The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits Volume 3 (The Mammoth Book Series)

by Mike Ashley

  “But what was the meaning of the drawing? How would Arnold be linked to a female deer?”

  He’d forgotten about the picture of the doe. “Tell me exactly what happened when John Slate approached your group with that illustration.”

  “As I remember it, he said something about the wedding and then took some papers from an inside pocket. He showed us the drawing of the doe and asked if any of us had ever seen it before. Louisa said she had not, and passed it to her husband. When it was my turn I admired it and he said I could have it, that he possessed more copies.”

  Swift turned to Persia Tolliver, hovering near the door as if waiting a chance to escape. “Thank you for your help here. We’ll be on our way.”

  “You won’t tell them I was at the wedding, will you? I had nothing to do with his death.”

  “You will be kept out of it if at all possible,” Swift assured her.

  John Slate’s body had been taken to an undertaker frequently used by the Continental Army in Philadelphia. Swift and Molly rode there from Penn House Inn, arriving around four o’clock. After a brief conversation the undertaker took them into his office and showed them the contents of the dead man’s pockets. “Nothing unusual here, as you can see. A money purse with a few sovereigns, a handkerchief, a key.”

  Alexander Swift picked it up. “That’s to his room at the inn. You found no letter or message of any sort?”

  “Nothing like that.”

  He thanked the man and they returned to their horses. “What do you think, Alex?” Molly asked.

  “Assuming he wrote a final version of that letter, it seems that he managed to deliver it to someone at the wedding. He and Persia went nowhere else.”

  “How would Slate even know who would be at the wedding? It was a small, private affair.”

  “Exactly! Think about it, Molly. Who would he know with certainty would be attending? The bride and groom, and the bride’s family. I think we can rule out Arnold’s children by his previous marriage. They’re hardly old enough to have a secret of interest to a blackmailer. And his sister is still in New England. But there is one other person who would certainly be at the wedding – Major Cutler, Arnold’s personal aide.”

  “Cutler!”

  “I’m sure I’m right, Molly, and I want to confront him with it. Can you get his wife out of the house on some pretext this evening?”

  “I’ll try, but I can’t believe that Cutler –”

  “That’s who Slate spoke with. That’s who he showed the drawing to.”

  “True enough,” she agreed.

  “All I have to do is trace the poison to him.”

  “Do you think General Arnold got it for him?”

  “There’s one other possibility. The Shippens’ neighbour, Dr Wade.”

  After a light supper Molly suggested a walk by the river, and Louisa Cutler agreed, though it was already growing dark outside. When they were alone, Swift lit one of Major Cutler’s cigars and said, “This has been a full day. At least Arnold and his bride will be relaxing now.”

  “And most enjoyably so,” Cutler agreed with a little chuckle. “Peggy is a lovely young woman.” He opened a bottle of French brandy and filled their glasses.

  Swift put down the cigar after a few puffs and cleared his throat. “I’ve spent a few hours this afternoon looking into the death of that strange fellow at the wedding.”

  “Oh? Have you learned anything?”

  “Quite a bit. The man’s name was indeed John Slate and he had a room at the Penn House Inn. He came to the wedding uninvited, in the company of a waitress at the inn named Persia Tolliver. She exited quickly after his collapse.”

  “What was his purpose in attending?”

  “The man was a blackmailer,” Swift told him. “He came to deliver a second blackmail note to someone he knew would be present. Because of his ill-fitting clothes, he attracted my attention from the outset. Though he approached several groups, yours was the first party he spoke to, and the first he showed the drawing of the deer. I believe, Major Cutler, that you were the object of the blackmail, and that you eliminated the threat immediately by poisoning the man’s drink when he set it on the table next to you.”

  “You’re very observant.” The major smiled slightly. “Where did I obtain this poison, and how did I happen to bring it with me to General Arnold’s wedding?”

  “You obtained it from the Shippens’ neighbor, Dr Wade, with the excuse that you needed to kill some rats in the house.”

  “I see you have spoken to him. We do have rats and Wade gave me some poison for them. But I never killed this man Slate or anyone else, except in battle!”

