The Mark of Merlin

CHAPTER FIVE

“Christ, Major,” Turtle groaned in a hoarse voice, his face drained of all color, “she didn’t have to know.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, dazed. I felt unreal. The words he had just said were not making any sense. My father murdered? He’d been killed. Killed! Not murdered!

The major put the gun on the mantelpiece before he looked at me again. When he did, his face hadn’t changed. He had meant what he just said.

“No, Bailey, she should know because she’d find out anyhow.” He sighed heavily. “Your father was killed by a forty-five slug.”

“A forty-five slug?”

He nodded. I glanced, bewildered, at Turtle. Gray-faced, the sergeant confirmed it.

“No. No! No!” I cried, turning from both of them, hugging my arms to my sides. Merlin whined urgently and I thrust him away, whirling back to the men. “I just won’t believe it. It doesn’t make sense. I could see someone shooting Warren. God knows he was hated but not my father. Not Dad. The men loved him. He ran a good regiment. No one ever complained about Dad, did they, Turtle?”

Turtle nodded slowly.

“Maybe it was a sniper got hold of a forty-five?” I suggested frantically. “It was a mistake? It wasn’t murder!”

The major took me by the shoulders and gave me a hard shake; his eyes were compassionate but I hated him.

“No, Carlysle, it was no sniper. It could have been a mistake,” he admitted slowly, heavily, as if he wished wholeheartedly he could accept that. “DeLord was driving your father to Warren. It was late. God knows but Bailey and I now have reason to think it was murder.”

“I don’t understand,” I cried, trying to twist away from the major, wanting to go to Turtle who stood so immovable, so silent, his stricken eyes dominating his white face. “I just don’t understand.”

My eyes lighted on the gun.

“Why did you say that gun killed my father?”

“I didn’t. I said it might have. Now listen to me. Your father was still alive when DeLord brought him in. We got the medic but there wasn’t anything he could do. But a Colt, particularly at short range, makes a recognizable

” he broke off, struggling to make this horrible recitation easier on my feelings. “It was a forty-five, not a rifle, not a German handgun. After your father died the slug proved it.”

“Turtle, you know who killed Dad. Who was it?” I shrieked, struggling to break the major’s grip.

“You’re as trigger-happy as he is,” the major bellowed, his eyes blazing, his hands like bruising iron grapples I couldn’t shake. “Now you listen to me, Carlysle. I’m just as anxious as you two to get your father’s killer but I’m not so much the fool as to take matters into my own hands. With a little patience, I can get the law to do it. That Colt may be all we need to do it legally, properly. War doesn’t give license to settle private quarrels.” He glared significantly at Turtle.

“Why not?” I cried, one part of me white-hot for vengeance, the other shocked at such hysteria. “Why didn’t you settle things then and there, the night Dad was killed? Why wait four months? Why let the murderer get scot-free?”

Laird gave me another bone-jolting shake.

“We had a war on!”

The cliche brought me up short. I hated it for one thing: It had been used as the excuse for so much inefficiency and stupidity. Right now it was so revoltingly trite it made me nauseous. Yet I knew what he actually meant by the phrase and I was too army to ignore the significance. Sensing the change in me, Laird let me go.

“Now, sit down. You, too, Bailey, and we’ll attempt to talk about this sensibly. There’ve been quite enough half-ass actions and assumptions.” The major pinned Bailey with a withering stare. He looked back at me and saw my rebellion getting a second wind and pointed peremptorily at the couch. “Sit!”

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.”

Turtle started swearing, softly, bitterly, accentuating each expletive with a dull thudding blow of his fist against the mantel until I was sure he’d bring his hand away bloody. He and Emsh had been boozing buddies; rivals in everything else. He would feel Emsh’s loss as perhaps no one else ever could.

“Goddamned Warren killed him, that’s what,” Turtle said savagely.

“We had to wait for tank support to pulverize the krauts’ positions before we could move up in that sector.” The major winced, his face dark with suppressed anger. “That was another reason why Jim stayed on the line,” he said.

“Gerhardt had rocks in his head. If only he’d known .” Turtle began.

“If he’d known, yes, but he didn’t.”

“Know what?” I demanded of the major.

“Known your father was wounded. Instead he reamed him.”

“Who? General Gerhardt? Reamed Dad? What for?”

“Failing to push on towards Setterich. Jim was told to quit fooling around, stop arguing about things like beetfields quit stalling, pull up our socks, and get with it.”

I stared at the major, incredulous at the general’s reprimand. For one thing, my father was a helluva good line officer. The regiment had many citations. Surely the general must have known that my father’s judgment was to be trusted.

