The Devil's Feast Read online

  “What, Mr. Wakley?”

  “I am at this moment fairly satisfied that this man died from arsenic poisoning.”

  By the time a quailing Mr. Scott arrived to inform us that messages had been sent to Rowlands’s lodgings and family, Wakley had sewed up the body, wrapped it in a new sheet, made arrangements for it to be sent to the mortuary, boxed his samples and sent his assistant away with them to his surgery.

  “Well, Captain Avery,” said the surgeon. He was almost cordial. “What will you do now?”

  My heart had started to beat loud in my ears when he mentioned arsenic, and I had been racking my brains for everything I could remember of the dinner. Who had sat next to Rowlands? (The MP Duncombe—who on his other side had had me—and the rude chef, Francobaldi.) What particularly he had eaten? (As far as I could recall, everything, and a good deal of it.)

  “I must discover who poisoned him and what dish killed him.”

  “Hold on to your horses, young man! It is possible the meal killed him—the violence of his reaction could suggest as much—but though I cannot say I have much regard for the Reform, it seems to me unlikely that such a thing would happen here. In my experience, most deliberate poisonings take place in domestic settings—women murdering husbands and lodgers, and so forth.”

  “So you are saying he was not poisoned by Soyer’s dinner?”

  “It is possible he was. The inflammation and corrosion begin further down the digestive tract, and are noticeable in the stomach and gut, which might be commensurate with his ingesting the arsenic somewhere toward the middle or end of the meal, so the effect of the poison would have been a little delayed by the other foods he had already consumed. It is also possible that he was not. There are many ways in which arsenic could have entered his body without any deliberate act of malice. Quite apart from killing bedbugs and mice, and in taxidermy, you will know as well as I that arsenic is found in every area of daily life: in cures for malaria, for asthma, for leprosy, even, God help us, in self-styled restorative tonics, lotions to restore gray hair to its previous color and skin creams sold by quacks, noodles and knaves! Did you also know that it provides a color pigment called Scheele’s green, which is found in paint, upon wallpaper and even on cloth?”

  I said I did not.

  “Some years ago a young woman died after wearing a green tarlatan dress to a party. She was overcome by the fumes from the arsenic dye on her skirts. Frankly, it is a scandal, one I myself have taken pains to expose, thus far to very little effect. The authorities, with their corrupt vested interests and their criminal apathy, do nothing.”

  “I do recall seeing Mr. Rowlands drinking from a small bottle of tonic.”

  “Aha! Perhaps he overdid his medication; or sleeps in a room with green wallpaper. Perhaps,” he said, raising an eyebrow, “he has a taste for stuffing and mounting animal skins. Or perhaps he has a vengeful butler or mistress. There are, you see, signs that he might have ingested small amounts of arsenic over a longer period, which built up in his stomach and finally killed him. He had the beginnings of fatty deposits on his liver. His heart had leaked. These imply, though do not prove, a longer gestation. What do you know of Rowlands?”

  “Almost nothing. I met him but once. Last night. He was a very keen trencherman.”

  “I assume you suffered no ill effects from the dinner? Have you discovered whether anyone else did?”

  “As far as I know, we are all well.”

  “As far as you know? Oh, my dear sir, you have been deputized by the club. You must be methodical! You must be systematic! What will you do next?”

  “There are seven members of the dinner I have not seen personally. I will discover if they had any ill effects.”

  “Good. And?”

  “I will find out what I can about Rowlands.”

  “I would recommend a visit to Thomas Duncombe, my fellow MP in Finsbury. They were good friends. I can furnish you with his address.” He pulled out a scrap of paper and scribbled on it. “What else?”

  “I-I—”

  “I advise you to discover all the sources of arsenic that may be found in the Reform, and if there might have been some accident.”

  “Yes, Mr. Wakley, but first we must tell Monsieur Soyer of your conclusions,” I said. “We cannot waste time if the kitchen is polluted.”

