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

by Robert Bruce Stewart

  “Where’s Nan now?” I asked. “I’d like to see her before we go.”

  “At the shop, writing her story.”

  After lunch, Emmie stopped in at Mosher’s office while I went across to the typewriter shop. I found Nan hard at it.

  “I just wanted to say good-bye before leaving.”

  “Good-bye, Mr. Reese. It really was wonderful meeting you.” She sounded sincere, but the typing never slowed.

  “What? No metronome?” I asked.

  “Metronome?”

  “Yes, remember how you had me play the part that first day we met?”

  “Oh, well, honestly, Mr. Reese, that was for my own amusement. I just wanted to see if I could get you to stand in front of the shop window waving your arm.”

  “I see.” Poor Peabbles.

  “I hope you aren’t offended. It was all done in fun.”

  “No, no. Well, I should be off, or I’ll miss my train.”

  “Thank you for stopping, Mr. Reese.” She gave me a warm smile, then added, “I don’t suppose you’d want that typewriter to go with your ribbon?”

  “Ah, how much?”

  “The deluxe is just $75.”

  “Too rich for my blood. Is that the one Melville used?”

  “Yes, found it perfectly suited to his needs. Or so I’m told.”

  “Well, all I have left is seventeen dollars. Can I put down a deposit and pay the rest when I come by to pick it up?”

  “Oh, yes. That would be most satisfactory.”

  She took my seventeen dollars and led me over to the sales counter, thereby displaying her seemingly new patent leather shoes. Apparently she took the same size as May Goodwin.

  She made out a receipt and handed it to me, folded. It was only after we’d boarded the train I took it out and read: “Eraser, 15¢.”

  I knew I was contributing to her trousseau, but I did come to regret not having consulted with Emmie before giving up my last dollar. Between the two of us, we had only enough for a light meal in the dining car that evening.

  We ran into Lang there and he invited us to join him. With the writing of this account in mind, I went over all the various false identities with him again.

  “How could you be sure Mr. Mosher wouldn’t be able to recognize that Naggie wasn’t Fiona Macleod?” Emmie asked.

  “I knew for certain that he’d never met Fiona Macleod.”

  “Yes, but he may have seen a photograph.”

  “No, you misunderstand. I knew he had never seen her simply because he believed in her existence. You see, there is no Fiona Macleod. She is the invention of a colleague of mine. But he has done such a complete job of hiding the fact, only a few know of his secret.”

  “Unlike the ladies behind Michael Field?” she asked.

  “I believe they, too, had hoped to keep their identity a secret, but were betrayed by someone in their circle.”

  “How does this colleague of yours manage to avoid all public meetings? And even his handwriting would be evidently male.”

  “He has a friend who plays the part. She corresponds for him, even has done readings,” Lang explained. “It was she who was too ill to make the trip.”

  “I can understand the two ladies using a man’s name in order to be taken more seriously by the literati. But why would a man take on a woman’s name?” Emmie asked.

  “Oh, it’s no mere nom de plume. Have you read the poems?”

  “Yes, some,” she said. “And they do seem written with a woman’s sensibility. Still, I don’t think I’d want a man writing for me.”

  “Even if you were a mere figment of his imagination?”

  “Oh, especially then.”

  We were enjoying a leisurely breakfast back at the apartment when Emmie introduced the subject of her school chum, Elizabeth. It was her I’d recognized as the female lead of Emmie’s Lord Dexter up-to-date story, the one she’d outlined to Mosher in his office.

  Elizabeth would be a difficult person to describe in a word or two, but since you’re already acquainted with Emmie, I’ll use her as a comparison. Whereas Emmie is a devious female of flexible principles, Elizabeth is a cunning devil of a woman with few principles at all. I wouldn’t go so far as to say she’s completely lacking in human sentiment—it just doesn’t have much of a chance against her all-consuming vanity.

  She and Emmie were in the midst of a long-running quarrel which neither missed an opportunity to rekindle whenever it seemed in danger of losing its spark. When last we’d heard, Elizabeth had gone off to Europe, leaving her husband behind, and their marriage in a state best described as precarious.

