FAMILY BUSINESS

I cannot confirm this through personal observation or knowledge based on research, but I have been told that my family believed in using private detectives to obtain information about people and things. 


The only P.I. I ever knew well personally was a colleague of mine at the insurance company.  His job was to ferret out fraudulent claims by photographing people who claimed severe injury, or even paralysis, dancing at weddings, and uncovering other forms of deceit.  He was a curious fellow, uniquely entertaining, unlike the grimmer police detectives I met working as an Assistant D.A. in Brooklyn.


I have no interest in ever engaging a private detective's services.  But I believe I would be a good P.I. if I tried my hand at it and that Caroline and Jane would be equally adept. I would love to see our names written backwards across a broad glass window.

John Cale: Evidence (Link)

SO MUCH FOR THE EVIDENCE

        It was in my rooms that night that we settled on the evidence which was to be offered next day at the inquest.  They had to come to me because I was on a couch with a twisted ankle and two broken ribs.  P.C. Dorey had found me lying on the cliff’s edge, and after rendering first aid had gone off for help to transport me home.

   “Well,” Le Marinel was saying, “all along I said the Chief would get them by the finger-prints.”  He looked over at me.  “Didn’t I say that on Saturday before you went into the wine shop?  Of course the fellow didn’t suppose that the little island of Guernsey could boast a finger-print expert like Carey.” Carey looked at McNab apologetically.

 “Forgive this outburst of local patriotism,” he said.  “We all know that without your constructive imagination my technical knowledge would not have carried us far.”


    Now this kind of talk was all very well between Le Marinel, Carey and McNab.  They had been together all day, and were in full possession of the facts.  But I had been out of things since Dorey took me home that morning, and knew nothing of the day’s developments.  So I cut into the talk.


   “If there’s a vote to be taken on the question of pre-eminence,” I said, “may I remind you that I am not in possession of all the facts?”


 

From:  John Ferguson, Death Comes To Perigord.  London & Glasgow, William Collins Sons & Co., Ltd., 1931.


John Cale: Evidence (Link)


Center Image:  Airplane trails over Guernsey night.