The Isle of Devils

by Craig Janacek

  “Ah, now look at this!” he exclaimed, handing me one of the papers.

  It appeared to be a receipt for a deposit at the bank of Cox & Co. at 16 Charing Cross, London. “This is one of the most reputable banks in all of England,” said I. “Certainly if I had anything of value to my name, I would deposit it there. But the description of exactly what he deposited is maddingly unclear.”

  “I agree,” said Dunkley, dejectedly.

  Just then a smeared and partially-torn newspaper clipping fluttered out of the pile. It looked as if it had once been crumpled up and then smoothed out again. I picked it up and read though it quickly.

  I showed it to the constable. “I wonder why Monsieur Dumas was so interested in this particular article that he saw fit to save it?”

  Dunkley nodded. “This is an excellent question, Doctor. Notice that the two men, LaRue and Dumas, were both shot to death in a hotel. These crimes are too similar to be a coincidence.”

  He was about to turn his attention to the rest of the room when I stooped down to pluck a piece of paper that had slipped behind the table. This proved to be quite different from the others. Rather than the methodical receipts, this was a crudely-scrawled letter. It was written with a violet-tinted lead-pencil on a half-sheet of cheap, thin slate-gray-tinted notepaper without watermark. It was headed “October 31” and beneath this were the following enigmatical lines, a facsimile of which is here reproduced.

  “What do you make of this, Doctor?” Dunkley asked with evident puzzlement.

  “The penmanship is at great odds with the tone of the letter,” I said. “The writing is hardly legible, as if the man was barely literate, and yet he freely uses a Latin term. It reads as though it were an appointment. Very strange,” I concluded, glancing up from the message to find the constable pensively stroking his trim beard.

  “Perhaps it was an educated man attempting to disguise his hand. But it is indisputably the hand of a man, don’t you think?”

  I nodded. “Yes, a man with the initial ‘B.’”

  “Are you aware of any of the guests with such an initial?” inquired Dunkley.

  I tried to recall the names of all of my fellow lodgers. “Yes, there are two. One is Mr. Sims, whose given name is ‘Bruce.’ The second is Mr. Bey, the man who fetched you. Of course, Mr. Sims drank from the same wine bottle as me and Dumas, so he could not possibly have been in a fit state to murder anyone.”

  “How can you be certain that he actually drank the wine? Perhaps he only pretended to?” hypothesized Dunkley.

  “I may not recall the end of the night, but I do clearly remember him drinking deeply from the first glass. And I do not know how he could have faked the constricted pupils that I witnessed this morning.”

  “Hmmm,” Dunkley appeared to be pondering this bit of information. “So, the first ‘B’ does not appear to be a suspect, but what about the second? Mr. Bey seemed like a cool customer, not overly distraught by the sight of a dead man.”

  “Not everyone is,” I pointed out. “Especially if they have been around one before.”

  “True,” admitted Dunkley. “Though we will need to determine where Mr. Bey has seen so much death. And we will need a sample of every man’s handwriting.”

  “Everyone’s?” said I, surprised.

  “Of course, Doctor. If Mr. Dumas can fake his name, as I suspect he did, so can any of Mrs. Foster’s guests.”

  Dunkley moved over to a portmanteau that rested upon a little stand, and proceeded to unpack and inspect the dead man’s travelling bag. From the very top, he drew forth a pair of large light brown canvas work-gloves, heavily stained with something black. “Ah!” Dunkley exclaimed. “Well, we shall not need to inspect the hands of your fellow lodgers.”

  I frowned in relative incomprehension. “I’m not certain that I understand, Constable.”

  “Look at these black stains, Doctor. This is clearly gunpowder. And more gunpowder than one shot would produce. But seven shots from the Colt? Yes, that could produce this amount of staining. Our murderer clearly wore these gloves to avoid the development of incriminating powder stains on his hands.”

  “But they were in Dumas’ bag. Surely they could belong to him? He could have used them for target practice.”

  Dunkley shook his head. “I think not, Doctor. Look at the size of these gloves. Compare them to the dead man’s hands. Do you think that he would have owned gloves that size?”

  Taking the gloves from him, I quickly ascertained that he was correct. The gloves were huge. Only a very large man would have hands big enough to call for gloves like this. “But the only man who has hands this size is Mister….” my voice trailed off, wonderingly.

  “Sims,” said Dunkley, finishing my thought. “Yes, very interesting indeed. Either Mr. Sims has a remarkable tolerance for whatever drug you both ingested, or someone very much wants us to believe that Mr. Sims is the guilty party. Remember, Doctor, that the gloves were left here for us to find. They could have very easily been taken away and secreted somewhere in the hotel. Our murderer would have had time this morning to smuggle them out for destruction or burying or dropping in the ocean.” He placed the gloves into his evidence bag and turned his attention back to the portmanteau.

