A Case of Dom Perignon: From the Victorian Carriage Mystery Series

by Alan M. Petrillo

  Earle brushed off his dinner jacket and was joined by a man that Roosevelt recognized as Inspector Bradnum. The pair sauntered across the room to where the king and Roosevelt chatted quietly.

  “Damn fool,” Earle boomed. “I told him he wasn’t welcome here.”

  “Who was he and what did he want?” Roosevelt asked.

  “He’s the bloody buggar who tells the lies to the Graphic,” Earle said. “Lies and more lies.”

  Bradnum coughed politely, “He also is a person who we are very interested in,” he said. “The police, that is.”

  Roosevelt eyed him for a moment. “Why are you interested in him? Does it have anything to do with this business between the king and me?”

  “Not that we know at this point, Mr. President. I can tell you, however, that we are most anxious to get more information from Mr. Purling — that is his name, Richard Purling — about the case everyone is now calling the Tram Man case.”

  “Damn foolish name for a serious problem,” Earle chimed in. “Who the devil put that label on it, I want to know.”

  Bradnum looked at Earle as if he had grown an extra head. “Why the Graphic, of course.”

  Madame Chevellier stretched her shoulders back and allowed the cleft in her ample bosom to attract the attention of the houseman at the ballroom door. She squeezed Samuel Owst’s arm a bit tighter as they stepped carefully down the carpeted staircase leading to the main floor and the throng of people milling around. She could hear snatches of hushed conversation as she passed and smiled when she realized they were talking about her.

  Owst stopped short near a tall, hatchet faced man who stood alone next to a pinch-faced, gray haired woman.

  “William, it’s good to see you.” Owst turned to the small woman next to him. “Mrs. Higgins. My pleasure. I am Samuel Owst, the editor of the Graphic, and this is Madame Chevellier, the distinguished psychic.”

  Mrs. Higgins forced a smile and nodded to each of them in turn.

  Madame Chevellier couldn’t resist the challenge. She extended her hand, palm down, toward Higgins, practically forcing him to grasp her fingers and brush his lips across them, each of which adorned by a large ring capped by a colored gemstone.

  “What a gallant man you have, Mrs. Higgins,” she said, smiling tightly.

  Mrs. Higgins muttered something inaudible, but was rescued by her husband.

  “Samuel, have you met the king and the president yet?” he asked.

  Owst craned his neck to see through the crowd. “We’ve only just arrived and it appears there is a considerable line formed for that very pleasure,” he said. “Would you care to join us?”

  “I think not,” Mrs. Higgins said quickly. “We already have paid our respects.”

  “Then we should be doing so ourselves,” Madame Chevellier shot back, her eyes bright. “Samuel, we should present ourselves.” She turned back to Mrs. Higgins. “Mind you care for that wonderful man, won’t you?” Just as quickly, she pulled on Owst’s arm and led him to the end of the reception line.

  “Was that necessary?” he asked.

  “Samuel, I do appreciate your bringing me to this reception, but I must not suffer fools lightly. That woman’s aura was as dark as a summer thundercloud. I simply tried to point out one of the positive elements in her life.”

  Owst laughed, shaking his head. “You do continue to amaze me,” he said. “Are you not aware of the controversy you cause when you perform like that?”

  Madame Chevellier leaned away from him. “Perform?” she asked, her eyebrows arched. “That is what I do every day of my life, just as you do.”

  Owst stared at her for a long moment and then the two of them burst into laughter.

  It was nearly fifteen minutes later before they found themselves at the head of the reception line, headed by J. R. Earle.

  “Samuel, delighted you could come,” Earle said, pumping Owst’s hand. “And who is this lovely creature?”

  Owst introduced her to Earle and she nearly winced as he kissed her knuckles in the French fashion. Earle turned to the king, standing to his right.

  “Your majesty, may I present Samuel Owst, the editor of the Hull Graphic.”

  Owst bowed and the king nodded. “Good of you to come, Owst.”

