With obvious reluctance, Delahanty introduced them. Babcock brightened when he heard Ames's name, and then a calculating look came over his face. “You could stand to make a nice sum of money, Mr. Ames, if you would speak to me.”
“Watch out, Ames,” Delahanty put in. “Babcock here is associated with the Globe.”
Ames lifted his chin and stared down his nose at the journalist. “No,” he said.
“You're sure? We'll spell your name right, give you a front-page headline.”
“Get away,” Ames said. His gloved hand had curled into a fist, but he reminded himself that he was not on his own doorstep here. Still, the fellow was a perfect bounder. He deserved to have his ears thoroughly boxed.
Babcock held up his hands in a gesture of mock surrender. “All right. No need to get hot under the collar.” He fished in the pocket of his voluminous overcoat and withdrew a grubby card. “Here I am, if you change your mind. Don't talk to the Post, they haven't a decent writer on their staff. 'Morning, Desmond.”
Ames did not take the card, and so Babcock thrust it back into his pocket, offered a mocking half-salute to them, and loped on down the sidewalk.
Delahanty shook his head. “Damned offensive, those fellows. Whatever they're paid, it isn't enough to do such work. Come on, let's see what we find at the Colonel's bailiwick.”
What they found was nothing: a surly youth who professed never to have seen a packet of six letters, and who whined that he didn't have the Colonel's galleys, either, because the police had taken them. He seemed to think of that action as a personal affront.
In ten minutes they were outside once more. Delahanty touched Ames's arm. “I can get you a copy of those galleys,” he said.
“You can? How?”
“I use the same printer as Colonel Mann does—did, I mean. He's cheap—and fast. He'll run off a copy for me, see if he doesn't.”
“That would be most helpful, Desmond. And now”— Ames glanced at the tall round clock on a post that stood at the edge of the curb—”it is nearly noon. What do you say we lunch at the St. Botolph? Perhaps we will hear something of interest.”
AT THE LARGE COMMUNAL TABLE AT THE ST. BOTOLPH Club on lower Newbury Street, Ames leaned back in his chair to allow the waiter to put before him a plate of soup. It seemed to be cream of pumpkin. At the St. Botolph, you ate the menu for the day, whatever it was: boiled cod or baked beans or hash and eggs, plain Yankee food for plain-living Yankees, no matter how wealthy they were. Delahanty—an Irishman of modest means—had been admitted to membership (thanks to Ames's sponsorship, and over the objections of some of the older members) because he edited a literary magazine, for the members of the St. Botolph fancied themselves to be “artistic” as well as what, for the most part, they were in fact: highborn, plain-living Boston Brahmins.
The atmosphere of the place this day was rather different from the usual low-key male give-and-take and sotto voce trading of financial information. When Ames entered, there had been a moment of surprised silence, followed immediately by a volley of congratulations.
“Well done, Ames!” someone cried.
“Got the fellow at last!” cried someone else.
“Death to the Colonel!”
“Damned scoundrel! Hope he roasts in hell!”
Ames had paused in the doorway, scanning the larger than usual crowd; a small, almost complicit smile crossed his face as he nodded his greetings to them. Before he took his seat, a few of the members rose to shake his hand; clearly, MacKenzie thought, Ames was generally assumed to be the Colonel's killer and was, therefore, in this place at least, the hero of the hour. The St. Botolph Club had undoubtedly been rich hunting grounds for the Colonel; MacKenzie wondered how many men in this room had been forced to pay up to him.
Or, for that matter, whether one of them was the man Ames was looking for.
The newcomers sat down; the hum of general conversation resumed. Ames noted several bottles of champagne on the table—not a usual thing. He tasted his soup: not bad.
“Did you do the deed, Ames?” asked a red-faced, white-haired man sitting across the table. “Don't worry, we won't tell. We'll get up a purse for you—give you a medal!”
“Ames didn't do it,” said another man. “No motive. No scandal in your family, right, Ames?”
“Acting for a friend, were you?” said someone else. “Decent of you. But who do you think might have done it?”
