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

by Alan M. Petrillo

  Glew drove up the roadway to the roundabout in front of Elmfield House and before the car before had come to a halt Bradnum had the door open and stepped out. He stumbled in the soft gravel and nearly fell, but recovered his balance and lumbered toward the front door. The constable at that post stiffened to attention.

  “Constable. I want this entry sealed. No one comes or goes through that door without my permission. Is that understood?”

  “Perfectly, sir.”

  “Glew, come with me.”

  Bradnum burst into the entry hallway, startling two constables who stood idly talking to each other.

  “Men, we have a situation on our hands. I believe that an assassin has gained access to the grounds of Elmfield House. He may even be in the house itself. I want one of you to go with constable Glew to search the first floor. The other with accompany me on a search of the ground floor. Now let’s get on with it.”

  Glew and one constable quickly mounted the wide staircase leading from the side of the entry hallway to the first floor. They disappeared into the nearest room off the upstairs corridor.

  “Come with me,” Bradnum said, motioning the constable forward. “Do you have a weapon?”

  “I have me truncheon.” The constable pulled the stout wooden stick from his belt and wiggled it.

  “Excellent. You may need to use it, so keep it handy. This man we’re dealing with has killed before. You can be sure he will not have any compunction about doing so again.”

  Bradnum moved into the sitting room off the entry hallway, peering behind sofas and chairs, and pushing the window drapes aside to be sure they didn’t hide anyone. He and the constable slowly searched all the rooms in the front of the house, but found nothing.

  In the kitchen, he found a cook and her helper hard at work, tending a large pot boiling on the wood stove. Across the room, heat shimmered from an oven where chickens were roasting.

  “Have you seen any workmen back here today. A carpenter, perhaps.”

  “Nay, there’s been no one but the two of us,” the cook replied. “And you two.”

  “Where does that corridor outside lead?”

  “Just the pantry across there and then the back of the house where the servants and workmen come and go.”

  “Constable, check the pantry. I’ll have a look at the back entry.”

  Bradnum moved down the corridor slowly, trying to keep his weight on the balls of his feet in case he needed to move quickly. Ahead he could see part of the rear entry room with its muddy boots and shoes lining a wall. Coats and jackets hung from pegs nailed to the wall. Bradnum looked around the room. Nowhere to hide in here.

  He pulled open the back door and startled the soldier standing there, guarding the entry.

  “Carry on,” he said, and shut the door firmly. As he moved down the corridor toward the front of the house, the other constable came out of the pantry.

  “Anything?” Bradnum asked.

  “Not a thing.”

  Bradnum puffed out his cheeks in a stream of breath. “Damn him. He must be outside yet. Let’s get back to the front of the house.”

  Sweeney leaned against a cabinet and toyed with the idea of reconnoitering the rest of the ground floor when he heard voices coming from the front of the house. He moved to the pantry doorway with the corridor and listened intently. Someone was giving orders to search the house. He looked around the room. The place was packed with goods. The only space where he could fit was a tall closet that held stacks of linens.

  Sweeney opened the cabinet door and pulled the linens forward. He then picked up the top third of the stack, stepped in behind the linens, pulled the door shut and set the table linens down hiding himself from view if the door were opened.

  He tried to calm himself and slow his breathing so he wouldn’t be detected. After two minutes he was calm enough to believe he actually might get away with his ruse. Suddenly he heard the scrape of a boot on the stone floor. He heard voices talking in the kitchen across the hall, and then movement toward him. He held his breath.

  He could hear someone moving around in the pantry, poking into cabinets, opening and closing doors. Sweeney tensed his body to spring out if he were discovered. The sounds got closer and then light flooded into the cabinet as the cabinet door was opened. Almost as quickly, the door slammed shut and the light disappeared. Whoever was out there hadn’t looked very hard.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  King Edward VII thrust his shoulders back and strode through the doorway into the brightly-lit dining room. He nodded to Lord Carrington and Roosevelt, and then quickly swiveled toward Lord Roseberry who stood at the far end of the long table.

