by Ellery Queen
“Not unnaturally,” said Raffles.
“He reproached her,” said Monsieur Kash. “He was heard to say he was deeply disappointed in her for making no effort to share his interests in life. She murmured something to the effect that it was all so bourgeois. This infuriated him. He retorted that all she cared about was squandering the generous pocket-money he allowed her on her ruinous Russian passion for gambling. Gentlemen, it was a fatal remark.”
“Fatal?” Raffles said.
“Her eyes flashed,” said Monsieur Kash. “She took off a necklace and bracelet she was wearing—obviously gifts he had lavished on her in his infatuation. She removed even her diamond earrings. She placed the jewels on the table before him. The first course of their dinner was about to be served. She turned her back on it and walked out of this room—and out of his life.”
“Good Lord!” said Raffles.
“A few months later,” said Monsieur Kash, “he departed it himself—from natural causes. He left her a species of bequest. He seems to have been convinced that her passion for gambling would be her ruin and that, within a year or two, she would be humbly glad to eat such a dinner as the one she had scorned. Hence the late gourmet’s bequest, which imposed upon our patron here at Eighty-Eight the obligation and necessary funds to serve nightly for the ballerina, for a period of two years, a dinner at table twelve identical with the dinner so carefully arranged for her on the night of her proud defection.”
“Extraordinary,” said Raffles. “So the bequest dinners are, in a sense, a repeated service of funeral baked meats—with the late gourmet lurking spectrally, as it were, every night at table twelve, with the conviction that sooner or later, inevitably, he would have the posthumous satisfaction of seeing the improvident ballerina obliged at last to consume the charming repast.”
I glanced uneasily at the corner table.
“Tomorrow night’s service of the dinner,” said Monsieur Kash, “will be the last. The young lady has never yet come to claim her dinners. Only the priest has come for them.”
“The priest?” Raffles and I said.
“By arrangement with our patron here at Eighty-Eight,” Monsieur Kash explained, “the parish priest, who officiated at the gourmet’s melancholy interment—which our whole staff attended as a mark of respect—collects the bequest dinners if unconsumed by the ballerina. The priest now has a slum parish of London’s dockland, where he maintains a soup kitchen for the destitute. Every evening he either sends an urchin or comes in person with a basket to collect the table twelve dinner.”
Monsieur Kash chuckled. “The priest drolly refers to the unconsumed dinners as ‘the manna,’ and he tells me,” said Monsieur Kash, “that food and wine for one person, as served here at Eighty-Eight, can be stretched considerably when added to a gruel and then distributed to the needy on the principle of the miraculous loaves and fishes—a biblical reference, gentlemen.”
“I recall it from my schooldays,” said Raffles.
The platter-hatted priest and the large cloaked poet were not in evidence when we left the deceptive premises of Eighty-Eight, so shabby externally, so sybaritic within.
“To a proud, sensitive young artiste of the ballet, and Russian at that,” Raffles said to me thoughtfully, as we walked away, “the necrophilic aspect of those dinners bequeathed to her may well seem morbid and repulsive. One can understand why she might prefer to starve rather than have anything to do with them. I look forward to meeting her tomorrow.”
But when we called at the Mayfair hotel toward noon the next day we were told at the reception desk that Miss Raffles’ guest had fully recovered from her indisposition and that the young ladies had gone out shopping.
“Miss Raffles left this note for you, sir.”
“Very well,” said Raffles, when he had read the note. “Please tell Miss Raffles that Mr. Manders and I will call again later in the day.”
“Dinah and her guest,” Raffles said outside, “seem to have arrived at terms of mutual confidence, Bunny. I infer from Dinah’s note that Lydia, when she walked out of the gourmet’s life, must have rejoined the Royal Nevsky Ballet—and subsequently, on the gourmet’s demise, have married the Nevsky’s leading dancer. Dinah says that his name’s Igor Koslov and that he’s the graceful, virile fellow who appears with Lydia in that photograph we saw, the one taken in Moscow.”
“Temperamentally,” I said, “he’s no doubt much more congenial to her than the gourmet ever was. But how did she come to be in the plight in which Dinah found her?”