  Madame Chevellier then stepped in front of the king, and curtseyed, as Earle introduced her. The king seemed disinterested.

  She stepped to the left and found herself in front of Roosevelt. Robert Wallace’s voice floated up from behind the president, introducing her. She curtseyed again and as she came up, saw Roosevelt offering his hand.

  “Mr. President,” she said, grasping his hand in hers, “it is such a pleasure to meet you. I have read so many complimentary articles about you.”

  Roosevelt laughed, but did not take his hand away. “You must not be reading the same newspapers that I do.”

  As his gaze locked on hers, she felt the familiar power surging over her. “Mr. President,” she said as she pressed her hand more tightly into his, “you must be very careful in the next several days. Trouble awaits you.”

  Roosevelt’s eyes flared. “Trouble seems to find me wherever I go,”

  She shook her head slowly, running her index finger along the lifeline in his right palm. “This trouble is very close, sir, and I fear it is trouble that will be difficult to avoid.”

  Roosevelt took a deep breath and broke their connection, dropping his hand to his side.

  “Madame, I always have been ready for whatever Fate has in store for me. It has been a pleasure meeting you.”

  When Madame Chevellier and Owst had cleared the reception line and stood next to a massive Ionic style column near the front of the ballroom, Owst leaned close to her ear.

  “What was that all about, the business about trouble?”

  She looked into his eyes, holding his gaze for a long moment before replying. “His aura was tinged with black. I fear something ill may happen to him.”

  Owst shrugged. “Nothing we can do about it.”

  Madame Chevellier looked away and said nothing. But she thought, perhaps there is something to be done. She began searching the crowd for Inspector Bradnum.

  Livery uniforms seemed to be the ticket that Patrick Sweeney needed to gain access to any location he wished, he thought as he stood in front of the faded glass in the back room of the Waltham Street Hotel. It was a small shabby room, dismally lit, where the waiters dressed before presenting themselves to the upper classes of society that filled the hotel’s ballroom. He looked closer at his image and straightened his bow tie so the ends hung in equal lengths. Mustn’t call attention to himself in any way.

  In the service corridor outside the ballroom, Sweeney queued with the other men waiting to converge on the ballroom with trays of delectables to whet the appetites of those inside. At a signal from the head man, the queue began filing into an anteroom to pick up the trays. Sweeney patted the packet of powders in his trouser pocket and shuffled forward with the rest of the group.

  Inside the ballroom, Sweeney made several passes down the right side, always keeping the king and the president in his peripheral vision. He smiled pleasantly at the guests and responded to their questions about the composition of the delicacies he offered on his tray. When the last appetizer had been snatched from his silver tray, he hustled back to the staging area and repeated the sequence. Armed with a freshly-filled tray, he stopped for a moment at the side of the doorway to the ballroom and set down his tray, bending down to adjust his boot lace. As he did so, he pulled the packet of power from his trouser pocket and spread it across the food. The crystals in the packet were practically transparent and were quickly absorbed by the appetizers.

  “Get moving over there,” the head man shouted.

  Keeping his head down, Sweeney waved to him, picked up the tray, and stepped into the ballroom. Several people stepped forward to take items from his tray, but he dissuaded them quickly.

  “Special for the king. Special for the pre
sident,” he said, lowering his gaze to focus on the forest of people in front of him. As he drew near the group around the king and president, he drew a deep breath and pressed forward.

  “Your majesty, some caviar, perhaps,” Earle said as Sweeney pushed through the crowd.

  “Not at the moment,” the king said, waving his hand over the tray. “I think I have had enough.”

  “Mr. President?” Earle had turned to Roosevelt, his hand extended toward Sweeney’s tray. Sweeney could feel the sweat begin to bead up on his forehead. He hoped no one would notice it.

  Roosevelt puffed his chest out and smiled widely. “Thank you, J. R., but I believe I shall wait for the dinner service.” He turned and greeted an elderly dowager wearing a large hat decorated with peacock feathers.

