The DEATH OF COLONEL MANN

by Cynthia Peale

  “Sorry to trouble you, Mr. Harris,” said Ames. He did not sound sorry at all. “We need to step into your office for a moment.”

  The clerk was all ears; MacKenzie saw a cloud of disappointment settle over his face.

  Safely inside, the door closed, Ames produced his card and introduced MacKenzie.

  There was a slight pause.

  “Yes?” said Harris. “Is something wrong, gentlemen?”

  “I am afraid so,” Ames replied.

  “Well?” Harris was suddenly impatient.

  “I did not want to inconvenience you,” Ames went on smoothly, “but I thought you would want to know.”

  “Know—what?”

  “There has been, apparently, some unpleasantness.”

  “Yes?” Harris barked it out.

  “I am afraid that you will need to call the police.” Already Ames was turning, preparing to leave.

  “Police!” cried Harris, finally aware that something was very wrong indeed. “What do you mean? What is it?”

  Ames turned back. “I have just paid a call on Colonel William d'Arcy Mann, up in Suite Four-twelve.”

  “And?” Harris was truly agitated now and beginning to perspire.

  “And I regret to inform you, sir, that Colonel Mann is dead.”

  “I THOUGHT HE TOOK IT RATHER WELL,” SAID AMES. “UNder the circumstances.”

  “Yes, well, I imagine he's paid to deal with all sorts of circumstances,” MacKenzie replied. As they paused at the curb to allow a stream of carriages to pass, he flexed his knee.

  “Bothering you?” said Ames, noticing.

  “A bit, yes.”

  “Then let's take a herdic. It's a nasty night, and you don't want to slip and fall.”

  It was, in fact, just the sort of night he enjoyed. Fog had blown in with the dark, bringing with it the sharp, sour smell of the sea. Now the streetlamps bloomed with misty halos, and people walked with care over brick sidewalks and cobblestone streets made slippery by the thickening mist.

  On such nights, MacKenzie knew, Ames often liked to prowl the city, walking, walking—no wonder the man was so thin! Through the narrow ways of the North End, inhabited almost entirely now by foreigners of one sort or another; along the broad new boulevards of the Back Bay, new—made land reclaimed from the smelly flats of the Charles; up and down the steep inclines of Beacon Hill, mansions on the south side, tenements on the north, communing perhaps with the ghosts of the souls who had lived there a century earlier, some of whom—the southsiders— were Ames's ancestors.

  These were always solitary forays. Ames liked to be alone, but even if he had invited MacKenzie to accompany him, the doctor would have had to refuse. In September, he had come to Boston from the West for an operation to save his knee, which, in April, had been badly damaged by a Sioux bullet. Only now, more than a month after his surgery, was he beginning to be somewhat ambulatory.

  There was a herdic-phaeton stand at the corner. Beyond, to their left, lay the vast empty space that was Copley Square, anchored on two adjoining sides by the Romanesque bulk of Trinity Church and the Ruskinian Gothic Museum of Fine Arts. On the farthest side, which would house the Renaissance palace that would be the new Boston Public Library, there was only a huge hole in the swampy ground, where cedar pilings were being embedded in the muck to hold the massive weight of the building to come.

  To their right lay the way home: to No. 161/2 Louisburg Square, Beacon Hill. It was a long way, particularly since they had already walked it once just an hour before. MacKenzie would be glad of the comfort of a herdic-phaeton, such as it was; these were small, two- or four-seater cabs, unique to Boston, drawn by agile horses that made their way about the city at all hours.

  Ames raised his arm; a herdic drew up from the waiting line and Ames gave the driver the address. They climbed in at the back and pulled the door shut.

  “Caroline will take our news badly,” Ames remarked as they settled themselves.

  MacKenzie agreed. Caroline Ames, his companion's sister, was by rights his landlady, just as Ames was his landlord; however, in his six-week stay in the city he had come to think of them as more than that, and they seemed to feel the same.

