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The problem with using tarot cards to play solitaire is that no matter how careful you are to shuffle out the Major Arcana, some malefic image like the Devil or the Hanged Man always turns up in a tableau where it doesn’t belong.
I had decided to ride out the storm in my office. The walk home would have drowned me, and there wasn’t a hansom cab in all of New Orleans that’d brave a trip to Storyville on New Year’s Eve. But by nine o’clock I’d drained half a dozen highballs and played as many hands of cards, and it was still wetter than Genesis outside.
The Queen of Pentacles and I had begun exchanging smiles when a blanched, waterlogged man with the posture of a crawfish tail and a suit the color of roux cannonballed his way into my office.
“I’m looking for Mr. Toups,” he wheezed, uncurling himself.
I nodded to the floor, where the man’s explosive entrance had left the nameplate that normally hung from my door. It read Arlen Toups: Fortunes Told and Mysteries Solved.
“Terribly sorry, sir.” He wrenched a handkerchief from his pocket, dusted off the plaque and returned it to me with a flourish. “My name is Theriot. I’ve come to deliver an urgent message.”
“That’s usually the most lucrative kind,” I said. “Sit down, Mr. Theriot. Make yourself comfortable while I fetch you a drink.”
“I don’t think—”
“I insist. Happy New Year’s.”
He shrugged. “Daresay I need one, anyway.” Collapsing into a chair, he removed a sheath of papers from his coat before wringing out his hat.
On the way to the liquor cabinet I stole a glance at Theriot’s bald scalp. The empiricists are calling phrenologists charlatans these days, but I’ve never been one to count out quackery when there’s still profit in its misuse. So I knew from experience what the so-called quacks might have inferred from the topology of my visitor’s head. They’d have used terms like “simian” and “cavernous,” and would most certainly have noted a conspicuous double-bulge at the center of the man’s skull that mapped to the spiritualist region of the human brain. Add all that up, multiply the sum by your own intuitions and prejudices, and you’ve got a working theory like the one I’d come up with: that Theriot was simple-minded, superstitious, and conveniently credulous. A dreamer.
I poured him some gin with a splash of soda water and decided to test my hypothesis.
“Tell me, Theriot: do you believe in the power of the tarot?”
“I’m afraid not, sir, begging your pardon. It’s not that I have any religious objections. It’s just that I’ve entertained readings before, you see, and I find that the conclusions are always very vague. Generalities, nothing more. Seems to me that you mystics simply say what most people would want to hear.”
“Is that so?” I asked, dealing a card face-up from the deck. I breathed in theatrically and closed my eyes. “But certainly you don’t think that a celebrated detective like Jerry Drighton would have dispatched one of his own off-duty police officers to deliver so urgent a message to a mere peddler of generalities?”
Theriot had to table his drink. He gazed fearfully at the card I’d overturned – the Four of Swords – as though it was levitating, then at me. “But I haven’t told you any of that! You mean to say that your card told you all that?”
“Of course,” I lied.
“Why, that’s incredible!”
Only a fool credits the incredible, Theriot. He couldn’t have been a more obvious cop if he’d been wearing his badge on his forehead. The lopsided bulge beneath his coat, his obligatory handlebar mustache, the paramilitary way he’d straightened himself out upon entering my office – it all screamed law enforcement. And there was only one detective left in New Orleans humble enough to have solicited my assistance.
“Had the tarot failed, I’d have opted for chiromancy,” I assured him. “Do you know how much you can learn from a person’s hands, Theriot? The rings – or ring marks – on his fingers. The types and locations of his calluses. The varieties of sediment lodged beneath his fingernails. Cuts, scars. Christ, the real marvel is how many dolts pay decent coin just to be reminded of what they’ve already made evident. But enough of that. What’s this message you’ve brought for me?”
“Right, yes,” said Theriot, now wholly befuddled. From the papers spilling across his lap he selected two envelopes, then slid both across my desk. “This one here is from Detective Drighton. He asked that you read it first. Not sure what the other one is.”
Drighton’s envelope was characteristically drab: mildewed, hastily sealed. It contained a scrap of paper torn from a police department ledger – evidently the closest writing material at hand – with a brief paragraph scrawled on the back.
