The Art of Detection (32 page)

     ‘Sir, what are we looking for?’

     ‘Anything the Presidio men might have overlooked,’ I told him, settling at the desk for a look at those tantalising envelopes: If Jack Raynor had a fiancée for whom he was contemplating the purchase of wedding bands, there would surely be letters.

     A less experienced investigator might assume that the two items Raynor had carried on his person, the Birdsong photograph and the enigmatic letter from the Los Angeles lawyer, had been in his breast pocket because he attached a high degree of emotional import to them. I knew, however, that their presence over his heart could as easily be due to any number of factors, from a recent receipt to a general disinclination to leave problematic documents where others might find them; indeed, he may even have had them with him the night he died because he planned to tear them into a thousand tiny pieces and set them free on the wind from the Pacific--such romantic notions were not unheard of, in a man in his situation. But he was, I had no doubt, genuinely fond of the singer, no matter what his plans for marriage might be; clearly, despite the lawyer’s cautiously enigmatic wording, Raynor intended to leave Birdsong something in his will in the face of potential family objections.

     Still, however problematic the signed photograph of a trans-vestite singer and a lawyer’s letter might be, there would be no reason for Raynor to conceal his love-notes from a fiancée. I expected to find them. I did not.

     Instead, the three letters in the drawer were from his mother, his brother, and his sister.

     The mother possessed what appeared to me an excessive interest in the game of whist, and furthermore assumed a similar obsession on the part of her son. Only at the very end did she add the lines, ‘I would of course adore seeing you this summer, if you decide to come home for a time, and we can talk about your plans for the future at that time. If only California wasn’t so very far away!’

     The brother’s letter addressed Jack Raynor’s summer plans with slightly more detail, all of which underscored Major Morris’s unvoiced fears about the renewal of his lieutenant’s contract with the United States Army. The brother, whose name was given as Edward, seemed most concerned with Jack’s possible desire for the summer house, which Edward hoped to use for the entire month of August.

     It was the sister’s brief note that hit the nail square:

Dearest Jack,

     As you asked, I haven’t said anything to the family, although really I think you’re being a little silly about this. If you love this girl, then we surely will, and there’s no need to go straight back to California. You know how Mummy adores planning a party, she’s going to be so disappointed if you go to a registry office.

     But you know best, and I can’t argue that Mummy’s getting any better as she gets older. The other day she had Eddy’s wife in tears because little Iris had dirt on her dress after playing outside! I’d live in California, too, if I could!

Kisses always,
your loving sister
Caroline

     ‘Does it seem to you unusual that Lieutenant Raynor only has three letters in his desk?’ I asked the corporal, who had begun picking hesitantly through the officer’s cupboard.

     ‘I’ve only kept two letters in six years,’ the lad told me. ‘Not a lot of room for keepsakes in this life, even for an officer.’

     I had not expected a sensible answer--I never expected a sensible answer from my assistants, with one shining exception--but I had to agree, the lad had it right. The rest of Raynor’s quarters gave the same impression, of a tidy man who dealt with things as they came up, then rid himself of encumbrances.

     Which left me with the question: Had Billy Birdsong become one of those encumbrances?

     My missing-person mystery was now clearly two, possibly separate, mysteries: Who had killed Lieutenant Jack Raynor? And, what was I to tell the singer about her lover’s intentions?

TWELVE

I did not go to the Blue Tiger that night, but I was not surprised, when I entered the speakeasy where we had left off the previous night, to find Martin Ledbetter leaning one elbow against the filthy bar, a cautious handkerchief resting between fabric and wood. He made his customary glass-raising gesture; I noted that he not only had sufficient funds to purchase his own drink, he’d had his hair cut and wore a crisp new shirt.

     ‘How long have you been here?’ I asked when I had ordered my own drink.

     ‘Just a few minutes,’ he replied; the slight difficulty he had with the letter s made clear that he had not begun his evening here. ‘No sign of Mr Winkie.’

     ‘Winkle,’ I corrected him. He made a peculiar noise half-way between a snort and a giggle, then frowned at his glass accusingly. I picked it up, and mine, and led him to a minuscule table in a corner of the near-deserted establishment. We nursed those drinks, then two more, but before I was driven to a choice between permanent liver damage and being forced to leave, a man in a dress came into the bar.

     His appearance answered a question: Other than the clothing, Merry Winkle had made no attempt to disguise himself as a female. A customer would have had to be blind, deaf, and dead drunk before making a mistake of gender. When I stood beside him at the bar, I could see that he had even neglected to shave that day.

     ‘I’d like to buy the lady a drink,’ I told the man behind the counter. The ‘lady’ turned to look at me, turned farther to stare in open disbelief, and only then remembered to assume a coquettish simper. I cut him off before he could launch into his spiel.

     ‘Would you by chance be known as Merry Winkle?’

     ‘I might, honey, if you’re interested in a little company.’

     ‘I am very interested in a little conversation, if that can be arranged? I shall of course pay you for your time.’

     ‘Don’t care what you call it, honey, I’ve got the time. Oh, and you’ve got a pretty friend, too.’

     ‘Er,’ Ledbetter said from my shoulder.

