The Isle of Devils (21 page)

When she saw me enter, Mrs. Foster turned to me. “I noted your irregularity at meals, Doctor. I was about to knock on your door. Mr. Sims just appeared and asked for a late breakfast, and I thought it would be easier if I made it for two.”

Sims laughed. “I suspect that most of us slept late once the storm passed. I for one slept as deeply as if I had taken a large dose of castor oil.”

Mrs. Foster nodded. “Yes, though you and the Doctor are the last of them to awaken.”

My brow furrowed as I gazed at them, for Sims’ blue eyes clearly showed the same miniscule pupils that I possessed. “I must confess that I don’t recall sleeping so soundly since they took the Jezail bullet out of my shoulder, and treated me afterword with morphine.”

Sims appeared puzzled. “Are you suggesting that we were under the influence of some drug, Doctor?”

“I am.”

“But how?” he queried.

“It must have been in the claret.”

“Impossible,” he scoffed. “I brought the claret.”

“But where else could it have been for both of us to feel the same effects?” I asked him.

“But Mrs. Foster also drank some of the wine,” protested Sims.

“It was but a small sip after opening it,” said Mrs. Foster slowly. “But I must say, gentlemen, that I did sleep especially soundly last night and awoke much later than usual this morning.”

“You see, Mr. Sims. The claret must have been drugged,” I concluded.

“If we were drugged, it could have been something put in the glasses either before or after the wine was poured,” pointed out Sims.

“If that’s the case, then there were only three of us at the table last night,” I said. “You, Monsieur Dumas, and myself. Are you suggesting that Monsieur Dumas drugged us? To what possible end?”

“How should I know what that madman was thinking? But let’s ask him,” he looked around, as if expecting to find the Frenchman in the dining room. “Well, where is Dumas?” asked Sims, his question directed at Mrs. Foster.

The innkeeper shrugged. “Mr. Dumas has some eccentric habits. He usually awakens before dawn and leaves the hotel before I can even make him some breakfast. He eats so little that I have wondered how it can even keep life in one. I never saw him this morning, and so I assume that he departed before I awakened.”

I shook my head. “Not if he drank the same drugged wine that we did.”

“Then he must still be in his room,” declared Sims.

“Shall we find out?” I suggested.

The three of us climbed the stairs, followed by both Mr. Delopolous and Mr. Bey, whose curiosity had clearly been awakened by our conversation. I discovered that Monsieur Dumas’ room was the one at the very end of the twisting corridor, immediately past my own. Sims knocked vigorously at the man’s door, but there was no answer. He knocked again, and called out. “Dumas! Open the door!”

There were still no sounds emanating from the man’s room and my companions looked confounded by the next step. Finally, Mr. Delopolous spoke up with an accented voice and a raise of his eyebrows. “Perhaps we should open the door? He may be ill.”

“Good idea,” said I. “Mrs. Foster, you must have duplicate keys?”

“Of course,” she replied. She drew a ring of keys from her apron and, after a moment’s selection, slipped one into the keyhole. The key turned with a sharp metallic snap, but the door refused to open. “He must have barred it from the inside.”

“Then we will have to force our way in!” exclaimed Sims. “Step back, Elizabeth!” He threw the entire weight of his Herculean frame against the stout door, which held after the first blow.

“Put your shoulder to it!” I cried. And indeed the second blow was too much for the door. It gave way before his great strength, as one hinge snapped, then the other, and down came the door with a crash. Sims staggered into the room, but then drew up with an incoherent exclamation. None of us in the hallway could see past his enormous shoulders to spy the cause of his alarm.

“Doctor!” he said urgently. “Get in here!”

I pushed past him, and was thunderstruck by the appalling sight before me. In the middle of the bed lay the stretched-out figure of Dumas, his mouth horribly agape, and his body encircled by a ghastly crimson halo of blood that stained the white bed-sheets which had been drawn up to his neck. It gave even my hardened nerves a shudder to look at him. But two things made this sight even more grotesque. The first was that the man’s eyes were covered by a pair of silver coins. The later was that two letters – “E” and “M” – were painted upon his forehead in blood. These stood out in vivid relief upon his lard-colored skin.

My attention was diverted from what was clearly Dumas’ corpse by the sound of a gasp from Mrs. Foster. Her face turned deadly white, her eyes rolled upwards and she collapsed to the floor behind me in a dead faint before anyone could catch her. I turned around and leapt to her aid, since Dumas was beyond such. “Fetch some brandy!” I commanded the dazed Mr. Delopolous, who rallied and dashed downstairs. Meanwhile, I propped her head, its face as white as chalk, under my rolled up jacket, for certainly the pillows on Dumas’ bed would never be usable again. I contemplated the propriety of loosening the collar of her high gown amidst a group of relative strangers. Fortunately, I was spared such a decision by the speedy return of Mr. Delopolous with the brandy. I poured a bit down her throat, and she began to revive. “There! There!” said I, soothingly. “That was quite a shock.”

“I am alright now, Doctor,” she said, a tinge of color beginning to return to her bloodless cheeks. She forced a shamefaced smile. “What has happened?”

“I am afraid that Monsieur Dumas is dead,” I explained. “The cause is not yet clear.”

“You must send for Constable Dunkley.”

“Excellent idea,” said I, turning to Mr. Bey, who seemed to be the master of himself and his emotions, unfazed by the tableau before him. “Would you be so kind as to step out to locate him?”

