Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Vol. 128, No. 5. Whole No. 783, November 2006

The Sugar Train by Edward D. Hoch

EQMm’s regular contributor Edward D. Hoch took his fans to New Orleans once before, with the sames series character he employs here, the turn of the last century’s Ben Snow. Alas, the story did not appear in this magazine but in the now-defunct The Saint Magazine (12/63). See “The Ripper of Storyville,” reprinted in The Ripper of Storyville and Other Ben Snow Tales.

Ben Snow concluded his business in New Orleans on Ash Wednesday, which in that year, 1901, fell on February twentieth. The frivolity and music of Mardi Gras had ended, and he had every intention of heading back to Texas the following morning. The Southern Pacific Railroad had a relatively new route that extended from New Orleans across Texas to El Paso and beyond, but when he reached the downtown terminal there was a surprise awaiting him.

“Ben Snow!” a familiar voice called out, and he turned to see Detective Inspector Withers striding toward him along the platform. That English accent, with a trace of the South in it, was unmistakable.

“I thought we were done with each other yesterday,” Ben said with half a smile. “You come to arrest me?”

“Not hardly, Mr. Snow. You helped me out a lot with this Ripper case and I wanted to get your assistance on something else.”

“My train leaves in thirty minutes,” Ben told him.

“Do you have to go right back? Could you spare me another few days?”

Ben was in no hurry to deliver some sad news to his client back in Texas. “I suppose I could do that,” he agreed. “What’s your problem?”

“Ever heard tell of the Sugar Belt Railroad? A plantation owner named Colonel Grandpere built it about six years ago and purchased a steam locomotive to haul sugarcane north from his plantation to the refinery, a distance of some twenty miles. Horseshoe Plantation is located in the area between the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain, and the railroad passes through several parishes on its way to the refinery. Lately someone has been trying to sabotage it, blowing up tracks at night. I’m short-handed right now and the colonel will pay someone to patrol the area, maybe catch whoever’s responsible.”

“You have any ideas about that?”

The detective shrugged. “Rival plantation owners, maybe. The sugar crops can be big business around here. You might be able to catch them at it in one or two nights.”

“I’ll have to return to my hotel. And I’ll need a horse to cover twenty miles of track. I retired my own to stud back in Texas a few months ago. Didn’t think I’d be needing him, heading east.”

“I can get you a horse. That’s no problem. I’ve got a carriage waiting. We can ride out and see Colonel Grandpere now if you’d like.”

“Why me?” Ben asked.

“He asked if I knew any gunfighters.”

Horseshoe Plantation, just a few miles from the city’s center, was a collection of sugarcane fields grouped around a great old plantation house with white pillars framing the front entrance. A black servant met them at the door and ushered them into a parlor that seemed to have been furnished by a woman. When Colonel Grandpere entered, walking with an ivory-handled cane and smoking a thick Cuban cigar, he seemed completely out of place in his surroundings.

“You are the man who’ll be protecting my railroad?” he asked, making no effort to shake hands.

“Correct, sir. Ben Snow’s the name.”

The colonel’s eyes dropped to Ben’s holstered pistol. “Gunfighter, are you?”

“I have been, when necessary.”

The colonel seated himself with some difficulty, favoring his right leg. He patted it with the cane and said, “Got that right here in New Orleans when the Union army captured the city back in ‘sixty-two. It was the end of the war for me. I was thirty-two years old and a colonel without an army.”

A quick calculation told Ben he’d be seventy-one sometime that year. “That’s when you got into the sugar business?”

“After the war. This house was my family home and with the abolition of slavery some of the adjoining plantation owners were only too willing to sell to me. I realized the same men who’d been our slaves would continue working the plantations as free men. I’ve built this into one of the largest plantations in the state. We have all the modern conveniences here, including a telephone line to our neighbors.”

“And your own railroad, from what I hear.”

He nodded, obviously proud of his accomplishment. “About ten years ago I started building a little tram to transport sugarcane to the refinery. We used strips of iron attached to heavy pieces of wood for the crossties. As the cane was harvested, the sections of track could be moved from field to field. At first the cars of cane were pulled by mule teams, but in ‘ninety-five I bought a steam locomotive and made it into a real railroad. That sugar train is worth a fortune to me.”