  The cab rattled over the cobblestones as they hurtled down Boylston Street past the Public Garden and turned onto Charles Street. On their left lay the Garden, the bare, dark, skeletal branches of its specimen trees barely visible through the foggy lamplight. In summer, Caroline had told MacKenzie, swan boats plied the Garden's little lagoon; you could take an excursion around the miniature islands and under the miniature suspension bridge, with a boy pedaling the boat at the back, a beautiful curved white wooden swan attached to its front. MacKenzie hoped to take such an excursion with her himself, come the warm weather.

  On their right lay the larger, darker Common. Dangerous at night, they had warned him, but during the day a splendid place to walk, when he could walk comfortably again. Down the Long Path under the tall elms, nursemaids pushing high-wheeled wicker perambulators, children playing tag and roll-the-hoop, and, in winter, skating on the Frog Pond.

  They crossed Beacon Street and went on down Charles to where the steep slope of Mt. Vernon Street rose up Beacon Hill. The horse made the distance to Louisburg Square in moments, and then they were home: a tall, swell-front, redbrick town house, one of a row, with a bow window made of lavender-tinted glass, a shining black front door with a fanlight above and a gleaming brass door knocker in the shape of a hump-backed sea serpent. Through the shutters they could see the glow of the lamps in the parlor, and MacKenzie felt his heart lift; for him, Miss Caroline Ames was a perfect angel of the hearth, and he hoped that she had waited up for them.

  SHE HAD. SHE SAT BY THE FIRE, A BOOK OPEN IN HER LAP; but enticing as it was, she had been too worried, her mind too unsettled, to read it—never mind to attend to the petit point that lay in the workbasket at her feet.

  This dreadful mess! Poor Val! And poor Addington, needing to perform this distasteful errand, having to call on the notorious Colonel Mann and ask him to be merciful, to leave off hounding Val for money that neither Val nor Addington had.

  Thank heaven Dr. MacKenzie had been well enough to go with Addington, she thought, and as the doctor's broad, honest visage floated up into her mind, she relaxed a little. It had been a fortunate day when Dr. Warren, who lived across the square, sent a note to Addington asking, in the most tactful way, if the Ameses might consider taking in a boarder. A man from the West, he'd said, a surgeon in the army who needed a place to recuperate after an operation that Dr. Warren was to perform on his knee.

  At first the idea had rankled. She had worried that people would talk; they would gossip that the Ameses, brother and sister, did not know how to live within their means.

  But their means, these days, were stretched perilously thin. Their father's will had left them, ten years before, provided with a small trust fund that had, with every passing year, been less adequate. They had hung bravely on until their mother died, more than a year ago now. Since then, they had thought about—and had even discussed, once or twice—various ways to increase their income.

  The most obvious one was for Addington to find some kind of remunerative employment. But Addington—brilliant, talented in a dozen ways, with widespread “interests” in many things—had no vocation for any particular thing. Their father had been a lawyer, but Addington had not been attracted to the law. Their father's father had been in the China trade and had owned shares in various manufacturing companies here in New England; but the China trade had dwindled, and the shares, part of their trust fund, had diminished in value.

  Their grandfather, one of the original proprietors of Lou-isburg Square, had put up this house in the eighteen forties and had died in it, secure in the knowledge that his descendants would live out their days in it as well. He could not have envisioned a time when his grandchildren might have to sell it.

  Sell it! How could they do that? Sell this house, with its curving
staircase, its carved white-painted wooden mantels, its serene high-ceilinged rooms filled with family treasures? The portraits of their ancestors gazing down upon them from the walls; the porcelains and ivories brought over long ago in the China trade; the slightly threadbare medallion-back sofa in the front parlor, the rosewood Duncan Phyfe sideboard and lyreback chairs in the dining room, the worn Turkey rugs, the grandmother clock in the hall— No. Even though its original elegance was somewhat tattered now, it was their lifelong home; they could never give it up. Somehow they would manage.

  The thought that Addington might, after all, practice law, immuring himself in one of the great Boston law firms, had in fact been discussed between them, but Caroline knew that her many-talented brother would suffer in such dusty work. No: he needed to stay free, gifted amateur that he was, to follow where his interests led him. He had been one of the most brilliant students in his class at Harvard, she thought fondly, and now, years later, he was brilliant still. He must stay free, like so many of his wealthier acquaintances, to do as he wished.

