The Case of the Bogus Detective 15

Mr. V.V. Bletchley had squashed my pa’s plan of using me to convince Reb Road Agents that our stagecoach could not be transporting silver. It was too ‘gallus’. 

But Pa did not give up. He tried a ‘flanking manoeuver’.

‘Sir,’ he said, ‘Have ye heard of a certain P.K. Pinkerton, a private eye operating on B Street?’ 

‘Everybody’s heard of him,’ said Mr. V.V. Bletchley. ‘He exposed a murderer last year and vanquished a bothersome outlaw name of Whittlin Walt back in September, even though he is just a kid.’

Pa put his hand on my shoulder. ‘This, sir, is P.K. Pinkerton!’

‘What?’ said Mr. Bletchley. ‘You are claiming your half Mexican daughter is the half-Injun Private Eye who has been working in this town for the past seven months?’

‘Aye,’ said my pa. ‘The P.K. stands for Prudence Kezia.’

‘And I ain’t half Mexican,’ I said in my normal voice. ‘I am half Sioux Indian.’

Bletchley shook his head slowly, like a boxer who has been punched one time too many. Then he looked at me. 

‘You are P.K. Pinkerton?’

‘Yes, sir! You can call me Pinky.’

‘Pinky is a master of disguise,’ said my pa, ‘and skilled with all kinds of firearms. She will be perfectly safe, else we would not have suggested it. Her visible presence virtually guarantees the safety of the silver-coach.’

Mr. Bletchley looked at me. ‘Ain’t you afraid?’

I must confess I was a little afraid on account of my stagecoach-going-over-a-precipice nightmare, but I knew my inscrutable features would not betray me. 

I sat a little straighter. ‘No, sir! I have been shot at, chased down a mine, sucked at by quicksand, almost buzzed in half and nearly froze, too, but I was never scared. I can shoot a gun and I can make a fire. I can ride a pony with or without a saddle.’

‘Although of course she won’t be riding a pony,’ said my pa. ‘She will be sitting up on top of the stagecoach for all to see.’

‘You sure you want to do that?’ Dizzy asked me. ‘You know those stages can be awful jouncy. I would hate anything to happen to a purty li’l thing like you.’

‘I am sure,’ said I. 

Dizzy shrugged & nodded, but Bletchley was looking at me with lips like a trout. Poker Face Jace said if someone purses their lips it means they are pondering something & have not yet made up their mind. 

Through the open window of the stage office came the smell sage brush & the sound of some quail. They were urging me to go to, ‘Chicago! Chicago!’ 

I could also see an outhouse.

‘Well, Mr. Pinkerton,’ said Mr. V.V. Bletchley at last. ‘I concede it is a bold plan, but I am afraid I cannot allow it. I will not risk harming a hair of this dear little girl’s head!’

‘H-ll!’ I said. ‘It ain’t even my hair! It is a _______ wig.’ (Here I used a strong adjective). I pulled off my lighthouse bonnet & wig in one swift motion and plunked them on the desk before Mr. V.V. Bletchley. 

Then I snatched up his freshly-loaded Pocket Navy and – before anyone could object – I cocked it, aimed & fired five shots in quick succession through the open window. 

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! 

Through the cloud of white gun smoke we all saw the door of the outhouse fly open. A miner dashed out. He was gripping a copy of the Territorial Enterprise newspaper in one hand and the waistband of his trowsers in the other. 

‘Why, lookee there,’ wheezed Dizzy, as the gun smoke cleared. ‘That little gal made that crescent moon into a full one!’ 

I nodded with satisfaction & blew away a coil of gun smoke issuing from the barrel. I had used the five shots to make the semi-circular moon-shaped vent into a circle. 

‘Goll darn!’ exclaimed Mr. V.V. Bletchley. ‘You sure can shoot. Well, that puts a whole new light on the matter.’ 

Here I noticed that Mr. Icy Blue had pulled the goggles up on his forehead so he could see better. Now he was watching me with his arms folded across his chest and his pale eyes narrowed. 

It was like he was waiting for me to do something more. 

I quickly set about re-loading the five-shooter. They were all watching me but I was not nervous. Everything I needed was right there on Bletchley’s blotter. I used his powder flask to drop a measure of black powder into each chamber & then added a piece of lint & then dropped in a .36 caliber ball & used the built-in rammer to jam it in real good. Finally I put caps on the nipples at the back of the cylinder.

