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

by Robert Bruce Stewart

  “Isn’t it wonderful, Michael, how our friends rally to our side at our time of misfortune?”

  She was wearing a different but equally well-cut suit and addressing an older fellow leaning against the mantle. He was at least fifty, with a long moustache and greying hair, but still handsome. He looked a little weary, but managed a roguish smile.

  “Are these the best we can do for friends?”

  “You must pardon my husband. The tragic death of poor May has him distraught beyond measure.”

  He muttered, “Bah,” then turned his back on us while banging out his pipe in the fireplace.

  “I don’t want to be rude,” a little man I hadn’t noticed interrupted, “but I am investigating a death.”

  “Oh, dear, Constable Peabbles, I forgot you were here,” the lady told him. She made introductions and insisted we all sit down. Her husband, however, remained standing. His look of amused unconcern seemed as incongruous as the playful attitude of his much younger wife, who, taking her role as hostess to heart, called down for doughnuts and coffee.

  Just as she’d done so, my literary collaborator from the previous day entered the room.

  “I hope I’m not intruding. I’m Nan Tway—I come representing the press.”

  “The more the merrier,” Mrs. Field told her. “What a wonderfully suggestive name.”

  “Suggestive?” Nan asked.

  Mrs. Field smiled and gave a dismissive wave of her hand, as if to signal she’d made an error. The room had gotten a little crowded, so Ed and I both rose and Nan took possession of the couch we’d been sitting on. Then our hostess went through the introductions again.

  “Mr. Reese and I met yesterday. And I’m well acquainted with Constable Peabbles,” Nan explained while writing down notes. “I entertained his mother’s cow at breakfast. You left the gate open again, Constable.”

  “I most certainly did not,” the latter said. Then he addressed the Fields, “I should tell you, the doctor suspects Miss Goodwin was poisoned. Whether it was intentional or not remains to be seen.”

  “Poisoned?” Mrs. Field asked. She gave her husband an inscrutable look, and he returned the favor.

  “The doctor seems to think so,” Peabbles went on. “Now, perhaps you can tell me, Mr. Field, when was it May Goodwin came to your room last night?”

  “She was here with Delia when I came in.”

  “So she came to visit you, Mrs. Field?”

  “Yes. Some time after ten o’clock. You see… she was to play the lead role in a play I’m staging. She was an actress, you know.”

  “Yes, I am aware of that. And a fellow countrywoman of yours. And I understand she et some chowder while she was here?”

  “We shared a bottle of wine. Then she mentioned she was hungry, so I had a bowl of chowder sent up. The doctor took the remnants with him.”

  “Yes, so he told me. What sort of wine? And where did you acquire it?”

  “A bottle of claret, St. Julien, from the hotel. And I must say they do charge dearly here.”

  “Deputy Sheriff Gaylord will want to hear about that,” the constable said smiling.

  “Who is Deputy Sheriff Gaylord?”

  “The enforcer of prohibition here about. So you both drank the wine?”

  “Yes, but only she et, as you say.”

  “And you suffered no ill effects?”

  “None whatsoever.”

  “So you were here with Miss Goodwin when your husband came in?”

  “Yes, perhaps a half hour later. Then I left them. She wished to discuss something with Michael.”

  “Might I ask what it was about, Mr. Field?” Peabbles asked.

  “What? Oh, something about this play of my wife’s.”

  His wife seemed as interested in his answer as the constable. “You see, Michael is an authority on the ancient romance on which it is based,” she explained.

  “Did Miss Goodwin seem ill when you were with her, Mrs. Field?”

  “Just before I left, she said she was feeling a little nauseous. Went into the bathroom. But then said she’d gotten used to it.”

  “Gotten used to it?”

  “I assumed she meant the quality of the fare here at the hotel.”

  “How did she seem to you, Mr. Field?”

  “Well, she fell asleep within minutes. She asked if I minded if she lay down on the couch there. I told her she could do what she liked. Then I went to my room.”

