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

by Robert Bruce Stewart

  He looked at me warily. “That fellow dead?”

  “No, that was a hoax. Did you plant the charges?”

  “No one was hurt?”

  “No. No one,” I assured him.

  “Sons of bitches lied to me.”

  “For god’s sake, you fool,” Annie interjected. “Quit talking to him!”

  She’d taken the gun and was holding it in a way I found worrying. McGee seemed of a similar mind.

  “Empty their wallets,” she instructed.

  He complied, then unhitched the team from the wagon.

  “I’ll tie them up good,” he said. “And maybe you should water the horses in the crick there. We’ll need to do some hard riding.”

  She looked at the creek on the far side of the road and then back at him. “All right, but any tricks and I’ll start shooting.” It wasn’t altogether clear which of us she was addressing.

  Once she was well away, McGee whispered in my ear, “Help me get a drop on her, and your friend won’t lose his wife.”

  “What about my money?”

  He stuffed a few bills in my pocket.

  “Ed’s too.”

  “Here, and ten she gave me.”

  He tied slip knots on my wrists and ankles and placed a gag in my mouth. When Annie returned with the horses, he asked for her help in hitching them up. Pocketless, she set the gun on the ground. Her back was to me and at a point when she needed to bend down, McGee glanced over and arched his eyebrows in her direction. When I didn’t budge, he made it more of a nod.

  By then, Annie had righted herself and picked up the gun.

  “Let’s be going,” she said.

  I waited until they were about two hundred yards down the road and then slipped off the ropes. McGee was looking back. I waved.

  22

  It was after four by the time Ed and I made it back to the hotel. I was in the bathroom when I heard Emmie whisper my name in an unusually seductive manner.

  I went in, but when I tried to crawl into bed, she stopped me.

  “You reveal all, and then I’ll reciprocate.”

  “I’ve left nothing concealed, Emmie.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “All right, scoot over.” I got in and told her all that had happened that night. It was dawn before I finished.

  “So poor Jimmy McGee has been kidnapped. And Mrs. Field’s in stir.” She expressed her satisfaction with a laugh more vibration than sound. “I expected it to be a fiasco.”

  “What you mean is, you ensured it would be a fiasco.”

  “Whatever are you implying, Harry?”

  “You sent Annie there, didn’t you?”

  “Well…” She hesitated, but only to heighten my anticipation. She was far too satisfied with herself to keep any secrets. “Annie came to see me last evening, asking to borrow money. Mrs. Field had told her all about her plan and suggested Annie follow you to the jail. Then when you released McGee, she could go off with him. Apparently your Delia was motivated by the same impulse, to grant Ed his freedom. I gave Annie twenty dollars, then told her how you were determined to foil Mrs. Field’s plan and suggested she go earlier in the evening with an alternate plan. I procured a bottle of bourbon from the hotel—to be billed to you, by the way—and recommended she use it to distract the guard.”

  “So the guard would drink himself senseless?”

  “With her help,” she said. Then through another reverberating laugh, “Wouldn’t it be priceless if Mrs. Field is charged with abetting the escape?”

  “I wouldn’t be too smug about it, Emmie. If they catch the McGees and get them to talk, one or both of us might be in for some trouble.”

  “Had anyone sounded the alarm before you left?”

  “No, all was quiet. The guard was still out cold and Mrs. Field too tightly bound to make a sound.”

  “Then Annie and her husband will be on a train by now, and by evening they’ll be in New York.”

  “Why were you so eager to aid Annie?” I asked. “For Ed’s benefit?”

  “Partly. But I also wanted her help on another matter.”

  “Which other matter?”

  “Identifying our William Tell,” she said.

  “What would she know about that?”

  “Quite a bit. Do you remember the page in May’s notebook on Mr. Well?”

  “I remember the William Tell.”

  “The first line, after the heading ‘Well,’ was ‘But not.’ It occurred to me that if Well was a code for the man’s name, the ‘But not’ might mean she had deduced he was traveling under an alias.”

