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what was now the Paul Davies/Paul Caldwell case, though I highly doubted his intention to pay.
     
     
    Mr. Macy, I slept like a baby last night, not the old nightmare, nor a toss or a turn. For this alone I thank you. Just knowing that you and I are working together on this memoir, opening up the old case, explaining its logic and structure, letting the world know what I achieved. I feel a new man. I even ate a full breakfast this morning, choked down all this poison and it tasted just fine. Last night, before I nodded off, I pulled out my other boxes of files from under the iron bed, and I read through a couple of the finest, though the rotter next to me whinged about the light and even called in one of the toughs to force me to douse the glim—it hardly matters. After you and I do this one, I think the one I call The Beautiful Dead Girl would do well with our readers. ("Don't miss another Ferrell and Macy adventure, coming next month!")
    So, the Barnabas Davies case was closed, eh? We had the name of Daviess Sydney child: Paul Caldwell, born 1893. We had a personality sketch of him up to the age of fourteen: possibly above-average intelligence, but with the anger of the abandoned child trapped in poverty. Beyond that, we don't know what kind of son Mr. Davies left behind when he tripped onto his boat and buttoned up his trousers. We know the boy went off to fight in the War and he didn't come home. Missing, Mr. Macy, meant they couldn't sort out the pulped-up bodies in the French mud or on the Turkish beach or in the Suez Canal. And Melbourne just called you dead after a while being missing. I think it was in 19 or '20 they said
    no one was missing anymore—all the missing files got relabelled as killed. So as far as official records had it, Paul was dead, though for some reason no one had got around to telling Eulalie and Tommy yet. Either way, case closed, I reckoned.
    But then, I reckoned again, Mr. Macy, and a canny and dramatic moment it was, as you and our readers shall see. Why close this case? I could spin away heaps of hours trying to get details of Paul Caldwell's life and military service to send back to his proud papa. True, no heir to give money to, probably, but "missing" isn't quite "dead," so why not see what I could find? And if he was dead, maybe he was a war hero, and he could be renamed posthumously, become brave Paul Davies, gallant martyr of the Ardennes, so the fat, dying brewer would buy him• self a nice dead hero-son, and what was that worth on his chart, and who picked up the cash legacy for it? My mind was moving fast, the old game was afoot, and the final tab in London was going to pay for a nice holiday.
    Now I had to pull strings to get a squiz at Caldwell's military dossier. It was locked up tight in Melbourne, not even families were allowed to see the files. Still can't today. Even Davies in London as next of kin would be allowed only a short letter declaring death and final rank. But if it's detection you want, Mr. Macy, you need a network of helpful individuals. With that, simplest thing in the world: bloke owes me a favour, knows another bloke who manages some girls in Mel• bourne, and one of them worked for a man who knew a bloke working in the of• fice of the historian at Defence and that bloke owed the first man a favour, or the first man would mention to Defence that the second bloke had been spending in• timate time with this or that inappropriate (not to say outright Aboriginal) girl, and a little money (billable as a Barnabas Davies expense, no question) moved (shrinking as it went) down along this long line of nameless but helpful individ• uals, and some scribbled notes made their way back along it, and now it's the 7th of July, when I copy the notes neatly into my file and add my own first questions, all of which reads, verbatim:
    Paul Caldwell. Born 1890 (Tommy said 1893). Volunteered for in• fantry (why?) October 1916, with determination made (by whom?) that his