The DEATH OF COLONEL MANN

by Cynthia Peale

  She must have said yes, because his expression eased a little and he looked up at Margaret, dear Margaret, so faithful all these years, and said to her, “Fetch a cloth and hot water. Hurry, woman—and bring sal volatile, too, if you have any!”

  And then Margaret's face disappeared and Caroline was aware that MacKenzie had awkwardly lowered himself to sit on the floor and was cradling her head in his lap. He was speaking to her, but she could not understand what he said. The next thing she remembered was Margaret coming back.

  Carefully, with a touch as gentle as a woman's, MacKenzie eased her shirtwaist off and cleansed her wound and bound it. A clean wound, he told her, and it would heal well. She was conscious of the pain, but as she kept falling in and out of consciousness, the pain came and went as well.

  Sometime later she realized that someone had put a pillow under her head and a blanket over her supine body. Margaret was bending over her, administering the horrible sal volatile that was meant to bring her out of her faint.

  Feebly, she pushed Margaret's hand away. She hated sal volatile. She would come to on her own. She looked around the room. Dr. MacKenzie was gone. But someone else had been here as well, she remembered. A woman—two. Val— and Isabel Dane.

  With a movement that sent a white-hot stab of agony through her body, Caroline sat up.

  “Where is Val?” she asked.

  “Gone, Miss,” Margaret replied.

  “With—?”

  “Mrs. Dane.”

  With Isabel. And Isabel, she remembered now, had had a gun. Had shot her—and had threatened to kill Val.

  She fainted again.

  IN THE FOG, MACKENZIE WILLED HIMSELF TO IGNORE THE agony in his knee as he hobbled to the end of the square, to Pinckney Street, and stood motionless, listening.

  Where had they gone—that madwoman (for surely she was mad) and Valentine? Valentine, whom he had been told to protect, whom he had failed to protect, and who was now, without doubt, in danger of her life.

  He listened. The fog pressed in at him from all sides, smothering sight, smothering sound— Nothing.

  But then—yes—he heard a sound and he turned, cupping his ear. Impossible to tell from which direction it had come, and yet he had heard it, he was sure.

  “Mrs. Dane!” he called. “Are you there?” Immediately, he cursed himself. If it were Isabel Dane, she would not answer him.

  But something was there—something, or someone, coming at him from out of the fog from the other end of the square. He started toward it, limping badly now, in no condition to go after anyone, let alone a madwoman carrying a gun.

  He tried to hurry, but his knee was on fire. He gritted his teeth as he put his weight on it, his cane slipping on the treacherous wet bricks, and then he was falling, crashing to the ground once again, and this time, he knew, for good—right in front of No. 16½, he realized as he saw the face of Addington Ames loom over him.

  “Where is Val?” Ames demanded, crouching beside him.

  “Gone,” gasped MacKenzie. In a few words, he told Ames what had happened. “But Miss Ames will be all right,” he added. “The bullet went clean through her shoulder. It is Miss Thorne who is in danger.” He broke off with a groan. “I failed you.”

  With a muttered oath, Ames helped the doctor to his feet and into the house, into Margaret's care. Then, with a word to his sister, he was gone, out into the night once more.

  Find Val, he thought. Find her before Isabel Dane can kill her, too. She has killed twice in this affair, and she tried to kill Caroline and Mrs. Vincent. Another death will make no difference to her.

  He loped along the square to Mt. Vernon Street. He stopped at the corner to listen. Nothing: the fog swallowed all sound. He might have been alone in this silent white world.

  Carefully, he inched his way down the steep slope to West Cedar Street. He held his breath, straining to hear. At the corner, he paused again.

  “Val?”

  No answer. No sound of women's boot heels tap-tapping along the brick sidewalks, no cry for help from Val, no warning shout from Isabel Dane.

  Cautiously he moved along West Cedar Street, but after a moment he turned back. Where would Isabel go? Not this way.

  At Mt. Vernon Street again, he turned down to Charles. Suddenly, clattering down the hill behind him, he heard the sound of carriage wheels, the thudding impact of horses' hooves on the slippery cobblestones. A runaway carriage— and in this fog, hurtling at such speed, it would surely collide with the mass of stalled traffic at the foot of the hill.

