Fair Play’s a Jewel (Harry Reese Mysteries Book 5)

by Robert Bruce Stewart

  “Books?” he asked.

  “Yes, I imagine it will require at least five books. Any good epic seems to have a minimum of five. So far, I’ve just finished the first. But it reads as a self-contained work. It’s that which I’ve brought with me today.”

  Emmie then must have gotten up and handed him something. Their voices lowered and I was having trouble hearing. I rose and sidled closer to the doorway. As I did so, the officious young woman gave me another of her stern looks—then began shaking her head. I tried to nonchalantly sidle back, but not having finished the first bit of sidling, I put myself off balance and fell backwards into the office, crashing into a small table.

  Both Emmie and Mosher greeted me with surprise. Then the officious young woman came in and the three of them together presented me a group portrait of ill-disguised scorn.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” Mosher asked.

  “Ah…” That’s as far as I got before Emmie interrupted me. She’d had about seven seconds to come up with a story, and for Emmie that was time enough.

  “This is Mr. Reese, my secretary,” she said. “I asked him to meet me here.”

  “You have a private secretary?” Mosher asked, then dismissed the officious young woman. She stared at me warily as she backed out of the room.

  “In truth, his chief duty is acting as my bodyguard,” Emmie went on, having redacted her story in the interval. “But one doesn’t like to go about introducing her manservant as her bodyguard. Secretary sounds more genial.”

  “You have need of a bodyguard?”

  “Oh, most definitely. I have received threats in response to my writing. To name just one, a certain German countess residing in Washington has labored diligently to undermine my work.”

  “A German countess?”

  “By marriage. English by birth. Of course, now she’s a dowager, having done in the poor count.”

  “She killed the count?”

  “Choked to death on a chicken bone.”

  “Surely, just an accident.”

  “Yes, one would assume so. Until one learns the countess had anticipated the death. And that the bone had made it into his Charlotte Russe.”

  “Charlotte Russe? How diabolical.”

  “Oh, she is the embodiment of diabolical.”

  “Well, sit down, young man.” He waved at a chair off to the side.

  “Did you have anything to report, Mr. Reese?” Emmie asked.

  “Only that I’ve had the bags sent to the Sea Cliff Hotel, as per your instructions.”

  She gave me a disgusted look, but replied with an imperious “That is well.”

  Then she and Mosher went back to discussing her story on Lord Dexter up-to-date. The other central character was a resourceful young woman who’d become estranged from her husband and gone off to Europe. On the voyage back to New York, she falls in with some confidence men and joins their scheme to defraud Lord Dexter of a sizable chunk of his fortune. All in all, Emmie spun an entertaining yarn, full of turning tables and betrayed alliances, and I was thoroughly engrossed when the arrow whizzed past my face.

  I wasn’t altogether sure what proper bodyguard procedure was in this situation, so I shouted, “Jesus!” and flung myself to the floor. Emmie and Mosher, neither of whom had seen the arrow, looked down at me with mystification—passing quickly into a reprise of the ill-disguised scorn they’d displayed at my entrance.

  “I don’t mean to be critical, Miss Meegs, but are you sure this man is up to being a bodyguard?”

  “Get down!” I shouted, then added the single word “arrow” while pointing to the book where the missile had embedded itself.

  Mosher calmly rose, closed the window, and then carried the murdered book back to the desk.

  “What a small arrow,” Emmie commented. “I think you may safely rise, Mr. Reese.”

  “From a crossbow would be my conjecture,” Mosher said.

  “Then how appropriate that it landed in Ivanhoe,” Emmie noted.

  “Yes, indeed. Is this the sort of attempt you’d expect from your countess?”

  “I think not. I don’t see how she could have known I’d be in Portland. And she got on well with Mr. Reese.”

  “Your persecutor got on well with your bodyguard?”

  “Well, relationships were confused at the time.”

  “Then it was meant for me,” Mosher revealed. “The assassin mistook Mr. Reese for myself.”

