by Jack Murray
It hooked dramatically away from the green and probably beamed an innocent fish going about his lawful business.
‘What poisonous luck,’ said Spunky miserably. ‘Best of luck, old chum. Playing a bit long methinks.’
This was an understatement. The only way of getting a ball onto the green in this wind, thought Kit, was by walking two hundred yards and dropping it there from your pocket.
With something approaching dread, Kit stepped up to the tee. He didn’t waste any time with practice swings such was his certainty of disaster. Instead of aiming to the right, he aimed directly at the green.
The ball set off good and true. Then the wind caught the ball in its grip. Momentum was lost, and the ball dropped listlessly onto the rocks. This acted as a signal to the golfing gods to make life even more difficult. The clouds opened up.
-
‘Best decision, no question,’ said Spunky, before taking a sip of his G&T. As if to amplify the point, a gust of wind blew rain across the window of Turnberry hotel’s bar, overlooking the golf course. It splattered the window like the last pheasant at a shoot.
‘Sorry, Spunky, but my leg isn’t at its best in this weather. Hurts damnably,’ replied Kit. He was sitting in a tartan-covered armchair, a newspaper nestling on his knee and a gin in his left hand.
‘Anything of interest?’ asked Spunky, indicating the paper.
‘No, it’s been a quiet month or two. Mary’s hopes were so high after the Phantom affair but now we have the...’
‘Crushing reality of life with Aston,’ interjected Spunky with a grin. ‘Tell her, the offer still stands if she ever fancies...’
‘Studying tables about widget outputs in Minsk,’ suggested Kit, one eyebrow raised.
‘Exactly, she’ll be in heaven.’
‘I see there was a robbery of the Sultan’s blue sapphire; not our chap by any chance?’
‘No, definitely not. We had him in the Italian embassy that night.’
‘Oh?’ It was a question.
‘Nothing of interest, just wanted to find out more about this D’Annunzio chap.’
The two men returned to a companionable silence. Spunky looked down the hill at the course and then over the sea towards Ailsa Craig. If anything, the weather was worsening. Summer rain had arrived with the inevitability of the first grey hair on a middle-aged man. The only sound in the hotel bar was that of newspaper pages being turned by Kit and rain rat, tat, tatting on the large window.
Spunky turned to Kit after a while and asked, ‘By the by, what’s this about you going to America soon?’
‘Yes, Algy’s getting married. Did you meet him?’
‘No, don’t think so. He’s your cousin, isn’t he?’
‘I suppose he is,’ said Kit enigmatically before continuing, ‘Good fellow. Came over in seventeen with the Americans. I wasn’t around then obviously, but he saw some action around eighteen at Belleau Wood. Came through it well enough. He came to visit me when we’d finished; stayed for a week and then he returned to America in early nineteen. It was round about the time we were in Paris. I think we just missed him, in fact. Aunt Agatha is coming obviously.’
‘What about your father and Edmund?’ asked Spunky.
‘No, I can’t see that happening,’ said Kit sadly. ‘He and Uncle Alastair still don’t speak.’
‘Plus ça change,’ replied Spunky but did not add anything more to this.
‘Mary’s coming too,’ said Kit.
Spunky lifted his monocle off and looked at Kit in surprise. ‘Really? Her Aunt Emily sanctioned her going to San Francisco with a rake like you.’
‘Aunt Agatha’s coming, remember?’
‘Ah armed guard, patrol dog and minefield, all in one five-foot aunt.’
‘Yes, that would certainly describe Aunt Agatha.’
They lapsed into silence to admire the shocking weather outside. Spunky lifted his telescope and put it to his good eye. ‘Still some hardy individuals out there,’ he noted.
‘A murder in Yorkshire, I see,’ replied Kit from somewhere behind his newspaper.’
‘Using a mashie from fifty yards of the green, must be a hellish breeze.’
‘It says here that it was predicted by a medium. They’re calling it the “medium murder”, apparently. How ghoulish.’
