The Body Snatchers Affair

by Marcia Muller

  He said nothing for a time, both hands tightly clasping the gold handle of his stick. Then he let out a breath and said resignedly, “All right. I’ll tell you the absolute truth. The answer is yes—and no.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that I was involved, yes, but only briefly and indirectly. I took no active part in the thefts, received not a single penny of the proceeds from the stolen gold. I was fortunate—my name was never brought up because so far as Kinney and the others knew, they had no cause to bring me down with them. I was never part of the gang.”

  “Then in what way were you involved?”

  “Kinney came up to Amador just after I was hired by the Gold King’s owners and attempted to recruit me,” Carson said with some bitterness. “I had no idea he was a crook until then—it was a shock to learn that he was. He’d had heavy stock-market setbacks and was in dire need of cash, his excuse for having orchestrated the scheme. Sneed was his first recruit, I was to be his second.”

  “To do what, exactly?”

  “Falsify my reports on new and established veins, to make it seem as though there were not as much gold-bearing ore in certain sections of the Gold King as there was. That would have made it easier for Sneed and his crew to steal and smuggle out the richest dust. For doing this I was to be paid five thousand dollars in cash.”

  “Did you agree to it?”

  “Not in the beginning. I turned Kinney down at first, but he kept after me—he could be very persuasive. Finally, at a meeting with Kinney and Sneed, and under the influence of several drinks of forty-rod whiskey, I weakened and gave in to temptation. To my everlasting shame.”

  “Your family is rich,” Sabina said. “Did you really need the five thousand dollars?”

  “No, except that I was young and foolish and independent as the devil, and I hated having to ask my father for money. My salary in those days was not large and I … well, the mining camps were rough-and-ready places and I admit to a weakness for poker in those days.” Carson’s mouth quirked self-deprecatingly. “And to a fondness for sowing more than my share of wild oats.”

  “Did you falsify your Gold King reports?”

  “No. I came to my senses in time, thank God.”

  “Kinney and Sneed must have been upset when you told them.”

  “I didn’t tell them. I pretended to follow through, but in fact all I did was prepare two reports—a false one to satisfy them without actually aiding in the thefts, and a genuine, completely honest one for the Gold King’s owners.”

  “Did you accept the five thousand dollars?”

  Carson shook his head. “I told Kinney my conscience wouldn’t allow it. He said I was a fool, but he didn’t argue; he was only too happy to keep the five thousand for himself.”

  A trio of hotel guests came hurrying along the promenade from the carriage entrance, chattering loudly among themselves. Sabina waited until they passed before she said, “If you came to your senses in time, why did you pretend to do Kinney’s bidding? Why didn’t you simply go to the owners or the authorities and reveal the plot to them?”

  “I did, though not directly. I am the author of the anonymous letter that led to the gang’s exposure and arrest.” Carson’s tone was bitter again, this time with self-recrimination. “My conscience finally got the better of me after I moved on to Grass Valley, but I didn’t have the courage to go back and expose the scheme in person—I was afraid of being arrested myself and sent to prison, of blackening the Montgomery name. So I settled for writing the letter. God knows, I should have done it sooner.”

  “If you had,” Sabina said, “someone in the gang might have realized you were responsible and implicated you.”

  “I almost wish that had happened. As it was, I returned to San Francisco and accepted an offer to join Monarch Engineering. But I lived on tenterhooks during the trial and for a long time afterward. Eventually I came to believe my past mistake would remain buried, and so it was until that devil Sneed was released from prison.”

  “He’d found out somehow that you wrote the anonymous letter?”

  “Guessed it. A man has a lot of time to think when he’s cooped up in a cell for eight years, he said.”

  “Did you deny it?”

  “I tried to when he first turned up at my office, the day before you and I dined at Haquette’s, but he just laughed. I suppose he could tell from my reactions that he’d guessed correctly. He threatened to expose me, to make my part in the high grading seem much worse than it was, unless I paid him the same amount Kinney offered me—five thousand dollars.”

