The Art of Detection (29 page)

     ‘The marks on the stone. The moss is all mussed along the top, and there’s a scratch where a metal grommet scraped it.’

     ‘Lichen, not moss,’ I corrected absently. He grinned suddenly, so that he looked about eleven years old.

     ‘Me and my pappy did a lot of hunting. They sometimes use me as a tracker here, when one of the horses wanders off or something.’

     I sent a vote of thanks in the direction of Major Morris, and said, ‘A veritable Natty Bumppo. What see you here, young man?’

     ‘I’m not that good, and there’s probably not all that much to see, what with the ground being a little on the dry side beforehand and then the rain afterwards. One man was sitting here smoking, another man came up behind him and knocked him off the rock. Looks like one or both of ’em sort of rolled around the ground a little, and although I don’t know about blood splash patterns and all, you can sure see the blood right there.’

     ‘Where Lieutenant Raynor lay dying.’

     ‘He was a good man.’ The lad pulled off his cap in an unconscious tribute, staring at the hand-sized smear of red-brown.

     ‘You knew him.’

     ‘He’d only been here for a little while, but it’s not a very large base, you get to know most of the officers. And he was one of the good ones.’

     ‘Any ideas about who would have wanted to do this?’

     ‘Nope. Most of the fellows felt the same way about him I did.’

     ‘I see.’

     ‘What was he doing out here, do you know?’

     I turned to look over the great shining expanse of the Pacific, set alight by the low-lying sun. ‘He was sitting and looking at the moon, smoking one of his small cigars, and waiting to meet a man he regarded as a friend. And I suspect that the man who did this had his own ambiguous feelings about Raynor. He killed him, but he couldn’t quite bear to turn his back and abandon Raynor’s dead body out here on the hillside, knowing what the gulls would do to it. Nor could he bring himself to push Raynor off the cliff to the sea.’

     ‘Wouldn’t be all that easy, to push him off.’

     ‘Why do you say that?’

     ‘Oh, it looks simple, just roll something over and splash, but in fact the slope’s just a little too gentle for that. ’Bout six months ago, we had a horse break its leg along here, had to shoot it, and the major ordered us to shove it off the cliff. Took ten of us the better part of the day to get the cursed thing anywhere near the water. ’Course, a man’d be simpler, but not real easy. Not unless you could pick him up and throw him.’

     I studied him for a while, so intently that the young man began to look nervous, as young men do. ‘Let us take a closer look at that cliff,’ I said. At that, his nervousness increased.

     ‘Uh, mister, I really wouldn’t if I was you. I mean, no offence meant, but you’re not a real young man.’

     ‘I shall endeavour to remain on the land side of the water-line, Corporal.’

     My youthful helpmeet sheltered my every step as we approached the steeper portion of the cliff, although I could see what he meant, that at this part of the cliffs, there was no convenient spot at which one could absolutely guarantee that a rolled object would continue rolling without fetching up on rock or shrub.

     I could also see something else. At the very point at which the slope became impossible, when I had resorted to hunkering onto my heels with one hand on the ground and Corporal Larsen’s firm grip on my coat-tails for support--the point, in short, at which farther progress became impossible--I spotted a lump of white half-way to the breaking waves, and even more precipitously, a light shape that could be the raw colour of broken wood.

     I looked around into the worried brown eyes of my assistant. ‘Which position on a belaying rope do you prefer?’ I asked. ‘The anchoring end, or the dangling?’

TEN

The lad would not hear of my dangling out over the ocean. In fact, he came perilously near to arguing with me entirely, considering that he was a soldier under orders, and only agreed to assist me when I pointed out that our other, equine companion might also serve to anchor the rope.

     Further delay came when he would have set out for the fort, where the nearest rope lay, on foot. It appeared that the nag which had transported me here was an officer’s horse, thus rendered off-limits to a mere corporal.

     ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I told Larsen. ‘Even if you travel at a jog-trot we’ll be working that cliff in the dark. Take the horse and go. If anyone questions you, you’re on a personal mission from Major Morris. But, lad? Don’t give anyone details.’

     In the end, the threat of impending darkness tipped him into obedience. With none of the caution demonstrated by the major and me, Larsen flung himself into the saddle and dug in his heels, not even pausing to adjust the stirrups to his shorter legs. Rider and mount flashed over the top of the hill, and he must have kept up the breakneck racing attitude because he rode the two-mile journey to the barn and back again in far less time than I would have credited to that particular creature. He dropped off the winded animal, led it along the slope to where I stood and, as soon as I had the reins in my hand, began dragging his equipment from the saddle.

     Along with the sack, the rope, and three apples, he had brought a lantern, which indicated how long he thought this was going to take us.

     I showed him how to fashion a climbing harness out of the rope, then tied the other end of it to the saddle, looping the middle around the saddle-horn. The corporal eyed the process dubiously, but seemed reassured by my knots as much as the attitude of disinterested competence I created for his benefit. He set off down the hill uncertainly, testing the play of rope as he went, but by the time he reached the sharper decline, he was moving easily, trusting my control of the situation.

