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

by Robert Bruce Stewart

  “Harry, were you sleeping again?”

  “I must have nodded off.”

  “I really wish you’d take this case more seriously. I’d like to get back home. By the way, Harry, I’m marrying Bridget.”

  “You told me that. When’s the wedding?”

  “Tonight. We picked up Bridget on the way into town. I figured since I’d be at the courthouse anyway, might as well kill two birds with one stone. I’ve got the license in my pocket.”

  “That’s swell. Did you find out who they bought the land from?”

  “Noyes. The same fellow who was building on it. I guess that’s not so odd. Builders are always buying lots.”

  “Was there any record of an engineer’s report when the corporation bought it?”

  “There was, but Elgar didn’t recognize the name. He said he’d check around. You think someone missed the fault when they bought it from Noyes?”

  “More likely he somehow faked the report. He must have bought it himself without waiting to have it checked. Maybe some estate wanted to unload it and he suspected if he waited until others heard about it, the price would go up. Then he got the contract for the new hotel. At some point, the ground started shifting and the foundation cracked.”

  “So you think he burned it down just to cover up the mistake?” Ed asked. “I don’t see how that would work.”

  “He was trying to cast suspicion on Branscombe. If it had been him, the policy wouldn’t pay and the hotel wouldn’t be built. Noyes counted on us letting the lure of the bonus cloud our judgment. If the claim was denied, he could offer to buy back the lot and no one would be the wiser.”

  “His foreman must know. I’ll see if I can track him down.”

  “All right, but try to do it without alerting Noyes.”

  “If Libby knew about it, why didn’t he just tell us?” Ed asked.

  “Maybe he wasn’t unhappy about this rival corporation being tied up a little longer.”

  “If it was Noyes, they’ll have to pay the policy. That leaves us with just the per diem, Harry.”

  “Plus McGee’s ten dollars.”

  “What ten dollars?”

  “I’ll tell you about it later.”

  There was a knock at the door and Ed greeted Nan.

  “Oh, hello, Mr. Ketchum. I was hoping to talk to you both. I’m doing a story on the great Biddeford jail break. And… well, there’s a rumor that you two may have been present.”

  “Is there?” I asked. “Come on in.”

  “Yes, thank you,” she said. “Also, if you’ll pardon me for bringing up so delicate a matter, Mr. Ketchum, that your wife was not your wife. And that she is the one who helped McGee escape.”

  “Would these rumors happen to have originated with my wife?” I asked.

  “I’m not at liberty to say. It would be betraying a confidence. Are you married, Mr. Ketchum?”

  “Yes, or soon will be. But not to my wife. Or at least not to the woman I took to be my wife.”

  Nan looked at me for clarification.

  “The woman Ed thought he was married to, Annie, was in fact married to this McGee sometime previous to Ed having met her.”

  “Then legally, you aren’t married, Mr. Ketchum.”

  “No. But that’ll be remedied this evening.”

  “You’ve replaced her? Already?”

  “Well, yes. I suppose you could put it that way.”

  “You all work so fast, don’t you? I can’t keep track of who is really with whom.”

  “Did Emmie tell you about Mr. and Mrs. Field?” I asked.

  “Yes, and about Mrs. Field and Miss Macleod, or rather, Miss Clack and Mrs. Naggle.”

  “It seems we were wrong about the love triangle, thinking Mrs. Naggle was after Mr. Field.”

  “Oh, I suspected Mrs. Field of being… otherwise. But wouldn’t have guessed Mrs. Naggle was the object of her affection.”

  “I don’t follow you,” Ed interjected. “Miss Macleod is Mrs. Naggle?”

  “Yes, and Mrs. Field is Miss Clack,” I told him. “We can call her Delia.”

  “So this Delia and Mrs. Naggle are…,” Ed faltered.

  “Tribades,” Nan informed him.

  “Tribades?”

  “Yes, I believe it comes from the Greek.”