  • • •

  SOYER’S ROOM BORE almost no traces of the previous night’s dining. It had been transformed into an office. The table had gone, and in its place was a large, handsome desk covered in papers. Two deep armchairs sat before the fire. The chef was standing by his desk. Next to him stood Mr. Percy, the steward.

  “Ah, Monsieur . . .” He hesitated over Wakley’s name. “Excuse me, we are planning a banquet. It is in four days’ time—there is a mountain of arrangements. But your results. It was cholera?”

  “I am afraid not.”

  Percy brought his hands together and gripped them tightly.

  “I see,” said Soyer. “What, then, caused the poor man’s demise?”

  “I cannot speak with absolute certainty. A number of tests must be performed, but currently I propose a diagnosis of poison, sir. Arsenic,” said Wakley.

  Soyer laughed furiously and sat down. “But it is impossible!”

  “Will this news be widely reported, sir?” asked Percy in a low voice.

  “I must lodge a coroner’s report and inform the police—unless, of course, the source of the poison can be quickly located and proven to be accidental. Of course, the family must be told.”

  “It would be better if it was not widely known just yet, sir. I am sure you understand,” said Percy. “We hold our banquet next week.” He gestured at the papers on the table. “Crowned heads, sir, foreign visitors. It cannot be canceled.”

  “I have heard of it,” said Wakley. “The Egyptian despot?”

  “His son,” said Soyer, a little sharply.

  “Hmm, I cannot say I have much sympathy with Lord Palmerston and his grand ideas, but I see your problem. Please do not misunderstand me. It is quite possible that the man was not deliberately poisoned. It is also the case that your dinner may not have caused it. This young man”—he gestured to me—“and you appear to have suffered no ill effects. You should, however, know that one may find arsenic in the most unlikely places: in the green dye of paper flowers on a table decoration, in the green of sugar leaves decorating a cake. I heard of one chef using arsenic dye to make a green blancmange—with dire effects. Why, I could walk you around your kitchen and find a dozen places where arsenic hides.”

  “Sir, my kitchen is the cleanest in London!” Soyer protested. “In the world! For me, cleanliness is the soul of the—”

  “I have no doubt that your kitchen is admirable, Monsieur Soyer,” said Wakley, smiling; it was clear that he thought he knew better. “I am sure, for example, that it is entirely free of rats, cockroaches and such?”

  “We employ a young man whose sole task is to catch vermin,” said Percy.

  “And to do so he employs arsenic and strychnine?”

  “Well, yes,” said Soyer. “But we are not fools. Great care is taken to keep such things locked away in special cabinets.”

  “Monsieur Morel, the housekeeper and myself are the only ones with keys,” said Percy.

  “The truth is that, even in the most excellent kitchens, such as this plainly is,” said Wakley enthusiastically, “contamination may sneak in. The matter is one of my very greatest hobbyhorses. The extent of it is a vast and unplumbed scandal, especially in London, where the ties with those who grow the food are becoming so tenuous.”

  “I am sure there is nothing—” Percy began, but Wakley plowed over him.

  “For decades, chalk and alum have been added to bread, and burned corn and peas ground up to make coffee. Vinegar is rendered sharper by the addition of sulfuric acid, arr
owroot is added to milk to thicken it, mustard is eked out with flour, strychnine is added to beer to add bitterness, and green vitriol to encourage a foaming head. And these are but the harmless manipulations.”

  “Good heavens!” I said. “Strychnine and vitriol in beer?”

  “And in gin, too. Enough to impart hallucinations and a nasty disruption of the bowels. And I have seen far worse: Indian berry—very toxic—added to beer to make it more intoxicating. Custard flavored with laurel—a mortal poison; pepper made from floor sweepings, comfits from china clay. Double Gloucester cheese colored with red lead. Lead, copper, mercury, arsenic—deadly, all—they are everywhere. I myself can attest that lead salts taste quite delicious.”

  “Why is nothing done?” I said.

  “Because we are ruled by noodles and knaves, and we mindlessly follow the religion of free trade to its most dangerous conclusions!” shouted Wakley, making us all start. “We let the market run its course, whatever its consequences. No regulation! God forbid that the public be protected from such things. It is not so in the rest of Europe.”