“It was her own fault, Bunny. Dinah says that Mr. Koslov’s been touring North America recently with the Nevsky Ballet. Lydia had no role in the repertoire, so she stayed in Europe, living at a hotel in Nice. Mr. Koslov left her with ample money for her expenses during his absence, but, according to Dinah, Lydia was tempted by the roulette tables at Monte Carlo and had very bad luck.”
“So she is an incorrigible gambler!”
“Aren’t all Russians?” said Raffles. “Anyway, she’d got herself into a fix—penniless and with a big unpaid bill at the Nice hotel. But she knew that Mr. Koslov and the Nevsky Ballet were on the way back from Canada in the liner Laurentian, due to dock at Liverpool today, so she decided to come to London and be at the station to join Mr. Koslov when he arrives here this evening on the boat-train from the liner.”
“She’d kept at least enough money, then, for her fare from Nice?”
“Apparently not, Bunny. Dinah says that Lydia had to pawn a ring she was wearing. It brought just enough for her fare, with nothing over for food on her journey. So she arrived in London, day before yesterday, in a famished condition—and as she hadn’t dared ask the Nice hotel to release her luggage with her bill unpaid, she couldn’t very well, devoid of money and luggage, expect a hotel here to take her in. But she’d lived in Mayfair when she was married to the gourmet, so she knew of the little garden—and as these June nights are pleasantly warm, she decided just to sit it out in the garden until it came time to go to the station to meet Mr. Koslov.”
“But she arrived the day before yesterday, and he’s not due till this evening!”
“She doesn’t impress one, Bunny, as being an eminently practical person. If it hadn’t been for Dinah, some gardener or constable would certainly have found Lydia in a hunger coma and had her removed to the nearest workhouse infirmary for admission to the ward for indigent females.”
“What a fate!” I exclaimed, appalled.
“Instead, she’s Dinah’s guest,” said Raffles, “and Dinah’s taken her shopping for ‘some necessary millinery, as Lydia has only the clothes she is wearing.’” He smiled a shade wryly. “As the bills for Dinah’s kindly purchases will certainly come to me, and I’m overdrawn at the bank, we’d better go to Ascot again, Bunny, and see if we can back a winner or two.”
In this, we were unsuccessful. Our minds were not really on it. We were out-of-pocket when in the evening we returned to London and called again at the Mayfair hotel—only to be told that the young ladies had been in but had gone out again.
“I heard some mention between them, Mr. Raffles,” said the reception-desk attendant, “of having a hairdressing appointment.”
“We’ll wait for them, then,” Raffles said. “Let us know when they come in. Mr. Manders and I will be in the Billiard Room.”
We had a whisky-and-soda or two and played a hundred-up on the hotel’s excellent billiard table. Raffles seemed restless. Every time he chalked his cue, he took out his gold half hunter for a glance at it.
“Perhaps, Raffles,” I ventured to suggest, as we finished the game and racked our cues, “the girls have gone on from the hairdresser’s to meet Mr. Koslov and the Nevsky Ballet off the boat-train.”
“I wonder,” said Raffles. A thought seemed to strike him. He stood for a moment in frowning abstraction, then said abruptly, “Come on, Bunny.”
“Where to?” I said.
“To Eighty-Eight,” said Raffles.
Aligh
ting presently from a hansom in the ill-lit old street near Drury Lane Theatre, we were admitted to Eighty-Eight by the same sleek footman who had opened the door to us on the previous night. After only a brief wait, we were told that Monsieur Kash would be able to accommodate us.
“You are later this evening, gentlemen,” he said, as he welcomed us in the dining-room, “but a table fell vacant about half an hour ago.”
“But this,” said Raffles, seeing to which table Monsieur Kash was ushering us, “this is table twelve!”
“Madame,” said Monsieur Kash, “has dined.”
My scalp suddenly tingled.
“Yes, gentlemen,” Monsieur Kash said, with an air of suppressed excitement, “finally, on the very last night of the bequest, the long-awaited ballerina has appeared, dined at this appointed table, and has gone her way.”
“Was she alone?” Raffles said.
