Titian hair

We love to see it.

I'm team Titian-haired Nancy, if I had to pick.

But now let's go ahead and discuss the characters that we see in The Suspect in the Smoke.

So first up is Mary McGregor.

A word of introduction.

Seventy-three years ago, a little Irish boy lay in his aunt's lap looking out on a strange and mysterious world that his solemn eyes had explored for scarcely ten short days while she, to whom the commonplaces of everyday surroundings had lost their first absorbing interest, was busily engaged in braiding a watch chain from her splendid Titian red hair.

These chains were the fashion of the hour, and the old family doctor, friend as well as physician, paused after a visit to the boy's mother to joke her about it.

"You're making a keepsake for your sweetheart, I see." "No, indeed," she answered gaily with a toss of her bony head.

I was told it was a sport fishing vessel owned by its captain, Jay Morgan, with offices in the Ocean Building on the Embarcadero.

The nameplate on the Titian-haired secretary's desk said Janice O'Dell.

[heels clicking] Yes? Could I help you, please?

I think so.

A shock of vivid red hair was the first thing about him that caught the eye.

A poet would have described it as Titian.

Its proprietor's friends and acquaintances probably called it carrots.

Looking up at Jimmy from under this wealth of crimson was a not unpleasing face.