Mrs. Roosevelt's Confidante (15 page)

Like the White House, but built on a smaller scale, the Virginia Executive Mansion was a white Federalist building with tall Grecian columns at the entrance. During the Civil War it had in fact been called the White House of the Confederate States of America. Thomas Jefferson had lived in a rented house on the land, but the current house wasn't finished until the eighteenth Governor of Virginia, James Barbour, moved in.

Prentiss didn't park his coupe in the circular drive but continued on through the filmy mist, behind the house. His meeting was in one of the abandoned buildings formerly used as slave quarters. The overcast afternoon had turned chill, and fog was beginning to roll in.

An old, paint-chipped sign announced
SLAVE STREET
, and Prentiss strode down the deserted oak tree–lined lane, the damp wind sighing in the branches and his brogue oxfords crunching on the gravel drive. The first building, like all of them, was a wooden shack made from rough-hewn logs, whitewashed but weathered, with a sloping roof and a brick chimney. He walked up the steps and shoved open the creaky door.

Governor King was already there, smoking a black cigarillo, sitting on a three-legged stool in front of a simple brick fireplace. An old straw mattress, now infested with mice, was in one corner of the room, a broken spinning wheel in the other. The room smelled of tobacco smoke, damp, and decay.

King was a robust man in his mid-sixties, with long, drooping eyebrows, long, drooping bags under his eyes, and long, drooping jowls on each side of his mouth. He wore a fur-trimmed coat, and his gray eyes were shrewd. “What happened?” he demanded without preamble.

“I—” Prentiss began.

The Governor stood. The stool toppled. “No excuses.”

“Sir, when I left her, she was dead. And the letter accusing Mrs. Ro—I mean Fish—was on her desk, waiting to be found.”

“Then who took it?”

“Sir, I don't know.”

Governor King dropped his cigarillo and ground it into the floor with his heel. “I saw the obituary in that Yankee rag of a newspaper. It was brief. Didn't mention Fish at all. And ‘died suddenly'?”

“It was suicide,” Prentiss insisted. “I know. I
know
.”

“How could you possibly know?” the Governor demanded.

Prentiss swallowed. “Sir, I think the less you know, the better.”

“Well. I'm sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you, sir.” Prentiss's features settled in an expression of strength through sorrow. It was a facial expression he'd perfected ever since the killings began. First the ants, the flies, then the abandoned kittens. As he grew older he went after his Irish setter, Charlie. Then, at the University of Virginia, the prostitutes—which had gotten him into trouble—and now Blanche. Blanche was harder to kill, of course, but he needed to redeem himself. Had to. For his own sense of self-worth and also someday to get King elected President. And, then—in the coming years—to be elected to the highest office in the land himself.

Governor King lifted one eyebrow. “You think the police were Roosevelt sympathizers?”

“That, or the press didn't want to pick it up. Too tawdry.”

King folded his arms across his barrel chest. “You need to do something.”

“I know one of the reporters for the
Buffalo Evening News
is filing a story. Blanche's mother was originally from Buffalo, you know—we can use that to our advantage.”

“How?”

“What if Blanche had given me, her beloved fiancé, another copy of the letter, in case she met with foul play?”

The Governor looked out the cracked and warped glass of the window. “I thought the girl committed suicide.”

“What if it was a murder disguised as a suicide? The Fish or her husband had her killed to shut her up?”

“If you had another copy of the letter in your possession, to be opened in case of any kind of an emergency, then that would implicate Fish—not just as a lesbian, but as a murderer. Or at least put her on a list of suspects.” The Governor gave a grim smile. “Why, this plan is even better than the original.”

Prentiss looked at his heavy gold Rolex. “I can make it back to D.C. by tonight—and catch my journalist friend at the tree-lighting ceremony.”

“Well, in spite of all your youthful tomfoolery,” the Governor said, nodding, “you might just redeem yourself yet, boy.”

Prentiss started, his face full of hope. “Yes, sir.”

The older man walked closer to the window, watching the black branches dance in the mist. “We're doing God's work,” he said, turning.

Prentiss took off his hat and bowed his head. “Amen.”

