First Blush: A Meegs Miscellany (A Harry Reese Mystery)

by Robert Bruce Stewart

  We—myself and my tall accomplice—were positioned near a bookmaker who had just seven horses on his slate, while there were at least ten running in the first race. For the first two races, I received no signs. I made small bets on my own account, but lost both times. In the third race, I received the first sign. I was to bet an equal amount on all the odd number horses. I had been instructed to always bet the entire amount, so I did so. Seventy-five dollars on each horse. We lost. I still had a couple dollars of my own, so I thought I’d stay for one more race. Then a small boy selling news sheets came up beside me and slipped me an envelope. It contained six hundred dollars. There was no sign in the fourth race, and I lost the last of my own small bank. Then, just before the fifth race, I had a sign and bet the six hundred as instructed. We lost again.

  I returned to the cottage and found Mr. Larabee handing out envelopes to his associates, and sometimes receiving them in return. Some of these people were the tall men, but some looked like prosperous businessmen. I felt a little sheepish approaching him, not having any envelope to give him. But he said that I shouldn’t worry about that, as they had actually done quite well that day. He handed me an envelope which contained twenty-five dollars. On the way home, I stopped off and paid the butcher, the grocer, and the laundry, and still had eight dollars.

  That evening I told Harry about my endeavor and he seemed sincerely pleased. I mean, of course, my literary endeavor. Though I hadn’t received payment yet, I insisted we go out and celebrate, and the following Friday we went out to Manhattan Beach. That was the Friday before Labor Day. We had dinner at the hotel, then saw a show at the little theatre, and afterwards attended the fireworks.

  I told Harry I was using some money my Aunt Nell had sent, but in fact it was the last of the money Mr. Larabee had paid me. In a way, I was glad things had worked out as they had, because when Harry made me swear I hadn’t won it at the track, there was no need to deceive him.

  Then I had a bit of a blow. On the way home Harry asked me how much I was being paid. I told him the one and six figure and that that would equal a little more than six dollars.

  “Did Mr. Sackett say ‘one and six’ and just that?” he asked.

  “Yes, that’s the way they always express it,” I said.

  “Well, Emmie, I’m no authority on matters of international finance, but I believe when an Englishman says one and six, he means one shilling and six pence.”

  “What about the pounds?” I asked.

  “What about the pounds, indeed?”

  “Are you playing horse with me, Harry?” He had a habit of teasing me in a most disagreeable way. He just smiled. Well, he turned out to be correct in this instance. Harry also had a habit of being correct in a most disagreeable way.

  As luck would have it, a check for three hundred dollars arrived the next week. This was payment from an insurance company for our work in Buffalo, which had allowed it to forgo payment on a claim. It came to Harry, but honestly, it was more mine than his. I had arranged the contract and, in the end, it was my solution to my uncle’s murder that allowed the company to withhold payment. And Harry conceded as much.

  Now we felt ourselves supremely well-off. So much so, we actually made current one of the department store accounts. Harry took me to several Broadway shows, each after a dinner at Delmonico’s or Sherry’s. And the fact I was only getting thirty-odd cents for each placement no longer seemed important.

  It was then that I wrote the account of Mr. Leverton and his fierce fight against the white slavers of Sag Harbor. The battle culminated in a victory for Leverton and, the next morning, his rescue of 147 immigrant girls from a cave above the shore. One fair maiden, an orphan, of course, had caught Leverton’s eye. Though I left it somewhat ambiguous as to whether she was in fact still a maiden at the time of said rescue, Mr. Leverton seemed content to leave the matter unexplored and married the girl. This was a sort of paraphrasing of what had occurred in Glens Falls just a month earlier.

  Mr. Sackett told me this story was even better than the last. Then he said he had some very good news. He had placed my body-in-the-canal story and gave me my first payment: thirty-seven cents. He had quite generously rounded up the fraction of a cent.

  “Where will the story run?” I asked. “Was it the Pall Mall Gazette?”