  “It was Naggie who told me about a woman staying at the small hotel in Étaples. The one owned by the Chappelles.”

  “And this woman was Elizabeth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she ever come back to New York?”

  “I knew she had crossed back over the end of May. But apparently not alone.”

  “She found a replacement for Tibbitts? Are they divorced?”

  “Not yet. Tibbitts has filed for one, but she intends to fight it.”

  “That will be tough if she’s traveling with her co-respondent.”

  “Oh, it’s not a co-respondent she’s brought back.”

  “Who, then?”

  “A healthy baby girl.”

  “Oh. Well that should bring Tibbitts around. Assuming it’s his. Is it?”

  “Yes, of course it’s his.”

  How she could pronounce that with such authority, I can’t say.

  We didn’t have a chance to see Naggie and Delia before their ship sailed, but later exchanged letters. By means of this correspondence, I was able to pin down those elements of Delia’s personal argot which had escaped me during our various conversations. The result can be found in the decidedly frank glossary which follows.

  It had been one of those cases which left little to show for itself, outside of the satisfaction of having contributed to the solving of the crimes involved—and the cracking of a couple pipkins, however indirectly.

  Emmie, however, did gain something material from the affair. Mosher came through with an edition of her book—now revised to incorporate Elizabeth’s newborn baggage. He printed 275 copies, then sent them all to our apartment. Emmie was disappointed he chose not to add it to his catalogue, but being like Delia of an indefatigable spirit, she immediately began work on the next book in her saga.

  Emmie’s Book

  The manuscript which Emmie brought to Portland—a novella written under her pen name, M.E. Meegs—has now been published. Those familiar with her “friend” Elizabeth may recognize the lead character as a thinly veiled portrait.

  Here is a taste from chapter one of Babes at Sea….

  The muffled clatter of rain on slate infused the grubby attic room of the grubby inn with a palpable gloom, while the relentless drip caught by a cracked chamber pot provided an unnecessary reminder of the wretchedness of her state… plic… plic… plic….

  For five days, Mrs. Biddle had waited for word. For five days, tension waxed as food and money waned—just as it had throughout the long, wet French spring… plic… plic… plic….

  Eight months on the Pas-de-Calais, the last three in another leaking attic room, where for the first time in her life Mrs. Biddle had been compelled to accept charity. And that she resented most of all. Resented the fact of it, if not the cause. Now, in this last week of May, she had come to Cherbourg on a vague promise from a dubious man. And for five days and nights, she waited… plic… plic… plic….

  Her mood, never one that could be judged sunny, had turned as foul as the weather. Still, as she sponged herself before the few remaining shards of a shattered mirror, Mrs. Biddle took solace in the resplendent, if intermittent, view. She had recovered nicely from her long infirmity. And what was privation to a woman who fed on adversity as lesser women feed on pastry? Tension for her was simply the unavoidable precursor to action. In this she resembled nothing so
much as a coiled spring. A rather good-looking coiled spring, to be sure. Few others sported so statuesque a figure, so clear a complexion, or so blonde and lush a mane. As frequently happened, Mrs. Biddle was cheered by her own superiority. But, speaking honestly, she couldn’t deny she was a coiled spring in dire need of a good bath.

  She had just finished dressing when there was a knock.

  “Un message, madame.”

  Mrs. Biddle opened the door and took a handwritten note from a boy in an ill-fitting uniform. As she read, he waited. She looked down at him in disgust.

  “Va-t’en!” she shouted.

  He made a face, then spat back over his shoulder, “Gadoue!”

  It was with the slamming of the door that the fruit of Mrs. Biddle’s recent infirmity announced herself from her makeshift cradle—a small drawer suspended by cord from the peak of a dormer. Her mother picked her up and brought her to the bed. Then hoped against hope that the well had not yet run dry. For like her mother, Eugenia was not one to give up easily.