  He leaped forward, but even as he reached the curb and stumbled over it into the street, the carriage tore past him, a dark, speeding shape in the fog-drenched night, come and gone all in an instant. He'd had a glimpse of the driver—a woman. Not Val, he thought. Mrs. Dane? And is Val inside with Isabel Dane at the reins, trying to escape, so that even in this blinding, killing fog she risks their lives—?

  “Addington!” She appeared out of the darkness like a wraith, and she ran to him and clung to him for her life. He was surprised at how small she seemed, small and delicate and yet very much alive, her beautiful face wet with tears, her corseted body shuddering, shivering, without jacket or cape.

  He started to murmur reassurance, but before he could say more than a few words, she gasped, “Mrs. Dane is trying to escape! She—”

  A woman's shriek tore through Val's words, followed by the sound of a crash. And then, even in the fog, even over the sound of splintering wood and grinding, snapping metal, he heard another, even more anguished cry. A death shriek it was, and no mistake: someone mortally wounded.

  Val froze in his arms. She turned her head toward Charles Street, which lay below, a tangled mass of traffic, and if that runaway carriage had hurtled into it—

  Heedless now of the danger, and with Val clinging to him, he slipped and slid down the last steep slope. In the swirling fog, illuminated by the blurred, haloed streetlights and the even feebler sidelights of the massed vehicles, he could make out the figures of men running. The breakaway carriage, its horses down, was directly before him. It lay on its side, its wheels spinning, the crowd pressing in around it.

  “Stay back!” he ordered Val, but she would not.

  “It is Mrs. Dane,” she cried, although she could not see for the throng.

  Ames pushed his way through the circle of men. Someone held a torch, and by its ruddy, flickering light he saw a woman lying in the street, trapped under a front wheel. Men were trying to lift the vehicle, to move it and free her, but the downed horses were thrashing, terrified, impeding the rescue. One of them had a compound fracture; in the light of the torch, he could see the broken leg bone protruding through bloody flesh. It would need to be put down, he thought.

  Heedless of the remonstrances of the bystanders, Ames crouched so that his face was close to Isabel Dane's. Her eyes were wide; blood flowed from the corner of her mouth, choking her as she tried to speak.

  And now, as the men heaved the carriage one last time to free her, Val knelt and cradled Mrs. Dane's head in her lap. All around them, people were crying for a doctor to come, but Val saw that it was too late for a doctor, no matter how great his skill.

  Mrs. Dane stared up at her, straining to speak, and Val bent her head to hear.

  “I did not mean to hurt you,” Mrs. Dane whispered. “He —the Colonel—forced me to it. He insisted…” She paused, choking. “He insisted on having information. About you… about anyone. I had to give your letters to him, or he would have ruined Alice.”

  “There, there,” Val crooned. Scalding tears blinded her for a moment, and she dashed them away. “We will get you to the hospital, Mrs. Dane, and—”

  “No.” Isabel Dane, with a great effort, shook her head. She stared up at the circle of faces above her, and her eyes fell on Ames. She whispered something, but he could not hear what she said and so he bent low, putting his ear to her bloody mouth.

  “I did it… for Alice…” she said. “Marian… and
Colonel Mann.”

  “And Mrs. Vincent?” he said urgently. “Was it you who shot at her at the theater?” For Longworth's sake, he needed to know.

  “Yes. For Alice. And I… almost succeeded….”

  TWO DAYS LATER, AT DUSK ON A COLD AND BLUSTERY AF ternoon, they sat in the parlor at No. 161/2 and watched Valentine as she fed her letters, one by one, into the simmering sea-coal fire. For a moment, before she let go of the last one, she hesitated; she held it, staring at it, and yet, Caroline thought, perhaps she did not see it. Perhaps she saw the menacing face of Colonel Mann; or Isabel Dane's, maddened with fear; or perhaps she saw her lifelong friend, Alice Dane, fainting at the Cotillion because a woman named Marian Trask had spoken to her and, in speaking, had signed her own death warrant.

