“Any woman who allows herself to be taken as a wife has already given up her virtue.”
“It’s just a turn of phrase, Nan. What would you have me say?”
“You hope to win me as your wife.”
“All right then, I hope to win you as my wife. But doesn’t that have you back to being a prize?”
“A prize that I award, on my own terms.”
“Of course. I have no objection to that, Nan.”
“How can you say that when you haven’t heard my terms?”
“All right, what are your terms?”
“Proviso number one: I keep my name. I will not go about calling myself Mrs. Peabbles.”
“But you will be Mrs. Peabbles, Nan.”
“Legally, perhaps. But I will continue to write as Nan Tway, and correspond in this name as I see fit.”
“Mrs. Peabbles was good enough for my mother.”
“Your mother despises the name.”
“Never said so to me. It could be awkward if I run for sheriff, but I suppose we could call you ‘his dear wife Nan.’”
“Proviso number two: there will be no ‘dear,’ or ‘sweetheart,’ or stomach-turning pet names of any sort. I will be Nan, and since you are so fond of the name, you will be Peabbles.”
“All right, Nan. And I suppose you’ll be wanting to find a new house?”
“Why so extravagant? What’s wrong with the one you have?”
“Well, my mother lives there…. Naturally, I assumed….”
“Assumed I would object to living with your mother? Certainly not. In fact, I insist we live with her. That is proviso number three. I’ll not be darning your socks and cooking your supper. Your house will do fine. And mine can go back to being a cow shed. If I marry you.”
“All right, Nan. Anything else?”
“Proviso number four: when my work requires that I be out late, you’ll raise no objections. Or if it requires me to travel, to New York, say.”
“All right. But I don’t see why the Cape Elizabeth Sentinel would be needing to send you to New York.”
“I hope to secure a job at one of the Portland papers when this is all over. You aren’t the only one with ambitions.”
“I don’t object to any of that, provided you don’t make me the butt of mockery. I mean, if we’re out walking, and an acquaintance stops and greets us, ‘Good evening, Mr. Peabbles, Mrs. Peabbles,’ you won’t go to the trouble of correcting him.”
“Agreed, as I see no likelihood of my strolling about aimlessly with you in the evening or any other time. You may pencil that in as proviso number five.”
“I suppose now it’s only fair I should have some conditions. Otherwise, I’ll have people calling me Mr. Tway.”
“I suppose so,” she said.
“First, if in the course of my running for office, I need to entertain certain men of importance, you’ll make yourself pleasant.”
“I have no need to make myself so. I’m always pleasant. But if you mean ingratiate myself with bores and half-wits, I will instead politely absent myself for some more pressing matter, such as taking my delayed evening stroll.”
“And you’ll need to show more care in how you dress, Nan. I can’t have you going about like that.”
“I agree to faithfully spend whatever amount you allocate from your own accounts on my care. Is there anything else?”
“No, I think I’m satisfied. If you are, of course.”
“All right, then,” Nan confirmed.
Delia pulled me close and whispered in my ear, “Negotiations are over, now comes the winding of the clock….”
But Nan had other priorities. She moved on to the practical matters of household budgets and the divvying up of living quarters. After a few minutes more, we went back down to our lair on the beach.
“I’m only surprised she didn’t insist it be notarized,” Delia said. “But they are headed to the altar. That’s two to my credit.”
“Two what?”
“Pipkins cracked. The Teaguelander’s and Miss Tway’s alliteration. I wager hers will be breached before the night’s done. I always knew I’d make a rum maidenhead jobber. Now I just need to get you back in bed with your wife. How’d you let her come to loathe you so?”
“I wouldn’t say she loathes me exactly. More like a chronic ambivalence. But it goes both ways. The cost in serenity of living with someone like Emmie is just too high. I’ve decided to send her on her way.”
“Send her on her way?”
“Why not? Let her haunt someone else’s bed. Say, maybe you’ve another uncracked pipkin I could try for size?”
“You think fresh dells grow on trees? No, you have to win her back. For my sake as well as your own.”
