The Art of Detection (30 page)

     Again, we were summoned to her dressing room after the show, and seated amongst the chocolate and flower tributes. She stripped off her stage face, painted on her other face of less exaggerated femininity, and changed into an embroidered frock of light wool.

     When she emerged from behind the screen, I stood up, but instead of accompanying her down the street to her bistro, I escorted the remaining staff and hangers-on out of the room, placed Ledbetter outside in the hallway to keep them from returning, and closed the door firmly.

     Wordlessly, I held out the pearl necklace; the singer took it, with hands that were uncertain with apprehension, and returned to me my stick-pin.

     ‘Sit down,’ I told her, and reached for the nearest bottle of an admirer’s wine, scrabbling through the debris atop the table for a cork-screw.

     Hesitantly, frightened, she obeyed. She took the glass I handed her, drank its contents as if it held medicine, and sat expectantly.

     ‘He’s dead,’ I told her.

     The green eyes closed. ‘I knew it,’ she whispered. ‘He’d have come back, otherwise. How?’

     ‘Murdered.’

     The singer stared up at me in horror, and said, ‘God. Because of me?’

     ‘As yet, there is no reason to believe his death had anything to do with you. The Army police are looking into it, but more to the point, I will continue to investigate the matter.’

     ‘The police? Oh no.’

     ‘In my cursory search of your Lieutenant Raynor’s quarters, I saw nothing that would bring your name into this at all. The only thing I found was this.’ I took from my note-case one of the two items I had removed from Raynor’s pocket, and placed it on the table in front of the singer. ‘He had it in his wallet. I thought you might want it returned.’

     She looked at the studio portrait of herself, which was signed,

     With love and kisses from Billy

     ‘No, I don’t suppose his family needed to see that.’

     She sounded bitter, as would any person required to deny their very existence; my need to move the investigation forward had to be put, temporarily, behind reassuring my client. ‘His family is of no importance,’ I said firmly. ‘What matters is that Lieutenant Raynor cared enough to risk carrying your photograph in his breast pocket.’

     There followed the usual teary self-recrimination of a client, which becomes no less tiresome with the number of times one is forced to witness it. However, eventually the singer’s tears receded and she sat staring at herself in the dressing-table mirror; I knew that in a moment, she would see her ravaged face and reach, half-heartedly but inevitably, for the make-up pots.

     For a performer, the sentiment ‘Life must go on’ runs closer to the surface than for other people.

     ‘The first night, you told me that one evening when you were walking with Lieutenant Raynor, he saw someone he knew, and retreated from a confrontation.’

     ‘Yes.’

     ‘I need to know every detail of that incident.’

     ‘What’s to tell? We were walking arm-in-arm, he spots two people a couple blocks up, he pulls me into an alley and we take another route to my place.’

     ‘When would this have been?’

     ‘I don’t know,’ she replied in a despairing little voice. I felt like shaking her, but instead merely leant forward so that I dominated her vision.

     ‘Think, Billy. What you were doing, how you felt, what was going on that night.’

     ‘I really don’t--Wait a minute,’ she broke off. ‘It was the night after he gave me the pearl. And that was on the full moon, I remember because Jack held it up to the window and compared the two, and said I would remember that night whenever the moon was full. He was such a romantic boy,’ she said, and began to weep again.

     Ruthlessly, I pressed on. ‘So he gave you the necklace on the Sunday?’

     ‘Monday,’ she said, and blew her nose.

     The moon had been at its fullest on the Sunday night, but I did not think the singer would have perceived the difference. ‘Monday, then. So you saw these other people on the Tuesday night?’

     ‘That sounds right.’

     ‘What did they look like?’

     ‘I only caught a glimpse.’ Her hand sought out a piece of cotton wool, and absently dabbed it into the jar of cold cream.

     ‘Men or women?’

     ‘Well, that’s the thing. There was a man and a figure in a dress. It was night and there was a street-light, but it was behind them, so between the fact that I only had a glance before Jack pulled me off the street and the fact that I couldn’t see their faces, I can’t be sure. But afterwards I thought maybe the woman was a kid who used to work with me, a few years ago when I was just getting started.’

     ‘A boy?’

     ‘Right. Very pretty face but couldn’t sing worth a plugged nickel, and two left feet when it came to dancing. As soon as I could afford better, I let him go. But I hadn’t seen him in years, and I can’t be at all certain it was him.’

     ‘What was his name?’

     ‘He called himself Merry, Merry Whisker was it? No, Winkle. Merry Winkle. I probably have a photo of him in my scrapbook at home, if you like.’

     ‘That would be extraordinarily helpful.’

     ‘I’ll send it to the hotel, shall I?’

     ‘Thank you. What about the man? Old or young?’

     ‘I really couldn’t see him--’

     ‘I understand, but impressions can be remarkably accurate.’

     ‘Well, young then.’

     ‘Tall or short?’

