The Devil's Feast Page 15

  “But I like him. And his wife. And his cooking.”

  “His cooking? You? Côtelettes de mouton à la Reforme? Potage Lord Marcus Hill? Pound cake filled with marzipan cream made to resemble a plucked chicken?”

  “You have not tasted his boiled beans and bacon.”

  I snorted.

  “He is not ridiculous in his native tongue.” He leaned back and shut his eyes. “He is, in his way, a brilliant man. He would have made a great general. Instead, he organizes a kitchen like a military campaign and invents something useful every week. If the government put him in charge of national nourishment, no one in the country would starve.”

  “And now someone has died in his kitchen and the club worries that there might already have been another victim.”

  “And they are fretting because of their banquet.”

  “Not just that—but yes.”

  “And, as Wakley says, arsenic is everywhere, and it may have nothing to do with Soyer.”

  “And I must resolve it in three days.”

  “What do you think, then?” he said.

  I gave him a pleading look. “I do not know. I cannot seem to cut the matter down to any size; the possibilities just seem to loom and grow. Do I look at the guests at the dinner? At the servants who cooked it or brought it to the table? At Rowlands’s friends and enemies—and what of the other man, Cunningham? Or the Russians, who may be plotting to have the banquet canceled, about whom I know nothing? Then there is the possibility of accidental contamination, but it also occurred to me after I saw Soyer quarrel with the meat man this morning that a supplier might deliver something unfit to eat if they were sufficiently dishonest or sufficiently angry. And there is the club itself: hundreds of members, dozens of staff—full, as I discover, of rivalry and resentment. Where do I begin? Where do I stop?”

  Blake’s landlady chose this moment to shriek up (she never climbed the stairs if she could help it) and demand why I wasn’t done by now. I called down that I was all but finished, and swiftly took up a bag, into which Blake threw a number of items.

  “I’ll climb out of the back window. It’s nearly dark now, so I will not be seen. You lock up behind you.”

  “And?”

  “You will have to find a way of getting me into the Reform. I’ll give you a head start. Then I’ll have one of those hot baths and sleep in your room.”

  I said, “You have to come through the gate in the side street—”

  “Carlton Gardens—I know it,” he said. “I’ll meet you in Crown Passage; it’s a narrow lane on the opposite side from the Reform in St. James’s. Come and find me.” He sauntered, too cocksure for my liking, toward the back room.

  Then he said, “Do you have those bottles you took from Rowlands’s rooms?”

  I examined my pockets. They were still there: one a tiny pot of Delftware, the other a tiny glass vial. He scooped them up onto his palm.

  “Can I keep them?”

  “If you can make your way down the wall without breaking them.”

  I did not bother to stay to watch him reach the ground safely. He seemed so sure of himself that part of me half wished him a broken ankle on the way.

  • • •

  MATTY WAS SLICING FRUIT: perfect grapes, pineapples and oranges. Next to her, Mrs. Relph was stirring a cream of the palest lemon hue.

  “I require your presence, Matty.”

  Matty looked up irritably. She came up to me and bobbed.

  “Mrs. Relph is losing patience with me. I can’t be disappearing all the time like this. People are starting to talk.”

  “It is important,” I said, equally cool. “I need you now. And I shall have words with Mrs. Relph.”

  “No—” she said, but I was already there.

  “Mrs. Relph, I shall have need of Matty today, and maybe for the next few days. It is on Monsieur Soyer’s business. I would be most grateful if you would release her when necessary.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said frostily, wiping red, calloused hands.

  “Is there something more you would say, Mrs. Relph?”

  “No, sir.” Her face had the closed look of the servant who knows better but will not say.

  “Please, speak.”

  “All right, sir.” She looked me square in the face and lowered her voice. “Since you ask. Besides that it becomes exceedingly difficult to complete tasks if she is constantly to be called away, the fact is, sir, Matilda is a good, steady girl, a clever girl with good prospects, and your presence and attentions are causing talk. I daresay you turn her head a little. But if she is to do well in this business, as I hope she will, she must hold on to her reputation and keep herself straight. It is hard enough with the men here. It’s hard enough with the attention Chef shows her. Your presence encourages more of that.”

