The Devil's Feast

by M. J. Carter

  “An incident?”

  “One of our members is sick,” Scott said. He made an awful gasping noise.

  “Two are sick,” said Mr. Percy. “Very sick. Symptoms similar to Rowlands’s the other night. They dined at the same table in the Coffee Room last night.”

  “I dined there, too.”

  “Will you come?”

  “I will dress at once.”

  Mr. Scott looked cheered. Percy gave me a small, relieved nod.

  When the door was shut, Blake climbed out of the cupboard and back into bed. I dressed.

  “I was so sure we had resolved Rowlands’s death last night. Mr. Thackeray mentioned how certain fashionable young men were taking arsenic, and I remembered Rowlands was taking Fowler’s, too. I was certain that he had poisoned himself by accident, and Cunningham’s death was something else. Now there are two more. Blake?”

  “I’m asleep,” said Blake.

  “What do you intend to do? Will you leave?” I said.

  “Mnnfwah!” said Blake. He turned violently onto his side so that his back was facing me.

  “Blake!”

  “If they are dead, don’t let anyone touch them, or anything around them.”

  My spirits lifted. “Of course. How shall we arrange it?”

  He pulled the covers up over his head. “Later.”

  • • •

  A SLEEPY FOOTMAN ushered me down to Mr. Scott’s room. The secretary sat at an expensive polished mahogany desk. His chair was upholstered in burgundy velvet. The desk itself was remarkably disorderly: papers piled up, papers slipping onto the floor, more papers sprinkled across it. Scott himself was still in his bedrobe, unhappily rubbing his hands. Mr. Percy stood to one side, looking as if his patience had been mightily tried.

  “Please, Mr. Scott, calm yourself,” said Percy. “You must tell the captain what has transpired.”

  Haltingly, Scott explained that the first man had been taken ill on the way to his carriage. His footman had returned to the club for help. He had been carried to a chamber, where he vomited and was convulsing and terrified. The club’s doctor had been called and administered an emetic. Almost immediately thereafter, the second gentleman, who had dined with him and was still drinking, had also fallen sick and had decided to take a chamber for the night.

  “Why did you not call me before?”

  “We hoped it might pass, and we did not wish to trouble you,” Scott babbled. “There is a good deal of spring influenza and the like around. Guests have been taken ill before here, and recovered.”

  “But these are the same symptoms as Rowlands had!”

  Scott blinked and shook his head.

  “May I see the gentlemen?” I said stiffly.

  Scott nodded, then began to rub his hands again. “Oh, sir, how shall we manage? The story is bound to leak out. Mr. Percy thinks we should close the kitchen, but the members will complain. And it will create the most terrible hole in our finances. We simply cannot afford it. And the banquet draws ever nearer. Three hundred guests to feed, every leader of the party, and all the great and good present, too. How shall we do it?”

  “Please, Mr. Scott, calm yourself,” said Percy. “We shall simply take a step at a time, and Captain Avery will help us. The banquet is in two days. If there are difficulties with the finances, I would be more than happy to go through the accounts with you.”

  At this, Scott stood up, turned haughtily to the steward and said in a strangled voice, “May I remind you of your station, Mr. Percy. You may occupy a significant position at the club, but you are a servant, nevertheless. I am the secretary, an official of the club. Do not presume to talk to me thus.”

  Percy inclined his head in a most dignified manner and turned on his heel.

  “Mr. Percy!” Scott called out. “I was hasty. I apologize.”

  Percy returned. His face was like granite, and Scott, flustered, could not look at him.

  “Would you please take Captain Avery to see the, ah, afflicted gentlemen?”

  • • •

  I REMEMBERED the club’s doctor from the night of Rowlands’s death. He was just the same as he had been on that occasion: at once avuncular and smilingly fatalistic. We stood under a gaslight in the hallway outside the door of one of the sick men as he whispered to us that there was very little hope.

  I asked if we might see the patient. He raised his hands in horror—it would be impossible. I asked him what was wrong with the patient. In a most complacent tone he said he could not be sure. Blake would have bristled at such an answer; now I did.

  “Are you certain of that, sir?” I said. And then, more quietly, “I am speaking to you at the request of the club itself.”

  There was a call from within the room, and he rushed inside, closing the door behind him.

  “What now, Captain Avery?” said Percy.

  “We must see the gentleman.”

  We stepped in as quietly as we could. The room was lit by two candles. On the bed, the patient was in the throes of the most hideous and dramatic convulsion I had ever witnessed. His spine had bent backward upon itself so extremely that his head and feet almost met, and he did not seem to be breathing. Then suddenly he was released, his back snapped forward and he was straight once more. The doctor glanced at us balefully but said nothing. For a moment, the man recovered and breathed again. Then, as we watched, his body was once more seized by a terrible spasm, which left him gasping and choking. For a dreadful minute his whole body seemed to be electrically charged. Then he fell back upon the bed, insensible. The doctor bent over him.

  “It is over,” he said at last.

  “I need to speak to you, sir,” I said.

  “Not now.” This ill-temperedly.