  “Tribo, to rub,” Ed told her. “I’ve made a study of friction—it’s the cause of a good many fires. But what’s that got to do with Mrs. Field and Mrs. Naggle?”

  “Forbidden love,” Nan told him.

  “Incest?”

  “A tribade is a Sapphist, a woman who, with another woman…,” Nan faltered.

  “Ohhhh. I thought they were mythical,” he confessed.

  “My understanding is that it’s more common than one might think,” Nan said. “But principally restricted to the inhabitants of brothels and reformatories, with occasional outbreaks at boarding schools. I’m sure none of us are likely to have encountered it previously.”

  Ed and I looked at each other.

  “Oh, your wife, Mr. Reese. Was she…?”

  “No, no. I’m fairly certain of that. Though she has spent a few nights in jail…. And, come to think of it, she did attend a women’s college.”

  “Oh, I’m sure there are exceptions to the rule,” Nan assured me.

  “How is it you’ve come to know so much about the subject?” I asked her.

  “Well, you must remember the trials of Oscar Wilde.”

  “Yes. You wrote a column on his plight?”

  “I had wanted to, but to write about it directly would have been out of the question. Then a couple years ago I came upon the idea of exploring the matter metaphorically. I read up on the subject of sexual inversion. Then wrote a whole series of columns attributing the decline in the alewife catch to a rise in epicene proclivities. I showed how the catch began falling precipitously immediately after Oscar Wilde’s lecture tour in the early ’80s. It was naïve, I wrote, to think other species were unaffected by literary decadence. Once I’d introduced the subject under cover of economic interests, I was free to expound on the matter of sexual inversion.”

  “And how were your columns received?”

  “Most enthusiastically, at least by the owners of the mills and street railways. The truth was that the alewives were in decline due to the construction of dams that blocked access to their inland spawning grounds. You see, unlike the licentious eel, the alewife is anadromous. It was the owners of the mills and street railways who’d dammed the rivers to harness electric power. I’m afraid I misled my readership.”

  “What newspaper doesn’t?”

  “It’s kind of you to put it in that light. But there was another unfortunate consequence.”

  “What was that?”

  “Whenever there’s a slight fall in one catch or another, those wanting to ban certain books on moral grounds use it as an excuse to purge our library.”

  “I bet Mrs. Field is the hermaphrodite,” Ed interjected.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Well, one of them has to be. At least according to what I’ve read.”

  “Maybe you should go see if you can find Noyes’s foreman.”

  “Have to be tomorrow, Harry. I need to prepare for the wedding. And put together the skyrockets—those chemicals finally arrived. We’re having the ceremony at ten, when most of the staff are done for the day. There’ll be a late supper, too. Then the fireworks. You’re both invited. And Emmie, of course.”

  He left and Nan turned to me.

  “Why does he want to find Noyes’s foreman? Do you have a lead on your arson?”

  “Perhaps, but it’s still tentative,” I said. “Does Noyes do any acting?”

  “He’s part of an amateur company. They sometimes perform at the theatre when the stock company has a night off. Why?”

  “Oh, just curious. I saw him reading a play. Do you know if he gambles?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. You suspect him of being one of the people
Miss Goodwin was blackmailing?”

  “We think he may be the one who set fire to the hotel. The one May called Jolly. But there’s reason to believe she was blackmailing him even before the fire.”

  “How do you know that?” she asked.

  “Last month she sent her brother a hundred dollars and told him it came from selling some jewelry.”

  “Jewelry Mr. Noyes gave her?”

  “Yes, but it must have been before the fire,” I said.

  “Well, Mr. Noyes may have something to hide. But not gambling.”

  “What?”

  “You must understand, this is a mere rumor. Something I’m reluctant to repeat. It would destroy a man’s reputation.”

  “Arson won’t be doing it much good,” I pointed out.

  “No, I suppose not. Well, there is a rumor that Mr. Noyes…”

  “Has epicene proclivities? À la Oscar Wilde?”

  “I need say no more.”