When I finished reloading, I handed the revolver back to Bletchley, butt first. 

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mr. Icy Blue give a little nod and replace his goggles over his eyes. I felt I had passed a test. 

‘Well,’ said Bletchley. ‘I do believe I have changed my opinion of your daughter!’ He put the pistol in his drawer & looked at Pa. ‘I think your plan might work after all.’

Dizzy scratched his belly and frowned. ‘I don’t rightly understand the Plan,’ he said. ‘Can you ’splain it again?’

Bletchley turned to him. ‘As I see it, these detectives are suggesting that you let the little girl and one of them ride up on top with you in shotgun position. The silver will be inside your coach. We will hide it under mailbags, as we got so many of those still left to deliver. But a decoy coach will set out first. It will appear to be carrying silver, but when the Reb Road Agents hold it up, half a dozen of my men will jump out and arrest them. Then you and the silver will ride on past to Sacramento in perfect safety.’

‘What is the point of that li’l gal, again?’ asked Dizzy.

‘To make your coach look harmless and ambling.’

‘All right, then,’ said Dizzy after a moment. ‘If you are sure you want to entrust so much silver to my care, I reckon I will do it.’ 

That is what he said, but I could tell from his feet pointing towards the door that he was not happy.

‘Blue?’ said Mr. Bletchley. ‘You all right with our plan? Can you rustle up five or six men for the decoy stage?’ 

‘Dam right,’ he growled. 

‘And you, Miss Pinkerton?’ said Mr. V.V. Bletchley, turning to me. ‘Are you absolutely, positively certain you want to do this?’

I set my wig & hat back on my head, looked at my beaming Pa & nodded firmly. ‘You bet!’

Read on...

The Case of the Bogus Detective by Caroline Lawrence is the fourth P.K. Pinkerton Mystery. You can buy the first 3 real cheap HERE. And you can read the rest of this one HERE. Or just check into this blog, where I will be posting chapters weekly!

The Case of the Bogus Detective 5

For as long as I could remember I had thought my Pinkerton Railroad Detective pa was dead and gone.

My Indian ma told me he died bravely, defending a train against robbers. Later, I heard he died of being frozen to death in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Finally, I learned he was not dead after all, but alive and well and living in Chicago. That was why I had decided to become a detective: so I could join him in that far-off city.

And now here he was, standing before me & trying to shut down the agency I had established so I could become a detective worthy of his approval!

The folk here in Virginia have a word for that: ironikle. 

‘Come on, Robert,’ said his partner. ‘We’ll get the sheriff to deal with this pygmy bogus detective.’

Ray G. Tempest turned to go and so did Robert Pinkerton.

My long-lost pa was about to walk out of my life again!

‘Wait!’ I jumped up out of my chair. ‘Stop! I will burn my shingle. Only tell me: what are you doing in Virginia City? Maybe I can help!’

‘None of your business what we’re doing,’ growled Ray. His hand was already on the door. ‘You are no more important to us than a bug on a rug.’ As if to demonstrate my insignificance, he spat on the floor of my office even though he was not chewing tobacco.

Jace had once told me not to ride straight at people with my questions, but to use a flanking manoeuver. I reckoned I had rid at them too straight.

Once again I cried, ‘Wait! Please.’ I looked desperately around my narrow office. On the potbelly stove the coffeepot was steaming. I could smell its aroma. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’

The two hesitated & looked at each other.

‘It is fresh ground and fresh brewed,’ I said, ‘using water from a Patent Moulded Ceramic Carbon Filter made by F.H. Atkinson of London which they keep in the saloon across the street. The water here in Virginia is full of arsenic, plumbago and copperas,’ I explained.

‘Full of what?’ said Ray.

‘And cookies!’ I held up the waxed-paper parcel. ‘I have cookies! Fresh-baked oatmeal cookies.’

My long-lost pa took off the small plug hat he had been wearing. ‘I willna say no to a wee cup of java,’ he said. ‘It smells mighty good.’ He looked at his partner.

‘Sure,’ growled Ray. ‘I reckon a fresh-baked cookie and a cup of brew is the least you can do for causing trouble.’

He closed the door & they both came back & sat down in front of my desk.

Hallelujah! Ping’s theory was right. Fresh coffee did encourage people to linger.

Bee’s oatmeal cookies probably helped, too.