  Alexander Swift smiled slightly as there came a knocking on the front door. “I asked Dr Wade to come over here after supper. That should be him now.”

  The portly physician was shown in by a servant. He shook hands with Swift and Cutler and took a seat. “Now how can I be of service, gentlemen?”

  It was Major Cutler who took up the conversation. “Mr Swift believes that I poisoned that man today with the dosage you provided for the killing of our house rats.”

  “Well –” The doctor seemed suddenly embarrassed. “He asked if I had ever provided you with poison and I remembered that instance last month. I certainly cast no suspicion in your direction, Major.”

  Swift took from his waistcoat pocket the pieces of the note he’d found in John Slate’s room, plus the folded picture of the deer. “This is my proof of a blackmail plot, gentlemen. It was the motive for the crime.”

  “What motive is this?” Major Cutler demanded. “This picture of a doe means nothing.”

  But it was Dr Wade who spoke again. “Doe was the dying man’s last word. I didn’t see this picture until now so I didn’t connect the two. This is the symbol of D.O.E., a Loyalist secret society that is the antithesis of the Sons of Liberty.”

  “D.O.E.?”

  The doctor nodded. “The Daughters of England.”

  And in a flash Swift realized his terrible mistake. He had sent Molly off in the darkness with a murderess.

  It was almost dark by the time Molly and Louisa Cutler reached the river, which was swollen with spring rains. Louisa was as talkative as ever, chattering on about life in Philadelphia since the British withdrawal. “It’s certainly nice to taste French brandy and champagne again,” she enthused. “And that Lafayette! Why, he’s little more than a boy!”

  “He is three years older than General Arnold’s new bride,” Molly pointed out.

  “Well, she’s just a child too! I do hope she doesn’t ruin the general with her extravagant ways.”

  “The man who was poisoned at the wedding – John Slate – apparently came there to blackmail someone. Do you think it could have been Peggy?”

  “I doubt it. We never saw her until she entered on the judge’s arm, and following the ceremony she was clinging to General Arnold the whole time. When could he have slipped her his note?”

  Molly felt an instant chill down her spine and stopped walking. “Louisa,” she said carefully, “how did you know about the blackmail note? I never mentioned a note.”

  “Isn’t that what blackmailers usually send? The word itself implies mail.”

  Everything was falling into place for Molly. “When Slate approached us at the wedding it wasn’t to give a message to your husband. You were the one he was after. He handed the drawing of the doe to you first, and the folded note would have been underneath. It was you who dropped the poison into his glass, not your husband.”

  “Oh, I don’t think anyone would believe that,” Louisa said. She reached out to grab Molly’s arm. “Come on, let me help you. It’s treacherous along the river in the dark.”

  Molly shook her off. “You’d had a prior threat and prepared yourself with a vial of poison. You saw your chance and you took it. What is your secret, Louisa? Does your husband know it?”

  Now the woman grabbed both her arms, dragging her toward the water. “My secret is that I
am loyal to the mother country, loyal to England. If that is a crime for which I can be blackmailed, so be it! There are plenty of others like me, including Arnold’s wife. What you win on the battlefield may be lost in the bedroom.”

  The earth went out from under Molly’s feet and she grabbed at the woman’s sleeve, pulling her down too. Then she felt a strong arm grip her waist just as her feet hit the water, pulling her up and free. It was Alex, come from somewhere in the dark like a charging animal.

  Louisa Cutler screamed once from the darkened water, and then she was swept away.

  “She killed that man,” Molly gasped, trying to catch her breath.

  “I know,” Swift said. “I figured it out just too late.”

  “It was soon enough for me.”

  “She belonged to a secret society called the Daughters of England. Slate found out from one of his lady friends and tried to blackmail her. She obtained some poison her husband was using to kill rats, and when Slate appeared at the wedding with a second warning she slipped it into his drink when he set it down to take out the picture.”

  “That’s when he passed her the note. After the first message she was expecting him at any time.”

  “We’d better get back and tell Cutler what’s happened. An accidental drowning, perhaps.”

