AHMM, March 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "Is that so? What could the prize have been, I wonder?"

  "Maybe it was a money bet. Halifax's granduncle sounds well to do and might have given him a big allowance."

  "We didn't find but five dollars in that wallet of his. We'll have to inquire, but he didn't seem to be living better than any other Pfc. And it's hard to collect winnings from a dead man. Yet ... there is that pot of gold over in New York, isn't there?"

  "We should look into this Edson fellow. I wonder if they ran their foot-race, and what would they have dueled with—cavalry sabers?"

  "If they were actually competing in a private Olympic, I don't think they got past the third event, Miller. It's an awful pun, but maybe Halifax got in over his head on that one."

  Jake checked the priest's face, but Kiernan wasn't cracking wise. If anything, a soft melancholy sat there.

  Back at the motor car, Kiernan had a thought. He reached inside his tunic and took out the paper they had found in Halifax's desk. Jake stood alongside on the running board while the priest sat behind the wheel, pondering the hodgepodge.

  He rotated the page and read the sideways material in the margins. After some minutes, he pointed out some crabbed printing in one corner. “Can you read that, Miller?"

  "Newcastle? Hard to read the names there, though."

  "Which Newcastle, I wonder?"

  "Well, I know of Newcastle coal from England. Is there another?"

  "Yes, a city built by convicts, ironically enough."

  A runner from headquarters trotted up at that moment, obviously relieved to have tracked them down. He had a telegram the XO had passed along for Kiernan's attention.

  Kiernan opened it so Jake could read along.

  * * * *

  LtCol Brinks

  Arrive 4PM Sunday ferry. Staying Winooskie Inn. Will take John home.

  W.N. Halifax, Captain of Cavalry

  * * * *

  "Sir, Colonel Brinks asks if you are able to meet Mr. Halifax at the ferry."

  "Of course. By the way, Private, is Boswell in the office today?"

  "Yes sir, he has the duty all weekend owing to poorly wrapped puttees."

  "Very good, there's another jacket I'd like to look into. Hop on the other side, son. We'll save you some boot leather."

  * * * *

  The man did not look like a villain. He was lean and nondescript except for a mouth that was too small for the teeth behind it. The body had some youth left to it, though years in the saddle had bowed the legs and put a slouch in the shoulders. His uniform was not a new issue, but it fit well; and the campaign hat was more compact and less floppy than the newer men's. Kiernan knew this innocuous-looking trooper had actually done much hard riding in the service, and had performed his Moro-killing with great energy. The bland features also masked a disciplinary history that had kept him down to the one stripe.

  Edson looked around curiously. Two folding chairs sat facing each other in the middle of the one-room shed. A single desk lamp burned on a hinged counter hanging off the right wall, and the shadowy corners of the room were cluttered with boxes, short lengths of leaning lumber, and other materials.

  "You wanted to see me, sir?” It was the first time Kiernan had heard Australian English, sounding something like Cockney, but Americanized by Edson's years in the U.S. service.

  "Yes, Edson, have a seat. I'm meeting John Halifax's kin when he collects the body tomorrow. I wanted to speak a few things about John's last days, so I've been looking up his companions."

  The man sat because it was expected of him, but his expression was manifestly confused as Kiernan took the seat opposite. “'Alifax's an ‘eadquarters man, sir. I'm in Troop G. I barely knew ‘im."

  "Please don't be reticent, Edson. He was no Regular, but there's no harm in admitting friendship with a new man. It would help me greatly if you could say good things about him for his granduncle."

  The man blinked at the priest's persistence. “Well, sir, I wish, but I only saw ‘im once ‘r twice on a report to the office."

  Kiernan's face grew less affable.

  "I have it on good authority that you went riding and shooting with the man. Why would you not admit to that?"

  Edson looked around again at the room they were in. “What's this place?” he asked, reassessing his summons.

  "The Knights of Columbus are putting up a recreational building for you men. This is their construction shack, but they've let me use it for hearing confessions and such until the work's done."

  "'M not one of your Catholics, sir, and I've nothing to confess.” Edson spoke his contrary vowels evenly and sat very still, accustomed perhaps to facing up to superiors during his fractious past.

