The Devil's Feast Read online

  “You find us in the midst of interviewing the kitchen staff,” I said. “My manservant and general factotum, Maguire, has come from the country to help me.” I fancied that Blake bent over somewhat more than he had and buried his face into his spectacles and his collar. Wakley glanced cursorily over his side-combed hair, his glasses and his mustache, and for a second he hesitated, as if something caught at his memory. I had the most dreadful thought that they had met before.

  “I should mention, young man, that I felt obliged to deliver my conclusions on the death of Mr. Rowlands to the police. I am now certain that Rowlands was an habitual user of arsenic in greater quantities than one would usually expect; but I am certain also that he ingested a fatally large dose of arsenic hours before he fell sick.”

  “Were you able to tell what the source was?”

  “No. Arsenic has a habit of creeping, even after its host is dead. It was everywhere in his stomach. A few mouthfuls of Fowler’s Tonic would not account for it, and so I must conclude that something else—probably on Monsieur Soyer’s table—delivered it.”

  “I have made sure that the dead man’s room has not been tidied, and neither has he been moved, so there will be ample opportunity for you to take samples of, of”—I swallowed—“the various bodily fluids. And I believe the club doctor acquired similar samples from our recovering patient.”

  “There, you are learning, Captain Avery.”

  “We also have reason to believe that the new corpse and his friend were poisoned after eating at the club, but by a different poison—strychnine.”

  “Good heavens! Two poisons! That is unusual. Though both are easily obtained for domestic use.” Thankfully, he did not ask how I, so obviously green in such matters, could have known this. “Well, no reason to delay a visit to our corpse. There is a footman ready to take me upstairs, apparently. I shall meet with you later.”

  “What do you do with the mice and rats you do catch?” Blake was asking the vermin boy.

  “Burns ’em, sir. But I sells the mice tails to a lady in Lambeth.” He looked sheepishly at Gimbell, who gave him a shove.

  • • •

  IN THE MIDST of our interviews, Soyer suddenly appeared in the doorway, wreathed in smiles.

  “I would be grateful for a moment with you both,” he said.

  Once he was in his office, his shoulders bowed and his smile vanished. He took from a pocket in his waistcoat a key, went to the sideboard and turned it in the lock of a small drawer. Out of this he drew two pieces of paper, on which there was a deal of black ink. He placed them on the table, his hands trembling, and gazed at Blake.

  The paper was of good quality, thick and white. The words had been cut out and stuck down, half were handwritten, the rest from publications: newspapers, bills, broadsides.

  The first letter read:

  This was not the first and it will not be the last. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, and all shall be taken from you.

  “When did this come?”

  “The morning after the dinner, after poor Rowlands died. It was addressed most formally to ‘The Chef of the Reform.’ I opened it, as Grove, the secretary, had walked out the day before, and I alone saw it.”

  “And you did not think to mention it to me!” I said sharply.

  “Je suis désolé, Capitaine. Truly. I know it was a mistake. But I did not know what it meant. I have always received a few letters that are—let us say—a little eccentric. I thought perhaps it was some angry radical or madman. And I confess, I was both worried and fearful that any unnecessary whisper of scandale at this time would be so bad for the banquet. I went to Lord Marcus to speak of Rowlands. I had the letter in my pocket. I discovered that he was already concerned about Rowlands’s death; he had called the committee. It was then that he told me about the gentleman who died after falling ill in the street three weeks ago, that it may not have been his heart. At the same time, he counseled caution. The two events were not likely to be connected but might harm us if they were to be widely known. Lord Marcus is my great champion on the committee; I did not wish to alarm him further. Then we thought of Captain Avery,”—he turned to Blake—“and you. And I assumed, with your great talents, it should all be swiftly resolved.”

  “Yet you kept the letter,” said Blake.

  “Oui.”

  Blake picked up the second.

  “It arrived half an hour ago,” said Soyer dolefully. “It was delivered to the porter upstairs, but he did not recognize the messenger. A boy. Here is the envelope.”

  The envelope was fine and creamy white. Again, it was addressed to “The Chef of the Reform.” There was no stamp. The strange pattern of handwritten and printed words read:

  This was no accident. You knew there would be more. And there will be. You cannot stop this. You and your foolish ambitions will be washed away in a raging torrent. A flood to cleanse the ordure.

  Soyer gazed at the letter. His uppermost emotion seemed to be sadness. “To have such an enemy. I had no idea. I thought they loved me.”

  Blake shrugged. “No one has only friends. And it may not be meant entirely for you.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “Addressing you as the Chef of the Reform rather than Soyer suggests some distance. Perhaps it is intended to alarm and upset you in order to disrupt the banquet. Its actual target may be the Reform itself, rather than you personally.”

  At this, Soyer’s distress seemed to abate a little.

  • • •

  I HAD TWO QUESTIONS for Blake as we made our way back to the butler’s room. Had he encountered Wakley before, and did he truly believe that the letters were not personally meant for Soyer?

  To the first question he said: “Yes.”

  To the second: “They may be. But no purpose is served by upsetting Soyer further.”