  “Alex, right at the end she said Arnold’s wife was involved too. Can we believe that?”

  He breathed a sigh. “Perhaps General Washington should not be told of this until we are certain. The war is not yet won. There are dangerous days ahead.”

  Benjamin’s Trap

  Richard Moquist

  Minnesota-born Richard Moquist graduated from North Dakota State University with a degree in pharmacy, a fact that may become obvious in the following story. It comes from his first book, The Franklin Mysteries (1994) in which Benjamin Franklin provides a ready hand and mind to help his nephew, Constable Wendell Franklin, solve crimes in eighteenth-century Philadelphia. Franklin is, of course, a major figure in American history and it’s not surprising he’s been selected as a literary sleuth. Robert Lee Hall has also written a series of novels with him as the detective starting with Benjamin Franklin Takes the Case (1988), though he chose Franklin’s years in London. For his next book Moquist moved forward a century. Eye of the Agency (1997) features Chicago newspaper reporter Sadie Greenstreet and her husband, a Pinkerton detective, involved in a murder on a Mississippi riverboat. Moquist’s third novel, The Concord Street Irregular, is in the pipeline and has moved forward another century to the 1950s.

  “You have arrived at precisely the critical moment,” said Uncle Benjamin in a more than jovial tone.

  He was at his workbench, connecting a shiny cylindrical apparatus to his electrical storage device. Above the cylinder, a piece of cheese hung by a thin metal wire. Another wire was attached to the metal cylinder below, which, in turn, was connected to a small ramp leading to the cheese. With wooden tongs, Benjamin reached in a covered bucket, producing a rather large grey mouse. He set the mouse on the metal cylinder with its front legs touching the metal wire where the cheese hung. The mouse stiffened momentarily, then Benjamin loosened his grip and the mouse dropped into the cylinder.

  “Ha, ha! Wendell. The apex of science! The pinnacle of physical philosophy! The perfectly useless device using the limits of man’s knowledge! This, my dear nephew, is the world’s first and only electrical mousetrap.” He raised his forefinger exuberantly toward the ceiling. “Perhaps I shall send one to the Marquis de Lafayette. It may become all the rage in European society.”

  A southern gale blew a continuous sheet of rain against the study window and Benjamin looked out with a frown, as if only now noticing the inclement weather. “And what brings you out calling on a night like this?”

  I shook my soggy constable’s hat and waistcoat, placing them on the rocking chair that faced the fireplace. It was indeed a shame to disturb his buoyant mood with morbid news from beyond those friendly study walls, so it was with some reluctance, and a sigh that I began.

  “It is one of the most diabolical crimes in the history of Philadelphia,” I said, warming my hands by the fire.

  Benjamin set down his wooden tongs on a side table while taking his customary chair. His jovial smile was now replaced by an earnest, questioning look.

  “It was early morning when I was called to the Salisbury Inn. The place was quiet as a mouse when I arrived – the guests and innkeeper’s wife, along with a few bystanders, were all huddled in the lobby room. No one spoke a word; they just pointed up the stairs to the lodging rooms.

  “It was in the first room on the right that I found Dr Shippen laying a blanket over a man in a bed as Mr Salisbury, the innkeeper, looked on.

  “ ‘It’s poison,’ the doctor said. ‘There’s no denying it. But just what kind of poison is beyond my knowledge.’

  “The dead man was in his bed with something close to a smile on his face. Yet his eyes fairly bulged out of their sockets in a manner so frightful and unnatural it set my hair stiff on my neck. I asked if a poison would cause that unnatural expression of terror in his eyes while the rest of his face remained tranquil, and Dr Shippen replied, ‘No, but this would certainly explain that ghastly look in his eyes.’ And then he pulled back the blanket.”

  I cleared my throat, turning to face my companion. “Uncle Benjamin, the man’s right hand was cut clean to the bone and was lying limp at his side. It was as if someone had tried to cut it off.”

  I paused, gazing at Uncle Benjamin’s awed expression as he sat motionless in his chair. The rain beat on the window and I threw a birch log onto the fire grate. Benjamin’s forefinger rested on the side of his temple and at length he said in a coarse whisper, “Go on.”

