by Tim Ellis
It took them five minutes to find Sister Augustin, who had camouflaged herself between two rows of healthy-looking runner beans.
‘Sister Augustin,’ Sister Ursula called to her.
‘What’s that you say, Sister?’
Sister Ursula said to Katie, ‘Sister Augustin doesn’t hear very well now. You have to stand in front of her and speak loudly. She’s very good at reading lips.’
‘All right.’
Once they reached the place where Sister Augustin was standing, Sister Ursula said to her in a loud voice, ‘You have a visitor, Sister Augustin.’
‘A visitor! I like receiving visitors. I think it was September of 1932 when I received my last visitor.’
‘This is Katie Brazil. She has some questions for you about a boy you admitted to the orphanage in 1916.’
Sister Augustin stared at Katie with yellowing rheumy eyes. ‘That was a long time ago, dear. My memory isn’t what it used to be.’
‘His name was Anthony Taylor,’ Sister Ursula said. ‘He was six years old and he was only here for five days before he ran away.’
‘Did his mother bring him here?’
‘No. His mother was murdered in Harbour Regional Park. The boy was brought here by Family Services.’
‘A lovely looking boy. Yes, I remember him now. His mother was an actress.’
‘That’s right. Her name was Jeanne Taylor.’
‘If you say so, dear.’
Katie said, ‘Is there anything else you can tell me about him, Sister Augustin?’
‘Tell you about him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Such as what?’
‘Have you any idea why he ran away?’
‘Yes, he ran away, didn’t he?’
‘Do you know why?”
‘The other boys.’
‘What about the other boys?’
‘They bullied him, called him names.’
‘Why?’
‘Poor boy. He was such a lovely looking boy as well.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There was something wrong with him.’
‘In what way?’
Sister Augustin pointed a bony finger to her pubic area. ‘Down there.’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’
‘The other boys found out and bullied him mercilessly. Children can be so cruel. They called him tumtum and moffie. I had no idea what those names meant. I had to ask the boys.’
‘I’ve never heard those names either, what do they mean?’
‘Anthony Taylor was both a boy and a girl down there. He was a hermaphrodite.’
‘You mean he had the genitalia of a boy and a girl?’
‘Yes. I understood why he ran away. I pleaded with Mother Superior De la Cruz who was here at the time not to contact the authorities. He’d been through enough suffering already. If they found him and brought him back, I was afraid of what might happen to him.’
‘Thank you, Sister Augustin,’ Katie said.
As she walked with Sister Ursula back to the entrance, she didn’t know how any of what she’d discovered helped their case. Anthony Taylor had been an inmate of the orphanage, but only for five days until he’d run away. Where had he run to? There didn’t seem to be any way of finding out. During the five days he’d been incarcerated in the orphanage, he was bullied mercilessly by the other boys when they discovered he was a hermaphrodite – born with both sets of genitalia. So, not only had he witnessed his mother being raped and strangled, he had also been taken into care and then bullied for his physical deformity. What a sad beginning to his life, she thought.
‘Thank you, Sister Ursula,’ she said when they reached the front door. ‘And thank the Mother Superior for me.’
‘I will.’
She walked back down the steps and woke the cab driver.
‘Back home, lady?’
‘Yes, please.’
***
The drive to Bakersfield took them just over two hours. It was a pleasant drive with the sun gradually moving directly overhead from the east. They talked most of the way, taking turnabout to reveal something new about each other.
‘Do you want to come in?’ he asked her as he pulled up outside the single storey house at 3411 Palm Street.
‘No, I don’t think so. I’ll wait out here until you’ve done what you came to do. Once you’ve finished, we’ll go and have our picnic.’
‘If you’re sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘I’ll be less than an hour.’
‘No rush. Some things are worth waiting for.’
‘Very kind.’
‘The picnic.’
He smiled. ‘Of course.’
The three-bedroom house was surrounded by a wooden fence, painted white with wooden shutters, had a double garage on one side and a small swimming pool in an enclosed garden area on the other side.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in a swimming pool, but he recalled swimming in the Indian Ocean at Newcastle in Australia during R&R from Guadalcanal. And even though it was a memory, it felt more like a dream than a life experience.
The door opened as he walked up the path.
‘Oh!’ a thin middle-aged woman said. She had dry frizzy hair, a hooked nose and wore blue dungarees over a baggy t-shirt.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.’
‘That’s all right. Sometimes that happens with this door. Because you can’t see through it, people take you by surprise. What can I do for you?’
He showed her his gold badge. ‘Sergeant Erik Urban. I’m here to speak to retired detective Roswell Higgins.’
‘Did you know him when he was in the police department?’
‘No. It’s about an old case he worked on.’
‘Go through. He’s sitting by the pool. Can I get you a beer or something else, Detective?’
He licked his lips. ‘A beer would be good.’
Roswell Higgins was a tall thin man with a mop of grey hair. The only thing that made his head different from his neck was his large ears. If it weren’t for those appendages, his head could easily have been mistaken for an extension of his neck.