  “I see,” I said stiffly. “I am sorry, madam, if I am regarded as a disruptive influence. I do not wish to be. And believe me, I am well aware of Matty’s fine qualities, which is why we need her.”

  • • •

  I TOLD MATTY THE NEWS.

  Crown Passage was a grim little alley. Blake was crouching in a doorway. I pulled him up and helped him into my plain country coat, watched the fleas leap upon it and wondered if it would ever be fit to wear again. It hid most of the poorness of his clothing and much of the stench, and a woolen cap with earmuffs covered much of his face. I pressed a small pie that Matty had taken from the kitchen into his hand. Dusk was falling as I led him down Carlton Gardens. In the balustraded wall around the club there was a gate. Most of the time, it was manned by one of Gimbell’s brawnier favorites, but Matty had, against my better judgment, lured him away with the promise of a meringue and a teasing smile, and sent out a little potboy, who, knowing no better, opened the door wide for us.

  We rounded the dark sides of the basement, dodging as best we could the scullery boys who scuttled in and out with slops and the delivery men wrestling pallets of greens, to the furthest and littlest-used entrance from the street. Though I had fought in numerous skirmishes in India, I found I was nervous. If we were discovered, what explanation could I give? Blake would be done for.

  We waited in the shadows until Matty opened the door.

  “Blimey, you stink!” she said in a hoarse whisper. Then, “How could you do this to yourself? Why could you not just do what the milord says? I thought you were steady, Blake, and then you do the stupid thing. How will you get out of this? And then to have Avery lie to me about it! You thought I could not keep a secret? Who else has more reason to, and better practice?”

  “I concur with everything Matty says,” I said.

  “Just your knowing where I am makes you an accomplice, Matty.”

  “Precious little care you are taking to keep yourself safe,” she replied. “We need to bide our time until the kitchen clerk goes for dinner, then we can get up the stairs.”

  She ushered us into the corridor, then pushed us into a cupboard too small for the three of us—Blake’s odor was almost overwhelming—until she was sure that no one was about, and we emerged, gasping.

  “We’ve a moment or two to get up the servants’ stairs.”

  Whistling and footsteps sounded from round the corner. There was nowhere to hide Blake save the lift that carried food from the kitchen to the dining rooms upstairs. Matty pointed to it desperately.

  “He will never fit.”

  Without a word, Blake threw off my coat and climbed in, miraculously folding himself up. Matty shut the doors quickly and began to draw on the pulleys. Round the corner came the prodigy, Perrin.

  He was right upon us when he said, “Ah, la belle Mathilde,” and gave her a look that was at once suggestive and soulful, and in heavily accented English said, “Do you take the clerk’s job?”

  “Just for a moment, Chef.” She smiled back, rather more warmly than nec
essary, while wrestling with the pulleys.

  He turned to me and evidently thought the worst, raising his eyebrows. Then he pressed his apron to his nose.

  “Bon sang! What is that, cette puanteur!”

  Matty answered at once. “There was a tramp, a beggar, got in here. The captain took him out, but he left something behind.” She laughed and pointed at my coat. “I’ll burn it and fetch a mop as soon as I’m done here.”

  He nodded at me, still half amused. “Bon, ma belle, make it soon.” She grinned and blushed, and as soon as he had gone began to work the pulley the other way.

  “Captain! I can’t pull it back down.” The ropes would not move. I leaned down with all my own strength, but to no avail. Then the kitchen clerk appeared at the end of the passage.

  “You’ll have to go upstairs and find him. I can’t go into the club,” she hissed, and fled.

  I snatched up my coat and dashed up the stairs to the porter’s lobby and thence into the saloon, almost sending footmen flying, then walked as swiftly—with the illusion of unhurriedness—as I could to the far corner of the building where I assumed the lift must emerge. I found a small anteroom where two footmen were wrestling with the lift door. They looked at me with great bemusement.