“The police will have enough suspects to keep them busy for some time, I should think,” Ames replied easily, falling in with their jovial bantering. “And since I was—fortunately—accompanied by my friend, here”—their eyes turned briefly to MacKenzie—“I can say with some assurance that he will vouch for me. The Colonel had gone to his reward, whatever it will be, well before we arrived.”
“But, seriously, Ames,” the white-haired man said, “what do you think? Any ideas?”
A dark-haired man wearing a pince-nez and a waxed, “dandy” mustache spoke up. “Remember that case last spring? The man whose mistress betrayed him? What was his name? Winchester?”
A few of them nodded. “Yes—it was Winchester,” someone said. “He's just filed for bankruptcy. But how about Garwood Royce? That was a messy affair, as I recall.”
More murmurs of assent. Then other offerings came forth: the case of Esther Goodrich, and poor Mrs. Fielding, and the Morison girl, what was her name?
The conversation died down while the soup plates were removed and servings of wet, steaming cod and overdone vegetables were put in their place.
“And don't forget David Wilcox,” someone said when the waiters had gone. “Where is he now? California?”
No one seemed to know.
“And what about the Bradshaw case?” offered the red-faced man who had first spoken. “I could never understand how Colonel Mann got that information. The Bradshaws were always so discreet.”
“But not discreet enough,” said Pince-nez. “Mark my words, gentlemen.” He cast a warning look around the table, smiling in an unpleasant way. “Someone always knows. A disaffected servant, or an impecunious relative, or even a fellow club member. It's human nature! Someone will always be on hand to sell you out.”
It was a dispiriting thought, and for a moment they ate in silence, digesting it along with their food.
Then Ames addressed a man who had not yet spoken; during the entire discussion, he had remained aloof. And yet, MacKenzie realized, he had been watching all of them, rather like someone closely observing a tribe of natives engaging in their primitive rituals.
“Professor?” asked Ames. “Can you enlighten us at all?”
The man whom he addressed was a slight, gray-haired individual with a high, domed forehead and a neatly trimmed beard. He had a look about him of ferocious intelligence, but more than that, of an avid curiosity, as if he burned to know everything about them—perhaps even more than they knew about themselves.
Delahanty whispered to MacKenzie: “William James.”
It was a name MacKenzie knew, and he looked at the professor with more interest. James's monumental work on the principles of human psychology had come out the previous year, and its fame had penetrated even into the wilderness of the western plains.
Professor James smiled a little and dabbed his mouth with his napkin, which he placed neatly on the table beside his empty plate.
“Schadenfreude,” he said.
Ames tilted his head slightly. “Of course. But beyond that—?”
James glanced around the table; like the good professor he was, he wanted to make sure that everyone understood him. “Schadenfreude—German is the language of science, so beautifully precise—means taking delight in someone else's sorrows. That is what gave the Colonel his power, of course. Pride, shame, fear—the opinion of those whom we allow to judge us—those were what he traded on.”
“Yes, well, that's true enough,” said Pince-nez impatiently. “But what about who killed him? What do you think about that?”
James shrugged slightly, as if the matter were of no importance to him. “There is a criminal type—the Italian, Lombroso, has described him very well. If I could examine each one of you, take a look at your skulls, the shape of your heads—that might tell me something. Or, at least, Signor Lombroso thinks it might. I imagine the late Colonel's skull would be an interesting thing, filled with telltale bumps and hollows.” He was smiling broadly as he spoke; he held up his hands and wiggled his fingers suggestively. They were broad, strong-looking hands, not what one would expect the hands of a world-famous scholar to be.
“But seriously,” said Pince-nez, “who do you think—”
“Motive,” said James succinctly. “But then again, as you have said, obviously half of Boston had a motive for the crime. So the police will have to narrow it down to whoever had not only the motive but also the opportunity—and the means.”
There was a slight shift in the atmosphere of the room, an uneasiness, as the members glanced at one another. Which of us does he mean?