As I poured their coffee, I secretly studied Robert Pinkerton.

I had always imagined my pa would be tall, dark and good-looking, like Poker Face Jace. But the short man sitting before me was ordinary-looking. With his slightly bulging brown eyes & slicked back brown hair & little mustache, he reminded me of an otter.

But I know that appearances can be deceptive. 

He was a famous detective. Probably the best in the world.

Any moment he would deduce I was his long-lost daughter.

I saw my detective sign on the desk & nudged it forward a little to help him with his deductions.

I said, ‘What brings you all the way from Chicago to Virginia City? You did not come just to shut me down, did you?’

‘Course not,’ said Mr. Ray G. Tempest, munching a cookie & looking around.

My pa sipped his coffee, which he took black with no sugar like me. He said, ‘We got reports of a pair of Confederate soldiers in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Their plan is to rob silver-carrying stagecoaches and send the money to General Robert E. Lee.’

I said, ‘Are they the ones who robbed the Wells Fargo stagecoach a few days ago?’

‘A Wells Fargo stagecoach was robbed?’ said Ray, sitting forward.

I nodded. ‘Up by Strawberry, according to yesterday’s newspaper. The Sierras ain’t snowed in like us,’ I added. ‘Our blizzard was localized.’

‘I dinna think it could have been them.’ My pa glanced at Ray.

Ray shrugged. ‘It might have been them,’ he said. ‘You got a description? Or a newspaper?’

‘Yup,’ I said. I fished around in my big oyster tin which I use for waste paper & found yesterday’s Daily Territorial Enterprise. ‘Page three,’ I said, as they both scanned it. ‘But it only says they were wearing butternut-colored uniforms and bandanas over their faces.

‘Goll dang, it was them!’ cried Ray.

I said, ‘So they are like Confederate Robin Hoods?’

‘Those Reb Road Agents ain’t no dang Robin Hoods,’ said Ray G. Tempest. ‘They– Goll DANG!’ he jumped up so fast that his chair toppled backwards. ‘What is that?’

He was pointing at my shelf. Mouse was walking near my glass-fronted butterfly tray.’

I said, ‘That there is Mouse, my pet tarantula.’

‘No, not that. THAT.’

I said, ‘My butterfly tray?’ 

‘Yes!’ He took a step back. ‘I hate them things. Get it away!’

I stood up & scooted my butterfly tray right down to the end of the shelf.

‘Further away,’ he said. ‘Those things give me the fantods.’ He was wiping his forehead with his handkerchief. His face had gone pale.

I carried my glass-fronted butterfly tray to the back of my shop & put it out of sight behind the counter.

When I got back to my desk, Ray G. Tempest was standing behind the chair, putting it upright. I could see his hands shaking.

‘Why don’t you like butterflies?’ I asked.

‘He doesna like the wee beasties’ feelers and flapping wings,’ said my pa. ‘Nor their zigzag manner of flying.’

‘Had a bad experience when I was little,’ muttered Ray. He took his flask from his coat pocket and drank from it. ‘Tooth elixir,’ he said by way of explanation. ‘My tooth is panging me something awful.’

‘Would you like another cup of coffee?’ I said.

‘Nah,’ he said, putting away his flask. ‘I’m gonna ride on down to find a livery stable and a hotel. And maybe some clove oil for my tooth.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘Besides, something stinks in here.’

‘Which hotel are you staying at?’ I said quickly. ‘The International?’

‘Is that a good one?’

‘Best in town,’ I said. ‘The Flora Temple Livery Stable is just a few doors along from it. If you turn right out my door and go three blocks north you can go in the B Street entrance of the International.’

Mr. Ray G. Tempest snorted. ‘Only if my boss here deems a room there worth the expense. He is a notorious skinflint. See you at the livery stable, Robbie?’ he said to my pa.

‘I’ll be there directly,’ said my pa. ‘Just finishing my brew.’

Mr. Ray G. Tempest exited the premises, taking my Detective shingle with him.

Heart thumping, I turned to my pa.

Should I reveal my true identity?

But he was a Detective. Probably the best in the world.

I reckoned I should give him a few more clews & let him deduce it himself.

He had opened his greatcoat & fishing around in his jacket. I noticed a little brass button on the lapel of his jacket. It said PINKERTON RAILROAD DETECTIVE in bumpy letters.

