The DEATH OF COLONEL MANN

by Cynthia Peale

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Ames?”

  MacKenzie saw that Longworth tried to smile, but the effect was more of a grimace.

  “I wanted a few words, if you have the time.” Ames was remembering his interview with this man's father. The family was a good one, had been good for generations. Apparently, with this poor specimen before him, it had reached the end of its goodness and was now headed down the path of degeneration. Just as Longworth Senior had said.

  “Ah. Time.” Longworth grimaced again, almost as if he were in pain. “Yes, I am afraid that I have plenty of that. Come in.”

  He stood aside to let them pass. In his office, thick, leather-bound law books lay piled on the floor; a table by the window held a few tattered folders; the inkwell on the desk was dusty, encrusted with dry black ink.

  They seated themselves on cracked leather chairs; Long-worth perched himself on the corner of his desk.

  “It is—a personal matter,” Ames said.

  Longworth waited.

  “About—Colonel Mann.”

  Longworth's expression changed slightly; a wary look came into his eyes.

  “You knew him,” Ames went on.

  A sudden malicious grin slashed across Longworth's face. “And you, Mr. Ames, discovered his body. That must have given you a nasty shock. What business had you with the Colonel, anyway?”

  “I needed to retrieve a packet of letters for a young— friend.” He hated having to say even so much; he hated having to be here in this dingy office. Then Val's tearful face rose up in his mind, only to be supplanted by the memory of Serena Vincent, and he went on. “Unfortunately, I was too late. I have it on good authority that the Colonel had the letters as late as four or five o'clock. Since they were not there when I went to him a few hours later, I have been working on the assumption that whoever killed him took them.”

  Longworth nodded. “I see. Well, Mr. Ames, I do not have them. I wish I did.” They saw his unpleasant grin again. “My pony came in last on Saturday, and I need the money. Would you have paid for them?”

  “No.”

  “Then how did you expect to get them, man? The Colonel was—”

  “Yes? What was he?”

  Longworth shrugged. “You know as well as I do what he was. Everyone knew. That is why he was so successful.”

  Ames contemplated him for a moment. “Did you work for him?” he asked abruptly.

  Longworth was taken aback at that. “Work for him? How do you mean?”

  “I mean, did you keep him free of the law? I have been told that in order to avoid being sued, he must have had someone giving him legal advice. Was that you?”

  Longworth gave a short laugh; he looked away and then looked back. “If you are trying to implicate me in the Colonel's murder, Mr. Ames—”

  “I am not trying to implicate you in anything. I am merely trying to recover a packet of letters that will prove very embarrassing to my young acquaintance if they are made public—or even if they are shown, privately, to the wrong person. Personally, I do not give one good damn who killed the Colonel, except insofar as finding that person may help me in my search.”

  Longworth's eyes gleamed as if he knew some delicious secret. “You would shield a murderer?”

  “Not at all. But finding the Colonel's murderer is a police job, not mine.”

  “Just so. Well, Mr. Ames, I cannot help you—”

  “You have the suite next to the Colonel's at the Hotel Brunswick.”

  This brought Longworth up short. “How do you know that?”

  “I bribed the chambermaid.”

  “Did you, indeed? That was very underhanded of you.”

  Ames held his gaze. “You did work for him,” he said flatly. “You were his legal counsel.”

  Longworth seemed to be considering something; then, after a moment, he said, “And what if I was? What does that prove?”

  “Nothing. Except that you may be able to help me.”In your search for those incriminating letters.”

  “Yes.”

  Longworth thought again. “This is a very delicate business, Mr. Ames.”

  “It most certainly is.”

  “But I will tell you frankly, if I had your packet of letters, I would say so. I could probably persuade you to part with some small sum for them, and even a small sum would be helpful to me at the moment.” He spread his hands wide. “But I don't have them. Honestly.”

  When a man like Richard Longworth said “honestly,” Ames thought, it was time to doubt every word he uttered.

