[Mark Twain Mysteries 01] - Death on the Mississippi Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title page

  Copyright page

  Historical Note and Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  About the Author

  A GRAND JOURNEY DOWN-RIVER . . .

  Mark Twain lit a cigar. “I’ve had a wonderful day today, Wentworth. I ask myself why a murderer would be following me, and I don’t get any good answers. If somebody was looking to rob me, he’s missed a dozen opportunities—not that I carry around enough money to be worth bothering with these days. And while I have my share of enemies, they’re more likely to write a scurrilous article about me than hire an assassin. Still, nothing would make me happier than a telegram at the next town telling me that the New York police have found their man, and are calling their detective home.”

  “Then we should have a grand journey down-river,” I said.

  “Oh, I’m having a grand journey already,” said Mark Twain. “It would be close to perfect if it weren’t for this highly improbable notion that somebody on board might want to kill me.”

  Death on the Mississippi

  A MARK TWAIN MYSTERY

  by Peter J. Heck

  Death on the

  Mississippi

  A Mark Twain Mystery

  Peter J. Heck

  Death on the Mississippi

  Copyright © 1995 by Peter J. Heck.

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Wildside Press LLC

  www.wildsidepress.com

  To my parents,

  Preston P. Heck and Ermyn Jewell Heck,

  who taught me to love good books,

  and who introduced me at an early age

  to Mark Twain’s writings.

  Historical Note and Acknowledgments

  Areader familiar with the writings of Mark Twain will recognize many of the anecdotes and quips herein as being adapted from his work, with due allowance given for Twain’s own intention to entertain or instruct the reader. For instance, Twain’s story of the treasure in Napoleon, Arkansas, which I have borrowed as the “Mc-Guffin” for my plot, can be found in Life on the Mississippi, chapters 30 and 31.1 have taken the liberty of assuming that it was, in fact, a true story rather than a tall tale setting up a comic anticlimax.

  The novel is set in the early 1890s, when Twain needed money to pay off his debts in the wake of several bad investments, and might plausibly have gone on the riv-erboat lecture tour described here. But while I have done careful research into the history of the period, and into the biography and personality of my protagonist, the Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain who appears in these pages is a fictional character, and the events of the novel are entirely fictional. And, while Mark Twain wrote more than one detective story of his own, he never, to my knowledge, solved a murder case.

  In addition to Mark Twain, a few historical characters are mentioned in passing: Twain’s family, especially his wife, Livy; William Dean Howells, Twain’s editor and friend; Henry H. Rogers, his benefactor; and George Devol, the most notorious of riverboat gamblers. All other characters who appear in the plot of this novel are entirely fictional creations, and should not be mistaken for any actual person, living or dead.

  Special thanks are due to George R. R. Martin, for allowing me to tap his riverboat expertise; to Darwin Ortiz, for nineteenth-century gambling lore; to the staff of the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut; to my agent, Martha Millard; and to my editor, Laura Ann Gilman, whose insight and judgment have been all a first-time novelist could ask. Any weaknesses that remain despite their efforts are entirely my own doing.

  Finally, my wife, Jane Jewell, has been a partner and an inspiration throughout the writing of this book. I might have been able to start the book by myself, but without her I doubt I could have finished it.

  Death on the

  Mississippi

  1

  After I completed my four years at Yale College in 18—, I faced the inevitable decision of what to do for the rest of my life. Conscious as always of our family’s standing as one of the oldest and most respectable in New England, my father encouraged me to read for the bar. Alas, my notions were at odds with his. I had learned that the world extended a considerable distance beyond Connecticut, and I was determined to see as much of it as possible. When it became clear that my parents would neither encourage nor support me in this ambition, I determined to find a means to accomplish it without their aid. And so, I found myself applying for the position of traveling secretary to Mr. Samuel L. Clemens, who was represented to me as a travel writer of some reputation. I wonder to this day whether I might not have done better at the law.

  Mr. William Dean Howells, an old friend of the family, had heard of the opportunity, and recommended me. Accordingly, I sent off my letter, and was invited to meet my prospective employer, who was giving a series of lectures in New York City prior to departing on a tour of the West. Being no fool, I took the opportunity to glance over the titles of some of his books—written under the curious pen name “Mark Twain.” While I had no time to read them, I could see that, as I had been told, they consisted of travel accounts—to the wilds of California and the Sandwich Islands as well as the great cities of France and Italy. Here, for certain, was my ticket to the world. And if my patron could make a living merely by traveling around the world and writing about what he saw, why, surely a Yale man could hope to do as well.

  On the day of my appointment, I traveled down to New York on the railroad, determined to make a good impression and secure the position on the spot. I arrived in New York late in the afternoon and took my dinner in Grand Central Station, in the basement restaurant, then made my way downtown to the Cooper Union, where my prospective employer was to lecture.