  “How much later was it when you returned, Mrs. Field?”

  “Oh, an hour or two. What would you say, Mr. Ketchum?”

  “What?” Ed didn’t seem altogether sure where he was.

  “Your lesson on the billiard table. Most thorough.” She turned back to the constable. “Mr. Ketchum is a practiced hand with his cue. Isn’t that so, Mrs. Ketchum?”

  Annie’s answer was a frightening look. But Mrs. Field only smiled at her.

  “When you returned to the room, did you speak with Miss Goodwin again?” Peabbles asked.

  “I didn’t notice she was still here. I went into the bath and then my room.”

  “Which is separate from your husband’s?”

  “Yes. You see, a genius needs his sleep.”

  This drew a little chuckle from the genius.

  “I wonder,” Nan interjected, “if she might not have been referring to something other than the fare when she said she’d gotten used to feeling nauseous.”

  “What do you mean?” Peabbles asked. “She knew someone was trying to poison her?”

  “The doctor told me he suspects she was… how-come-ye-so.”

  “Corned? It was just wine they were drinking,” Peabbles reminded her.

  “Not corned. There was a come-by-chance in the making.”

  “Oh, in the family way, you mean.”

  “In the pudding club?” Mrs. Field asked.

  “If that means knocked-up,” Nan told her, “then, yes.”

  “The doctor didn’t say anything to me about it,” Peabbles complained. “When’d he tell you that?”

  “I met him on the way in. He said he’ll know for sure this afternoon when he does the autopsy.”

  “I can’t say I’m surprised,” Mrs. Field told us. “I took her for a jade from the start. But it is a piece of luck for you, Constable.”

  “How do you mean, Mrs. Field?”

  “Well, odds are, all you need to do is find the cull who left Madam Van the gift.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Who it was keeping cully. On whom the mort bestowed her eel-pot.”

  “I believe Mrs. Field is conjecturing that Miss Goodwin was a fancy woman and the father of the child might have killed her to eliminate his liability,” Nan explained.

  “Ohhh,” Peabbles responded. “Well, she was keeping company with a fellow named Jack Taber. Another actor. But getting back to last night, neither of you heard a yip from her after going to bed?”

  “No, not a yip,” Mrs. Field confirmed. Her husband shook his head.

  “Then this morning, she’s dead as Hannah Emerson,” Peabbles concluded.

  “Hannah Emerson?” Field asked.

  “An apocryphal name used by rustics when referring to a person thoroughly and unquestionably dead,” Nan explained.

  “Yes, Miss Goodwin might have been Hannah herself when we found her,” Mrs. Field said.

  “Might I ask, Mr. Reese, what your connection to the affair is?” Nan asked me.

  “He was in the billiard room with Mr. Ketchum and myself.”

  Nan smiled as she wrote.

  “I believe I may also have provided the wine, at least indirectly.” I thought I might as well confess what the constable would soon learn.

  “How is that?” Nan asked.

  “I had a case of St. Julien shipped here, and the management confiscated two bottles. Presumably to sell at a good profit.”

  “My, my,” she said. “Our laws are flouted with such abandon.”

  “Well, I suppose I should go
look for this Taber fellow now,” Peabbles announced.

  He didn’t say it with much enthusiasm, but after picking up a couple of doughnuts, he was off.

  “The beak takes to the scent…,” was Mrs. Field’s farewell.

  What was most peculiar about her use of cant, if that’s the proper name for it, was that it came in spurts. In between times, she spoke in a refined sort of way. Not self-consciously like Annie. But as if it was her natural manner of discourse. Language, for her, seemed just another way to make herself exotic.

  During the lull, Annie had attached herself to the genius Field like a barnacle and he was having a tough time scraping her off. He called to his wife for assistance.

  “Delia, why don’t you find a part for this woman in that damned play of yours?”

  “What a grand idea. The part of Nicolete seems to be open, Mrs. Ketchum.”