  Longworth eased himself off the desk. “I wish I could help you, Mr. Ames, but I fear I cannot. And I must ask you to excuse me now. I have an urgent matter to attend to.”

  Suddenly urgent, thought Ames; a few moments ago, you said you had time to spare.

  “Will you continue the Colonel's—work?” he asked, rising also. He was reluctant to leave; this man knew much, he thought, and it would take far more than this brief interview to pry it out of him.

  “Continue it?” Longworth gave a short laugh. “Perhaps. It takes a skilled hand to do such work, and I am not sure I have the Colonel's talents. But—yes. I may.”

  “The Colonel must have had any number of people who gave—or sold—him information,” Ames said. “And if you could supply me with a name or two—”

  “Why should I even admit to knowing the Colonel's informants, much less give you their names? Even if I knew them, which I do not. The Colonel was a secretive man. He had to be, given the nature of his business. And, given that, the only surprising aspect of this entire case is that he managed to stay alive as long as he did.”

  “The nature of his business was despicable,” Ames retorted.

  They stood facing each other; Mackenzie was just getting to his feet.

  “Despicable?” Longworth said. “That is rather extreme. After all, the Colonel did not force people to behave badly. He merely took advantage of their behavior after the fact.”

  “That is the despicable part,” Ames replied.

  He turned to go, MacKenzie behind him. They had just reached the door when Longworth said, “I can account for my time, you know.”

  Ames paused and turned. “You can?”

  “Yes. I was playing cards all evening at the St. Botolph.”

  Easily checked, Ames thought; if he needs to lie, surely he can come up with something better than that.

  He nodded. “Good. Then you have no reason to worry.”

  They moved to the outer office, and then Ames turned back. “Are you acquainted with a Mrs. Serena Vincent?” he said.

  “No.”

  I don't believe you, Ames thought. You had her program in your room at the Hotel Brunswick.

  “The actress.”

  “I know the name.” Longworth spoke testily, as if he were suddenly angered.

  “Many people know the name. She herself had some business with the Colonel—”

  “I know the name but not the lady herself,” Longworth said curtly. “Good day, gentlemen.”

  URGENT BUSINESS, HE SAID. LET US SEE WHERE HE MIGHT lead us.” Across the way, Ames stepped into the doorway of a tobacconist's shop a few doors down Washington Street. MacKenzie crowded in beside him. He would replenish his supply, he thought, while he waited.

  Ames watched the doorway of Longworth's office building. Many people were going in and out, and the sidewalk in front was crowded, particularly now as the noon hour approached— Ah. There he was.

  Ames was only just able to keep Longworth in sight. But almost at once, Longworth turned into a doorway. From across the street, Ames read the sign; it was a Western Union office.

  Was it a telegram that Longworth had intended to send all morning? Or one that he knew he needed to send only after his interview with them?

  Five minutes later, Longworth reappeared and walked back the short distance to his office. MacKenzie was just coming out of the tobacconist's.

  “Since we are in the neighborhood,” Ames sai
d, “we may as well pay a call on Desmond. He may have picked up something useful.”

  But when they arrived at the cluttered office of the Boston Literary Journal, they learned that Delahanty had no news despite his considerable efforts. “Nothing,” he said. “I've been talking to who knows all, and I haven't heard a thing.”

  Delahanty looked frazzled. He was pacing his little office, back and forth, back and forth; his mane of red hair looked as though he'd been caught in a high wind without a hat.

  “What's wrong, Desmond?” Ames asked, unable to keep from smiling a bit at his friend's rather ostentatious display of creative distemper.

  “Oh, nothing at all,” Delahanty said sarcastically. “Mother of God! The nerve of some people!”

  He waved his hand at his desk. Aside from the usual piles of manuscripts and printers' proofs, Ames saw a dozen or so large sheets of foolscap with scribbled lines, crossed-out lines, arrows darting up and down, little diagrams with squares and rectangles and small, inked-in circles. They were silent testament to the torments of composition, not unusual in a place like this, except he knew that Delahanty, like many of his fellow Irishmen, was fluent with words both written and spoken.