  It was my first visit to this thriving city, and I decided to take a cab downtown, since there was still plenty of light for a look around. Some other time I wanted to ride the subways, which my mother said were dirty and dangerous; but this time I was in no hurry, and eager to see the sights of New York City. There was a line of hansom cabs on the west side of the station, and I climbed aboard the first one, which had a serviceable-looking bay gelding between the poles. The driver (a greasy fellow wearing a dented bowler hat) flicked his reins, rounded the corner, made a right turn onto Park Avenue, and headed south.

  I was struck at once by the magnitude of the buildings and the size of the crowds that thronged the streets; the station itself was the largest building I had ever been inside. More than once, I found myself craning my neck out the window of my cab to peer down the side streets or to gaze up at the buildings as we passed. (Surely, I told myself, a travel writer ought to be observant!)

  At first, the street we followed was as wide as a football field, with islands of greenery along the middle—hence its name, Park Avenue. We passed the impressive Murray Hill Hotel at Fortieth Street, with a line of elegant rigs in front that made m
y hired conveyance and its driver look decidedly frugal. The pedestrians in this affluent neighborhood were well-dressed and unhurried, manifestly at home among the handsome buildings lining the street. Even the few children I saw were clean, well-behaved, and firmly attached to their governesses.

  At Thirty-fourth Street, where the subway emerged from its caverns, the street changed its name to Fourth Avenue, and the character of the neighborhood altered. Now my cab contended for the right-of-way with heavy-laden delivery wagons, and the crowds along the sidewalk moved along with evident purpose. The shops were now more numerous, and made no pretense to exclusivity. And every corner seemed to have its newsboy, bawling out his singsong inducements to purchase his papers. I saw other young boys, too—usually gathered in conspiratorial groups, planning some sport or mischief. One gang of half a dozen urchins ran full tilt across the trolley tracks in front of an onrushing train—just in time to escape the clutches of a pursuing police officer, who pulled to a halt, puffing and shaking his fist at the laughing boys.

  I had heard that New York was at once the grandest and the most wicked city in the United States, and by the end of my ride, I was ready to believe it. It was hard to imagine that so many sights and events could be crammed into a two-mile carriage ride. But at last we reached the lecture hall, in a clean, well-lit area of the city. I arrived about twenty minutes early, and from my vantage point in the middle of the auditorium, I watched the seats filling up with prosperous-looking citizens and their wives, as well as a few less respectable-looking characters. At the appointed hour, the lights dimmed and a little white-haired fellow with a large mustache shuffled out onto the stage. Nothing could have prepared me for the surprise that was about to follow.

  In a quiet, almost conversational voice, with a noticeable western drawl, he began to say the most preposterous things. His casual posture was a sharp contrast to his formal attire; but his subject matter, poor diction, and undignified language were an even greater contrast. He began with an incoherent story of some outlandish wager concerning a frog, followed by a tale of being cheated in a horse trade, and continued with long-winded, highly improbable tales of his travels—all interspersed with irreverent observations of the great and powerful. Having grown up in a quiet corner of Connecticut without much straying forth, I found much of his talk frankly incredible.

  So, apparently, did the audience; no sooner would he utter some absurdity than they would break into peals of laughter. He kept his composure remarkably well at this ridicule, and indeed kept up his talk, slowly and calmly, as if he didn’t care in the least whether they believed him or not. The audience neither hooted nor stormed out, but seemed willing to wait complacently to see what impossible statement he would make next, and howl at it as uproariously as at the previous—with frequent applause, as well. They even clapped after he told a ghost story in Negro dialect and frightened some poor girl in the front row half to death with the shout, “You’ve got it!”

  I was frankly at a loss to understand either the audience’s behavior or the lecturer’s willingness to tolerate it. I began to wonder whether he might be inviting the audience’s laughter on purpose, but dismissed that notion as ludicrous. After all, I had it on the best authority that he was a highly successful and respected literary figure. Still, I was completely amazed when he finished and the audience rose to their feet to applaud him. I had never seen such a singular performance before. Indeed, it gave me some reason to wonder whether I might not better abandon my notions of travel altogether.

  Despite my misgivings, I made my way backstage and found Mr. Clemens surrounded by a large group of notables and others who had come to pay their respects—ranging from several gentlemen and ladies in the height of fashion to a swarthy immigrant in worker’s clothes and two men dressed in a sort of nautical uniform. I would eventually get used to the fact that in almost every city we visited, half the local people of importance and out-of-town celebrities, an appalling number of fortune hunters, gamblers, rivermen, and other characters too disreputable even to list here would apply for free passes on the ground that “Sam and I go back twenty-five years.” But I am getting ahead of my story.

  The group began at last to thin out, and the lecturer took note of me standing quietly to the side and turned to address me. “You must be young Cabot. Howells says he knows your father, is that right?”

  I nodded my assent and shook his hand. “Well,” he said to the remaining throng, “this big young fellow has come all the way from New London to see me, so I’ll ask your leave. Mike, Mr. Snipes, I’ll see you tomorrow.” The two men in uniform murmured their assent, and I followed Mr. Clemens along the hallway.