The Governor did a double take when he saw the extent of Prentiss's bruised face. “What the hell happened, boy?”

“Kissing Fish has a new friend—a redheaded girl who came over with Winston Churchill. Fish took her to the Cotton meeting. Let's just say…she has quite a right hook.”

“Stay out of trouble, Prentiss,” the Governor said, shaking his head. “I'm warning you.”

Prentiss clasped his hands behind his back. “I will, sir. I promise.”

“Come on then, let's go back to the house before you leave—or else the wife will have a fit. Christmas Eve day and all that.”

Prentiss noticed the change in the man's mood. “Will Mrs. King be serving her special eggnog this afternoon?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

King beamed. “Yes, with her famous bourbon whipped cream. And those little pecan cookies.”

As the two men opened the door to step into the thickening fog, King clapped his arm around Prentiss's shoulders. “And I do believe there will be carolers!”

Maggie couldn't wait to see Aunt Edith, but first she had Christmas presents to buy. She didn't have much time, so she ran down the herringbone-patterned brick sidewalks in the raw damp, to where she knew there was a department store. She stopped for a passing group of schoolchildren, walking hand in hand and singing,
“Hi-ho, hi-ho, we're off for To-key-yo—to bomb each Jap, right off the map, hi-ho, hi-ho.”
U.S. flags were everywhere, flapping from poles, tacked up to windows, graffitied on the sides of buildings, even chalked onto the sidewalks.

Breathless, Maggie made it to Woodward & Lothrop and wandered the floors, luxuriating in the piles of plenty, especially after witnessing the dearth of merchandise in the department stores in London. For women, the store had jewelry, slippers, quilted robes, and nightgowns. For men, there were arrays of smoking jackets, pajamas, White Owl cigars, shaving kits, and shirts.

In the housewares department, Maggie giggled at perhaps the best slogan of the season, for the Proctor toaster: “Merry Crispness.” There were portable radios, as well as records by Nelson Eddy, Kate Smith, and the Dorsey Brothers
.

But despite the massive quantities of items available on the shelves, Maggie chose only a few pairs of silk stockings, a bargain at $1.15 a pair. She realized she should probably buy everyone war bonds; that was the patriotic thing to do. As she waited for the cashier to ring up her purchase, she glanced around at other shoppers. The sight of a man in a fedora briefly caught her attention.
Haven't I seen him before?

Maggie was stopped in her tracks by a mannequin wearing a pink silk negligee with a black lace bodice, not unlike the one Rita Hayworth had worn in a recent
Life
magazine spread.
Well,
Maggie thought,
my wearing it tonight might just take care of John's present.

But after paying at the register, she realized the man in the fedora was still there, following at a distance. Reverting to training, Maggie ducked into a ladies' restroom, took off her coat, turned it inside out so that the blue lining showed, and draped it over her arm. She took a beret out of her handbag and covered her red hair with it, then added a pair of plain-glass spectacles. Realizing she had not been wearing makeup before, she painted on a red lipstick bow. Satisfied, she left, using the service elevator to get downstairs, then made her way out to the street.

She window-shopped in the mist, checking her reflection in each plate-glass window to make sure she wasn't being followed, relying on her training and instincts to spot anyone she'd seen before, or anyone covering his face with a hat or newspaper or umbrella. Satisfied at last that she'd lost the tail, she took yet one more precaution—darting across the street, getting on a bus, and sitting just behind the driver. A few blocks before the Willard Hotel, she got off. She took a roundabout way to the Willard, still checking reflections in shop windows, until she spotted a bookstore, a tiny one, sandwiched between two larger buildings.

The store was deserted, except for a huge ginger cat, grooming himself on a table of books. There was a lump in her throat as she reached down to pet him, thinking of her own cat, K, now residing at Number Ten Downing Street with the Churchills' menagerie.

A day in the life of a spy,
she thought. Even though she might be trailed by God knows whom, she couldn't show up without Christmas presents.