“What the general didn’t know was that not only was the colonel wounded, not that that mattered in the advance, but we hadn’t enough officers. Captain Hainey was killed, Major Dunbar was badly wounded, and that left only Colonel Gregory, Major Sorowitz, me and - “

“Warren!” I inserted, beginning to understand. “So Father plays the hero because he won’t let Warren get command of the regiment.”

“Battalion,” the major corrected me. “I was Exec.”

“Why didn’t Dad just transfer Warren back to Division HQ?”

The major shook his head impatiently. “We don’t know, Carlysle. God knows I suggested it, hinted at it, and when we moved into action at Baesweiler, I came right out with it. I told the colonel if he wanted the regiment to move out with any confidence, he’d better transfer Warren.”

“And?”

The major grimaced ruefully. Turtle looked disgusted. “We got our heads handed to us,” Turtle finally said. “In no uncertain terms,” the major said humorlessly, “we were told that Colonel Murdock still commanded the regiment. And until his command was challenged by the commanding general, he felt no need to explain decisions.”

I blinked, visualizing the scene, picturing Dad’s lean face, expressionless as he always was when angered.

“His wound?” I asked tentatively, wishing to temporize my father’s unusual autocracy.

Both the major and Turtle shook their heads slowly. “Something was worrying him, Major,” Turtle said slowly, frowning in concentration. “And I didn’t have no clue. Not a one.” Turtle’s face reflected the hurt of this unusual reticence.

“He wouldn’t have worried about turning the regiment over to you, Major,” I remarked, “even with only a few officers.”

“I think,” the major began slowly, “it was more than relinquishing command just then although the morale was pretty bad after the beetfield incident. Near as I can remember, the colonel started getting edgy around October.” “DeLord joined us in October,” Turtle suggested.

The major shook his head violently. “DeLord’s all right. I’d bet my bottom dollar on that.”

“Dad liked him a lot.”

“He sucked up to Warren when your dad was dead!” Turtle growled.

“C’mon, Bailey, you must know what the colonel and DeLord were cooking up? They had too damned many quiet conferences.”

Turtle glowered unhappily. “All I know’s something about looting.”

“If DeLord was the looter,” I jumped on the idea, “and Dad was trying to make him make good, maybe DeLord killed him to keep HQ from finding out.”

Both the major and Turtle dismissed that notion instantly.

“DeLord preferred a thirty-eight,” Turtle said.

“And he was crying when he brought your father in,” the major added softly.

The silence that followed those words was punctuated by the wind outside, by the spatter of snow driven against the windowpanes. It made no sense, Dad’s murder. Maybe it had been a mistake.

If Dad, after Donald Warren had goaded Emsh into disregarding his judgment about sending Charlie Company into the beetfields, had finally decided the man was too much of a menace in the regiment, had gone to order Warren back to the rear, why would Warren kill him? That was too straightforward an act for Donald Warren. His modus operand! would have been to slyly report my father’s wounded condition to Division HQ and have Gerhardt order Dad relieved of duty. But Regan Laird would have assumed command, unless Warren tried to kill him, too, which made even less sense. For Warren, though he had never made any bones that he considered himself a superlative officer and a clever tactician, was not fond of the hazards of actual line duty. He didn’t want to get killed. No, Warren would not have killed Dad to prevent his transfer.

Now possibly someone else, hearing Dad send DeLord for Warren, might have decided that the dark road was a good place to remove Warren permanently.

“How many were around when Dad sent DeLord for Warren?”

Turtle swiveled round, startled, his jaw dropping, his eyes blinking nervously.

“Huh? Half of headquarters company. But we all left to check the ammo and rations.”

“Supposing,” I suggested, hunching forward, “someone decided it was time to transfer Warren permanently?”

The major sighed. “I’d considered that as the strongest possibility until

Turtle found out about the looting.”

“Looting?”

“Looting on an extensive scale.”

“Yeah, Bit. The regiment was sometimes first into an area. Like that Cotentin lorry.” He nodded to Major Laird who acknowledged the example. “A whole kraut truck trailer crowded with liberated’ things. The CAO sent out directives every third day about what to look for in the kraut transports, stuff they’d made off with, what monuments not to bomb, that kind of crap. Kind of stuff your father detailed over to Warren to keep him out of the line. Only some of the stuff wasn’t turning up at Division HQ.”

“What does that have to do with Dad’s death?”

Turtle screwed his face up in thought. “I think the colonel got worried that someone in the regiment was holding back. One time I caught him planting some things on a bombed-out kraut truck near Baesweiler. Told me to forget what I saw and shut up.” Turtle shrugged expressively.

