Her father’s ashtray sat on the far edge of Billie’s desk, positioned for clients’ convenience. Most women now smoked, but Billie had never liked it as a daily habit. There were smoking days, yes, indeed, but this wasn’t one of them. The ashtray was cleaned out and empty. The daily newspapers sat on her desk—The Sydney Morning Herald,the scandal sheet theTruth,and the most recently availableParis Herald Tribune—all neatly folded. It paid to know what was being said in the world. Two framed pictures faced Billie. One was a formal portrait of her mother and father on their wedding day, her father in tails with white tie and a black shining top hat tucked under his arm (probably the only time he’d ever touched one) and her mother in a glittering headpiece, a waved bob hairstyle she hadn’t changed since, and a scandalously short gown that showed her ankles above low-heeled shoes tied with glossy ribbons. Ella held a bouquet that trailed to the floor, and on her dark lips was the grin of the cat that got the cream. The other frame was smaller and held a more recent image, one of Jack Rake, taken by Billie in Vienna. It was mostly in focus and it caught him smiling that weekend before the world crashed in around them. That weekend they’d fallen in love.
Billie’s breath caught in her throat. Jack was just as he looked in those flashes that haunted her each time she closed her eyes. That smile. And the seriousness that followed. Those earnest, searching hazel eyes. “Blast,” she murmured, and looked away. She needed work to keep her occupied.
Her ivory blouse had been tied in a pussy bow at her throat but had begun to loosen, and with neatly kept, unvarnished fingers Billie fixed the knot, then picked up the top envelope on her wide wooden desktop. Her eyes narrowed. It was addressed toMr.B. Walker, and not for the first time. This might be mail for her late father, but well over a year after his death that was unlikely to be the case. Billie Walker was not what many people expected. Perhaps foremost, Billie was not aMr.But then, what was the fun in doing or being what was expected? She slit open the envelope and glanced through a solicitor’s dull note about a previous case involving marital disharmony. The day’s mail brought little to be excited about and she soon turned to the newspapers, flicking through them before committing to a more thorough reading with a fresh cup of tea on the way. A shipyard lockout was causing havoc at the Sydney docks. A series of pictures showed Chifley with the governor-general, Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, at an official function. Sydney auction houses were busy moving valuables, some of which appeared to be major estate pieces. In world news, two-piece swimming costumes were being modeled in Paris. There was a large-scale withdrawal of Russian troops from Germany. Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg agreed to repatriate German war prisoners as soon as possible. France had still not signed any agreement.
Billie looked up from the papers as Samuel came in with the tea tray, a morning routine that was always a pleasant distraction. Broad-shouldered and lanky, wearing a lightly pin-striped suit and a pleasing burgundy and sky-blue tie of the current style, he sprawled out in one of the two chairs opposite Billie’s desk and dropped a sugar cube into her tea, most of his professional formality evaporating when he left the outer office that was his guard post. His teamaking was surprisingly good, something he’d mastered either in the army or at the urging of a mother with good English sensibilities. He pushed her teacup across to her.
“What’s doing?” he asked, absentmindedly rubbing some irritation under the glove that covered his left hand.
“Very little, Sam, I have to say,” Billie responded. She pushed her deep brunette curls back behind her ear and sipped her tea.
Sam was one of those earnest Aussie lads who had enrolled in the army young and had worked in a secretarial role for some time before war broke out and he was needed for more exciting work in the2/23rd Battalion—exciting work in the war being the kind that set you up as cannon fodder if you didn’t have the right connections. Sam wasn’t a connected bloke, and had he been rich, he likely wouldn’t be working as a second to a PI now. He had many skills as a secretary, but truthfully he wasn’t a great typist. Anyone could see why, and clients had good-naturedly joked about it more than once. In Tobruk an Italian thermos bomb had finished off many of his comrades-in-arms and he’d come away with a few less fingers and some terrible scarring on his hands—defensive wounds, Billie had surmised. His left hand was wrapped in a leather glove, filled in the necessary places with wooden prosthetic fingers. His right, though scarred, was whole and as steady as you could want on a trigger hand.