  "It's understood then that you're not here to seek absolution. You are not sorry for what you've done."

  At that the man started to rise, but Kiernan put up a hand that would have stopped all the noonday traffic on Broadway.

  "Humor me then, and explain why you put Halifax up on Apache Jack at the riding hall a week ago Friday—the day before you were also seen plugging away together on the pistol range. And you were with him at the park this Saturday, too, when he drowned. I recognize you now."

  Edson denied none of it. He said, “'Appenstance, sir. We waltz small circles in this place.” The man's eyelids came down like a snake's. “And what would it matter if it be true?"

  "Well, firstly, you would have denied his acquaintance for no apparent reason and then owned up to it only when confronted. That's suspicious."

  "Sir, I don't think I've to put up with this any longer.” If the trooper's confidence had been shaken, it was now regrouping. But he kept his seat, still under the spell of Kiernan's rank and scrutiny, probably curious, too, about how much he was suspected of.

  "Did Halifax ever loan to you his Bible and some of his private correspondence?"

  "Like schoolmates? No. Sir."

  Kiernan took out Halifax's geneology. He held it up so that Edson could see what was writ there.

  "I think you borrowed them to help trace out a real or fabricated connection to his family and to its wealth."

  "Wake me, mother, I'm in a penny dreadful!” Edson said flippantly, but he had sat very upright with his hands on his knees.

  "If we went to your barracks and had you open up your footlocker, we'd find those things, wouldn't we? Halifax must have encouraged you to investigate your connection, hungry as he was to expand his family. I'll wager the letters contain questions and answers to questions he posed to his grand-uncle about the lost Australian sheep. I believe he was looking forward to presenting you to his relative as a long lost shoot from this family tree of his. And you a full-blooded cavalry man to boot—though a prodigal one."

  "You'd ‘ave to bring the Provost in on that,” Edson said, perhaps calculating the time he would have to dispose of the evidence.

  Kiernan went on as if he had not heard.

  "But you were not keen about the family, only about its fortune. With John out of the way, you could present yourself as a grieving distant cousin and a sole survivor to a bereft old man, couldn't you? You could break out of this endless grind of mucking stalls and chasing bandits for private's pay. So you began your pentathlon as one possible means of arranging a fatal outcome.

  "Maybe you convinced John that he had to prove himself first before you would deign to take part in any reunion. You knew how fierce the family cavalry tradition was, everyone within earshot of John knew that, so you played on it as the centerpiece of this dangerous competition you concocted. You hoped Apache Jack might break his neck or kick his head in. When that didn't work, you hoped he might pull some rookie trick and shoot himself on the range. No luck. Maybe you already knew he was no swimmer when you began, and so you lured him into deep water and raced away from him with that speedy stroke you Australian lads use. You left him to perish."

  Edson's eyes were locked with Keirnan's; his lip slid up his teeth in a doggish way. Now he did look the villain.

&
nbsp; "Yes, you made him promise not to wax about you to the old gentleman or anyone else until he had proved himself. It's only the little tracks that you left that put us on to you—those missing personal items, for instance, and your having to sign in at the hall and the range. And then it just took a glance at your service jacket to close the final circuit."

  Edson said nothing.

  "Paul H. Edson. Born Newcastle, New South Wales. And when John caught up with what your middle initial stood for, how his heart must have leaped."

  A tall, stooped man stepped quietly from behind the portable confessional, emerging from shadows that leaned over Kiernan's back like dark seraphim.

  "Pfc. Paul Halifax Edson, meet Captain William Halifax."

  The old man looked at Edson the way he must have looked upon ancient enemies fleeing his saber. “You are the worst of scoundrels,” he said.

  On cue, Jake and Boswell came in bearing a footlocker between them. They placed it down just inside the gaping Dutch door and stood to either side, folding their arms like harem guards.

  "Do you recognize Miller there? You swam right by him at the lake on Saturday. But why don't we follow this to its logical conclusion and take a look inside your box? You've already scotched any chance of getting into this man's good graces."

