The Bughouse Affair: A Carpenter and Quincannon Mystery (6 page)

“And, finally, I perceive that you are well read from the slim volume entitled
Poems
tucked into the pocket of your coat, and that you have a sensitive and sentimental nature from the identity of the volume’s author. Emily Dickinson’s poems, I am given to understand, are famous for those qualities.”

There was a moment of silence. Quincannon, for once in his life, was at a loss for words.

Axminster clapped his hands, and exclaimed, “Amazing!”

“Elementary,” Holmes said.

Horse apples, Quincannon thought.

Penelope Costain yawned. “Mr. Holmes has been regaling us with his powers of observation and ratiocination all evening. Frankly I found his prowess with the violin of greater amusement.”

Her husband was likewise unimpressed. He had refilled his glass from a sideboard nearby and now emptied it again in a swallow; his face was flushed, his eyes slightly glazed. “Mental gymnastics are all well and good,” he said with some asperity, “but we’ve stayed well away from the issue here. Which is that my name is on that list of potential burglary victims.”

“I wouldn’t be concerned, Andrew,” Axminster said. “After tonight’s escapade, that fellow wouldn’t dare attempt another burglary.”

Quincannon said, “Not immediately, perhaps. He may well suspect that I know his identity.”

“You recognized him?”

“After a fashion.”

“Then why don’t you go find him and have him arrested?” Costain demanded.

“All in good time. He won’t do any more breaking and entering tonight, that I can guarantee.”

Mrs. Costain asked, “Did you also guarantee catching him red-handed at the Truesdales’ home?”

Quincannon had had enough of this company; much more of it and he might well say something he would regret. He made a small show of consulting his stem-winder. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said then, “I’ll be on my way.”

“To request police assistance?”

“To determine the extent of the Truesdales’ loss.”

Dr. Axminster showed him to the front door. The Costains remained in the parlor, and the counterfeit Sherlock Holmes tagged along. At the front door the fellow said, “I regret my intervention in the garden, Mr. Quincannon, well-intentioned though it was, but I must say I found the interlude stimulating. It isn’t often I have the pleasure of meeting a distinguished colleague while a game’s afoot.”

Quincannon reluctantly accepted a proffered hand, clasped the doctor’s just as briefly, and took his leave. Nurturing as he went the dark thought of a different game, one involving
his
foot, that he would have admired to play with the Axminsters’ addled guest.

6

SABINA

Before leaving her Russian Hill flat on Wednesday morning, Sabina set out a bowl of milk for the young cat she’d recently adopted, Adam—so named because he was the first in what she hoped would be a long succession of pets—and opened the bedroom window a few inches so he could come and go as he pleased. She had never sheltered an animal before, but Adam provided companionship and comfort against the cold of the night.

“Don’t stray too far,” she told him as he brushed against her ankles. “You’re much safer here, with a nice soft featherbed to sleep on.”

I must be daft, she thought, speaking this way to a creature that can’t possibly understand me. Yet she felt that the cat, in its own way, seemed to understand her moods, especially that of loneliness. And she was lonely often of late, even more so than usual since Stephen’s death, for reasons that were not quite clear to her. Perhaps she ought to accept one of John’s frequent invitations to dinner and a performance at the opera house.…

She’d contemplate the notion later. At the moment there was business to attend to.

As usual she was the first to arrive at the agency office. John came in a short while later. Sabina had a sharp eye for his moods; one long look at his gloomy visage prompted her to say, “I take it your surveillance at the Truesdale home last night was unproductive.”

“Oh, the yegg came skulking, right enough.”

“But you weren’t able to nab him?”

“It wasn’t my fault that I didn’t.” Her partner shed his Chesterfield and derby, hung them on the clothes tree, and retreated behind his desk where he tamped his pipe full of tobacco and set fire to it with a lucifer. “Unique scent,” he muttered. “Monograph on a hundred and forty different types of tobacco ash. Faugh!”

“What’s that you’re grumbling about?”

“Confounded lunatic. Not only did he cost me the housebreaker’s capture, he did his level best to make a fool of me with a bagful of parlor tricks.”

“Lunatic?”

“That blasted Englishman pretending to be Sherlock Holmes.”