  “Ah, yes, here is another interesting item,” said Dunkley. It was another piece of paper, but in stark contrast to the other note. This held but two words, written with a broad-pointed pen in an indelible ink on a sheet of fine thick blue-tinted stationary. The blocky handwriting showed no similarity to either Dumas’ crabbed notes, or the illegible scrawl of the unknown ‘Mr. B.’ The constable held it up to the light to show the watermark, which read ‘Scott, Phil.’ Dunkley nodded in satisfaction. “American paper,” he concluded. But the words made little sense. The first was ‘MOREAU,’ while the second was ‘ÉMERAUDE.’ “What do you make of this, Doctor?”

  I shook my head in complete mystification. “Moreau is a French painter. Perhaps it is a reference to a painting?”

  “I don’t see how that is relevant,” said Dunkley. “Now this is most unusual,” he said. He held up a three-inch circular piece of bronze, most carefully wrapped in some fine Eastern silk. On it was an equestrian portrait of a soldier, who appeared to be the American General Washington. He was surrounded by an intricate wreath of cotton, tobacco, sugarcane, corn, wheat, and rice. Around the edges were inscribed the words:

  “What is it?” I asked wonderingly.

  Dunkley shook his head. “A seal of some sort. And a dangerous item, proclaiming loyalty to a vanquished nation. I would not be surprised if this was a motive for his death, especially since the other murdered man in the newspaper was also involved with the Confederacy.”

  The only other item of note in the luggage was a solid-frame, double-action revolver, with a fluted cylinder and blued finish, and which I recognized as a MAS 1874 pistol common in the French army. The remainder of the man’s clothes appeared unremarkable. Dunkley hefted the man’s handsome cane. “Hmmm,” he mused, “this is no ordinary cane. You should feel its weight, Doctor. It appears to have been fortified with lead. He fidgeted with the cane for a moment, and then it made a clicking noise. With a sudden movement, Dunkley separated the cane into two sections, an external sheath and a short but wickedly-sharp sword. “Hah! Hardly the cane for a gentlemanly stroll about town! This is a formidable weapon. I wonder what Mr. Dumas had to fear.”

  “He clearly knew that his life was in danger.” I quickly briefed the constable on my conversation with Dumas two nights prior.

  “Very interesting, Doctor,” he mused. “Very interesting, indeed! Here we have a man who feared both assassins bearing weapons and ghosts pouring poison. And yet he fell prey to both attacks in one night. Very careless.”

  “I doubt that he ever imagined that his murderer would be so reckless as to poison multiple innocent bystanders. He must have felt safe enough to drink the comet vintage with us. Normally, I believe that he only drank from his own bottle.”

>   “Yes, indeed,” agreed Dunkley. “And that leads us to this.” He indicated the final possession of note in the room, a green bottle on the dressing table. It was a French long-neck flowerpot-shaped bottle, with very thick walls of a dark grass green color and a blistery inclusion at the bottom. The seal proclaimed that the bottle contained a fifty-year-old Calvados from Normandy. “The cork is still in place,” he noted, “and the bottle is full and very heavy. Dumas must have been saving this one for a special occasion.”

  “I am not certain how that helps us, Constable.”

  Dunkley pursed his lips and shook his head in a perturbed fashion. “I am not certain either, Doctor. But I don’t like this case at all. It is a real snorter.”

  “It seems to be that there are plenty of clues, you should have no problem tracking down the murderer and quickly making an arrest.” said I, consolingly.

  “That is the very problem, Doctor. This would appear to be my red-letter day. But there are far too many clues in this room. How are we to distinguish the essential from the rubbish? Look at this body,” he pointed. “What do you make of it?”

  I turned my full attention to the body and pondered of what use I may be to the constable. Might not the nature of the injuries reveal something to my medical instincts? But the cause of death was quite plain. Seven gunshots were not a subtle finding. There were the mysterious painted letters on his forehead, of course, and the strange coins on his eyes. But what could it all indicate? I cudgeled my brain to find some possible explanation. What a tissue of mysteries and improbabilities the whole thing was! “I have no plausible explanation, Constable,” I finally admitted.

  “It seems to me that the coins are a clear sign to one of the guests. Is this not a payment to enter the underworld? And is not one of the guests a Greek? Mr. Delopolous, I believe is his name?”

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Constable, but that is a false conclusion. Charon’s obol was a coin that the Greeks placed into the mouths of their deceased relatives and friends so that they could pay the ferryman to take them across the rivers Styx and Acheron, and thence hopefully to the fields of Elysium. The Greeks did not place the coin on the eyes, nor would they have done it for a bitter enemy, which presumably Dumas was, or he would not have been murdered in the first place.”

  Dunkley pursed his lips as he considered this information. Finally, he nodded slowly. “That is fine reasoning, Doctor. So Mr. Delopolous is not our suspect. But perhaps our murderer does not possess as fine a Classical education as yourself? Perhaps he was trying to throw suspicion towards the Greek, expecting that I would think this was a Greek custom?”

  I agreed that this was a plausible hypothesis. “One thing that bothers me is that Dumas’ pistol was clear across the room, as was his sword cane. He seemed too paranoid to make such a mistake.”

  “But he was drugged, Doctor,” pointed out the constable.

