I did, holding myself stiffly erect, disdaining the cushions inches behind me. Merlin, deciding the crisis was over, curled around by my feet and lay down. The major waited pointedly until Turtle seated himself on the other end of the couch.
“Now, Carlysle - “
“Would you have told me straight out if I had been a boy?” I interrupted him bitterly.
“Yes,” the major agreed. “That would have been necessary.”
“But not necessary for a girl, huh?” I retorted sarcastically.
“Bit .” Turtle pleaded, speaking for the first time.
I cut him off impatiently. “A girl may not avenge her father’s murder - “
“There will be no avenging,” the major snapped violently.
“It’s an archaic distinction. He was my father, boy or girl. I’m not delicate, not sheltered, not stupid.”
The major cocked an eyebrow at me. “Then shut up and listen,” he suggested in a dangerously soft voice.
I shut my mouth and folded my arms across my chest, glaring at him.
“The night your father died, we were bivouacked just north of Siersdorf. Your father had set up his command post in a shack near a coal mine we’d cleaned out two days before. The regiment was spread out all over the area. I’d been sent up with some units to help the One Hundred and Sixteenth at Setterich. Now, Bailey says DeLord was with your father for about an hour. Then a call came in from Division for your father. DeLord was sent to get Warren-“
“What was the call about?” I demanded.
The major took a deep breath. “I don’t know. Right now I want you to understand the events as we have pieced them together. DeLord was sent to get Warren. But your father changed his mind and had DeLord drive him.”
I glanced at Turtle who usually knew all my father’s business whether Dad intended him to or not. Turtle gave a negative shake of his head.
“The sergeant was called to check on the ammo and rations that had just come up. When he got back to the post, how long, Bailey?”
“Half hour maybe.”
“When Bailey got back, your father was gone and so was his jeep and his usual driver was fast asleep.”
The major paused. “I was on my way to report myself back from Setterich when DeLord came in with your father.”
I tried to force the picture out of my mind, of Dad unconscious and dying.
“At first we assumed it was a sniper,” the major was saying in a dull voice. “We’d had a helluva time cleaning out some kraut positions north of the mine. Two men in a jeep, late at night on a forest road.”
My imagination drew another horrible picture the jeep bucketing along the dark, shaded road, the sudden crack of a . I closed my eyes and leaned wearily into the pillows behind me.
“As I said, the medic noticed the kind of wound and removed the slug. Turtle and I made him keep quiet. We checked every single side arm in the area within the next couple of hours. None had been fired that recently and none were missing.”
“But that one,” I began, pointing to the fireplace, “where did it come from?”
Laird shook his head, sighing.
“Someone stashed it away,” Turtle growled. He emphasized “someone” just enough to make me certain he knew who “someone” was.
“Knock it off, Bailey.”
“Stashed it away,” Turtle continued stubbornly, “so we wouldn’t find it that night and then slipped it into the colonel’s footlocker. Safest place in the world, you think about it.”
“Ballistics can easily prove if that Colt killed your father,” the major went on, ignoring Turtle’s bitter aside.
“The serial number will tell us who it was issued to. We go on from there.”
Turtle snorted.
“Yeah, and suppose the Colt turns out to belong to some poor slob got killed back on the Cotentin,” he sneered. “Where’s your theory then? I tell you - “
“Bailey!” There was something about Regan Laird that daunted even Turtle. “That gun is important - “
“Fingerprints!” I cried out. “You smeared all the fingerprints just now.”
The major dismissed that with an impatient wave of his hand.
“I am more interested in the two attempts made to break into your boardinghouse, Carlysle.”
I stared at him blankly.
“Tell me, how long after your father’s things arrived was the first attempt?”
“Just a day or two,” I said, startled. “But I just had the box. And I only found the gun in the locker, today.”
“Eyah,” agreed the major pointedly, “but the thief didn’t know the locker was delivered here.”
“Chrissake!” Turtle exclaimed, scowling. “Colonel died in November. This is March. Took long enough.”
“Oh, that’s ridiculous. Why would the burglar - “
“If that gun does identify the murderer
If he did put it among your father’s things as the safest place to hide it .”
“Look, Major, I packed the colonel’s things myself .”
“It’s there now and as I remember it, we had to leave the locker open until Division had gone through it.”
“Then someone in Division could have put it in and it needn’t be connected with my father at all,” I remarked sourly.
“Then why the two attempts to break into your room? What else were they after?”
I shrugged, having no answer at all. I still didn’t feel the incidents could be related. There wasn’t anything else of value in the locker or in the box. It would be a sophisticated burglar who wanted my father’s stamp collecfion and he’d’ve had to know the stamps were in my possession.
“That doesn’t answer why my father was murdered,” I said finally into the silence of the room.
“No, it doesn’t, and that is what has bothered me ever since it happened,” the major said in a defeated voice. “It makes no sense. He was a damned good officer. Hell, he was wounded -“
“Wounded?” The word came out of me like a shriek. “Wounded?” I stared in horror at Turtle who flushed violently red. “Wounded! When?”
The major sat down, running his hand back through his hair. Elbows on his knees, he leaned forward to me.
“He’d got winged two days before, bullet grazed him in the ribs. He made the medic patch him and then pulled rank so it wouldn’t be reported.”
It was so like my father.
“Goddamned fool’d be alive today if he’d listened to reason,” Turtle suddenly exploded, unleashing his accumulated tensions. “Chrissake, Gerhardt knew! Warren’d never got the regiment. Why’n hell did the colonel have to stay on the line?”
Turtle hurled himself away towards the fireplace, futilely pounding at the heavy mantel. The gun bounced.
“Warren get the regiment? What d’you mean?”
The major shook his head from side to side, sighing again. “It’s hard to piece this all together for someone who wasn’t there. So much was happening so fast. That’s why we made out it had been a sniper’s bullet. The morale of the regiment was shot to hell after the beetfield massacre .”
“Beetfields?”
“Look, let me explain and don’t interrupt,” and the major held up a cautionary hand. I nodded agreement.
“Our objective at the time was to join other elements of the Division for a major assault at Setterich. But we had to clear Siersdorf out beetfield by beetfield. We hadn’t been warned there would be so much opposition. Company B and C were to advance. They hadn’t got more than two hundred yards before the crossfire was murderous. Emsh you remember Emsh?”
“Sure, who else ran Warren’s company while Warren was sucking up to the C.O. of whatever post we were on?” I asked.
“Shut up. Emsh wanted to pull out and called back to the command post. Jim had gone up to see what was holding up the advance so Warren got on the walkie-talkie and started in on Emsh. Whatever was said, Emsh moved Charlie Company out again. They got pinned down in the rows of the beetfield. The krauts were taking a bead on the bulge of the combat packs. DeLord ordered his company to shed theirs but he had to pull Baker back and Charlie was pinned flat. Your father got there and was grazed by a ricochet. By the time we mopped up the two German emplacements, there were only twenty men left of Charlie Company. Emsh was not one of them.”