The Devil's Feast

by M. J. Carter

  Scott spoke over him. “A case of gagging on your own medicine, I think, Captain. Of course,” he went on, addressing the whole room, “should she prove guilty, the club could reopen, your staff could return to work, Chef, and the banquet for Lord Palmerston would go ahead.”

  “Mr. Soyer?” said Loin.

  “Anything you wish to say to me may be said before these gentlemen,” Soyer said coolly.

  Loin nodded. “I should like to confirm that you have closed the kitchen?”

  Soyer spread his arms out and raised his eyebrows as if to demonstrate what a foolish question it was.

  Loin bristled. He asked where the previous night’s dinner had been prepared. Once again, Soyer spread out his arms.

  “We prepared food for two hundred guests last night,” he said. “There were nine different items on the carte. Each dish is prepared in a different part of the kitchen, and each has parts contributed by perhaps three or four people.”

  “What did the victims eat?” said Loin.

  Percy brought out the list. “Would you care for some refreshment, sir?” he asked Loin.

  “Thank you. I’ll have coffee,” said Loin.

  Loin began to bombard Soyer with questions. Did he have an idea of what in particular might have poisoned the men? How clean was the kitchen? What about the gentleman who had fallen sick in the street, and Mr. Rowlands? Had he known them personally? Soyer, feeling himself under attack, began dramatically to protest the absolute cleanliness of his kitchen.

  In the midst of this, a bespectacled manservant emerged from the butler’s pantry carrying a tray. It was Blake. At the sight of him I stopped breathing.

  Silently, Blake placed a pot of coffee with one cup and a small jug of fresh milk on the table. Loin was so taken up with Soyer he barely noticed him. Looking up from his task, Blake gave me a wicked smile.

  “Would you care for me to pour it?” A bland servant’s voice. The gloved hands hovered over the coffeepot.

  “Please,” said Loin. Soyer was in full flow.

  Blake poured out the coffee.

  “Milk, sir?”

  “Please,” said Loin irritably.

  I almost choked. At any minute I expected his hand to reach out and seize Blake’s gloved wrist.

  “Will there be anything else, sir?”

  “No.”

  With a small bow, Blake withdrew. I breathed again.

  Loin’s questions became increasingly exasperated, Soyer’s answers increasingly outraged. I was relieved when Loin turned abruptly to me.

  “Mr. Scott says you have the details of the evidence against the suspect. I’ll have your account now, if I may. Briefly, though.”

  “It is not evidence,” I said, “it is gossip and coincidence.”

  “Sergeant,” said Soyer stiffly, “I shall excuse myself. I have pressing matters to take care of. I shall be in my office.”

  Loin waved him away in a manner deliberately disrespectful. Soyer stalked off. Perrin and Morel would have followed him, but Loin held up his hand. “The other gentlemen, though, I’ll be wanting to speak to them, too.”

  From the kitchen maids’ dinner to the discovery of Matty’s handwritten words in Soyer’s letters, I described the accusations against her, pointing out the obvious objections as I went along. I described what I knew of Mr. Cunningham’s death, a matter which discomfited Mr. Scott, and I took a gloomy pleasure in his aggrievement.

  “Mr. Cunningham was old and had a weak heart,” he protested. “There is no proof that he died as a result of eating here.”

  “At that point, I believe Matty had not yet begun to work in the pastry kitchen,” I said, ignoring him. “She was still a kitchen maid. Moreover, it is my belief that the notes sent to Monsieur Soyer are not genuine. The club’s banquet for Ibrahim Pasha has been canceled, but I believe there are those who are determined that it take place, no matter what the consequences. What better way to reinstate it than by producing a suspect? And how easy to acquire a paper in Matty’s hand. They are all over the kitchen.”

  “And do you have a notion of who might do such a thing?” said Loin, who clearly thought I was addled.

  “I do not make rash accusations before I have evidence,” I said, staring at Scott.

  “Matty? That’s the girl’s name?” said Loin.

  “Yes, Matty Horner.”