  “True, but I think Dumas would have things arranged in advance. Aha!” exclaimed I, carefully reaching under the pillow beneath his head and extracting a unique jack-knife. The blade was about six inches long, and the black ebony handle was inscribed with yet another set of mysterious initials: “L.E.” and a well-worn symbol that looked like a flame arising from a ring.

  “What is it?” exclaimed Dunkley.

  I shook my head in confusion. “I do not know.”

  “Very interesting, Doctor. To what society did our Mr. Dumas belong, I wonder? And then there is this.” He pointed to a red stain on the far side of the bed. The sheets had become saturated with blood and a few spots had clearly dripped onto the floor. But the spots had been smeared by someone stepping upon them. “Look at that bloodstain. The pattern is most unusual. I am at a loss to explain what type of shoe has a sole that leaves such a featureless print.”

  I stared at the smudge of blood for a moment before responding. “What if it’s not a shoe? A soft-soled bed-slipper might make such a mark.”

  Dunkley laughed. “That’s brilliant, Doctor! Of course you are right, but that only muddles things further,” said he, shaking his head in despair. “Think of the picture that we are compiling: Mr. B drugs at least two innocents to get at his mark, and then climbs up a ladder to Dumas’ room in his bed-slippers during a terrible storm. ‘Mr. B’ then proceeds to don a pair of giant gloves, shoot the mark seven times – which required a re-load of the pistol! – all the time trusting his great fortune that the two men whose rooms were close enough to hear the gunshots just so happened to be the ones that were bystanders in his drugging scheme. ‘Mr. B’ then places two coins on Dumas’ eyes, writes two letters on his forehead in paint, neglects to steal any gold sovereigns or bank-notes, and departs again via the window in his blood-stained slippers. Who would believe such a tale? It’s outlandish!”

  I could not argue with his assessment of the situation, and only shook my head in bewildered commiseration. I finally corrected him on one part of his narrative. “It’s not absolutely certain that the murderer came in via the window. Only that he left that way. It’s still possible that he came in through the main door, with some sort of lock-picking tool, and then bolted it behind him in order to have time to initiate his escape in the event that the gunshots awoke the hotel.”

  Dunkley finally shook off his dark musings. “That is a good point, Doctor,” he nodded. “Well, there is little else to glean here, I think. Let’s repair downstairs and examine the ladder in the garden. After that we can begin to question the other guests.”

  We closed the door behind us as best we could given the damage done to it by Mr. Sims’ giant frame and I led the way as we twisted through the corridor back to the staircase. When we reached the landing, I was about to descend, when Dunkley stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. “Hold a minute, Doctor. What do you make of this?”

  I looked over at a small side table nestled against the cedar railing that separated the open staircase from the landing. On it rested a copy of the prior day’s Royal Gazette and a handful of small glass shards of varied colors. I failed to see what had attracted his attention. “What is it?”

  “The glass. I did not notice it in my haste to reach the dead man’s room. Was it there when you passed through this morning?”

  I stared at the pieces of glass, which summed to a total nine and were a mixture of mostly deep green shards, with two that were a lighter blue color. I wracked my brain to try to remember. “I’m sorry, Constable, but I cannot recall. On my way down, I was still rather befuddled by the drug, and on our way up, we were in a rush to confront Mr. Dumas. But I don’t understand the significance of the shards. Was something broken here?”

  He shook his head. “No, Doctor. Look at those worn edges. This glass was not recently broken. This is sea-glass.”

  “Sea-glass?” I inquired.

  “As I am certain that you know by now, Bermuda is ringed by treacherous reefs which have spelled the end of many a ship. When those ships go down, so does their cargo, including many glass bottles. Over time, most of those bottles break apart. Then the sand etches the pieces and the waves tumble them about until they obtain this uniquely smooth shape and color.”

  “But what do they have to do with anything?” I protested.

  “Perhaps nothing,” shrugged Dunkley. “But why are they here? Nothing about this murder makes any sense, and I don’t like things that are out of place. We will need to ascertain if anyone knows how this sea-glass appeared here. As you said, the murderer could have entered Dumas’ room via the corridor. Did the mysterious Mr. B leave this sea-glass behind? And if so, why?”

  I shook my head again in confusion and began to descend the creaking staircase, a thought entered my mind. “One thing is for certain, Constable, whoever killed Dumas was not staying in the downstairs bedchamber.”

  “Why do you say that, Doctor?”

  “Climbing these stairs would be nigh impossible without awakening all of the inhabitants of the closest rooms.”

  Dunkley appeared to consider t
his. “That is an interesting observation, Doctor. I must ponder that one. As far as I can tell, no one in this hotel could have killed Dumas. And yet the man is indisputably dead, and not by his own hand. It is our job to find out who the person is that could – and had a reason to – kill the man, creating such a bizarre spectacle in his wake.”

  §

  CHAPTER XI

  THE EVIDENCE OF THE PROPRIETRESS

  With a befogged mind, I finished descending the stairs, only to find Mrs. Foster waiting for us in the entryway with a look upon her face that indicated either extreme agitation or excitement.

  “I have discovered something, Harry!” exclaimed the lady, and addressing Constable Dunkley by his given name, clearly forgetting in her eagerness that he was present on official business.