The Secret of Linden Court

By Thomas Stimson

Andre Kosowicz has a secret...

In a quaint European city so old that Roman coins are still unearthed in the back gardens of trim little houses, the single, thirty-seven-year-old junior file clerk of the City Tax Department thought he knew every street, lane, boulevard, alley, thoroughfare, highway and byway within the city limits...until now.

Stuck in the back corner of an ancient file cabinet, Andre finds an old, faded street record and discovers evidence of a neighborhood he has never heard of: Linden Court. With no taxes paid by residents since before the Nazi invasion, he believes Linden Court has long since been paved over or bombed out of existence. To satisfy his curiosity, Andre heads to Olde Towne where, with a little snooping a lot of luck, he finds a bustling cul-de-sac of homes and shops in the shadow of an ancient linden tree.

Rather than reporting his discovery to the city for recognition and rewards, Andre befriends a variety of colorful Linden Court residents as diverse as Madame Ra’Coone and her House of Fashion, gay gallery owner and art historian Szymon, the neighborhood’s barkeep Franz, a former member of the Resistance known as The Alley Sniper and his hot-to-trot niece Sophie.

How long can Andre keep his discovery a secret from the tax department, his bitter boss and the aloof college graduate who has suddenly taken a liking to him? And how has Linden Court been able to hide in plain sight for over twenty years?

A page-turning mystery with twists and turns, clever dialogue, danger, and a dash of romance set in 1960’s Eastern Europe

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Stimson
• Release date: May 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215067802

Thomas Stimson

Thomas Stimson is a native of Washington State, a veteran of the US Coast Guard and currently works as a credit analyst for a major auto manufacturer while writing and spending time with his family and travelling.He has published a mystery novel set in Eastern Europe "The Secret of Linden Court" (2023), a novella "The Jackass" (2020) set in 16th Century Spain and Central America and upcoming works "Dear My Diary - The Courtship of Kimmie Coconut Tree" and "A Bitter Ending in Sugar Land" in the works.Thomas published the SweetSips series of liqueur-making cookbooks under the pen-name Charles Thomas and is a member of the Northwest Independent Writers Association (NIWA).

Book preview

Prologue

The primary defendant sat nervously at the defense table waiting for the trial to begin, one leg in a full-length cast. As he looked around, dozens of secondary defendants filed into the seats of the courtroom. He knew them all. Friends. Neighbors. Acquaintances. They were all accused of the same assortment of crimes…crimes against the city tax department.

A pretty young woman, having selected a seat near the front, smiled and gave him a little wave. She was not a defendant but a former co-worker. He had dated her for a time, but she had suddenly moved on, and so had he, albeit reluctantly. Was she there to cheer him on…or testify against him? He smiled and nodded in acknowledgement, hoping she was on his side and that of the others.

By the end of the trial, he could lose his job. He could lose his pension. His bank account could be seized to pay fines. If he were imprisoned, at least he could count on a roof over his head, three meals a day and prison garb. That would be a step up from what he had now since he had already lost his home and all his belongings.

If I had never found Linden Court, then I wouldn’t be in this God-awful mess, he muttered to himself.

A bewigged Bailiff strode into the courtroom, carved staff in hand and rapped the floor with its tip three times, announcing "Arise all ye, for the Honorable Magistrate Judge…

Spring 1964

Andre lived in a quaint European city so old that Roman coins were still unearthed in the back gardens of trim little houses. He watched glorious sunsets from the tops of ancient city walls and purchased goods from shops whose proprietors could trace their ownership back a dozen generations or more. 

He was a junior file clerk in the City Tax Department and his group had just been told that big changes were in the works…computers were coming! Andre had read about computers, even seen pictures of them in the popular science magazines…room-sized machines full of blinking lights, whirring reels of magnetic tape and thousands upon thousands of vacuum tubes. 

Will our jobs be taken away? I have heard that computers will do our jobs faster and with fewer mistakes, asked one anxious bookkeeper, who had made more than his share of errors.

My cousin said they can run all day and all night without lunch breaks or sick days, added a secretary, who often had to take time off to care for her ill mother.

And they will one day take over the world and make us their slaves, chimed in Tomislav as a wave of nervous laughter rippled through the group.

Mr. Pyndyk, put up his hands for attention, I understand your concerns and let me be the first to tell you that no jobs will be lost in the foreseeable future. 

Andre’s coworkers shared skeptical looks all around as the Section Manager continued, It will take time for the computer system to be built, installed, programmed, tested and fed all the necessary information to create tax bills for mailing. That is the only function the computer will perform. The only ones most likely lose their jobs, in the long run, are the men and women who go door-to-door to collect the taxes for us.