Sabina raised an eyebrow. “You mean the fellow Mr. Bierce wrote about yesterday?”

“None other.” He puffed furiously on his pipe. “Sherlock! What kind of name is that?”

“John. Exactly what happened last night?”

She listened gravely while he explained in detail accurate to a fault. When he was done, she said, “Well, the Englishman may be an impostor—”

“May be!”

“—but it sounds as though he’s well versed in the methods employed by the genuine Sherlock Holmes.”

“Bah. A mentalist in a collar-and-elbow variety show at the Comique could perform the same tricks.”

“Nevertheless,” Sabina said, “he must be adept at his role to have fooled Dr. Axminster and his guests into believing him.”

“Crackbrains can be sly as the devil. This one also happens to be a pompous, arrogant show-off.”

She suppressed a smile, thinking of John’s lofty opinion of his own detective skills. “Arrogance was one of Mr. Holmes’s traits, judging from Dr. Watson’s memoirs.”

“Yes? Well, it’s hardly the mark of a successful detective. I am every bit as skilled as he was reputed to be and I’ve blessed little arrogance in
my
makeup.”

Sabina again managed not to smile. “Poor John. You did have rather a difficult evening, didn’t you?”

“Difficult, aye, but not wasted. Dodger Brown’s the man I’m after, sure enough. When he slipped my clutches on the Truesdale property and swung around to kick me—”

“Kick you? I thought you said you slipped on the wet grass.”

“Yes, yes. But how he got away is of no consequence. The important fact is that he was of the right size and reeked of cheap wine. Dodger Brown’s weakness is foot juice.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Where’s the dossier on him?”

“Your left hand is resting on it.”

“So it is.” He caught up the paper, read aloud from it as he sometimes did with such documents—more to himself than to her. “Dodger Brown, christened Hezekiah Gabriel Brown, born in Stockton twenty-nine years ago. Orphaned at an early age, ran off at thirteen, fell in with a bunch of rail-riding yeggs, and immersed in criminal activity ever since, exclusively home burglary in recent years. Arrested numerous times and put on the small book by the coppers in San Francisco, Oakland, and other cities. Served two prison terms, the last at Folsom for stealing a pile of green-and-greasy from an East Bay politician. Description: slight of build, thinning brown hair, vulpine features. Known traits: close-mouthed, seldom works with confederates. Known confidantes: Clara Wilds, extortionist, otherwise none. Known habits: a taste for Chinese prostitutes and frequenter of parlor houses that employ same; regular customer of cheap-jack gambling halls and Barbary Coast wine dumps. Current whereabouts unknown.” He lowered the dossier, nodding thoughtfully. “Little enough information, but perhaps enough.”

Sabina said, “If he recognized you last night, he may have already fenced his swag and gone on the lammas.”

“I don’t think so,” John said. “It was too dark for him to see my face any more clearly than I saw his. For all he knows, I might have been a neighbor who spotted him skulking or the owner home early. A greedy lad like the Dodger isn’t likely to cut and run when he’s flush and onto a string of profitable marks.”

“After such a narrow escape, would he be bold enough to try burgling another home on the insurance company’s list?”

“As like as not. He’s none too bright and as arrogant in his yegg’s fashion as that daft Holmes impostor. It was a bughouse caper that landed him in Folsom prison two years ago. He’s not above another, I’ll wager.”

“So then you’ll reconnoiter again tonight at another of the residences on Great Western’s list?”

“Aye, and I’ll put the fear of God into him if he comes. Scruffs like the Dodger can be made to confess their sins.”

“Strongarm tactics, John?”

He pretended to be mildly offended at the suggestion. “The threat of violence is often as effective as the use of it,” he said sagely.

“You intend to avoid Jackson Pollard for the time being, I suppose?”

John nodded. “Not only cash was stolen last night, but also a valuable necklace the banker’s wife neglected to lock away in their safe. I suggested Truesdale wait before filing a claim with Great Western, but he refused. Pollard won’t take kindly to the claim.”

“No, he won’t.”

“If he should call while you’re here, tell him that blasted English impostor is responsible for the night’s fiasco and I’m busy working to atone for his interference.”

