[Mark Twain Mysteries 03] - The Prince and the Prosecutor Read online

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  Title page

  Copyright page

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  The Legend of Mark Twain Lives in Peter J. Heck’s acclaimed mystery series . . .

  Praise for

  A Connecticut Yankee in Criminal Court

  “An enjoyable tour of 1890’s New Orleans . . . Twain can take a bow for his performance. Heck takes a colorful city (New Orleans) and a colorful character (Mark Twain), adds a murder, a duel, some voodoo and period detail and conjures up an entertaining sequel to Death on the Mississippi.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A period charmer . . . Against the background of this famous city with its colorful mix of characters, cultures, food, music, and religion, the famous author and his loyal sidekick worm their way into the heart of a scandalous murder.”

  —Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine

  “Packed with casual racists, unregenerate Civil War veterans, superstitious rationalists, and poseurs of every stripe—exactly the sort of colorful cast that brings its satiric hero’s famous talent for unmasking pretension into brilliant relief.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “This Crescent City mystery simmers.”

  —Booklist

  “The second of Heck’s Mark Twain detective novels is a charming winner. Twain is as fabulous a personality in fiction as he was a real-life writer . . . A unique, intriguing reading experience.”

  —Ed’s Internet Book Review

  “Exciting.”

  —Book Alert

  DEATH ON THE MISSISSIPPI

  A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN CRIMINAL COURT

  THE PRINCE AND THE PROSECUTOR

  The Prince

  and the

  Prosecutor

  A Mark Twain Mystery

  Peter J. Heck

  The Prince and the Prosecutor

  Copyright © 1997 by Peter J. Heck.

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Wildside Press LLC

  www.wildsidepress.com

  For Dan, and the boys in the band.

  Historical Note and Acknowledgments

  As with my previous Mark Twain mysteries, this novel walks a line between history and fiction, using historical figures as fictional characters, and introducing them into situations that they never faced in real life. While Mark Twain met Rudyard Kipling on more than one occasion, they never crossed the Atlantic together on the same ship. Nor did they ever collaborate to catch a murderer—Carrie Kipling would certainly have mentioned such an event in her highly detailed diaries, had it occurred.

  I have done my best to portray Mark Twain and his era as faithfully as possible, and to make him and the Kiplings (the only other historical figures here) act and speak as they probably would have in the circumstances they face here. The historical Twain’s financial difficulties in the early 1890s, stemming from a series of bad investments and worse luck, sent him to the brink of bankruptcy. He sent his wife and daughters to Europe, to take advantage of a cheaper cost of living, while he made several trips across the Atlantic, going on lecture tours and tending to his finances in the U.S. By the end of the nineties he had paid his debts. I show him at the beginning of this period, although I have rearranged his itinerary for my own purposes.

  I have taken certain other liberties with fact. These include my resuscitation of Mittel Reuss, a German principality that ceased to exist in 1616, as well as my wholesale remodeling of the City of Baltimore, the historical version of which was a much older and smaller ship than the one portrayed here. I hope the reader will take these inventions in the same spirit as my creation of the various imaginary characters who play supporting roles to Mr. Clemens and the Kiplings.

  My fictional Mark Twain tells a number of jokes and stories that the historical Twain wrote or told on many occasions. As a practiced public speaker, he had on hand a stock repertory of witticisms and anecdotes, which he expanded and modified for different audiences, so it is no surprise that he would do so during the voyage portrayed in these pages. I stand ready to accept the reader’s verdict that my own inventions (there are a few here!) fall short of Mr. Clemens’s enviable standards, but I hope they are at least in the proper spirit.

  As always, too many people to mention individually have had some hand in helping me bring this novel to completion. I owe special thanks to my editors, Laura Anne Gilman and Natalee Rosenstein; to my agent, Martha Millard; and to my wife, Jane Jewell, my first and most demanding reader. Thanks also to Charles Chaffee, for information on early ocean liners. The book would have been far less than it is without their contributions; of course, any flaws that remain are my own responsibility.

  The Prince

  and the

  Prosecutor

  1

  “William, someone is calling you on the telephone.” I looked up in surprise at my mother, who had interrupted my leisurely breakfast with this remarkable announcement. Until then, I had been dawdling over my coffee and reading a newspaper.

  “Really,” I said. “I wonder who it could be.” The telephone had been installed in my parents’ home in New London only a few months before, shortly after my graduation from Yale in 189—. Having left home very soon thereafter, I had never before gotten a telephone call at home.

  With a feeling somewhere between excitement and anxiety, I arose from the dining room table and walked out to the front hallway, where the instrument had been mounted on the wall near the foot of the stairs. I picked up the earpiece, and spoke into the conical black tube. “Hello, are you there? This is Cabot; who’s calling, please?”