  I took the chair opposite his. “The doctor was of an opinion that the dead man had witnessed the cutting of his hand. And this seemed likely, for it had bled profusely, more than would be expected had he died first and the wound inflicted later. His position on the bed indicated that no struggle had taken place, nor had the man even moved before or after that gruesome deed.”

  Benjamin shifted uneasily in his chair. “A poison that renders a person so paralysed he cannot move, yet can be alert enough to watch his hand being nearly cut off. That is altogether more than gruesome. Who was this unfortunate man?”

  “His name was Edward Huggins,” I continued. “A British sales merchant of exotics – Oriental spices and teas along with liquors and tobaccos. He came to Philadelphia with two fellow merchants to seek buyers for their goods. The two remaining merchants were understandably in quite a state over the affair. Their papers confirmed they worked for Chesterton’s of London, a large trading company. I also found that these Englishmen had queer habits for merchants. You see, according to the innkeeper, they stayed in their rooms by day and left only for an hour or two at night. The three were secretive to the point that their meals were left outside their doors and eaten in their rooms.”

  “Each had his own room then?” Benjamin inquired.

  “Yes. And when questioned about their actions, they just shrugged and said it is often the custom to be confidential in business dealings, as one must be wary and not arouse the competition.

  “Now,” I continued, “the inn has few guests this time of year, the one other boarder being a man named Pascales, a broker who also sells tobacco, though of the South American variety. This man left the inn early this morning before the alarm went up. He has not been seen since.”

  “He sells tobacco too, you say? That is of interest,” said Benjamin as he rose from his chair, then walked toward the fireplace and pulled on the thick bell rope which hung by the mantel. “Anything further?” he asked, returning to his former position in his horsehair chair.

  “The innkeeper is Charles Salisbury, a young man who works the inn with his wife, Elizabeth. I have heard the Salisburys have come on hard times of late and employ only the skeleton of a staff. A chambermaid is the only permanent worker, but, due to illness
, she was not on duty last night.”

  “Yes,” said Benjamin, nodding. “As I recall, the inn was once called the King’s Inn and was owned by Elizabeth Salisbury’s father. He was a Loyalist who helped the Tory cause during the war. He died about 1778, I believe, leaving the inn to his daughter, who soon married Mr Salisbury.”

  “Mr Salisbury was quite adamant that we find the murderer – bad for business, you know. But here is something you may find of interest,” I said, and showed Benjamin an old piece of parchment that had been deeply folded into quarters. “I found this curious note in the dead man’s pocket.”

  “Carpenters’ Hall, West Wing, Northwest Corner, Nine,” Benjamin read with a pondering exactness. “Possibly a meeting place. What was the time of his death?”

  “He was served his dinner very late – it was nearly ten – and did not leave his room after. Dr Shippen estimates he died between that time and midnight.”

  Benjamin drew the paper nearer his bifocals. “This paper, despite its good condition, is of an old English parchment type no longer in use. And the deep lines indicate it was kept under something heavy, or possibly in the pages of a book.”

  A knock on the study door was followed by the ample figure of Benjamin’s yellow-aproned maid, carrying a silver tea tray piled high with cakes and honey. A rolled and tied piece of paper was on the tea tray and she handed it to me.

  “A note from Constable O’Boyle at the station house,” I said after the maid had curtseyed and closed the door behind her. “It states that the lost tobacco broker has returned – claiming to have been out all day selling to the tobacconists in town. He was questioned, but says he never met Edward Huggins. Further, Dr Shippen reports that the dead man’s food was most definitely poisoned. The doctor gave the remainder of Huggins’s supper to a sickly cat, who experienced several seconds of complete paralysis before being put out of her misery.”

  “Confirming the presence of poison was, of course, an essential point in our investigating,” said Benjamin as he took his cup of tea. “But since the two associates of the deceased deal in spices, I should have liked to examine the poisoned dish for traces of spices. Remember that most poisons are quite unpalatable and would need to be masked by spices or some other means.”