The Art of Detection

by Laurie R. King

  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 sati
sfaction. 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.

  Instead, I was leading him in the opposite direction, while he positively hopped about with frustration.

  ‘But we know who it is!’ he protested, his voice ringing loudly through the silent canyons of the financial district. ‘We need to go and catch him.’

  We, I reflected, the smile returning briefly to my lips: We from a boy who had introduced himself by picking my pocket three nights before.

  ‘And when we have caught him, what do we do with him?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, turn him over to the authorities,’ he replied indignantly.

  Such innocence and trust was, in its way, an encouraging sign. I stopped to look at Ledbetter’s face in the light of the street-lamp, and found him looking at me with the enthusiasm and urging of a dog whose master held the ball. I had intended merely to take myself to my rooms and grimly contemplate the walls, but instead I found myself thinking, Why not? I placed my hand on his shoulder, and said, ‘Mr Ledbetter, perhaps you might be of assistance by allowing me to review the case aloud.’

  We adjourned to my rooms, ignoring the raised eyebrows of the doorman, the night desk clerk, and the elevator boy along the way. Inside, I turned up the lights and told him to help himself to a drink. When I came back from washing my hands, having exchanged my outer coats for a dressing-gown, he was sitting in a chair far from the desk.

  ‘You really must learn to return drawers to their original state,’ I advised him as I poured my own glass. I pulled open the offending drawer, saw with interest that he had merely looked, not taken, then closed it again and went to sit in the chair across from the furiously blushing, possibly reformed young thief.

  ‘The man’s name is Gregory Halston,’ I began without preamble. ‘He, too, is a junior officer stationed on Fort Barry, and as he has been there longer than Raynor, he is technically in a superior position.

  ‘Either happenstance, or some unconscious awareness of a degree of similarity on the part of their commanding officer, brought these two young men together. And once they were assigned to the same post, they of necessity lived together, the only two officers in their half-deserted fort.

  ‘Both men had a secret, the same secret, unbeknown to the other. I do not know if sodomy is a hanging offence in the United States Army, or merely cause for corporal punishment and dishonourable discharge, but once they had seen each other on the street, in similar circumstances, neither was in doubt.

  ‘The two might have cast their eyes in opposite directions and agreed that the evening had never happened, uneasy but content that their blackmail was mutual, except for one thing: The following day a letter arrived, and Raynor determined to leave the Army altogether.’

  ‘What letter?’

  ‘From a legal gentleman in the southern part of the state. I believe Lieutenant Raynor made the fatal mistake of telling his neighbour and fellow officer his plans, possibly under the assumption that Halston would feel reassured at his future absence. Instead, it had the opposite effect: Halston panicked, believing that once Raynor was safely out, their mutual hold over each other would fail. Guilt,’ I mused, ‘has an interesting way of twisting one’s thoughts.’

  ‘So, Halston bashed him and hid him in the gun room. We need to go tell his commanding officer.’

  ‘How do you propose that we approach that revelation? None of us on this side of the Gate would make the most solid of witnesses on the stand. I, after all, presented myself as a Raynor family lawyer, which I am not. Or perhaps you would like to go in my stead?’ I allowed him to consider that distasteful turn of affairs, then added, ‘Or perhaps Miss Birdsong?’

  ‘So we can’t pin the bastard down because none of us could testify?’

  ‘There is little proof other than our word.’

  ‘But, his hand!’

  ‘Ah, so you wish to place Mr Winfield on the stand?’

  ‘Yeah, he’d be just great,’ Ledbetter admitted, and took a hefty swallow from his glass. ‘Come on, now, there’s got to be some kind of evidence. Detectives always find evidence.’

  ‘A foot-print that matches the shoe of a man who spends many hours down on his knee before a target with a rifle. As do half the men on the base. The cryptic note of a meeting-place, which again could have come from any side. Letters leading to inescapable conclusions that would mortify a family and turn their wrath against your friend the singer? I believe Jack Raynor would prefer to go unavenged, than have that path of destruction.’

  Ledbetter slapped his glass down on the table, sending the contents flying, although fortunately the glass was nearly empty. ‘So he’s got away with it?’

  ‘I did not say that.’

  He looked at me askance. ‘You’re going to sneak up on him and shoot him in the back?’