His conversation was interrupted by the appearance of a strikingly handsome woman clad in riding costume. “Are you boring your visitors, darling?” she asked, bending to kiss him on the cheek.

“This is my wife, Bedelia. Inspector Withers of the New Orleans police and Ben Snow, who’s going to safeguard our railroad.”

“Thank heavens!” she said with enthusiastic approval. “They’ve been blowing up sections of track every few nights lately, and the police seem powerless to stop them.”

“I can recommend Mr. Snow highly,” Inspector Withers told them. “He’ll get the job done.”

“Who do you suspect?” Ben asked. “The line must cross other properties on its way to the refinery. What sort of agreement do you have with them?”

Bedelia Grandpere smiled. “My husband could charm the birds from the trees. Our neighbors hold him in great esteem, and each year he presents them with a three-hundred-pound barrel of sugar for permission to cross their land with our railway. But you must put an end to this terrible sabotage. Come out here at sundown the next few nights and patrol the area.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Ben promised. Grandpere mentioned a generous fee, with a bonus if the bomber was caught or killed. Ben quickly agreed to it.

“Do you have a horse he could use?” Withers asked the colonel.

“Certainly. Bedelia, please show Mr. Snow to the stables and help him choose a suitable horse.”

“My pleasure.”

Ben followed her out of the parlor while Withers remained with the colonel. “It must be a great deal of work keeping such a large plantation running,” Ben said, making conversation while they walked through the great old mansion.

“My husband has some excellent overseers, and I help out when I can.” They walked through an enormous kitchen and exited the house by the back door. He could see the stable about fifty yards behind the house. When they reached it, a tall young man with a moustache was brushing down a chestnut colt. “This is our hostler, Rubin Danials. Rubin, Mr. Snow here needs a good horse.”

Danials ceased his brushing and turned his attention to Ben. “You an experienced rider?”

Before he could answer, Bedelia decided for him. “How about Duke? He’s a good gentle mount.”

Rubin saddled the horse and Ben mounted with ease. He was surprised when Bedelia gripped the reins before he could ride off. “Could I speak to you a moment? It’s about this sabotage business.”

“Certainly.” He dismounted and followed her a little way away from the barn, leading Duke behind him.

“There’s something you should know, and I’m certain my husband won’t mention it. I don’t imagine it will surprise you to learn that I’m his second wife. My predecessor died five years ago and I met the colonel during Mardi Gras two years later. He has a grown daughter, Matty — Matilda — from his first marriage. She left home a few months ago and has been living in the French Quarter. There was no love lost between them, and I wonder if these attacks on the railway might be instigated by her. They began in early January, about six weeks after she left home. She might have hooked up with some unsavory characters in the Quarter.”

“Have you seen her since she moved out?”

“Just once. I was shopping for some candlesticks in the Quarter, before Christmas, and she was working at a little store there. I told her we’d welcome her back home, but she wouldn’t speak of it. She viewed her father as an evil man bent on ruining her life.”

“What was the name of the shop?”

“La Belle Fleur. It’s on Iberville Street.”

“Thanks for the information. Tell me something else. Why is sabotage on the rail line such a grievous blow to your husband’s plantation? Surely the cane could still be hauled in wagons.”

She smiled like a teacher imparting knowledge to a backward pupil. “Once cut, the cane begins to lose its sugar content. The faster it reaches the refinery, the more valuable it is.”

“I see. Is the harvesting continuous?”

“Given the right weather conditions, with enough sun and moisture, a stand of cane can be harvested many times. When you ride out you’ll see that the workers move from one field to the next, with the train tracks moving right along with them.”

She left him and headed back to the mansion. Ben rode Duke for a mile or two, watching while the cut sugarcane was loaded into rail cars and trundled off to the permanent tracks that led to the refinery. A locomotive stood ready to haul the train on its way as soon as the proper number of cars had been filled. It became obvious to Ben at once that one man on horseback could hardly patrol twenty miles of track in the dark. Perhaps his best bet was to contact Colonel Grandpere’s daughter.