  “I’d rather hear you recite more of your poetry,” Annie told him. “May I tell you my favorite? It goes like this:

  I love you with my life—’tis so I love you;

  I give you as a ring

  The cycle of my days till death:

  I worship with the breath

  That keeps me in the world with you and spring:

  And God may dwell behind, but not above you.

  Mine… Mine…

  I’m afraid I can’t….”

  Mrs. Field stood close behind her and whispered in her ear:

  “Mine, in the dark, before the world’s beginning:

  The claim of every sense,

  Secret and source of every need;

  The goal to which I speed,

  And at my heart a vigor more immense

  Than will itself to urge me to its winning.”

  “I wrote that?” Field asked. “Must have been suffering from ague.”

  “I think it’s sublime,” Annie assured him. She was displaying a side I’d not witnessed before and would hardly have thought possible. Ed’s shrew turned reverent acolyte in Field’s presence.

  “Better check her for fever, Delia.” He then made to leave, but Annie cut off his line of escape. “I know, why don’t you show this woman your china?”

  “My china?” his wife asked.

  “Yes, perhaps that piece of rolwagen Mr. Wycherley presented you.”

  “Oh, yes. An excellent idea. Come into my snuggery, Mrs. Ketchum.”

  While Field made his exit, his wife all but dragged Annie toward her chamber. Then there was a sharp bark and a chow dog came running in. He followed Mrs. Field and Annie inside just as the bedroom door closed.

  “I suppose we should be getting along, Harry,” Ed said. “We have our own investigation.”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “And I suppose I should go write up my story,” Nan added.

  But none of us budged.

  Mrs. Field must have traveled with quite a collection of china, because a good deal of comment emerged from her bedroom. Often Annie seemed to dismiss individual patterns as not to her taste, but with persistence, Mrs. Field could be heard to win her over and the sharp noes turned to equivocal sighs.

  “Is your wife a collector of china?” Nan asked Ed.

  “Never mentioned it.”

  “Did you happen to see a dog come running through?” A woman wearing a colorful dressing gown had come into the room without any of us noticing.

  “If it’s a chow, I believe it’s in Mrs. Field’s chamber,” I told her, nodding at the door just as Annie uttered an appreciative moan.

  “Who has she in there?”

  “She’s showing my wife her china collection,” Ed told her.

  “And you sit quietly by, waiting to be presented your horns?”

  “Pardon?”

  She didn’t respond, but went to the bedroom door and pounded. “Release my dog, you rover!” She was another countrywoman of Mrs. Field and the late Miss Goodwin and had obviously been interrupted while dressing.

  Not long after, the door opened and Mrs. Field stuck out her head. “Who’s the brim besieging my sanctum?”

  Annie pushed by her, looking disheveled and blushing furiously.

  “Come back, my Florence,” Mrs. Field called to her. “You forgot your specimen.” She was holding up one of the hotel’s tea cups. Then she turned to Ed, “I’ve buttered your bun for you, brother starling. You’ll find her not so captious now.”

  Annie had retreated into a corner and, while facing away from us, straightened herself out. Meanwhile, the interloper sat down with her chow dog in her lap. Her hennaed hair had broken loose from whatever had held it in place and she needed to continually wave it from her plump face.

  “You’re Fiona Macleod, aren’t you?” Nan asked her.

  “Yes, and I intend to lodge a complaint with the management. I hope you weren’t molesting my dog as well,” she said to Mrs. Field.

  “No, merely suggested he teach his mistress some manners.”

  “And what do you know of manners?”

  “You forget, Madam, to whom you are talking. My blood runs blue.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” Miss Macleod told the rest of us. “If she were to murder two uncles, her father would be an earl and she a lady.”

  “That’s right, gig. But no amount of butchery would make a lady out of you.”

  Before answering, Miss Macleod rose and approached her adversary until their faces nearly touched. “No, bunter, I’ve no motive but the pleasure of it.”