“Your sake?”
“I’ll not explain now,” she said. “Time will be better served by my showing you how to end the mort’s vexing ways. Master this technique, and she’ll turn to butter in your hands.”
“Sounds messy. Do you have one that’ll just render her flesh obliging?”
“No more talk, there’re better uses for velvet. Now, can you touch the tip of your nose with your tongue?”
“My nose with my tongue?” I asked.
“Come below, I’ll teach you to dispatch your mort’s hidden sailor….”
She had me curious, but I never learned precisely what she had in mind. Just as she pulled me down on the sand, we heard oars breaking the surf.
A boat landed and two rough-looking seamen disembarked. One gave a soft but distinctive whistle.
“That must be the signal for Mr. Bed to appear,” I whispered.
“They seem to be smugglers.”
“Yes, liquor, most likely.”
“But where’s my Mattie Alles?” she asked.
“Not sure. Maybe on that schooner lying offshore.”
The fellow whistled again. When there was no answer, he looked over at his comrade and shrugged. Then they started to drag the boat back into the water.
“We can’t let them get away,” Delia whispered.
“I wonder what’s keeping Peabbles?”
“Probably up there with his trousers around his ankles. It’s up to us, Harry. I’ll parley with them, you stay out of sight unless I call out.”
She hopped up and gave a return whistle. The seamen looked her way and then at each other.
“Ahoy, there,” she called. “Have you brought me the nectar?”
They exchanged looks again. Then one approached her.
“Are ya here for the goods?” he asked.
“Yes, you-know-who sent me.”
The one fellow started unloading crates, but the nearer one seemed unconvinced.
“An’ the money?”
“It will have to go on account, I’m afraid.”
Just then, there was a commotion up at the mouth of the cave. Peabbles came tumbling down the cliff.
“Back to the ship!” the whistler yelled. He grabbed Delia and dragged her toward the boat.
With Peabbles knocked out by his fall, it was all up to me. I ran wildly toward the fellow manhandling Delia. My plan was to distract him enough to allow her escape, yet stay safely out of range of his blows. As it was, I eliminated the need for blows entirely. A well-anchored strand of kelp caught me by the ankle and flipped me head first into a boulder.
When I woke, Nan was wiping my face with a wet handkerchief.
“What happened?”
“Our pirates have escaped, along with the woman we knew as Mrs. Field.”
She went over to Peabbles, still prostrate in the sand.
“Wake up, Peabbles,” she goaded. “Your chances for election are waning with the tide.”
“Where are they?” he asked.
“Out to sea. Along with your hope of becoming sheriff.”
It was then that Stanley Chambers, the beachcomber, arrived. He made his way to the crate the smugglers had left behind, then used a rock to loosen the top.
“St. Croix rum
,” he announced, holding up a bottle.
“Brought by the Mattie Alles,” Peabbles said. “I’m still in the running, Nan.”
“What good is that if you can’t prove who’s behind it?” she asked.
“It’s something to bargain with. I reckon now I can persuade the ship’s master to tell me what I’ve already guessed.”
I heard the familiar yap of the chow, then turned to see Emmie and Naggie running toward us.
“We solved it, Harry,” Emmie called. “Or, rather, Naggie did.”
“May’s code?” I asked.
“Yes, the names. Bed, King’s, Jolly…,” Naggie told me.
“How’d you do that?”
“Remember the rhyming slang I told you of?”
“Rhyming slang?” Nan inquired.
“Yes, love. From East London. Instead of stairs, we say apples and pears. To laugh is cow and calf.”
“Makes conversation a little long-winded, doesn’t it?” Peabbles asked.
“That’s just it. You see, it ends up shortened. So laugh becomes cow, and stairs just apples. Which don’t rhyme at all, of course.”
“Where’s that get us?” I asked.