These profound reflections on the kismet of life were interrupted by the arrival of tea and a platter of sandwiches. The silver tea pot shone like, well, silver, and the platter, also silver, was on three tiers. The top two tiers contained sandwiches on a paper doily and the bottom, some scones. Spunky poured the tea and added a dash of milk to both cups.
‘You don’t do the milk first?’ asked Kit, sardonically.
‘Of course not, silly way to do it,’ replied Spunky taking sip. He continued, ‘Say what you will about the Picts being an uncivilised bunch of barbarians…’
‘I don’t think I ever said anything of the sort,’ pointed out Kit.
‘But they do make a rather good cup of tea,’ replied Spunky, ignoring Kit. ‘When does Mary return from organising weddings?’
‘Soon, I hope,’ said Kit looking up from the paper. ‘No offence, but I miss her horribly.’
‘None taken, completely understandable. ‘So, Esther will get hitched in September and you’ll be...’
‘St Valentine’s Day next year,’ replied Kit wistfully. A promise of another life. He couldn’t wait and said as much. Spunky’s eyebrows arched almost off his forehead. Kit burst out laughing. His face reddened slightly. Spunky saw his opportunity and went in for the kill.
‘I shall be amazed if the citadel isn’t breached by enemy forces before then,’ said Spunky.
Kit nodded thoughtfully, ‘I shall hold off her advances as best I can, old man.’
3
San Francisco, June 1920
A smug grin grew on the features of Alastair Aston. He began to nod slowly, then he began to chuckle and then, oddly, his head began to shake. His features suggested that it was all too easy; any fool could have guessed it. A mere trifle for a man such as he.
The he in question was in his mid-sixties. Light reflected off his bald head courtesy of the bed lamp. He had a friendly face that always suggested, however kindly, that he did not take you seriously and nor should you.
He turned a page of the book, ‘The Case of the Broadway Virgin’. Another page turned, his head nodding slowly. ‘Of course, it has to be,’ said Alastair with an almost smug it-was-obvious-from-the-start certainty. A casual observer would not have failed to detect a note of triumph in the voice. He turned to the final page.
If Marcus Aurelius had not coined the phrase about counting chickens before they hatch, then he missed a trick. One moment Alastair Aston was sipping from the vessel of victory, the certainty of his Holmesian powers of deduction about to be confirmed when all of a sudden nemesis tapped him on the shoulder and stuck its tongue out. Triumph turned to shock, then dismay. He snapped the book shut.
‘Must be getting old.’
He turned to the bed lamp and switched it off unhappily.
-
Eight hours later he was awoken by the curtains of his bedroom being opened violently. Light flooded into the room blinding Alastair’s semi-conscious. He blinked and tried to hide his eyes from the light with his hands.
‘What on earth?’
‘Time to get up,’ said Ella-Mae, his housekeeper. She was a diminutive, dark-skinned woman of indeterminate age save for the streaks of grey in her hair. Ella-Mae’s mood was a constant sourly-sunny. Housekeeper to the Astons this last twenty-five years, she ruled the home with an iron rod dipped in acid.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ said Alastair, from halfway under the sheet. ‘Haven’t I fired you yet?’
‘Every day.’
‘Yet here you are,’ he said wearily, covering his eyes from the bright sunlight, ‘as welcome as a hangover but without the bonus of a wonderful night had.’
‘What on earth are you reading?’
asked Ella-Mae, staring at the battered paperback on his bedside table. She picked it up and stared at a picture of beautiful young lady in a state of undress in front of a man in a suit holding a pistol.
‘Ah, a very deep and penetrative work on the human condition. It would go over your head,’ said Alastair dismissively.
‘I’m five feet tall,’ pointed out his housekeeper, ‘everything goes over my head.’ She stooped down to retrieve some clothing off the floor and walked towards the bedroom door. ‘I’m going,’ she said on the way out.
‘Don’t come back,’ shouted Alastair before adding in a quieter tone, ‘Did you bring my tea?’
‘In front of you as usual,’ came the reply.
‘Ah yes.’
