Poisoned Penman , livre ebook

Andrews UK - Dan Andriacco

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

84 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

London, 1922: Two years after helping Sherlock Holmes solve the Hangman Murders, American journalist Enoch Hale becomes even more intimately involved in another puzzling mystery. Langdale Pike, veteran purveyor of gossip to the trash newspapers, is poisoned while sipping tea with Hale - and apparently just as he is about to spill a secret more important than social gossip. With the unrequested aid of advertising copywriter Dorothy Sayers, Hale pursues a number of leads based on notes in Pike's pocket diary - including an interview with the formidable G.K. Chesterton.His attempts to uncover the identity of one of Pike's fellow club membersbring Hale the unwanted attention of Mycroft Holmes, head of His Majesty's Secret Service, and of his younger brother. Once again Enoch Hale and the theoretically retired but far from retiring Sherlock Holmes join forces to solve a crime that may have international complications. And this time Hale himself almost becomes a victim when he gets too close to the solution. This fast-moving tale is sure to please themany fans of the first Enoch Hale - Sherlock Holmes adventure, The Amateur Executioner.

Informations

Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	22 avril 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781780926346
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0300€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Title page
The Poisoned Penman
Another Adventure of Enoch Hale with Sherlock Holmes
Dan Andriacco and Kieran McMullen

Publisher information
2014 digital version by Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
First edition published in 2014
© Copyright 2014
Dan Andriacco and Kieran McMullen
The right of Dan Andriacco and Kieran McMullen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious or used fictitiously. Except for certain historical personages, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and not of MX Publishing.
Published in the UK by MX Publishing
335 Princess Park Manor, Royal Drive,
London, N11 3GX
www.mxpublishing.co.uk
Cover design by www.staunch.com
Grateful acknowledgment to Conan Doyle Estate Ltd. for the use of the Sherlock Holmes characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Dedications
Dan Andriacco dedicates this book to
NUNO ROBLES
Kieran McMullen dedicates this book to
CHARLES MALTESE