  “Good evening,” I said. “The lift is broken. The fault is downstairs. The ropes, I think. It must be fixed. Before dinner. You must go!”

  “But we cannot both leave our post.”

  “But you must. You were both asked for.”

  Reluctantly, they left.

  “Blake! Open the door!”

  There was a muffled choke. I pulled the lift open. Blake blearily opened his eyes, and tumbled out hands first into a heap on the floor.

  “Too old for that,” he muttered.

  The servants’ staircase was just outside the anteroom, so I bundled Blake up in my coat and half carried him up the two flights of stairs to my room. Thankfully, we had no further encounters.

  I requested a bath (one I should not have minded myself), and a footman delivered a note which proved to be from Wakley. It confirmed the diagnosis of arsenic poisoning, and added that he would send a longer report on the morrow. Blake took the bath, emerging a good deal sweeter-smelling and reassuringly pink-fleshed, though still alarmingly whiskered, and wearing my bedrobe.

  He had taken out Rowlands’s two small bottles and placed them on the desk. Now he unscrewed each and sniffed them.

  “What do you think?”

  He was silent for a while, his brows bunched in concentration. He upended the contents of the glass bottle onto his finger and licked it.

  “Fowler’s Solution,” he said.

  “The tonic?”

  He nodded. He poured out the contents of the small blue pot onto the desk. A smaller pile of white grains. He stared at them. I reached over to touch them, and he pushed my arm away.

  “I reckon it’s white arsenic.”

  “Good lord! How can you tell?

  “I’ll need milk and an egg.”

  I summoned a footman to go down to the kitchen and request milk, an uncooked egg, bread and butter and a hearty soup. Food was not permitted in the rooms, but I said Monsieur Soyer had offered me the kitchen’s resources, and it was an emergency. Blake lay down and rested.

  I was to meet Jerrold downstairs, and dressed for dinner. The footman delivered a tray. Blake sat up suddenly, as if surprised from a deep sleep.

  On my table was a bottle of sherry. He poured a generous shot into a glass and took a swig. Then he took from the bag I had brought from his rooms a small pack of tools and instruments. He unwrapped it and extracted a pair of small tongs; with these he picked up a single grain of the powder. Before I could stop him, he placed it upon his tongue.

  “Blake!”

  Immediately, he gagged, spat it out, took a great mouthful of sherry and then spewed it out into the sink. He took a mouthful of the milk, swilled and spat that, too. He broke the egg and tipped it into a glass with more milk, which he swallowed. Then he sat down on the bed, rubbing his mouth gingerly.

  “Well?”

  “That’s arsenic: sharp, like a sting in the mouth.”

  “And you thought it a fine idea to try it yourself, in your state, to discover this. And I am supposed to be rash.”

  “I knew what I was at. Arsenic is the active ingredient of Fowler’s.”

  “I had no idea. My aunt takes it for her lumbago.”

  “It’s flavored with lavender water, and is mostly quackery.”

  “So Rowlands was dosing himself with two kinds of arsenic.”

  He shrugged. “Arsenic’s a treatment for the clap. He may not have known it was also in the Fowler’s. But there’s enough here for him to have killed himself and a few more besides.”

  “So it was self-induced.” I felt my chest sink with relief. And then, “But what about Cunningham?”

  “Perhaps it was cholera and a bit of dyspepsia. We’ll talk tomorrow. Now, I shall eat my bread and soup and sleep, and you will have your dinner.”

  It was with an almost jaunty step that I made my way to the dining room.

  Chapter Ten

  The Reform’s dining room was known as the Coffee Room. It was another great long chamber, divided into three parts by gilded columns and pilasters, adorned with carved, gilded swags, wreaths and cornices, furnished with red silk curtains and Persian carpets, and set with tables laid for four and six. At each table sat gentlemen—mostly in dark frock coats, though here and there one saw flashes of green or blue—drinking and dining. Douglas Jerrold and Henry Mayhew were sitting together, Mayhew more smartly dressed than usual, in a correctly buttoned waistcoat and a properly knotted necktie.