Smiling paternally, he added, We will still need the accountants, assessors, auditors, clerks…really, all of you…to make this department run smoothly and efficiently long into the future. Mailing out bills and having payments sent to us in the post brings us one step closer to the modern tax collecting they are doing now in the larger cities, including the capital.

Andre went back to his desk in the Streets and Thoroughfares Sub-Section of the Property Division and unwrapped the remainder of a sandwich he had started before the meeting was called. The news sounded interesting, and Mr. Pyndyk had assured them their jobs were safe. Andre believed him.

His job was to maintain the details, including the proper name and exact location, of every street, road, avenue, boulevard, court, lane, alley, cul-de-sac, drive, thoroughfare, intersection, roundabout, highway and byway within the city limits, right down to the street numbers on any given stretch. Each street was assigned its own individual Green Card.

Anytime a street was built, closed, merged with another or had its name changed, it was Andre’s job to fill out the requisite forms, file them and send copies to the Engineering and Assessor’s office and create or update a Green Card with the necessary information.

Additionally, if a building was erected, added to or torn down and addresses added or subtracted from the official record, it was Andre’s job to fill out a different set of forms, file them and send copies to the Assessor’s office so they could determine who to tax and how much. 

Despite his title of Junior File Clerk, Andre was not a youngster and the title rankled him. He was very good at his job, or so he believed, and had watched as one junior file clerk after another got promoted into increasingly higher ranks. This, despite his nearly twenty years of loyal service to the tax department. 

Well, Mr. Pyndyk would say, when Andre asked about this or that person being promoted over him. He has a college degree, or Her mother knows the mayor’s wife, or He didn’t make as many mistakes as you.

Andre was sixteen and parentless when the war ended. The city had been devastated by bombings, fires, epidemics and starvation and the local government was left in shambles once the Nazi’s puppet leaders were ousted and hung in the main plaza. To regroup, what was left of the city’s old guard re-organized and hired anyone who could read, write and follow directions to fill needed slots in the new city government. 

The 18th century building housing the old Tax Department had been badly damaged and Andre was hired as part of a team to collect, organize and transfer the records that could be salvaged to a largely unscathed manor house. Over time, Andre became an official city employee with benefits acquired in fits and starts as the city and nation rebuilt and grew. 

Due to the war’s crippling effects on everyday life, Andre did not have a college degree and could not afford to get one on his current salary. Nor did he have parents who hobnobbed with the mayor or city council members. They had been killed during a bombing raid while Andre was out searching for food. 

And yes, Andre knew he made errors and, undoubtedly, he had created extra work for others. But should that keep him from promotions and raises? He did not think so. ‘Besides,’ he thought to himself, ‘the errors weren’t that big.’

Luckily, city employees could not be fired or let go but for the direst of reasons. This made Andre the de facto head of the Streets and Thoroughfares Sub-section. He knew far more than anyone else about his little corner of the Tax Department and was highly regarded by his peers. However, his status was not recognized by Mr. Pyndyk with the title or pay Andre felt he had earned and deserved.

Now, in 1964, they were stepping into the computer age. It would be months before the computer arrived and more months to get it up and running properly. To prepare for this event, Mr. Pyndyk assigned Andre’s team an additional long-term assignment: They were to go through all the Green Cards, match them up with what was on file at the assessor’s office, make any needed adjustments and, finally, make photocopies of the originals that would, in time, be transcribed onto computer punch-cards. 

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I think Brigitta is a man-hater, opined Tomislav, one of the other two members of Andre’s sub-section, as they shared a moment at the water cooler. I heard she lived with her boyfriend during their last year in university, doing everything for him. Cooking, cleaning, laundry and…all the rest, he added with a knowing wink.

So why would that make her a man-hater? asked Andre.

Well, story is, he dumped her at graduation after securing a plum job in Paris. Left her with no engagement ring, no ‘I’ll be back for you’, no nothing. 

They both craned their necks around the corner to watch Brigitta, a serious young college graduate, erasing a stray letter from the record she was typing. Andre tried to imagine her doing all the rest.

And she always looks constipated, like she hasn’t let one loose in days, added Tomislav.

By the way Brigitta dresses and acts, her family has money, observed Andre. "For someone like her to get a clerical job with the likes of us would give anyone constipation…and make her a man-hater. If the story you heard is true, and it happened to me, I would probably be a man-hater too. Or rather, a woman-hater."