Arlen –
Received the enclosed invitation this afternoon. After considering contents, decided you ought to be involved. Sent messenger to Madame El, who is now aware of and amenable to your attendance. Come at once. – Drighton
Folding Drighton’s note into my coat pocket, I turned my attention to the second envelope. It was an ornate invitational. Textured card stock laden with silver foil. A deep coffee stain beside the broken seal testified against Drighton’s grace.
Inside the envelope I found two documents: an invitation, printed on matching paper, and a handwritten letter. Scratching my beard, I unfolded this latter piece.
Dear Detective Drighton,
The letter you have in your hands is the fourth of its kind; its predecessors I burned before posting. I have spent nearly a week deliberating over whether to involve the police, and only now, on the morning of what may prove a catastrophic day, have I decided to do so. I can only hope you receive this message in time to act accordingly.
You will learn from the enclosed invitation that tonight I will host a modest (if unconventional) New Year’s Eve celebration, during which several hours of cocktails and hobnobbing will culminate in a midnight séance. What the invitation will not tell you is this: that during the séance I plan to reveal a rather shocking truth about a certain guest, and that my revelation will incriminate this guest beyond any shadow of a doubt.
As I have no guarantee that this letter will reach you unread, I cannot write in any more detail about my guest’s identity or his reprehensible crime. I will add, however, that several friends and colleagues of his victim will attend tonight’s celebration, and that my original intentions were to allow these individuals to dispense justice as they saw fit. Whether they chose to proceed through institutionalized legal means, or in some less traditional manner, I deemed their own prerogative. Consequently I was inclined to exclude the police altogether.
But my hand has been forced. I now fear that if confronted, the criminal in question will react violently – perhaps murderously – to any accusations leveled against him. In such an event I must assume that I would be his principle target, and for this reason I now seek your protection.
I beg of you to attend tonight’s celebration and, furthermore, to announce your title and rank upon entrance. Given your estimable record jailing our city’s most recreant villains, I am confident that the guest in question will take no action in your presence. Nor, I think, would he attempt to abscond, for doing so would amount to an admission of guilt.
In waiting,
Madame El
Spiritual Medium
The invitation itself was unremarkable. It listed an uptown address riverside of St.
Charles as the event’s venue, black tie as its dress code, and ten o’clock as its start time. I had just over half an hour if I was going to be on time. I wasn’t. And I’d have to forgo the formalwear.
Theriot had finished his drink and now slouched casually in his chair. He snapped upright as soon as I looked up from Madame El’s invitation.
“Walk with me,” I told him. “And keep up.”
I collected my umbrella and we stepped outside. The weather hadn’t improved; rain pattered like Tommy gun fire against Storyville’s crumbling wooden brothels. I set a brisk pace and clamped my free hand onto the revolver in my waistband. We passed a few dark corners lit only by the bloodshot eyes of their inhabitants, whores and boozers who’d have clubbed Theriot dead just to lick the gin residue from his lips.
It wasn’t until we’d reached the relatively safe streets of the French Quarter that we managed to hail a pair of hansom cabs.
“Must be bad business if Drighton’s got you running off in the rain like this,” remarked Theriot, climbing into one of the carriages. “On New Year’s Eve, no less.”
“I can tell you this, Mr. Theriot: There’s at least one person alive tonight who won’t see a single day of 1910.”
——-
Jerry Drighton, a taller, hairier variant of Theriot covered in a mess of muscle and scar tissue, stood awaiting my arrival on Madame El’s doorstep with a toothpick stuck in his frown. Detective Dour, they called him. Just a few years ago he’d been built like a prizefighter, but since then New Orleans’ metastasizing demimonde had landed a few too many haymakers, and the man I presently beheld looked more like a back-alley pug.
The past decade hadn’t spared me, either. At some point it had sprayed gray across my beloved beard, and no matter how frequently I scratched it or how thoroughly I scrubbed it, I’d never managed to restore its glorious Cimmerian blackness.
“Evening Arlen.” He slapped me on the back, unfrowning. Guys like Jerry don’t smile. They just unfrown. “You’re twenty minutes late. And dressed rather oddly.”