  I drew closer to the bed. The dead man’s face had been pulled into a grotesque rictus, as if all the muscles had been dragged upward. As if death mocked us, with a livid, hideous smile. Around his lips was a foamy white stain. His fists were still clenched in death.

  The door opened. A footman.

  “Sir, the other gentleman will not open his door.”

  “You have another patient, doctor,” I said. “You”—I pointed at the footman—“stay here.”

  • • •

  “WE MUST GET into the room,” I said.

  Percy nodded.

  I backed away and hurled my full weight at the door. It did not budge at all.

  “Captain Avery,” said Mr. Percy quietly, “I have a key.”

  The man lay very still on the bed, the sheets wildly twisted about him, as if he had taken part in some crazed struggle. Something—his foot—gave a little jerk. I approached. I saw the same white stain around his mouth as I had seen on the dead man. I bent over him.

  “He is alive!” To my intense relief, he was breathing, shallowly. His foot gave another jerk.

  I left the doctor with his new patient and dispatched Percy to find Scott and make arrangements to summon Mr. Wakley. Then I returned to my room. Blake was still lying in the bed.

  “I need you,” I said. “You must advise me, at the very least.”

  “I need a day’s more sleep.”

  “Blake!”

  He sat up, groaning. “What’s the damage?”

  “One man dead. Another, I hope, recovering. Vomiting, convulsions.”

  He rubbed his face and scratched his head.

  “All right. I’ll stay. I’ve thought what to do and, though it galls me, I suppose I will have to be your fartcatcher.”

  “My what?”

  “Your valet, your footman, your manservant, just as you suggested. Make sure you do not enjoy it too much.”

  “My servant?”

  “Mmm.” He looked at me from under his eyebrows, unsmiling.

  “Just now, you are the most sinister servant anyone could i
magine. And how will I pass you off? I had not mentioned you before.”

  “I came up from Devon,” he said. “I arrived last night, stayed in a tavern, planned to accompany you home, but now will stay. You’ll say that you summoned me the day before yesterday, when you assumed the matter would take a few days. Then you thought it would be swiftly resolved, so did not think to tell the secretary, as you expected to depart today. I’ll lodge in the servants’ quarters here. I can observe the staff. We’ll make inquiries together.”

  “But surely they know you here?”

  “Soyer will know me, and he must be warned. He has no guile, or none without notice. No one else will.”

  “It must be poison, don’t you think?”

  “Looks like it.”

  First, he took a razor to his hair, cutting it shorter round the sides, then brushed it into a side parting, causing the thicker side to fluff up in a most un-Blakean manner and teasing the other down over the scar across his eyebrow. From the bag I had carried from his rooms he brought out a plain black loose frock coat and waistcoat, a clean white shirt, a pair of dark gray trousers, well-polished boots and an old but well-made leather bag. Out of this came a beaver hat, a pair of wire spectacles and white gloves, the middle two fingers of which had been stuffed so as to hide the damage to his hand. Having dressed, he drew out a little case in which there was a small pot of gum Arabic and what appeared to be several dead black flies. One of these he affixed to his upper lip, transforming it instantly into a surprisingly credible mustache. His shoulders rolled forward and he bowed his head, rather than meeting the world with his usual bold glare. Blake was gone, and in his place was the picture of a steady, unobtrusive manservant.

  We discussed how we should manage the thing. It was obvious that I would have to lead our inquiries. Blake suggested a number of questions for the doctor, which I attempted to receive in good part, though, in truth, the exchange set both our teeth on edge.

  We tiptoed out into the corridor, avoiding the footmen who were starting to pad about the place, took the servants’ stairs to the saloon, then scuttled in an ungainly fashion across its mosaic floor and thence to the basement. There was a sleepy kitchen boy on duty. I saw Blake out into the yard and returned upstairs; a few moments later, he knocked upon the door carrying his leather bag and asked for me. Together, we went to see our victims.

  • • •

  THE DEAD MAN’S name was Addiscomb. Blake prowled around the body, his observation patient, slow, unnerving. He pored over it, bringing himself very close, and sniffing and occasionally even prodding with his finger. Then he took out a small notebook and began to scribble. Once he had examined the body, he looked over the room inch by inch until I was almost twitching with restlessness.

  “Show me what to look for, or at least teach me, so we may be done quicker.”

  He did not look up.

  “Tell me, then, what you have found?”

  “Not much to be found. This is murder from a distance.”

  “Murder?”

  “What else?”

  “I suppose you are wonderfully well acquainted with poisons,” I said, only half-jokingly.

  “I know a little about arsenic and nux vomica, which they grow in India. It’s called strychnine here. I’d say that’s what did for our corpse.”

  “Not arsenic?”

  “No. The way the face is contorted, the bluish tinge of the skin, I’d say it was strychnine.”

  “Two different poisons?”

  “So it would seem.”

  “What does it mean? Arsenic one day, strychnine the next?”

  Blake shrugged. “Most poisoners find one means of killing and stay with it. There could be two poisoners, but that seems farfetched. Most poisoners don’t want their crimes discovered, but this one wants us to know these were not accidents. He has used a second poison so the Reform will know that this was deliberately intended. And if the story leaks out, no one will care if it was arsenic or cyanide or antimony or lead or whatever, they will just remember that Soyer and the Reform Club poison their customers.”