“And that man will prove to be, I think—”
They hung on his words, every eye trained on him.
“—the man most threatened by the Colonel, and therefore the man with the most to lose. I must return to Cambridge. Good-day to you, gentlemen.”
With a final nod around the table, he left them. There was a little silence after he went, as if his calm, dispassionate words had somehow deflated the balloon of everyone's fancies.
The luncheon broke up not long afterward. People shook hands, made appointments, wandered off to the afternoon's business. In the lobby, while Ames and Delahanty made their arrangements, MacKenzie studied the posted announcements of upcoming events. The club's annual Art Show, he noted, was to have its opening reception on Saturday afternoon. And next week, on Tuesday evening, the noted journalist and world traveler, Godfrey Orcutt, was to give a talk. Both, he thought, might be interesting; he had lived for so long in the western wilderness, cut off from the amenities of civilization, that he felt starved for events like these.
“You'll have those galleys—when?” Ames asked Dela-hanty.
“I'll stop at the printer's on my way back to the office,” Delahanty replied. He noticed MacKenzie studying the announcement board. “Orcutt's talk should be interesting, Doctor, if you're free. He's a real adventurer—as much as Henry Morton Stanley ever was. His dispatches about his journey up the Amazon were fascinating.”
He glanced at the wall clock—it was five minutes till two—and turned back to Ames. “I've an appointment at three with a lady scribbler, heaven help me. But I've time for the printer before I see her, and if he's not too busy, perhaps I'll have them by tonight. I'll bring them around.”
YOU—YOU TOOK THIS FROM HIM?” EDWIN REDPATH'S face was long—chinned and sallow, framed by heavy Dundreary whiskers—and, just now, blank with shock. His eyes, however, betrayed a glimmer of relief as he fingered the check—his own check, made out to Colonel Mann—that Ames had just handed to him.
“Yes,” Ames replied.
They were in the dim, high-ceilinged library of Redpath's mansarded town house on Commonwealth Avenue.
“But—how did you—” Redpath was known as a hard man of business; it was odd to see him so disconcerted.
“I was looking for something,” Ames replied shortly. “In the course of doing so, I came across your check.”
Redpath's face sagged a little, and his eyes became watery. “I am rather pressed for cash at the moment, but the fellow was going to print his filth—”
“You saw what he was going to publish?” Ames interrupted. “He showed you the galley proofs?”
“Yes.” Redpath took out his handkerchief and loudly blew his nose.
Ames wondered if he should tell him that the Colonel's rag might come out after all—unedited—albeit a bit late.
“So you went to him about what time?” Ames asked.
“About five-thirty.”
“You're sure?”
“Yes. I had another appointment at six.”
“And the Colonel was in good health when you saw him?”
“Damn his soul—yes, he was in fine fettle.”
“Happy to have your money, of course,” Ames murmured. “And you say he had the galley.”
“Yes.”
“Did you see anyone else while you were there? Anyone going in or out?”
Redpath nodded. “I did, as a matter of fact.”
“Can you describe him?”
“It was a woman. She was coming toward the Colonel's rooms as I left.”
“Did you see her go in?”
“Yes.”
“And her appearance—?”
“Sable cloak,” Redpath said, remembering. “Must have cost someone a pretty penny.”
“Was she tall? Short?”
“Oh, quite tall. And very handsome.”
“Age?”
“Not more than thirty.”
“Did she seem upset? Fearful?”
Redpath shook his head. “No. She seemed—angry. And she had an imperious air, as if she were used to being noticed and didn't seem to mind it,” he added disapprovingly.
Ames nodded, but before he could reply, Redpath spoke again. “And I can tell you this, although I don't know how helpful it will be. Before I myself went in to see the Colonel, as I stood at his door—I had already lifted my hand to knock—I heard him speaking to someone.”
“Ah.” Ames leaned forward in his chair, his fine dark eyes alight with interest. “Man? Woman?”
“Man. I couldn't make out exactly what was being said, but both voices were angry.”
“You saw him as he came out?”