  “Wentworth, is that you?” came a familiar drawling voice, recognizable even over the telephone as that of my employer, Mr. Samuel Clemens, a writer and lecturer of some repute. “I’ve hung around this blasted telephone office half the morning trying to get hold of you—you’d think they’d give faster service, for what they charge for long distance. Good thing there’s only one Cabot with a phone in New London, or the operators would never have found you. I was about ready to give up and send a telegram, except I hate cramming my whole damn message into ten words, and I’d still have had to wait for the answer. How’d you like to go to Europe?”

  “Europe!” I exclaimed. “When do we leave?”

  In the capacity of traveling secretary, I had recently accompanied Mr. Clemens (who was better known to the public under the pen name Mark Twain) on an extensive lecture tour of the Mississippi Valley, New Orleans, and the South. The tour itself had been a great success, with overflow crowds in every town where we stopped. Upon our return to New York, Mr. Clemens had proclaimed himself satisfied with my performance of my duties, paying me a bonus of a hundred dollars above my salary for the tour.

  But it had been over a month since our return. I had sat idle for all of September and into October. True, I had spent a few hours each day working on my notes of the tour, with the notion of turning them into something publishable. My father, who had expected me to follow in his footsteps and take up a career as a lawyer, kept dropping hints about “com
ing back to the real world” and “taking up respectable work.” It did not in the least impress him that I had found employment with a famous writer, or that I was meeting important people in the world of literature. So the invitation to accompany Mr. Clemens to Europe came as something of a godsend.

  “I’ve talked Henry Rogers into sponsoring a European tour starting in November,” said Mr. Clemens. “I reckon I can wrap up my affairs here in a week or so, and jump on the first boat leaving after that. If you can come on down to New York by Monday, I’ll have plenty of work for you. And maybe this time we can manage to take a trip without anybody getting murdered.”

  “I certainly hope so,” I said. One of the unexpected duties of my position as Mr. Clemens’s traveling secretary had been my participation in the resolution of two murder cases—one that began in New York and came to its conclusion aboard a Mississippi riverboat, and another involving two deaths among the New Orleans aristocracy.

  “I’m in the Union Square Hotel again,” said my employer. “I’ll tell them to reserve you a room starting Monday night. Pack your trunk—we’ll probably be gone right up till spring. And if you know any French or German or Italian, brush up on it now. I reckon we’ll see most of the continent before we’re done.”

  “I’ll start packing right away,” I said, excited that my dreams of foreign travel were at last about to come true. “Look for me midmorning on Monday.”

  I broke the connection, and turned to see my mother standing behind me, a sad expression on her face. Her arms were folded across her bosom, and she had on an old, dark blue dress that in the dim light of the hallway seemed to emphasize her melancholy. “So, you’re leaving again,” she said quietly. “Your father will be very disappointed, William.” She and my father were almost the only people I knew who called me by my first name. It made me feel like a small child, despite my being a good ten inches taller than Mother.

  “How else am I to see Europe?” I asked. “If it weren’t for Mr. Clemens, I’d never have been out of New England.”

  “Your father and I have never been to Europe, and it has not hurt us in the least. Besides, if it weren’t for Mr. Clemens, you’d never have been in jail,” she said accusingly. My parents had been deeply shocked to learn of my having spent several hours in a New Orleans jail cell following a duel with pistols. (I had done my best to keep the knowledge from them, but some well-meaning person had seen the New Orleans newspaper accounts and passed on the story.) She cocked her head to one side and looked up at me. “I don’t think that man is a good influence on you. Mr. Digby tells me that his books are unwholesome and that he openly mocks respectable people of our sort.”

  “I am sorry to hear that,” I said. Mr. Digby was the minister at our church, and my mother put great stock in his opinion on all subjects. I personally found his manner rather pompous, but had generally refrained from criticizing him in my mother’s presence. “I can only tell you that Mr. Clemens’s circle of acquaintance includes some of the most eminent people in the country. If Mr. Digby had spent as much time in his company as I have, I hope he would be of a different opinion.” As I said this, the image of my employer came to me, puffing great clouds of cigar smoke, knocking back full bumpers of Scotch whisky, and swearing like a stevedore. Perhaps it was just as well that Mr. Digby had not made his acquaintance. . . .

  “I see I am wasting my time talking to you,” said my mother. “Your father will have something to say about this when he comes home.” She raised her chin, then turned and walked away.

  “I am sure he will,” I said, as calmly as I could manage. I was angry at her opposition to my plans, but I had no desire to hurt her. “But if I don’t take this opportunity now, it may never come again.”

  She turned and looked at me, and I could see a hint of moisture around her eyes. “And what opportunities are you passing up in favor of this notion of seeing Europe? Why not settle down and make a fair start at establishing yourself in some worthwhile profession? You know how your father is eating his heart out at your refusal to follow him into the practice of law. But I think he would be satisfied by your commitment to any steady and respectable occupation.”

  “Perhaps he would,” I said. “But I have made my commitment to Europe, and to Mr. Clemens.”