  “Did you give him the money?”

  “No. Not one red cent.”

  Sabina raised an eyebrow.

  “God’s honest truth,” Carson said. “I told him I refused to be blackmailed and in turn threatened him with a charge of attempted extortion.”

  “You thought no one would believe the word of an ex-convict, eight years after the fact?”

  “I hoped that might be the case. But that’s not why I refused to pay blackmail. I escaped punishment for what I did and almost did in Amador County, but my actions have weighed on my conscience ever since. There would be greater shame in accommodating a man like Sneed to keep my past sins secret than in having them revealed and my reputation sullied. It would almost be a relief to have the truth come out. My only regret if it does is what it would do to my father and the Montgomery family name.”

  “Did Sneed make any further attempt to blackmail you?”

  Carson nodded. “He slunk away that first time, but then two nights ago he showed up at my home with the same demand and an additional threat. If I didn’t pay, he would not only ruin me by going to the newspapers, he would see to it that I suffered a serious, possibly fatal ‘accident.’”

  Two nights ago. The evening the bughouse Sherlock had summoned her to Huntington Park. He must have expected Sneed to come calling at the Montgomery mansion, perhaps even followed him there.

  “And your answer then?” she asked.

  “The same as before: no. I made him aware that I wasn’t afraid of him and cast him out.”

  “Was that the truth? That you weren’t afraid of him?”

  “Yes. I encountered more than a few men like Sneed in the mining camps. Full of bluff and bluster, but cowards at heart.”

  This, and the rest of what Carson had said thus far, had the ring of truth. Sabina had watched him closely and he’d exhibited none of the telltale signs of the liar: no nervous gestures, or facial tics, or averted or too direct eye contact; no glib or overly earnest statements, no points glossed over or contradictory. But his innocence or guilt in the death of Artemas Sneed was yet to be determined.

  Sabina was aware of water splashing in the fountain behind them, of the scents from the exotic blooms—her senses heightening as she pressed on with her questioning. “Did you see Sneed again after that night at your home?”

  “No. I assume he gave up and crawled back into whatever hole he’s living in.”

  “The Wanderer’s Rest on Davis Street.”

  No reaction from Carson except mild surprise.

  “You didn’t know he was lodging there?”

  “No. It isn’t likely he’d want me to know.”

  “That stick of yours,” Sabina said. “It wouldn’t happen to contain a removable steel shaft, would it?”

  He blinked, taken aback by the apparent non sequitur. “You mean a sword cane? No, of course not.”

  “Do you own such a stick?”

  “No. I’ve never carried any weapon except a pistol, and that only during my time in the Mother Lode. What does a sword cane have to do with the matter at hand?”

  “It’s the instrument that was used to kill Artemas Sneed.”

  “To kill— Sneed is dead?”

  “Run through in his room. Perhaps murdered, more likely killed in self-defense during a struggle. There was an unfired pistol in his hand.”

  “My good Christ.” Carson’s
astonishment, she was sure, was genuine. “How do you know all this, Sabina?”

  “I have my sources.” She was not about to admit that she had discovered the body, or that she had failed to inform the police.

  “And you think that I may have— No, I swear by all that’s holy, it wasn’t me. I’ve never been to Davis Street in my life.”

  “Then you won’t mind telling me where you were between five and seven last evening.”

  “Is that when Sneed was killed? I was at the Bank Exchange in the Montgomery Block, imbibing too many of Duncan Nichols’s Pisco Punches with three of my firm’s clients. If you’d like their names—”

  Sabina shook her head. There was no need; Carson could not have a more credible alibi.

  He said after a short silence, “Who did kill Sneed, I wonder?”

  “It could be anyone. An ex-convict, would-be extortionist, and habitué of the Barbary Coast is sure to have made enemies, in and out of prison. The police may never find out.”

  “Do they have my name?”

  “No. Nor will they have it from me.”

  “My part in the high-grading scheme … do you intend to tell the authorities about that?”