“No.” Redpath blinked a few times, as if only now he realized the implication of what he said. “No, I did not, come to think of it. The argument stopped. I waited a moment, and then I knocked. Colonel Mann—damn him!— called ‘Come!’ and I went in.”
“And—”
“He was alone.”
Ames sat back with a small nod of satisfaction, but he said nothing.
“Now, that is odd, isn't it?” said Redpath. “It only just now strikes me. What do you make of it?”
“Nothing, for the moment.”
“Do you—did you have business of your own with that damned rascal? But obviously you did, or you wouldn't have been there.”
“I was there on behalf of a young friend,” Ames said. “A packet of her letters had fallen into the Colonel's hands, and I had agreed to try to get them back. You didn't see them, by any chance?”
“No.”
Ames shrugged. “I didn't suppose so.”
“I am eternally grateful to you, Ames,” Redpath said fervently. “You have saved me a good deal of embarrassment.”
“I should warn you that you may see the police,” Ames said, and he told Redpath about the Colonel's ledger. “I am reasonably sure that the check mark indicated you paid. So if the police manage to figure that out—”
Redpath shrugged. “I'll deny everything. They can't prove I paid—can't prove I was there, for that matter.” He held up the check and with great deliberation tore it in half and tore the halves again.
“True.” Ames nodded. “And this meeting between us today did not happen.”
“Of course it didn't.”
“You can instruct your butler?”
“Certainly. He's been with me for years.”
They took their leave. The westering sun sinking behind the buildings in the distance made long shadows of the spindly trees along the mall, and people hurried along in the freshening wind as twilight came on. It would be a chilly night for the young ladies dressed in their finery for the Cotillion, Ames thought, and he sighed to himself, thinking of a lost evening when he might have been reading by the fire in his study. He loathed big “do's” like this; only for Val would he subject himself to the discomfort of his patent-leather dress shoes and long-tailed evening coat.
“You're sure you
want to go through with this affair tonight?” Ames said, casting a wary glance at his companion. His sister had invited the doctor to attend.
“Oh, absolutely,” MacKenzie replied. “Most kind—most kind—”
Ames grimaced; it might have been a smile. “You'll have a headache from the noise and a bad digestion from the supper—if you can get any in the crush. And sore feet— No. You won't be dancing, that's one advantage you'll have over the rest of us.”
But I might try, thought MacKenzie.
They took a herdic back to Louisburg Square, and by the time they arrived it was nearly dark. Lights gleamed from the windows of the tall brick town houses that surrounded the little oval of greenery in the center, and as they alighted they caught the delicious odor of roasting lamb from someone's areaway. Not from the Ameses', however; an extra-large tea would suffice this day, Caroline had said: “They put on a splendid supper at the Cotillion, and we don't want to spoil our appetites.”
She was a frugal woman, MacKenzie thought approvingly. Not stingy, but frugal. His spirits lifted as he saw her now, glancing out at them through the lavender-glass bow window.
Ignoring the warning throb in his knee, he followed his landlord into the house.
AS THE TWO MEN ENTERED THE PARLOR, THEY WERE FOL-lowed almost immediately by Margaret with their tea.
“Well, Addington?” Caroline asked. “What happened? Hello, Doctor.”
She looked a little disheveled and she put her hands to her hair, trying to smooth it.
“I misplaced my ivory fan,” she said, laughing. “And I only just found it—in a box on the top shelf of the closet in the guest room. I can't imagine how it got there.”
She looked younger than usual, MacKenzie thought, and prettier, too, with her face slightly flushed, her hair slightly disarranged. In the hissing light of the gas jets, her eyes seemed to have a special glow. He eyed the tea tray, which was unusually full: scones and Sally Lunn, of course, but small watercress sandwiches, too, and a plate of cold sliced ham, and a heavy-looking concoction, brandied fruit cake.
Caroline sat down to pour, but she couldn't refrain from looking up at her brother and asking, “Did you see Inspector Crippen?”
The DEATH OF COLONEL MANN Page 7
