Culpepper showed me with civility into what he called the interview room, whose furnishings a Quaker would have deemed spare. Before he got any of my own vital statistics, the lieutenant asked me for a concise rendition of my encounter with Marie Prasquier, along with a description of her appearance. Having elicited this, he stepped away, asking me to wait for him. In a rather thoughtful gesture, he had a rookie policeman bring in a pitcher of ice water and some reading matter, consisting of a few Collier’s magazines from last spring and a handful of pamphlets describing the allures and attractions of Treasure Island.

A short while later, I heard outside the building a steely voice over the Exposition’s public-address system. Culpepper was wasting no time broadcasting a description of Marie Prasquier around the island, along with the request that anyone who might have seen or spoken with her should report to the authorities at the Administration Building. No mention was made of her death.

About an hour later, Culpepper was back. He opened the door and ushered three men into the room. One was a raffia-haired kid in his early twenties wearing a white uniform and peaked cap bearing the words THRELKELD’S SCONES. The second man was in his late sixties, garbed in a gray serge suit that was glossy from too many encounters with an iron (whereas his yellowing shirt had never met one). The third fellow was about fifty-five, overweight, and planted in a leather-cushioned wheelchair, his bandaged right foot clearly afflicted by the gout.

Culpepper asked us if we’d ever seen each other before and we all mumbled words to the negative. He showed the three men out of the little room, then ducked his head back in to grin at me.

“These were your rivals for the hand of Ma’m’selle Prasquier. It seems she proposed to them this morning as well. And last week to my friend Russ, I’ve just learned, and a college kid who works at the Chuck-a-Luck stand, and half the male skaters in the Ice Show. Stay put. I’ll be needing a statement from you.”

He shut the door, and I was left alone for a considerable amount of time.

I have a good sense of rhythm. I write fairly well for percussion. But there is a limit to how long I can entertain myself drumming my fingers on a hardwood table. So I turned my attention to the pamphlets on the desk and opened up one emblazoned PAGEANT OF THE PACIFIC!

It informed me that, some seven years earlier, the city fathers of the Bay Area had decided that a West Coast world’s fair to rival the much hoopla’d World of Tomorrow in New York would be a boon to California commerce and culture—but where to put it?