The Case of the Exploding Speakeasy

by David E. Fessenden

  THE CASE OF THE EXPLODING SPEAKEASY BY DAVID E. FESSENDEN

  Published by Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas

  2333 Barton Oaks Dr., Raleigh, NC, 27614

  ISBN 9781938499852

  Copyright © 2013 by David E. Fessenden

  Cover design by Ken Raney, www.kenraney.com

  Book design by Reality Info Systems, www.realityinfo.com

  Available in print from your local bookstore, online, or from the publisher at:

  www.lighthousepublishingofthecarolinas.com

  For more information on this book and the author visit:

  www.ExplodingSpeakeasy.com

  All rights reserved. Non-commercial interests may reproduce portions of this book without the express written permission of Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas, provided the text does not exceed 500 words.

  When reproducing text from this book, include the following credit line:

  “The Case of the Exploding Speakeasy by David E. Fessenden published by Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas. Used by permission.”

  Use of the Sherlock Holmes characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle by permission of Conan Doyle Estate Ltd., www.conandoyleestate.co.uk

  Commercial interests: No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by the United States of America copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are all products of the author’s imagination or are used for fictional purposes. Any mentioned brand names, places, and trade marks remain the property of their respective owners, bear no association with the author or the publisher, and are used for fictional purposes only.

  Brought to you by the creative team at LighthousePublishingoftheCarolinas.com: Denise Loock, Brian Cross, Eddie Jones, Rowena Kuo, and Meaghan Burnett

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Fessenden, David E.

  The Case of the Exploding Speakeasy / David E. Fessenden 1st ed.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Praise for

  The Case of the Exploding

  Speakeasy

  The Case of the Exploding Speakeasy is a good yarn and fun to read . . . a pleasing extension of the Sherlock Holmes series into a new generation and the New World. In the end, the scene is set for more adventures. I hope they won’t be long in coming.

  ~Steve Dunham

  Editor and Writer

  Like a plate of cookies on my desk, The Case of the Exploding Speakeasy is tough to resist. I love the wit of the interior dialogue.

  ~Tim Shoemaker

  Speaker and Author of the Code of Silence series

  Intrigue, suspense, a hint of romance, and laugh-out-loud humor ignite The Case of the Exploding Speakeasy. Dave Fessenden writes a page-turner whodunit that does not disappoint.

  ~Elaine W. Miller

  Speaker and Author of We All Married Idiots

  With superb character development, a riveting storyline, escalating intrigue, and a final twist that you didn’t see coming, The Case of the Exploding Speakeasy brings the Holmes/Watson adventures to a new generation both then and now. Do you have the eyes to spot the all-important clues scattered through a narrative that artfully draws you in? Bet you can’t guess the outcome of this case! I dare you—pick it up and give it a try.

  ~John Kitchen

  Senior Pastor, Stow Alliance Fellowship, Stow, OH

  Author of Revival in the Rubble

  From its whacky title to the bombshell ending, Dave Fessenden’s The Case of the Exploding Speakeasy is a delight, worthy of the most esteemed detective novels. Well-crafted and with a cast of colorful characters, Speakeasy will make you laugh out loud, scratch your chin as you consider “who dun it,” and maybe even shed a tear over its surprising twists of tenderness. Conan Doyle himself would approve. Don’t miss this one!

  ~Rebecca Price Janney

  Historian and Author of 18 books, including

  The Heather Reed Mystery Series

  For Sam, my father-in-law,

  who loaned me the first Sherlock Holmes

  book I ever read, and for my sons,

  Jay and Dan,

  who have encouraged me to write stories.

  Acknowledgements

  If I named all those who helped me in this, my first novel, it would be far too long and read like a phone book.

  I can’t, however, neglect to thank the folks at Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas—Eddie Jones, Denise Loock, and Rowena Kuo—for all their help and support.

  I owe a lot to many early readers of the manuscript, especially those at Pat Rushford’s workshop at Oregon Christian Writers’ Conference, to Marlene Bagnull, Rebecca Price Janney, Carol Wedeven . . . and yes, it’s starting to sound like a phone book, so I better stop now. So sorry I can’t name you all.

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  CHAPTER 1

  When Basil Meridan peered through the keyhole and saw the face of his dead employer, he probably had no idea how drastically his life was about to change—again. By the time I met him, however, the full weight of his predicament must have begun to settle on him.

  It was early evening as Basil, a former English butler, prepared to deliver the first round of drinks to the weekly card game that had just begun in the back room of Harry Ragan’s speakeasy. Basil arranged a set of mugs in a circle around the outside of a serving tray, and in the center he set a foaming pitcher of beer (he had long ago learned not to call it a carafe). Despite the unappreciative audience, he continued to practice the highest standards of serving, and part of that was arrangement on the tray.