‘I have a button just like that,’ I said. ‘Just like the one on your lapel.’

‘Do ye?’ He took a match out of the jacket and sparked it on the bottom of his boot. 

I thought I should give him another clue. ‘My Indian ma gave it to me,’ I added. My heart was thumping hard. ‘She was Lakota Sioux.’

‘I guessed ye had a wee drop of Injun blood,’ he remarked, holding the lit match to the bowl of his pipe.

I thought How is it possible he does not recognize me? I’d best give him a real big clew.

I said, ‘My pa was a Pinkerton Railroad Detective, too.’

This last statement seemed to startle Robert Pinkerton to his feet. He had Expression No 4 on his face: Surprise.

I stood up, too, my heart thumping. I thought He has finally put two and two together. At last he has realized that I am his long-lost daughter.

But I was wrong.

‘Dang!’ he said. ‘That java has done the trick. I need the jakes!’

I stared at him. ‘You what?’

‘I need an outhouse!’ he said. ‘My bowels have been out-of-fix and I have been bunged-up for a week. But now I am ready, willing and able. Can ye tell me where is the nearest wee privy?’

‘Behind this building down the slope,’ I said.

‘Much obliged,’ he said, touching the brim of his silly putty-colored plug hat. 

And with that he ran out of my office.

As I watched the door shut behind him I tried to swallow, but my throat felt too tight.

I thought, ‘My long-lost pa was sitting less than a yard away from me with my name right there on the shingle. I gave him three big clews but he failed to recognize his own flesh-and-blood, viz: ME. He must be the worst detective in the world.’

Then I thought, ‘Maybe my original ma just met him once or saw him from afar and told me a big story.’


And finally, ‘That would mean that Robert Pinkerton is not, and never was, my pa.’

Read more...

The Case of the Bogus Detective by Caroline Lawrence is the fourth P.K. Pinkerton Mystery. You can buy the first 3 real cheap HERE. And you can read the rest of this one HERE. Or just check into this blog, where I will be posting chapters weekly!

Tinker Tailor Votive Willies

Caroline Lawrence with the artefact

It is a snapping cold day in February and I am hot on the trail of a Roman artefact from Rome's ancient port of Ostia, the setting of most of my Roman Mysteries series of books. The artefact – a small marble relief of four women and a baby – first came to my attention when someone posted it on an Ostia Facebook Group. We were all very excited because none of us had ever seen it before! A few quick emails told us that it was part of the Wellcome Trust Collection with the Science Museum. It was in storage at a museum repository in West London. As the only member of the Ostia Group based there, I volunteered to go and have a look. My motive was not unselfish: as an author of historical detective stories this is exactly the sort of object that can give me an entire plot line!

East Wing of Blythe House 1924

So on 2 February 2012, I take the train from Clapham Junction to Kensington Olympia, then walk to 23 Blythe Road. I've been to this part of London many times, (and even done a couple of book signings at Brook Green Books), but I never knew about the Victorian treasure box that is Blythe House. Built around the year 1900, its original purpose was to house the Post Office Savings Bank. At one time over a thousand female clerks worked here, segregated from their male counterparts for propriety's sake. They all used to enter via the East (i.e. back) Wing.

East Wing of Blythe House 2012

In 1979 the British Government bought part of Blythe House to use as extra storage space for the British Museum, the Victorian & Albert, and the Science Museum with the Wellcome Trust. The late Sir Roy Strong, director of the V&A called Blythe House "a marvellous building" and said it "should be not just a dumping ground but an exciting new complex for the public." It is a marvellous building. Still attached to the West Kensington Postal sorting office and minus the smokestacks visible in earlier photos, the distinctive red and white brickwork makes it look like a glorious confection of Lego blocks.

Shivering in my down parka, I arrive at the east wing of Blythe House, the same entrance used by all those female clerks. I go to a turnstile called Gate A and press the call button. Anyone can visit, but you have to make an appointment first. I have been put in touch with Ms. Katie Maggs and she has kindly agreed to meet me and show me the artefact. The place is maze-like even before I get inside, but I manage to find reception up some outside stairs. I check in with a porter behind a window. He gives me a yellow plastic pass. Katie meets me a few minutes later. She is young, warm, friendly and informative. With a degree in Classics from the University of Warwick followed by two MAs from University College London, one in Museum Studies and one in History of Medicine, she is the perfect person to tell me about the unusual artefact I'm about to examine.

