The Isle of Devils (23 page)

Just then a smeared and partially-torn newspaper clipping fluttered out of the pile. It looked as if it had once been crumpled up and then smoothed out again. I picked it up and read though it quickly.

I showed it to the constable. “I wonder why Monsieur Dumas was so interested in this particular article that he saw fit to save it?”

Dunkley nodded. “This is an excellent question, Doctor. Notice that the two men, LaRue and Dumas, were both shot to death in a hotel. These crimes are too similar to be a coincidence.”

He was about to turn his attention to the rest of the room when I stooped down to pluck a piece of paper that had slipped behind the table. This proved to be quite different from the others. Rather than the methodical receipts, this was a crudely-scrawled letter. It was written with a violet-tinted lead-pencil on a half-sheet of cheap, thin slate-gray-tinted notepaper without watermark. It was headed “October 31” and beneath this were the following enigmatical lines, a facsimile of which is here reproduced. 

“What do you make of this, Doctor?” Dunkley asked with evident puzzlement.

“The penmanship is at great odds with the tone of the letter,” I said. “The writing is hardly legible, as if the man was barely literate, and yet he freely uses a Latin term. It reads as though it were an appointment. Very strange,” I concluded, glancing up from the message to find the constable pensively stroking his trim beard.

“Perhaps it was an educated man attempting to disguise his hand. But it is indisputably the hand of a man, don’t you think?”

I nodded. “Yes, a man with the initial ‘B.’”

“Are you aware of any of the guests with such an initial?” inquired Dunkley.

I tried to recall the names of all of my fellow lodgers. “Yes, there are two. One is Mr. Sims, whose given name is ‘Bruce.’ The second is Mr. Bey, the man who fetched you. Of course, Mr. Sims drank from the same wine
bottle
as m
e
and Dumas, so he could not possibly have been in a fit state to murder anyone.”

“How can you be certain that he actually drank the wine? Perhaps he only pretended to?” hypothesized Dunkley.

“I may not recall the end of the night, but I do clearly remember him drinking deeply from the first glass. And I do not know how he could have faked the constricted pupils that I witnessed this morning.”

“Hmmm,” Dunkley appeared to be pondering this bit of information. “So, the first ‘B’ does not appear to be a suspect, but what about the second? Mr. Bey seemed like a cool customer, not overly distraught by the sight of a dead man.”

“Not everyone is,” I pointed out. “Especially if they have been around one before.”

“True,” admitted Dunkley. “Though we will need to determine where Mr. Bey has seen so much death. And we will need a sample of every man’s handwriting.”

“Everyone’s?” said I, surprised.

“Of course, Doctor. If Mr. Dumas can fake his name, as I suspect he did, so can any of Mrs. Foster’s guests.”

Dunkley moved over to a portmanteau that rested upon a little stand, and proceeded to unpack and inspect the dead man’s travelling bag. From the very top, he drew forth a pair of large light brown canvas work-gloves, heavily stained with something black. “Ah!” Dunkley exclaimed. “Well, we shall not need to inspect the hands of your fellow lodgers.”

I frowned in relative incomprehension. “I’m not certain that I understand, Constable.”

“Look at these black stains, Doctor. This is clearly gunpowder. And more gunpowder than one shot would produce. But seven shots from the Colt? Yes, that could produce this amount of staining. Our murderer clearly wore these gloves to avoid the development of incriminating powder stains on his hands.”

“But they were in Dumas’ bag. Surely they could belong to him? He could have used them for target practice.”

Dunkley shook his head. “I think not, Doctor. Look at the size of these gloves. Compare them to the dead man’s hands. Do you think that he would have owned gloves that size?”

Taking the gloves from him, I quickly ascertained that he was correct. The gloves were huge. Only a very large man would have hands big enough to call for gloves like this. “But the only man who has hands this size is Mister….” my voice trailed off, wonderingly.

“Sims,” said Dunkley, finishing my thought. “Yes, very interesting indeed. Either Mr. Sims has a remarkable tolerance for whatever drug you both ingested, or someone very much wants us to believe that Mr. Sims is the guilty party. Remember, Doctor, that the gloves were left here for us to find. They could have very easily been taken away and secreted somewhere in the hotel. Our murderer would have had time this morning to smuggle them out for destruction or burying or dropping in the ocean.” He placed the gloves into his evidence bag and turned his attention back to the portmanteau.