  But every year, prices went up while their income declined. After their mother's death, they had let three of their full-time servants go, retaining only the all-purpose girl, the faithful Margaret. Their cook was a daily who had Thursdays off; fortunately Margaret was handy in the kitchen and could fill in for her.

  So the advent of Dr. MacKenzie had been a blessing in more ways than one, Caroline thought. His seven dollars and fifty cents a week in board money made an enormous difference in their household accounts. Now, each week, when Caroline sat at her little escritoire in her bedroom and totted up income and outgo, she had no need to worry at the end of it, wondering how they would manage. They could even afford little extras now: a roast every Sunday instead of every other, a new cloth for the dining room table, a new pair of high-button boots for herself instead of a visit to the cobbler once again to ask him to try to repair her old ones.

  And Dr. MacKenzie had turned out to be a most agreeable gentleman, too—not intrusive, no trouble, not even in the days immediately after his operation, when they'd had to take his meals to him in his room (and grateful they'd been, then, for the elevator that they had installed for their mother's benefit). But he was so cordial, so congenial, they hadn't minded all the up-and-down—and now, as he recovered, he was proving to be a good companion for Adding-ton.

  Yes, she thought. They'd done well to take him in. And those few people who had made snide comments about the Ameses taking in boarders could very well keep their comments to themselves.

  Outside in the square, the two men climbed down from the herdic-phaeton and Ames paid the driver. The herdic rattled off toward Pinckney Street as they climbed the short flight of granite steps and paused to clean their boots on the mud scraper by the door. Inside, they deposited their outer garments and hats on the hall tree in the vestibule; then they went into the parlor to greet Caroline.

  She rose from her seat, her book sliding to the floor.

  “How—how was it?” she asked. As fair as her brother was dark, she had soft brown eyes and curly light brown hair which she wore fashionably done up into a Psyche knot, with frizzy bangs over her forehead. Only two months out of mourning for her mother, she wore a gown of some soft stuff the color of bronze oak leaves. It was high-collared and long-sleeved, and, with its bustle, slightly out of fashion. Her only adornment was a mourning brooch pinned to her bodice. She was a trifle plump, but although she wished that she were more slender, Dr. MacKenzie did not.

  Just now her eyes were wide with anxiety, and her sweet, pretty face, ordinarily pink-cheeked, was pale and drawn. MacKenzie hated to see her so; he hated knowing the bad news that her brother was about to give her.

  “Not good,” Ames said shortly. He strode across the room and took up his accustomed place, standing by the fire, one long, slim, booted foot resting on the brass fender. MacKenzie limped to the chair that had become his, a Morris rocker.

  “Well, Addington?” Caroline said. “What happened?”

  “Nothing,” he replied.

  “Nothing! You mean he—he wouldn't listen to reason? What did he say?”

  Ames turned slightly to give her one of his looks. “Nothing,” he repeated.

  “But didn't you—”

  “He was dead, Caro.”

  There was a moment of shocked and horrified silence. She went paler still, her hand flown to her bosom; then, faintly, she said, “How?”

  “We found him on the floor of his suite,” Ames said. His voice dragged a bit. “He had been shot,” he added.

  MacKenzie wondered at his brutal bluntness, but then he reminded himself that although Miss Caroline Ames was delicate in the way that all females were, ill equipped to deal with the harsher realities of life, she was nevertheless a Boston female, and therefore blessed—or cursed—with a stronger, more steely character than that of females born and bred someplace else. Ames must have believed that his sister could deal with his news, MacKenzie thought, or he would not have divulged it. He pulled out his pipe (she'd given him permission to smoke when he first arrived, and very grateful to her he was) and lit up.

  “I see,” she said. For a moment—no more—she seemed to waver and weaken; then, with a visible effort, she pulled herself together and said calmly, “Well, then, you'd better tell me everything.” She sank onto the worn brocade sofa opposite MacKenzie and folded her hands in her lap, prepared to hear her brother out.

  And there was, after all, not so very much to tell; in less than five minutes he had said it all.