He was referring to the overpolished silver rings adorning my fingers and the velvet cape draped over my shoulders. Gimmicks. The notions people have of mystics these days are preposterous. “As to that, Jerry, you might have sent a more punctual messenger. But that’s hardly important. Do you hear what I hear?”
“I don’t hear a thing.”
“Exactly. No chatter, no laughter, no music. Either Madame El is an enormously dull host or something is awry. We’d better hurry in.”
Jerry refrowned, swiveled, and lunged for the door. Before he could turn the knob I reached up and seized his arm. It had been a while since I’d worked with Drighton. I wanted to be sure we were on the same page.
“I trust you remember my methods,” I said. “But in case you don’t, I’d like to remind you to introduce me to the other guests as a medium. Or a fortune teller. But not a detective. Never a detective.”
“Whatever you say, Arlen. Let’s go.”
We walked into a barrage of gasps. Four, five, six wide-eyed faces stared up at us from whatever it was they’d been huddled over before we came in. I knew what it was, of course. There’s only one thing grisly enough to draw half a dozen otherwise occupied individuals like leeches to an open wound.
Jerry knew, too. “I’m Detective Drighton. New Orleans Police. What’s going on here?”
They all exchanged baffled looks. Then one of them – tall, bespectacled, and the only one still holding a drink – voiced the question on everyone else’s mind: “How could you have possibly known to come here?”
“I was invited,” replied Jerry. “Just like the rest of you.”
Another volley of blank expressions. “Well, Detective,” continued the tall man, “you have impeccable timing. Not five minutes ago our hostess dropped dead. Right here in front of the fireplace.”
The guests broke their huddle as we approached. Drighton knelt to inspect Madam El’s corpse while I took stock of our situation. Six guests: three women, three men. One of the men – middle-aged, paunchy, and exceptionally well-dressed – looked familiar. The others were strangers. Cocktail glasses were littered everywhere: one on the mantle, three on the coffee table, two overturned on the floor, and one in Tall Man’s hand. Two of the women were crying. The third stared vacantly at Madame El, her palms glued to her cheeks, presumably in shock. I shifted my attention to the cadaver that had been our hostess. No blood. No bruises. Poison?
“You,” I said, pointing to Tall Man. “Who are you?”
“Name’s Tom Gaumond. Lawyer. And who might you be?”
“This,” interjected Drighton from his perch on the floor, “is Mr. Arlen Toups, a peer of Madam El’s in the psychic arts, and a close friend of mine. Please answer any questions he asks you as if they were my own.”
I bowed. “Thank you, Jerry. Now, Thomas, can you tell us what happened here?”
“There’s not much to tell, I’m afraid. We’d all been drinking and talking – just idle conversation, you know – when Madam El ducked into the kitchen. She’d been doing that quite a bit tonight. I believe there were some hors d’ouvres in the oven she’d been checking on. Anyway, when she came back out this time she had her hand on her brow and mentioned that she wasn’t feeling good. She was breathing very quickly – desperately, like. And shaking a little. Then, just as she was passing the fireplace there, she stumbled and braced herself against the mantle. You can see where she had to set down her drink. She took another step or two, and just collapsed. Harold here tried to help her up.” He gestured to the porcine, sartorially adroit individual who I now recognized as Harold Baur, one of Louisiana’s feted cotton moguls. “But when she didn’t respond, he felt for a heartbeat. He announced to the rest of us that she was dead. We were about to call for help when you and the detective arrived – rather unannounced, I might add – and scared the wits out of us.”
“She is quite dead,” confirmed Drighton. “No signs of physical injury.”
“Very well. So you’re Tom, a lawyer. And Mr. Baur’s reputation precedes him. How about the rest of you?”
The third man introduced himself as Patrick Murtagh, a scientist. What kind of science, I asked? Chemistry, he replied, gulping. Then he introduced his wife, one of the two sobbers, who was young, fair-skinned and attractive just like her husband. Her name was Isabelle. Patrick spoke like a chemist, regulating the flow of his words like he was squeezing them from an eyedropper. Isabelle spoke no words at all.
Then the woman whose gaze had been transfixed upon the heap of dead flesh lying at her feet finally managed to pry her palms from her cheeks and eke out a few words. Her name was Michelle Lambert. Between a body like an hourglass and her sericeous French accent, she trumped the other two women in the appeal department. Which fit, because she was an actress at the Saenger Theater. Single, to an extent. Engaged.
