AHMM, July/August 2012

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Not only was this one of the biggest public rooms of the hotel, but we would be without our cabinet or the smoke machine or any of our props. Although I couldn't see how I could help her, I asked if I wouldn't be needed.

  “Tonight we must rely on Aurelius,” she said, seemingly unconcerned.

  I wasn't so sure. I blew hot and cold about the emperor. Sometimes I believed him square and honest and a fact of the universe. Other times I thought he was a bunch of phooey.

  “He's our main hope of saving her,” Madame Selina said as if she detected my doubts. “A life's at stake.”

  With that, I ran out to the street and found a carriage. At quarter of nine, I led our three guests along the immense veranda and down the long corridor of the hotel. The Rose Salon was already packed, as news of a séance by the famous Madame Selina had swept through the hotel and several of its neighbors. We pushed into the room. LaLune and I made our way to the front, leaving our other two guests standing inconspicuously at the back.

  Madame sat facing the gathering, concentrating impassively as she always did before a séance. She was on a slight platform with nothing but the chair she sat in and a small round table with a single candle burning. When she saw me, she raised her head and I nodded. She motioned for me to come closer and whispered, “Whatever happens, get to her room. With our two guests if possible. If they baulk, go alone.”

  She resumed her solitary and concentrated pose. The gas lights were brought down to the faintest golden glimmer and the candle beside her leaped up to seize all the light in the room. It was warm with the press of so many bodies. I could hear the rustle of crinolines and the papery sound of the ladies’ taffetas and the shuffle of the gentlemen's shoes and boots.

  Madame slumped back in her chair. “We have one seeking knowledge,” she said in a faint voice.

  No response. There was such a long pause that I began to fear Aurelius had taken his holiday elsewhere.

  “We have one seeking knowledge,” she repeated.

  Again, no answer and as the minutes stretched out, I felt LaLune stir beside me.

  “It is George LaLune, Turtle Band, great nephew of the last Great Sachem of the Mohawks,” he said in a loud voice.

  Whether Aurelius had been slumbering or whether he was pals with the Great Sachem in the afterlife, Madame's eyes rolled back in her head, and Aurelius spoke, a low, harsh, hollow sound octaves below Madame's normal voice. “What do you seek?” A ripple of sound went through the room, followed by whispers and shushings.

  “I have been falsely accused of poisoning a guest. Who has poisoned Edith van Boord?”

  Aurelius gave a groan and his voice dropped still further. “Those closest to her seek her death with the waters.”

  Gasps of horror. If a restaurant could be ruined by a bad oyster, the whole town could be threatened by poison in the springs.

  “Death in the bottle they carry. Death in the green jar on the dressing table. Death to the poor child.”

  There was a shriek from the middle of the room and a man's voice shouted for the lights. My two companions shoved their way to the corridor and I followed. At the door, I glanced back. In the bright yellow flare of the gas, I saw that Madame Selina had collapsed, unconscious, her hair undone, her arms dangling over the sides of her chair. I ran for the stairs with my companions.

  Behind us someone was shouting, “Stop, stop, you have no right!” Edith's uncle, no doubt.

  And another, higher voice demanding, “Rupert, stop them! Stop them!”

  No chance. I'd found my way to the van Boord's rooms earlier in the day, and I knew where to go in the vast maze of corridors. The constable forced the door and we surged into the suite. The curtains were all drawn and the light was low. The constable turned up the gas revealing a dressing table with—honestly my heart skipped a beat I was both so relieved and so surprised—a small green porcelain jar.

  Our other companion lifted the lid, examined some white powder and nodded. “Arsenic, I am certain,” he said. That counted for a lot, since he was the local chemist.

  I shouted for Edith and ran through the other rooms, startling an older woman, nurse or maid, who occupied the small room next to Edith van Boord. We found her lying in bed, sick, weak, and frightened.

  “You're all right now,” I said. “You're safe now. Do you remember me?”

  “The boy at the restaurant,” she said and fainted.