  The name—meaning as it does well-born—was chosen as testament to Mrs. Biddle’s own opinion of herself. How could her daughter be otherwise? She did, of course, resent the encumbrance on a life which had been kept scrupulously free of encumbrances. Not even marriage was allowed to impinge upon Mrs. Biddle’s devotion to self. But here, at her breast, was an extension of that self, and even if she loved the child only half so much as she loved herself—a daughter’s chromosomal entitlement—it would still be far more than any self-abnegating genetrix could muster.

  “Bonjour, little sister!”

  A petite girl—no older than seventeen, but last called ingénue at twelve—entered the room bearing a baguette and two pots. She set these on the table, then pulled an orange from one pocket of her jacket and a parcel of soft cheese from the other.

  “Where did you spend the night?” Mrs. Biddle asked bitterly.

  “Making sure baby sister has some breakfast beside the milk of a witch,” the girl answered in a thick French accent, but nearly correct grammar.

  After throwing off her jacket, she tied her russet hair into a loose knot, then pried the baby from her mother—the latter making no protest. She sat down at the table and dunked a finger in the pot of milky chocolate, then let the baby curled in her arm suckle it. Mrs. Biddle rose and rebuttoned her blouse before the broken mirror.

  “This is for you to eat,” the girl said, nodding toward the food but not looking upon the woman at the mirror. “I’ve well eaten.”

  “Your belly full, is it? Have a care, girl, or soon you’ll find yourself with your own little sister. Or the pox.”

  “That makes nothing to me,” the girl told her as she waved the small bottle of holy water she wore on a string about her neck and depended on as spiritual prophylactic.

  “Simple peasant. You think that protection enough when you spend the night passing yourself about?”

  “I do not pass myself about!” the girl shouted back indignantly. Realizing her tone had unsettled Eugenia, she softened it. “I was with a… éminent man, the husband of the mistress of the mayor.”

  “He told you the mayor beds his wife?”

  “Yes. And why not? It is a… honneur?”

  “Honor. So, I have the mayor’s cuckold to thank for my breakfast?” Her pride temporarily subdued by the aroma of cheese and coffee, Mrs. Biddle took a place at the table.

  “No. This is for baby sister—you are the cow it must go through first.”

  “Then I suppose I must eat my grass.”

  “And say meuh!” the girl added for the benefit of her little sister.

  “I’m an American cow,” Mrs. Biddle corrected. Then, in a display that would have shocked any who knew her in the prenatal past, she gave her child a spirited “moo-oo!”

  “So the cows talk different also?” the girl asked.

  “Yes, and the roosters.”

  “No cocorico?”

  “Cockadoodledoo!”

  While her elders went through their bilingual bestiary, Eugenia, quite reasonably, looked on in stupefaction. Barely three weeks out of the womb, she had not yet learned an infant must pay for her keep by lavishing signs of amusement on her caretakers whenever they chose to degrade themselves. She was grateful for the chocolate her benefactress had provided, but surely she had adequately expressed her appreciation by not immediately regurgitating it upon the girl’s blouse.

  In truth, the girl—Mélisande, she called herself—was not even ten years younger than her “little sister’s” mother. Though her exact role was a matter of continuous debate, she was an adjunct acquired during the previous winter. She had arrived in Étaples sometime before Christmas and Mrs. Biddle had made occasional use of her as factotum, with the girl wanting no payment beyond lessons in English. It was, she claimed, with that objective that she had come to the colony of Anglophones on the Pas-de-Calais.

  When the money ran low and Mrs. Biddle economized by moving to the hostel’s attic, the artful girl attended her more frequently—like the others at Étaples, she was convinced that sooner or later the proud woman would wire home for passage. For her own part, Mrs. Biddle knew full well the girl was merely ingratiating herself in the hope of securing a berth on the inevitable return voyage to New York. And Mélisande knew that Mrs. Biddle knew.

  When spring arrived and the pregnancy proved difficult, Mélisande took on the duties of nurse, and her self-serving motives were mildly diluted with something resembling compassion. But the birth of Eugenia changed everything. Mrs. Biddle was completely dependent on the girl for two weeks, by the end of which Mélisande’s devotion to her “little sister” had become fact.