  “Michael, you should move closer down this way toward the three of us. You wouldn’t want to be eating by yourself.”

  Lord Roseberry bowed and plucked at his graying moustache. “I was waiting to see where you would place us, your majesty. And the president was in a close conversation with Lord Carrington…”

  Roosevelt snapped his head in Roseberry’s direction. “Nothing you couldn’t take part in, Michael. Please join us.”

  Lord Roseberry took a seat opposite Roosevelt and Lord Carrington, facing the sideboard closest to the head of the table, where the king had sat.

  The king rang a silver bell and a butler appeared from a side door.

  “Clarence, pour us some of that nice claret you have uncorked. I think we all could stand a bit of the grape at this point.”

  The butler poured the wine and then left, being replaced by two young kitchen maids who served the soup course. When they finished ladling out the thick broth, the king raised his wineglass.

  “Gentlemen. To our good friend Theodore, who has graciously put up with the unpleasantness that we have all faced these past days. May you continue in good health, Theodore.”

  The two lords chimed in with “to your health” before each took a liberal swallow of wine.

  “Easy men,” the king chided. “There’s plenty left in the bottle and an entire cellar full to back it up. No need to be hasty with good wine.”

  Lord Roseberry’s face reddened from ear to ear so that it almost glowed. He lowered his head and concentrated on his soup.

  “Your majesty, we are simply trying to keep up with the royal appetite for the finer things in life,” Lord Carrington said, raising his glass toward the king. “To your health.”

  The foursome drank again. Roosevelt was the one to break the ensuing silence.

  “Does anyone else smell something burning?” he asked.

  Sweeney reached across the darkness and edged the cabinet door open. He could see part of the doorway and it was empty. No sound came from the interior of the pantry so he unfolded himself from his cramped position and pushed the top of the linen stack out onto the floor. Once extricated from the cabinet, he gathered the linens and stowed them in the cabinet, closing the door with a quiet thud.

  A voice in the kitchen said something about a sirloin, but Sweeney couldn’t hear clearly enough to make sense of what was said. He did know, however, that the sounds of the serving girls moving in and out of the kitchen meant that the dining room was occupied and dinner was being served. Now was the time for him to act.

  Peering around the edge of the doorframe, Sweeney checked the hallway. Empty. He slipped along the plaster wall and emerged in the entry room leading to the back door. At the end of the line of shoots and boots, he pushed the Wellingtons aside and snatched up the box of matches. When the first one he struck caught fire, he put the burning tip against the fuse nestled in the joint between the floor and wall. The quick fuse sputtered and then caught, it’s flame racing along the wall behind the line of boots and toward the dining room.

  Sweeney’s eyes glowed as brightly as the quick fuse as he watched it flame and disintegrate as it burned. Time to be gone, he thought. He picked up his toolbox and opened the back door, touching his cap in salute to the constable standing there.

  “Pleasant day to you, Mate.�
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  The constable wrinkled his nose and watched as Sweeney disappeared around the corner of the house.

  “Damn, we must be missing something,” Bradnum said. “Sweeney wouldn’t risk showing up here unless he had some unpleasant business planned.”

  “What could he do here?” Glew asked. “The king and president are secure in the house having dinner. He can’t get to them.”

  Bradnum had turned away from the front of Elmfield House and taken a couple of steps toward the gatehouse when he abruptly stopped.

  “Of course,” he said. “The dining room. Glew you’re a genius.”

  He ran past Glew up the front steps and stopped in the doorway, looking over his shoulder. “Let’s go, Glew. He must be in the house.”

  Bradnum disappeared into the entry hall and raced down a side corridor toward the rear of the house. The corridor led to a cross hallway between the conservatory and the kitchen. Bradnum bounced off the intersecting wall and stumbled several steps along the hallway until he emerged in the back entry room.