“I will do my best,” he replied calmly before departing.

Since Mrs. Foster appeared to be recovering, I turned my attention back to the corpse, wondering if the nature of the injuries might not reveal something to my medical instincts. His duvet was drawn up, so I gently reached and turned it down. I found that Dumas was clad only in
his long purple night-dress, his knobby ankles and ungainly feet protruding starkly from beneath it. The gown was once fine, but now in great need of repair, as it sported multiple holes, clearly made by bullets. It was only then that I became conscious of a faint hint of gunpowder still lingering in the air of the room. I looked about and soon discovered the likely cause of those holes, as a Colt Single Action Revolver lay on the nightstand beside a guttered bedroom candle. Of course I refrained from handling it, not wanting not contaminate any of the evidence. I stood there, rather perplexed about the next step, as one glance was more than sufficient to show that the man was clearly beyond any aid that I could offer. Fortunately, my indecisive state was soon interrupted by the out-of-breath appearance of my acquaintance from two days earlier, Constable Dunkley. He was dressed similarly to our prior encounter though today he carried a brown wide-awake in his hand.

“Well, that one’s a deader,” he said unceremoniously, obviously un-rattled by the sight. Notwithstanding this callous remark, he immediately took up the case with a great deal of energy. He drew out a memorandum book and pen from his breast pocket and began to take notes. “Now who touched what?” he glared at Sims, Mrs. Foster, and I, the only three people to have entered the fatal room.

“Mrs. Foster and I touched nothing,” replied Sims. “Only the doctor…”

I threw up my hands to ward off his glare. “I was only doing my duty and ensuring that he was in fact expired.”

Dunkley nodded grudgingly. “Fair enough, Doctor. Now tell me, how long has he been dead for?”

I considered this inquiry. “I am not certain that I am fully qualified to answer that question, Constable. You must have a coroner…”

“Rubbish!” said he, waving off my suggestion. “By the time old man Tucker gets here from Hamilton whoever shot this man will be halfway to Virginia. You’ve been around a dead man or two, I suspect, Doctor, so just give it to me straight.”

Reluctantly, I nodded. “I should say that he has been dead about ten hours, judging by the rigidity of the muscles. But, as you likely know, many things can affect the period of
rigor mortis
and hence that estimate.”

Dunkley pulled out his pocket-watch and consulted it. “Still, we’ll take it as a reasonable starting point. Even if you are off by an hour that places the murder as occurring sometime between midnight and two o’clock. That was right at the height of the storm, so whoever did this was almost certainly a resident of the hotel. Elizabeth,” he said, turning to Mrs. Foster, “has anyone checked out this morning?”

“No,” she replied. “Not officially. I suppose it is possible that someone left without paying their bill.”

“We can only hope so!” exclaimed Dunkley.

I frowned in non-comprehension. “But that means that the murderer would have gotten away.”

Dunkley chuckled. “Not in the slightest, Doctor. Lest you forget, this is an island! The only way someone is getting off Bermuda is via a boat, and no boats are running yet this morning while the sea recovers from last night’s tempest. Once the hue-and-cry is raised over him, it would be a short trip to the rope for any man who has fled this hotel. No, the only purpose served by someone running would be to sign their own confession of guilt. We can only hope that whoever did this foul deed is so obtuse. Now let’s figure out the exact time of death.” He reached up and rapped on the wall to his right. “Elizabeth, who is staying in the adjoining room? There were how many gunshots? Six? Seven? Too many to sleep through, that’s for certain.”

Mrs. Foster glanced at me uncertainly. “That would be the Doctor’s room, Constable,” she replied hesitantly.

Dunkley’s bushy brown eyebrows shot up as he turned to me. “Well, Doctor?”

I felt my brow furrowing. “I am afraid that I did sleep through it.”

Dunkley looked skeptical. “You must be a powerfully deep sleeper, sir.”

“I am afraid that my slumber was not natural.”

“I am not certain that I am following you, Doctor. Are you a consumer of laudanum?”

I shook my head. “No, I rarely take any medications myself. But last night, I was under the influence of some powerful drug, and not intentionally I assure you.”

“Drugged!” Dunkley exclaimed. “By who?”

“That is what we were trying to ascertain when we were rousting Mr. Dumas here. I thought that perhaps it was him.”

“And what made you think that?”

I explained to Dunkley the sharing of the comet vintage the prior evening. As I concluded, he looked around at Mrs. Foster, Mr. Sims, and I with silent astonishment.

“Uncertain of the reason for his reticence, I ventured to ask a question. “Was there any point that I did not make clear?”

He shook his head. “Not at all, Doctor. Your statement is extraordinarily lucid. Well, that certainly is a major clue. If we can ascertain who drugged you, then we have our murderer.”

I nodded slowly. “I suppose that
what you say is
probably true. It’s unlikely that we have both a murderer and a wine-bottle druggist under this roof.”

“You misunderstand me, Doctor,” said Dunkley, shaking his head. “I was not implying that this was an unlikely coincidence. It is obvious that these events were directly related. You see, the murderer was not trying to drug you and Mr. Sims. His aim was Mr. Dumas here. Look,” said he, pointing at the bedclothes, where some black powder appeared mixed in with the blood. “The powder-blackening demonstrates that the shots were fired from close range. Mr. Dumas was drugged to ensure that the murderer could get close to him. You were simply a bystander in the process.”