  “What makes you think someone wishes to harm you?”

  “The previous attempts.”

  “Previous attempts?”

  “Yes. Two days ago, as I was leaving for home, a piece of the cornice came loose from the building next door and barely missed my head.”

  “Couldn’t that have been pure chance?”

  “That’s what I assumed. But then yesterday, just as I approached my house, a bullet flew by my left ear.”

  “How can you be sure it was a bullet?”

  “It became embedded in an oak.” He pulled a small blob of lead out of a pocket and showed it to us. “I carved that out of the trunk.”

  “Have you told this to the police?” Emmie asked.

  “Yes, they took it all down. But they’re less than useless. Their chief theory is that it’s some prankster. To tell you the truth, I wish I had a bodyguard. Not so much for myself, but my family. At least until I can get to the bottom of these attacks.”

  “Perhaps we can be of service?”

  “You and your bodyguard?”

  Implicit in his tone was a high degree of skepticism. Doubtless due to a combination of my unbodyguard-like performance during the arrow episode and Emmie’s protean autobiography. By her own words, she’d written herself into a corner. But Emmie is never a slave to logical progression.

  “Mr. Reese is not in fact my bodyguard, he is my husband. M.E. Meegs is my pen name. My real name is Emily Reese.”

  “Then why all that nonsense about a bodyguard?”

  “I wished to present myself as an independent woman, and not a mere appendage. Harry’s appearance—Harry being my husband—came as a complete surprise to me, and I wasn’t going to give up my independent identity so easily. So I needed to explain his presence without undermining my credibility.”

  (I considered inserting an editorial comment here, but Emmie’s statement was so obviously self-damning, what would be the point?)

  “But if he isn’t a bodyguard,” Mosher asked, “what’s all this twaddle of helping me to identify my tormentor?”

  “Oh, it certainly isn’t twaddle. Harry is a well-known private investigator, who has, with my able assistance, solved a number of perplexing cases, including a healthy number of murders. Isn’t that so, Harry?”

  “Is it?” I asked.

  “Healthy number of murders?” Mosher asked. “How many murders has he prevented?”

  “Well, that number is, of course, unknowable. How many more would the mad Cynthia Howell have killed in her murder-for-insurance scheme? Who can say? But we always guarantee satisfaction.”

  “That may be,” Mosher told her. “But my satisfaction will be restrained if you only solve my murder after-the-fact.”

  “Fear not, Mr. Mosher. I’ve already formulated a plan. Put your safety in our hands and your cares are at an end.”

  “But what would this cost? I’m not a rich man.”

  “Harry often works gratis, when it’s for the public good. Isn’t that right, Harry?”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes. All we may ask is a little consideration later on….”

  “Publishing your story?”

  “Well, you can hardly do that without committing to the entire saga.”

  “All right. Provided you catch the culprit before he does any harm.”

  “You may rest assured on that. Can’t he, Harry?”

  “What’s that? Oh, yes. By all means, rest assured.”

  “Now for my plan,” Emmie promised. Then there was a short pause while she formul
ated one. “Harry and I will be staying at the Sea Cliff Hotel on Cape Elizabeth. Suppose you come out there as well, under an assumed name.”

  “To what end?”

  “To entrap your assassin, of course.”

  “Would you mind not referring to him as my assassin? Let’s go back to tormentor. How does this lay a trap?”

  “Well, he will almost certainly follow you out to Cape Elizabeth. Then, as you go about there, posing as a tourist, Harry and I will be watching. When he makes his move, we will pounce.”

  “I’d prefer a plan whereby you pounce before he makes his move. But I suppose it would be safer for my family if I were to stay elsewhere until this is over.”

  “Oh, much safer. But remember, you’ll need to arrive under an assumed name.”

  “I’ll go out to the hotel tomorrow, under the name Richard Merrill.”

