The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady

In the meantime, of course, everybody at the camp had to be fed three meals a day, every single day of the year. The Army sent in some of the staples—flour and sugar and coffee. And some of the fresh vegetables were grown in the garden that Bessie managed. But the rest of it had to be found locally, and merchants and farmers from Darling and Cypress County were granted contracts to supply meat, vegetables, fruits, milk, eggs, and bread. The quartermaster handled the payments for that, as well.

As Camp Briarwood’s liaison officer, Ophelia had played a vital role in finding the right suppliers and contractors. She had spent all her life in Cypress County and could confidently boast that she knew every single merchant, businessman, farmer, orchardist, and plantation owner, as well as all their fathers, brothers, cousins, and friends. So when somebody put in a bid to become a supplier, Ophelia was responsible for assessing the capability of his (or her) dairy herd to supply milk, cream, and butter; or an orchard to produce peaches and plums; or a garden to provide fresh vegetables; or a herd of pigs or beef cattle to furnish the kitchen with steaks, hamburger, bacon, and ribs. She did a good job, too. She had been able to find local suppliers who were qualified to fill more than 90 percent of the orders Sergeant Webb gave her.

Of course, Ophelia didn’t do the purchasing itself, or handle any of the billing or the payments. Corporal Andrews negotiated the contracts with the suppliers. Sergeant Webb prepared and managed the invoices that went to the appropriate federal offices in Washington, D.C., where payment was approved and the checks sent to the camp for disbursement. They were held in a locked drawer of the quartermaster’s desk until the suppliers picked them up. The system was straightforward enough, Ophelia had thought, and—at least as far as she could tell—it seemed to be working perfectly. There was hardly ever a hitch in the supply schedule, and none of the suppliers had ever complained that they weren’t paid on time.

But somebody—a woman, he said, calling herself Mata Hari—had tipped Charlie Dickens that something fishy was going on in the quartermaster’s office, and he had asked Ophelia to help him find out whether the tipster was telling the truth. Now that she was here, though, in this deserted, creepy building, Ophelia was getting cold feet. And recalling the story of Mata Hari, she seemed to remember that the woman, an exotic dancer, had been executed for being a German spy. All of a sudden, her excuse for coming—that she had to pick up some paperwork—didn’t seem very plausible. What did she have to get off her desk that was so pressing and urgent that it couldn’t wait until Monday morning?