“Quite alone,” said Monsieur Kash. “Would you care this evening, gentlemen, to select from the menu?”
“We’re content,” Raffles said, “to leave it to you.”
As Monsieur Kash went off, I glanced questioningly at Raffles.
“What in the world,” I said, “can have made her change her mind?”
“It just could be, Bunny,” he said, “that it was the visit to the hairdresser’s.”
His brows knitted and he said no more. I was frankly baffled. At the tables around us, the bon viveurs, napkinned to their double chins, were devoting themselves with a minimum of irrelevant conversation to their absorbed enjoyment of a cleverly conceived and impeccably served alimentation.
For our part, we again failed to give our own dinner the undivided attention it deserved. Raffles, gazing absently at the delicate pink and creamy pale camellias in the cut-glass bowl on the table, was pursuing some train of thought which I strove in vain to divine. “Eat up, Bunny,” he said suddenly, “and let’s get a cab back to the hotel.”
When we reached the Mayfair hotel, we were told by the reception-desk attendant that, yes, the young ladies were in Miss Raffles’ suite.
“We’ll go up,” said Raffles.
As we turned away from the deck, a small man was coming at a run down the carpeted staircase. Though he was wearing a smart suit, light traveling ulster, and corduroy cap, so that his lithe figure and masculine virility were not now emphasized by skin-fitting tights, he was instantly recognizable from the Moscow photograph. From the pallor of his handsome face, the hectic glitter of his dark eyes, he seemed to be in a shaking rage as he raced across the lobby and out into the street, shouting for a cab.
“Koslov the dancer,” said Raffles.
He started upstairs at the double, myself at his heels. He knocked on the door of Dinah’s sitting-room. The door was opened by a svelte, elegantly dressed young woman with raven hair parted in the center and swept softly back to a knot at her nape. Her lips a shade over-rouged, she gazed at us with wide grey eyes, mascara-shadowed and startled.
Raffles said coldly, “I prefer less maquillage and your hair its natural color—fair. What have you been up to, Dinah?”
I followed Raffles into the sitting-room, closed the door, and turned, staring stupefied at his young sister, so subtly changed in appearance.
“You’re going to be furious with me,” she said to him. “I’ve caused an awful row between Lydia and Igor Koslov. You remember Lydia said something about a dinner being served for her every evening? Well, it’s true. She’s told me all about it. The dinners are a queer bequest from her first husband, a kind of food addict. Lydia would rather die than touch them. She said they’d been hanging over her, dragging at her like a kind of fate, for two whole years, and she was thankful that tonight would be the end of them. Well, I suddenly thought it’d be rather fun if she sent somebody else to eat the dinner! It would sort of turn the tables on the gourmet—and Lydia would have the last word, after all, d’you see?”
“In a way,” said Raffles.
“Lydia was horrified when I first suggested it,” Dinah told us, “but then she got as excited as I was. She said that the people at the dinner place had seen her only once, and that was nearly three years ago—but to be on the safe side we went to a famous hairdresser’s salon in Mayfair and asked him to make me look as much like Lydia as possible. He went to great pains to do it.”
“Evidently,” said Raffles.
“It was quite late when we came out of the hairdresser’s,” Dinah went on. “So Lydia went off in a cab to the station to meet Mr. Koslov and the Nevsky Ballet off the boat-train, and I got a cab and went to the dinner place. It’s called Eighty-Eight and only gourmets know of it.”
“Is that so?” said Raffles, expressionless.
“It looked rather dilapidated,” Dinah said, “but a proper footman opened the door to me. I put on a slight foreign accent, like Lydia’s, and showed him the little Moscow photograph and said I understood that table twelve was reserved for me. He said he’d inquire and went off with the photograph, leaving me in a little hallway, then he came back and said that Monsieur Kash found it feasible, and took me to a dining-room, where this Monsieur Kash seemed quite excited to see me. He said he had despaired of ever doing so.”
“Did he indeed?” said Raffles dryly.