‘You’re welcome,’ replied Ella-Mae from the corridor. She was knocking on another door.
Alastair made a face at her before squinting angrily at the sunlight. To be fair, he was the first to admit that he wasn’t at his best in the mornings. As much by instinct as anything else, he looked to the side of the bed. The space beside him was empty. He glanced up at a photograph of a young couple on the wall. His heart sank. Again.
With some effort he hauled himself out of bed. He slipped his feet into the slippers Ella-Mae had perfectly placed on the floor beneath the bed. Another glance at the photograph before his thoughts were interrupted by Ella-Mae shouting at his son. Another day had begun.
-
Alastair sat alone at his breakfast. The breakfast room was comfortably large, decorated in the English style. There were two paintings on the wall: a Winslow Homer watercolour of a fisherman and a portrait by Eakins of an attractive dark-haired woman of around forty. There was a sideboard with an array of breakfast food on silver platters. Ella-Mae had made bacon, eggs and a peculiarly American delicacy he had acquired a taste for, grits. Any embarrassment regarding his submission to American culinary predilections had long since subsided.
As he refilled his teacup, the door to the breakfast room opened. A tall, friendly-looking man with straw-coloured hair and dark eyes entered. He wore a tweed jacket and a bow tie. The tie was yellow with black polka dots. The black matched his eyes, the yellow his hair.
Alastair regarded him and the tie with undisguised distaste. Having made great theatre out of looking his son up and down, he said sardonically, ‘Well Algernon, delighted you could join me; it’s a beautiful evening.’
‘Very funny dad, it’s eleven in the morning.’
‘Really, I rarely see you out of bed before nightfall.’
The two men breakfasted in silence. Alastair read the morning paper while Algernon read the back and front pages of the same paper. After a few minutes Alastair became aware of this.
‘I do wish you’d get your own paper, Algernon. It’s somewhat disconcerting trying to read about the issues of the day with you shifting your head to see the baseball news.’
‘Sorry, pops.’
Alastair rolled his eyes. Nearly thirty years or so of living in America, twenty-eight years since the birth of Algernon, he still held out resolutely against the degradation of his mother tongue by the colonials. It was a lonely battle, but duty required that he fight to the last man which, strictly speaking, he was.
‘Do you have something against the English language?’
Algy laughed breezily, ‘Pops, you’re the tops.’ With that he rose quickly and exited the room before Alastair gave full vent to his ire. He watched the door close.
‘I declare, the boy’s getting worse,’ said Alastair to himself. At least it would have been. More by instinct than any particular noise he looked up, startled, to see that Ella-Mae had arrived in the room. He drew the newspaper up against his chest defensively as if fearful his housekeeper would stab him. This wasn’t necessarily out of the question. It had been on the cards for years. Decades even.
‘I do wish you wouldn’t do that. You’ll give me a heart attack one day.’
‘I’ve been working on that for twenty years and you’re still here,’ replied Ella-Mae picking up the plates and cups from the table, not bothering to look at the master of the house.
Alastair made great show of returning to his newspaper, ignoring his diminutive housekeeper. When she’d left the room he said, ‘I really must put a bell around her neck.’
4
There were barely three people in the bar. One man alone sat alone looking at a pair of empty glasses. He was in his twenties but seemed older. A slim moustache reluctantly decorated his top lip. One of the other men in the bar came up close to him to order. The seated man turned around; the stench of alcohol, or worse, almost made him gag. There was something sad about a bar with no women, thought the man at the bar. We civilise one another, he realised.
‘Hey Joe, another one over here.’ It was a Chinese guy. The accent was pure American. Second-generation, thought the other man in the bar still capable of thought.
The seated man wasn’t sure of many things in life, but he was pretty certain the barman wasn’t called Joe. A glass of bourbon sailed down the bar, western style. This raised a smile in the man and not just because the other man returned to his seat. The smell of bourbon seemed to stand up and walk with him.
‘Good trick,’ he said to the bar man. ‘Do you want to try again with me?’