“Don’t you see, Harry? The word ‘Bed’ doesn’t rhyme with the name we want, it’s the first word of a phrase the final word of which rhymes with the name. We already figured out that the man May knew as Field was in her book as Well. Then Naggie surmised it stood for ‘well-heeled.’ And Jolly was from ‘jolly boys,’ which was Mr. Noyes. So we listed all the other names we’d encountered. The next one we got was easy. ‘King’s ransom’ for Mr. Branscombe.”
“And Bed?”
“‘Bed and board’…”
“For Deputy Gaylord,” Peabbles interjected.
“You already knew?” Emmie asked.
“The lot up above—always seemed odd it hadn’t been sold off. Just an old cottage and pasture, but on prime real estate. The day of that explosion, I learned it belonged to Gaylord. Then a day later I got to thinking about that and it made me curious. I broke into the cottage that night and found it empty. That made me even more curious.”
“Why?” Emmie asked.
“After the explosion, Gaylord asked the fellow who rents the pasture to watch over the cottage, because, he said, he was afraid there might be looting during the commotion. But the place was empty. Whatever it was had been taken away the previous night, the night of the explosion. He’s been using the cottage as a storeroom. We all knew Gaylord turned a blind eye to the serving of drink, no doubt for something in return. But I’d begun to suspect he had a hand in the trade itself.”
“So May Goodwin must have watched him taking shipments from the cave,” I said. “Then somehow found out the dates of future arrivals.”
Peabbles then reminded me of the shoes that had been returned to May Goodwin’s room.
“One held the receipt for the kerosene. She must have found that at Noyes’s house during one of her visits. The other had two items: a page written in Branscombe’s hand, listing the dates when he expected shipments of liquor from Gaylord; and a schedule from the harbor master of incoming boats.”
“So she matched one to the other and came up with the list in her notebook,” I said.
“That’s right,” Peabbles went on. “When we were here this afternoon, I did a search of that cave. The far end’s only recently collapsed. I’d noticed something similar in the cellar of the cottage. I think they’d tunneled between the cave and the cellar. That way they could move the liquor to the cottage and back without being seen. They probably sent it out by skiff.”
“It’s too bad Gaylord didn’t show himself,” I said.
“I must have revealed my hand somehow,” Peabbles said.
“But the main crime was murder,” Nan pointed out. “And Miss Goodwin didn’t have time to give us a clue to that.”
“You told me Gaylord had tried his luck as a shopkeeper a few years back,” I said to Nan. “What sort of shop was it?”
“He’d inherited a drug store from an uncle. But he never got a proper license. And soon came up bust.”
“Then he would know where to get digitalis, and maybe even had some left over. And pennyroyal, too.”
“You think he gave it to May?” Peabbles asked.
“May led Branscombe to believe he had impregnated her. He offered to get her something to take care of it and thought by getting it from Gaylord he would keep his situation from becoming known.”
“But Branscombe didn’t know she was also blackmailing Gaylord,” Peabbles explained.
“So Gaylord provided the pennyroyal, but first poisoned it with digitalis….” Nan added.
“I imagine he knew how ineffective pennyroyal is,” I said. “And knew that May would probably keep taking more until she’d reached a fatal dose of digitalis.”
“But how can I prove any of that?” Peabbles asked.
“I’m sure Branscombe will admit to buying liquor from Gaylord, especially when you remind him you know he supplied May the pennyroyal. But first, you might get a warrant to search Gaylord’s place. Five will get you ten, you’ll find the remnants of his drug stocks.”
“How much of that did you already know, Mr. Chambers?” Emmie asked the beachcomber.
He laughed. “Oh, I don’t trouble myself with knowing.”
“But you’ve witnessed the smuggling?” Peabbles asked. “And seen Gaylord picking it up? I’ll need you to testify.”
Chambers held up a bottle of rum, and Peabbles nodded.
The beachcomber began walking off with his booty. “You know where to find me… Sheriff.”
Just then, there was a rumble up above. A puff of dust shot out of the cliff where the mouth of the cave had been.
“And you had me up there just a scant hour ago,” Nan complained to Peabbles.