  Matty was lingering in the doorway. She was most agitated.

  “Percy says I’m not on the list to question,” she said. “You’ve to put me on the list.”

  “But, Matty, we know it wasn’t you.”

  “You’ve got to put me on the list. You don’t understand. Don’t make me different from the others. They’re starting to talk. Please.”

  “Who—” I started to say, but she closed the door.

  The staff still to be spoken to had by now mostly collected in the kitchen maids’ dining room, where they waited to be summoned. Platters of fried fish—sent out for by Soyer—had been laid out on the table. The mood was now a combustible mix of impatience to leave, uneasiness and growing suspicion.

  This was apparent in the Irish underbutler we next interrogated. “Did you know, sir, that a couple of kitchen maids were taken sick after staff supper about three weeks ago? Very ill they were.”

  “I had heard,” I said. “What do you have to say about it?”

  He shrugged. “Ask them. Hannah and Margaret. They’ll tell you. Anyway, sir,” he went on, “poison’s a woman’s weapon. Everyone knows that. Stands to reason it’s a woman. A man would stand up for hisself, not creep around in the shadows, cowardly like. That’s what everyone’s saying—or thinking—out there.”

  The kitchen maid Hannah, whom Percy and Morel had named as one of the two girls who had been taken ill, came in after him. She was a small, sallow woman, with wisps of straggling hair escaping from her cap.

  “Pea soup, chicken stew and dumplings. And a bit of pound cake, I ate, sir. The pains started half an hour after. They was unbearable. My throat burned. I was thirsty, but I couldn’t hardly swallow. My stomach hurt worse. A gripping pain that took me and caused me to twist about. I hurt all over. Then, well, there was stuff I’d rather not say to a man, sir. But it was bad, sir. Terrible for a day—them squeezing, seizing pains in my stomach and all over. Then it began to pass, but I wasn’t right for a fortnight. And I’m still not right. Nice plump
cheeks, nice plump arms, I had before, sir. Now I’m like a skinny old goat. Feel like I’ll never be myself again. Now they’re saying it was poison. And when I think back, there was a bitter taste in the stew. Or maybe it was the pound cake.”

  The next girl to come was Margaret, the kitchen maid who had almost knocked Matty off her feet. She, too, insisted she had been poisoned. The sickness had not affected her as it had Hannah, and she was a handsome girl, though in repose her face was hard and her manner insolent. She said that after eating the maids’ dinner that night she had felt a burning sensation, an unquenchable thirst, stomach spasms. They were saying it was poison, she said, and she thought they were right.

  “And do you have any idea what might have caused it?” I asked politely.

  “I do.”

  “And?”

  “Pound cake. Only me and Hannah ate it.”

  I nodded.

  “And is there anything else you recall from that day?”

  “Plenty. ’S a woman’s tool, ain’t it, poison?”

  “So it is said. Though in this—”

  “Then you should look at the kitchen maids. Can’t be me or Hannah, we was victims.” She glanced at me provokingly.

  “Who, then?” I said.

  “Well.” There was a pause. “Matty Horner. She was helping with the maids’ dinner that night; she served it up. The staff cook had to go. And I reckon she made the pound cake.” She seemed almost to dare me to contradict her.

  “Do you have anything more than suspicion, Margaret?”

  “Told yer, sir. She made the pound cake; it made me sick. And I know she weren’t in her bed the night that Mr. Rowlands died. One of the footmen said. What was she doing? She won’t say.”

  “I can assure you, Miss Horner committed no wrongdoing that night; indeed, quite the opposite.”

  The girl gave me a bald look.

  “You’d know then, sir,” she murmured. Then, after a moment, “She’s a dark one. Not what she seems. Only been here months, and look where she is. Wound certain people round her little finger. She’d do anything to get on. And she got that place in the pastry kitchen ’cos the apprentice she replaced died.”

  “It is no secret that you dislike Miss Horner, is it, Margaret?” I said.

  “Look, I’m not the only one that thinks it,” she replied.

  She was not. The next kitchen maid also made dark allusions to Matty, and the cooks after her. They repeated the rumors. She had helped with the cooking on the night the kitchen maids had gone sick; she had been in the kitchen on the night Rowlands had died. She had not been to bed that night and wouldn’t say what she’d been up to. Considerably disquieted, I called in Percy.

  “I do not know where it started,” he said, the gray pouches under his eyes more marked even than earlier. “But Margaret has been talking and talking. She has a certain sway with some of the kitchen maids. There’s only a few of them left now in the dining room, sitting there, fretful and idle. ‘The devil makes work,’ as they say. Matilda is new, some begrudge her her success, everyone wants a culprit as soon as possible.”

  “But this is nonsense.”

  Mrs. Relph walked in without announcing herself. She clutched a shawl tight around her shoulders.

  “It may not be my place, sir,” she said in a tone that made it clear she very much thought it was, “but you will have heard what they’re saying out there about Matilda. Rumor takes hold quick, sir. I hope you will call a stop to it because, if I may say so, sir, it will get worse, and you’ve helped it.”

  Percy nodded. “These interviews, Captain Avery, maybe they were not wise.”