  He led me to a dressing room and plopped himself in a comfortable-looking seat. I took his broad gesture as an indication to seat myself in a nearby chair, and declined his offer of a cigar. He took one out for himself, and I waited while he clipped the end and applied the match.

  I am not sure how I expected a literary man to look, but I took the opportunity to examine Mr. Clemens carefully. He stood perhaps five feet eight, and still wore the dark evening dress that was his “uniform” for lectures. He wore his white hair long, in the fashion of two decades ago, and he sported a large mustache. His piercing eyes—surmounted by bushy brows—bespoke a lively intelligence, while his drawl suggested an origin somewhere in the West. A sly smile and the now briskly burning cigar provided a sense of warmth in the midst of all the snowy-white hair.

  “W. W. Cabot,” he said, taking an experimental puff. “What would the initials be for?”

  “William Wentworth, sir. I’m named after my mother’s older brother. At school, there were quite a few other fellows named William, so everyone called me Wentworth.”

  “Wentworth Cabot; well, it has a respectable enough air about it, for whatever that’s worth. So, young man, do you have any notion what I want a traveling secretary to do for me?”

  It seemed a simple enough question. “Why, travel with you, and handle your correspondence and papers,” I responded.

  “Just as I thought. Cabot, I suppose you think a travel writer makes his living by traveling and writing about it. Is that so?” The cigar smoke was getting thicker.

  I had never thought of any other possibility, and said so. Clemens nodded, took another puff, fixed his gaze on me, and began to talk.

  “I can’t say as how I expected much else. I don’t expect you’ve read any of my books, either.” He waved away my stillborn protest. “Don’t sham, young fellow, you’ll never get the job that way. I’d smoke you out in two minutes if you tried it.” I restrained myself from commenting that his cigar was on the verge of doing exactly that.

  “The fact of the matter is, I can’t really travel at my own pleasure any more. Every town I set foot in expects a lecture, if not a solid week of ’em. I can put off the little towns with halls the size of a tomcat’s coffin, but the big ones will pester me to distraction. I’ll end up doing them anyway, so I might as well schedule them in advance and let the people know I’m coming through. So my traveling secretary has to set up my schedule of lectures—deal with the booking agents and hotel managers in every city I’m going to, collect the fees, buy the train tickets, and in general run my whole life so I have time to see enough of the dratted place to write about it.

  “If that’s not enough, you have to arrange mail forwarding to my local address in each city, so I don’t miss anything of importance. You have to find out the location of the hotel and the train station and the lecture hall and the telegraph office and how to get from one to the other and a dozen other places before we even set foot in the town. If I want to tour the local diamond mine, or elephant farm, or bottomless pit—every little dog kennel of a town I’ve ever been in has some such firetrap that they drag innocent visitors out to see, and if I don’t write about it, nobody will believe I’ve been there—you’re the one who has to find out where it is and how to see it.

  “Besides that, you’ve got to dig up out-of
-town newspapers and decent cigars, carry my papers and correspondence, pry me out of conversations with the local bosses and literary ladies, listen to me try out my jokes in fifty different towns, and generally work like a coolie.” He gave me another stare. “You really haven’t read any of my books, have you.”

  “No, sir, but I—” He cut me off again.

  “Just as well. At least I know you aren’t doing it for some sort of imaginary glory, like the last silly fellow I hired as secretary. Lord knows what some people will make themselves important over. I knew a man who bragged all up and down the river that he was assistant cook on a second-rate steamboat out of Cincinnati. Managed to make some capital on it, too—those were the days when you could impress some of the local girls just by traveling on a steamboat, let alone working on one. So there are some people who think working for Mark Twain is something to give themselves airs about.”

  If I had entered the room with any notion of giving myself airs about employment of the sort he had just described, he had quickly cured me of it, but I refrained from saying so. I had declared my intention to see the world, and had no better way to do it while earning my keep than to hire myself out to Mr. Clemens, or someone like him. Since he was the only world traveler in need of a secretary to whom I had a letter of introduction, I knew I must perforce accept the position—provided he saw fit to offer it. So far, I had no way of guessing whether he was in a mood to do so or not. “I don’t mind that sort of work, sir,” I told him.

  “Aha, but can you do it?” said Clemens. “Have you ever dealt with a theater manager?”

  I stretched my memory, and had to admit that I had not.

  “Ever bribed a hotel clerk?”

  That was also beyond my range of experience.

  “Ever been seasick? Been shot at? Ever ridden in a stagecoach? Gone up in a balloon? Speak Dutch, or Hindu, or Fiji Island pidgin?” I confessed my lack of these qualifications, and my ignorance of the principal hotels in London, currency exchange rates, customs, and nearly everything else he could think of having to do with his vocation. Finally he asked me, “Damnation, boy, have you ever been outside Connecticut before?”