“Ah, yes, here is another interesting item,” said Dunkley. It was another piece of paper, but in stark contrast to the other note. This held but two words, written with a broad-pointed pen in an indelible ink on a sheet of fine thick blue-tinted stationary. The blocky handwriting showed no similarity to either Dumas’ crabbed notes, or the illegible scrawl of the unknown ‘Mr. B.’ The constable held it up to the light to show the watermark, which read ‘Scott, Phil.’ Dunkley nodded
in satisfaction. “American paper,” he concluded. But the words made little sense. The first was ‘MOREAU,’ while the second was ‘ÉMERAUDE.’ “What do you make of this, Doctor?”

I shook my head in complete mystification. “Moreau is a French painter. Perhaps it is a reference to a painting?” 

“I don’t see how that is relevant,” said Dunkley. “Now this is most unusual,” he said. He held up a three-inch circular piece of bronze, most carefully wrapped in some fine Eastern silk. On it was an equestrian portrait of a soldier, who appeared to be the American General Washington. He was surrounded by an intricate wreath of cotton, tobacco, sugarcane, corn, wheat, and rice. Around the edges were inscribed the words:

“What is it?” I asked wonderingly.

Dunkley shook his head. “A seal of some sort. And a dangerous item, proclaiming loyalty to a vanquished nation. I would not be surprised if this was a motive for his death, especially since the other murdered man in the newspaper was also involved with the Confederacy.”

The only other item of note in the luggage was a solid-frame, double-action revolver, with a fluted cylinder and blued finish, and which I recognized as a MAS 1874 pistol common in the French army. The remainder of the man’s clothes appeared unremarkable. Dunkley hefted the man’s handsome cane. “Hmmm,” he mused, “this is no ordinary cane. You should feel its weight, Doctor. It appears to have been fortified with lead. He fidgeted with the cane for a moment, and then it made a clicking noise. With a sudden movement, Dunkley separated the cane into two sections, an external sheath and a short but wickedly-sharp sword. “Hah! Hardly the cane for a gentlemanly stroll about town! This is a formidable weapon. I wonder what Mr. Dumas had to fear.”

“He clearly knew that his life was in danger.” I quickly briefed the constable on my conversation with Dumas two nights prior.

“Very interesting, Doctor,” he mused. “Very interesting, indeed! Here we have a man who feared both assassins bearing weapons and ghosts pouring poison. And yet he fell prey to both attacks in one night. Very careless.”

“I doubt that he ever imagined that his murderer would be so reckless as to poison multiple innocent bystanders. He must have felt safe enough to drink the comet vintage with us. Normally, I believe that he only drank from his own bottle.”

“Yes, indeed,” agreed Dunkley. “And that leads us to this.” He indicated the final possession of note in the room, a green bottle on the dressing table. It was a French long-neck flowerpot-shaped bottle, with very thick walls of a dark grass green color and a blistery inclusion at the bottom. The seal proclaimed that the bottle contained a fifty-year-old Calvados from Normandy. “The cork is still in place,” he noted, “and the bottle is full and very heavy. Dumas must have been saving this one for a special occasion.” 

“I am not certain how that helps u
s
, Constable.”

Dunkley pursed his lips and shook his head in a perturbed fashion. “I am not certain either, Doctor. But I don’t like this case at all. It is a real snorter.”

“It seems to be that there are plenty of clues, you should have no problem tracking down the murderer and quickly making an arrest.” said I, consolingly.   

“That is the very problem, Doctor. This would appear to be my red-letter day. But there are far too many clues in this room. How are we to distinguish the essential from the rubbish? Look at this body,” he pointed. “What do you make of it?”

I turned my full attention to the body and pondered of what use I may be to the constable. Might not the nature of the injuries reveal something to my medical instincts? But the cause of death was quite plain. Seven gunshots were not a subtle finding. There were the mysterious painted letters on his forehead, of course, and the strange coins on his eyes. But what could it all indicate? I cudgeled my brain to find some possible explanation. What a tissue of mysteries and improbabilities the whole thing was! “I have no plausible explanation, Constable,” I finally admitted.