  After tugging his waistcoat into position and straightening his blue-and-yellow striped tie, Basil picked up the tray and strode down the hall, his spine ramrod straight, until he reached a small door. This led to the back room, from which could usually be heard the muffled rattle of poker chips, punctuated occasionally by a loud guffaw from the holder of a winning hand.

  But this time, not a sound came from behind the locked door. Basil’s stomach fluttered slightly, for he knew the silence meant that the delicate veneer of friendliness surrounding the game had peeled away. Harry Ragan loved his friends, but he loved his winnings more.

  With a shaking hand, Basil rapped on the door. The sound was like a gunshot in the quietness, but he received no response. After waiting some moments, Basil bent down and peeked through the keyhole.

  Framed in the keyhole was his employer, Harry Ragan, his face contorted in a look of pure rage.

  Crouched in front of the door, frozen in an awkward pose, Basil continued to stare. The elegantly placed pitcher of beer slid slowly to the edge of the tray and tumbled to the floor, spilling its contents on Basil’s aging patent-leather shoes
. Still he squatted, transfixed by the image in the keyhole. Suddenly noticing the dampness around his ankle, he rose unsteadily to a standing position and straightened his spine like a soldier at attention. He balanced the tray in his left hand as he gave his waistcoat another habitual tug and, with an uncharacteristic stumble, headed back to the kitchen for a rag. He had just set down the tray on the kitchen counter when the building was rocked by an explosion, which, as Basil later described it, “knocked me on my nether regions.”

  But I’m getting ahead of my story. Perhaps I should start with how I became entangled in the mysterious demise of Harry Ragan.

  I was sitting at my desk tapping out the details of yet another obituary (pretty dreary stuff, but as a cub reporter on the Philadelphia Herald in 1926, I had little choice in what I worked on) when my editor, Charlie Rosenbaum, handed me a report that had just come over the telegraph from London. “You may relate to this obit, Watson,” he commented cheerfully. “He’s a Britisher, like yourself. Even has the same last name. Do some research and find out what makes him important enough to merit time on the transatlantic cable.”

  “He’s my father,” I replied, choking out the words. “I only heard about it last night.”

  Charlie’s eyebrows rose and his teeth clenched a bit tighter on the stem of his pipe. “Hmm. Small world. Then I suppose you don’t need to do much research.”

  I sighed and began typing. After years of using a typewriter, I was still amazed at how the words appeared out of nowhere amid the clatter of the metal levers.

  John Watson, M.D., associate and biographer of the late and celebrated Sherlock Holmes, private consulting detective, died suddenly last week . . .

  Oh, brother. I wonder how many newspapermen have been charged with the task of writing their own father’s obituary. I suppose my dad would have found a rich irony in all this. I gathered that he was opposed to my choice of profession, though he never expressed it outright. Mr. Holmes, on the other hand, had been quite free with his opinion.

  When I had announced my intent to leave for America to seek a newspaper job, Mr. Holmes (still alive then, though very frail) had little goodwill to offer. “Those rags! They never get anything right!” he had said, huddled in his chair by the fire. “You should take up a nobler profession.”

  Though my father, I always assumed, secretly shared his old friend’s opinion, he had risen to my defense. “Now, Holmes,” he had said, “you know that once Thomas sets his mind to an idea, there’s no turning him back. And as for the profession of journalism”—and here he must have choked down his true feelings—“I’ll admit it has its faults. But perhaps Thomas can make some improvements.”

  “Watson, you should be ashamed!” Holmes’s voice rang with a righteous tone. “As the boy’s father, it’s up to you to speak some sense to him.” He had turned to me with a withering gaze, his lower lip wobbling uncontrollably. “I recall,” he had said, passing a bony hand across his forehead, “I say, I recall using the local dailies to set a trap for a smuggler. What was the name you gave that case, Watson?”

  “It was ‘The Adventure of the Six Napoleons’,” my father had answered, strolling across the room and laying a protective hand on the bookshelf containing his published volumes. As the detective’s great mind faded, my father’s, it seemed, had grown sharper. Age has a way of evening things out.

  “Yes, ‘The Adventure of the Six Napoleons’,” Mr. Holmes had repeated, his protruding jaw chewing on every word. “I gave that reporter patently false information, but he printed every word. How can you respect a profession which allows itself to so easily be led astray?”

  I had remained silent out of respect, but my father had just been warming up to the verbal battle. He sat down and faced the old detective. “Holmes, you can’t condemn an entire profession on the actions of one man!”

  “But there were many other times, with many other papers. I tell you, I often solved the case before those reporters discovered the first clue.”

  My father had shifted uncomfortably in his chair and muttered, “That’s nothing. You often had the case solved before I had the first clue.”

  “Exactly!” Holmes had said, turning to my father as a tiger to his prey. “And if the father is fooled, what of his son? A youth cannot hope to improve on his elders.”

  I had chuckled and said, “If that were true, there’d be no social progress. We’d still be living in caves.”

