The Seventh Bullet (9 page)

He looked up at me and then at Beveridge. “It’s not easy for
me to talk in front of Carolyn,” he said. “Bev knows. She simply overpowers me. That’s why I couldn’t speak out against her brother’s coming to live with us—first back in Cincinnati and then here in New York. Twelve years on and off the three of us were living together. Then finally I couldn’t take it any more.” Here he slapped the open palm of his hand down onto the table; a moment later he was carefully straightening the resultant ripple in the white cloth. “I never did know just what was going on between the two of them—if you know what I mean—but I had my suspicions.”

Sherlock Holmes might have pretended not to be shocked by Mr. Frevert’s innuendo, but I was not so competent an actor. I could not
—would
not—allow him to utter such an insinuation uncontested. I put down my glass and demanded an instant apology. “Mr. Frevert, how can you impugn the reputation of your gracious wife? Not to mention a dead man who can no longer defend his honour! And in front of Senator Beveridge!”

Frevert’s droopy eyes opened wide at my outburst, but almost immediately they resumed their previous attitude. “I had no intention of shocking you, Dr. Watson, but you must understand that my wife and her brother were very, very close. Bev knows. Ask their sister Eva. She thought that Carolyn was keeping Graham from the rest of the family on purpose. They seldom made it to family gatherings, and till the day he died they were hardly ever apart. Even when they
were
separated, they corresponded daily. Why, they dressed up for dinner every night!”

“There’s nothing outrageous about dressing for dinner,” I maintained.

Frevert took another sip of his port as if to fortify himself. “Maybe not,” he said, “but when brother and sister are drinking
champagne every evening and then remaining together all the night, I think there’s something terribly wrong.”

During Frevert’s and my entire exchange, Beveridge sat smoking his cigar. No doubt he had heard it all before.

“Oh, come, sir,” I said, “I’m sure there’s a plausible explanation.”

“Of course. Of course. He was writing all night, they said, and she was sorting and arranging his files. Perfectly natural, they said.”

“You disagree?”

“All I can tell you, Dr. Watson, is that I finally had to leave. We hadn’t been living together as man and wife for quite a while anyway.”

But a few hours ago I didn’t know this man, and now I was learning his most intimate secrets.

“You’d never see Graham with a girl. Oh, he’d escort some pretty young lady to a fashionable
soirée
every so often—or take along his sister. But he was never really interested in the fairer sex. You’re a doctor; you know what I mean.”

Although neither homosexuality nor incest have ever elicited the tiniest intellectual curiosity on my part, I confess in these pages that I did know exactly what he meant.

“When they were young,” he resumed, “Carolyn’s mother didn’t let Graham play with any other children for the longest time—and then finally she would only let him play with girls. Dr. Watson,” he said, looking me in the eye, “we’re men of the world. We understand such things.”

“Maybe so, Mr. Frevert,” I said rising from my seat, “but whatever one may understand does not require one to draw the sordid conclusions that you are suggesting.”

I turned to Beveridge, who was in the act of putting out his cigar. It was obvious to him, as I hoped it was obvious to Mr.
Frevert, that our interview had ended and that I was quite ready to go to my hotel.

Frevert, however, would not be denied. He rose and caught my arm. Positioning himself very close to me, he said with a hushed voice, “Perhaps, as you say, Doctor, we don’t know anything for sure. But I’ll tell you this, as Beveridge there is my witness, that woman so loved her brother that if he ever seriously looked at another woman, why, I think Carolyn might have committed murder herself to prevent someone else—anyone else—from possessing him.”

With that, he sat down, obviously talked out.

Indeed, we were all tired. Thus, with Frevert’s charges still reverberating, Beveridge and I excused ourselves, bade good night to our hostess and her remaining guest, and left for the hotel.

So sleepy was I and inattentive to my surroundings that I scarcely appreciated the largesse of Mrs. Frevert, who had obviously spared no expense in securing rooms for Holmes and me. As my head hit the pillow, however, I was contemplating neither the immense room in which I was lodged nor the testered bed in which I was now ensconced, but rather the initial peculiarities I had discovered in a case containing much that was not as it appeared: a provocative woman who seemed so different at home, a youthful senator who seemed to possess the cynicism of older men, a quiet husband who had so much to say. What had Holmes once observed about the deadly souls who practised deception? They were like the purring cat when he sees prospective mice.

When I began contemplating the fluffed-up Ruffle so thin underneath his snow-white fur, I knew that I was in desperate need of rest.

“As the world knows, the eternal verities are kept alive solely by the hypocrites who preach and profess them.”

—David Graham Phillips,
Light-Fingered Gentry

W
hen Mrs. Frevert said that she would take care of our accommodations, the Waldorf-Astoria, like the R.M.S.
Majesty,
was certainly more than I had anticipated.
^*
Rubbing elbows with “nobs,” as the local aristocrats were known, was not beyond the purview of Holmes’s investigations. Indeed, on more than one occasion he had come to the aid of members
of some royal family or another, but sharing their way of life was a different matter. With servants available at the touch of a button and marble pillars and satin wall-hangings providing the backdrop, one might envisage oneself residing at a palace instead of a hotel. Nonetheless, amidst all the splendour, I was able to locate and bolt down a simple breakfast of rashers and eggs in the Men’s Cafe. Not for me the posh Palm Garden restaurant, separated from the Cafe by only a glass wall, or the celebrated Peacock Alley, the lengthy corridor leading to the Garden, from whose cushioned chairs beneath whirling ceiling fans people could gawp at the affluent or renowned characters who frequented the sumptuous hostelry.