One: Tea Time for Death
“It began with the tea,” the Hatter replied.
— Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
“Good work again, Hale.” Nigel Rathbone looked up from the typed pages in his hand and favored his employee with a rare smile. “Tomorrow this story will be a leader in newspapers from Manchester to Massachusetts.”
Enoch Hale, a tall American with a narrow face and a pencil-thin mustache, had presented his boss with the third installment in a series of articles about rumrunning. The managing director of the Central Press Syndicate, the fourth largest press association in the world and coming on strong under Rathbone’s reign, couldn’t get enough of it.
“Thanks,” Hale said, lighting a celebratory panatela, “but there’s an even bigger story to bag. I’m hoping all this ink will bring forward some concrete leads on the British part of the operation. No other journalists have touched that yet.”
“Hope doesn’t sell newspapers, my lad.” The sparkle in the South African’s hazel eyes belied the rebuke in his words.
“Yes, sir. What I meant to say is, I’m working on it.”
Hale was convinced that this would be the biggest story he’d worked on since coming to London, bigger even than the Hangman Murders [1] , if he could nail it all down. Illegal booze had become a huge international business since the Volstead Act brought Prohibition to the States two and a half years before. Some of the stuff was home grown—bathtub gin and the like—but some high-quality alcohol was being shipped from England to please the more sophisticated palates and bigger pocketbooks of America. Hale had written a general outline of how that worked in his first three stories. Now came the hard part—nailing down the rumors and speculation that he’d come across in his research.
Sources on Wall Street, where Hale had worked before the Great War and still had family connections, had told him that Scotch was being moved out of England over the signature of a stockbroker named Joseph P. Kennedy. From there it was sent to the States on boats controlled by another Irish-American, William McCoy.
According to the sources, this McCoy had at his command a whole fleet of boats that moved alcohol to what was called “The Rum Line” three miles off shore of the U.S. There, fishermen and lobstermen would pick up loads and run them in to customers like “Big Bill” Dwyer, an Irish mobster in New York, by way of Northport and Greenport on the North Shore of Long Island. There were only two Coast Guard cutters on the North Shore, and Hale’s informants told him that Dwyer paid off the cops and Coast Guard. Northport had an underground tunnel system with speakeasies, storehouses, and a bowling alley, but the booze didn’t stop there. It went into New York City on roads like the Vanderbilt Motor Parkway. The Vanderbilt, known as Rum Runner’s Road, was a privately owned 48-mile concrete road open to the public for a toll. It had been built by the rich as a convenient way to get to their “bungalows” in the Hamptons. Since it was private property the cops couldn’t patrol it.
All of that was on the American end of the scheme. Here in Britain, Hale had put out feelers over the past several weeks to try to identify suppliers, shippers, paid-off customs officials, dockworkers, and union bosses who were involved. Surely his three-part series would jog loose a memory or rouse a suspicion in someone willing to talk to an enterprising reporter.
“Don’t expect the next piece by teatime,” Hale told Rathbone, “but it’ll be worth waiting for.” Someone is orchestrating all this from here, and I intend to find out who and how.
“Tea, Hale?” Langdale Pike asked, looking up from a notebook in which he was writing. He was a small man, except for an outsized head decorated with gray mutton-chop whiskers. Lights in the chandelier above him danced off of his pink scalp.
“Of course. Earl Grey would be nice.” Hale preferred coffee, but when in London…
That afternoon, Hale had presented himself upon request at Pike’s club, Arthur’s, after half a day spent on the London Docks in pursuit of a lead. Such variety in the course of his day had been a major reason that Hale, inspired by a fellow volunteer ambulance driver named Hemingway, had gone into this line of work after the war. The horror with which his Fleet Street profession filled his family back in Boston and New York was icing on the cake.
Hale’s Brahmin roots and Brooks Brothers suit always stood him in good stead at Arthur’s, however. Established in 1811 as the first club formed by member ownership, Arthur’s was one of the reasons the area around Pall Mall and St. James’s Street had long been nicknamed “Clubland.” While each club had its own quirks and particularities, they shared a propensity for tall ceilings, huge paintings, marble statues, and (except for the Reform Club) grand staircases in the entrance hall.
The building, at 69 St. James’s Street, stood four stories high but was divided into only two floors. Langdale Pike sat at a table right in front of one of the four large windows on the ground floor, next to the front entrance on the far right of the building. He’d sat there every day for more than twenty years, collecting and then reselling gossip in the form of paragraphs for the trash papers.
“I always drink Caribbean Black Sage myself,” Pike said. “Good for my gout. It was recommended to me.”
He stopped writing, closed the notebook, and stuck it in the breast pocket of his unstylish three-piece gray suit. Hale allowed himself the passing fancy that the small volume must contain a wonderful collection of secrets.
Pike hailed a passing waiter, a young man with longish blond hair, and asked him to bring Mr. Hale a cup of Earl Grey. Pike’s own tea lay on the table in front of him. As soon as the waiter disappeared, he took a long sip.
“You said that you had some information I’d be interested in,” Hale prodded, impatient with the civilities. “What’s so special that you couldn’t just tell me on the telephone?”
Ever since Hale’s friend Tom Eliot had introduced him to Pike during that Hangman Murders business, he had occasionally contacted Pike for the sort of information that only Pike would have. Small amounts of Hale’s personal funds had passed into Pike’s hands in appreciation. But this time it was different; this time, Pike had come to him.
“I had to be careful speaking on the telephone, my good fellow.” Pike looked around and then leaned forward, speaking in a low voice. “This isn’t just cheap goss—”
Stopping in mid-word, he fell forward as if suddenly weak.
“Pike!” Hale moved quickly across the table and felt the older man’s wrist. Pike’s pulse was weak, his hand icy.
“Somebody call a doctor!” Hale yelled. The words were barely out of his mouth when he felt Pike’s pulse stop beneath his fingers. The strange little man was dead.
Acting on an impulse that he could never explain even to himself, Hale reached into the breast pocket of Pike’s coat. He transferred the notebook inside, the one that Hale fantasized as being full of secrets, into his own pocket before anyone else got near the body.

1 See The Amateur Executioner , MX Publishing Co., 2013.

Two: Coshed!
“I was following you, of course.”
“Following me? I saw nobody.”
— “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot”
Rumrunning forgotten, Hale spent the rest of the day writing a story that was part first-person account of Pike’s death and part obituary.
Langdale Pike, a fixture in the front window of Arthur’s Club for more than two decades, died there on Tuesday afternoon in the presence of this reporter after suffering an apparent heart attack. He was 64 years old.
Mr. Pike, known to have a large circle of friends from all classes, made what was said to be a comfortable living writing paragraphs…
The story quoted Tom Eliot, Hale’s banker friend who wrote poetry on the side, as lauding Pike’s “amazing knowledge of the world even though he saw so little of it.” The retired detective Sherlock Holmes said that Pike “had he c