  “So Rowlands’s death was no accident?”

  Blake shrugged.

  The other victim, the Honorable Henry Rickards, Addiscomb’s friend, seemed to be recovering.

  “He woke briefly and asked for darkness and quiet,” said the doctor. “His convulsions, such as they were, seem to have passed. I hope he is over the worst. I gave him bromide of potassium. He is now sleeping deeply.”

  I asked the doctor if he had known either of the gentlemen. He said he had not.

  “They were both poisoned,” I said.

  He looked about him as if someone might be eavesdropping. “Let us not jump to conclusions.”

  I looked at him, incredulous. Blake brushed off, somewhat overenthusiastically, an invisible speck from my shoulder. That is to say, he prodded me.

  “I was led to understand,” the doctor murmured, “that the club is keen to avoid any unnecessary awkwardness at this time.”

  “I beg your pardon? Who has told you this?”

  “Why, the committee—”

  “So this has happened before?” said Blake. The interjection was all the more surprising, as it was uttered in an accent in which London vowels were mixed with an unmistakable (and impressive) Irish brogue.

  “No—”

  “What were the dead man’s symptoms?” said Blake impatiently.

  “Your manservant is very impertinent!”

  “Isn’t he?” I said. I turned back and frowned at Blake. “However, I do find him a great help in my inquiries. His methods are thorough, though a good deal less courteous and pleasant than my own. So I request politely that you answer the question. If it helps, consider the question from me; the committee has appointed me, and I require the truth.”

  The doctor’s eyebrows flew upward.

  “The dead man’s symptoms?” said Blake.

  “Severe nausea,” he said grumpishly. “Sensitivity of all the senses. Light, sound and touch all pained him and seemed to start the convulsions. Involuntary spasms, beginning in his legs. Stiffening and jerking of muscles. By the time I arrived, his body was already convulsing and he was frothing at the mouth. One of the servants had given him a salt-and-water emetic.”

  “Died of asphyxiation?” said Blake.

  “Probably.”

  “Seeing the contortion of the face, I would say it was a certainty,” said Blake.

  “Your servant fancies himself some manner of physician, does he?” said the doctor.

  “Strychnine. I’ve seen it before,” said Blake.

  “And the sick gentleman shows the same symptoms?” I said.

  Reluctantly, the doctor agreed.

  “Have you attended any similar cases at the Reform?” I said.

  “Is that any of your business?”

  Blake whispered in my ear.

  “It is. Are you a member of the Reform, sir?”

  “I am, and proud to be.”

  “The committee will take a dim view of any attempts to inhibit my investigations.”

  “Moreover, sir”—this was Blake—“you allowed the administration of a salt-and-water emetic for what was undoubtedly a case of strychnine poisoning, thereby killing your patient more quickly.”

  “But I was not to know! And I was told the club wished to be discreet.”

  “By whom?”

  “The secretary, Mr. Scott.”

  “My question again, sir.” I said. “Have you seen anything like this?”

  He shook his head.

  “What about Rowlands? What about the gentleman who fell ill in the street and was not found until the next day?”

  The doctor glowered. “If you mean Mr. Cunningham, he had a weak heart.”

  “It will be a very easy matter
to visit Mr. Cunningham’s family.”

  “It is possible that he ate something that did not agree with him.”

  “Is it conceivable that it was poison?”

  “The symptoms were not the same as these men’s at all,” he said, giving me a wary look.

  “Good God, sir! Do you really think that such a thing could seriously be kept a secret and, more than that, should be? Does this not suggest to you that there is a matter that must be addressed and resolved?”

  The doctor shrugged angrily.

  “You may have heard of me, doctor. My name is Captain William Avery. I won two medals in Afghanistan, saved the life of a maharajah in India, and was with the poet Xavier Mountstuart in his final battle before he died. My threats are not empty ones.”

  “It is not impossible that they were poisoned,” he said stiffly. “The gentleman, Cunningham, he had vomited. But it was certainly not strychnine.”

  “I have some work for you. I should like an accurate résumé of what you recall of the previous cases, and another of your observations of the dead man today. I should like you to collect what you can of the dead man’s bodily fluids for the coroner. I am ordering a postmortem. I expect you to agree to it.”

  “Do you indeed?” he said, bridling.

  “No matter if you do not. Mr. Wakley will be coming anyway. But it will not look well if you do not. The club will be grateful for your services.” I smiled politely.

  • • •

  “AH, BLAKE, I WAS GOOD! ‘You may have heard of me, I am Captain William Avery, my threats are not empty ones.’ I was marvelous!”

  “Can’t call me Blake.”

  “Maguire, then.” He had chosen it himself.

  “Remember it: Maguire. You did well, but you had a lever on him—his negligence and his appetite for approval from the club.”

  “And I recovered your rash intervention.”

  “Hmm.”

  “What next?”

  “I’d like to meet Mr. Scott.”

  • • •

  I ASKED Mr. Scott if he knew the two men Addiscomb and Rickards.

  “I knew them both a little; very respectable gentlemen. Often dined here. I believe they were both members of Parliament.”