Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 128, No. 6. Whole No. 784, December 2006

There were few more undesirable places for a detective and temperance man to be plying his trade, Quincannon reflected sourly, not for the first time in the past week, than the bowels of a blasted brewery.

The fine, rich perfume of malt, hops, yeast, and brewing and fermenting beer permeated every nook and cranny of the two-story, block-square brick building that housed Golden Gate Steam Beer. Whenever he prowled its multitude of rooms and passages, he was enveloped in a pungent miasma that tightened and dried his throat, created a thirst that plain water couldn’t quite slake. In his drinking days he had been mightily fond of the type of lager, invented during the Gold Rush and unique to San Francisco, known as “steam beer.” John Wieland’s Philadelphia Brewery, the National Brewery, and others operating in the city in this year of 1896 specialized in porter and pilsner; if one of their owners had sought his services, he would not be suffering such pangs as this place instilled in him. But it had been Golden Gate’s James Carreaux who had come calling, and the fee-plus-bonus he’d offered for an investigation into the bizarre death of his head brewmaster was a sum no Scot in his right mind could afford to turn down.

In the five years since Quincannon had taken the pledge, he had seldom been even mildly tempted to return to his bibulous ways. Even on those occasions when he visited his old watering hole, Hoolihan’s Saloon, to spend an evening with cronies or clients, he hadn’t once considered imbibing anything stronger than his usual mug of clam juice. But after one full week of undercover work in the Golden Gate’s rarefied atmosphere, his craving for a tankard of San Francisco’s best lager had grown to the barely manageable level. Another week here and he might well be seduced.

Well, it was a moot point. He wouldn’t be here in the guise of a city sanitation inspector for a second week, or even for one more day. There was no longer any doubt that Otto Ackermann’s death had been a deliberate homicide, not the freak accident the authorities had ruled it to be. He knew who had manufactured what Carreaux referred to as a “devil’s brew” by coshing Ackermann and pitching him into a vat of fermenting beer to drown, and he was tolerably certain he knew the reason behind the deed. All that was needed now was additional proof.

Instead of entering the brewery with the arriving employees, as he had on previous mornings, he loitered outside the main entrance. The cold, fog-laden March wind was much preferable to the brewery perfume. He smoked his pipe, feigning interest in the big dray wagons laden with both full and empty kegs that passed by on Fremont Street.

Caleb Lansing, the assistant brewmaster, was among the last to arrive, heavily bundled in cap, bandanna, and peacoat. He barely glanced at Quincannon as he passed and entered the building. Quincannon essayed a small satisfied smile around the stem of his briar. Lansing had no idea that he was about to be yaffled for his crime; if he had, he would have taken it on the lammas by now.