  “Better to come out today. I suggest you go home now and pack a bag. Tell your wife you need to make a business trip to Boston. You can wear Harry’s straw hat—that will confuse your malefactor. Then Harry will leave posing as you, wearing your derby. On your return, you and I will go out to the Sea Cliff together.”

  “I’m not sure I like that part of the plan, where I’m acting as decoy,” I confessed.

  “Don’t mind Harry. You go off now and come back as soon as possible.”

  Mosher did as she suggested and we were left alone.

  4

  I had an inkling of what lay in store, but only an inkling. I expected Emmie to be angry. I suppose she had a right to be. But I wasn’t prepared for the wallop she landed upside my head.

  “Damn you, Harry!”

  “Take it easy, Emmie. I think you knocked my eye out of its socket.”

  The officious young woman poked her head in and saw me nursing my cheek. For the first time, she smiled. “Everything all right?”

  “Yes, just fine, thank you,” Emmie told her.

  She left and Emmie started pacing in front of me.

  “From now on, Harry, you will follow my instructions explicitly. I can’t believe you came here to spy on me.”

  “What about all the times you’ve spied on me?”

  “Never to such an extent that it could undermine your very identity.”

  A dubious distinction to make, since the identity I’d undermined was a false one.

  “If you were just coming here to meet a publisher, why keep the trip a secret? Why tell me all that nonsense about Dot Klopheimer?”

  “Kotzschmar. I wanted this to be a trip of my own. On my own terms, and in my own name. Not as Mrs. Harry Reese. You may find this difficult to believe, Harry, but there are times when I wonder why I ever married you.”

  “Oh, I don’t find that difficult to believe. There are plenty of times I’ve wondered the same thing.”

  “You wonder why I married you? Or why you married me?”

  There was only one right answer to her question, and that was the one least likely to result in another wallop upside the head.

  “Why you married me, of course, Emmie. But if your sole reason for coming to Portland was to meet with Mosher, and Leverton’s visit to the apartment came as a surprise, why did you go looking for him in Boston?”

  “I went to ask him to stop trying to communicate with me. To relieve your childish anxieties.”

  “I see. And yet, right now, he’s just a few miles from where we are in this office.”

  “I had no idea….”

  “Honestly?”

  “Of course, honestly. Where is he?”

  “A small town nearby, Westbrook.”

  “Harry, I will not be made to feel accountable for one of my characters. Once he stepped out of my story, I no longer had any control over Mr. Leverton or his actions. And it’s not as if your own jottings aren’t chockablock full of absurd characters skipping from one preposterous situation to another.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Emmie.”

  “Oh, you don’t? Tell me, where were you between the time we left the depot and your arrival here?”

  “Across the street. In a typewriter shop.” I showed her my ribbon as verification.

  “So you were across the street buying a ribbon for a typewriter you don’t own. And did you have any conversations while there?”

  “Let’s see. There was a discussion concerning the reproductive cycle of certain catadromous fishes…. And then I helped her with her anatomical Latin.”

  “Helped who with her Latin anatomy?”

  “The woman who sold me the ribbon the first time.”

  “The first time?” Emmie seemed confused.

  “Yes. But she wasn’t Latin…. And it was all oral….”

  “All oral…?”

  “Verbally so,” I explained.

  “Need I go on?”

  “No, I wouldn’t bother.” Another minute of this passive inquisition and she’d have me revealing my role as metronome.

  “Well, you almost lost me this opportunity, Harry, entangling your scenario with mine. It’s very lucky for you that arrow arrived when it did.”

  “Lucky for you, too. Your effort to gain favor with the nonsensical Lord Dexter wasn’t going off as planned.”

  She made a condemnatory noise. “Someone was playing horse with me.”

  “Who was playing horse with you?”

  “A man I met in New York. He gave me an introduction to Mr. Mosher and suggested I incorporate a modern Dexter into my story. Mr. Mosher, he told me, believed A Pickle for the Knowing Ones the acme of American literature. Just the sort of cruel joke I’ve come to expect as an authoress. But there’s no use crying over spilt milk. The important thing now is that I’ve convinced Mr. Mosher that I can perform a service for him.”