  “Mr. Field?”

  “Yes, exactly. The man whom Annie had been following about incessantly since she arrived. I asked her if she’d observed any strange behavior, and she told me she’d seen him take the crossbow from the prop room at the theatre. And though she hadn’t seen him shoot it, she did see him bury it on the beach.”

  “And the bull?”

  “She saw him watching the result. Then, the night before the explosion…”

  “You aren’t going to tell me he was responsible for that?”

  “No. He had an alternate plan. He sawed part way through several of the steps leading down the cliff.”

  “And she kept quiet about it?”

  “Not completely. She confronted Mr. Field, offering to remain silent if he would leave his wife and go off with her. When he told her he wasn’t really Field, she lost all interest in him. Then she learned Jack Taber was her husband, Jimmy McGee, and decided to set her sights on him.”

  “Fickle girl. But why does the faux Field want to do in Mosher?”

  “I have a theory. Remember how I’d gone through Mr. Mosher’s files looking for clues?”

  “You made it sound as if you’d come up empty-handed.”

  “I mentioned a running dispute Mr. Mosher had had with an English author a few years back. But I made as if I’d forgotten the name. You must remember. I told you he was the author of the fairy books. And his name began with an ‘L’.”

  “You were testing my knowledge of English fairy-book authors?”

  “I took your ignorance for granted. I was testing Naggie. The man’s name is Andrew Lang.”

  “The author of Aucassin & Nicolete?”

  “Translator. It really is a medieval text. It seems Mr. Mosher has pirated a number of Lang’s works. Aucassin & Nicolete being one that has sold particularly well.”

  “My copy cost two bits. But I suppose it adds up,” I said. “Are you going to confront the faux Field?”

  “Yes. In fact, we need to get up.”

  “Get up? What about the quid pro quo?”

  “No time for it, Harry. What if he flees this morning? You’ll have to take a rain check.”

  “I’ve a drawer full of them at home.”

  We’d scarcely finished dressing when Naggie came to the door with her chow in tow. The dog gave me an ugly look and ran into the bathroom.

  “Mrs. Field’s gone missing,” Naggie reported. “And her poor husband is worried sick. Do you know where she is, Harry?”

  As if prompted, the dog emerged from the bath with Delia’s hairpiece in his mouth.

  “It’s Delia’s zarndrer!” Naggie cried. “She’s been scalped!”

  “Only her toupee.” I took it from the dog and handed it to her. “She’s safely locked up. Just as her husband wanted.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “Perhaps we should explain to him what happened?” Emmie suggested.

  “What? Oh, yes,” Naggie agreed. “I’m… I’m sure he’ll want to know.”

  The three of us went down the hall to the Fields’ suite and found him finishing breakfast. If he was worried sick he was doing a stellar job of hiding it.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked.

  “Dear, Harry was with Delia last night,” Naggie told him.

  “Oh? Good for him. And why not?”

  “No, dear. It seems she’s gotten
herself in trouble. She’s in jail.”

  “Hah! Excellent news. What she get caught at?”

  I told him about McGee’s jail break and Delia’s subsequent incarceration, with Emmie interrupting frequently to provide the details of Ed and Annie’s relationship.

  “Sounds too incredible,” he said when we’d finished.

  “Yes,” Emmie agreed. “Almost like something out of a fairy tale.” Then she stared at him.

  “Found out?” he asked sheepishly.

  “So you are Andrew Lang?” Emmie asked him. “You knew, didn’t you, Naggie?”

  “Yes, love. I’m sorry I pretended otherwise.”

  “That’s all right,” Emmie told her. “I should tell you, Mr. Lang, we know all about your stealing the crossbow. And sawing the stairs to the beach.”

  “And the bull?” he asked.

  “So it was you who released the bull?”

  “Yes, of course. But it was the red towel that gave me the idea.”

  “Actually,” I interjected, “it’s a myth that bulls charge on seeing red. You see…”

  “Shut up, Harry,” Emmie suggested.

  “Have you told the police?” Lang asked.