That wouldn’t placate him, Sabina knew. Great Western’s claims adjustor was not a tolerant man. Bungling was bungling, in his view, no matter what the reason or excuse.

“It’s not likely either of us will have to talk to him today,” she said. “I’ll be leaving shortly and I expect to be gone the rest of the day.”

“Your pickpocket investigation?”

“Yes. I spotted the woman at the Chutes yesterday afternoon and followed her to the Ambrosial Path on Kearney Street. She struck again there before I could stop her, and vanished into the crowd.” Sabina added ruefully, “So you’re not the only one who suffered a setback last evening.”

“Were you able to identify her?”

“No. She wore a hat and clothing fashioned to obscure her features and conceal the shape of her body. She seemed familiar, though—I did get close enough to determine that. I’ll know her the next time my path crosses hers. And when it does, she won’t get away from me again.”

“Nor Dodger Brown from me,” John vowed.

7

QUINCANNON

Even in daylight hours Quincannon walked soft and wary, and made sure his Navy Colt was fully loaded, when he entered the heart of the nine square blocks that comprised the Barbary Coast.

The district, named for the coast of North Africa where Arab pirates attacked Mediterranean ships, housed every imaginable type of crime and vice and the thousands of thieves, cutthroats, footpads, swindlers, crooked gamblers, shanghaiers, and hordes of prostitutes who carried them out. Sudden death lurked in its crowded streets and buildings, the danger so great that no coppers in uniform ventured there after dark except in twos and threes and heavily armed with pistols, Bowie knives, and skull-bashing truncheons a foot long. Only the most notorious felons were pursued and caught by the police, and of those, few were ever punished for their crimes.

For the most part, though he was known as a detective, Quincannon was tolerated in the district. He had lived and worked in the city long enough to make the acquaintance of several Barbary Coast denizens, among them members of the underclass who were willing to sell information for cash; he caused no trouble and gave no grief while within its boundaries; and if he chanced to be after one of the scruffs who inhabited the Coast, he made the fact known to such prominent members of the ruling class as Ezra Bluefield—men who were not averse to giving up one of their own in return for money or favors. Sabina didn’t quite approve of these sometimes less-than-scrupulous dealings, but she admitted that more often than not they produced results, and trusted him not to cross a line that would endanger the agency’s reputation.

His first stop on today’s venture into the Coast was Jack Foyles’ on Stockton Street, a known hangout of Dodger Brown’s. Foyles’ was a shade less disreputable than most wine dumps, if only because it was equipped with a small lunch counter where its habitues could supplement their liquid sustenance with stale bread and a bowl of stew made from discarded vegetables, meat trimmings, bones, and chunks of tallow. Otherwise, there was little to distinguish it from its brethren. Barrels of “foot juice” and “red ink” behind a long bar, rows of rickety tables in three separate rooms lined with men and a few women of all types, ages, and backgrounds, a large open-floored area to accommodate those who had drunk themselves into a stupor. Porters who were themselves winos served the cheap and deadly drink in vessels supplied by junkmen—beer glasses, steins, pewter mugs, cracked soup bowls, tin cans. There was much loud talk, but never any laughter. Foyles’ customers had long ago lost their capacity for mirth.

No one paid Quincannon the slightest attention as he moved slowly through the crowded rooms. Slurred voices that spanned the entire spectrum of society rolled surflike against his ears: lawyers, sailors, poets, draymen, road bums, scholars, factory workers, petty criminals. There were no class distinctions here, nor seldom any trouble; the drinkers were all united by failure, bitterness, disillusionment, old age, disease, and unquenchable thirst for the grape. If there was anything positive to be said about wine dumps, it was that they were havens of democracy. Most customers would be here every day, or as often as they could panhandle or steal enough money to pay for their allotment of slow death, but a few, not yet far gone, were less frequent visitors—binge drinkers and slummers who found the atmosphere and the company to their liking. Many of these were crooks of one stripe or another, Dodger Brown among them.

But there was no sign of the Dodger today. Quincannon questioned two of the porters; one knew him and reported that Brown hadn’t been to Foyles’ in more than a week. Did the porter know where the lad might be found? The porter did not.