  There is no need for me to tell you all the ins and outs of the case. The scandal was written up in all the public prints and retailed by every gossip at the Springs. Madame's Selina's prompt action was praised to the skies and even Nip Tompkins, late of the Orphan Home, came in for a paragraph or two and personal thanks from the heiress of the van Boord fortune.

  I was pleased as you can imagine and Madame Selina noticed. “This holiday has done you good, Nip. Every man deserves to be a White Knight once. I daresay you've grown an inch or two since.”

  But this brought back all my worries and almost spoiled my triumph. “I imagine you'll be visiting the Orphan Home sometime soon.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “I'm outgrowing the cabinet.”

  “The new one should be ready when we return,” she said. “I am not about to lose you over a few feet of carpentry.”

  I could have danced a jig, and I may have cut a caper or two, for Hilda's dinners and interesting errands and the delights of the city were still mine. But there remained one thing and when we were steaming down the Hudson, I asked her about it.

  “You had the wet handkerchiefs tested somehow.”

  “That's right. After you mentioned the bluish tint of Edith's skin, I noticed her pallor. That was very observant of you, Nip, and it made me think. The chemist ran the Marsh Test and detected arsenic. But the chain of evidence was unclear.”

  I had to ask about chains of evidence, which are not physical like the chains around a strong box but have to do with how evidence is handled and who could tamper with it. Though there was no chance of that with us, Madame Selina said that any good lawyer would raise a lot of doubts.

  “So we needed the séance.”

  “We needed Aurelius.”

  I could see that in a way, although I never liked to see Aurelius at work without the personal assistance of Nip Tompkins, who was only invaluable as long as the late emperor needed a hand. “But the green jar. How did you know about that?”

  She turned to me as if genuinely surprised, for Madame always claims to remember nothing from her trances. “The green jar?”

  “The one Aurelius mentioned. The one with the arsenic, hiding amid the cosmetics like a jar of face powder.”

  “I'm surprised you need to ask, Nip. Of course Aurelius would notice such a thing. Unlike railroads and steamboats, arsenic is something old Romans know all about.”

  Copyright © 2012 Janice Law

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  * * *

  Fiction: AUTUMN CHILL

  by John H. Dirckx

  Nobody received an invitation to Howard Rentz's last birthday party. His two sons and their families didn't need invitations because they were running the show. And it was more or less understood that his bachelor neighbors on either side would drift over and join in once the commotion started. The attendance of Howard's girlfriend Joy Lynn was also taken for granted.

  The lots in Rentz's neighborhood ran back hundreds of feet toward the wooded slopes of an ancient cemetery. His rear deck commanded a view of oak leaves turning gold on distant heights under the fraternal kiss of an October sun. Nearer at hand, asters flourished and squirrels foraged among the unkempt ornamental borders that separated his place from his neighbors’ better-tended flower gardens.

  Joy Lynn Robiche gathered up Styrofoam containers and plastic cups, the remains of a fast-food lunch for two, and dropped them into a waste can in a corner of the deck.

  Rentz consulted a pocket watch on a chain. “What time's your conference?”

  “Thre
e.” The lie fell smoothly from her tongue.

  “I hope you'll have time for ice cream and cake and some socializing before you have to leave.”

  Joy Lynn nodded silently. If her manner was proprietorial and efficient rather than affectionate, Rentz didn't seem to mind, or even to notice. Her appointment was pure fiction, designed to allow for an early escape from the party.

  At a little past one o'clock, Howard's two sons and their families mounted the steps to the deck in a semisolemn procession. Kevin and Virgil were copy-and-paste replicas of their father—rough hewn, beetle browed, obstinate as spring steel. Kevin's wife Sheeba, with skin and hair the color of chilled honey, leaned over Rentz's shoulder from behind and planted a noisy kiss on his cheek. “Happy birthday, Dad.” She deposited two wrapped presents on the table at his elbow.

  Virgil's wife Cary added another package to the pile and headed for the door to the kitchen. She was dark, slow moving, and unabashedly plump. “I'll put you-know-what in the refrigerator,” she confided as she passed close to her father-in-law.