  Edson pivoted out of the chair and had it whirling toward Jake before he was fully upright. Jake put up his hands but got a slatted smack on the chin. Edson's boots thumped as he hurdled the footlocker, stiff-arming Boswell so violently that the small man bounced off the side wall. Then he was gone into the night.

  Jake and the clerk got gamely to their feet and went after him.

  "Watch he doesn't have a knife!” Kiernan yelled after them, then turned to make sure Halifax had not reacted badly to the violence.

  The old man looked more weary than shaken.

  "This is my doing,” he said. “In my own way, I lured John to his death just as surely as that scoundrel."

  His hand floated up to his forehead like a leaf lifted on a trembling wind. “Of all life's companions I have lost, this cuts the deepest."

  Jake's troop had a busy Monday: foot and mounted drill, stable cleaning and grooming of horses, scrubbing floorboards until they looked bleached and urinals until they shone. After mess he dragged himself back to where the previous night's excitement had begun.

  The chaplain stood at the builder's desk working on correspondence. “That bruise doesn't look too bad, Miller. And I saw Boswell alive and well. How was the food this evening?"

  "I didn't stop to taste it. Have they caught up with Edson yet?"

  "Not yet, but he's been sighted. It's rather clear he's trying for the Canadian border."

  "If that greenhorn sentry hadn't challenged us, we would have had him before he got out of the stable. What will happen to the louse when they catch him?"

  "Well, he's a deserter during wartime, he assaulted men on his way off the post, and he left on stolen government property. It won't go well. The important thing, I suppose, is that he's been cast out of our midst."

  "Do you really think the old man was satisfied with what we did?"

  "When I saw him off with the body, he was grieving; and that's all I could see."

  "We should have brought our findings to the CO."

  "I told you, the XO considered it very circumstantial, that we needed to bring real evidence before he took it higher. And if Edson had kept his dim wits about him, there's not much we could have done except see that he was ostracized. After all, he did not hold John's head under the water, he merely lured him out and then deserted him when he took the challenge, a gamble that you almost upset with your quick action. So now Edson will have to work out his salvation somewhere else. For that, I will have to answer. Hopefully, he'll repent some day for what he did."

  "I doubt it,” Jake said in a clumsy attempt to alleviate the priest's troubled thoughts. “I hate deserters. Them, and thieves and drunkards."

  "I suppose then there'd be quite a ruckus of a Saturday night if you were hearing confessions like I do; but listen, Miller, do me a favor."

  The priest reached across the long shelf and picked up something from behind the rolled blueprints. It was a violin case.

  "I borrowed this from the chaplain of the Vermont Guard."

  "Isn't he a Protestant?"

  "In a word ... yes; nevertheless, I would like you to scratch out a tune for me."

  "Why is that?"

  "I'd like to help you get past your trouble with your mother, but I need to hear you play before I can intercede."

  Jake's look was as skeptical as the one Sergeant Duda had given the priest at the riding hall.

  "Play, Miller. Please. I'm trying to be scrupulous."

  Jake considered rebellion, but then took the instrument, suddenly desirous of lifting himself from his situation with a little music.

  "Not quite in tune,” he said, plucking and adjusting, “but nicely made. What shall I play?"

  "Are you acquainted with the ‘Londonderry Air'? You might know it as ‘Danny Boy.’ If you play it well, I can say so and buy you some grace with a letter to your mother."

  Jake took up the bow and put the instrument under his bruised chin. As he played, he was reminded of nights at the Hibernian when his mother had sung along with the other men and women, and he had picked out her untrained but vibrant soprano without having to glance up from his fingering.

  "That will do fine,” Kiernan said when Jake had finished.

  Somewhere in the outer darkness, the bugler began to blow Taps. When the notes had all vanished, the lights in the cavalry barracks went out. Jake lay on his back with his hands behind his head, staring at the dark ceiling, turning over and over the irony of feeling more guilt about the death of a man he had fought so hard to save than did the man who had left him to die.

  One guilt tended door for another. The darkness above gazed down at him.

  "Lily,” he said.

  Copyright © 2010 Chris Muessig

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Department: THE MYSTERIOUS CIPHER by by Willie Rose

  Each letter consistently represents another. The quotation is from a short mystery story. Arranging the answer letters in alphabetical order gives a clue to the title of the story.