  Then: “What are you going to do now, Addington?”

  “Now?” He seemed puzzled. “What can I do now? Now it is in Inspector Crippen's hands.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “I am afraid so. He will have some part in the investigation at least, and he may well be in charge. I heard last month that he has been promoted to the homicide division—if that can be thought of as a promotion.”

  “But, Addington—if Inspector Crippen has anything to do with it, they will never find who killed Colonel Mann! Remember last year at the Somerset—!”

  He nodded; he shrugged. “Frankly, I do not give a picayune who killed the Colonel, and I would imagine that neither do you. We are well rid of him.”

  “Yes, but, Addington—what about Val's letters?”

  He hesitated. “I don't know.”

  “But—we must get them for her! Are you sure they weren't there? Oh, I wish I'd been with you!”

  A momentary spasm of outrage contorted his features as he envisioned that scene and at once dismissed it.

  “No, Caroline, they were not there. I had little time, you understand. I did not want to encounter another of the Colonel's supplicants.”

  “No. Of course not.” She thought about it. “But that means—it means that we are no better off than before. And remember how the Colonel worked, Addington. If people did not pay him on Monday evening, he ran the item in Town Topics the next day. He always had the proof sheets— what are they called? galleys?—of his next issue with him in his hotel suite to show people exactly what he was going to say.”

  “How do you know so much about how the Colonel worked, Caroline?”

  She waved a hand at him dismissively. “Oh, everyone knows that. And besides, Letitia Converse had a run-in with him last year. She told me all about it.” She gave a little shiver of distaste. “Horrid man! Blackmailing people—spying on them! Oh, Addington! What are we going to do? Poor Val! You know the Putnams. They will never forgive her if her name shows up in that scandal sheet!”

  “I believe the Colonel confined himself to initials.”

  “Still. It doesn't matter. He always put in enough detail so that people would know whom he meant. They will spot it—”

  “Do such proper people read the Colonel's rag?”

  “Everyone reads it, whether they admit it or not. You know that. And even if they don't see it for themselves, someone will be sure to tell them. People are alw
ays eager to pass along the latest scandal. Poor Valentine will be disgraced, and her future in-laws will hear of it soon enough, one way or another.”

  She thought for a moment, her wide, smooth forehead wrinkled in a frown. Then: “Addington, listen to me.”

  He threw her a wary glance. “What now, Caroline?”

  “You must stop the publication of tomorrow's issue of the Colonel's paper.”

  “And how am I to do that, pray?”

  “You can—well, you can talk to Mr. Delahanty, for a start.”

  A thought he'd had himself, but he did not think it necessary—or wise—to tell her so.

  “And how can he help?”

  “He will—oh, I don't know! Somehow he will know how to stop it! He is a kind of newspaper publisher himself, isn't he?”

  “A literary magazine is not a newspaper, Caro.”

  “But it amounts to the same thing, for our purposes.” A new thought struck her. “Addington! Surely, if the Colonel is dead, tomorrow's issue will not be published?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Well, you can find out, can't you? Mr. Delahanty can tell you! Say you will speak to him! And then—”

  She hesitated, obviously given pause by the enormity of what she was about to ask him to do. “Then we will just see,” she added somewhat lamely. “If the issue is held up— who knows, perhaps the police won't let it appear—then you have just that much longer to find those letters.”

  “Now wait a moment, Caroline. How do you propose that I do that? They were not in the Colonel's suite—”

  “As far as you know.”

  “As far as I know, yes. But if they weren't there, how can we know where on earth they might be? I will simply tell Crippen to be on the lookout—”

  “Oh, no! Who knows who will see them if Inspector Crippen gets his hands on them? If he bungles this case the way he did the theft at the Somerset—”

  She turned to MacKenzie. “Last year, there was a theft of some silver at the Somerset Club.” This, he knew, was one of Ames's clubs. “Inspector Crippen was in charge of the investigation, and Addington was very helpful to him. Inspector Crippen was all set to arrest the wrong man, when Addington pointed out that he was the wrong man. If it hadn't been for you, Addington—”