  As a nearby bell struck one, the insufferably precious game ended when neither patron nor retainer could remember the call of a rhinoceros. Her dignified demeanor restored, Mrs. Biddle rose from the table and announced they would be sailing that evening.

  Mélisande was ecstatic. Six months of attending this contumelious shrew had worn thin even her good humor. Now, at last, she was sailing to New York. And not as an ignorant provincial likely to end up the exotic in some tenderloin house of sport. She had used her time in Étaples wisely, mingling freely with the expatriate poets and artists—in some cases quite freely—and would arrive in New York thoroughly fly.

  “I must go off to make arrangements,” Mrs. Biddle told her. “You’ll need to start packing. We catch a boat from the Gare Maritime at five.”

  On picking up her jacket, Mrs. Biddle displaced that of the girl. The gold fob of a watch peeked out from a pocket. With a subtle grace born of careful breeding, Mrs. Biddle palmed the watch and slid it into her bag.

  Down below, she negotiated her way through the damp, narrow lane, past the broken glass, half-eaten fruit, and filthy progeny of the slum, trying in vain to ignore the over-powering stench of urine. When an inebriated sailor slouching in a doorway made a suggestion she thought demeaning, Mrs. Biddle spat on him without turning her head. Though few would guess it to look at her—especially those unacquainted with her expectorial marksmanship—Mrs. Biddle was no stranger to her milieu. Her first memories were of a street indistinguishable from this in all its essentials, if not its particulars. The drunken sailor, for instance, who now stumbled from his haunt and challenged her with insulting gibes, would have been wearing the uniform of the U.S. Navy rather than that of the French. But if the menace was universal, the methodology employed in confronting it was quite personal. Mrs. Biddle lowered her arm and shook her sleeve. A straight razor fell into her palm.

  ~~~ ~~~ ~~~

  To be continued…

  ~~~ ~~~ ~~~

  Dear reader,

  I do hope you’ve enjoyed this scrumptious sample. Those unable to resist a further helping will be happy to learn that Babes at Sea is on sale and awaiting their pleasure.

  To learn more about the Byblos Foretold Novaplex, please visit: ByblosForetold.com

  Yours, with unstinting gratitude,

&nbs
p; M.E. Meegs

  Glossary

  aphrodisiacal tennis court : a woman’s secret (17th century)

  bandogs : bailiffs, police (17th century)

  beak : sheriff’s officer, policeman (U.K., 19th century)

  belle chose : a woman’s secret, French for “beautiful thing” (14th century)

  belly bumping : copulation (U.K., 19th century)

  bene cove : good fellow (17th century)

  bivvy : beer (U.K., 19th century)

  bleed : to extort money from (17th century)

  blue pig : whiskey (Maine)

  bobbish : in good spirits (18th century)

  brim : an impudent, lewd woman (17th century)

  brother starling : a man who shares a woman with another (17th century)

  bunter : a woman of questionable morality; a term of contempt (U.K., 19th century)

  butter your bun : to lie with a woman before passing her on to another (17th century)

  buzzard : silver dollar (U.S., 19th century)

  catamenia : menses (Latin)

  cave of harmony : a woman’s secret (U.K., 19th century)

  century : one hundred dollars (U.S., 19th century)

  chippie : prostitute (U.S., 19th century)

  clicket : to copulate (17th century)

  clip : hug, embrace (17th century)

  cod : friend (17th century)

  come-by-chance : an illegitimate child (18th century)

  commodity : a woman’s secret (16th century)

  conveniency : wife or mistress (17th century)

  corned : drunk (18th century)

  cote : cottage (17th century)

  country wife : a naïve young wife from the country, title character of Wycherley’s play (17th century)

  cove : fellow (17th century)

  cranny : a woman’s secret (17th century)

  crib : brothel house or apartment (17th century)

  cull : a dupe; a prostitute’s customer (17th century)

  curtain lectures : woman’s scolding of her husband (17th century)