  The adults seated themselves on an assortment of metal chairs and babbled desultorily about nothing in particular. A psychologist might have peeled away layer after layer of family pathology here without ever getting to the bottom of things. More telling than the laconic and barely civil exchanges were the periodic silences.

  Cary and Sheeba were evidently at loggerheads over something that went deeper than their sharply contrasting temperaments. Virgil and Kevin's manner toward their father was a lumpy blend of filial awe and rude condescension. Everyone but Rentz displayed a savage coolness toward Joy Lynn. The men treated her merely as an unwelcome intruder, but the women's wry glances and curt asides expressed disapproval of everything about her, from hairstyle and shoes to demeanor and personal code of ethics.

  The three preteen children each went their own way. Virgil and Cary's boy Jacob marched purposefully toward a weedy thicket in the middle distance, where anyone who was paying attention would have seen him slicing open milkweed pods with a stainless steel knife and examining their contents with a magnifying lens.

  As for Kevin and Sheeba's son Devlin (a k a Speedo and Loco Boy), within five minutes of his arrival in his grandfather's backyard he had slid into a nonexistent home plate about thirty times, always with different sound effects. By the time his father called off the game, Devlin's jeans had accumulated enough grass stains to overwhelm even the leading brand of laundry detergent—not that it mattered, since he had also shredded the fabric beyond repair.

  Devlin's sister Deirdre lingered on the deck, surreptitiously eavesdropping on adult conversations. She had an eyebrow ring, a rosebud tattoo on her left calf, and an alarmingly advanced vocabulary for a child of eleven.

  “Hey, girl, come here,” Rentz summoned her in a stage whisper. “I got a job for you. This is just between the two of us.” He massaged her shoulder with a big bony paw while whispering a commission in her ear. She nodded compliance and made off for the kitchen. Just before she reached the door he called after her, “And, hey, girl—a big spoon, okay?”

  A round-shouldered little man with a face like an owl appeared on the deck with his head tilted to one side, his gait an uncompromising waddle. “Happy birthday, Howard,” he said. “I guess no coffee today?”

  “We've got coffee. Joy Lynn, get Wally a cup of coffee.”

  “Just black,” said Wally with a shy glance at Joy Lynn. “No sugar.”

  “I know.”

  Rentz swung around to face his sons. “Everything okay at the shop?”

  “No problems, Dad,” said Virgil. “But we've got to talk some more about that Wagner plant. It's just sitting there empty—”

  “Okay, you mugs,” chirped Sheeba, “no business discussions today.”

  “But next week could be too late,” objected Virgil, without meeting his sister-in-law's gaze.

  Cary began dispensing ice cream and cake, pausing frequently to lick her fingers. Jacob was called in from the edge of the woods, where he was trapping insects in a plastic specimen bottle, and Devlin was persuaded to remain seated for a full five minutes with the promise of double rations of carbohydrates. For a few minutes a morose kind of tranquility reigned.

  Sheeba took pictures of her father-in-law opening his presents—an imitation ivory backscratcher, a baseball cap with a mildly sleazy caption, the kind of gifts middle-aged people usually receive from family members instead of articles of intrinsic value. Rentz held a T-shirt adorned with a monkey face across his chest and mimicked the monkey's grimace for the camera.

  “Kind of chilly out here this afternoon,” he remarked as he laid the shirt aside.

  “Well, we are about three weeks into fall,” Joy Lynn reminded him.

  “Hey, is it raining?”

  His sudden exclamation was seconded by indignant outcries from the others.

  Rentz leaned over the wooden railing of the deck. “Ricedale! What do you think you're doing down there?”

  In the side yard of the house next door a wiry man in a checkered cap was watering the potted plants suspended from an awning by sticking his finger into the threaded metal fitting on the end of a garden hose so as to send a jet of water curving gently upward. “That's Mister Ricedale, if you don't mind. I'm irrigating the hanging gardens of Bangladesh, same like I do every day about this time.”

  “Well, you're also irrigating the ice cream and cake.”

