re buying shoes for the Army and have just been invited to dinner with somebody who’s got a lot to sell?” I answered.

  I sat down on the sofa, watching him a little anxiously. He looked tired. The humor and resiliency that make him normally look less than his fifty-five years were gone. By the way he moved his head I could tell that the wound he’d got in his neck at the Argonne was bothering him again, as it did when he went without sleep too long. His hair looked grayer, and the twinkle that usually warmed his black eyes when he talked to me was gone. Whatever it was they’d been doing was still undone, and he was worried and discouraged. I’d seen him worried many times. I’d seldom seen him discouraged.

  “No,” he said. He smiled faintly again. “At least not that I’m aware of. I’m on the receiving end myself, this time. There’s a man here that I want to meet casually and off the record. I thought I could probably get you to ask him and his wife in for dinner.”

  “Do I know them?”

  “If you don’t, you will. They’ve just come, and they’ll be everywhere sooner or later. I’ll probably run into him myself, but time is of the essence, and I haven’t got much of it to spend at parties these days. If you haven’t met them, do so at once and have them in.”

  I looked up at him with astonishment. It was the first time since I’d known him that he’d got me mixed up with Sergeant Buck. For a moment I was pretty amazed.

  “That’s an order, I take it,” I said, acid-sweet.

  He looked at me quickly. I hadn’t realized it was possible for him to flush, but he did. “I’m sorry,” he said abruptly. “I didn’t mean it that way. I’m tired, I guess. I’m the last person in the world who’d try to order you around, my dear—or want to. You must know that. I’m asking your help in a matter of importance.”

  “In that case, I’ll be delighted,” I said. “Who is it? And what’s he done? Or am I allowed to ask questions?”

  He smiled at that. “I don’t just know how I could stop you,” he said blandly. “I can even answer that one. I don’t know that he’s done anything—or that he’s left anything undone, which concerns me even more right now. That’s what I’m trying to find out. It’s Lawrason Hilyard I’m interested in. Have you met either of them?”

  “He’s one of the dollar-a-year men in OPM, isn’t he?” I asked.

  Colonel Primrose nodded. “He’s attached to OPM. Officially he’s an assistant branch chief. Actually he has a sort of special liaison job between OPM, the Board of Economic Warfare and Army and Navy procurement. And I want to meet him.”

  “Couldn’t you just get a taxi and go to his office? And save everybody a lot of trouble? After all——”

  He interrupted me placidly. “Don’t be naïve, Mrs. Latham. I could—very easily. I could also phone him and ask him to come to my office. That’s precisely what I’m trying to avoid—as you’re perfectly well aware. You haven’t answered my question. Have you met them?”

  “No, I haven’t,” I said. I got up and went over to my desk. “But I can, very simply.”

  I pulled a batch of papers out of the pigeonhole where I keep the letters I’m going to answer someday and the memoranda of things I’m going to do if there’s ever time. It’s usually so full I have to put its whole contents in the fire periodically to make room for new entries. The letter I was hunting for would probably have gone that route if it hadn’t been for Colonel Primrose, merely because even now there are only twenty-four hours a day in Washington, and the friends of friends descend like locusts—or like wolves on the fold, some people say. I got the letter out and put the rest of them back.

  “A friend of mine who used to live here asked me to call on them,” I said. I went
back to the sofa. The letter was quite thick. I saw Colonel Primrose brighten instantly. He cocked his head down, the way he does, and his eyes sharpened like an old parrot’s.

  “What do you think he’s done, or hasn’t done?” I asked.

  He came over and sat down beside me. “That’s blackmail, I suppose you know,” he said pleasantly. Then his face went so serious suddenly that I was a little ashamed of myself.

  “I don’t want to know, really,” I said.

  “I hadn’t planned to tell you. But if you have common friends, you might find out some of the things I haven’t been able to find out myself. It’s important—and confidential.”

  “Then don’t tell me,” I said. “I’m very bad at——”

  He interrupted me. “Have you ever heard of promethium?”

  “I’ve heard of Prometheus in Greek mythology.”

  “That’s where the word comes frorm. Just as titanium comes from Titan. Promethium is a metal like titanium, iridium and beryllium. It’s used chiefly as an alloy to harden softer metals like copper and aluminum. It’s important already, and on the priorities list, but——”

  He hesitated for a moment.

