Death of Colonel Mann: A Beacon Hill Mystery

Colonel Mann was dead. Of that inconvenient fact there could be no doubt. He lay sprawled, face up, on the garish Turkey carpet that covered the sitting room floor of his expensive hotel suite. A darkening crimson stain marred the bosom of his boiled white shirt. In his right hand he clutched a handsome silver-knobbed walking stick. Addington Ames stood quite still, staring at the body. Although he knew the Colonel by reputation--who did not?--he had never met him. For years he had heard it lamented throughout Boston Society that the Colonel was in robust middle age, no more than forty-five or fifty. He will live on and on, people said, spreading his poison, bleeding us dry. No more. Whatever harm the Colonel had done--and it was very great, Ames knew--he would do no more now. In the harsh glare of the electric lights, the Colonel's face--fleshy, bearded--looked not robust but old. Already, Death had marked it for his own. Old, thought Ames, and vicious and corrupt, like the man himself. He turned to glance at his companion, who stood behind him. "Doctor?" he said. He moved a little to one side so that MacKenzie could step close to the body. Dr. John Alexander MacKenzie, uncomfortable in the overheated room--in its advertisements, the hotel boasted of its central heating--crouched and felt the Colonel's forehead and then lifted his free hand. "Body's still warm," he said. "No rigor." The Colonel's skin was a sickly shade of blue-gray; his eyes, staring wide, were oddly flat. Dead eyes, thought MacKenzie: circles of black pupil, iris no longer visible. He'd seen eyes like these often enough during his service with the army on the western plains to know instantly when he was looking at a corpse. Ames grunted. "This is the night when the Colonel held open house each week," he said. "I wonder, given his methods, that he did not keep a bodyguard with him." Without touching the Colonel's bloodied shirtfront, MacKenzie scrutinized the neat little hole in the fabric to the right of the third gold stud. Then, with difficulty and with the aid of his cane, he stood up. "There is his pistol on the desk," he said, gesturing. "But it looks to be a Smith and Wesson thirty-eight. Too large a caliber for a wound this size." He sniffed; he thought he could smell a faint odor of gunpowder, but he could not be sure because it was overlaid with a heavy, sweet scent that might have been the Colonel's hair pomade--or a woman's perfume. Ames nodded. "So we may assume that he was not seized with a sudden fit of remorse and driven to kill himself." "No," replied MacKenzie. "He did not do that. And yet, for the wound to be so accurately placed, the weapon must have been fired point-blank--just outside powder-burn range." Ames thought about it. "A bold man, then. And someone the Colonel knew well." "Yes. Perhaps he did have a bodyguard"--MacKenzie flexed his bad knee--"who turned on him?" "Possibly." Ames looked away, contemplating the middle distance. He was a tall man, markedly taller than his companion, and whippet thin. His black hair was combed back straight from his high forehead; luxuriant dark brows arched over his brilliant black eyes. His nose was sharp and pronounced, his clean-shaven face as long and thin as he himself. He wore a gray Inverness cape over his dark coat and trousers; his neckcloth, of a good gray silk twill, was slightly frayed at the edges, as were the cuffs of his coat. He was two years younger than MacKenzie, who was forty-one. Ames seemed to have come to some decision. Moving with care, he stepped around the Colonel's body to the ornately carved desk. MacKenzie, as he always did when he was slightly unnerved, tugged at the end of his mustache. "Should we notify the staff?Peale, Cynthia is the author of 'Death of Colonel Mann: A Beacon Hill Mystery' with ISBN 9780385496360 and ISBN 0385496362.