  “No, not this go-round,” he smiled. “It already ran, in the Bacup Times.”

  “I don’t believe I’ve heard of the Bacup Times, or of Bacup, for that matter.”

  “Well,” he said, “it’s a modest placement, there’s no denying that. But there are advantages to a modest placement. You see, now I can continue placing the same story elsewhere. Whereas, if it had made it into the Pall Mall Gazette, the whole of England would have seen it already.”

  I suppose his reasoning was sound. Still, I felt a little silly telling Harry my first placement was in the Bacup Times. He asked me if this was a sister publication of the Hiccup Herald. Harry hadn’t had a chance to read either story, so now I told him all about them. He was very amused at the body-in-the-canal story and said it was destined to be a classic.

  However, the second story, having a Pink as hero, he took as a slap in the face. As I mentioned earlier, Harry despised the Pinks and considered anyone who didn’t share his view something of a traitor. A week or so later, I came up with the antidote story, about Mr. Worth, Robert Pinkerton’s friend, having his pocket picked in Pinkerton’s presence. Harry loved this story, and I was back in his good graces.

  We went through our three hundred dollars at a staggering pace. In three weeks there was nothing left and we were back on account at the grocer, butcher, and laundry. In Buffalo, my annual salary hadn’t been much more than that check. Harry’s work was still slow, so he felt he had no choice but to go back on the payroll at his former employer. He made an awful show of despair. Harry had a sort of religious prohibition against working normal business hours. As for my contribution to the family purse, Mr. Sackett paid almost enough to cover the fare I spent collecting my fee. And the season at the track was now over. It seemed obvious I would need to find a more remunerative way of augmenting our income.

  It was then that I first heard about Mrs. Holden’s little card parties. I was having coffee with Dorothy, our maid. Harry had hired Dorothy to come in three times a week, before we were married. And when he returned with me, neither of us had the heart to let her go. If I hinted that maybe someone else could better take advantage of her services, she went into a litany of sad tales about her family. The tales were so detailed that some of them may have actually been true, so I made note of them all.

  Well, on the day in question, I had brought home some pastries and was sharing them with Dorothy over coffee. I enjoyed chatting with her because she was acquainted with a side of Brooklyn of which Harry seemed unaware, the Brooklyn of policy shops and Raines Law hotels. She told me about her family’s adventures, and those of her friends, most of whom also worked as domestics. This led her to Nancy, a live-in girl employed by Mrs. Holden, just up the street at the Margaret.

  It seems that on two afternoons a week, while her husband was away at work, Mrs. Holden held card parties for her friends. But these ladies weren’t playing whist for five cents a hand, they were playing bridge for ten cents a point.

  I had been developing a certain skill with cards ever since meeting an associate of Harry’s named Mr. Schuler, back in Buffalo. I had every confidence I could come out ahead if I could just get invited to Mrs. Holden’s card parties. Dorothy suggested that if we made Nancy a confederate, she could find some suitably subtle way of letting Mrs. Holden know there was another willing attendee nearby. I gave her a few dollars to take Nancy out on her next evening off and that was all it took. A day later, I received an invitation from Mrs. Holden.

  Which brings me to the first visit of Mr. Noakes. This was sometime in the latter half of October. He was a young man, with sandy hair and a hurried way of speaking that sometimes made it difficult to understand
what exactly he was saying. That and his accent, of course. Mr. Sackett had given him my address and he said he was much relieved to find me at home.

  “You see—Mrs. Meegs, is it?” he asked.

  “Mrs. Reese,” I told him. “M.E. Meegs is just a pen name.”

  “Oh, yes, of course. Well, you see, Mrs. Reese, about a month ago, a body was found in the Rochdale Canal, in Lancashire.”

  “Are you friend of Harry’s?” I was certain this must be an elaborate scheme of Harry’s to have me look like a fool. He was convinced that I had a predilection for bodies in canals.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know Harry, Mrs. Reese. Is he an associate of Mr. Sackett?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Noakes, please go on.”