Typing aside, Sam’s role was varied. Sometimes it paid for Billie to have a strong arm around. Sometimes it paid to have a tall man in the outer office to run interference if a disgruntled husband came in, angry that she’d helped his wife divorce him. And sometimes it simply paid to have a man for added cover when Billie was in the field, or to compensate for the fact that she was a woman working in a predominantly male business. It helped matters that Sam lookedpassingly like Alan Ladd, though much taller, which made him easy on the eyes, and realistic as a partner for Billie when such a masquerade was required during an investigation. Most of the grizzled gents in her profession wouldn’t pass convincingly as a match for her, but she and Sam made an attractive pair, and that went a long way in certain circumstances. He didn’t know much about detective work yet, having been on the job only a few months, but he was great with orders, and unlike some other men he didn’t mind taking them from a woman—decent work being rather scarce even for able-bodied men, after all. And by some measure, working as a secretary for Billie was probably more exciting than being in the forces, or at least that’s what Sam claimed. It wasn’t all filing cabinets and administrative work. He was getting to know all the bars, hotels, doss-houses, and back alleys in the city. Not glamorous, exactly, but not dull, either. And if he couldn’t type with ten fingers, well, that was just fine.
“How wasThe Overlanderslast night?” Billie asked him. She hadn’t seen a lot of pictures lately, but it was something Sam enjoyed spending his paychecks on. “Did Eunice like it?” she added. He’d only just started dating Eunice, though he didn’t talk about her much.
Sam was expounding upon Chips Rafferty’s portrayal of a Western Australian drover when the telephone rang. He put down his cup, cleared his throat, and answered in a professional tone. “B. Walker, Private Inquiries, how may I...”
Sam trailed off and Billie raised an eyebrow, watching.
“They hung up,” he said, puzzled, and replaced the receiver in its cradle. “Or they were cut off.”
“You didn’t hear anything?”
He shook his head. “The street, perhaps.”
It was just past three in the afternoon, only minutes after Billie had suggested Sam might leave early, when she heard a polite knock on the door of the outer office and the sound of him letting someone in.
“I... I understood it was a lady detective,” said a small, panicked voice in the next room, emphasizing the word “lady” as if it were terribly important. Not everyone knocked on that outer door. In fact, most people came walking straight in with their troubles and needs, so Billie deduced that this was someone either especially polite or especially nervous. She rose swiftly from her desk and made her way to the open doorway of her inner office before Sam could explain. No sense in losing a customer who might skedaddle through nervousness, especially when business was a little too slow for comfort.
A tense woman in her late thirties or early forties stood in the outer office, giving the impression of a spooked deer, her feet planted slightly apart as if she might bolt at any moment. Billie took her appearance in quickly: she stood roughly five foot three and wore an impressive chocolate-brown fur stole clasped at the bust, probably mink or musquash, and fine quality at that. Beneath that was a brown suit of a light summer weight, a little drab and conservative in its design. Probably tailor-made, but not recently. Her Peter Pan hat was prewar in style, not the latest fashion. It was a slightly lighter brown than the suit and was finished with a chocolate-brown feather. The woman wore very little makeup, and a pair of round, plain cheaters made her brown eyes seem huge, adding to the impression of a startled doe. Like her attire, the woman’s hair was brown. Her shoes were good-quality reptile skin to match her handbag, but notflashy. The heels were low, sensible. A little worn, but nicely kept. Her gloved hands were clasped tightly over the handle of her small handbag, and both seemed as sealed shut as her mouth, which looked to have lately sucked a lemon.
Billie imagined her wearing a darker, heavier suit of similar utilitarian cut and color in autumn and winter and this one throughout spring and summer, but her fur... now, that was special, almost out of place on a person like this. For an antipodean November, Sydney wasn’t too hot yet, but this accessory was by no means worn to ward off the cold. The hairs on the stole were gleaming and brushed down evenly. It seemed new and Billie wondered about the story behind it.