  “You mean our identifying his assassin?”

  “Tormentor. And I will attend to that. You may concentrate on solving your own case. When you leave here, you’ll be wearing Mr. Mosher’s derby. Try to lose anyone following you before you go out to the Sea Cliff. When you get there, book three rooms. One for yourself, one in the name M.E. Meegs, and the third for Richard Merrill. Is that clear?”

  “We’ll be bunking separately?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Though the hat fit fine, I felt the part of Emmie’s plan dependent on my impersonating Mosher somewhat flawed. He was about twenty-five years my senior, outweighed me by fifty pounds, and sported a bald head and prominent moustache. But I kept my misgivings to myself.

  In the first place, I don’t think there was any arguing with the fact I’d stepped on her toes, and she wasn’t entirely unjustified in feeling bitter about it. And in the second place, sometime between that arrow whizzing by my face and Mosher’s account of the falling cornice we crossed an unseen border. Ante arrow, all the events that had occurred since the morning of Leverton’s call could be attributed to coincidence and human idiosyncrasies, primarily Emmie’s. Post cornice, we’d entered Emmie-land. There was nothing noteworthy about Emmie sounding like a character in an especially lurid dime novel. But when a middle-aged burgher like Mosher starts doing likewise, something’s gone askew.

  What troubled me most was that not only had I entered her peculiar domain, I’d done it of my own volition. There was no use trying to ascribe blame elsewhere. This wasn’t one of those situations where she brings me to a make-believe opium den and lays a dead body at my feet. No, this time I’d written my own ticket, and there’d be no complaining about the consequences.

  I went off as instructed and was soon boarding the car to Cape Elizabeth. Toward the back I saw my collaborator from the typewriter shop. She glanced up and then quickly looked away. When I sat beside her, she pretended to be surprised.

  “Oh, Mr. A’Reese. How serendipitous.”

  “Yes, it certainly is. Flo told me your name. Nan, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Nan Tway. Did your wife show herself?”

  “No, I went in after her. It seems she was meeting Mosher with hopes he�
�d publish one of her stories.”

  “She’s an author?”

  “Well, like those pirates of yours, she has aspirations.”

  “And you resent those aspirations?”

  “No, not at all. I prefer having her in a fictional world—it’s safer for all concerned.”

  “Then why spy on her?”

  “I was afraid she might be plotting a deception of another sort.”

  “Oh, yes. You feared she came here… to spawn.”

  “Well…, I… I don’t suppose you know anything about a Pinkerton detective named Leverton?”

  “I don’t believe so. Is he the one with whom you suspect your wife was going to…?”

  “It’s a long story. How was it you guessed I was spying on my wife?”

  “Simple ratiocination. You were obviously trying to watch someone, and without being seen. And you didn’t seem particularly good at it, so I assumed you were not a professional investigator.”

  “Actually, I am a professional investigator, of a sort. Was I really that bad at it?”

  “Well, when I asked you to wave your arm above your head, you complied without objection. And surely you remember how much attention that drew. I don’t think if Nick Carter were observing a suspect from across the street he would so readily agree to play the part of a metronome while standing before a plate-glass window.”

  “No, I suppose not. How’d you know it was my wife?”

  “I saw your wedding band, but it was really just a guess.”

  She was a small woman, couldn’t have stood more than four foot eight, and I suppose it’s only natural that when you shrink someone down that small the proportions get a little out of whack. She was probably somewhere between my age and Emmie’s, say, twenty-five. Her hair was in a tight bun, but still managed to look unkempt. And the only word befitting her dress is dowdy. Not only was it unfashionable, it was also nearing the end of a long life. Her most distinctive trait only became apparent when she spoke. Her upper lip had a tendency to curl northward, exposing her teeth.