  “There is one other thing,” I said. “Remember my asking you about the names of the women in that notebook of May Goodwin’s? Florence P., Marie Louise, etc.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “There was one name, Mattie Alles, you told me sounded familiar. Peabbles seems to know who she is.”

  “Oh, yes. I remembered myself last evening. The Mattie Alles is a schooner that sails out of Portland. Peabbles spent a short while on board as a deckhand, but never got his sea legs. They sent him ashore in New York and he had to make his own way back. I suspect they’re all ships of some sort.”

  “I suppose that’s why he was willing to hand Mattie over to Delia.”

  “Hand the ship to her?”

  “She still thinks it refers to a girl. Could prove entertaining. By the way, she wanted me to invite you.”

  “Invite me where?”

  “Do you know about a little cave, up the cliff at Maiden’s Cove?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Peabbles is expecting some sort of rendezvous there early tomorrow morning. He’s determined who Mr. Bed is and intends to make an arrest.”

  “At what time?”

  “He told us to be there at midnight. Are you coming to the wedding?”

  “I need to get my story in. But I’ll meet you no later than half past eleven. In fact, I should be off. I still need to write up the jail break.”

  Emmie showed up a little later and told me of the waylaying of Delia at the farm. I pretended not to have witnessed it.

  “Say what you will about the erstwhile Mrs. Field, hers is an indefatigable spirit,” Emmie concluded.

  “And she’s in for another adventure tonight, by the arrangement of Constable Peabbles.”

  “What’s happening tonight?”

  I told her about Peabbles’ plan, and the nautical nature of Mattie Alles and company.

  “Is it smuggling?”

  “I assume so. Peabbles has intimated he knows who Bed is. And Ed and I have a good idea we know Jolly’s identity.”

  “A man named Noyes,” she told me.

  “How on earth did you know that? I don’t remember telling you about him.”

  “You didn’t. It was the moldy potatoes.”

  “What moldy potatoes?”

  “Remember the man who sold the kerosene in Falmouth said he gave the buyer some sacks of moldy potatoes to weigh down his tarp?”

  “You found them at Noyes’s?”

  “Naggie’s dog kept finding them along the road. So this morning, Naggie and I took him out and followed the trail up toward town. It stopped at the home of Mr. Noyes. The dog ran to a barn and found the stash.”

  “So Noyes must have dropped off the kerosene and then gone home unaware he was leaking potatoes.”

  “So it seems. But why would he want to burn down the hotel?” she asked.

  I told her all about the building site and our theory.

  “So now we know that Jolly, the arsonist, is Mr. Noyes and Well, our William Tell, is Mr. Field.”

  “You mean Lang—there is no Field,” I corrected.

  “Yes, but Field is the only name May Goodwin had for him. With two names, Naggie and I should be able to crack the code.”

  “You and Naggie?”

  “Yes. She has a theory we’ve been testing.”

  The wedding was held in a field some distance inland from the hotel. A long table was laid out, and a wedding bower constructed of twigs and branches. Illuminating the scene was Ed’s bonfire. A dozen of the staff were already in attendance, with others coming and going as their duties allowed. Also joining in the festivities were Emmie, Delia, myself, and a small flock of goats which provided a pastoral frontispiece by devouring the wedding bower as the vows were exchanged.

  Ed had hired a justice of the peace to perform the ceremony, but it was Delia who ran the show. She insisted she give the bride away, and, when the ritual was completed, she started the celebration off by reciting a poem she attributed to her husband:

  “A Girl,

  Her soul a deep-wave pearl

  Dim, lucent of all lovely mysteries;

  A face flowered for heart’s ease,

  A brow’s grace soft as seas

  Seen through faint forest-trees:

  A mouth, the lips apart,

  Like aspen-leaflets trembling in the breeze

  From her tempestuous heart.

  Such: and our souls so knit,

  I leave a page half-writ —

  The work begun

  Will be to heaven’s conception done,

  If she come to it.”

  In the silence that followed, Emmie leaned toward me and whispered, “Your friend’s exposed herself as a rank sentimentalist.”