The last of the guests was yet another dazzler. No surprise there, either, considering her last name was Baur. She didn’t work, of course, unless there’s such a thing as being a professional trophy. Her first name was Betsy, and she looked the part – blonde, red dress, deep voice. She introduced herself between sobs and cigarette drags, then buried her face into her husband’s shoulder.
I addressed Tom again. “How do you all know each other? Or do you?”
“Funny you should ask. We were discussing just that with Madame El before she… Well, fact is, we all used the same physician. Man named Dr. Pallis. Perhaps you’ve heard of him?”
I was about to shake my head when Drighton piped up. “You can’t mean Dr. Hugh Pallis, surely?”
“That’s the man.”
Drighton rose, shaking his head. “Dr. Hugh Pallis was killed a few weeks back. His assistant found him with a syringe full of poison stuck in his leg. It’s on the books as a freak accident, but we all had our suspicions.”
“So did Madame El,” added Michelle. “That’s why she planned tonight’s séance.”
“It’s a damn shame we’ll have to go without it,” said Tom. “As a law man myself, I’d have enjoyed learning what really happened to Dr. Pallis. Not that I believe in any of that hocus pocus stuff, of course. But you’ve got to wonder whether Madame El knew something we didn’t.”
I grinned wider than a Cheshire cat. “Not to worry, Tom. You came here for a séance, and a séance you’ll yet have. But with two key differences: First, that it will be the spirit of Madame El herself, rather than that of Dr. Pallis, whose testimony you’ll hear. And second, that in Madame El’s earthly absence it will be I, Arlen Toups, who will serve as tonight’s medium.”
——-
Harold Baur, at least, had no intention of lounging around a murder scene while some crackpot psychic readied the dining room for a séance, and he didn’t mind saying so. But when Detective Drighton politely suggested that anyone who left the premises might as well proceed directly to jail, Baur – and the other guests – truckled.
“Just what the hell are you up to, Arlen?” demanded Drighton once we’d sequestered ourselves in the dining room. “You can’t possibly expect these people to sit around a corpse until you’re ready to perform some phony midnight voodoo ritual.”
I balked. “Don’t be absurd. Midnight is an hour away, and I won’t have the local gossips claiming that it took Arlen Toups until 1910 to solve a case he’d accepted the year prior. I should require no more than twenty minutes, depending on how quickly you complete your assignment.”
“What? What assignment?”
“I need you to take an inventory of everyone’s possessions. Make a list of everything – and I do mean everything – on their persons. Money, documents, medicines, timepieces, jewelry, photographs. And see if you can’t learn a little more about each of them in the process, though I suspect biography won’t matter much here.”
“Christ, Arlen, we don’t even know for sure that the woman was murdered. People die suddenly for other reasons, you know. Don’t you think we ought to inspect her glass for poison before we go making suspects out of everyone?”
“Really, Jerry, your shortsightedness astounds me. Do you remember how the guests were situated when we came in? All knotted around that body, like moths on a lantern. In those moments the killer could easily have swapped Madame El’s glass on the mantle for some other guest’s on the table or the floor. Or he could have swapped it with his own, which he might well be cleaning as we speak. No, Jerry, an inspection of the glass might confound us, and at best it would only confirm what I already know: that our hostess was poisoned. Better explore other paths first.”
“But how could it have been done? It’s not so easy to slip poison into someone’s drink, you know. Not without them noticing.”
“Tom mentioned that Madame El stopped into her kitchen regularly to check on something she was cooking. Chances are she’d have set her drink down on the way in. Say our murderer notices this the first time it happens. Then he poisons his own drink, waits for her to enter the kitchen a second time, and casually trades his glass for hers.”
“But she knew she was in danger. Told us as much in her letter. You’d think she’d have taken a few precautions.”
“As a matter of fact, Jerry, it’s precisely because she took precautions that she behaved so foolishly.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that she took the ultimate precaution: She summoned the storied Detective Jerry Drighton to serve as her sentential. With a man as redoubtable as yourself chaperoning her cocktail party, no criminal would think to pilfer a spoon from her table, much less poison her drink. I fear that your acceptance of her invitation doubled – at least in her mind – as an unspoken promise of safety, and that from that point forward Madame El felt secure enough to relax her guard. A fatal mistake.”