He was sitting in a deckchair in worn-out shorts and a shirt with his large bony feet dangling in the pool.
‘Mister Higgins.’
The man opened his eyes. ‘You’re as thin as me. We’re not related, are we?’
‘I shouldn’t think so. I’ve not been well, but I’m on the mend now.’ He held out his gold badge. ‘Detective Sergeant Erik Urban.’
‘Have you come to arrest me?’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘Ha! You show me the evidence, and I’ll decide whether I’ll come quietly, or not.’
His daughter came out with a bottle of beer and a shotgun. She placed the bottle on a round table, pointed the shotgun at Erik and said, ‘Sit.’
He sat, clutched the ice cold beer and took a long swallow. ‘You didn’t say anything about a shotgun, Miss.’
‘Comes as extra. What do you want with my pa?’
‘As I said, I’ve come to talk to him about an old case.’
Higgins looked at his daughter and said, ‘Put the gun away, Charlene. We both know why he’s here. Get me another beer and then go to the shops as you planned.’
‘I could shoot him.’
‘They’ll send someone else.’
‘I’ll shoot them as well.’
He smiled at Erik. ‘You’ll have to excuse Charlene, Sergeant. My daughter is a bit overprotective of her father.’ He turned back to her. ‘Go and put the gun back where you found it and stop threatening the Sergeant.’ He looked at Erik again. ‘You’re not here to arrest me, are you, Urban?’
‘Information only.’
‘There you are, Charlene.’
Charlene stared at Erik. ‘If you’re sure?’
‘I’ll still be here when you get back,’ her father said.
Urban took another swal
low of beer. ‘I have a lady waiting in the car for me. We’re having a picnic after I’ve spoken to your father. Arresting him and putting a handcuffed man in the back seat of my car would not do my love life any good. And between you and me, my love life hasn’t been much good for some time.’
‘I’ll hunt you down and kill you if you take him when I’m not here.’
Higgins shook his head. ‘No you won’t, Charlene. The man’s come to talk, nothing more. Get me that beer and go shopping.’
Charlene disappeared back into the house.
‘She can be a bit crazy at times, but a kinder daughter you couldn’t wish for.’
‘You’re very lucky.’
‘I am.’
Charlene came back with the beer for her father. ‘I could stay.’
‘Go shopping.’
‘I’ll be less than an hour.’
‘Take your time.’
After Charlene had left Higgins said, ‘This is about the spate of starlet murders, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘After I read about the death of Hildegard Zinn, I knew it was only a matter of time before someone would link it to the Jeanne Taylor murder from 1916 and come knocking on my door. Is the boy doing the killing?’
‘That’s what we think.’
‘Who else would know the details of the original murder?’
‘You want to tell me what happened, Roswell?’
‘We were all paid a hundred thousand dollars to keep quiet – that’s it.’
‘Quiet about what?’
‘The cover-up.’
‘Who was the killer?’
‘No, I never knew that. The only one who did know was Fenton. Whoever the killer was, he arranged with Fenton to cover everything up. We were simply paid our money and told that the investigation was at an end. If anybody asked, we were to tell them we’d tried everything we could to identify the killer, but that all the leads had dried up.’
‘What about the sketch artist’s drawing?’
‘It didn’t look like anybody we knew. Fenton obviously knew who it looked like, but he never told the rest of us.’
‘Why didn’t it appear in the newspapers?’
‘Fenton argued that we couldn’t destroy a man’s career based on a likeness derived from the fevered imagination of a six year-old boy. If we received corroborating evidence, then that was a different matter. Of course, there was no corroborating evidence, so the investigation went nowhere.’
‘It wasn’t Trent Duncan?’
‘No, the drawing was nothing like him. If you want the truth of it, you need to speak to Fenton. I believe he’s Deputy Chief of Police now though, isn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘I can’t see him volunteering the information. In the end, all you have is my word against his, and they’ll believe him over me because he’s a pillar of the community and I’m merely a retired nobody.’
‘Any idea what happened to the file?’
‘I have an idea that Fenton would have made it disappear, but I couldn’t prove it. To be honest, I took the money and forgot all about it. I can’t say I’m proud of myself, but I’ve learned to live with it.’
Erik took a swallow of his beer and stared into the lapping water. All that retired detective Roswell Higgins had done was to confirm what he’d already guessed anyway, but he still had no evidence of a cover-up. And without evidence, he couldn’t accuse Deputy Chief of Police John Fenton of any wrongdoing.
Higgins was right, it was his word against Fenton’s and without any evidence to support his word, the Deputy Chief of Police would be believed over a bitter detective trying to besmirch a pillar of the community.
‘How’re you enjoying retirement?’
‘Best thing I ever did. Who wouldn’t want to sit by a pool every day and wait for death to come knocking.’
‘I’m not death, by the way.’
‘No. Charlene thinks you are, but I know you’re not. Unless you can find evidence against Fenton, you can’t touch me. And I’d be surprised if there’s any evidence left to find.’
He finished his beer and left.
As he opened the front door, Charlene was walking up the path.