     ‘Actually, it is mere conversation I require,’ I told Winkle. ‘Perhaps we might sit down with our drinks?’

     It took some time to convince the man that in this case, ‘conversation’ was not synonymous with some variation on his usual professional activities, and he was still looking more than a little uncertain when Ledbetter went to fetch him another drink. I placed a dollar coin on the table, which he slipped into his flat bodice, then began.

     ‘Mr, er, Winkle.’

     ‘Look, I haven’t used that name in a long time. Why don’t you just call me Winfield?’

     ‘Mr Winfield, then. Nine days ago, on a Tuesday night, you were seen with a client, walking along Market Street.’

     He shrugged. ‘You can see me most evenings, walking along Market with a client. Except Sundays,’ he corrected himself, adding piously, ‘ “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.” ’

     Young Ledbetter narrowly avoided choking on his beer, and I opened my mouth, then decided this was not the place for a lecture on the difference between Sabbath and Sunday. ‘Most commendable of you, Mr Winfield. However, you had a client that night, a man somewhat shorter than you, who was probably a soldier.’

     Winfield laughed, revealing a mouthful of teeth that explained the state of his breath. ‘They’re all soldiers and sailors, honey. Anyway, who is it says he saw me?’

     I hesitated, loath to bring my client into this. ‘Just a singer, who was going home late from the cabaret.’

     ‘Well I--Wait a minute. You don’t mean Billy Birdsong?’

     ‘Do you know her?’ I answered noncommittally.

     ‘Sure I know her, I used to sing in a revue when she was first hired. I had an accident, broke my foot. If I hadn’t, I’d be on the stage like she is now. I’d’ve been the one to go off to France and get famous. I sing, too, you know.’

     ‘I can tell from the timbre of your voice,’ I replied. ‘So you noticed Miss Birdsong one evening two weeks ago?’

     ‘Her and a fancy man. She pretended she didn’t see me, but she did, and she ran away down an alley before she had to talk to me.’

     ‘Do you remember who you were with that evening?’

     ‘Oh yeah. He calls himself “Smith”, like I’d believe that. I call him Smitty. He’s a regular, shows up about once a week. Although, come to think of it, he hasn’t been by in a while.’

     ‘Since that night, perhaps?’

     ‘Damn! Excuse my French, but you’re right. Wonder if it scared him off? If it did, it’s mixed blessings. The man’s a real bastard.’

     ‘In what way?’

     Winfield played with his drink, then fortified himself with a deep swallow. ‘My regulars are what you might call a “specialised clientele.” Not quite honest enough with themselves to walk up to a boy on the street, or even in a place like this. Smitty likes to make a kind of game out of it, that he thinks I’m a girl until…Well, I don’t think I have to spell it out for you.’

     ‘Quite.’

     ‘He’s not the only one, looks nice and talks all polite and then when the door’s shut you’re something stuck to the bottom of his boot. I mean to say, I know I’m just a…a…vessel, but don’t know why that makes me any more scum than the men who use me.’

     Ledbetter, who had just returned from another trip to the bar, stopped dead to stare at Winfield. The man in the dress saw the glass hovering above the sticky table, took it from Ledbetter’s hand, and threw half of it down his throat.

     However, it was a sentiment I had heard before, in other parts of the globe; I smiled in sympathy. ‘Can you describe “Smitty” for me?’

     ‘Little bit shorter’n me. Black hair, greeny-brown eyes, soldier’s tan--face and hands, that is, pale under his clothes. Like a hundred others I’ve seen this year.’

     ‘What about what they call identifying marks? A tattoo or scar, perhaps? An accent, a ring, an unusual pocket watch, the manner in which he combed his hair? Anything that stands out in your mind from a hundred others?’

     ‘Smitty’s not exactly what you’d call well endowed. Maybe explains something about his short temper,’ Winfield added with a brief flare of bitterness.

     I kept my face straight, not only at the unintended humour of this psychological revelation but at the thought of checking a line of suspects for that particular trait. I nodded encouragement; he played with his glass, thinking.

     ‘His finger!’ Winfield raised his eyes to mine. ‘The little finger of his, let’s see, his left hand. It stuck out a little when he moved the other fingers, all stiff, like he’d broke it. And it had dark spots in it, like…’

     ‘Like he’d crushed it, embedding bits of gravel under the skin,’ I finished ungrammatically.

     ‘Exactly. Why, you know him?’

     ‘Not yet,’ I said with satisfaction. A few minutes later, sure I had received all that Winfield knew, I gave the man enough money to allow him the rest of the evening off, if not the week.

     I was smiling as we left the speakeasy, holding to myself the vision of a misshapen finger with gravel beneath the skin, draped across the front of a slim book, as Jack Raynor’s neighbour, Lieutenant Gregory Halston, came into the corridor to see who was moving about next door.

     I did not smile for long. Always, the proof of villainy is far more tedious than merely identifying the villain.

     My young assistant--who, I reflected, might be one of the more unlikely Irregulars I had employed, but also one of the more effective--was in favour of rushing to board the last Sausalito ferry of the night and storming the fort then and there.