  With a sudden, almost violent movement, Val thrust the last letter into the fire. It caught at once; its edges blackened and curled, smoking, and then it burst into a blossom of bright flame before being consumed into ashes. They all watched it; no one spoke.

  Then Val turned to Caroline. “Will Alice recover, Caro?”

  Caroline lay half reclining on the old fainting couch brought down from the attic for her convalescence. She felt better today, not so weak, but it would be a good long time, she knew, before she recovered completely. The pain in her shoulder had lessened somewhat, but she still could not move without agony.

  “I think she will,” she said, but in truth she did not know. She had had a telegram from Dr. Hannah: “She is in hospital stop Fair prognosis stop.” Dr. Hannah had referred, she understood, to Alice's physical condition; her mental state was something else again. “But when she comes home she will need you, Val.”

  “Yes,” Valentine said softly. She stayed sitting on the low stool before the fire, her exquisite profile clear and clean against the cast-iron fireback. “Yes, she will need me—and I will need her, as well.” She smiled: a sight that gladdened Caroline's heart. “Mary Leicester plans to go to Rome next month,” she said. “I thought I would go with her. Alice could come, too. We could winter there, and in the spring we can go to the South of France. You could join us then, Caro. Could you do that? Would you?”

  “Oh—” Caroline was momentarily flustered. Visiting the South of France had never been something she'd even remotely considered. “I don't know, dearest. We'll see.”

  Val managed a laugh. “I know what that means. All during my childhood, ‘We'll see’ meant ‘Probably not.’ But think about it—do!”

  MacKenzie shifted in his chair, his bad leg with its damaged knee stretched out on an ottoman before him. A setback, Dr. Warren had said; let us hope it won't be permanent. He lifted a copy of that morning's newspaper from where it lay on the floor beside him. Serena Vincent's name appeared there in a headline in large black type.

  “And Mrs. Vincent?” he said. “Can she survive involvement in this second scandal?”

  Ames, who had been far away in his thoughts, came back. “I have no doubt,” he said, “that in this instance, the publicity will help her career. And if it does not—”

  What then, for that beautiful woman with her “past,” her dubious lifestyle? She could go to New York, he thought; or, if that were not far enough, to London, to Paris, Vienna—

  The thought of Serena Vincent in any of those places made him feel surprisingly unhappy. Here in Boston, he might never see her again, but all the same he liked to think she would be here; he did not want her to go away.

  The door knocker sounded. They waited tensely while Margaret answered. We will never be truly tranquil again, Caroline thought, not after this. Always, when we hear that knocking, we will have a moment when we dread to learn who has come, and with what bad news.

  They heard a man's voice. Let it not be Inspector Crip-pen, Caroline prayed. But when Margaret slid open the pocket doors and showed in their visitor, it was Desmond Delahanty, red-faced from the cold and holding a sheaf of foolscap.

  He greeted them all with something less than his usual good cheer, settled himself among them, and accepted the cup of tea that Valentine put into his red, chapped hands.

  “Glad to see you looking so well, Miss Ames,” he said, nodding at Caroline. “Mind you don't exert yourself too much these next few weeks.”

  “I couldn't exert myself if I wanted to, Mr. Delahanty, and in any case, I don't. What is it you have there—a new composition?”

  Delahanty shook his head. “No. Well, yes, in a way. I thought you might be able to tell me whom to give it to—or whether to give it to anyone at all—now that—ah—”

  “Your script for the Christmas Revels,” Ames said. He put out his hand, and Delahanty gave him the scribbled papers. “Caroline, do you think there will be a production of the Revels this year?”

  “I doubt it. Now that Isabel is—”

  “Yes. So perhaps, Desmond, you'll want to keep this.” And then, at the look on Delahanty's face: “Or perhaps you won't. I beg your pardon.”

  Delahanty sipped his tea. “I had a bad feeling about it all along, you know. About the script, I mean. I felt it was a waste of effort, that it would never be used. At the time, I thought that was because Mrs. Dane would not be satisfied with whatever I wrote, no matter how good I thought it was. But now I see…”

  “Yes,” Caroline interjected. “You were right in what you felt, but for the wrong reason.”