“I’m Ms. Walker, the principal here. This is my secretary and assistant, Mr. Baker,” Billie explained with a wave of her hand, and the woman’s eyes widened for a moment. “Would you like to come into my office, Mrs....?” The woman did not complete the question with a name. Nonetheless, Billie stepped smoothly back into her office and pulled a chair out for the woman before making her way around the wide wooden desk and waiting by her seat.
It took a moment for the woman to follow her from the outer office. Sam offered to take the woman’s stole, but she mumbled a thank-you and refused. After an awkward silence, during which it seemed even odds whether the woman would sit down or bolt, she finally entered and took the offered seat across from Billie.
“Please, make yourself comfortable,” Billie said gently. “Samuel, would you please bring some tea?” Billie hoped it might help settle her flighty companion.
Sam tactfully closed the inner office door.
“How may I be of service to you?” Billie asked, watching as thewoman’s eyes went to the floor, then the globe on the filing cabinet, before finally settling on the big map of Sydney on the wall. Her lips remained sealed throughout.
Billie was used to this initial process sometimes taking a while. She was patient and she didn’t press for names or personal information before it was necessary. Many people who came to see her were upset by their circumstances, and for some the mere prospect of dealing with a private inquiry agent about any matter was distressing enough on its own. As Billie well knew, PIs had a mixed reputation. This fact hadn’t escaped her, growing up with a PI dad, and little had changed on that score. She suspected that the American detective pictures that were currently popular did not help—they were full of ultramasculine shady types, handy with their fists, who said “sweetheart” while their eyes said something else. Some female clients intentionally sought out private inquiry agents of their own sex, particularly if their problem was a domestic matter that they would find awkward to discuss with a man, or perhaps simply because the prospect of dealing with a Sam Spade type did little to comfort them. This was the bread-and-butter work of a woman like Billie Walker, and she wondered what story the potential client before her would tell. Cheating husband?
The Bakelite wall clock above the doorway ticked away the minutes until eventually Sam returned with a tray assembled with a teapot, milk jug, two cups, sugar, and spoons. He slipped away again without a sound, and the door closed with a soft click. For a big man, he knew how to achieve strategic invisibility. After several more ticks of the clock, her tea sitting untouched, the stranger finally spoke.
“I wanted to see you because...” She was finding something difficult to say. “I need... a woman’s intuition.”
Billie let that one lie. She didn’t believe in what was often called “women’s intuition,” even if it was what some people came to her for. Men’s intuition was simply called knowledge, or at the very least an informed and rational guess. When the little woman in her stomach told her something was wrong, it was informed by a thousand tiny signals and observations of human behavior. It was deduction at work—some of it conscious, some subconscious, though no less rational than a man’s reasoning. Billie did believe in paying attention to the knowledge in that lifesaving gut of hers, but not because she thought it was some mysterious and almost mystical feminine ability. Listening to her gut had been vital in getting her through the war, and it was put to good use in her business. It was something her father, Barry, had done before her. Such instincts were about being observant, about listening—something many women happened to do very well, which was probably where the term had come from. But there was no sense in breaking down the notion of women’s intuition now. In fact, for the moment there was no sense in speaking at all. The stranger in her office was now wringing her hands. Billie watched and waited for her to open up. She was like a kettle building up steam.
“My son... is missing,” the woman finally said. The words sounded heavy and hard to say. Billie noted a light accent slipping in—was it European?
Not a divorce number, then,Billie thought. She’d only just wrapped a rather unfortunate case that had required her to hop four fences to chase a man down, ripping a good pair of silk trousers. She was tempted to swear off divorce cases for however long she could—which likely wouldn’t be long at all if she wanted any paying business before 1947 rolled around.
“I see,” Billie responded in a level tone. “How old is your boy?”