After hurrying down the tessellated walkway and through the grand doors swung wide by a commissionaire in a long burgundy coat and matching flat, short-billed military-style hat, I found Rollins and the Packard waiting on Fifth Avenue between Thirty-third and Thirty-fourth streets where the night before he had requested that I meet him. At the very least, he was dependable. Blocking a service entrance, the motor car was no doubt stationed illegally; but, as Rollins put it with the utmost grimness in those dark eyes, “When your boss used to be a U.S. senator, the coppers usually look the other way.” What other perquisites accompanied the role of legislator? I wondered.

I must confess, however, that the true wonderment percolating within me centred not on Beveridge’s activities or even on my upcoming interview with the former New York Senator Millard Pankhurst Buchanan but rather on my trip the following day to Sagamore Hill, a journey that at least for the next hour I had to put out of my mind. Despite the fact that tomorrow I would be
travelling with Beveridge to visit a former president of the United States, I had to remind myself that my primary concern was still this morning’s stop in Columbus Circle at the New York
American
building.

Beveridge had secured an appointment for me with Buchanan, one of the men vilified by Phillips for the senator’s close ties with the railroad trust and his ruthless handling of those who opposed his financial dealings. After being denied re-nomination by the Democratic party, so Beveridge had explained, Buchanan had gone to work in offices at the
American
as a political adviser to William Randolph Hearst, its owner, who, despite some earlier electoral failures, still coveted the presidency. Since Hearst was responsible for hiring Phillips to write
The Treason of the Senate
in the first place, it was ironic—to say the least—to discover Buchanan employed by the architect of the latter’s own downfall. That peculiarity was but one of many questions Holmes would want me to ask the senator.

Bequeathing to Rollins the job of finding a place to leave the motor car, I entered a building very much like the newspaper establishments of Fleet Street. Surrounded by the insect-like chatter of countless typewriting machines, I made my way through a maze of corridors and lifts to the office of the senator’s secretary, a young man with receding dark hair, who, according to the sign in front of him, was named “Mr. Altamont.” Rising to great me, he revealed a commanding height and wiry physique that put me in mind of the young Sherlock Holmes.

“Dr. Watson,” he said rather coolly after I had introduced myself, “the senator is waiting for you, but he asked me to warn you in advance that he is on a very limited schedule. He sails this
afternoon for England and is only in the office at all to conclude a few final matters before he leaves. In short, he doesn’t have a great deal of time.”

I nodded and followed. Passing through an imposing oak doorway above which hung a single, rather weatherbeaten horseshoe, curved toe downward, we entered a large, dark, wood-panelled chamber with fixtures of brass and furniture of leather. One wall of the room from floor to ceiling was devoted to shelves full of uniformly bound, blond-leather law books. So high did these shelves climb that to the left of the wall’s centre stood a ladder attached to a brass rail just below the ceiling. The senator occupied a massive red-leather chair behind a partner’s desk with ormolu fittings. He was a tall, bulky man with a leonine head of white hair. That the white mane curled so dramatically upward at the nape of his neck put me in mind once again of Ruffle the cat and his interrogative tail. Happily, however, the senator was much more communicative. Indeed, if the instructions for Altamont had been to act abrupt with me, there was nothing in his own attitude to suggest it.

“Dr. Watson,” he said warmly, offering me a firm hand to shake and an unfaltering gaze to regard. Were I more of a cynic, I would surmise that he had mastered that strong greeting at a school of acting. Let it suffice to say that his studied sincerity put me in mind of the great Henry Irving. Holmes used to compliment my insights into people’s characters. Cutting through the layers of Buchanan’s political posturing was going to present a challenge.

The senator motioned for me to sit, and I took the place opposite him at the partner’s desk. Clasping my hands together in the same way he did, I felt very much like his mirror image.

“You see, Doctor,” he said, trying to establish the perimeters of the conversation without losing his friendly touch, “as I trust Mr. Altamont has explained, my wife and I are leaving for England this afternoon, so I don’t have much time to dally here at the office. In fact, the only reason I agreed to your little visit when I heard what you wanted was to see this matter laid to rest once and for all. That damned Phillips cost me my senate seat! His scurrilous lies depicted me as some dupe of the exploiters of the people. Anarchist drivel! Why, I come
from
the people! I used to be a farm boy upstate myself. I get angry all over again thinking about the hell Phillips caused me.”

It was clear that the longer Senator Buchanan talked about Phillips, the more emotional he became. His face had begun to take on a florid hue when Altamont knocked gently on the door. This interruption allowed Buchanan the opportunity to collect his thoughts.

“Come in,” he said, and Altamont entered, followed by a tall but unimposing man with brown hair, close-set blue-grey eyes, and wearing a green-chequered suit. Until the secretary mentioned the man’s name, I never would have taken him for the authoritative monarch he was.

“Senator Buchanan,” Altamont said, “Mr. Hearst asked if he might be allowed to attend your meeting with Dr. Watson.”

“Why, Bill, come on in,” Buchanan said, introducing me to the famous publisher. Hearst seated himself in the chair by my side and neatly folded his hands in his lap.

“Dr. Watson,” he said, “it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’ve read every word you’ve written about Sherlock Holmes. Your plots are so clever that some people don’t even believe he’s real and ascribe
his genius to you. That’s quite a compliment to your writing. If you ever want to work for an American newspaper, you can count on getting a job right here. You could help sell a lot of copy.”

I thanked him for his generosity and for one brief moment—the briefest of moments—wondered how it might be to live in New York. To be sure, Hearst had distracted me, but his presence had also lightened the atmosphere in the office. Even the senator seemed to feel more jovial.

“Have a cigar,” Buchanan offered. Obviously, the appearance of his employer, despite their Christian-name relationship, slowed the senator’s plans for an early departure. In fact, he was the only taker of his own offer. After cutting the end with a brass clipper that was hanging from a fob at his waistcoat, he lit a panatella. Hearst pocketed his, and I refused altogether.