  “Perhaps, but we could not have predicted this, and since we have started we cannot give up now. Where is Matty?”

  Mrs. Relph said, “I took her into the dessert kitchen. I won’t have her sitting there listening to those wicked girls!”

  “How is she?”

  “She bears it as well as can be expected. She is a brave girl.”

  “She is, and I thank you, Mrs. Relph,” I said. “Truly I do. I had no idea that this would bring such a thing upon her. But I am certain we can scotch these insinuations. They are purely circumstantial.”

  “See you do,” she said shortly.

  • • •

  THE NEXT to be summoned was the roast cook called Albert who so provoked his peers. He sauntered in, something essentially insolent in his very gait. It occurred to me that Monsieur Benoît was so caught up in his little world of cooking and fury that he probably had never even noticed the young man’s natural insubordination. He reminded me of a sort I had encountered in the army: the soldier who believes himself sharper and bolder than the rest and thinks he can get away with anything.

  “I can help you, Captain,” he said. “I know who the guilty one is.”

  “You’re German,” said Blake.

  “I am.”

  “Who is it, then?”

  “It is the girl,” he said nonchalantly, examining his hands. “Matty.”

  “And how do you know?” I said, keeping my voice as cool as I could.

  “She is—what do the French say?—putain, bad girl.” He smiled.

  I did not know the word, but I did not like his overfamiliarity.

  “That’s a foul word for a hard-working kitchen maid,” said Blake, quietly. I wondered if the young man could feel the iron in his voice. “Do you have any reason to say this?”

  Albert waved his hands as if to illustrate his words. “The others say she was here in the kitchen the other times when men got ill, but I have the proof.” He smiled again, now triumphantly.

  “Proof?” said Blake, his face a genial mask.

  “I hear what they have eaten, the men, the one who died, the one who is sick. La crème d’ananas. The pineapple cream. Matty, she made it! And ask how many they sell last night? Only two!” He sat back, pleased with himself.

  “How do you know this?”

  “Look for yourself. In the ledger. It is easy enough.”

  “And why would she do this?” asked Blake.

  He fixed the young man with a look. Albert smiled at first but after a few moments dropped his gaze, and his answer was ill-tempered.

  “Why? I do not know. People are bad. And she comes from the gutter.”

  “You know there are those here who say that you could have committed this crime?”

  “I? Who says this?” Albert essayed a careless grin but managed to look only sulky.

  “Where are you from, Albert?”

  “Württemberg. All the best cooks are from here.”

  “And how did you find this out, about Matilda?”

  “I keep my eye on things. I know things.” He grinned again.

  “We may need to speak to you again, but for now you are dismissed,” I said coldly.

  He stood up with a swagger and made for the door.

  “He is German,” I said, almost hopefully.

  “He is from the west, near the French border, nowhere near Russia—if he is indeed from Württemberg. We’ll ask the other German cooks if he has a regional accent.”

  “Good God! Something you do not know?”

  The door opened, and Matty crept in. She sat upon a chair, then pulled her feet up under her skirt and fastened her arms tight round her skirts as if to make herself as small as possible. She would not look at us.

  “Those girls were sick the night I helped to make the maids’ dinner.” Her voice was dull.

  “Why did you not say, Matty?”

  “It didn’t seem like anything at the time. It just seemed like they had a tummy upset. I didn’t cook the food. Well, I helped with the pound cake. And I was there in the kitchen the night Rowlands died. But I was nowhere near the food—Chef had me writing letters, ’cos his secretary had left, and I hoped to speak to
you, before you went. After that, I was with you and Rowlands.”

  “We know that you had nothing to do with it, Matty,” I said.

  “Last night, the pineapple cream separated,” she went on. “I was sent to recover it. Egg white and yolks beaten in by hand. It took an age, and there wasn’t much of it. It was to be served for lunch today.”

  “But the two gentlemen had it.”

  “I only heard that when Mr. Percy got the list of dishes. The kitchen clerk said they were the only two who had eaten it. Footman offered it to them late, as a special.” She shifted in her seat. “Margaret says they’ll arrest me.”

  “They cannot; this is mere coincidence.”

  “I told you before: no one wanted it to be the kitchen but, if it is the kitchen, everyone wants a culprit quick, so we are saved and things return to how they were. Everyone knows I was on the streets, and no better than I should be. Even people with nothing against me, even those who like me, are looking at me funny.”

  “We know it is not true, Matty. We will explain it.”

  “You can’t stop it. I’m tainted, whatever happens. Even if they let me go and I came back, I’d be marked. I should have known it was too good to last.”

  I had never seen her so defeated.

  “Matty, this is nonsense. A mistake. Do not lose faith. And see, we have letters from the real culprit to Monsieur Soyer,” I said.

  “Letters?” she said.

  “Show them to her.”

  Blake brought them out of his pocket and laid them on the table.

  She stared at the printed letters and written words as if mesmerized by them.

  “What is it, Matty?”

  “The written words that have been cut out.”

  “What of them?”

  “Can’t you see? They’re my writing.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The committee is ready for you, sir,” said the footman.