“I don’t suppose you’ve seen Delia about?” Naggie interrupted.
“The poor woman’s headed out to sea, on a ship full of lonely ruffians,” Nan explained unhelpfully.
“Out to sea?”
“Just up to Portland,” Peabbles said. “The Mattie Alles should be docking in an hour or two. I’ll be headed up there now.”
“Would you mind if I came with you, Constable?” Naggie asked. “To extract Delia.”
“No, not at all.”
Nan and the chow went with them, leaving Emmie and me alone. We sat on the beach and I told her about the evening’s events—substituting a seaman’s right hook for the kelp and boulder.
It was then we heard the first of Ed’s skyrockets. We climbed up the cliff and joined a crowd watching the display from the shore road. The noise was deafening and soon the hotel was emptied of guests and staff alike—every man, woman, and child gazing in awe at Ed’s display of his art.
Which explains why no one noticed the fire until it was well under way. It seems one of the rockets landed on the seaward porch of the hotel, out of sight of the crowd staring off in the opposite direction. The air was already filled with smoke and the scent of Ed’s bonfire, so it wasn’t until the fire reached the front of the hotel that anyone noticed the subsidiary inferno. By then it was too late to do much but watch.
It was while we were thus occupied I felt a tug on my sleeve. It was Ed. He led Emmie and myself into the shadows where his bride was waiting.
“I’m thinking it might be better if Bridget and I catch the first train out this morning,” he said.
“You sure you want to hurry off?” I asked. “Could be some work for a crack arson man come morning.”
“The wind changed on me, Harry.”
“Might have happened to anyone, Ed,” Emmie assured him. “Do you have enough for your tickets?”
“Bought them yesterday. Well, so long.”
Emmie gave Bridget a little hug, and as they disappeared into the darkness we went back down to the beach and slept until woken by the sun.
26
On rising, we took a car into Portland, where we
bought fresh clothes and then took a room at a hotel to bathe and nap before our afternoon train. Driven from bed by hunger, we went out seeking sustenance and spotted Peabbles seated at a lunch counter. He commiserated with us over the loss of our belongings in the inexplicable conflagration at the former Sea Cliff Hotel.
“Any idea what set it off?” he asked with a wink.
Before I could answer, Emmie issued an emphatic no, then shifted the conversation to a less awkward topic. “Were you able to secure a warrant to search Gaylord’s home?” she asked.
“Oh, you can always find a judge of an opposing faction willing to take a shot at the other side. We found the digitalis, and quite a store of other drugs.”
“What about Noyes?” I asked.
“Not so forthcoming, I’m afraid, Mr. Reese. I’ll need to build a case on him. Will the insurance company pay you?”
“No, no bonus at least. When will you and Nan be tying the knot?”
“As soon as we can scrape a few dollars together.”
“There is one other matter, Constable,” Emmie interjected. “That of Mr. Lang.”
“Yes, Mr. Lang. I had a long talk with him yesterday. He came and told me all about it. Then I spoke with Mr. Mosher. He says he’d just as soon keep the whole thing a private matter.”
“I suppose a pirate publisher comes to expect certain expressions of discomfort from his authors,” I said.
“One thing I can’t figure out is, who set the charges in the first place?” Emmie asked.
“I’ll wager it was McGee,” I told her. “I suspect he knew about Gaylord’s operation, and that May was blackmailing him. And probably guessed it was him who killed her. He didn’t think it safe to accuse Gaylord publicly, but thought by exposing his operation he might set someone else on Gaylord’s track.”
“Yes, and one more reason I might have to go after him,” Peabbles said.
“That doesn’t sound fair, Constable,” Emmie told him. “After all, if he hadn’t planted the charges, you wouldn’t have found out about the cottage.”
“You sound like my Nan, Mrs. Reese. That’s just what she said.”
I had a little pang of guilt just then. I’d spent some effort convincing Peabbles that Nan was no Emmie. Now I wasn’t so sure.
Fair Play’s a Jewel (Harry Reese Mysteries Book 5) Page 22