Seconds later a glass of bourbon cruised towards the seated man, arriving within half an arm. The man reached and took the glass in his hand. He stared at it for a moment and then downed the liquor in one gulp. Removing his wallet, he slapped a dollar down on the bar top. Saluting the barman, he got up from the stool and made his way to the exit, breakfast finished.
Van Ness traffic had died down but rather than take a cab he decided to walk to the office a few blocks away. Then he glanced up at the sun and changed his mind. He hailed a cab.
‘870 Market Street.’
Ten minutes later, the cab pulled up outside a not-so-flatiron style grey-brick building. The James Flood building rose twelve stories from the street. To one side was a cable car turntable, to the other was Powell Station. The man walked in through a large set of wooden doors into an ornate, white-marbled lobby. The doorman smiled as he entered.
‘Hello, Pete,’ said the man to the doorman.
The man took the elevator a few floors before exiting and walking along the corridor. He stopped outside room 314. The sign on the door read: Pinkerton National Detective Agency.
He walked through the door past a few citizens, through a low wooden swing door to an office in the back. The head of the agency spied him and motioned with his hand, which was clutching a thin file, to follow him.
The man walked towards the haze of cigarette smoke that permanently hung around his boss. Phil Geauque was a man nearer forty than thirty but looked older. They called him ‘the old man’, behind his back. His hair was thinning, and he could have done with losing a pound or two. There was no mistaking the hard glint of his eyes. No one in the building messed with him.
He looked at the man and sniffed. Shaking his head, he said, ‘I have something for you that’ll keep you away from drink for a day or three.’ He handed the man the file he had been holding. The two men looked at each other, waiting for something.
‘What do you want me to do, read it to you as well?’
‘Thought you were going to be nice to me.’
‘That was last week. New week, kid. Crack this I’ll be nice to you again. Maybe.’
‘You’re a sweetie,’ said the man and turned to walk out of the office.
‘Hey, Hammett,’ shouted Geauque.
Hammett turned around. ‘Yes?’ asked the Pinkerton man.
‘Lay off the booze; and stop making your reports like literature. I don’t have the time.’
There was nothing in that for him, so he shrugged and went back through the small outer reception area. It was filling up. Usually older men or older women, their fearful eyes full of the betrayal or uncertainty or the forlorn hope they were wrong.
Hammett
made his way downstairs, tired of waiting for an elevator that never seemed to come. He went through a different exit onto Ellis Street. Outside in the sunlight he realised he was hungry. Beside the Flood Building was John’s Grill.
The restaurant was one of the first to open after the quake in 1906. Its wood-panelled walls gave a sense of intimacy. Inside it was fairly full. The usual assortment of politicians on the make, police on the take, journos eavesdropping and minor celebrities shouting across the tables to one another hoping to attract the attention of someone, anyone.
Hammett nabbed a table by the window that was being vacated by a young couple. He sat down and a waiter put a glass of water on the table. Hammett opened the file and began to read. With each sentence his heart began to sink.
It was the same every time. A new file, a new hope of something interesting. Then reality arrived like a sap on the head. This was a variation on the old story. A man wanting someone to follow a woman. He read on until the waiter came and took his order. He was young and Chinese. Hammett wasn’t sure why he was surprised by this. He ordered chops, potatoes and tomato.
He read the file for a few more minutes then he lost interest. He closed it and indulged in a more interesting activity: looking around him. The constantly changing current of humanity. The Grill never failed to interest him. So many different people. Old, young, rich and not-so-rich, white and every other colour under the sun. San Francisco in a room, eating great food. It was always full, yet he usually found a place to sit.
He looked at the different tables. A man sat alone at a table across the restaurant. He was writing in a notebook, drawing with words, probably, the patrons. Not a bad idea, thought Hammett. He fished a notebook from his pocket and began to do the same.
5
Grosvenor Square, London July 1920
Kit breezed through the front door of the Grosvenor Square mansion with a smile and a good morning to the aged Fish, his Aunt Agatha’s increasingly befuddled butler. He was racing towards eighty with all of the speed and purpose of a tortoise in mating season.