  Loin was astonished. I had forgotten he had known her; of course, she had been a police informant.

  “Blake asked Soyer if he would take her on as a scullery maid after Holywell Street. She has been doing very well.”

  • • •

  “MATTY HORNER? Is that you?”

  “It is, Sergeant Loin,” she said. She sat upright in one of the armchairs in the butler’s room where first we had had tea together. Mrs. Relph sat on the other chair; she had the ability to maintain a perpetually outraged expression. At this moment, I was actually glad of it. Matty had tidied herself and arranged her hair. She looked up with a calm that seemed to me to most closely resemble hopelessness.

  “Well, this is a turn-up,” said Loin. “You’ve filled out and grown, Matty. Regular family reunion, isn’t it, Captain Avery? Only one we’re missing is Blake.”

  There was a silence.

  “I’d hoped to see you out of trouble for good, Matty . . .”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He gave me a brief glance and gestured to Mrs. Relph. “I shall be speaking to Miss Horner alone.”

  • • •

  I FOUND BLAKE in the kitchen maids’ room, dozing. I shook him awake.

  “For God’s sake, what were you thinking, coming in to serve Loin like that?” I said. “I thought I should choke. I’d give you a blinker right here and now if I could! I swear you wanted to be caught!”

  Blake smiled placidly. “It went off all right.”

  “All right? You could have been taken there and then. I cannot believe you would be so foolish.”

  “Young Will Avery all sober and so grown up.”

  “It was a stupid, irresponsible thing to do.”

  “You must have had a moment’s pleasure watching him take the coffee from my hand, and no notion it was me.”

  “My heart was in my mouth. We cannot take such risks. We should not be wasting time. We should be chasing Francobaldi and visiting Duncombe and Molesworth.”

  He said, “I cannot leave until Loin and his constables go and he has finished with Matty.” Then, “You know, I think your concern feeds my levity.”

  I left in a fit of pique and went to see Soyer.

  “Are you busy?”

  “I am never idle!” he said with a brittle cheer. “The banquet is canceled. I cannot run my kitchen, nor find the one who wishes me harm, nor keep a poor, innocent girl from the police. So I will find something else to occupy me. I am planning the soup kitchen. If I cannot cook here, then I will bring forward its opening. The giant boiler I ordered from Bramah and Prestage is ready. Where better to put my energies?

  “With this kitchen, I believe I could feed thousands more effectively than has ever been done before. I have a number of recipes for cheap and wholesome soups thickened with rice and pearl barley. I call them ‘panadas.’” He gestured at the papers on his desk. “Such quantities are not for the fainthearted, however. I must work out every last detail. I plan to provide food for at least three hundred and fifty hungry mouths on our first attempt. But tell me, is there anything I can do to help you? Have the police asked for anything?” His lip curled. It was the only intimation of how angry he was.

  “I should like to visit some of your suppliers, with your permission.”

  “Eh bien, if you like. If you think it may help. Do whatever you must.”

  • • •

  IN THE KITCHEN Perrin and Morel stood in uneasy silence on opposite sides of the
twelve-sided table. Matty and Loin had not emerged.

  “There is a message for you, Capitaine,” said Morel. “A boy came just a moment ago. I did not like to disturb you. There is a person who wishes to speak to you waiting outside. They would not give their name.”

  Mystified, I thanked him, took my coat and emerged into the gray afternoon light. I traversed the yard, took the steps up to the street and came out onto the corner of Pall Mall. I could see no one waiting in any direction save a couple of constables standing outside the club.

  “Captain Avery?” one said.

  “Yes.”

  He took hold of my left arm, the other constable my right. “I am arresting you for debt.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  I spluttered and protested that this was outrageous. I demanded the name of my accuser and insisted I owed money to no one, which was more or less true. None of it made the slightest difference.

  An hour later, I was in the Marshalsea Prison, in a grubby little room which stank of decades of other men’s sweat, my only consolation that I had it to myself. I had had to pay all I had to secure it.