Drighton grumbled. “I suppose that’s possible, though I don’t see how you can be so sure. But seeing as you are, I’ll play along. For now.”
Once Drighton had marched back into the parlor and begun barking orders, I turned to study Madame El’s oversized circular dinner table. A curious shape by pedestrian standards, designed not for practicality or surface area but for communal discourse. For ceremony. It was perfect. And at the center of each place setting, just as I’d hoped, stood a neatly folded card bearing each guest’s name. So Madame El had premeditated a seating chart. Clockwise: Madame El, Harold Baur, Betsy Baur, Tom Gaumond, Michelle Lambert, Patrick Murtagh, Isabelle Murtagh, Arlen Toups, Jerry Drighton. I committed this arrangement to memory (I never employ ink where the mind will suffice) before gathering up the name cards and shuffling through them. I was searching for irregularities – an invitee not among the guests present, for instance, or a conspicuous misspelling. But the only anomalous name was my own, penned unevenly on an inferior grade of paper. An eleventh-hour provision.
There was nothing left to do until Drighton returned, so I planted myself in a chair, took another stab at the grey in my beard, and surveyed Madam El’s outlandishly ornamented dining room. Mounted on each of the four walls was an exotic creature’s severed head: a snarling bear, a toothy alligator, a boar, and something else. A bird? It had feathers, anyway, and a beak. It seemed out of place, too wildly colorful and plumy to have ever been as vicious as its counterparts. No doubt each of these creatures bore some symbolic meaning – a meaning that an enterprising spiritualist like Madame El would have adjusted according to the preferences of her customers.
The door swung open a few minutes later and Drighton filled its frame, brandishing a tattered notepad.
“Here you are,” he said, tossing it at me. “Every possession, down to the lint in their pockets. Nothing too unusual. No pills or powders or liquids.”
Meticulousness was not one of Drighton’s shortcomings. He had recorded the guests’ personal effects down to the number of buttons on their coats and pennies in their pockets; his entry for Isabelle Murtagh even listed “several crumbs, presumably chocolate, settled at base of purse.” A trace of satire from Detective Dour? I wondered.
“I was thinking,” he announced as I thumbed through his notes, “that we can rule out Mrs. Baur and Mrs. Murtagh, can’t we? Madam El didn’t invite them, I mean. They were guests of their husbands.”
“But she could have reasonably expected their attendance.”
“True enough. And poison is a woman’s weapon, they say. But listen, I had another idea. What if Madame El herself didn’t know exactly who she was looking for? What if she just invited a list of likely suspects, as it were, and had devised some means of using tonight’s proceedings to ferret out the bad apple?”
My eyebrows rose. “Now that, Jerry, is first-rate thinking.” But my own thoughts were on Jerry’s list. “What more can you tell me about these two individuals?” I asked, indicating two names: Harold Baur and Michelle Lambert.
“Well, you know Baur as well as I do. Cotton king. Social elite. Rolling in wealth. Come to think of it, it’s almost suspicious that a man with such bottomless coffers chose to spend his New Year’s Eve here, of all places.” A pause. Then Drighton snapped his fingers. “And he’s the one who rushed to help Madame El when she fell! Didn’t seem too excited to stick around, neither, when we asked him too.”
“Does he have children?”
“Three, if memory serves. Why?”
“And Michelle Lambert?”
“She’s a seedy character in her own right,” answered Drighton, who had apparently interpreted my question as an invitation to articulate his own prejudices. “All those theater types are. Slippery, vague, know what I mean? Plus she’s the only woman who Madame El invited directly, and it’s like I said earlier: poison’s a woman’s weapon.”
“That’s fine, but did you learn anything more… factual?”
“Not much. She’s French – Europe-born, not Cajun. She’s engaged to a Dryade. You know the name, don’t you? Reputable family around here. Banking, I believe.”