As Katie leads me down a succession of corridors, stairs and passageways, I get a strong sense of deja vu. I've never been here before, but it seems terribly familiar. There is an odd 1970s institutional feel; it reminds me of the recent film version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

'This place has an odd 1970s institutional feel,' I say. 'It's like something out of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.'

'That's because they filmed it here,' says Katie. 'They spent four days here last September.'

Toby Jones (Alleline) & Ciarán Hinds (Bland) on the roof of Blythe House

As a film buff and big fan of the movie, this is an added bonus to my visit! I learn that other movies and TV series were filmed here, (e.g. Minder and The New Avengers). You can also see an atmospheric short film called The Phantom Museum set in the maze of corridors, stairwells and storerooms at Blythe House.

Katie points out the willies

Our first stop is a nondescript door in one of those corridors. Katie has taken me here to pick up gloves, but really - bless her generous heart - she wants to show me some of the ancient treasures stored here. Henry Wellcome, an American adventurer and medical archaeologist, collected over a million objects to do with ancient life and especially medicine. The cream of his collection is on show in a permanent collection called Medicine Man at the Wellcome Collection near Euston, but there are plenty more goodies here in Blythe House. This particular room is full of shelves of clay body parts. These are the objects Romans dedicated to their gods if they wanted healing for a specific part of the body. I see dozens of heads, hands, feet, wombs, babies, breasts, & willies.

Yes, willies. If you couldn't wee or do other useful things with your dangly bits, or if you had some sort of boil or spot, you would dedicate a clay model of the appendage to the appropriate god. And you would pray very, very hard.

Votive eyes (& lead slingbullets?)

On the shelves I also see plaster casts of objects, e.g. a big bunch of votive intestines and the famous Babylonian divination liver in the British Museum. There are a couple of charming pigs. Why pigs? It was an agrarian society, deeply concerned with food and survival. If a farmer had a sick pig, he would offer a votive to the god. In addition to the large and medium objects on shelves, there are also drawers with smaller objects: grotesque faces, wooden nit combs, Etruscan false teeth, a flint knife, marbles, tiny votive statues and votive eyes, some of which look suspiciously like lead sling-bullets.

funeral slab with plug and hole

One funerary object in particular captures my attention: an inscribed slab with a plug over a carved hole into which the mourner could pour a libation of wine to refresh the ashes of the dead lying beneath. I knew about this custom but never realised that there was a special type of slab to make this easier. (I told my hairdresser about these libation slabs the day after my visit and she said a friend of hers often goes to his dad's grave with two beers. He drinks one himself and pours out the other in slurps for his father. I guess we're not so different from the Romans, after all.)

Henry Wellcome in Indian headdress

Henry Solomon Wellcome had a fascinating life. Born in a frontier log cabin in Almond, Wisconsin in the year 1853, his interest in archaeology was sparked by the find of an Indian arrowhead when he was only four. Five years later, his family moved west in a covered wagon and were caught up in a bloody Sioux uprising in Minnesota. Nine-year-old Henry helped his pharmacist uncle Jacob tend those wounded by arrows and tomahawks. These two incidents sparked his abiding interest in "primitive" peoples. Henry gained his love of medicine from working in his uncle's pharmacy. Later, he studied medicine, grew a moustache and went on an expedition to South America in search of quinine bark. In 1880 he moved to London to set up a pharmaceutical business with a friend. From then on, England was his base for travel all over the world. He met famous explorers, associated with cultured socialites and married the beautiful daughter of Dr. Barnardo. But his main fame is for all the artefacts he collected himself and through others, over a million during his lifetime. He was finally knighted and died at the ripe old age of 83, leaving his collection to the Wellcome Foundation, the Trust he himself established.

My three passions are the Romans, the Wild West and movies. In the oft-filmed Blythe House with its many Roman artefacts collected by an American born in the Wild West, those passions have come together in a delightful way. At the end of my hour with the charming and generous Katie, I am excited and enthused. And I haven't even told you about the object of my visit. That I must leave for another blog (which you can find HERE.)

P.S. You can find hundreds more fascinating objects on the Science Museum's great interactive website, Brought to Life. There is also a superb site devoted to Henry Wellcome. And, oh, all right! As you've made it to the end of this post, here is a picture of some votive willies. If you want to make your own investigation, start here.