  “——if certain conditions can be met, it’s going to be allocated, and it will be perhaps the most important of the critical and strategic metals. If the Navy can get what it wants, the submarine battle of the Pacific is won before we really start. It’s that important. I can’t go into it, but at New London last week a naval officer called it the ‘magic metal.’ That’s literally what it is.”

  “And how does it tie in with Lawrason Hilyard?” I asked.

  “He produces virtually the entire output of promethium in this country,” Colonel Primrose said quietly. “He also issues the priorities on it for OPM. In one capacity or another, he comes as near one-man control of a strategic material as is possible today.”

  “Dishonestly?”

  “Not at all. Or there’s no evidence to that effect. Practically everybody who can’t get an A-I-A or at least an A-I priority rating on anything he wants says it’s because somebody in OPM is sitting on it for his own benefit. That’s to be expected. From all I hear of Hilyard he’s a good citizen.”

  “Then why——”

  “Ask me later,” he said. “Now, what’s in that letter? Read it to me.”

  “It’s from Agnes Philips,” I said, opening it. “She used to live here.”

  I read it to him. “ ‘Grace dear,’ “ it said. “ ‘You’ll be furious, but will you, for me, come out of your cave dwelling and call on the Lawrason Hilyards? He’s an angel and responsible for all the cakes and ale—including the lovely new swimming pool—the Philipses are now happily enjoying. You’ll adore him, and since no man ever married the woman people who like him would have picked out for him, I’ve said all you need to know about Mrs. H.—except that the nest egg was hers, from a previous husband.

  “ ‘But Lawrason and Myrtle aren’t the point. It’s Diane. I want you to do something about her. Diane’s twenty-two, almost twenty-three. She looks like a Fragonard, and she’s all violet and pale gold, except, unfortunately, a little promethium dropped into the ladle when the angels were pouring her out——’ ”

  I stopped and looked at Colonel Primrose. Apparently I had heard of promethium.

  He smiled. “In a two-per-cent promethium alloy, copper cuts the toughest steel in existence, Mrs. Latham,” he said blandly.

  “She . . . does sound awful,” I said. I went back to Agnes’ letter.

  “ ‘——so that “difficult” isn’t quite strong enough and her family don’t like to call her any of the more modern terms. We think she’s a lamb, personally, but the young man wouldn’t have been our son-in-law, and I suppose that always makes a difference. Although I never met him, really. Lawrason and Myrtle broke it up before we came three years ago, and since then this place has had a stag line that reads like an American Almanach de Gotha. But the lady always says No. If you could produce a socially presentable, well-born young man—he doesn’t have to have money, now—that Diane would marry, Myrtle would pay you a million dollars. You’d better think it over—you’ll need money March fifteenth.’ ”

  I stopped and looked at Colonel Primrose. “Shall I read any more?”

  He nodded calmly. “If you please, Mrs. Latham.”

  “ ‘I can’t tell you anything but village gossip about Bowen Digges, called “Bo,” ’ ” I read. “ ‘It was his name as much as anything the family didn’t like. He came from the wrong side of the tracks. Father dead, mother ran a roadside store and service station. He worked up from water boy to wash-up man in the laboratory at seventy-five dollars a month, which august job he had when he decided to marry the boss’ daughter. It was one American success story that flopped. They paid him twenty-five hundred dollars to abandon the idea, which he did promptly and beat it. That piqued Diane. I’d have been pretty mad myself. It was certainly shortsighted, as Diane, her sister Joan and a son by Lawrason’s first wife are the only heirs. But Bo must have heard about the bird in the hand.

  “ ‘All that was five years ago, and should be water under the bridge. But somehow it isn’t. That’s one of the reasons Myrtle decided to go to Washington with Lawrason and take a house. Once I asked Diane if she was still in love with Bo. She turned those amazing hyacinth eyes on me and said, “When he wanted twenty-five hundred dollars more than he did me?” So that’s that. Anyway, I wish you’d call on them and see they get around, and that Diane meets the cream of the crop. There’s something about her that makes my heart hurt. I don’t know what it is. Maybe you can do something about her mother, even. Does Lilac happen to make good arsenic soup?’ ”

  I turned to the end of the letter. “That’s all about the Hilyards, except a couple of postscripts.

