Marcia Muller: The Body Snatchers Affair

“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.

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 nasty 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.”