  My arrival had been utterly demeaning. The gatekeeper had recognized me at once, and laughed, then spat before my feet. The prison governor was waiting for me. The last time I had seen him, after Blake’s disappearance, he had groveled in embarrassment. Now, he enjoyed my humiliation.

  “Who has done this to me? This is trumped-up nonsense!”

  “Welcome, Captain Avery. Who would have thought we should meet again so soon! And in such circumstances! But I have the summons here.” He waved a piece of paper at me. “It is quite legal.”

  “I cannot believe this! Surely the law says I must be told who claims a debt from me?”

  “I am sure you will find out soon enough.” He smiled loftily. “In the meantime, you may as well make yourself comfortable. The trustee will take you to your room. It is one of the better ones, but it will cost you.”

  “I was dragged off the street. I have urgent matters to attend to. My friends have no idea where I am!”

  “Would you rather they did?”

  That was a good question, to which I had no good answer.

  And so here I was, in this noxious little room with its mildewed walls and its dirty little window. There was a deal chair and a gray wooden pallet covered in nothing but other men’s stains, and that was all. I had just enough left in my pockets to purchase a candle, but not enough for dinner or a blanket. This was debtors’ prison.

  I had come to hate the Marshalsea when I visited Blake. Incarceration within its walls was a thousand times worse. It was a cold night. I wrapped myself as best I could in my coat, and passed the hours alternating between rage, frustration and boredom. Not knowing the name of my accuser or why I had been imprisoned added a ghastly edge of desperation. I racked my brains for outstanding debts of any size. I could think of nothing. Money was not plentiful, but I had thought we were scraping along. The truth was, however, it wasn’t just the poor who lived on the edge of debt. In Devon, almost everyone I knew lived on the line between almost-prosperity and debt—a bad harvest, a purchasing arrangement fallen through, and misery beckoned. In the dark, I began to imagine that there might be some great financial arrangement that had slipped from memory. Had I mortgaged the house in Devon, or borrowed on the harvest and simply forgotten? Had Helen bought dresses or furniture I did not know about? When would I find out? Would I be left to rot? Blake had said there were men who had been in the Marshalsea for thirty years for debts which no one now remembered.

  Toward morning, I finally fell into a shallow sleep filled with fevered images of faces and torsos twisting in terrifying convulsions. I awoke sweating and gasping as the door of my room opened and the trustee stepped aside to reveal . . . Sir Theo Collinson.

  “What?” I wheezed, shaking those fearful pictures from my head.

  He swept in like winter, his brows bunched over his eyes like furious hillocks. The effect was mitigated somewhat by the fact that his stomach preceded the rest of him by several inches.

  “How did you know I was here?”

  He cast his eyes over the room and, with a moue of distaste, settled himself gingerly on the chair.

  “It really is most unpleasant, is it not? I have told you before, Avery, I know everything,” he said. “I have eyes everywhere.”

  I heartily hoped this was not the truth.

  He sighed. “I put you here.”

  “You! But—”

  “Avery, do you think I am stupid?” he said slowly, and there was cold, calm malice in his tone. “Have I ever given you any reason to suppose that I am stupid?”

  “No, sir.” My blood began to chill.

  “Then how did you and he imagine that you could provoke me in such a way and get away with it?”

  “I do not know what you mean.”

  With the same ghastly, cold calm he said, “Where is he?”

  “Where is who?”

  His eyebrows twitched. “Do not play with me, young man. No one plays with me and gets away with it. Remember who put you here.”

  With some difficulty, I fought my rising agitation and answered, “I do not know. On a boat to Timbuctoo by now, for all I know. Or dead.”

  “We both know he is alive! Where is he?”

  Anger was my savior. “How the devil did you get me incarcerated here?”

  “I think you do not understand just how powerful I am,” he said, his voice chilly and calm again. “I could have you moldering here for months.”

  “But I owe you nothing.”

  “Indeed? Here is the bond to show you do.” He handed me a sheet of paper with a passable imitation of my handwriting on it which said that I owed Sir Theophilus Collinson the sum of £150.