  DI QAK FHZ AYSG'Q IHRGS FK YGS QYOKG FK RGSKM DQP UDGN, D'S AYTK ZKKG ZYDQ IHM JMKSYQHMP. QADP DP GHQ FKMKEW JADEHPHJAW.

  —SYTDS KSNKMEKW NYQKP

  Cipher Answer: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

  Solution listed in Table of Contents

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Department: BOOKED & PRINTED by Robert C. Hahn

  Ireland and Scotland have a substantial cadre of first-rate writers populating their lands with criminal misdeeds of all sorts—Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, and Ken Bruen, to name just a few. Three first-time authors who are ready to join their ranks are Russel D. McLean of Dundee, Scotland; C. David Ingram of greater Glasgow; and Stuart Neville of Northern Ireland. All three offer tarnished knights jousting with their own demons, characters who reflect the moral ambiguity of modern life and who wrestle with choices that often lead to unpredictable, lifelong quagmires.

  * * * *

  Russel D. McLean's the good son (Minotaur, $24.99) is the first novel by the acclaimed short story writer (and regular AHMM contributor). J. McNee is a bitter Dundee ex-cop whose fiancée, Elaine, was killed by a still-unknown hit-and-run driver, which also left him with a bum leg and a load of guilt. Fallout from the crash included estrangement from his fiancée's family, heavy drinking, striking a fellow officer and losing his job as a Dundee policeman, and, eventually, taking over an aging P.I.'s business.

  * * * *

  * * * *

  His life is transformed again when James Robertson enters his office. Robertson, a farmer, wants McNee to investigate the life his brother Daniel was leading in London in the decades before he returned to the family farm and silently hanged himself from a tree
. The police, satisfied that Daniel committed suicide, are uninterested in investigating further, but James needs more.

  A few phone calls are all it takes for McNee to discover that Daniel was using a Soho nightclub as an address and working with a notorious London gangster, Gordon Egg. But McNee's phone calls are also enough to bring trouble in the form of Daniel's girlfriend and Egg's brutal henchmen.

  McLean's prose is marvelous as he details McNee's struggles to come to terms with Elaine's death, his own guilt, and his fractured relationships with former colleagues and Elaine's sister, Rachel. And while McNee tries to carry all that baggage, he invites an additional burden when he persists with his attempts to provide James Robertson with the closure he requested, even after the latter tells him to quit. But what else can McNee do when his efforts lead to another woman's death and the shooting of a friend?

  McLean has created an intensely complex, credible central character and surrounds him with a skillfully drawn supporting cast. Readers will look forward to a reprise of J. McNee.

  * * * *

  C. David Ingram's the stone gallows (Myrmidon, $14.95) introduces hard-luck Glasgow investigator Cameron Stone. As in The Good Son, a car accident again sets the stage for a violent shift in the life fortunes of Cameron Stone, a detective constable in Glasgow. As young Stone, with an older colleague, is staking out a trucking firm boss who is suspected of human trafficking, the detective gets involved in a wild car chase that ends in the death of a woman and her infant. The crash leaves Stone seriously injured and unable to remember clearly what happened.

  While still in the hospital, he receives a get-well card from his wife with a note saying she has left him and taken their young son with them. Although an internal police investigation officially clears him, Cameron is labeled a “baby-killer” by segments of public opinion. He ends up resigning from the force, and is eventually taken on as a gofer at a detective agency owned by his former partner and mentor, Joe Banks.

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Ingram packs a lot into his nearly four hundred pages. Cameron tracks down a runaway teen working in a brothel disguised as a “health spa,” follows a woman whose sister suspects her of having an affair with her husband, and tackles jobs his ex-colleagues on the police force don't want to dirty themselves with, such as physically discouraging a suspected drug dealer near a school, intimidating troublesome teens, or putting the fear of God into a pervert who preys on young girls. Each event morphs into a thoroughly absorbing story, testing Cameron's abilities and resolve and threatening those closest to him. And a brilliant ending, perfectly orchestrated and totally fitting, will leave readers eager for more of Cameron Stone.