Andre wondered if he would ever have a relationship long enough to build into a base of love, let alone hate. For now, I will have to settle for being a job-hater, he cracked in a voice low enough not to be heard by others. He was only half serious, but best not to let others hear. Besides, Tom was fun and liked to banter.

Andre went back to working on the computer project, as he thought of the new assignment, while letting Brigitta and Tomislav handle the day-to-day duties. The arrangement was by an unspoken mutual consent: the junior workers found the new assignment tedious and Andre preferred working alone amongst the familiar file cabinets.

Over the years, Andre had sought out and walked every street of the city. He was intimately familiar with neighborhoods housing the wealthy and the downtrodden; business districts from bars and bordellos to banks and boutiques; enormous tree-lined boulevards dozens of meters across and alleyways barely wide enough for two bicycles to pass. He relished them all and did not believe any one person knew the city as well as he did. Not even the police or firefighters or street workers knew the full extent of this grand city as they tended to work within specific neighborhoods or districts. 

Now, amongst the mid-nineteenth century wooden file cabinets and their troves of detailed information, Andre felt at home. With each record came memories of this little shop or that pretty home or how a particular neighborhood smelled after a warm summer rain. He liked this project and it was important for the department. Maybe it would help him get promoted. ‘But,’ Andre thought wistfully, ‘probably not.’

As he cleared out the last files of District Seven’s cabinet, he spotted a Green Card in the back left corner of the drawer. It was face down and wedged into a crack. With a bit of gentle tugging, it came free. Andre turned over the card and saw a street name he had never seen before: Linden Court. 

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Andre could not sleep. The newlyweds upstairs were having another one of their rows of yelling, crying and breaking things. It was worst on Fridays when the husband got paid, drunk and abusive, in that order.

But what was really keeping Andre up was the mystery he was trying to solve on his own: Of all the discrepancies he had had to research so far, Linden Court was the only street he had not been able to locate. 

The Green Card had been an earlier, pre-war version of what they were using now. Many of the cards on file were of the same type so its age was not unusual. What was unusual was that Andre knew the district and neighborhood very well but had never seen or heard of Linden Court. 

He paid a visit to the plat flat, the office where current and retired plat books were located, and eventually found Linden Court and its exact location in Olde Towne. Linden Court was a true court or cul-de-sac, shaped like a wineskin laying on its side, with an open tail as its only access onto Saint Martin Street. Andre could find no records of the court being destroyed in the war, having been built over with a new structure or made into a city park. 

The plat books were updated every five years using, in part, records from the Streets and Thoroughfares Sub-Section. The last record of Linden Court was in the 1935-1939 volume and nothing from 1940 onward.   

Andre then did some quiet snooping in the assessor’s office. As a long-time employee, he could access files nearly anywhere and no one would question him except, perhaps, to offer him a bit of birthday cake or catch up on some juicy gossip. 

No one paid any mind to Andre as he found listings of property assessments and tax billings for Saint Martin Street, Louis Lane, Dogleg Drive and a host of other streets, lanes and courts in the area, but not a single one for Linden Court. 

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Andre trudged back to his dull, gray, post-war tenement building located far from the tram lines where the rent was cheaper. He had recently lost yet another bicycle to thieves, despite removing the front wheel and keeping it in the office with him.

His building was one of many that had been designed and built on the cheap to house the dispossessed until they could move into more permanent dwellings. Nicknamed The Tombs, the tenements faced annual rent hikes proportionate to the increased amount of vandalism and decreased levels of basic maintenance.

As Andre entered the building, his head full of thoughts about Linden Court, the familiar smells of stale tobacco smoke, cooked cabbage and urine, both animal and human, made Andre wish for the means to have a better place to live. 

The five flights of stairs to his apartment only exacerbated the fact that he could never bring a girl here for a night of fun. The last working lift died three years ago and no decent girl would be caught dead in a dump like this. Andre sighed and started the long climb up, stepping over turds in the semi-darkness as a matter of habit.

He had told no one about his discovery yet, not even Tomislav. And if Andre informed Mr. Pyndyk of finding Linden Court, his boss would have found a way to blame Andre for having lost it in the first place. Moreover, Mr. Pyndyk would add this to the growing list of reasons why Andre should not be promoted, especially if people were living there and not paying property taxes. 

Property taxes! It dawned on Andre that if he found a street where people have been living for years and not paying their taxes, he would be a hero! Back taxes and fines would be levied and collected. The squatters might go to prison. Andre would get a reward, a promotion and perhaps a percentage of what they could recover.

He could finally get into a decent place! But telling Mr. Pyndyk now could open the door to having his boss take the credit for Andre’s discovery and leaving him with nothing.