  “Not in this kitchen, Monsieur,” Soyer insisted stiffly. “We use only the best grocers. Our flour is purchased directly from one mill in Shropshire, with which I am well acquainted. Our spices—”

  “Oh, but yes! Gentlemen, yes! Even here!” Wakley’s voice throbbed with passion. “Respectable grocers add poisonous chemicals to their food in order to make it look more appetizing or to extend its life: copper salts are added to bottled fruits and vegetables to make them a brighter green; sulfate of iron to potted meat and anchovies to make them red. All, of course, highly toxic.” He walked over to the sideboard, picked up the jar of peas that Mr. Blackwell had left the night before and examined it. It was, it had to be said, an exceedingly lurid green.

  “As I said,” Soyer put in coolly, “I use only the best suppliers in London and the freshest food. As for preserves, we make our own.”

  Wakley smiled kindly. “Personally, I would not buy anything that has passed through a grocer’s mill. But you are correct, the vast majority of adulteration is of cheap food. The poor must eat, and those who sell to them adulterate their products to keep their prices low. Do not even ask what happens to workhouse food: oatmeal is padded out with barleymeal, and children clutch their stomachs in pain as they cry with hunger.”

  “I quite agree, sir!” said Soyer. “And, to that end, in one week I will open a scientific soup kitchen to feed the poor in Spitalfields. With a hundred gallons of good soup made from fresh ingredients, I calculate I can feed between five hundred and six hundred people. And I have plans for a model kitchen that could supply enough for tens of thousands.”

  “Remarkable!” said Wakley. “Though we must take care not to let our niggardly government use such initiatives as yours as a fig leaf for its own failures.

  “Now, I truly do not wish to insult you, but I would advise you to discover all the uses of arsenic in the kitchen. You may be surprised to find more than you expected. And, if you had any leftovers from your dinner, I should like to take samples so we might have them tested to see if we might locate the source of the arsenic.”

  “Alas, sir, we have been cleaning the kitchen since early this morning. We disposed of it—for fear that it might be tainted,” Soyer said.

  “That is a shame,” said Wakley shortly. He picked up Mr. Blackwell’s peas again, and shook his head.

  “But you did say, did you not, that it was possible that poor Mr. Rowlands’s demise had nothing to do with my dinner? And it is possible, is it not, that he may have ingested what killed him earlier in the day, or even over a longer period of time?” Soyer continued.

  “It is possible, but I must suggest you do not dismiss the idea that there may be contamination in the kitchen entirely.”

  • • •

  MR. WAKLEY TOOK his leave soon afterward.

  I lingered, hoping for a few moments alone with Soyer. Mr. Percy, most tactfully, left the room.

  “May I ask what will you do next, Captain Avery?” Soyer said, before I managed my own question.

  “I must discover if anyone else suffered ill effects from the dinner: send to Mr. Francobaldi, Mr. Duncombe, Mr. Prestage, Mr. Blackwell and Mr. Jerrold. Oh, and Mr. Ude and Lord Alvanley.”

  Soyer’s grin faltered. “Asking if they were ill? That is not a proposition I love.”

  “It must, however, be done,” I insisted, spurred by Wakley’s certainty. “I will be as discreet as I can.”

  “Let me talk to Ude. He can be—how shall I say?—a little quick-tempered. And I shall probably see Francobaldi tonight. Let me ask him,” said Soyer.

  “May I ask why?”

  “For convenience,” he said, and then, “and because, as you saw, Captain, he can be a little—what do the English say? Hasty?—and he is not always discreet.”

  “He was sitting next to Mr. Rowlands, and . . .” I coughed, rather than say more.

  “Oh, no, Captain Avery!” said Soyer. “He can be unmannerly, he is often rude, but I should never have believed—”

  “Mr. Duncombe was on Rowlands’s other side.”

  “But they were the best of friends!”

  A voice in my head said that this did not necessarily count for anything. The voice sounded very much like Blake’s.

  “Monsieur Soyer, I must know more about Mr. Rowlands. Can you tell me if anyone else at the table was familiar with Mr. Rowlands, or perhaps disliked him?”