  The smell of burning powder was overpowering.

  Four steps into the corridor to the dining room, Bradnum could see a sputtering flame running along the base of the wall. It was moving directly toward the dining room.

  He ducked down at the flaming end of the fuse and tried to extinguish the flame, but the sparks burnt his hand and he jerked it away. As the flaming end of the fuse disappeared around the corner, Bradnum crashed into the door and burst through the doorway.

  He saw the fuse leading to the sideboard and leaped headlong onto the carpeted floor smashing into the sideboard’s oak base. As the fuse burned hotly along the base of the wall two feet from the sideboard, he thrust his hand behind the heavy oak, squeezing his arm down toward the floor. He felt his fingers touch a bundle of long hard tubes and then they found the braided cord of the fuse. He tightened his grip and yanked the fuse cord from the dynamite just as the glowing end reached his hand and burned him a second time.

  Bradnum, his eyes screwed tightly shut, lay on his back panting.

  “I say, Bradnum. What the devil are you doing down there?” the king asked.

  Four pairs of eyes were riveted on him. Bradnum reached behind the sideboard and pulled out the wrapped six sticks of dynamite. He stood and thrust the dynamite into his jacket’s side pocket, and then dusted himself off. “Just a bit of housekeeping, your majesty. I would like the four of you to remain in this room for the moment. The man who left this calling card is still nearby. It’s time for me to have a chat with him.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Bradnum barreled down the corridor past the kitchen and pushed through the doorway to the rear yard of Elmfield House, bumping into the young constable guarding the entryway and knocking both of them to the ground.

  “Damn, man, get off of me,” Bradnum sputtered. “Can’t you see he’s going to get away?”

  “Who is, sir?” the constable asked as he helped Bradnum to his feet.

  “The Irish assassin. He’s dressed as a workman and probably carrying a box of tools.”

  A look of astonishment crossed the constable’s face. “A man like that came out of the house a few minutes ago. He went that way.” The constable pointed toward the side of the house.

  “Come with me, man.”

  They raced to the side of the house and halted near a thick stand of boxwood.

  “Check those bushes,” Bradnum ordered.

  The constable disappeared behind the tall, dense boxwood bushes and reappeared seconds later. “Nothing, sir.”

  Bradnum squinted toward the front of Elmfield House and could see all the way to the gatehouse where two sentries stood looking back at him.

  “Well, he’s not gone toward the front, so the only way left is over there.” Bradnum pointed to a thick copse of trees on the west side of the Elmfield House estate. “He’s got to be in there. Get over to the trees quickly and see if you can spot him. I’m going to get reinforcements started and will be right behind you. And constable, be careful. This man is dangerous.”

  As the constable double-timed across the lawn toward the trees, Bradnum sprinted around the front of the house where he found a constable and a sentry from the 15th Foot.

  “You two, come with me. It’s urgent. We have the assassin trapped in the woods.” He paused to catch his breath and looked at the sentry. “Soldier, make sure you have a full magazine and one in the chamber. Safety on. Constable, the sentry will lead us into the woods. Now follow me.”

  Bradnum turned and began running toward the tree line, but quickly found himself falling farther and farther behind the two younger and fitter men. He was only half-way across the wide expanse of lawn when the other two reached the tree line and split up, taking different paths into the woods. The constable angled to the south and the sentry to the north.

  Bradnum arrived at the wood’s edge wheezing so heavily that he bent over and jammed his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. Between gasps, he looked into the thick woods, but could see nothing moving.

  Damn, he thought. Where are the three men who went in there after Sweeney?

  Once he had cleared the side of Elmfield House, Sweeney set off at a fast walk on a diagonal across the lawn and toward the trees. From the gatehouse, it would appear that he was headed toward one of the outbuildings on that side of the estate. Once safely inside the cover of the tree line, Sweeney ditched the tool box and stripped off the coveralls. He placed them in a small depression and broke off several branches from a leafy bush to camouflage them.