  “Well I certainly will try one,” said a matron with a diamond bracelet glistening on her wrist. She took one of the appetizers and indelicately stuffed it into her mouth, before quickly reaching forward and taking a second one.

  Before he knew it, Sweeney was mobbed by ladies and gentlemen, all intent on getting on of the delicacies that had been offered to the king and president. Within two minutes, the tray was empty.

  Sweeney tried to control his breathing as his heart rate accelerated. He had failed, he knew. Neither the king nor the president had taken any of the poisoned food. Within minutes, the guests who had ingested the poison would begin to feel ill. He knew he could not be in the room when that happened.

  Sweeney pushed the tray above his head and strode through the room to the doorway to the staging area. He paused there and looked back toward the center of the room, straight into the gaze of Inspector Herbert Bradnum.

  Inspector Bradnum, watching the king and president handling the reception’s guests, felt a twinge as the waiter pushed his tray of food close to the king. Something about the man made Bradnum look him up and down. The man had sweat on his brow, but who wouldn’t in such a close atmosphere, he thought. The waiter turned to Roosevelt, who declined, seemingly to the waiter’s annoyance. Bradnum thought he was fairly accurate in reading the unspoken messages on people’s faces when they were confronted with unexpected circumstances. This waiter seemed nonplussed when neither the king nor the president took any of the food offered.

  Bradnum kept a close eye on the king and president for the next few minutes, and then followed the progress of the waiter as he made his way across the ballroom to the far wall. The man paused at the doorway and looked directly at him. Bradnum knew something was amiss by the look on the waiter’s face. He was hiding something.

  As the man disappeared through the doorway, Bradnum heard a commotion over by the king. A woman had fainted and was being laid gently on the ground. Bradnum pushed through the crowd that had formed around her and watched as someone produced smelling salts and waved it under her nose. The smelling salts had no effect.

  Before he could take a step in the woman’s direction, a man to his right collapsed onto the floor, clutching at his collar and breathing heavily. Then another man, an elderly gentleman, collapsed in front of him, causing Bradnum to catch the man to break his fall. As he laid the man on the hardwood floor, a single thought flashed through Bradnum’s mind. Poison.

  Bradnum bolted for the door the waiter had gone through and crashed through it, knocking down a waiter coming the other way with a tray of food. The two of them went sprawling and bits of the food sprayed across them both. Bradnum got up, and slipping on the slimy floor, ran through the staging room to the exit.

  At the far end of the corridor leading to the main staircase he found a hotel porter manhandling a bag up the stairs.

  “Did you see a sandy-haired gent coming down the stairs? He would have had a waiter’s uniform on.”

  The porter scratched his head, seemingly grateful for the break. “Aye, he ran past me down there on the landing. He was headed for the front door.”

  Bradnum raced down the stairs and out into the street. The forecourt was a madhouse of activity. Cabs, carriages and cars were drawn up in front of the building, either discharging passengers or taking them on. Knots of people milled around in front of the hotel, while the pavement out front was crowded with passers-by. The sound of traffic out in the road told him that avenue was full to capacity too.

  He pushed his way through the people blocking his progress and found himself a bit of clear space at the junction of the road and the pavement. He first looked south toward Queen Victoria Square, but could see no sign of his quarry. Turning north, he angled left and then right, trying to get a better view of the pavement. Just as he was about to turn again, something caught his eye. It was the gold and black livery pattern of the waistcoat of the Waltham Street Hotel. He had his man in sight.

  Bradnum ran up the gutter, splashing in the rivulet of dirty water that trickled there, waving at pedestrians and shouting for them to give way. He had gained on his quarry by half the distance when the man suddenly turned to the right and disappeared. When Bradnum came to the spot where he thought the man had turned, there was nothing but the narrow space between two buildings. At one time, the space might have been a full-sized alley, but both wooden structures had taken to leaning toward each other so that they formed a covered archway now instead of an alley.