  “As far as I am aware, no one there but Duncombe knew him, though perhaps Jerrold had met him through the club.”

  “Did you know him well? Has he family?”

  “He was not an intimate, non, but he was a keen member of the club, and came often. He was a bachelor, a genial young man of good taste. He enjoyed life. He appreciated my kitchen. I saw him at the theater often, and he was a habitué of the gaming tables and the races. He was a dandy and took particular care with his dress and toilet. In these things, of course, he resembled Mr. Duncombe, too, though they differed in politics, for he was a Whig and Mr. Duncombe is a radical. I do not know his family—quite wealthy, I think. I cannot think that anyone would want him dead. I suppose you should speak to Duncombe,” he said uncertainly. “We can give you the address.”

  “Thank you. Wakley gave it to me.”

  He fidgeted and cast a look at his desk.

  “Is there anything you wish to tell me, Monsieur Soyer,” I said, “that might help me to help you?”

  “You know, I can think of nothing.”

  I looked into his brown, guileless eyes. Blake could stare his interlocutors into revelation. I could not. Soyer shook his head emphatically back and forth.

  “This morning,” I said, “Captain Beare suggested something may have gone awry in the kitchen. He mentioned the possibility of foul play. I know his words offended you, but please, Monsieur Soyer, tell me, do you have any suspicions of your own? Is there something you fear?”

  “No, no, that is ridiculous. Overdramatic. Beare is an angry little person, a skinflint with no taste, he wishes to dine only on bacon and beans (mine are, in fact, very good) and wants the kitchen to subsist on pennies. The truth is, my staff adore me. My fellow chefs are my dearest friends. I count some of the highest in the land as my patrons. I have no enemies, I tell you. And, as for contamination, my kitchens are the cleanest you will ever see, Captain Avery. I assure you. You may ask anyone.”

  “In the library, with the committee, I surmised that you were concerned that perhaps the kitchen might be in some way responsible for Mr. Rowlands’s—”

  “Non, non,” said Soyer emphatically, “it was just the shock of his passing. And of course, I cannot ignore even the slightest suggestion of uncleanliness in our kitchens. Our reputation must be above question.”

  “I quite see,” I said patiently. “And what about the oth
er gentleman who died? Mr. Cunningham?”

  “I do not think I knew him. You would do better to ask the committee. He dined in the club, but never came to one of my dinners. I was told that, three weeks ago, he ate here one night then left, intending to walk home, as he did not live far away: Mayfair, I think. Somewhere along the way, he was taken ill. He fell in the street and was sick. It was some hours before he was found and brought home. He expired soon after. His sickness, when it was described, was not unlike Mr. Rowlands’s. That is all I know.”

  “Can you think of anything he and Mr. Rowlands might have had in common?”

  He shrugged. “Cunningham was much older. I do not believe they were friends. He was certainly no dandy. Between you and me, a rather dull man, I think. I suppose they were both to the Whig side.”

  I nodded.

  “May I in turn ask you a question, Captain Avery? Have you yet heard from Blake? It would be so marvelous if he were able to free himself.”

  “I beg your pardon?” I said, alarmed.

  “From his other obligations.”

  “Of course.” I almost laughed. “I am afraid I have not heard from him. I am sorry, I did say that he would be unlikely to come. So, you are organizing a soup kitchen, next week? And the banquet in four days. How will you find the time?”

  “There is always time if you make it, Captain Avery. I have a fine brigade here, and one rises a little earlier, gets to bed a little later, drinks a good deal of coffee. My mind teems with notions. I wish to be a chef for all people, and I am not blind. I create ice cream pagodas for great men but, all the while, the poor starve. I have seen the houses of the destitute silk weavers in Spitalfields, six or seven in one small room, families deprived of all basic necessities: no food, no fire, barely a garment to cover themselves, children without a morsel passing their lips for days at a time, forced to beg for a crust. I know I can show how vast quantities of nutritious food may be produced cheaply and quickly so those in want need not go hungry.