Louise's Blunder Read Online Free PDF Page B

impossible. Or perhaps Hughes had gone underground, with a new cover story, and was hidden in a closet at the Federal Reserve Building where the Trident Conference was being held, tuned in to several listening devices, ready to sell his information to the highest bidder. No one could say I didn’t have a vivid imagination.
    I got off the bus at 25th Street and went down the street, stopping in front of a tiny cottage, part of a short row of similar cottages that I suspected were once servants’ quarters for the double row house on the corner. I double-checked the address. This place was way too small for a boarding house. But I had the right place so I walked up to the front door and knocked. I could hear a radio playing classical music inside.
    I was just about to knock again when the front door opened revealing a little elderly woman wearing a pink apron studded with embroidered strawberries. She used way too much bluing in her hair.
    ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘can I help you?’
    ‘Mrs Nighy?’ I asked.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘My name is Louise Pearlie,’ I began.
    ‘Do come in,’ she said, ‘the sun is making my eyes water.’
    Entering a dark hallway I glimpsed a lounge off to the left where Mrs Nighy had set up her ironing board. Two cats, one black and one a tabby, regarded me lazily from a davenport. The house was so small I could see all four rooms from where I stood. A half-closed door at the back of the house, opposite the kitchen, showed a slice of what had to be Mrs Nighy’s bedroom. Lots of pink flounced across the window curtains and a knitting project lay across the bed. In front of the house, across from the lounge (this door ajar too), I saw Hughes’ room. The embroidered white curtains at the window were feminine, but the trousers thrown across the foot of the bed belonged to a man.
    I heard a kitchen timer sound off.
    ‘Oh dear,’ Mrs Nighy said, ‘let me get my biscuits out of the oven and I’ll be right back.’
    When she turned toward the kitchen I slipped into Hughes’ room. I hoped Mrs Nighy moved slowly.
    Hughes’ dopp kit sat on his dresser. His desk held a map of Europe secured by a glass with a quarter inch of brown liquid in it. It smelled like bourbon. A battered leather briefcase, a narrow one secured with a flap that buckled, rested on the desk chair. Holding my breath I flipped open the satchel flap. There were no OSS files or documents inside. In fact there was nothing in the satchel except a half-sheet of notepaper that read ‘G. Sunday 9th’. Quickly I stuffed the note in my pocket.
    I was waiting, a little breathless, for Mrs Nighy when she came back into the hall.
    ‘Do come sit down,’ she said, leading me into the lounge.
    I sat in a faded pink wing chair, one of a pair on either side of a petite fireplace meant to burn coal, and she took the other.
    The black cat jumped off the davenport and meandered over to us, lying down on the rug between us as if to protect her owner.
    ‘I’m doing my ironing,’ Mrs Nighy said. ‘I just have the one boarder, and the laundries are so busy, it’s no bother to wash and iron his things.’
    ‘Speaking about your boarder,’ Louise said, ‘I’m calling to ask you about him. Paul Hughes?’
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Such a lovely man. No trouble at all. I was lucky to draw his name. He’s quite tidy and so quiet. He reads in his room every evening after dinner. Rarely goes out except to visit his mother on the weekends.’
    ‘As I was saying,’ I said, ‘I’m from his office. He hasn’t been to work for two days, and we haven’t heard from him. You don’t have a telephone, I suppose?’
    She glanced at a drum table, where a telephone must once have stood.
    ‘No,’ she said, ‘my old one couldn’t be repaired and I haven’t been able to get it replaced.’
    ‘Is Mr Hughes in town? Have you heard from him?’
    ‘No,’ she said, ‘he’s not here. He left to visit his mother in Fredericksburg and hasn’t returned.’
    My