  “Well, let’s see, where was I? Oh, yes, this body was found when the police were coincidentally dredging that part of the canal for a missing girl, who, as it turned out, had eloped with a circus performer. This man, not the circus performer, the dead man in the canal, Arden Coombs was his name, was found with the pockets of his coat filled with stones. So, at first, the police assumed he had committed suicide by drowning himself in the canal.”

  “At first?”

  “Yes, you see, there was a large contusion on the side of Mr. Coombs’s head, and the doctor said it was most unlikely it had been caused by a fall. He also said Mr. Coombs had been dead no more than a day or two. In one pocket of the coat there was a newspaper clipping. It was barely legible but the police eventually determined it was a clipping from the Bacup Times. The editor told the police the story had come from a source here, in New York. It was your story, Mrs. Reese.

  “Well, the Lancashire Constabulary thought it highly suggestive that a man found dead in a canal carried with him an article about a man found dead in a canal. Especially now that it was determined that he’d been murdered. It was the only clue of any sort they had, so they contacted the Consul here for help. He assigned me to find out what I could. I contacted the authorities in Buffalo and soon determined that no such incident had occurred there, at least not in anyone’s memory. Bodies had been found in the Erie Canal, I was told, but none of the details matched the case in the clipping. I then learned the story came from Mr. Sackett. At first, he was reluctant to give me your address, but the Consul made a call to the police commissioner, and, well, here I am.”

  “I see,” I said. I hardly need to point out that the situation was an awkward one. I wasn’t sure how to approach the matter, but I decided to simply tell my tale and hope for the best. “Mr. Noakes, I’m sure you’re aware that newspapers sometimes take certain liberties with the facts in cases like this.”

  “Certainly, Mrs. Reese. You see, my father’s in the business. But in this case, which are the true facts?”

  “Well, there was a ring of opium smugglers, or at least there probably was such a ring. And a man was killed and his body thrown into a canal, or slip, more precisely. And he was very likely to have been involved in the smuggling ring, assuming it existed, of course. Though he was murdered for another reason entirely. And all that had nothing really to do with the other man, the one who never had a yachting accident.”

  “I see. And the names?”

  “All taken from the previous evening’s Brooklyn Daily Eagle.”

  “I see. Well, I suppose it could just be a coincidence.”

  “That seems very unlikely, Mr. Noakes. Are there any suspects?”

  “Well, I was only given a summary of the situation, but from what I gather, no, there aren’t. Apparently, Mr. Coombs was a well-respected, and well-liked, solicitor. He was an older gentleman and had already turned his practice over to his son, with whom he lived. There is no one who seems to have a motive.”

  “Have they determined whose coat Mr. Coombs was wearing?”

  “Whose coat, Mrs. Reese?”

  “Well, it hardly seems likely Mr. Coombs clipped my story. Unless he anticipated being murdered in this way.”

  “I see what you mean. I’m not sure if the police there have thought of that or not. I shall have to cable them your question, Mrs. Reese.”

  He assured me he would let me know if he learned anything new and then said good-bye. I decided not to tell Harry about Mr. Noakes’s visit. If I did, he would go on, in his jocular sort of way, about how I had been the cause of poor Mr. Coombs’s death.

  That same day, I got word from Mr. Sackett that he had placed the story about Leverton and the white slavers in the Leek Times and Cheadle News. Of course I didn’t relay this to Harry, partly because I didn’t want to suffer his wrath, and partly because I would have felt distinctly silly repeating the name of the publication.

  III

  For my next story, I used as a basis an episode that had received much attention in New York. A lawyer named Henry Zeimer had been operating what was termed a divorce mill. If a wife became tired of her husband, something not altogether unimaginable, she could hire Mr. Zeimer and he would provide a young lady to act as co-respondent in a divorce suit. They would subpoena this woman and she would, reluctantly, confess to having had relations with said husband. The husband could, of course, make denials, but then they always do. If the husband were suing for divorce, the same young lady might appear as a private detective, giving evidence against the wife. I told the story in the voice of this young lady. I had met many consummate actresses of this type at college and had much fun coming up with the details left out of the newspaper accounts. It turned out a little longer than Mr. Sackett would have liked, but he said he was sure he could place it somewhere.