The French Quarter in the days after Mardi Gras took on the air of a sleeping village. Ben visited it on Friday morning after riding along the track to make certain there’d been no new damage overnight. The temperature, in the mid fifties, enabled him to hide his gun belt beneath a leather jacket without attracting undue attention. La Belle Fleur proved to be a tiny shop wedged between two cafes, selling candles, beads, and amulets that suggested a possible connection with voodoo and the occult. But there was nothing the least bit eerie about the pale-complexioned young woman behind the counter, despite the plain gray shift that she wore. She had a ready smile and a friendly manner as she asked if she could help him.

“I’m looking for Matty.”

She bit her lower lip. “That’s me. Did my father send you?”

“I’m doing some work for him, but he didn’t mention you. I just heard about you working here and thought you might be able to help.”

“I don’t help my father with anything. I’m on my own now.”

“The French Quarter can be a dangerous place for an attractive young woman alone. A few blocks further along this street is Storyville, a sector with legalized prostitution.”

Her face hardened. “I know that. I’ve lived in New Orleans all my life. Did you come here to buy something?”

Ben studied the display case and picked out a coiled snake bracelet for five dollars. She seemed pleased enough at the sale and he started in again. “It’s about your father’s railroad.”

“The sugar train? What a joke that is!”

“How so?”

“It’s a joke on the other property owners. He gives them a barrel of sugar every year for the right to run his train across their land.”

“Someone’s been blowing up his tracks at night.”

The news seemed to surprise her. “No doubt a dissatisfied neighbor.”

“Do you know anyone who might be doing it?”

“Of course not!”

“What about some of your new friends in the Quarter?”

“I’ve only been here since November. I don’t have many friends.”

“Perhaps if you returned to Horseshoe Plantation you and your father could work out your differences.”

She shook her head. “Never! He was nearly fifty when I was born. I always felt closer to my mother, and not just in age. I’ll never go back there.”

“Is it his wife you object to?”

“Bedelia? She’s part of it, but it’s mostly my father. He’s never gotten over the South’s losing the war. He’d be happy if all his workers were still slaves.”

“The war’s been over a long time.”

“Not at Horseshoe Plantation.”

Ben left her then, clutching his purchase in a small paper bag.

He doubted that a young, attractive woman like Matty Grandpere would be without friends in the French Quarter, and he waited across the street until he saw her close the shop for an hour at lunchtime and go next-door to a cafe for something to eat. She chose a table near the rear and sat with her back to the bar, so he was able to enter and order a beer and keep her in view. The place catered to a mixed group of shopkeepers and laborers, none of them black. It wasn’t long before a sandy-haired man in a checkered work shirt entered and stood at the door as if searching for someone. Ben wasn’t surprised when he headed for the rear table and joined Matty.

The two conversed casually, and from his distant observation post it seemed to Ben they were no more than friends. The man left before Matty and called a greeting to the bartender as he departed. “Was that Mark Despard?” Ben asked the man, inventing the name.

The bartender frowned. “Who? The guy that just left? Tommy Franz, he’s a regular here. Never heard of Despard.”

“I must have been mistaken, but I know I’ve seen him somewhere. Does Franz work down at the docks?”

“He does some fishing, but he’s no longshoreman. He hires onto boats sometimes. Maybe that’s where you saw him.”

“Maybe,” Ben agreed.

“Whatever he’s doing these days, he’s making money at it. He spent a bundle during Mardi Gras.”

Ben wandered around the docks for a time and then returned to his horse. He picked up the tracks for the sugar train just outside the city and followed them, this time all the way to the refinery. Colonel Grandpere’s locomotive had just pulled in. For a time he watched workers unloading the cane from the cars, carefully weighing and recording each load before sending it into the main refinery building. Ben rode close enough to ask some of the workers if they knew Tommy Franz, but the name meant nothing to them. His tracking of the colonel’s daughter had gotten him nowhere. There was no hint that Franz was anything but a casual friend.

As he thought again about the explosion that had blown up the tracks, Ben wondered if Inspector Withers had checked local sources of dynamite or black powder. He rode back into downtown New Orleans and called at police headquarters. “How’s it going, Ben?” the inspector asked. “Gotten anywhere on the sugar-train sabotage?”

“Not yet. I was wondering if your department checked for recent sales of explosives.”

“Well, folks use a lot of fireworks during Mardi Gras.”