  “This is a forgery! I never signed this!” For the second time in a day, I was consumed with outrage.

  “And how long do you think it would take to prove it? And how much do you think it would cost? For every witness you might find to confirm your version, I could provide three to swear to mine.”

  “Good God, Collinson, I did everything you asked of me, and more. I have heard nothing from you these two days, and now I get this?”

  “Come, Avery,” Collinson said, suddenly all softness. “You understand. Blake has defied me, he is out and free, you are in London. Where would he go if not to seek you out?”

  “You overestimate my influence with him. Do you think he would stay, Sir Theo? He would be a fugitive forever. He would not mind leaving London at all.”

  “Oh, well, you will have your little game.” His small eyes seemed to shine with malevolence. “In the meantime, reflect on this. I can keep you here as long as I like. But it will be easier if you do as I say. You will go to him, wherever he is, and you will tell him that he will perform the task I give him. That task has now changed. He is to find the perpetrator of the Reform poisonings. I do not care how he does it, but it must be done. If he refuses, you will be in here for as long as I wish it. And I will find him, and his punishment will be worse than yours. Is that understood? You should think twice about trifling with me.”

  He gave me a few minutes for his words to sink in. I was bound, there was no question. It felt insupportable. I wanted to rage, but I would not give him the pleasure of it. Blake’s perversity in refusing to give in to him no longer seemed perverse at all.

  “Now I am going to have you released. For a while, at least,” he said. “Do not think of heroics. Remember you have a wife and child. And you have already committed yourself to the Reform. What you are doing there, I cannot imagine. We both know you are no investigator. You are neither the class for it nor, let us be honest, do you have the mind.”

  “And what do you know about it?” He was not wrong, but I saw no reason why I should take his insults.

  He gave me a pitying look
. “I told you, I know everything.” He shifted awkwardly in the chair. “Incidentally, how many are dead just now?”

  “I thought you knew everything.”

  “Lord Marcus Hill wrote to me,” he admitted. “And certain members of the government have asked me to look into it. I expected a visit from you regarding the Russians. You have been avoiding me, Avery.”

  “There are three dead if you include Cunningham, and one recovering. That is, as far as I know.”

  “And are you nowhere near apprehending a culprit? Have you made any advances at all?”

  “I have established that Rowlands may have been dosing himself with arsenic,” I said, anger making me proud, “and that the gentlemen last night appear to have been poisoned with strychnine. I arranged a postmortem examination for Rowlands—tests are taking place. There was another postmortem today. I have interviewed all the kitchen staff and, when I was dragged off the street, I was about to visit Soyer’s suppliers.”

  “Not bad, but no real results, I see. There are the Russians, of course. And you should be acquainted with the club’s other troubles.” His eyebrows twitched with anticipation. “Should I apprise you? I do not know,” he mused.

  “I should,” I said reluctantly, “be grateful for anything you can tell me.”

  He shifted on the chair, trying and failing to make himself comfortable.

  “Well, of course, the club is in debt; the architect, Barry, says it owes him a good deal. It seems the members will have to step in; good thing there are some very wealthy ones. Then there are the factions. You would have thought they would all simply be happy to eat their fine dinners and slumber in their chairs, but they are not.

  “Have you come across William Molesworth? He and his radical friends are not at all pleased that the club they started has become far too deferential to the Whig grandees. It is not beyond imagining that they contemplate a break with the Whigs and a departure from the club.

  “On the other side, there are Whigs such as Ellice and Beare who answer to Palmerston and are very comfortable where they are, believe the party has done quite enough to bring about change for one century and would not mind one whit if Molesworth and the rest took themselves off. They would happily wish them to the devil. Frankly, I cannot really see why the die-hard Whigs do not simply join the Tories. But there are old bonds that hold them to the party, and they accept they must win over the middle if they are to counter the Tories in the long term. Palmerston regards the radicals—when he can be brought to think about them at all—as a thorn in his side. Then we have the so-called liberals, the moderate middle; among them, Lord Marcus Hill, who acts the peacemaker rather well. Didn’t think he had it in him.