  “ ‘P. S.: You’ll probably hear them play the other side of the record about Lawrason, with “ruthless” as the leitmotiv. There’s probably something in it, but he’s been wonderful to us. Diane’s the only thing I’ve ever disagreed with him about—and only once openly.

  “ ‘P. P. S.: If you’re tired of being a widow, darling, I’d suggest Myrtle Hilyard’s brother, Bartlett Folger, who’ll be around there with them. So far, nobody’s been smart enough to get him to the altar, and he’s got a lovely place out here.’

  “And that’s all,” I said.

  “When you’re tired of being a widow, Mrs. Latham,” Colonel Primrose remarked, “I trust you’ll remember my application for priority rating has been on your desk for some time?”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said. I put the letter back in the envelope. “Would you like me to call on the Hilyards this afternoon?”

  He smiled. “I would, very much.” He held out his hand. “May I see that letter?”

  I gave it to him. He read the first part of it through slowly, frowning a little.

  “Did I leave something out?”

  He shook his head. “No. I was just interested.” He gave the letter back to me, got up and stood for a moment looking absently at the fire. Then he said, “You don’t mind asking them for dinner for me, do you? It might be a good plan to have Diane, too, if you will.”

  “And Mr. Bartlett Folger?” I asked.

  He smiled. “I’d like to say let’s skip him, but since this is business, not pleasure, I think it’s a very good idea.”

  I went to the desk and got my calendar. It was full for almost a month.

  “I can cancel the Martins’ dinner Friday,” I said, “if I can get the Hilyards then.”

  “That’s fine.”

  He started for the door. Almost there, he turned around and smiled again.

  “I think I’m going to enjoy working with you officially for once, Mrs. Latham,” he said. “It will also be a pleasure not to have a body for you to stumble over, just for once.”

  He was partly right, because it was a stray tramp who stumbled over Lawrason Hilyard’s body, not I. It was the next Wednesday morning he did it—two days
before the Hilyards and Diane and her uncle, Bartlett Folger, were coming to my house to dine.

  CHAPTER 2

  BY FIVE O’CLOCK, WHEN I SET OUT TO CALL on the Lawrason Hilyards, I had picked up a considable amount of what might be called background material. Backstairs material would be a more accurate term, I suppose, since it came mostly from Lilac, my colored cook, while she was serving my lunch. Lilac, a ranking blossom in the Rosebud Chapter of the Daughters of the Nile and a member of the Vigilantes Committee of her church, gets the local news even ahead of the gossip writers, and from a slightly different angle. Her angle on national and international affairs is also slightly different, because the only authorities in those fields that she has the least respect for are the laundryman and the policy man who collects her burial insurance Monday mornings at ten o’clock. When I have lunch or dinner alone I can hear as much of the news and comment on both fronts as I care to hear. Nevertheless, I was surprised when she came waddling to the service table by the door with my soup plate.

  “Did Ah hear you an’ th’ colonel talkin’ ’bout some people named Hilyers?” she asked.

  I nodded. Lilac’s been with me since before my elder son Bill was born and through all the major crises of my life, and I don’t suppose anything goes on in the house that she doesn’t know all about.

  “Boston, he’s workin’ for them,” she said. “Leas’ he was,” she added darkly. “Boston ain’ never worked for them kind of people be-fore.”

  “What’s the matter with them?” I asked casually.

  “Ah don’ say they’s nothin’ the matter with ’em,” Lilac answered. “You know Boston. He’s light. Ah don’ mean part white. Ah mean jus’ natchurly light . . . an’ fiery.”

  I knew Boston. He used to be Agnes Philips’ mother’s butler, and I suppose the Hilyards had got him through Agnes, or she’d have asked me to help them find servants too. I hadn’t realized he was particularly fiery. Nevertheless, according to Lilac, he didn’t think much of the Hilyards. It seems that they paid one thousand dollars a month for the house that General Ralston’s wife was delighted to get three hundred dollars for in normal times, and boggled at paying Annie and Boston one hundred and twenty-five dollars as cook and butler. Mrs. Hilyard ordered tom turkeys instead of hens, which is a crime of no mean order, in Lilac’s opinion. She also insisted that the vegetables be cooked in their skins in half a cup of water to save what Lilac calls the vittlemans and doesn’t believe in, and she was always poking around in the kitchen.