“I didn’t mean that. Do they sometimes use dynamite to remove old tree stumps?”

“Sure. You realize we’ve been pretty busy around here lately. No time to check things like dynamite sales.”

“Where could I check them out myself?”

“There are just three places locally. Of course, the dynamite could have been brought in from Baton Rouge or almost anywhere.” He jotted the names on a sheet of notepaper. “Let me know if you find anything.”

Ben visited all three places that afternoon and found nothing. All of the big plantations ordered dynamite along with other supplies, but there were no recent purchases by individuals. “It’s the best way of getting rid of tree stumps,” one dealer told Ben. “You drill a hole in the stump, slide in a stick of dynamite, and light the fuse.”

Ben carefully wrote down the list of plantations that had purchased dynamite, including the Horseshoe. It proved nothing, except to show Colonel Grandpere he’d been earning his pay. He stopped back at the bar where he’d seen Matty with Tommy Franz, but neither of them was there. After a beer and a light supper he rode back out to Horseshoe Plantation.

It was past sundown and Colonel Grandpere greeted him on the dimly lit porch. “I’ve been waiting for you, Snow. I think our man is on the move.”

“Tonight?”

“Right now! One of my neighbors telephoned that he saw someone with a sack crossing his field at sundown. I’ve got Rubin, our hostler, along, too. We’ll ride out and catch him in the act. Got your pistol?”

“I’m never without it. I went around to a few places that sell dynamite and made a list of their customers. You might want to look it over.”

“Later,” the colonel said, folding the paper and slipping it into the breast pocket of his jacket.

Rubin Danials was mounted and waiting back near the horse barn. “Hello, Ben. Good night for hunting, eh?”

Ben glanced up at the moon, barely visible thorough the scattered clouds. “Good night for blowing up tracks, too. Do we know where this guy is?”

“There’s a bend in the river brings it within a few miles of Pontchartrain. The colonel thinks he’s there.”

They rode out into the darkness, guided only by the occasional moonlight. Danials, who seemed to know the route best, led the way, with Ben and the colonel behind. “Keep your gun ready,” the colonel told Ben. “If we find him, he could be dangerous.”

Soon they reached the sugar-train track, running along the side of a field and heading northwest away from the city and toward the refinery. They traveled faster now, following a path along the railroad. Presently Ben spotted the flare of a match up ahead. “There!” he pointed.

They rode up fast and Ben was off his horse before the others. A long fuse was burning toward a single stick of dynamite under one of the rails. As he yanked it out a slender figure with a double-barreled shotgun appeared from behind a tree. It was Matty’s friend, Tommy Franz. He fired a blast at Rubin Danials, blowing him off his horse, and then aimed a second barrel at the colonel. “Get him, Snow!” Grandpere shouted in the same instant the second barrel was fired. The old man fell back, clinging to his reins, just as Ben put two quick bullets into the killer’s chest.

Franz stumbled back, dropping the shotgun, as Ben rushed to the aid of the wounded men. He saw at once that Rubin Danials was beyond saving, and turned his attention to the colonel, lowering him to the ground as he stripped away the bloodied jacket and shirt. His chest was peppered with a dozen or more shotgun pellets, causing a bit of bleeding, but there was none of the massive damage that had ended the hostler’s life.

“Did you get him?” the colonel managed to gasp.

“I got him. He’s dead. But so is Danials, I’m afraid.”

“Can you get me back to the house?”

“You haven’t lost much blood,” Ben said. “But we’d better head for the nearest house. Where is it?” He checked over the colonel’s horse, which seemed unharmed, and tied his employer onto the saddle so he wouldn’t fall.

“The — the Crabtree place, through these woods.”

Ben led the colonel’s horse in the direction indicated, and presently a large farmhouse came into view beneath the moon. After some pounding on the door, Ben was rewarded by the appearance of one of the Crabtrees. “What’s going on?” the man wanted to know.

“Colonel Grandpere’s been wounded and there are two dead men back by the railroad tracks. Do you have a telephone here?”

“Well — yes, we do. These farms are connected and we have a line running into the city. What happened?”

“Another attempt to sabotage the sugar train, but that’s over now. Call Inspector Withers and let me speak with him.”