     ‘Short,’ she answered immediately. ‘That much I did see, that Merry, if it was Merry, was taller than him.’

     ‘Clothes?’

     ‘Against the light that way, he was just an overcoat and a hat. No uniform, if that’s what you’re after.’

     ‘And when you call to mind the attitudes of their persons, how they walked and the manner in which they moved, what would you say was their relationship? Brothers? Friends?’

     ‘Frankly, they looked like a pro and her john. A professional. Which is why I even remember it, because once it came to me that it looked like Merry, I thought how sad his life must be.’

     ‘I see. Where precisely did this take place?’

     By this time I had been in San Francisco slightly over a month, and bore in my mind a clear map of her primary streets and districts. When Billy Birdsong told me the name of the street on which she and Raynor had been walking, the approximate cross-street, and in what direction the other two had been seen, I knew precisely where the encounter had taken place. I got from her a description of ‘Merry Winkle’ and questioned her further for some minor detail of dress or person, but she had nothing else, and soon her eyes began to tear up again. I summoned her dresser from the hall-way outside, and asked the woman to accompany Miss Birdsong home.

     Outside of the Blue Tiger, young Ledbetter hovered at my elbow, the very picture of impatience. ‘What happened?’ he demanded. ‘Why were you talking to her for so long? And what are we doing now?’

     I raised my eyes, then looked past him at the nighttime street. ‘I believe,’ I said slowly, ‘that I need to find a male prostitute.’

     His dropped jaw said that I had succeeded in amazing him, yet again.

ELEVEN

Martin Ledbetter was only somewhat reassured when he found that it was a specific prostitute I sought, and not for any carnal purposes. ‘Er, you don’t know who he is?’

     ‘I know a possible
nom de nuit
, if that be the proper phrase, and I know more or less where he plies his trade. I am relying on you, Mr Ledbetter, to lead me to him.’

     As we made our way in the direction of the sighting, I explained the situation: acquaintance of Jack Raynor seen with a person who might be a failed dancer with trans-vestite proclivities, where seen, accompanying whom.

     ‘And you think I know him?’

     ‘I should doubt it, as your circle is somewhat more exalted than his. However, you may know the sorts of places someone of that sort would ply his trade. A street-corner, do you think, or inside an establishment?’

     ‘Did his, er, client know he was a trans-vestite?’ Ledbetter asked.

     ‘That,’ I told him, ‘is indeed the question.’

     It was now close to three o’clock in the morning, and I had my doubts that we would find the person in question still lingering at a street-corner or inside a speakeasy. Ledbetter knew the area as well as I had thought, and one or two of the denizens claimed some degree of recognition to my description of the person we sought, but in the end, the hour was too far advanced, and the hypothesis was not to be proved that night. I should have to return on the morrow, when the working girls, and boys, are fresh.

     However, this did not mean that my work was done.

     ‘You perhaps should go home, Ledbetter,’ I suggested. ‘You look as if you could use some sleep.’

     ‘The night is young,’ he protested, although a moment before he had been stifling a yawn.

     ‘Very well, perhaps you could recommend an all-night diner, at which we might while away an hour. Preferably along the water-front.’

     He located a small building, little more than a hut with greasy windows, that nonetheless was warm and smelt pleasingly of fresh coffee and bacon. The other patrons were either early labourers on their way to work or revellers endeavouring to sober themselves for the trip home; I reflected with amusement that my companion and I fit with either category.

     The coffee and breakfast fare restored us both to a second wind, and provided a layer of insulation against the damp air when we went out of the door at a quarter to five.

     My valiant young guide paused in the doorway to get his cigarette alight, then asked, ‘Where to now?’

     ‘Fisherman’s Wharf,’ I told him absently, occupied with studying the figure he cut. ‘I say, wait here for a moment.’

     I went back inside, and within two minutes had made the necessary arrangements, returning with a hat in my hand. ‘Put this on,’ I told him. He took it with fastidious fingers, wrinkling his nose at the pomade stains that darkened its interior. Admittedly, it was not a very nice hat, but it was the only one in the diner that was neither a cloth working-man’s cap or a tall formal article such as the one I wore. All we required was the silhouette.

     He lowered it with distaste onto his slick hair; I studied the effect, and nodded. ‘You may take it off if you prefer, and save it until it is needed. Come now, dawn will be here shortly.’

     ‘Why are we going to Fisherman’s Wharf?’

     ‘We seek an informal water-taxi service.’

     ‘But the hire-boats are down closer to the Ferry Building.’

     ‘Miss Birdsong lives on the southern slopes of Pacific Heights. When Raynor left her flat in latter weeks, he was in the habit of turning due north. This would lead him directly up the hills; if he were heading for the ferry, he would turn east, as he was wont to do in earlier days, in order to avoid the steep climb. I believe that in the early days he was dependent on the ferry to take him across the Golden Gate. Later, he made other arrangements.’