  “So what is this, the Queen's birthday?”

  “It's my birthday, you dingbat. And if you don't get out of here with that fire hose, I might decide to administer a kick to your southern hemisphere.”

  “Oh, yeah? Well, if you did that, I might decide to run a sickle through your giblets.”

  “Oh, yeah? Well, if you did that, some folks downtown might decide to hang you from a long pole with a short rope.”

  “Well, in that case I better come up there and help myself to a last meal of iced Beam and steak, I think you said.”

  Ricedale's arrival on the deck introduced a welcome note of joviality into the proceedings. Kevin and Virgil nevertheless finally managed to corner their father for some serious talk.

  “Look, Dad,” said Virgil “we need to move fast on this Wagner plant deal. It'd be bad enough if somebody bought the place and junked all the equipment and turned it into a skating rink, but what if they started up another heating and cooling business?”

  “They'd be crazy if they did,” said Rentz. “Wagner went bankrupt.”

  Kevin moved his chair closer to his father's. “That's because he's an alcoholic. Another guy with some capital and both feet on the ground could come in there, take over that shop, and give us more competition than Wagner ever did.”

  Virgil returned to the charge with a different line of argument. “Wagner just bought a couple of twelve-foot Dodge forming brakes last year. The beds and the rams both tilt. They can punch and notch at the same time. The dies that go with them would just about fill the back shed.”

  Rentz snorted scornfully. “And then where are you going to keep the flatbed?”

  “Dad,” said Virgil, “we sold the flatbed a year ago, remember? Now that Wagner is bankrupt, he'll have to practically give away all that gear to whoever buys his shop.”

  Howard Rentz reared up in his chair with a flash of wrath. “Now look here, you two,” he stormed, “my brains haven't turned to mush yet. I'm still running the business, and I'm telling you to leave Steve Wagner's plant alone. Time we met his price and started paying tax and insurance on a whole ‘nother shop, we'd be bankrupt ourselves.”

  “There's something else we need to talk about,” said Kevin, with the air of a man venturing onto thin ice. “We figure it's about time we had some stake in the business. We're making all the runs but we're still selling on straight commission, and both of the girls still have to hold down part-time jobs to keep shoes on our kids’ feet.”

  “Yes, and your mother used to do the books and the bills at the shop
and sling hash to keep shoes on your feet. When I go, it'll be soon enough for you two to find out how much fun it is to own a business. Then you can buy another shop or branch out into aluminum siding or do whatever other fool thing you want so you'll end up in receivership. Till then, this old boy is the top dog, and I don't need any little pups to tell me when to bark.”

  He spoke with such vehemence and decision that Kevin and Virgil fell silent and moved away.

  “Where's that pill-peddling buddy of mine?” roared Rentz, still excited. “Hey, Wally, have you got any of those stomach mints on you? The kind that take the hide right off your tongue and put a chill clear down to your gizzard?”

  * * * *

  The phone was ringing when Detective Sergeant Cyrus Auburn got back to his desk after lunch. The dispatcher put through a call from Nick Stamaty, the investigator for the coroner's office.

  “You got a minute, Cy?”

  “Sure,” said Auburn. “My manicurist isn't due until two. What's up?”

  “I've got a funny kind of complaint to check out, and I thought you might want to be in on the preliminary investigation in case it turns out to be a homicide.”

  “A funny homicide would be a nice change. What's the story?”

  “Woman thinks her boyfriend was murdered by his sons so they could gain control of the family business.”

  “Which business?”

  “Rentz Heating and Cooling.”

  “One of their guys replaced the coil in my air conditioner last summer. Murdered how?”

  “Day before yesterday he didn't answer his phone. The girlfriend went to the house and found him unresponsive. It looked like a massive stroke, so the paramedics ran him to the Chalfont. He died about noon yesterday afternoon without ever regaining consciousness.”

  “Autopsy?”

  “This morning. Technically, any death within twenty-four hours after hospital admission is a coroner's case, but the coroner released this one to the hospital pathologist because the decedent was a heart patient.”