Donald Moffitt - Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 57, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2012

I waited at the busy telegraph office and paid for a long message. Madame was gone when I got back, and she didn’t tap on the door of my room until just before dinner, when she stuck her head in and said, “Look lively, Nip. We have work to do.”

When she opened her big satchel, I saw what looked to be the yellow paper of a telegram, but she said nothing about that and took out her purse. I was to hire a carriage and collect George LaLune and two other men. “George expects a message and I have spoken with the others. We begin at nine o’clock in the Rose Salon.”

Not only was this one of the biggest public rooms of the hotel, but we would be without our cabinet or the smoke machine or any of our props. Although I couldn’t see how I could help her, I asked if I wouldn’t be needed.

“Tonight we must rely on Aurelius,” she said, seemingly unconcerned.

I wasn’t so sure. I blew hot and cold about the emperor. Sometimes I believed him square and honest and a fact of the universe. Other times I thought he was a bunch of phooey.

“He’s our main hope of saving her,” Madame Selina said as if she detected my doubts. “A life’s at stake.”

With that, I ran out to the street and found a carriage. At quarter of nine, I led our three guests along the immense veranda and down the long corridor of the hotel. The Rose Salon was already packed, as news of a séance by the famous Madame Selina had swept through the hotel and several of its neighbors. We pushed into the room. LaLune and I made our way to the front, leaving our other two guests standing inconspicuously at the back.

Madame sat facing the gathering, concentrating impassively as she always did before a séance. She was on a slight platform with nothing but the chair she sat in and a small round table with a single candle burning. When she saw me, she raised her head and I nodded. She motioned for me to come closer and whispered, “Whatever happens, get to her room. With our two guests if possible. If they baulk, go alone.”

She resumed her solitary and concentrated pose. The gas lights were brought down to the faintest golden glimmer and the candle beside her leaped up to seize all the light in the room. It was warm with the press of so many bodies. I could hear the rustle of crinolines and the papery sound of the ladies’ taffetas and the shuffle of the gentlemen’s shoes and boots.

Madame slumped back in her chair. “We have one seeking knowledge,” she said in a faint voice.

No response. There was such a long pause that I began to fear Aurelius had taken his holiday elsewhere.

“We have one seeking knowledge,” she repeated.

Again, no answer and as the minutes stretched out, I felt LaLune stir beside me.

“It is George LaLune, Turtle Band, great nephew of the last Great Sachem of the Mohawks,” he said in a loud voice.

Whether Aurelius had been slumbering or whether he was pals with the Great Sachem in the afterlife, Madame’s eyes rolled back in her head, and Aurelius spoke, a low, harsh, hollow sound octaves below Madame’s normal voice. “What do you seek?” A ripple of sound went through the room, followed by whispers and shushings.

“I have been falsely accused of poisoning a guest. Who has poisoned Edith van Boord?”

Aurelius gave a groan and his voice dropped still further. “Those closest to her seek her death with the waters.”

Gasps of horror. If a restaurant could be ruined by a bad oyster, the whole town could be threatened by poison in the springs.

“Death in the bottle they carry. Death in the green jar on the dressing table. Death to the poor child.”

There was a shriek from the middle of the room and a man’s voice shouted for the lights. My two companions shoved their way to the corridor and I followed. At the door, I glanced back. In the bright yellow flare of the gas, I saw that Madame Selina had collapsed, unconscious, her hair undone, her arms dangling over the sides of her chair. I ran for the stairs with my companions.

Behind us someone was shouting, “Stop, stop, you have no right!” Edith’s uncle, no doubt.

And another, higher voice demanding, “Rupert, stop them! Stop them!”

No chance. I’d found my way to the van Boord’s rooms earlier in the day, and I knew where to go in the vast maze of corridors. The constable forced the door and we surged into the suite. The curtains were all drawn and the light was low. The constable turned up the gas revealing a dressing table with — honestly my heart skipped a beat I was both so relieved and so surprised — a small green porcelain jar.

Our other companion lifted the lid, examined some white powder and nodded. “Arsenic, I am certain,” he said. That counted for a lot, since he was the local chemist.

I shouted for Edith and ran through the other rooms, startling an older woman, nurse or maid, who occupied the small room next to Edith van Boord. We found her lying in bed, sick, weak, and frightened.

“You’re all right now,” I said. “You’re safe now. Do you remember me?”

“The boy at the restaurant,” she said and fainted.

There is no need for me to tell you all the ins and outs of the case. The scandal was written up in all the public prints and retailed by every gossip at the Springs. Madame’s Selina’s prompt action was praised to the skies and even Nip Tompkins, late of the Orphan Home, came in for a paragraph or two and personal thanks from the heiress of the van Boord fortune.

I was pleased as you can imagine and Madame Selina noticed. “This holiday has done you good, Nip. Every man deserves to be a White Knight once. I daresay you’ve grown an inch or two since.”

But this brought back all my worries and almost spoiled my triumph. “I imagine you’ll be visiting the Orphan Home sometime soon.”

“Whatever for?”

“I’m outgrowing the cabinet.”

“The new one should be ready when we return,” she said. “I am not about to lose you over a few feet of carpentry.”

I could have danced a jig, and I may have cut a caper or two, for Hilda’s dinners and interesting errands and the delights of the city were still mine. But there remained one thing and when we were steaming down the Hudson, I asked her about it.

“You had the wet handkerchiefs tested somehow.”

“That’s right. After you mentioned the bluish tint of Edith’s skin, I noticed her pallor. That was very observant of you, Nip, and it made me think. The chemist ran the Marsh Test and detected arsenic. But the chain of evidence was unclear.”

I had to ask about chains of evidence, which are not physical like the chains around a strong box but have to do with how evidence is handled and who could tamper with it. Though there was no chance of that with us, Madame Selina said that any good lawyer would raise a lot of doubts.

“So we needed the séance.”

“We needed Aurelius.”

I could see that in a way, although I never liked to see Aurelius at work without the personal assistance of Nip Tompkins, who was only invaluable as long as the late emperor needed a hand. “But the green jar. How did you know about that?”

She turned to me as if genuinely surprised, for Madame always claims to remember nothing from her trances. “The green jar?”

“The one Aurelius mentioned. The one with the arsenic, hiding amid the cosmetics like a jar of face powder.”

“I’m surprised you need to ask, Nip. Of course Aurelius would notice such a thing. Unlike railroads and steamboats, arsenic is something old Romans know all about.”

Copyright © 2012 Janice Law

Nobody received an invitation to Howard Rentz’s last birthday party. His two sons and their families didn’t need invitations because they were running the show. And it was more or less understood that his bachelor neighbors on either side would drift over and join in once the commotion started. The attendance of Howard’s girlfriend Joy Lynn was also taken for granted.