  “You’ve given me no reason to. You had no direct role in the conspiracy, and you were responsible for the arrest and punishment of the perpetrators. Legally you couldn’t be prosecuted in any event. The statute of limitations on theft-related crimes is seven years. So you needn’t worry—as far as I’m concerned, your family’s good name and yours are secure.”

  “I’m in your debt.” Then, “But what do you honestly think, Sabina? Do I deserve punishment for what I did?”

  “You have been punished,” she said, “for the past eight years. I imagine you’ll continue to be for the rest of your days.”

  “By my conscience, you mean.”

  “Yes.”

  “And rightly so.” He reached out in a tentative way to press fingertips against her arm, then withdrew his hand quickly as if afraid his touch might have offended her. “Your opinion of me matters a great deal,” he said. “I believe you know that. Have you lost feeling and respect for me, now that you know the truth about my past?”

  Sabina looked into his blue, Stephen-like eyes and again felt none of the once-strong attraction. She said slowly, “That isn’t an easy question to answer.”

  “Please be truthful. You don’t feel quite the same, do you?”

  “Perhaps not.”

  “And you’d rather not have anything more to do with me.”

  “I can’t say right now, Carson. I do know I’d prefer not to attend the performance at the Baldwin tomorrow evening, or to share any more dinners in the immediate future.”

  “I understand.”

  There was nothing more to be said. They stood as one and without speaking left the Grand Court and then the hotel. At the bridge that spanned New Montgomery and connected with the Grand Hotel across the street, his parting smile was melancholy, his good-bye handshake weak, his step slow and ponderous as he left her. Watching after him, she couldn’t help wondering if this was the last she would ever see of Carson Montgomery.

  25

  QUINCANNON

  Quincannon finished regaling Sabina with a somewhat embellished account of his role in defusing the Chinatown powder keg by saying, “Gentry’s shell was no harder to crack than a Dungeness crab’s. It took Crowley and Price less than fifteen minutes to break him wide open.”

  “Doubtless with the aid of some not so gentle persuasion.”

  “Have you ever known the police to use another kind on a treacherous renegade?”

  She smiled and took a sip of her tea. Quincannon gazed fondly at her across the white linen tablecloth with its red rose in the center between them. It was Saturday noon and they were seated in the rather intimate atmosphere of the Maison Riche at Dupont and Geary Streets, one of the city’s tonier French bistros, whose dinner specialties included such epicurean delights as caviar sur canane and poulet de grain au cresson. The luncheon fare, in Quincannon’s opinion, was no less elegant, even if the portions were on the skimpy side.

  He was in high good spirits today. It was not often he was able to persuade Sabina to dine with him, and he had anticipated yet another turndown when he broached the subject at the agency the previous afternoon. Her acceptance had surprised and delighted him, the more so because it had been neither slow in coming nor apparently grudging.

  Her present mood, however, was less ebullient than his. She seemed quiet and introspective, he thought, though she was nonetheless splendid company outside the business confines of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services. He hadn’t asked what was troubling her, sensing that she wouldn’t have told him. Carson Montgomery again, mayhap? Perhaps, but her acceptance of the luncheon invitation was a sign, or so he fervently hoped, that she might not be as enamored of the socialite as he’d feared.

  She said as she lowered her cup, “Gentry’s motive, I imagine, was power and greed, the same as Mock Quan’s.”

  “Those, and an obsessive passion for the services of flower willows, a vice he shared with James Scarlett. An endless supply of beautiful courtesans, Dongmei among them, was the reason he joined forces with Mock Quan in the first place, just as opium and Dongmei were the sources of Scarlett’s corruption.”

  “A police sergeant and the Western-educated son of a tong president—strange bedfellows.”

  “And a pair of incompetent bughouse fools, else all of Chinatown might be in the midst of a bloodbath by now.”

  “Yes. Another crisis averted.”