I knew what he meant. Dad could be mighty short when he was worried and not even as long-standing an associate as Ed Bailey dared him in that mood.

“An officer?” I suggested, thinking of DeLord.

“Could have been anyone,” Turtle replied. “Hell, all the guys swarmed over the stuff. We all lifted things here and there.” He saw the major’s glare and rose to the accusation blandly. “Sure, me too.” Then his face hardened. “Until that - Warren started searching combat packs.

Lousy -!”

“Warren?” I asked, sitting up, my mind flipping through the possibilities. I might not feature Warren as a murderer but a larcenist? It was Regan Laird who pricked this theory.

“No, I saw the quantities of things the searches turned up. You could hide a piece here and there but not that much. Some of those wagon trailers had big canvases, heavy carved chests, old books,” he explained. “Not stuff you could hide in a money belt or your shirt.”

“Warren had a footlocker, didn’t he?” I pursued.

Laird shook his head firmly. “Yes, but they don’t hold much. And he’d have no way of getting loot back from the line. Does you no good to steal something you can’t hide and can’t send on. Besides, how would someone like Warren know what would be valuable?”

I gave a harsh laugh. “Same way the krauts would. And I suppose, if the krauts felt it worthwhile lifting from the French, it would be worth Warren’s while, too.”

“A point,” Laird allowed but he was not convinced. He leaned forward then, tapping me lightly on the shoulder. “Just remember, Carlysle, all this is only supposition. If it had been normal times, or even in an assembly area, we would have reported it to the MPs or the CID. But we couldn’t.” He glanced over my head at Turtle. “I know Bailey has it in for Warren but I’m afraid he’s allowed other elements to cloud his judgment. Oh

” and he raised a hand to quell Turtle’s resenting guttural, “that’s one reason Turtle came down here, to enlist me in going after Warren and forcing a confession from him.”

“But there’s the gun now,” I reminded him.

“Yes, there’s the gun and there’ve been two attempts to burglarize your room. I’m asking why and although I can’t figure out yet why someone would murder Jim Murdock, I can no longer believe it was a sniper. If there was wide-scale looting traced to our regiment, if Colonel Murdock knew about it and wanted to find the looter, that would account for him not wanting to leave the line for any reason. He had laid a trap .”

“Yeah, and he sent DeLord for Warren,” Turtle reminded him.

“ which would be an ample reason for Warren shooting father .”

“But

” the major interrupted us, “your father never got to Warren that night. He was killed on his way there.”

“Then, if Warren isn’t the looter, though I like that theory very much,” I grinned wickedly, having many private reasons for hating Donald Warren, “whoever put that gun in my dad’s locker knows it will connect him - Warren - with the murder.”

“Exactly. But who’s back?” the major asked sardonically. “I am. Turtle is

“

“DeLord’s back and so is Warren,” Turtle remarked in a very quiet voice.

“Warren?” I exclaimed.

“Yeah,” and I have never seen such a horrible expression on Turtle’s battered face. Involuntarily I drew back. “Yeah, Warren’s back. He got wounded, you know, Bit,” and the sergeant grinned knowingly at the major.

“Bailey?”

Turtle’s eyes rounded with innocence. “He got hit at Aachen when we was clearing out each house in a block.”

“Badly, I hope,” I said vengefully.

“Smashed his shoulder real bad,” Turtle replied, shaking his head ruefully.

“Not low enough, huh?”

“Carlysle!” Laird bellowed.

I grinned up at him. “I have absolutely no use for Donald Warren.”

“Neither do I but your indiscretion is inappropriate for a young girl - “

“But not for a young boy?” I asked sweetly.

The major’s eyes were snapping with anger and he was barely containing his own temper.

“All right, Bailey. I’m here, you’re here, Warren’s back, and so is DeLord. What we have to do is get that revolver out to Edwards and run a ballistics check - “

“When the storm settles down,” Turtle interrupted.

The wind had indeed risen in volume and ferocity, as if stirred by the tenor of our arguments. Snow lashed at the windows, some particles sifting in around the old casements. Regan Laird turned towards the windows, listening to the storm’s violence. His mouth curled in a faint smile as he realized the elements had abetted the sergeant’s moratorium.

“That’s a real cold sound, Major,” Turtle said blandly.

I wondered if the major knew Ed Bailey as well as I did, because I knew that nothing was going to stop Turtle from killing Donald Warren. And I had no intention of apprising the major of that knowledge.

Regan Laird looked speculatively at me. Abruptly I got to my feet, to break his train of thought lest I inadvertently betray myself.

“Good God, dinner!” I exclaimed with real feeling and dashed to the kitchen.