  “Poor woman,” Delahanty murmured. “She had—”

  The door knocker sounded once more, and he broke off as they waited for Margaret. She entered bearing the silver card tray and presented it to Ames.

  “Splendid!” he exclaimed as he took the card and read the name of the caller. “Show him in!”

  In the next moment, a slight, gray-haired, bearded man appeared. Caroline did not know him, but her brother obviously did; he rose from his chair, seized the man's hand, and gave it a hearty shake.

  “Professor James! Delighted to see you!”

  “I hope I am not intruding,” James said. “But I was in the neighborhood, and I wanted to see how you were getting on.”

  He greeted the other two men, and Ames introduced him to the women and settled him near Caroline. She could not help staring at him, although she did it as discreetly as possible. He was famous, she knew, and for something she found rather intimidating: studying people's minds, their thoughts both conscious and unconscious (although what “unconscious” meant she could hardly imagine). She was somewhat reassured when James turned to her and said gently, “And how are you, Miss Ames?”

  “Well enough, thank you.”

  News of her injury at Isabel's hands had not appeared in the papers, thank heaven, and how Addington had managed that she had no idea. But word of it had obviously gotten out, as she'd known it inevitably would.

  She smiled at him. Really, she thought, he was not intimidating at all.

  Over his shoulder, she saw the small hole in the door-jamb. She couldn't seem to stop looking at it these past two days. Addington had found the bullet, had given it to the police. No word yet on whether it matched the others, but she knew it would. And then at last, perhaps, her name would appear in the newspapers. Well, she'd deal with it when it happened, would hold her head high and simply ignore the gossip.

  James's gaze shifted to the novel on the table beside her. She'd finished it last night and had begun to read it all over again; she did that often with books she particularly liked.

  “I see we share a fondness for the work of Miss Strange-ways,” he said, smiling back at her.

  And then, because her surprise must have shown on her face, he added, “I find her stories to be very entertaining. And quite good in her characters' motivations. Motivation is everything, isn't it, in fiction as in life?”

  “Well—yes—I—” Caroline could think of nothing to say that would not sound foolish. The august, the world-renowned Professor William James—an admirer of Diana Strangeways!

  “In fact,” he said, leaning toward her as if to impart a confidence
, “I will confess to you that I find her stories much more readable—and enjoyable—than my brother Henry's efforts.” In a theatrical gesture, he put his finger to his lips. “But you must never tell anyone that I said so! Bad for family relationships, you know.”

  And then he laughed, and Caroline laughed with him, and the tension in the room dissolved as they all relaxed.

  They chatted easily for a while, and then the professor said it was time for him to go. Ames saw him out, and he stood by the bow window to watch him as he made his way along the square. It had begun to snow, the lavender-colored flakes shimmering down through the light of the streetlamps.

  Motivation, James had said. The one who had the most to lose.

  And that had been not Serena Vincent, not even Richard Longworth, but Isabel Dane. Or so she had thought, in that frenzy of social striving and ambition and greed that was her world.

  It was a fierce world, he thought. Harsh and unforgiving, as much a battlefield as in any war.

  The snow was falling more heavily now, shrouding the streetlamps in lavender-tinted clouds, covering the cobblestone street and the steps of the houses, the autumn-dead greenery in the oval.

  A fierce world, in which the women fought more bitterly than the men. To the very death, they fought.

  He reached up to close the shutters against the night.

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  IT SOMETIMES HAPPENS THAT WRITERS GET LUCKY: WE SER-endipitously discover a character more intriguing, or more outlandish, than many of those who come to us through our imaginations.

  Such a character was Colonel William d'Alton Mann. The moment I found him, I recognized him for what he was: a perfect murder victim. And so, changing his middle name to one I liked better, I appropriated him and moved him to Boston from his Gilded Age bailiwick, Manhattan. There, for an amazing number of years, the real Colonel Mann published his scurrilous newspaper, Town Topics, and extorted money from the city's wealthiest and most socially prominent citizens to keep their names—and their scandal—out of it.