  It was Delia herself who broke the spell. She lectured the now “priest-linked” pair against unnecessary “curtain lectures,” then toasted Bridget, “To the well wearing of your muff, mort!”

  The fare was modest, but there was an ample quantity of wine—including three bottles of my St. Julien. When some musicians started up, I pulled Ed aside.

  “When do the fireworks start?” I asked.

  “Can’t say for sure, all depends how quickly the fire burns. I have it so the fuses are set off intermittently. Provides an element of chance.”

  Later, we’d learn he’d left a little too much to chance.

  Nan showed up as I expected she would, after the ceremony but in time for a free meal. At half past eleven, she and I went and fetched Delia from behind a tree, where she was giving the bride some last-minute tips for the honeymoon.

  “Don’t forget dear Mattie,” I reminded her.

  “I must away, fair dell! Come, Harry, and you, dimber Nan.”

  As we walked, Nan read us her account of the jail break. It began with a seemingly factual recitation of events, depicting Delia as the heroine who had the misfortune of arriving too late to prevent the escape. But that was followed by a lyrical exploration of Annie’s seduction of the guard, told via the usual piscatorial allegory—this episode centering on the lubricious shad.

  It was hot stuff. And I suspect Delia thought so too because she offered to recite another of her husband’s poems, one befitting Nan:

  “So jealous of your beauty,

  You will not wed

  For dread

  That hymeneal duty

  Should touch and mar

  The lovely thing you are?

  Come to your garden-bed!

  Learn there another lesson:

  This poppy-head,

  Instead

  Of having crimson dress on,

  Is now a fruit,

  Whose marvelous pale suit

  Transcends the glossy red.”

  “My, Mrs. Field,” Nan said. “You certainly leave little to the imagination.”

  Delia took Nan’s arm in hers and they had a quiet conversation out of my hearing.

  When we reached the beach, we found Peabbles waiting for us. He seemed pleasantly surprised to see Nan. I told him all about
Ed’s findings and our conclusion that Noyes was Jolly—but left the epicene proclivities unmentioned. He scribbled some notes and then suggested we all go up to the cave.

  “But it will be so difficult to see what’s happening down here,” Delia told him. “Why don’t you and Miss Tway take station there and Harry and I will hide behind those rocks? Then when we see someone coming, we can signal you by tossing stones up.”

  Peabbles wasn’t altogether in favor of her amendment to his plan, but gave in when it was clear her mind was made up. They climbed up to the cave and then Delia pulled me toward her.

  “Come, Harry. We must get close enough to listen.”

  “What do you expect to hear?”

  “Peabbles hoeing his garden. I’ve already planted the seeds.”

  “What seeds?”

  “I’ve told him that Miss Tway is longing to be his wife, but unlikely to wait much longer.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “Well, I won’t claim he’s likely to turn Hotspur. But it gave him a good prod. Then, just now, I told her she could expect a proposal imminently.”

  “How’d she respond?”

  “She asked me on what terms.”

  “I think your seeds might need some tending.”

  “That’s just what I’ve done—gotten them alone in a dark cave. What could be more fertile than that? Come, soon their bellies will be bumping and they’ll be moaning their devotions.”

  25

  We crawled up beside the mouth of the cave, but it wasn’t moans we heard.

  “It’s funny us being up here alone, Nan,” Peabbles whispered.

  “Why is it funny?”

  “I just remember the last time we were up here.”

  “That must have been ten years ago. And if I remember correctly, nothing happened worth remembering.”

  “Well, maybe if you weren’t always gibing me, Nan, I wouldn’t get so flummoxed. But now I think I’ve made my place. And I’m ready to take you….”

  “Ready to take me? What place have you made?”

  “After tonight, I expect I’ll be in for something bigger than town constable. Might even run for sheriff.”

  “And you expect me to give up my virtue to you as a prize?”

  “Not your virtue, Nan. If you’d’ve let me finish, I meant take you as my wife.”