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By Root 1103 0

I travelled in the best style available all the way to the end of this tale). I didn’t understand it until I reached England, the 12th of September, 1922, by which point it didn’t matter. Turned out to be the simplest thing in the world: Barnabas Davies wanted to meet all of us detectives on his case, anyone who’d met the children or seen the women. I made the trip to England to pursue the case, paid for all the way by Davies Ale, because the old man wanted to know if Eulalie was well and shapely, wanted to see my face when I talked about Paul. Of course by the time I arrived in London, Davies was cold under the ground, and old Miklos Tailor was grinning ear to ear, because the solicitors had just informed him that the Estate of Barnabas Davies was going to pay for this investigation to reach its conclusions. I’d never met Mi-klos Tailor until the day I walked into that office, but he embraced me, pinched my cheek, welcomed another of his “brothers.” He retired at the end of the Davies case, you know, lived high off his inflated billings of the dead man’s coffers for the rest of his days.

And obviously, no expense was spared for his detectives on the case. Davies took priority over everything else, and whatever we asked for, we got two of. The usual would-be divorcés and adulterous this-and-that and suspected embezzlers had to wait patiently because Tailor was going to make sure every last loose end of this case was pursued, gathered, braided, and dipped in gold paint. The final report he submitted to the solicitors, duly marked up and passed on to the executors of the estate, ran to 2500 pages with photographs, individual biographies of the multi-national bastards, transcripts of interviews with them, maps of their locations, letters of acceptance and name-change certificates, and on and on. You can imagine the proportion of that report dedicated to the late Paul Caldwell.

More on that later. First though is our next interview. Say! What do you think of that idea? Our interview, as in yours and mine, Macy! You could write these up with you in a participatory role. You could be my Watson on the scene, not just with the pen. Of course, not every scene, that wouldn’t be realistic, and we mustn’t forget who’s the main attraction here, no offence. But still, an assistant, someone to ask me questions, to whom I can explain my reasoning and deductions so the reader can follow along with some of the more twisty turns—this has a nice ring to it. Let’s see how it feels.

London had procured a little more information on Captain Marlowe, and they’d arranged for me to pay the late Captain’s parents a visit. First you and I examine the information they’ve dug up, a summary of various available military records and the work of a couple of Tailor’s local men snooping around to save me time:

Captain Hugo St. John Marlowe left base camp at Cairo on 12 November, 1918, on four-day pass. Did not return on 16 November. Searches initiated 18 November revealed nothing. Interviews with officers, men, revealed nothing of significance. March 1919, natives appeared asking for reward, having found Capt. Marlowe’s identity disks and those of Corporal P. B. Caldwell (AIF), as well as an AIF Lee-Enfield .303 rifle. Natives reported finding these objects near Deir el Bahari. Renewed interviews revealed no knowledge of any relationship between Captain Marlowe and Corporal Caldwell, though AIF records show Capt. Marlowe twice took unusual step of recommending promotions for Caldwell to Capt. T. J. Leahy (AIF), Caldwell’s company commander.

“What do you make of that, Macy?” I asked as we sat in the plush offices of Tailor Enquiries Worldwide. (And welcome to the action, Macy!)

“Can’t figure it, can’t make heads or tails of it, Mr. Ferrell,” said my young American assistant. “Most peculiar.”

“And so it shall remain, until all at once the truth in its crystal purity will be made manifest to us, Macy, and vile fraud will melt away.”

Here’s all we had for certain: our Caldwell had some relationship with a British captain who’d poked his nose in Australian