Pushing my chair back, I indulged in one last, especially thorough beard scratch before standing. “What makes this case so intriguing, Jerry, is that a tenured sleuth – a professional like yourself, even – would have been trained to begin in all the wrong ways. Customary procedure might, for example, have dictated that we look further into Dr. Pallis’s death, that we search for parallels between his murder and Madam El’s. Procedure might, too, have led us to submit the cocktail glasses in the parlor for analysis, or to ask ourselves whether Madame El really knew who she intended to accuse tonight. But all of these avenues are detours. In the first case, why should we divert our attention to Dr. Pallis’ infinitely more nebulous death when we have before us an opportunity to catch Madame El’s killer practically red-handed? As for the wine glasses, I’ve already spoken to how further inspection might confound us. And what does it matter if Madame El knew who she intended to accuse? Regardless of whether she knew, we must know. No, Jerry, I’m more convinced than ever that to expose our killer we need merely to examine the facts at hand open-mindedly, scientifically, and with the razor-sharp intellects that have earned us each the reputations we enjoy today. That said, let us commence tonight’s séance.”
Drighton went cock-eyed.
——-
I instantly regretted sitting across from the bird. Where Madame El had found so eldritch a creature I couldn’t imagine, but I half-suspected that she’d plucked it from some feverish child’s nightmare. It seemed constantly on the verge of speech: Yes, I imagined it saying, my friends on the other three walls will rend your body. But I will haunt your dreams and dismantle your psyche. I will rend your mind. Of one thing I felt certain: This otherworldly bird knew who’d poisoned its owner. That, at least, we had in common. And so I’d decided that it and I ought to join forces.
As our six suspects streamed in from the parlor, I asked them to heed their seat assignments then instructed Jerry to snuff out all but one of the candles. Harold Baur and Michelle Lambert sat beside me, and the other four guests in an arbitrary order across from us. Drighton stood under the bird by the door, hands folded, watching Argus-eyed over the assembly.
“I hope this won’t take long,” spat Baur. “Candidly, I’m astonished that our police department” – he shot an eyeful of daggers at Drighton – “would resort to this medieval farce in a twentieth-century murder investigation.”
“It does seem rather unscientific,” added Patrick Murtagh.
“Well, I find it tres amusant!” said Lambert. “All wonderfully dramatic, like at Saenger Theater.”
“No,” I said to Baur, “it won’t take long. Just a few minutes. But for those few minutes I expect your full cooperation. I’m entirely aware that you and others at this table doubt the integrity of my profession and the efficacy of ceremonies like this one. Think what you like. But tonight there will be real powers at work. Unseen powers, true, but as real as the chairs we sit in. And I’ll stake Detective Drighton’s faultless reputation as well as my own that starting tomorrow morning you’ll never again cast aspersion upon palm readers and fortune tellers and so-called charlatans like me, because tonight, Mr. Baur, those very powers in which you’ve never believed will reveal a killer in our midst.” I paused, allowing silence to settle over the group. “Now, please join hands.”
Baur and Lambert both elevated their hands, seeking mine. But instead of clasping their palms, I slipped my hands higher and held their wrists gently. Both guests tensed a bit, unaccustomed to the awkward grip. But neither objected.
Having laced my fore and middle fingers across two sets of veins, I could now gauge the pulses of both Harold Baur and Michelle Lambert. Both were fast. No surprise given the circumstances. Baur’s was slightly faster, but his girth, disgruntled state, or a combination of the two might have accounted for the difference. Excellent. Now for the set up.
“You must all remain in complete silence,” I announced, “while I summon the spirit of Madame El. You may hear strange sounds. Things in the room may even move. But no matter what happens, it is imperative that our hands remain interlocked, and that you do not speak or cry out. Let us begin.”
Rolling my eyes back, I began to breathe deeply, audibly. I continued in this manner for several minutes, until everyone had a chance to make themselves comfortable and I felt Baur’s and Lambert’s pulses decelerate. To my heavy breathing I added a hum, subtle and indistinct at first, then deeper, cacophonous. A rumble.
“Our beloved Madame El,” I began in a loud, monotone chant, “angry and unavenged, seeking retribution, join us now and move among us! Commune with us now and move among us! Move among us!”
I repeated my summons three times. In the middle of my fourth repetition I stopped abruptly mid-sentence.
“She is here,” I whispered. Then, booming: “She is here!”