‘You going?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do I need to get the shotgun?’
‘Not today.’
‘Don’t come back. The next time I see you, I’ll blow your face off.’
‘I won’t be back.’
He climbed into the Mercury and said, ‘We ready for that picnic?’
Marilyn smiled. ‘I certainly am. You get what you came for?’
‘Yes.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
Monday January 26, 1948
There was a quiet tapping on the door.
She was sitting on the sofa in her silk pyjamas staring at the pin-boards and making notes for the academic paper she was writing with Howard.
‘Who is it?’
‘Erik.’
She opened the door to find him standing there looking tired and bedraggled in a double-breasted suit, shirt and tie.
‘It’s six-thirty in the morning, Erik. You look like they’ve just thrown you out of the drunk tank.’
‘Thanks.’
‘We need to go and buy you some new clothes.’
‘Wouldn’t be worth it right now, not until I’m fully recovered. It’ll be a few weeks yet before I’m a bit more than a bag of bones. I’ll make do until then.’
‘I was expecting you to call in last night.’
‘I got waylaid.’
‘Oh!’
‘Did the Mother Superior at the orphanage speak to you?’
‘Waylaid by a woman, you mean?’
‘We’ve moved off that subject.’
‘If you stick your nose into my affairs, then it’s only right that I’m allowed to do the same. What’s her name?’
‘It’s called a private life for a reason.’
She smiled. ‘I have information you want, don’t I?’
‘Her married name is Marilyn Rackham, but her maiden name is Kendrick. She was married to Henry for eighteen months before he went off to war and got himself killed. She’s the Chief Librarian at Cahuenga Branch Library, which is where I met her. She’s been very helpful with my research. Yesterday, she accompanied me to Bakersfield. And then, after I’d spoken to retired detective Roswell Higgins, we drove to the Kern River, just outside Bakersfield, sat on the grassy bank and had ourselves a picnic.’
‘And you stayed the night at her place?’
‘Neither of us are teenagers.’
‘When’s the wedding?’
‘What did the Mother Superior say?’
‘She was very helpful, although I can’t say I discovered anything that will help us. Anthony Taylor was admitted there on February 11, 1916, but only stayed five days.’
‘Five days!’
‘He ran away, and that was the last anybody saw or heard of him.’
‘Why did he run away?’
‘He was being bullied by the other boys. Apparently, he’s a hermaphrodite. They found out . . .’
‘A what?’
‘Hermaphrodite. The term comes from the Ancient Greek. Hermaphroditus was the son of Hermes and Aphrodite in Greek mythology. He fused with a nymph and became a person possessing the sexual organs of both a male and female.’
‘Do people exist with such deformities?’
‘They must, because Anthony Taylor is such a person.’
‘And the other boys in the orphanage made his life so miserable that he had no choice but to run away?’
‘Exactly.’
‘At six years old?’
Katie shrugged. ‘He obviously survived.’
‘And we have no idea what happened to him?’
‘No.’ She pointed to the board. ‘I have his physical description at the time, but I don’t suppose it’s relevant now. What did you find out?’
He sat down on the sofa. ‘Jeanne
Taylor’s murder was a cover-up. The detectives on the case were each paid a hundred thousand dollars to close the investigation, but we only have retired detective Roswell Higgins’ say-so on that. So far, there’s no other evidence to support what he says. In the end, it boils down to his word against Deputy Chief of Police John Fenton’s – no contest.’
‘He couldn’t shed any light on the location of the file or the drawing?’
‘No.’
‘Did they know who Jeanne Taylor’s killer was?’
‘He said only John Fenton knew that.’
She sighed. ‘We seem to be taking one pace forward and three backwards all the time.’
‘So it would appear. Anyway, I have to go now, but you know what I know.’
‘I’ll see you this evening then?’
‘Yes.’
She let Erik out, closed the door and then added the new information to the board. Nothing seemed to hang together. They couldn’t solve Jeanne Tylor’s murder, and they couldn’t solve the current murders. Who was John Fenton protecting? Clearly someone who had lots of money in 1916. There had been five detectives, and John Fenton would surely have demanded more than the others received. And how had Anthony Taylor – a six year-old boy – survived? Where was he now? Who was he now?
***
After he’d washed and changed his clothes, he shuffled into the kitchen and sat down at the kitchen table for breakfast.
Ruby said, ‘Did you fall asleep on her sofa again?’
His lip curled up. ‘Something like that.’
In fact, that’s how it had begun, and all he’d been expecting or wanting, but Marilyn had other ideas. No sooner had he closed his eyes on her sofa than she was taking his hand and leading him into her bedroom. He’d had serious doubts about his ability to perform. He wasn’t the man he used to be and felt sick at the thought of satisfying a woman who hadn’t slept with a man for at least eighteen months, but she had reassured him that they would only be sleeping together, and to his relief that’s exactly what they did.
He’d woken himself and her up a couple of times with his nightmares, but she’d held him close until they’d passed. Earlier, he’d declined her offer of breakfast, but had kissed her without any prompting and said he’d call her soon.