  “What's all that?” he said.

  Delahanty groaned. “It is my miserable attempt to come up with a script—complete with stage directions and costume suggestions—for the Christmas Revels.”

  Ames had attended the Revels only once. He had a memory of some of his acquaintances bounding about the stage in strange getups, bells on their caps and shoes, shouting nonsense rhymes and expending, in general, a good deal of energy.

  Not, as Caroline would say, his cup of tea. Nor hers, either.

  “How did you get dragged into that?” he asked.

  “Fool that I am, in a weak moment months ago, I told Mrs. Dane that I would write this year's script. I'd forgotten all about it. And she wants the thing finished by next week.”

  Ames could not help laughing. “Come now, man, it's not the end of the world if you don't turn in a completed script for the Christmas Revels!”

  “Oh, isn't it? I don't count myself as a coward, but I tell you in all frankness, I don't relish having to make that particular announcement. Not to that lady. I'm glad you'll be halfway around the world by then, so you won't see the performance—if it ever occurs.”

  A pained look came to Ames's face.

  “What's wrong, Addington? Did I say something—”

  “The expedition has been canceled,” Ames said shortly, and he explained about Professor Harbinger's broken leg.

  Delahanty was appropriately sympathetic, his own problems, for the moment, put aside. “I tell you what. Let's go to lunch at Durgin-Park. I haven't been there since I returned, and I miss it.”

  The market dining rooms at Durgin-Park were on the second floor of the North Market Building in the heart of the Haymarket district, just beyond Faneuil Hall. Patrons were seated not individually, but at long, communal tables that now, at the height of the noon hour, were crowded with men from the city's business district. Fifty cents, here, bought a thick slab of good Yankee pot roast, mashed potatoes, gravy, a side dish of cranberry sauce, and a bottomless cup of coffee; fish or fowl were less expensive. This fare was delivered by surly waiters in shirtsleeves and long white butchers' aprons. They rushed back and forth from the kitchen like demons, slamming plates down on the tables with a defiant air, as if they dared anyone to challenge their arrogant attitude; they met requests for extras—a glass of water, say—with a ferocious sneer.

  Noting MacKenzie's bemused expression, Ames said, “You wonder at the ungraciousness of our servers, Doctor? They are a trademark attraction of this place, and the reason that many people like to dine here.”

  MacKenzie accepted this without comment, but he noted it to himself as another item for his mental file labeled “Mysterious New England Behavior.”

  They ate quickly, conscious that others were waiting for their places, and within the hour they were outside in the Haymarket once more. All around them the busy market district swirled with activity, carts and wagons lumbering by, men shouting, small boys darting in and out. MacKenzie saw the carcasses of rabbits and half-haunches of beef hanging in the butchers' stalls that lined the ground floor of the domed Quincy Market Building opposite; on either side were farmers' wagons filled with country produce, potatoes and onions and great mounds of orange pumpkins and varicolored squashes.

  “Your appointment with Dr. Warren should take no more than an hour?” Ames asked him.

  “I would think not.”

  “Then—” Ames produced his pocket watch, flipped it open, and thought for a moment. “When you have seen him, perhaps you could meet me afterward at the St. Botolph, at, say, between four and four-thirty?”

  “Certainly.” MacKenzie sighed to himself. After his consultation with Dr. Warren, he'd wanted to go to No. 161/2 to spend a delicious hour before the fire with Miss Ames.

  “And where are you off to, Addington?” Delahanty asked. “Something to do with the Colonel, no doubt.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you don't want to say what that might be?”

  “No.” Most definitely, he did not; and in any case, she might not be at home.

  THE TELEGRAM ADDRESSED TO AMES ARRIVED SHORTLY AF-ter Caroline's solitary lunch. As she finished her coffee, Margaret came into the dining room bearing a small silver tray upon which lay the flimsy yellow Western Union envelope.

  Caroline stared at it as if it were an evil omen; in her present state of heightened alarm, it seemed to be a portent of some further disaster. At once she wanted to banish it— throw it into the fire.