  “No. We needed to be sure first.”

  “I promise you, I had no intention of hurting the man. Just wanted to give him a feeling of unease.”

  “Because he pirated your work?” Emmie asked.

  “And was so damned arrogant about it. I met with him in London a couple years back, after I’d published objections to his theft. He told me my protestations had only increased his sales. Thought that extremely humorous.”

  “So you came here to torment him?”

  “To the States? No, I was already planning a trip. But then it got a good deal more complicated. Byzantine might better describe it, eh, Fiona?”

  “Oh, they know I’m not Fiona, love,” Naggie told him. “But you better tell them the rest.”

  “Well, I’ve become something of an authority on folklore. Apparently you’ve heard of the fairy books.”

  “Blue, pink, etc.?” Emmie asked.

  “That cloying conceit was my wife’s idea. As was the series itself. She predicted it would be a profitable way of making use of my research and so it’s proved. Well, back in May I was invited to meet with some other folklorists in New York. And then arranged to meet some others in Boston. I mentioned this to my friend… Fiona Macleod. She told me she was also coming to the States and so we arranged to travel together.

  “A few days before our boat was to sail for Boston, she became ill and was unable to make the voyage. She asked me to fulfill her commitment to come to Portland and give a reading. I agreed, but then she revealed it would also involve meeting with Mosher about some galleys.”

  “She was unaware of your animosity toward him?”

  “Yes, apparently. Well, there she was, too ill to travel, and I couldn’t bear to deny her so simple a request. Therefore I agreed. But the idea of meeting Mosher again filled me with dread. I’d pushed the affair from my mind, and wasn’t interested in revisiting it by having him inform me anew how much he’s made off my work. So I was relieved when I saw on the passenger list the names Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper.”

  “The aunt and niece who write as Michael Field?”

  “Yes. I’d met them years before, and while I didn’t know them well, I knew that Mosher published their work with their blessing. I was sure they’d agree to fulfill the duties required of Miss Macleod, as they were probably planning to meet with Mosher already.”

  “And did you ask them?”

  “I arranged to be seated at their table at dinner that evening. But the two women I was introduced to were impostors.”

  “Impostors?”

  “Oh, don’t say it like that, love,” Naggie said to Emmie. “I was Miss Bradley, and my Delia was Miss Cooper.”

  “Your Delia?” I asked.

  “Yes, love. She’s my companion. Lives with me in Étaples. You see, Miss Bradley and Miss Cooper were visiting someone nearby us, and we met them at a little dinner. Miss Cooper told Delia how they’d been invited to Boston and looking forward to the trip. Then something had come up and they wouldn’t be able to go, after all. But how Delia got the letter, I’d rather not think about.”

  “Which letter?” Emmie asked.

  “A letter of introduction from Louise Chandler Moulton, who lives in Boston but comes to London every summer. She’s famous for her salons.”

  “Salons?” I asked.

  “Literary salons,” Lang answered. “You know, those affairs where pretentious writers, would-be writers, and the merely pretentious get together and alternately flatter and cut one another for their mutual amusement.”

  “Well, getting back to the story,” Naggie said. “Miss Bradley and Miss Cooper, or the Fields, as everyone calls them, had been invited to Boston for the month of July. Louise Chandler Moulton knows everyone in Boston but would herself be in London, so she gave them a letter introducing them to her friends.”

  “So Delia stole the letter of introduction?”

  “Yes. She’s incorrigible. She took the letter and proposed we go, posing as Miss Bradley and Miss Cooper. We’d be treated royally, she said, and it wouldn’t really hurt anyone. So we bought tickets and started reading the Fields’ poetry. Or Delia did, anyway. We even borrowed the dog of a friend.”

  “The chow?”

  “Yes, looks just like the Fields’ chow.”

  “Which was responsible for the demise of Mr. Kipling’s rabbit?” I asked.

  “Rudyard Kipling?” Emmie asked.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Naggie said. “Or so the story goes.”

  “Oh, it’s quite true,” Lang confirmed.