  Mrs. Holden’s card parties had proved moderately profitable, at least until she confided that some of the other ladies were having suspicions about my “fancy work” with the cards. I took her caution to heart and after that my winnings became more modest. The attendees were mainly middle-aged, middle-class women who held conventional views on just about everything. I was generally able to get along with them, but apparently committed a faux pas when I asked if Mrs. Holden minded living across from the huge stables that occupied the opposite corner. She replied, rather emphatically, that this was the Brooklyn Riding and Driving Club, and not some common livery. I offered a contrite apology, but of course they smell just the same.

  My next story again came from the Eagle. A man claimed that he had been robbed of $1,800 by two women with whom he was having a conversation on Patchen Avenue, at three o’clock in the morning. This man was “well known among the fraternity of the Turf” and often carried such sums. What made this case so singular was that the money had been taken from a wallet in his trousers, and then the wallet returned, without him being aware until the next day. At least one of these women was a master gun, or dip, if you prefer that term. I credited her with a veritable crime wave.

  Mr. Worth, the friend of Robert Pinkerton, was also robbed by an unknown young woman. At least he was in my version of the event. I decided it would be more interesting if I made it the same woman. I chose an exotic name I’d seen on a shop window and paid tribute to her talents with an aristocratic title. And so it was that the Countess Consuelo Maria de la Salsiccia was christened, the scion of a noble Italian family.

  Then, just around the first of December, Mr. Noakes telephoned and asked if he could drop by that evening. He had received a letter from an Inspector Cropsey of the Lancashire Constabulary and wanted to share it with me. Over dinner, I told Harry all about Mr. Noakes’s previous visit. Ironically, he thought I was having fun with him. It wasn’t until Mr. Noakes came to the door that he seemed to comprehend the truth of it.

  I introduced the two of them and then Mr. Noakes sat down and read us aloud the letter, which follows.

  Dear Noakes,

  Please inform Mrs. Reese that she was correct about the coat. Mr. Coombs’s son had identified it as his father’s, and it was very similar. But after your inquiry, I looked into it further and it seems the elder Mr. Coombs’s coat was by a different maker. Mrs. Coombs, Arden’s daughter-in-law, insists the l
abel is not the same. Old Coombs’s coat, however, cannot be found.

  Now it seems even more likely that this is a case of murder. Unfortunately, I can find neither a suspect or a motive. Mr. Coombs was a widower of sixty-two years, exceptionally well liked by colleagues, family, and friends. The only mark anyone had against him was his poor choice of attire, hardly a motive for murder.

  The two usual motives, money and love, seem both eliminated. His estate consisted mainly of his well-established practice as a solicitor, which he had already turned over to his son. Beyond a few hundred pounds in the bank, his son isn’t aware of any other asset. There was a modest insurance policy, but his son spent more than that on the monument over his grave.

  As it happens, the deceased had been having a fling of sorts with a woman, but she is likewise widowed and I can find no one who held any objection to the affair.

  No evidence has been recovered at the canal, where the body was found. It had rained quite a lot the evening before it was discovered and there were no clear tracks apparent. It is a somewhat secluded stretch and there seems to have been no witness, though I still have to locate a canalman and his family who passed through that previous afternoon.

  For the lack of anything to the contrary, we are working on the assumption this was the work of a stranger, someone simply passing by, perhaps a robbery gone awry. However, that does beg the question of Mrs. Reese’s story being in the pocket of the coat.

  Please thank Mrs. Reese for her helpful suggestion. I will inform you if there are any further developments, as I imagine she will be curious to find out what role her story played.

  Regards,