  Looking back the way he had come, Sweeney saw a slim constable running across the lawn toward him.

  Bejesus, he thought. The bloody English don’t give up. Well, I’ll give the youngster a surprise.

  Sweeney sprinted deeper into the woods, checking over his shoulder as he ran. The constable reached the cover of the tree line just as Sweeney splashed through a narrow brook that took him by surprise. He clambered up the steep bank on its far side and turned to look back. Too late. The constable saw him and began running again.

  Sweeney turned and dodged behind an old elm felled by the wind, its branches still covered with now-brown leaves. He looked around for some kind of weapon, discarding the idea of stones and settling on a stout three-foot-long branch. He crouched behind the elm’s trunk and waited.

  Within minutes he heard the heavy tread of the constable coming toward him. It sounded as if the constable would pass right by his hiding spot. Sweeney raised the heavy branch, cocking his arm like he would hold a cricket bat and tensing his muscles. The next moment the constable passed in front of him.

  Sweeney swung the branch as hard as he could. The blow caught the constable on the forehead and knocked him unconscious, splitting his forehead open and sending a stream of blood coursing across his face.

  Sweeney stood for a moment considering what to do next and then quickly decided. He unbuttoned the constable’s jacket and flipped him over to get the jacket off him. Then he yanked off the man’s uniform pants. Sweeney quickly shed his own jacket and trousers and dressed in the policeman’s uniform. As the finishing touch, he picked up the constable’s uniform cap, which had been sent flying into the bushes when he struck the man. Not a perfect fit, he thought, but it will have to do. Sweeney ran his hands down the sides of the jacket to smooth it out and then turned to the west, toward the wall that bordered the edge of the woods.

  Bradnum edged carefully into the thick foliage, keeping a hand in front of his face to prevent his eyes from being stabbed by low branches. He had gone about two hundred feet when he stopped suddenly. The sound of someone hurrying through the trees was cut short by a wet-sounding thwack and then the thud of something, or someone, hitting the ground.

  He stood silently with an ear cocked toward the area from where the sound had come. He could hear the sound of water running over rocks, but over it was a scuffling sound. Bradnum made up his mind to approach cautiously.

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sp; The ground sloped away slightly and Bradnum moved gingerly across a small brook, trying to keep his boots dry by hopping across from stone to stone. On the other side he saw the tracks where others had climbed the soft bank. Withdrawing the small revolver from his jacket pocket, Bradnum climbed the bank and continued on toward a large elm tree that had been blown down.

  As Bradnum moved around the uprooted tree, he saw a man’s silhouette and raised the pistol, cocking the hammer back.

  “Hold on there. Put up your hands.”

  As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Bradnum realized he had made a mistake and had one of his own constables at gunpoint. He thumbed the hammer down and lowered the pistol.

  “Never mind. Put your hands down. Have you seen him?” Bradnum said stepping closer.

  As he did, his toe caught on the body on the ground. In the same instant, the man in the constable’s uniform whirled around and grabbed his gun hand, twisting his wrist back toward his forearm.

  A searing pain shot up Bradnum’s arm and he involuntarily dropped the pistol.

  Sweeney snatched the pistol and thumbed back the hammer, pointing the muzzle directly at Bradnum’s chest.

  “Bloody busy day, wouldn’t you say?” he asked.

  Bradnum shut his eyes and lowered his chin, waiting for the shot. It didn’t come. He opened his eyes to see Sweeney smiling at him.

  “No, Mate. I think you’ll be of more use to me if you’re breathing. You see, you’re going to help me out of these woods.”

  “I will not help you escape.” Bradnum thrust his chest out in defiance.

  “You either come with me or else you can have a bullet in the brain now. Your choice.” Sweeney pointed the revolver at the middle of Bradnum’s forehead. “Which is it?”