Slowly, I rotated my head clockwise, leveling an empty gaze upon each of the guests in turn. As my eyes passed over Detective Drighton, he nodded. He had followed my instructions. The time had come for our master stroke.
“Madame El, there are skeptics among us. There are those at this table who would doubt your presence, your power – your anger! Give them a sign!”
At precisely that moment the decapitated bird perched over Drighton’s head crashed to the floor, triggering a series of gasps and shrieks. Drighton himself even loosed an affected yelp. Baur’s and Lambert’s pulses raced. I could hardly contain the Cheshire cat tugging at my lips.
“Now, Madam El, speak to us! Reveal your killer, that we might confront him in your presence here tonight!”
A long silence. I resumed my hum. The pulses I held in my hands slowed gradually as they recovered from the shock Drighton and I had engineered.
Under my breath, at first: “Yes… yes!” Then excitedly: “You speak! You say that your killer is indeed here, at this very table!”
The pulse in my left hand quickened.
“You say… that this person came here tonight hoping to silence you. To bribe you.”
Faster.
“Yes?” I paused, then stole glances at Lambert and Baur. “You say that your killer is very close to me. Right beside me, even!”
Faster.
Baur and Lambert both opened their mouths to object, but I drowned them out. “Quiet! What now, Madame El? Tell me which of these two poisoned you tonight! Expose your killer!”
I maintained silence for just a few more seconds, smiling inside as the one wrist pulsed furiously.
Then I locked eyes with Michelle Lambert.
——-
Two days later Jerry Drighton marched through the door of my Storyville office carrying a large box wrapped in green gift paper and crowned with a bow. I’d never known the man to knock. But neither had I known him to bear gifts.
“What’s this?” I asked, standing.
He ignored my question. “We found that letter in Lambert’s apartment, just like you said we would. How the devil did you know it would be there?”
“Just a hunch,” I lied.
“Thought you’d say something like that,” he replied. “So I came prepared to force your tongue. Until you provide me with a full explanation, I’m not going to let you open this present. And seeing as you’re a man of insatiable curiosity, I don’t believe you’ll sleep tonight if you never find out what’s in this box.”
“But that’s blackmail!” I cried.
“Correct. Appropriate, isn’t it? Now stop stalling and tell me everything. If I didn’t know you better I’d assume your selection of Michelle Lambert as Madame El’s murderer was sheer, dumb luck.”
“You do know me better, though. Tell me, what did the letter say, exactly?”
“I have it here.” Drighton reached into his pocket, withdrawing a half-sheet of paper featuring a few lines of neat cursive. “We found it in an envelope along with a copy of the invitation Madame El sent me on the day of her death. It reads: ‘Dear Ms. Lambert. I know you murdered Doctor Hugh Pallis, and I know why. I have enclosed an invitation to a New Year’s Eve soiree I’ll be hosting. If you do not attend with $1,000 in cash, I will reveal everything to the other guests.’ Signed, Madame El. After that she’s listed the other guests, along with their professions.”
“And that,” I explained, “is where my own suspicions began: with the guests’ professions. She invited both a lawyer and a chemist, which struck me as a telling combination given that Madam El had intended, according to the letter you forwarded to me, to conduct a sort of unofficial trial against Dr. Pallis’s killer. To let the guests ‘dispense justice as they saw fit,’ I believe she wrote. Rather chilling idea. Anyway, the lawyer – Tom Gaumond – would presumably serve as prosecutor, while the chemist – Patrick Murtagh – might speak as an expert on poisons. But the professions of Ms. Lambert and Mr. Baur struck me as inconsistent: what possible value could an actress and a cotton magnate add to the evening’s proceedings?”
“Is that how you managed to narrow it down to those two?”
“No. Actually, you very nearly stumbled upon the key to the whole conundrum yourself, Jerry.”
“How so?”
“Do you remember suggesting that perhaps Madame El didn’t actually know who’d killed Dr. Pallis, but rather had drawn up a guest list of likely suspects and had devised some plan to single out the culprit that very night? Your idea being that perhaps we might reconstruct her plan and unmask the villain ourselves.”
“I remember.”