  When all was said and done, my parents had no choice but to acquiesce in my continued employment as Mr. Clemens’s secretary. After all, I was a grown man and in full possession of my senses. In fact, my father’s attempt to get me to listen to reason—or, more precisely, to my mother’s pleas—seemed almost perfunctory. It made me wonder whether he might not have his own unfulfilled wish to see some of the world, even if it didn’t qualify as a steady and respectable occupation.

  In any case, the following Monday found me once again in New York City, in the lobby of the Union Square Hotel, where I had first learned what it meant to be part of a police investigation. Mr. Clemens had reserved a room for me adjacent to his own, and within an hour of my arrival I was immersed in the now-familiar business of helping him with his correspondence, and taking care of last-minute arrangements for our journey to Europe. It felt good to be busy again, and to be a part of the great world beyond Connecticut.

  My employer lounged in a comfortable easy chair, his feet propped up and a pipe between his teeth. The hotel had sent up an urn of hot coffee and some sweet buns for our late-morning refreshment. I sipped at my coffee in between scribbling down Mr. Clemens’s instructions. Fortunately, his slow speech made it easy to keep up with him; my education had included many things, but instruction in shorthand was not among them.

  “I’ve been in touch with my English publishers,” said Mr. Clemens. “They’re anxious for my new book, and if I get a little work done on the boat, it’ll be just about ready for the press. I’m planning on meeting Livy in London, so she can go over the manuscript—she’s the only editor I really trust—and then I’ll hand it in and start to see some money from it.”

  “I’m surprised you wouldn’t publish it first in this country,” I said. “Don’t your fellow Americans deserve first look at your writings? I’m sure they’d support your work as well as the British would.” I was a little taken aback by his intention; it seemed out of character for a staunch admirer of all things American.

  “I’m sure they would, but there’s the damned copyright problem,” he growled. “It’s been the plague of my existence, Wentworth. The English won’t recognize copyright for any book first published elsewhere, so I have to let the stiff-necked swindlers put it out before the American edition, even if it’s only by twenty-four hours. Otherwise, I’d never see a penny from England.”

  “That’s dreadful! I can imagine the difficulties it must create,” I said. “Still, with today’s fast ships, and the transatlantic telegraph, it ought be considerably easier to coordinate the two editions, shouldn’t it? Why can’t you simply send your corrected manuscript directly to New York, once the English have finished with it?”

  Mr. Clemens knocked the ash out of his pipe and shook his head. “You don’t know the half of it, Wentworth. The fast ships cause more trouble than they prevent. With a couple of my books, the Canadians got hold of the English edition and ran off pirated copies for sale in the U.S before my American publishers had the type set. They cost me thousands in royalties, and thousands more trying to stop their goddamned thievery. Howells and George Putnam and I went to Congress a few years ago, and we convinced them to plug up some of the loopholes. But there’s still no guarantee I’ll get the benefit of my labors unless I pay attention to every jot and tittle of the law. Writing’s hard enough work, without having to be a damned lawyer, as well.”

  “I can believe you,” I told him, recalling my own efforts at turning my notes into something resembling passible prose. I thought I had a solid grounding in the use of my native tongue, but while my sentences were correctly formed, to my eye they lacked a certain vigor. I had expected my employment with Mr. Clemens to bring about some improvement
in my writing, but my carefully revised pages looked even less presentable to me now than they had when I was still a student.

  “We’ll be traveling on the City of Baltimore,” said Mr. Clemens, standing up and walking over to pour himself another cup of coffee—his third since the urn had been delivered. “I figure an American writer ought to patronize an American ship when he can. Besides, she’s a little older and less fashionable than the others leaving at around the same time. So she’ll save us a few dollars.”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s important. It would have been nice to travel on one of the big new ships, though.”

  “Oh, the City of Baltimore is big enough,” said Mr. Clemens. “You should have seen the old Quaker City, the ship I took on my first visit to Europe in ’67. I thought she was pretty well fitted out, but she was already thirteen years old, and barely a dinghy next to these modern ocean liners. Only nineteen hundred tons, with paddle wheels, and sails! They’d laugh her out of the water, these days.”

  “I shan’t complain,” I said. “I’m getting to see Europe at last. If I had to stoke the boilers on the crossing, it wouldn’t be too high a price to pay.”

  Mr. Clemens looked at me with a twinkle in his eye. “Maybe I’ll take you up on that, Wentworth,” he said. “I do have to watch my expenses these days, and two passages to England for the price of one may be too much of a bargain to pass up!”

  After lunch (at which I was treated to a string of amusing stories about European travel), Mr. Clemens sent me to the American Steamship Line’s terminal at Pier 43, on the Hudson River near Christopher Street. The bellboy in the hotel lobby told me that the Fourteenth Street tramway, which stopped not far from the hotel, would take me directly there, and (after a somewhat crowded ride that my mother would undoubtedly have considered undignified if not outright dangerous) so it did.