“Why don’t you give him the laudanum?” I asked.
“No,” Kaz said. “I am very sorry, but no. Tadeusz is a Polish soldier. He must do what is right, even at a cost to himself. We cannot take a chance with any more drugs.”
I didn’t care about other Polish soldiers; I just couldn’t bear to see this kid suffer. I looked away from Kaz, knowing he was right, unwilling to meet his eyes. I stared at the floor, flushed with a sense of shame at what we were putting him through.
Crumbs. There were crumbs at my feet. Just as there had been on the ground where Eddie lay. I thought back to the kitchen at Penford Street in Camberwell. Why were there gardener’s gloves on the counter? Why would anyone use more than a month’s ration of sugar for a single cake?
“What does an oleander flower look like?” I said, bending down to feel the crumbs. They vanished into tiny pieces as I rubbed them between my fingers.
“They can be white or red,” Kaz said. “They look a bit like propeller blades, I always thought. Five petals, I believe.”
“With long, narrow, shiny green leaves?”
“Yes, why?”
“The plant at Sheila’s place,” Big Mike said.
“Yeah. I’m not much on flowers, but my dad once arrested a florist for murder. He used the sap from an oleander plant as poison. He found out that his wife was having an affair, and that the guy would come over while he was out making deliveries. He began to notice that his single malt Scotch was down about an inch or so every Wednesday, so he put two and two together and figured the guy was enjoying his liquor and his wife. So one Tuesday night, he takes the sap he’d harvested from his hothouse oleanders and adds it to the Scotch. Wednesday afternoon, he comes home expecting to find a dead body and a hysterical wife. Instead, he finds both of them dead. Gave himself up right away. Said his wife never drank a drop that he’d known of, but that she must’ve kept more than one secret from him.”
“Oleander?” Tadeusz said. He’d come to a halt at one of the windows, leaning on the casement, his face resting on the wood frame.
“A flower,” Radecki said. “Apparently very poisonous.”
“It is,” I said. “Fast acting, and very bitter. Which is why the florist added it to the whiskey, to disguise the taste. And why Sheila used so much sugar. She must’ve baked up something for Eddie, and he keeled over in the alleyway. Then all she had to do was kneel and drive the bayonet between his ribs.”
“Is it a beautiful flower?” Tadeusz said, as he opened the handle on the window and took a deep breath of the fresh air.
“Beautiful and deadly,” I said, thinking of Sheila and her earnest tears, her ingenuous and believable abandonment. My man’s dead, I’m alone, and a killer may be after me. Just the right words to get a couple of flat-footed GIs to feel sorry for her, give her a few pounds and a ride to the train station. The air flowing into the room felt good, as if it were washing away the shock of how duplicitous even an innocent-looking young girl could be.
“How long would I have until you take me to see the general?” Tadeusz said to Kaz, without looking away from the open window.
“It will be in a week.”
“I think not,” Tadeusz said, hoisting himself onto the narrow sill, holding each open window with one hand. The hinges creaked, the breeze blew his white robe back, and for a second it looked as if he’d grown wings. Then he was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY
It had only been four stories, but four was enough with a flagstone terrace at the bottom of the drop. Tadeusz had put an end to his torture, and as much as I had wished he could see things through, I couldn’t blame him. The only thing worse than being executed and buried in the Katyn Forest was to witness the executions and burials, then be thrown into a secret police prison, where fear and memories ate away at your mind until reality and sanity decayed beyond repair. Then to be sent back out into the world through a bureaucratic mistake, silent and withdrawn, adrift among people who wanted only to draw you out, stand you up, use you, and watch you relive the nightmare visions at their bidding. For the greater good.
Funny, but with all the sacrifices in this world for the greater good, I had to wonder where it had gotten to. That greater good. Just around the corner, like prosperity? Hoarded somewhere, stockpiled in a warehouse for after the war? Or had it been spent in payoffs, kickbacks, bribes, sweetheart deals, promotions for the incompetent but well connected? I don’t remember seeing any greater good in Sicily, at Salerno, or along the Volturno River. Just death, snafus, and suffering. So good for you, Tadeusz.
All this ran through my head as I stood at attention in front of Colonel Harding’s desk the next morning, Kaz and Big Mike a step behind me. I kept my mouth shut, which I had learned the hard way was the best defense when Harding had that look: lips compressed, jaw muscles clenched, the vein above his temple throbbing. It was like waiting for a hand grenade to go off.
“You,” Harding said, pointing a finger at Kaz, “were supposed to be lying low somewhere.”
“I-,” Kaz began, drawing a dark look from Harding.
“When I want to hear from you, Lieutenant Kazimierz, I will let you know. You,” Harding said, moving the accusing finger in my direction, “were supposed to be in Dover, talking to the Russians while they had their tour. And you, Corporal, were supposed to be driving him there. Instead, the three of you end up north of London, at a top-secret facility, standing by while a valuable asset jumps out a window. That wouldn’t have had anything to do with your presence there, would it?”
“Tadeusz Tucholski,” Kaz said. When Harding didn’t snap at him, he continued. “That was his name. Tadeusz was very valuable, it is true. He was also very, very fragile. I don’t think we understood how fragile. If we hadn’t gone, he might not have killed himself, not that day. But some other day, certainly.”
“It’s true, Colonel,” I said. We’d agreed that it didn’t make any sense to reveal Radecki’s use of his laudanum. He’d had the best of intentions, and it had nothing to do with what happened yesterday. Unless you counted the fact that we’d withheld it from Tadeusz. All around, a truth better not told.
“He was in real bad shape, Colonel,” Big Mike said. “It’s a wonder he held together this long.”
“That may be, but it still doesn’t tell me why you two went up there, when you should have been on your way to Dover.”
“I came by here early yesterday morning, to read the file on Topper Chapman that Cosgrove had sent over. I called Scotland Yard to check something and heard that Scutt wanted me over at the Rubens, where a body had been found. It was Eddie Miller, the kid I saw with Sidorov. Apparently Kaz had been seen handling the murder weapon, a Polish Army bayonet, the day before, and Scutt was suspicious of him. Thought he might be taking his revenge on the Russians by killing one of their informers, something along those lines.”
“Especially after that comment at the Russian Embassy,” Harding said.
“Yes, sir,” I said, eager to display the proper military courtesy, which sometimes had a calming effect on Harding. “We went to search Eddie’s flat, and ran into a girl from the hotel, Sheila Carlson. She gave us a sob story about getting married to Eddie, and how she’d found Eddie’s body but ran away because she thought the killer might be after her.”
“But she was the killer?”
“Yes,” I said, thankful that Big Mike must’ve filled him in last night. And now I knew what the smaller cake pan had been for. “She used poison, from an oleander plant. Left a note for Eddie, met him in the alley, gave him a piece of cake that he was probably happy to eat. That poison is fast acting, and in no time he was on the ground, with Sheila thrusting a blade into his heart. But first she’d given Captain Radecki a poisoned apple cake to take to Tadeusz.”