  Then, with the two of them looking equally satisfied, Miss Macleod made what might have been a dramatic exit, had the gravitas not been undermined when she stopped at the door to summon her dog with the customary baby talk.

  Annie, now composed, announced she was going off to find Field.

  “You’ll no doubt find him prowling for laced mutton,” his wife told her.

  “Sorry?”

  “Seducing unguarded females. But don’t worry, my pet, your time will come.”

  Annie ran out, while Ed watched, seemingly frozen in angst.

  “Well, it’s been lovely,” Mrs. Field proclaimed. “And thank you all for attending our little murder. But now I must ask you to leave.”

  “Yes, of course,” Nan said. “Come along, gentlemen.”

  As the three of us went out, we passed Branscombe, the hotel’s proprietor, coming in. He greeted Mrs. Field and closed the door.

  “What an extraordinary morning,” Nan said. “I expect I’ll be able to sell this to one of the Portland papers. By the way, Mr. Reese, the issue of the Sentinel with our column should be out now. Good day, gentlemen.”

  8

  “What time’s our appointment with Noyes?” I asked Ed.

  “What’s that?”

  It was obvious that the events of the morning had left him unsettled. And if I hadn’t spent most of the previous three years in a similar state, I might have been sympathetic. But since marrying Emmie I’d lost all sense of what it means to be settled, and so, naturally, had come to begrudge signs of tranquility in others.

  “Noyes, the builder. You said we had an appointment to see him this morning.”

  “Oh, he said any time before noon—he’ll be working at home. Say, Harry, you see what I mean about Annie, don’t you?”

  “You’re afraid you’re losing her to this Field fellow?”

  “Sure. Don’t you see it?”

  “I wouldn’t worry. He doesn’t seem interested in what she’s selling.”

  “Maybe not in front of his wife….”

  “Trust me, Ed. You’ve got nothing to fear from him. Frankly, I doubt you’ll find anyone willing to take her off your hands.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Ed, face facts—you married a harpy. Worse, a harpy who recites poetry. And the market for verse-spewing shrews, even attractive ones, is spectacularly small. Supply will always outstrip demand. So, as I said, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  “I appreciate your trying to comfort me, Harry. I jus
t wish you could have done it without putting Annie through the wringer like that.”

  “Sorry, but I thought you’d find it more reassuring if I backed it up with a cogent argument. Now, where do we find this Noyes?”

  “Not far,” he said. “Back up towards town, there’s a turnoff.”

  In an effort to keep Ed’s mind off his wife, I told him about the conversation I’d overheard the night before on the beach.

  “And you think it was the same May who died last night?”

  “How many English girls named May do you think there are about? And with a pudding in the oven?”

  “I forgot about the pudding,” he admitted. “What do you think that fellow meant when he said Noyes told him it was her lover behind it?”

  “Well, it was right after he warned her that she may have gone too far in getting mixed up in something, so it wasn’t something small. But let’s be careful in what we mention to Noyes.”

  We came to the turnoff, and a hundred yards beyond that to Noyes’s residence. His housemaid answered the door and took us around to the back. Noyes was sitting at a table beneath a misshapen oak with a set of building plans laid out before him. But his attention was on the small book he was reading. Ed introduced me and while Noyes fetched us some chairs I picked up his book, Clyde Fitch’s Barbara Frietchie.

  “A moving work,” Noyes said as he returned. “Have you seen it performed, Mr. Reese?”

  “Haven’t had a chance. But I did see Weber and Fields’ version, Barbara Fidgety.”

  “A burlesque?”

  “Yes, but first-class. The sort that has both a beginning and an ending.”

  He smiled. “Do you think you fellows will be able to wrap things up soon?”

  “We expect so,” I told him. “Though one can never be sure.”

  “Seems a simple matter. The policy was paid for, and the fire was real enough.”

  “Oh, the fire was real enough. But with arson, it matters a great deal just who set the fire. If it was one of the principals, then we have a case of fraud.”

  “And if you save the insurer from having to pay, they give you a reward?”