Withers wasn’t at police headquarters that late, but they contacted him and he rode out in his buggy shortly after other officers had arrived on the scene. The colonel was already on his way to the hospital, and Withers had only the bloodstained shirt and jacket Ben had stripped from the old man. “He was lucky.” Feeling around in the perforated jacket, he came upon the paper Ben had given the colonel with the names of the local dynamite customers. “What’s this?”

Ben held the paper up to the lantern light and explained that he’d been trying to determine if there’d been any dynamite sales to individuals. “None of these places made individual sales, as you can see.” The inspector took the list to examine Ben’s notations. The paper was so thick no light passed through it. “Of course, the dynamite could have come from upriver or almost anywhere.”

Withers uncovered the dead man, his chest torn open by the buckshot blast. “Rubin Danials,” he muttered, “a good man with horses.” He walked over to the second body, the man with the shotgun. “Do you know him?” the inspector asked Ben.

“Not really, but I think his name is Tommy Franz. I saw him at a bar in the French Quarter with Grandpere’s daughter.”

“Matty? I’m sorry to hear she’s involved in this.”

“We don’t know that she is.”

Withers sighed. “I’d better have her picked up for questioning.”

Ben slept only a few hours that night. Though the shooting of Tommy Franz had been more than justified, he wondered at Matty Grandpere’s involvement in the case. Was her alienation from her father so severe that she would enlist a man like Franz to sabotage the sugar train?

By morning Matty had been located and brought in for questioning. Since he had fired the shots fatal to Tommy Franz, the inspector wanted Ben present, too. “I have to get to the bottom of this,” he told them both.

“How is my father?” Matty asked. Her face was drawn and pale, and Ben wondered if it was the colonel’s wounding or Franz’s death that upset her most.

“His wounds aren’t serious,” Withers told her. “The doctors picked about a dozen bits of buckshot off his skin. None of them penetrated very deep. He’ll be out of the hospital in a day or two.”

She shifted her gaze to Ben. “You were the one who killed that man?”

“I had no choice. He fired his double-barrel at Danials and your father.”

“Miss Grandpere — Matty — what was your relationship with Tommy Franz?” Withers asked.

“There was no relationship. I barely knew him. I started having lunch at that cafe when I took the job at La Belle Fleur. He talked to me one day and after that he often came over to my table. I never saw him outside the cafe.”

“Did he ever mention your father, or the sugar train?”

“Never. I doubt if he knew who my father was.”

Withers looked doubtful. “Grandpere isn’t a common name. I’m sure he knew.”

“But what did he hope to accomplish by attacking the railroad?”

The detective made a few quick notes before he replied. “At some point he may have been planning to extort money from your father in exchange for stopping the attacks. We may never know.” He picked up Ben’s list of dynamite suppliers. “I’ll check these out and try to discover where he bought the stuff, not that it makes much difference now.”

“Do you need me any longer?” Matty asked.

“Not right now. Maybe you should go see your father at the hospital.”

“If you want to, I’ll go with you,” Ben offered.

“Oh, all right,” she agreed, hardly concealing her reluctance.

Colonel Grandpere had been taken to the Tulane University Hospital, one of the city’s oldest. They found him in a private room being attended by his own nurse. “Daddy,” Matty said softly, entering the room with some hesitation.

He lifted his head and peered at her. “You’ve come back, my darlin’ daughter.”

“Not for good, just to see you. How do you feel?”

“Pretty good for someone my age who took a load of buckshot in his chest. Lucky you were there, Snow, or he’d have finished me off.”

She went over to his bed and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “The police think I was somehow involved with this Tommy Franz, but I barely knew the man. He only had lunch with me a few times.”

Colonel Grandpere frowned. “He did? That man was no good.”

There was a noise at the door and Ben turned to see Bedelia Grandpere entering. “Well, Matty. You’ve come back.”

The colonel’s daughter gave her a sour look. “Only for a visit. I thought you’d be in mourning after Rubin was killed.”

Bedelia ignored her remark and went to the colonel’s bedside. “We’d better be going,” Ben suggested to Matty. He thought he understood one reason why she’d left home.

Colonel Grandpere returned to the plantation two days later, accompanied by Bedelia. Ben had only to collect his pay and move on. He’d done the job as best he could and there was nothing else for him in the city. He would head back to Texas later that day.

