Merlin, who had napped on the far side of the stove while we were eating, woke. He stretched, walked majestically first to thrust his nose under Turtle’s hand, then the major’s, and then sat down expectantly by the kitchen door.
“Say, didn’t he get volunteered for the K-9 Corps?” Turtle inquired, indicating Merlin with a cake-filled fork.
“He didn’t make it.” I grimaced, filling Merlin’s bowl with what was left of the noontime stew.
“Naw!” Turtle’s eyes went round with amazement. He hitched his chair around to get a full view of the shepherd. “You don’t mean it. Him? I’d’ve thought he’d be a good kraut killer.”
“I did pull rank on them,” I explained, “and made them give him an honorable discharge. But the fact remains he was considered of ‘an insufficiently aggressive personality’ for the Corps.”
Turtle made a rude gesture. I giggled because the major glared so fiercely.
“If you were regular army,” I told Laird, “you would know that army brats like me can’t be shocked by mere sergeants.”
“I don’t get it,” and Turtle shook his head sorrowfully, “he had half the rookies and two thirds of officers’ row at Riley scared puking.”
“Particularly Warren,” I chortled nastily. “I swear, Turtle, he poisoned those other pups when he found out base families were going to take them. You know as well as I do that he made the Downingtons put Morgan away. She never bit him. She had more sense.”
“Didn’t I go to the C.O. myself?” demanded Turtle, his eyes wide at the implication he hadn’t helped.
“That you did. Honest to God though, why couldn’t it have been Warren who got killed?” I cried angrily. Turtle looked away.
“Any coffee?” the major asked, breaking the uncomfortable silence.
I slammed across the room for cups and back to the stove for the pot. The major’s raised eyebrows cautioned me to get a hold of myself. I poured carefully.
“Warren’s back, too, you said?”
“As a matter of fact,” drawled Turtle, stirring spoonful after spoonful of sugar into his cup, “he came back on the same ship I did.” He put his spoon very carefully down, right next to the knife he had not used. He straightened both so they were precisely aligned and then looked the major in the eye.
The major sipped his hot coffee, his eyes never leaving the sergeant’s. His left eyebrow arched slightly.
“He joined his missus in Boston day before yesterday. I believe he planned to pay a courtesy call on Miss James Carlysle Murdock.”
“Of all the insufferable, patronizing, condescending, ridiculous, hypocritical, vicious, egregious, inconsiderate, vile, contemptible, despicable,
” I spluttered, rigid with indignation, unable to categorize what I felt from my guts about Lieutenant Colonel Donald Warren.
“I think that’s very interesting,” the major remarked when I momentarily ran out of appropriate adjectives. He didn’t, however, mean my descriptive venom. He meant that Warren was in Boston and proposing to call on me. “I’d very much like to know why he felt constrained to call on you.”
That drew me up short for I had been about to launch into another tirade, having recovered my eloquence. I glanced at Turtle and then did a double take on him. The look on his face was a killing one, a hating one, far more expressive of what I felt for Warren than any word fashioned by man to express inner violences.
“You do think Warren killed my father, don’t you, Ed Bailey?”
Turtle’s head turned sharply around to me and I saw the deadly hatred in his eyes, and something else, unfathomable and unfamiliar.
“He only thinks so,” Major Laird interposed in a steely voice. “But I want to know why first. There is more to this whole goddamned mess than a fine man’s death. I want to know what. Is that clear, Bailey?” The major spaced those last words out very carefully, as if cutting the orders of the day ineradicably on Turtle’s consciousness.
Turtle swung his head slowly back to face the major. “Yes, sir,” he grated out softly. “Very clear, sir.” Merlin, sensing the aura permeating the room, looked up from his dinner and growled deep in his throat.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The details of living got us through the rest of the evening. I washed the dishes while the two men chopped wood and replenished fireplaces and wood buckets throughout the house. Thanks to a fall survey course in English literature, I cleverly bethought me of heating bricks to warm the beds.
The wind had risen higher with nightfall and the snow was swirling and howling around the Point where occasionally whitecapped waves lunged to the top of the protective dunes. Within the house, despite its chilling discussions, there was warmth and companionship.
By the time the chores had been done and Merlin let out for a brief run, we were all ready to turn in for the night. Perhaps as much to be alone with our various thoughts as to sleep. Maybe the others felt, as I did, that all should sleep on what had been said and suspected.
My room was warm and the wrapped hot brick did take the clammy chill off the sheets. With Merlin stretched comfortingly beside me, I should have slept. I think I did but it was a restless slumber and shallow, for any crackling of the fire or sudden whine of the wind at the shutters roused me.
I was awake when I heard the minute clink of the latch moving on its track. Merlin raised his head briefly but his body did not tense. He didn’t even mutter a growl. He put his head back down, sighed, and slept. I could feel the cold from the hallway and, through slitted eyes, I saw a figure cross the room. The dying fire lit the gargoyle side of the major’s face as he softly stepped across the floor. He bent over the fire and quietly added more logs. He turned back. I closed my eyes tightly, then remembered to relax the muscles of my face. I could feel a difference in air pressure as he stood right by my bed. I could feel Merlin turn his head and I felt motion through Merlin’s body against mine as the major scratched the shepherd’s muzzle. Then lightly, so gently I couldn’t be sure whether it was his fingers or just the air current preceding the withdrawal of his hand, I felt him touch my hair, much as I had his the previous night.
When he had left, I wondered if he were mocking me. Had he seen my eyes a trifle open? Had he been awake last night when I had caressed him in similar fashion? Caress, I suddenly admitted to myself, was the proper word. Because caress implies tenderness, affection, desire. I could chide myself all the way from Orleans to Boston on any cold, uncomfortable baggage car, yet not escape the fact that the major was more man that I had been next to in a long time and I was - to be blunt - man-hungry. These years when I should have been dating, dancing, having fun with boys were empty. The boys were embattled in far places. I remained in chaste loneliness. By virtue of a life as an army child, I understood the world of men better than most girls, but I understood it as a child and not as a woman. The major, wounded and embittered, was a magnificently romantic figure. This whole crazy situation of his being my guardian was romantick in the Gothick tradition. Ridiculous when my father must have known exactly .
My train of thought stopped with an icy jerk. The realization that my father had known exactly what he was doing in assigning me to Laird’s guardianship dawned on me. He’d’ve known that the major’s type was attractive to me. He’d had plenty of opportunity to judge what kind of man I liked, or what kind of man he’d prefer me to like. I had, after all, dated regularly on most of our posts after I was fourteen. Well, Dad had provided me with his choice and thrown us together by the simple expedient of making the Chosen my guardian, in case he shouldn’t be around to introduce us. Of course, Dad was a fatalist so he would have done just as he had to make sure Regan Laird and I met. Had he anticipated the fact that I would divine his complicity? Probably. Dad never underestimated my intelligence, which is why I worked so bloody hard at getting good marks. He’d insisted on a proper good education even to the point of putting me in day schools when the post facilities were inadequate. And he’d insisted I try for Radcliffe. Always aim high, he’d said.