  “For the time being, anyway. Until another, more stable Mock Quan emerges or someone else lights the fuse—some cold-blooded hound like Little Pete. Mark my words. One of these days, the whole Quarter will go up in flames.”

  “You may be right. In any event, it’s a relief to mark this case closed—particularly for Mrs. Scarlett.”

  Quincannon concurred. After leaving the Hall of Justice the day before, he had gone to Elizabeth Petrie’s home on Clay Street to give their client the news. Andrea Scarlett had been weepingly grateful that she need no longer fear for her life and could return to her home; the arrest of her husband’s murderer and her would-be assassin seemed much less important to her. Understandable, if a bit on the callous side.

  Sabina took a bite of her salade de crevettes. And then nearly caused him to drop his fork by saying, “I’ve been thinking that we should waive the rest of Mrs. Scarlett’s fee. I’ll include a letter to that effect with our final report— Why are you looking at me that way?”

  “Waive her fee?” he said, aghast. “What put that daft notion in your head?”

  “It’s the least we can do for the woman. She may not be the most virtuous person, but neither is she wicked. She has had a trying time, and she’s a widow with insufficient funds to support herself, much less pay us. She will surely have to return to her former work as a seamstress. Seamstresses, whether you’re aware of it or not, are not at all well paid.”

  Quincannon made a pained sound in his beard. “Sabina, have you forgotten that I was shot at by Mock Quan on two separate occasions and nearly killed both times? Not to mention made to trek through low Chinatown alleys, prowl opium dens, invade an undertaking parlor in search of a snatched corpse—”

  “Don’t be melodramatic. Of course I haven’t forgotten.”

  “Well, then? All of that, not to mention a near tarnish on our reputation as detectives, for not so much as a copper cent?”

  “We have Mrs. Scarlett’s retainer—”

  “A mere pittance.”

  “—and we’ll hardly miss the remaining few hundred dollars. It’s the proper thing to do and you know it.”

  “I know nothing of the kind.”

  “Well, it is,” Sabina said. “Just as not telling Mrs. Harriet Blanchford what her son did is the proper thing to do.”

  “What’s that? According to your account, Bertram Blanchford is a nas
ty piece of work—lower than a gopher’s hind end. He deserves whatever punishment comes his way.”

  “Yes, but the old woman doesn’t deserve to suffer any more than she already has. She is still grieving over the loss of her husband, and relieved and happy to have him back in his final resting place. The truth about Bertram would make a misery of the rest of her days.”

  “Is that why you’ve yet to return the ransom money to her?”

  “Yes. I’ll do that once I’ve invented a story to explain how I came by it and who is responsible.”

  “And what if Bertram should try another scheme to dupe money from her?”

  “I daresay he won’t. Not after I put the fear of God into him.”

  “He’ll still stand to inherit when she passes on.”

  “The bookmakers and sure-thing men who hold his markers may not allow him to live that long,” Sabina said. “Billy the Bookie has an evil reputation. But if Bertram surives with nothing more than a beating or two, Harriet Blanchford is no fool. She knows of his profligate ways and she may not trust him with what remains of the Blanchford fortune. In any event, that is her business. Ours is to spare her any more grief.”

  “And to collect our due for services rendered. You don’t intend to waive any of our fee in her case, do you?”

  “No, of course not. And a not inconsiderable one it is, you’ll be pleased to note. Five hundred dollars, plus expenses.”

  Quincannon admitted that this was a sizable sum. In other circumstances it might not have completely made up for a loss of the Scarlett fee, but here in the Maison Riche, with Sabina for company and on the table in front of him one of his favorite dishes, foie de veau aux oignons, the fattening of their bank balance seemed not quite as important as it usually did. He was, in fact, reasonably content with his lot and that of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services. And would be even more so if he knew the precise nature of Sabina’s relationship with Carson Montgomery, past and present.

  Should he take the bull by the horns, as it were, and bring up the subject here and now, admit to what he’d been told by Theodore Bonesall? There might not be a more propitious time or place than over a congenial luncheon in a crowded restaurant.