  Holmes had scowled and turned his face to the wall. My father’s brow furrowed but he said nothing. I felt guilty for I knew my father’s old friend would brood over my comment for hours. But it had lifted my heart to think that at least once I had won an argument with the great Sherlock Holmes.

  Only months later the great detective had died. My father, always the soul of generosity, had invited Sherlock’s aging brother, Mycroft, to live with him. Now with Dad gone, who would look after poor old Mycroft?

  The cable story regarding my father’s death was fairly complete. However, I noticed with a trace of irritation that the writer in London had listed every Holmes mystery Dad had written, yet left out his published medical papers and the only serious book he ever penned, a semi-autobiographical history of the Second Afghan War. He was justly proud of that voluminous work, and it received some critical acclaim even though its sales were dismal.

  I was also somewhat surprised that I received no mention as his only living relative. (Those who have closely followed my father’s stories will know that he was lucky in love, though his love interests were not lucky in longevity. He had buried two wives when he met and married my mother in 1901. What both of them thought would be a marriage of their mature years had been interrupted by a surprise package in 1902—namely, me.)

  The writer of the cable report must have been singularly lazy, since a brief visit to Mycroft would have yielded him all the information he needed. I added the following conclusion:

  Dr. Watson is survived by one son, Thomas, a newspaper reporter in Philadelphia. Later, after the paper came out, I noticed it was the only line in the story my editor deleted.

  I handed the completed obituary to Charlie. He must have seen the way this gruesome piece of work had taxed me, for he let me leave work a few minutes early—an act of consideration I could hardly call characteristic.

  I stepped out to the street, my mind filled with memories of my father. As I pulled my collar up against the cold, I thought about how he had buttoned my coat on wintry days when I was a child, playfully shaking me about like a puppy with a slipper. How ironic that the death of a man’s father can simultaneously bring back memories of childhood and yet make him feel very old indeed.

  After a bumpy trolley ride, I stepped onto the sidewalk and tried to avoid stumbling on the uneven pavement. I still had a six-block walk to my apartment, a cold-water flat in the city’s Germantown section. Lost in thoughts of my father, I ignored the scraps of paper that were floating by. They looked vaguely familiar in size and color, but it wasn’t until one almost hit me in the face that I snatched it—a slightly charred twenty-dollar bill.

  CHAPTER 2

  Looking ahead, I saw an incongruous spectacle: billowing clouds of smoke, firemen scrambling around in confusion, and a street full of people jumping up and down, chasing after bills that were flying in all directions. A mixture of tragedy and comedy, of terror and glee. What I wouldn’t have given for my pad and pen, at this moment sitting on my desk at the office. Fortunately, I found a man willing to trade the twenty I’d grabbed for a pencil and some scrap paper. Money well spent for a hastily drafted lead paragraph.

  A suspicious explosion in a Germantown gambling den about five o’clock yesterday evening sent a shower of money raining onto pedestrians. The explosion blew out windows in the back room of a restaurant (it was a speakeasy, but my editor wouldn’t permit me to call it that) owned and operated by Harry Ragan on the 200 block of East Price Street
. Ten- and twenty-dollar bills, apparently from a high-stakes poker game, filled the air moments after the explosion. Hose Company No. 3 extinguished the resulting blaze in a matter of minutes, but police had trouble restoring order as a large crowd chased the wayward money. Ragan and three others died in the explosion.

  Not my best material, I’m afraid. Months of writing obituaries may teach you to spell a name correctly, but it doesn’t prepare you for the pressure of on-the-scene reporting.

  Pushing my way through the crowd, smoke, and debris, I searched for someone to interview. My eyes landed on a rather distinguished man wearing a waiter’s apron, with a blanched face and trembling hands. He sat on a bar stool out on the sidewalk, staring at the ground.

  “Excuse me,” I said, “may I ask you a few questions?”

  “You’re British!” he said in the clipped accent of an Englishman. “What are you doing here?” His tone sounded almost accusatory.

  “I’m a reporter for the Herald,” I explained, and tried again. “Who are you and how did you end up here?”

  “Basil Meridan. I work here. Or at least I did. Oh, bother, I suppose I’m out of a job again.” He reached under his apron and tugged at his waistcoat.

  “You don’t look like someone who would work in a speakeasy,” I said, and I was not simply trying to flatter him. Even here, seated on a barstool amid the wreckage of the back room, he exuded a cultured manner and a regal charm that made even his dirty waiter’s apron appear stylish. As he began to tell me his story, I understood why.

  “It may be hard to believe, sir, but I didn’t always serve beer and pretzels in an illegal saloon,” Meridan began. “Over the past dozen years, I was butler and personal aide in some of the more prestigious manor houses in England. I also worked in a London gentlemen’s club for a while.”

  “How did you end up here?” It was likely irrelevant to the story of the explosion, but I couldn’t resist asking the question.