And yet, there was something unsettling about the entire matter, even after Inspector Withers assured him no charges would be brought against him for shooting Tommy Franz. “It was self-defense,” he told Ben. “The man had already shot two people.”

“Have you been able to trace the dynamite?”

Withers spread out Ben’s list on his desk. “It appears he got it from one of these big plantations, or else he brought it in from upriver.”

Ben was staring at the sheet of paper, suddenly wondering how he could have been so dumb. “I’m on my way out to Horseshoe Plantation to collect my fee and return their horse. It might be a good idea if you came with me.”

Inspector Withers gave him an appraising look. “All right,” he said finally. “If you want me to.”

They reached the plantation a half-hour later, and Bedelia ushered them to her husband’s study. It was a more masculine room than the parlor where Ben and the colonel had first met, with bookshelves holding Civil War histories and volumes on sugarcane cultivation. “Good to see you on your feet again, Colonel,” the detective said.

“It’s a miracle I’m still alive,” Grandpere told him. “I have you to thank, Mr. Snow.” He handed over a check, which Ben quietly pocketed.

“Will you be going back to Texas?” Bedelia asked.

“There, or somewhere else. I’m a wanderer.”

Colonel Grandpere smiled. “You can do a good deal of wandering with the money I paid you.”

Ben was uncertain till that moment what he would do, but he knew he could not leave New Orleans with the truth untold. “It’s hardly enough to commit murder for you.”

The color drained from the old man’s face. “What are you trying to say, Mr. Snow?”

“That this entire charade was carefully planned by you for the purpose of killing Rubin Danials. You then arranged for me to kill your triggerman, Tommy Franz, insuring that you’d be safe. It would have been the nearest thing to a perfect crime I’ve ever come across.” Bedelia was staring at him, open-mouthed. She turned to her husband and demanded, “What is he saying? Tell me it’s not true!”

“Darling, the man is insane.”

Inspector Withers joined in the conversation. “Why would the colonel want Danials dead?”

“Matty made a remark that implied Bedelia might have had a relationship with him. If that was the case, or if the colonel even suspected it, he’d have a motive.” Bedelia said nothing, and averted her husband’s gaze. “I think the colonel hired Tommy Franz just as he hired me. He supplied him with dynamite to damage some of the sugar train’s tracks, and then hired me to guard them. It was Tommy’s own idea to meet up with Matty. Last night the colonel said he received a telephone message that the bomber was near the tracks, but the nearest neighbor seemed surprised at our presence. That was just a trick to get Danials and me out there. He probably told Franz that I’d be along as a witness that the killer shot him, too.”

“But they were both shot!” Withers protested.

“Were they? How could one man have his chest ripped open while the other was barely scratched and his horse not even touched? Remember that sheet of paper I used to list the dynamite sellers and their customers? I’d given it to the colonel and he placed it in the breast pocket of his jacket. You found it there after he’d been shot. But I remembered thinking later that the paper was so thick no light passed through it. No light. How could the buckshot have gone through the colonel’s jacket and shirt to cause those minor surface wounds without penetrating that paper? It couldn’t have! Franz’s first shot was strong enough to kill Rubin Danials outright, but the second shell contained only powder, no buckshot. The colonel had made careful holes in his jacket and shirt beforehand — which went unnoticed in the dark — and even nicked himself with a knife to produce a bit of blood. A dozen rounds of buckshot were stuck to his skin with drops of glue. Franz was to fire the first barrel, killing Danials, and then the second barrel before running off. What he didn’t know was that the colonel had brought along a gunfighter to kill him, too.”

“You figured all that out from the sheet of paper?”

“There were no holes in it. This is the only possible explanation.”

The colonel started to rise, reaching for his cane, but Bedelia got there first. She raised it and swung at him, and she might have killed him if Withers hadn’t grabbed her and pulled her away.

Later, as Ben Snow walked from his hotel to the train, he heard the sound of a saxophone from somewhere on Basin Street. It was the first music he’d heard since the end of Mardi Gras, and he paused for a few minutes to enjoy it. New Orleans was a great city. It always would be.

Copyright © 2006 Edward D. Hoch