“Perhaps whatever it was that happened during the Fire, the thing that so upset Mr Long's loyal father.”
I tried to picture my father in the role of a criminal, and failed. I shook my head. “Holmes, he was an ethical man. And my mother enormously so—she never would have put up with a real wrongdoing. No, I can only say that, if he did something criminal, there would have been a reason for it.”
“She would not have put up with it, you say. And she left for England a few weeks after the Fire.”
“Wouldn't any woman with two small children?”
His gaze neither changed nor left me, and I shifted uncomfortably. What was he getting at? Why did I feel suddenly uneasy, as if a masseur were closing in on some bruised and tender spot?
But Holmes said nothing further; in its way, that was even worse.
Chapter Nine
Friday morning, faced with a plethora of urgent tasks and troubling questions, I decided that the two things preying most heavily on my mind were my need for a dress for the evening and the continued lack of communication from Dr Ginzberg. As soon as we had finished our breakfast, and after a glance at the changeable spring sky, I put on a light rain-coat and crossed Union Square to the dress shops.
It took a couple of hours to find a frock and shoes sufficiently formal for an evening out, but since my other options were a kimono or
I gave the driver Dr Ginzberg's address, which was both her home and the office where we had met those last times, after I had been released from hospital and before I had left for England. The taxi pulled up in front of a building that looked almost right although the walls were a different colour, and when I got out to ring the bell, the plate said “Garbon.”
A small woman answered, but that was her only similarity to my psychiatrist. I explained about my search in increasing detail, but so little was her response that I began to suspect that she was either dim or deaf.
“I'm sorry,” I said. “Do you speak English?”
“But of course I speak English,” she said with a light accent of Southern France. “However, I do not know the person for whom you search.”
“Perhaps she has moved. Do you mind telling me who sold you the house?”
“It is merely let, through an agency on Geary Street, but I do not believe the owner is named Ginzberg. Something with a B, I think it was. Baker? Bolton?” She shook her head. “No, I can't remember. It has been five years we live here, and always we pay to the agency.”
“Perhaps they can tell me. They're on Geary, you said?”
“Not too far from the start of the Panhandle—you know the narrow strip of green that leads into Golden Gate Park? One or perhaps two streets to the east.”
“Thank you,” I said, and had stepped off the small landing when her voice stopped me.
“Are you the person who sent a letter?”
“I wrote to this address, yes. Twice in fact.”
“There was one last month, from some place with the most interesting stamp. I did not remember the name on the address.”
“That was from Japan, yes.”
“Most such letters are caught by the mailman, who sends them to the agency. The Japan letter came here, and I gave it to him the following day, to take there. Perhaps as you say, they will know.”
I thanked her and went back to the waiting taxi and asked the driver if we might explore the area to the south of the Panhandle for an estate agency, but it turned out that he knew the place, and drove directly to the door. Again, I had him wait in case this, too, proved a brief visit.
The office was staffed by a solitary woman, who should have been three or four. Two 'phone lines rang the moment she put down the receivers, three people waited to speak with her, and clearly she was not going to give me much of her attention.
I waited with limited patience, and when I reached the head of the queue, I took from my purse a five-dollar bill and laid it, and a piece of paper bearing the Ginzberg address, on the desk in front of her. She looked at it, looked at me, and rang off the telephone she was speaking on, laying it and its brother onto the desk so they would not interrupt.
“Thank you,” I said, giving her a smile. “I can see you're busy, but I need to find a woman who used to own one of the houses your agency manages. Her mail gets forwarded here, so I assume you know where she is.”
“What's her name?”
“Dr Ginzberg. I think her first name—”
“Sure, the mental doctor. She doesn't own the house, and I don't know where she is. We just stick anything that comes for her in an envelope and send it along with the monthly cheques to the hospital. Not that she gets much anymore.”
“Do you have a name there?” I asked, ignoring the impatient shifting of the man behind me.
“Not particularly. Just the business office.”
“Thank you,” I said again, and left her to her popularity.
At the hospital, I suggested to my driver that he might want to leave me, as I could easily find another taxi at the busy door, but he shrugged and said he'd go and get some lunch, and wait for me down the street. I paid him off, in case he decided to leave, put my head down, and forced myself to enter the dwelling-place of fear and pain.
One step inside the door, and the smell seized me by the throat, making my legs go weak and my head begin to whirl. If coming to San Francisco had filled me with dread, this building was the very centre of that horror, and the smell of cleaning fluid and illness made the memory of those weeks rise up in the back of my mouth. Physical pain and raw abandonment and an excoriating sense of guilt slammed into me, fresh as the week I first woke here. I would have turned on my shaky legs and bolted for the door had a nurse not noticed my distress, and come to take my elbow.
“Miss,” she repeated, “come sit down, you're about to faint.”
Obediently, I took the chair she dragged me towards, and felt her cool hand pushing gently but firmly against the bare nape of my neck, forcing my head down. I took a breath, then a few more; the dizziness passed somewhat, and I sat upright.
“Goodness,” I said with an embarrassed laugh. “I hadn't expected that.”
“Not to worry, it's always the strong ones that get the feet knocked out from under them by hospitals,” she replied cheerfully. “Had an Irish longshoreman in here this morning, one look at the needle and—
“Actually, it's the business office. I'm trying to track down a doctor who worked here ten years ago.”
“I couldn't help you there, I've only been here three, but I can get you to the office.”
Several turns and a stairway later, the more distressing odours and sounds faded, and the office itself could almost have been anywhere. Almost. I thanked my guide, and went through the door.
Two more recitations of the details of my quest were required before I was set before an authority in a suit and tie instead of dress and stockings. I gratefully sank into the indicated chair, pulled off my gloves as an indication of my intention to see this enquiry through, and gave a third, somewhat more detailed version of the story.
At the end of it the man in the suit sat back and laced his hands together over his waistcoat.