  ‘Mr Ledbetter, what sort of fiction do you read?’ I asked, more than a little shocked. ‘Certainly not. We simply need a better grade of witness.’

  ‘Do we have one?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Damn it, you sound awfully complacent about all this.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘because I have done this before.’

  I waited, to see if he could work it out on his own. His eyes narrowed in thought, and after a minute, began to take on a twinkle of excitement. ‘You want to set a trap for him.’

  ‘Something of the sort.’

  ‘A secret meeting at night,’ he said, his words tumbling in excitement, ‘like the one he and Raynor had! Say, this is as good as a Sherlock Holmes story!’

  Indeed, the unnecessarily melodramatic twist he proposed was just the sort of thing Conan Doyle would have enjoyed, and my immediate impulse was to dismiss it out of hand. However, I held myself and considered, and on thinking it over, I decided that it was true: a parallel meeting by night could be, as Ledbetter might put it, just the ticket. I found myself smiling.

  ‘Mr Ledbetter,’ I told him, ‘you are a man after my own heart.’

  Now it was just a matter of suborning a major of the United States Army.

  THIRTEEN

  It was a curious sensation, to find myself the conservative and hesitant half of a pair, but young Ledbetter had the bit in his teeth now, and nothing would do but that we compose a deliberately mysterious note and arrange to deliver it to Lieutenant Halston before morning. I sat at the desk with a piece of anonymous white paper and, after a moment’s thought, wrote the following:

  Gregory Halston, you were seen that night, but 50 dollars in cash will purchase my continued silence.

  Tonight, at the same hour and place he died.

  ‘Hey,’ my novice accomplice exclaimed, ‘you’re pretty good at this.’

  ‘I ought to be,’ I told him, which served to remind him that, in truth, he had little idea who I was or on which side of the law I walked. I retrieved the note, and placed it in a plain envelope, writing Halston’s name on the outside. ‘I shall take this over to Fort Baker in the morning, and have it delivered to him.’

  ‘Oh no, you can’t just give it to him.’

  ‘I could, actually, simply telling him that some person unknown to me had handed it to me as I approached the grounds. However, I did not intend to do so. I shall merely leave it anonymously with the fort postmaster.’

  ‘L
et me do it.’

  ‘Your presence in the fort would take explanation, where I already have reason to be there. Don’t worry, Ledbetter, I shall call on you for the evening’s efforts.’

  ‘You won’t try to take this guy on all on your own?’

  ‘By no means. It is a long-time habit of mine to depend on others when it comes to open warfare. And now, young man, you need to take yourself home and sleep through as much of the day as you can manage. I shall expect you at Fisherman’s Wharf at ten-thirty tonight. Dress warmly, in dark clothing, and be sure nothing you wear rustles or rattles.’

  He left me, reluctantly. I waited at the window until I had seen him pass down the street and round a corner, then resumed my outer garments and let myself out. By good fortune, a taxi driver was sleeping at the kerb, and interrupted his slumber to take me to Fisherman’s Wharf. I arranged with him to continue his sleep there, as paid employment, and I was standing at the oddly-rigged fishing boat when the Chinese crew came up two hours later.

  They were not pleased to see me at first, but the bills in my hand softened them considerably, and the promise of more bought me their services for all of Friday night.

  Well pleased, I woke my snoring driver a second time and had him deliver me to the ferry terminus. At Fort Baker, I arranged for the letter to be given to Lieutenant Halston, concluded business with his commanding officer, and again crossed over to the city on the Bay.

  Upon returning to the hotel, I tacked a note onto my door threatening violence to anyone who disturbed me, and slept through what remained of the daylight hours.

  I woke, persuaded the hotel kitchen that I did require a meal at that hour, and dressed in the sort of clothing I had recommended to Ledbetter.

  When the sun was well down on the horizon, the Chinese crew and I set out from the fishing boats and made north across the fierce currents. A small pier serving the emplacements at Fort Barry was tucked into a cove laid about with jagged rocks, with the Bonita lighthouse sitting at its outer edge and a single track of tramway leading straight up the cliff behind. As I rode the deck, in the fading light I noted the curious difference of colour in the ground on the right and left of the pier, brought together at a sharp fold of earth. I speculated about the presence of a fault here, what it meant for the future of the city behind me. And then the light winked out, and all was darkening outline.