  “How are you, Douglas?” I managed to get in first. “No ill effects after Soyer’s dinner?”

  The older man stood up, pushing his unruly hair back from his face.

  “None at all, my dear Avery. Now, an invitation to the kitchen is one thing,” he said, smirking, “but ensconcing oneself at the club is quite another. You are a damned Tory, Avery! I am surprised they have not run you out of the place.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Douglas,” said Mayhew, refilling his glass with a plum-colored nectar. “This place was lost to politics the minute Soyer’s first dish reached the table. It is a palace to fine living, and the zeal of the radicals is quite blunted. See the butterfly brigade over there—Duncombe with Molesworth and their friends—out in their brightest plumage, tucking into their veal chops.” He pointed to a table of dandies showing off in gold braid and yellow velvet. In among them I saw Thomas Duncombe and William Molesworth. Molesworth ignored me; Duncombe acknowledged me with a discreet wave.

  “You have arranged the table with the Coffee Room clerk?” Jerrold added, looking suddenly anxious. “He is a tartar, I’m afraid, a stickler.” At the Coffee Room’s entrance, a severe-looking man at a lectern was gesturing furiously at me. “Very hard on members’ guests. He insists they must sign in the book before dinner. No exceptions.”

  I went over and explained that the club committee had arranged for me to stay at the club. The Coffee Room clerk said my name was not in the book. I said Mr. Percy and the secretary would vouch for me. Rules were rules, he said. The committee had no special rights when it came to guests; he had heard nothing of it from the secretary. I spied the footman whose name I could not remember divesting himself of plates. He came over, reintroduced himself—“Jeffers, sir”—and confirmed that I was a guest of the committee. This cut no ice. I was a stranger, the Coffee Room clerk said. He could not allow me to eat if my name was not in the book. Jerrold came and asked if I might be his guest, but he, too, was forcefully rebuked. He was allowed one guest: Mr. Mayhew.

  By now we were beginning to attract attention.

  “We shall find you a sponsor,” said Jerrold decisively, and he cast about th
e room. Duncombe looked over, and I bowed my head, I cannot really say why; I simply had a strong feeling that I did not want to be beholden to him. Mayhew, meanwhile, was raising and lowering his eyebrows at a tremendous rate, gesturing at someone sitting behind him. Jerrold at first pointedly ignored him but, after a few minutes of vainly looking, he gave in.

  “He would not be my first choice,” he said with a sigh, “but we shall ask him anyway. He came on his own, and he should agree if we ask him sufficiently humbly. Let us hope he is not in one of his crochets.”

  The man in question was perhaps thirty, an eye-catching figure with a powerful face, a squashed pugilist’s nose and a bulldog chin. He had a startling mop of wavy hair, almost pure white, and wore round spectacles. He leaned back precariously in his chair, and there seemed to be a dozen empty glasses before him on the table.

  “Thack!” Jerrold said, with as much warmth as he could muster.

  “Young Douglas.” The man, at least ten years his junior, brought his chair down and stood up. He was extremely tall.

  Jerrold twitched at the greeting and smiled long-sufferingly. “I wonder if you might do us a great favor tonight. This young gentleman is being put up at the club by the committee, but Scott, the secretary, has failed to inform the Coffee Room tyrant. I have used up my visitor for the day, and the clerk insists he cannot be fed. Would you be so good as to make him your guest for the night?”

  The man looked down at me. He hesitated.

  Jerrold added, “Of course, I expect to pay for his dinner.”

  “In fact, the committee will pay,” I said quickly, “or I will. Either way, everyone will be reimbursed.”

  “Thack, may I introduce Captain William Avery. He has been in India.”

  “Ah, I was born in India. One of the Chinjalee Averys?”

  “No, sir, I am afraid not.”

  “I wonder you have not heard of Avery, Thack,” Jerrold prompted, almost tauntingly. Between the two men, matters were not entirely easy. “He was the toast of India, saved a maharajah from a tiger, fought the Thugs with Xavier Mountstuart and won a sheaf of medals in Afghanistan before being invalided out.”