  Bradnum ducked into the gloom and worked his way along the trash strewn in the alley to a rear yard surrounded by a head-high wooden fence. He was alone. There was no one there. He pulled a dilapidated box over to the fence and peered over it. He could see no sign of the man. He had lost him.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Inspector Bradnum stepped into the shadow of a thick column at the back of Elmfield House’s entry hallway and surveyed what he had accomplished. An armed constable stood at what Bradnum surmised the fellow believed was a ready position, although any newly-named Army corporal would have called the pose lounging. Bradnum thought about strolling over there and reminding the constable of his responsibilities to the king, but then thought better of the idea.

  The poisonings at the reception the previous night had given the case an even more bizarre quality that it already had taken. The superintendent had accosted Bradnum early that morning at the station and had torn him apart. Bradnum winced at thought of the superintendent’s onion breath washing over his face, the man’s mouth just inches from him. The superintendent ranted for a minute or two about the importance of protecting the king and the president, and then launched into a profanity-laced history of what he believed to be Bradnum’s intellectual capacity, policing ability and parentage.

  Bradnum had borne it all with a straight face, even though he felt the anger boiling up within him. He had wished for some Eno’s Fruit Salts at that moment. When the super finished, he had narrowed his eyes. “If anything happens to either of them, even a scratch, I’ll nail your bollocks to the wall of my office,” he had said. With that threat hanging pregnant in the air, the superintendent had stomped out of the room.

  Bradnum shuddered and looked around the room to dispel the thought of speaking in an inordinately high voice. At the corridor entrance from the entry hallway to the main part of the house stood another constable, this one more erect and seemingly concerned about his surroundings. As Bradnum scrutinized the room, he fixed on a large window, its drapes open to the morning light. Outside on the lawn, an Army private paced by carrying a Lee Enfield rifle on his left shoulder.

  The inspector smiled. It had been a remark made by the superintendent that had triggered what Bradnum believed was the first mobilization of the British Army for police purposes in the city of Hull. The superintendent had spit out some bit of advice that morning to the effect that he didn’t give a rat’s arse what Bradnum had to do to protect the king and president, even to the point of calling out the Army. Bradnum had thought it bluster at the time, but after careful reflection, saw the beauty in the superintendent’s hyperbole.

  Bradnum had the good fortune of being closely acquainted with the colonel who commanded the 15th Foot, the
East Yorkshire Regiment. The regiment kept a company of men, more than 125 strong, on the northern fringes of the town and Bradnum had quickly prevailed upon the colonel’s love of king and country. By late morning, a platoon of infantry, fully kitted out and armed, had been deployed outside Elmfield House to protect its occupants. The Tommies ran regular patrols throughout the grounds, established sentry positions around the house itself, and manned checkpoints at the roads leading into the estate.

  The assistance of the Army allowed Bradnum to deploy the constables under his command throughout the interior of the house. He also had assigned a contingent of his best men to serve as personal bodyguards for the king and president for the duration of their stay in Hull.

  Bradnum had spoken with Thomas Taylor, King Edward VII’s private secretary, about canceling the tramway rededication, but the man had turned him away. The king would not be cowed by anarchists, he had said. Roosevelt’s man, Robert Wallace, had simply smiled and told him that the man who had charged up San Juan Hill wasn’t afraid of showing his face at a public ceremony.

  Bradnum drew in a deep breath and exhaled loudly. He wasn’t a card player, but he knew that the cards he had been dealt on this job were crappy. He had to figure out a way to make them work for him.

  Madame Chevellier shifted in the plush armchair and watched the houseman approach from the double-door entry to the sitting room.

  “The inspector begs your pardon, Madame. He is occupied at the moment, but will join you shortly.”

  The houseman inclined his head toward her and left. She looked around the room, making comparisons. It is as I saw it in my night dreams, she thought. The sofa table with the long hanging runner over at the side wall. The double thick drapes that could shut out the light entirely when closely drawn. The thick fabric of the chair she now sat in. It is all as I have seen it before, she mused, yet this is my first visit to the house.