For Aunt Edith, she decided on one of the year's most popular novels,
The Sun Is My Undoing,
by Marguerite Steen, about a slave trader's descent into madness.
Well, that should be serious enough for her.
For David, who was still obsessed with all things American, she chose Louisa May Alcott's
Little Women
. And for John, she picked up F. Scott Fitzgerald's
The Last Tycoon,
since he'd apparently never read an American novel. She also thought he might learn a thing or two. She paid at the register with her eyes on the front window, watching the passersby, but the street stayed empty.

When Maggie arrived at Peacock Alley at the Willard Hotel, damp and cold, parcels in hand, Edith Hope was already waiting. Fringed lamps lit the long, carpeted corridor, and the potted topiary trees were hung with tiny silver lights and glinting Christmas ornaments. A harpist in the corner played “Silent Night.”

“My goodness!” Edith exclaimed, looking at the grown woman in front of her. “Margaret, is that you?”

Maggie realized she still had the beret and glasses on. She removed both and bent to kiss her aunt, who was sitting on a small, fat sofa, then sat down herself. Aunt Edith was older, she realized with a pang, with more gray in her hair and deeper lines around her eyes. Still, she was a handsome woman, with ramrod-straight posture and a regal bearing.

“You're looking well, Margaret.”

“Thank you, so are you.”

“It's been much, much too long.” Aunt Edith sniffed. “I still don't understand why you couldn't have come home for Christmas. The trains are horrible this time of year, and with all the military on the move—I didn't think I'd get a seat.”

Well, I traveled across the Atlantic Ocean, dodging Nazi submarines,
Maggie thought, but she let it go.

“I'm so sorry, but because I'm here working for the Prime Minister, I don't have any time off to travel far.” Maggie took a quick sweep of the room, just to make sure the man hadn't followed her. Other than a few hotel guests chatting in the lobby, she saw no one suspicious, certainly not the man in the fedora. “And you do look wonderful,” she said.

“Don't flatter me. I look old,” Edith replied. She was dressed in a brown-and-white checked suit with a rust-colored silk blouse. She wore no lipstick or powder. On her lapel was a small blue enamel pin with the college arms of St. Hilda's, Oxford, her alma mater. Her shoes were sensible and low-heeled.

“How's Olive?”

“Olive's quite well. She sends her regards.”

A waiter materialized. “Would you ladies like menus?”

“I'll have a pot of Darjeeling,” ordered Aunt Edith.

Maggie smiled. “I'd like the cream tea.”

Edith made a
tut-tut
sound. “All that fat and sugar.”

“Which I haven't had for years because of rationing!” Maggie retorted. She tried a new tack. “How are your classes this term? Any young Marie Curies in the lot?” Edith was a professor of chemistry at Wellesley College.

“My students seem to be getting worse every year. I keep waiting for one of them to set herself on fire with a Bunsen burner.”

“How has the war affected campus?”

“Everything is topsy-turvy. We have a semi-blackout on campus—to protect Boston Harbor. Even Mildred's leaving us to lead the WAVES—the new Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service—everything's an acronym now, isn't it? At any rate, it's part of the U.S. Navy.” The Mildred in question was Wellesley College's president, Mildred McAfee. “And everyone's knitting socks for soldiers. When I lecture I can scarcely hear myself over the clatter of those damn needles.”

Maggie pulled out her own knitting, a sock with “Victory” in Morse code around the top. “I've been doing my bit, too.”

Aunt Edith looked down her long nose. “I know you're working for the war effort, and you're to be commended for it—”

Here comes the “but,”
thought Maggie.

“But I did have such high hopes for you, Margaret. I didn't want your extraordinary upbringing and education to be for naught.”

“I—”

“I hear some of the seniors are taking a Navy correspondence course—Helen Dodson, the astronomy professor, is teaching it. After they graduate they'll go into the WAVES—I hear they're also learning cryptography. You know, it's not too late for you to do something like that. And then, maybe when this infernal war is over, you can do something, well,
important
with your life. I didn't raise you to be mediocre, you know. I raised you to be extraordinary.”

“I'm assisting the Prime Minister of Britain!” Maggie quieted as the waiter brought a tray with their tea and scones. They waited for him to leave.