     Before long, he turned around to traverse the slope backwards, braced fully against the rope that was scouring my palms. The horse was tired enough that the peculiarity did not cause it to startle, which was as well. The sun rested a thumb’s breadth from the horizon, and Corporal Larsen was invisible to me, nothing but a tension on the hemp running through my hands. I felt him move down, responding to the single tug by holding the rope firm, then at the double tug played out more of the line. There was a single loop remaining at my feet, and I was considering the challenge of persuading the horse to move down the hillside a few yards when another single tug came, and I held fast. Finally there came a series of sharp tugs, and I began to haul the line steadily in against the pommel. In a few minutes the bulk of the rope lay across my boots, then a long shadow wavered across the hillside as the last rays of the sun gave outline to my assistant’s form.

     His boyish face with flushed with adventure and triumph as he wrestled himself free from the no-doubt painfully constricting harness, then walked over to present me with his treasure. However, he took one glance at the state of my palms and gave an exclamation of dismay.

     ‘Your hands! Oh, that was really stupid of me, not to have brought gloves! Here, let me wrap them.’

     ‘Your California weather is so clement, I neglected to wear my own,’ I admitted. ‘It’s nothing, I shall just need to take care that I do not add my own stains to the marks on the towel. Show me what you’ve found, lad, and stop fussing over me.’

     He insisted on tying off his relatively clean handkerchief, however, before he would give me his sack. While I opened its top, he tidied the rope like a good soldier, but his eyes never left what I was doing, and his actions were somewhat distracted by his attentions.

     The wooden object I had spotted was the business end of a base-ball bat, split from the handle by the force of the blows, still clotted despite the rain with the killing residue. Shards of bone had been driven an eighth of an inch into the hard wood.

     ‘I couldn’t find the other part,’ Larsen said, sounding apologetic.

     ‘It’s probably floated half-way to Hawaii by now,’ I reassured him, and reached for the other object in the sack.

     There is a shroud held in veneration by the Roman Church, displayed in a church in the Italian city of Turin, that appears to show the face of a bearded man around whom it was wrapped at death. Being old and odd, this remarkable object is of course identified as the winding-sheet of the Saviour, although there is no proof of the matter.

     The cloth I unwrapped on that darkening hillside was weirdly similar to the Turin shroud. As I unpeeled the sodden object, stains appeared; I spread it flat, and in a peculiar coincidence, the last rays of that day’s sunlight travelled across it, then went dim, as Corporal Larsen and I stood staring down at the clear imprint of a man’s agonised face, pressed into the cloth.

     We made use of the lamp Larsen had brought, darkness catching us up as we passed through the tunnel to Fort Baker. Although he would have had me in the saddle, I could see no reason to perch on high while the corporal laboured at my side, and in the end we walked together in front of the horse, which bore the stained towel and the murder weapon as if bearing Raynor’s body home.

     Back at Fort Baker, I was disappointed to find the military police from the Presidio in possession. I needed a conversation with the good major, but such would not be provided this evening. Instead, I turned over the items my young friend had recovered from the cliffside, and made an appointment for the following afternoon.

     The Army launch
El Aquario
was busy shuttling back and forth across the passage, and after retrieving my unnecessary brief-case from Morris’s office, I went down to the dock to await its next trip. As it happened, Lieutenant Jack Raynor waited there as well, on his final voyage across to the Army mortuary. I stood on the pier, and later on the tossing deck, contemplating the wrapped form of the young officer and addressing him with my silent questions. A promising young officer with secrets to keep: Why had he died?

     The lieutenant did not say.

     When I returned to the hotel, the desk-man handed me an envelope with the hand-written initials BB at the upper left corner. I opened it as I rode up in the lift, and found inside the dates of Lieutenant Raynor’s presence in the city over the last month of his life, both at the club, and when he had been free during the daylight hours. At this juncture, I did not know that it would do me any good, but I folded it into my pocket and walked down the silent hallway to my empty room.

     It was long since dark, and truth to tell, I was feeling my age. I should have liked nothing better than a large and leisurely meal, a book, and my currently solitary bed, but my day was far from finished. Instead, I called for a hurried plate of sandwiches and descended to the hotel’s Turkish baths, which restored me sufficiently that I might consider the remainder of the night without outright loathing. I resumed my semi-formal evening wear, dropped my silk hat onto my freshly trimmed head, pulled a pair of thin leather gloves over my abused hands, and set out for the Blue Tiger cabaret.

     The man at the door tipped his hat to me, recognising instantly the generous patron of the night before. I was guided up the stairs again to the balcony, shown to a table overlooking the stage, and provided a bottle of champagne on ice. I was later than I had anticipated, and Martin Ledbetter gave a sour glance at the sweating silver bucket.

     ‘They wouldn’t bring the bubbly until you were here to pay for it,’ he said, reaching for the glasses.

     ‘Still, they did allow you to sit down,’ I pointed out.

     He did not deign to answer.

     Billy Birdsong was already on the stage, half-way through the second of her two evening’s performances. I was interested to hear a different set of songs from the previous evening, an indication that many of the audience were repeat visitors. She also wore a different costume from those she had appeared in; I wondered idly just how extensive her repertoire and her wardrobe were.