  “So then you met on the boat,” Emmie said.

  “Yes, Andrew—Mr. Lang—was very nice about it. Teased us for a day or so, but finally revealed he knew we were fakes. Then we made a deal.”

  “What sort of deal?”

  “Well, he would let us go on being the Fields if we would also go to Portland and one of us pose as Fiona. We agreed, naturally. Delia loved the idea. But things didn’t go well in Boston.”

  “You met someone else who knew the Fields?”

  “No, we were lucky about that. They all believed we were the Fields. But it’s difficult to get Delia to act proper in society. She’s downright wild sometimes.”

  “So you were coming to Portland with one of you being Fiona Macleod. And Michael Field?” Emmie asked.

  “At first we planned to abandon Michael Field in Boston. But she and I’d had a row, and partly to annoy me, she suggested Andrew could play Michael Field in Portland and she would travel as his wife.”

  “But why did you agree to that?” I asked Lang.

  “To torment Mr. Mosher?” Emmie asked.

  “Yes, frankly. I thought he might think Michael Field was really a man. You see, the Fields always write under the one name, even correspond that way. But after we arrived, I went into his shop, disguised, and spoke with his assistant, not yet revealing myself as Field. She knew Field was the pen name of the two women, so of course Mosher would as well.”

  “So you needed to find some other way to upset him?”

  “That’s right. But just upset him.”

  “Weren’t you worried he’d recognize you?” Emmie asked.

  “I made sure he never saw me. It was more difficult once he came to the hotel, but also easier to plague him.”

  “But then May Goodwin found out about it?” I asked.

  “Yes. We were given a tour of the theatre and I saw the crossbow among some props. I slipped it under a jacket I was carrying. She saw me do that. Then followed me into Portland and saw me shoot it through Mosher’s window. That evening, before she died, I found her in here talking to Delia. When Delia left, Miss Goodwin told me what she’d seen and asked for one hundred dollars.”

  “Did you give it to her?”

  “No, before any
transaction could occur, she complained about not feeling well. Asked to lie down. I told her to be my guest and went into my room.”

  “Did she know your real identity?”

  “No, didn’t seem to. Only that I wasn’t Field.”

  “And then you went back to tormenting Mosher?” I asked.

  “Why not? I don’t mind saying, I’ve had great fun. Haven’t you, Mrs. Naggle?”

  “Well, it’s been an adventure. But I won’t mind at all getting home to our own little cottage.”

  “Where’s Mr. Naggle?” Emmie asked.

  “London, I imagine. Wormwood Scrubs, more than likely. Haven’t seen him in ten years.”

  “And Delia really comes from a family of aristocrats? Can you tell us which?”

  “No, love. That would just make trouble. She goes by Delia Clack, another of her little jokes. But now I need to rescue my roaring girl from her imprisonment.”

  “Well, I don’t think that will be difficult,” I said. “She didn’t really do anything to break the law. They’ll just assume she was a witness McGee wanted out of the way.”

  “That’s just like her, always getting away with things. But I’ll tell you what, don’t let on that you know all about us. Maybe we can have some fun with her. After all, as Mr. Naggle always said, fair play’s a jewel. And she’s not deserving of any jewel.”

  It was then the woman herself entered, with Constable Peabbles in tow.

  “My, my, what a reception.” She passed a hand over Naggie’s shoulder without looking at her. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve had a trying evening and I think now I’d like a bath.”

  She went off and Peabbles turned to Lang.

  “Mrs. Field was found locked in a cell in the Biddeford jail this morning. Bound and gagged. Told me a most peculiar story.”

  “I’d be surprised if she told you anything but,” he replied.

  Peabbles turned to me. “I wonder if I could have a talk with you, Mr. Reese?”

  He brought me out into the hall and closed the door behind us.

  “Do you know what Mrs. Field was up to last night?”

  “I can’t say I’m in her confidence. But I assume it was something excessive.”

  “She told me she’d heard McGee would try to escape and went to foil his plan.”