“You were close. But Madame El did know who she intended to accuse. The question she must have asked herself weeks ago – and the question we should have been asking ourselves that night – was how she might possibly have convinced Dr. Pallis’s killer to attend his or her own tribunal. Madam El’s entire plan – the unofficial trial, that is – hinged upon the guilty party’s presence. And the best way to guarantee a criminal’s attendance is by arranging an exchange: the promise of secrecy at a considerable price.”
“Blackmail. So that’s why you had me list everyone’s possessions.”
“Precisely. If my assumption was correct, it followed that we needed only to determine which of the guests was carrying an abnormally large sum of money. Your list told me that both Michelle Lambert and Harold Baur had over a thousand dollars with them that night. Baur is a millionaire; transporting so fat a bankroll might not be too unusual for him. But it was certainly irregular for an actress to have that kind of cash on her. Something else stuck me, too: why had Lambert showed up in the first place? Certainly her fiancé’s family, the well-known Dryades, would have been hosting festivities infinitely more entertaining than Madame El’s. Like Baur, it seemed she would have had better places to be.
“Then there were Madam El’s seat assignments. It seems natural to me that if you intend to confront someone during a séance, you’d want to sit diametrically opposite that person. Unfortunately, my last-minute invitation forced Madam El to make room for a ninth guest. When there are an odd number of people at a circular table, you don’t sit directly opposite any one person. But the two individuals to be seated across from Madame El were Patrick Murtagh and Michelle Lambert. I had already ruled out Patrick Murtagh, so my suspicions came to rest upon Lambert. All that remained was to confirm those suspicions, which I did by monitoring her pulse for the duration of our séance.”
“But wait. If Lambert believed she could buy Madame El’s silence, why kill her?”
“Simple. Lambert knew the problem with blackmail: there’s only one way to be sure it ends.”
Drighton nodded. “What about the illustrious Mr. Baur, then? Why did he deign to attend Madam El’s humble little gathering?”
“It’s no secret that Harold Baur suffered a ruinous bout of influenza some two years ago. Nearly killed him. I’d wager that Doctor Pallis played a critical role in his recovery. However callous he may have seemed the night we met him, Baur is a fundamentally good person. He owed Pallis his life, and he would have wanted to see his savior’s killer brought to justice.”
“As to that,” noted Drighton, “we’ve already re-opened the case on Doctor Pallis. Why do you suppose Lambert killed him?”
I shrugged. “There’s no telling for sure. But I can think of at least one reason a young woman engaged to be married might worry about her doctor’s privileged knowledge. I never met Pallis, but I know that under the influence of the right bribe – monetary or otherwise – even the best of men can be convinced to perform odious deeds. Even, perhaps, illicit procedures that terminate embarrassing pregnancies.”
Drighton snorted. “You can’t possibly mean –”
“Like I said, I don’t know. Maybe it was less sinister than that. Maybe Doctor Pallis and Michelle Lambert themselves had an affair. In any case, I suspect that one of them, fraught with guilt, let their story slip to a certain confidante. A person whose job it is to elicit confessions too dark for priests. The spiritualist Madame El.”
“I say, Arlen, something’s just occurred to me. Do you think it’s possible that Madam El planned all along to accept Lambert’s blackmail payment? That she only intended to conduct her unofficial trial if Lambert failed to pay?”
I laughed. “Of course. Why, that was precisely her plan all the way up to the morning of New Year’s Eve, when either her conscience or a premonition overpowered her greed and she solicited your guardianship.”
My friend leaned back and shook his head admiringly. “Incredible work, Arlen. Absolutely incredible.”
“Only a fool credits the incredible, Jerry. You would have arrived at all the same conclusions by way of your own methods if I hadn’t insisted upon mine.”
Detective Dour unbent the characteristic droop in his lips. For a fleeting moment I thought he might even have inverted it. “You’re right, I suppose,” he said. With a quick thrust of his leg he sent his gift sliding under my desk until it came to rest at my feet. “After all,” he continued, “it’s not as though you and I solved this thing ourselves.”
It was my turn to register confusion. But having inferred from Drighton’s cryptic tone that I would find the answer to my unspoken question sealed in his box, I eagerly picked off the bow and stripped away the wrapping paper beneath, then peered inside. Blinked. Smiled. Trembled a little.
The otherworldly bird stared up at me.