‘But with my luck,’ Andre thought resignedly, ‘the street had been destroyed in the war and built over in the last twenty years…and I would get nothing but a hard time for leading my boss on a wild goose chase.’

No, he couldn’t tell Mr. Pyndyk or anyone else about this mystery until he himself had resolved it. Tomorrow was Saturday and Andre was going to find Linden Court, or what had become of it, one way or another.

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It was shaping into a beautiful May morning as Andre took the tram to Olde Towne and got off at the Farmers Plaza where the marketplace was in full swing. Vendors were busy selling smoked meats and fresh produce, handicrafts and all manner of goods to the locals and tourists who crowded the stalls. From there, Andre made a beeline to a less-traveled corner of the original city where streets of cobblestone outnumbered those of asphalt. 

When he reached the spot on Saint Martin Street where Linden Court’s entrance was shown to be on the pre-war plat maps, Andre found nothing but a high, ivy-covered wall between two buildings. It was four or five meters high and not constructed in a way that made scaling it easy, or even possible. The sidewalk along the wall was evenly built and no sign that a street or driveway had cut through here. Not in recent times, anyway.

He slowly walked up and down the nearby streets, seeking the borders of the block and another way in. Part of the neighborhood was bisected by one of the remaining sections of the ancient city wall, built to keep the town safe from foreign invaders of centuries long past. The steps leading to the top of the wall had been blocked years ago due to the stonework crumbling from a combination of age and the percussive shocks of mortars and air-dropped bombs from the last two wars.

With no luck in finding the mysterious Linden Court and giving it up as a lost cause, Andre decided on a coffee and croissant at a nearby café. He found a seat near the window, picked up an abandoned newspaper from another table and was shaking it out for a read when he spotted a middle-aged couple with a full grocery cart stop in front of the wall across the street. The woman reached through the ivy and part of the wall opened.  The couple hurried through the doorway and quickly closed it behind them. 

Andre stared at what he had just witnessed. The newspaper was forgotten as Andre nursed his coffee and watched the wall more closely. Soon after, the wall opened and a different person came out, pushing a bicycle through, pulling the door closed and giving it a quick shake for security. To his amazement, in an hour and a half of lunch and coffees, Andre watched over a dozen different people come and go through the ivy-covered wall. None appeared to use a key but just reached through the ivy and it opened.

He paid for lunch and, looking around cautiously, crossed the T-shaped intersection to the wall and reached through the ivy at the spot everyone else had reached into. It was right there…a spring-loaded latch. With a push, the gate opened noiselessly. Andre slipped inside and closed the gate, his heart beating faster and nervous sweat dampening his brow. 

On each side were the windowless brick walls of two buildings and in front was part of the old city wall. Andre followed the curving alley as it opened into a broad cobblestoned cul-de-sac with a cluster of about twenty homes and businesses lining the perimeter. 

The most striking feature was an enormous tree dominating the center of the street…a linden tree. 

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Surrounding the tree was a community garden filled with plots of blossoming cabbages and carrots, tomatoes and onions, flowering garlic and aromatic herbs, climbing strawberries, blueberry bushes and a host of edible delights mingling with marigolds, nasturtiums, roses and carnations. Cobblestones from the center of the court had been pulled up and stacked to form deep beds and create borders and walkways.

The street was clean and well-maintained. Houses painted in cheerful colors were fronted with window-boxes sprouting spring flowers. Children played football in the open street and a few adults were shopping or tending to front-yard gardens. A storekeeper sweeping his entryway eyed the stranger with curious caution. 

Andre awkwardly strolled around the court, looking into the bakery for a few moments, pretending to admire dresses in a shop window, perusing a display of artwork at a gallery, then back to watching the children at their game. Andre sat for a bit on one of the park benches beneath the linden whose leaves were quickly thickening in the spring sunshine. There was an air of peace about the court...the typical urban noises deadened by the surrounding buildings and ancient city wall.

Now that he had found Linden Court, Andre did not want to leave. He did not have much money left, having spent most of it at the café, but wanted to stay a bit longer and learn more about the people living here. 

He made a decision and entered The Hair of the Dog, passing a snooker game in progress and into the main room where several people lounged at the bar and tables. Peanut shells littered the floor, tobacco smoke hung stubbornly in the air despite opened windows and the warm smell of grilled sausages tempted Andre's appetite, though he had only just eaten. The room quieted a bit as Andre settled himself on a stool and ordered a lager at the bar. 

The burly bartender, a barrel-chested man with black, wiry hair sprouting from bared forearms,