“He was awfully kind,” Dinah told us. “He took me to table twelve and made a great fuss over me. So did the waiters. They couldn’t do too much. Even the chefs in the kitchen peered out at me through the service hatch, and they were all smiles. Only the diners at the other tables paid no attention—they just went on stuffing themselves—but the staff were wonderful, so delighted to see me at last and make me feel important. And the food was delicious, though I couldn’t really eat much, I felt too excited—most of all when I finished dinner and Monsieur Kash escorted me to the little hallway and, as he helped me on with my mantle, told me that he had a cab waiting outside and the cabman had instructions to take me to an address where I’d find that I was expected.”
“And you went off in that strange cab?” Raffles said, with a shock I fully snared.
“Oh, it was quite all right,” Dinah assured us. “Monsieur Kash helped me into the cab, and shook hands with me, and said I needn’t feel the least disquiet as the address in Thamescourt Street, where the cabman would take me, was the house of a priest.”
“A priest?” Raffles and I exclaimed.
“Yes,” said Dinah, “and it was just as Monsieur Kash had told me. When I got to the house and pulled the chain of the doorbell, it was a priest in a cassock who opened the door to me. He was awfully kind. He invited me into his study, where the window was wide open and the walls were lined with books, and he introduced a friend of his who was there, an enormous person who wore a cloak and ribboned eyeglasses but seemed quite nice. The priest asked me if I had enjoyed my dinner at Eighty-Eight. I said I had. He said he knew all about the bequest dinners, had come to regard them as ‘manna’ and had been in the habit of collecting it, most evenings, to help feed the poor of his parish. But he said that when he’d called at Eighty-Eight this evening with his friend to collect the last of the manna, they’d been told that I was in the act of eating it all—and, from the doorway of the dining-room, they’d seen me doing it. I felt terribly embarrassed.”
“As well you might,” Raffles said grimly.
“But the priest and his friend just laughed,” Dinah told us, “and the priest said he was delighted to meet me at last. He said he’d heard that I was fond of gambling and he asked what game of hazard especially interested me. So, remembering what Lydia had told me, I said I had a passion for roulette. Then the priest and his friend talked to me about roulette for a while, and it was all quite pleasant—until suddenly an awful thing happened. The priest opened a drawer in his desk and took out a little package. He said it was for me—and that he knew he spoke for his ex-parishioner, the late gourmet, in expressing the hope that I would think very seriously about what I found in the package, and take it to heart.”
�
�Good Lord!” said Raffles.
“I felt simply dreadful,” Dinah confessed. “The package was meant for Lydia, of course, not for me. But all I could do was accept the package, say goodnight to the priest and his friend, and hurry back here to the hotel to give Lydia her mysterious package. But when I rushed into my sitting-room here, I found both Lydia and Igor Koslov waiting for me, and they were having a fearful quarrel—because apparently Lydia had told Igor that she’d let me go to Eighty-Eight in her place, and he was furious with her for having anything to do, even indirectly, with the wretched bequest.”
“A woman’s second husband,” Raffles said, “is understandably sensitive on the subject of her first husband—whether he’s been disposed of by death, as in this case, or merely by legislation.”
“Oh, I know,” said Dinah. “Both Lydia and Igor are terribly Russian and sensitive—and Igor demanded to know everything that had happened. I had to tell him, just as I’ve told you and Bunny. And Igor snatched the package from me and demanded of Lydia what was in it. She said she hadn’t the faintest idea. He ordered her to open it immediately, in his presence. She said she’d have nothing to do with it, in or out of his presence, and she rushed off to her own room—the one you booked for her—and locked herself in. And Igor Koslov tore open the package himself.”
“What was in the package?” Raffles asked.
“A little cardboard box,” said Dinah, “but there was nothing in it!”
“Nothing?” Raffles said.
“Well, nothing,” said Dinah, “except a few words written on a half sheet of notepaper. I didn’t see what the words were, but Igor Koslov went absolutely livid when he read them. He said, ‘By God, I’ll get to the bottom of this!’ He could hardly speak for rage. He crammed the paper into his ulster pocket and rushed out.”
“Very well,” Raffles said. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow about your imprudent escapade, Dinah. Meantime, do something about your hair. Come on, Bunny.”