  But of course she could not do that. It was for Adding-ton. And aside from that, she wanted to know what it contained. Opening it in his absence was out of the question, so she would have to suffer its presence until he came home.

  She took the telegram from the tray and carried it into the parlor, where she put it on the mantel. At once she knew that that was the wrong place for it; she should take it into his study, she thought.

  But she left it and went to look out at the square. Through the lavender-glass windows, the shrubbery looked oddly colored, a kind of purplish-black. She'd seen it so all her life and it had never bothered her, but just now it did. It seemed eerie, and somehow threatening, as if it were the shrubbery in a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, harboring goblins.

  She felt terribly restless. Her petit-point bag lay by her chair, but she was in no mood to do petit point. On the side table was the Diana Strangeways novel. Yes: if she could become immersed in that—as she probably could—the time would pass.

  By three o'clock, when Val came, she felt better; but one look at Val's face brought her back sharply to reality.

  “You haven't heard from him today?” Caroline said.

  Mournfully, Val shook her head. She looked ill, thought Caroline. Ill—and sad. A little surge of righteous anger swelled in her heart. Drat that George Putnam!

  After failing to come to tea yesterday despite his promise to do so, he had failed today to communicate in any way, Val said. No appearance at Aunt Euphemia's, no flowers sent in repentance, no note for her to receive when she returned home from her Sewing Circle—nothing.

  “But you will,” Caroline said in a determined voice. She put her hand on Val's arm. Val did not look up. “Hear from him, I mean. I simply can't believe that he would—”

  “It's not George,” Val said dully. “It's his mother. You know what she's like. She's so terribly—proper. And this business with the Colonel—” She broke off in a sob, and Caroline got up from her chair and went to where Val sat on the sofa and put her arms around her.

  “Don't, Val,” she said softly. “Please don't cry. It doesn't do any good, and it only makes your eyes hurt and go all bloodshot.”

  But as Valentine sobbed against her breast, she thought, Remember, Caroline Ames, when you yourself wept your heart out for a young man who went a
way and never came back. Remember that… and, perhaps, let Val weep as she will.

  “I k-k-keep thinking, what would she say if she knew the truth?” Valentine got out between sobs. “What would she say if she knew that Cousin Addington's business with the Colonel was about me? She would immediately insist that George break off with me. And perhaps she does know. Perhaps that's why George has been so—so cold all week. I could feel it on Tuesday night at the Cotillion—that he was turning against me. And his mother was, too.”

  She took a long, shuddering breath; then she straightened, patting the few strands of her hair that had come loose, adjusting the bodice of her dress. She was wearing a little French number, straight from the workrooms of M. Worth in Paris, which Euphemia, in her delight at Val's match with George Putnam, had decreed Val must have. It was middling blue, with an astonishing array of tucks all down the front so that it looked as though it were molded to Val's figure. The sleeves were full at the shoulder, and the skirt, in the latest style, was mercifully free of a bustle; it flared out slightly at the bottom in a graceful, swaying effect when Val walked.

  Caroline herself had never had a dress from M. Worth, but she did not envy her young cousin. In Caroline's world, Paris dresses did not exist; and besides, as she did not hesitate to admit to herself if to no one else, her figure was far too plump to look right, as Val's did, in such a creation.

  “You mustn't give up hope, Val,” she said gently. “I am sure this terrible mess will work itself out somehow. And I know George isn't so foolish as to—to give you up simply because Addington happened to find the Colonel's body.”

  “He would be right to do that, Caro. You know he would. No man wants a fiancee, never mind a wife, who is tainted by scandal.” Her voice was rough with tears, but she kept them in. “And so—I have given this a good deal of thought—if he does change his mind, I can bear it.” She took a deep breath and went on. “I have begun to harden my heart.”

  “Don't say that!”

  “Yes. I will say it. I have begun to harden my heart against him. I must, don't you see? In order to survive after he—after he—” She broke off and bit her lips.