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

by Robert Bruce Stewart

  She had devised two alternative strategies. Both would require the collaboration of the fickle Lord Dexter. And both would end with the impoverishment of Dowling—an outcome she’d only first considered the day before, but one which had grown so far in her affection it had become a prerequisite.

  The first strategy was to reveal the scheme in its entirety—including her own part in it—and then suggest she and Dexter collude to defraud Dowling. This plan held one minor inconvenience and one major risk. The minor inconvenience was that it would mean betraying the betrayal she had arranged with Cobb the previous afternoon. The major risk was that Dexter might prefer to expose them all rather than take a chance at what was likely to him a trifling sum.

  The second strategy was to persuade Dexter to help the destitute duchess get the better of the unscrupulous syndicate and its deceitful representative. This plan would take advantage of the groundwork already laid, but it entailed one minor inconvenience and one major leap of faith. The minor inconvenience was that it would mean not betraying the betrayal she had arranged with Cobb the previous afternoon—since his abetment would be essential—and therefore having to share the profits with him. The major leap of faith was the same one on which the original scheme depended: that Dexter accept the faux duchy as genuine.

  To decide between the two strategies, Mrs. Biddle had settled on a simple test of his lordship’s credulity. She would show him her deed.

  “Forgive me for intruding. But I find myself in need of someone I can trust.”

  “Well, don’t look for him on this boat. A damnable den of thieves.”

  “Have you been robbed of some valuable?”

  “A bracelet I bought for my daughter. A five-thousand-dollar Par-ee-shen bracelet. And a ruby tie-pin the girl gave me as a present. And a pair of cuff links, dills.”

  “Dills?”

  “Had pickles carved on them.”

  “Ah. How horribly exasperating for you,” Mrs. Biddle commiserated. “Perhaps I shouldn’t be bothering you about my dilemma.”

  “Hell, girl, my whole life is one long chain of exasperations. Nothing new about that. You go ahead and sit down and empty your soul.” Lord Dexter removed a stack of papers from a chair, but himself remained standing.

  “That man I’ve told you about, Dowling, he now tells me he will give me twenty thousand dollars.”

  “Doubled it that quick? Then you ought to ask for fifty,” he told her.

  “I could so use the money. But I can’t bear to part with this, my family’s legacy.” She reached in her bag and brought out the antiqued deed to the Duchy of Aquatique, then handed it to Lord Dexter. If he laughed out loud, she would as well—then execute strategy number one by telling him all about the scheme.

  His lordship did not laugh, but held the document tentatively, gazing upon it as he would a sacred text. He knew not a word of Latin, and the name Charlemagne brought no light of recognition. But he found the crisp, yellowed parchment and red-wax seal not just credible, but convincing. And when he sighted the geographically distorted map on the reverse, his snow-white eyebrows shot northward. Strategy number two it would be.

  “I feel certain this man Dowling and the syndicate mean to take advantage of my situation,” she confided. “I only wish there were a way to… I believe the expression is ‘to turn the tables.’”

  “Swindle the swindlers?” his lordship asked, the eyebrows temporarily inscrutable.

  “I hope you won’t find it presumptuous of me to suppose you might approve of such a course. It’s only… I’ve heard a rumor, and coupled with your mention of the cuff links—dills, of course… might you be a descendant of Lord Timothy Dexter?”

  “His namesake, even. You heard of him, have you?”

  “Oh, yes, of course. The Pantagruel of the Merrimack. You may count me among those who regard his Pickle the American answer to Tristram Shandy.”

  “Quite so, quite so.” His lordship couldn’t recall the question this Tristram fellow had posed, but he preferred not to reveal his ignorance before a Knowing One. “He cut that Shandy down to size. Yes, ma’am.”

  “What’s more, he was a man of commercial genius, and one who never hesitated to engage the hypocrites.”

  “Fought the hypocrites his whole life,” his descendant agreed. “Not to mention the damnable bloodsuckers.”

  “Indeed. That’s why I thought you might be receptive to helping me get the better of these… bloodsuckers.”

  Lord Dexter emitted a raspy cackle, while his eyebrows, having shed their apparent apathy, provided a visual accompaniment of wave-like oscillations.

  Assuming this to be an answer in the affirmative, Mrs. Biddle continued. “I wonder… Forgive me if this suggestion seems a foolish one, but I wonder if it wouldn’t help things along if I were to tell Dowling you had offered me fifty thousand dollars for the deed?”

  “Bid him up?”

  “Yes, but in the end, through some sort of sleight of hand, I manage to take his money, yet keep my legacy.” The lady now stopped to fan herself. “I wonder if we could continue our discussion on the promenade? It’s rather airless in here.”

  Mrs. Biddle knew it was Dowling’s habit to go for a morning walk, and it was important that he remain convinced that things were proceeding as planned. When they reached the open deck and she espied him some way off, she brought him to Lord Dexter’s attention.

  “Do you think we could give him a little performance? Let him hear you offer me fifty thousand dollars?”

  His lordship embraced the suggestion, and then delivered a quite respectable, if somewhat overly theatrical, performance. Histrionic eyebrows are an actor’s friends—but not when they step on his lines.

  II

  While her patroness was working her charms on Lord Dexter, Mélisande was attempting the same with Tomasz. He had arrived anticipating a private encounter with Lady Eleanor and was visibly disappointed to find instead the baby-tossing American widow he’d met that first night on the boat deck.

  “Excuse me, please. I must have the wrong cabin.”

  “No, no.” Mélisande pulled him toward her and closed the door. Then, by pressing her body against his, she herded him further into the room. Each time she sallied, he retreated. But given the confines of a steamship cabin, it took only half a dozen sallies to have him pinned beneath her on the bed.

  She had met resistance before, but strength of character has little chance against animalistic urgings when a shapely young girl has one pressed beneath her and is tickling one’s ear with her very capable tongue. When Tomasz broke out in a sweat, she took it as encouraging. When his face turned a purplish-red, she read it as an extreme form of passion. But when he began foaming at the mouth and moaning in a decidedly unromantic way, she recognized it as a seizure.

  She fetched a glass of water and began sprinkling his face. Soon he recovered enough to stumble to the safety of a chair, and not long after, the hyperventilating abated. But each time she came within a foot of him, the moaning began anew.

  “Are you sick?” she asked.

  “No, I don’t think so. But please, I am a gentleman.”

  Mélisande had no idea what bearing that had on the matter but was loath to show her ignorance. “Ohhh. I did not know.”

  “I came at the request of Lady Eleanor.” He took out the note she’d sent him and handed it to Mélisande.

  “Yes, yes. I know. But she asked me to see you. She is very busy.”

  “Are you her friend?”

  Mélisande emitted a noise signaling her ambivalence. “We travel together. She’s American also.”

  “I thought the duchy was in France?”

  “Yes, but she lives in America. Her grand-papa dies, she gets her duchy.”

  “What about her father?”

  “Dead.”

  “Indians?”

  “Ummm, no. He shoot his self.”

  “Suicide? Why?”

  “Because mother, she sleeps with grand-papa.�
� Mélisande had a knack for creating biographies.

  “Poor Lady Eleanor,” Tomasz said, shaking his head. “Do you know who it is who threatens her?”

  “Threatens her? No. Do you like her?”

  “Oh, yes. Very much. She is the most beautiful-looking woman I’ve ever met.”

  “Yes,” Mélisande agreed reluctantly. “But if you only look.”

  Tomasz hadn’t heard her addendum. “Do you think she feels the same about me? I mean, that she likes me?”

  “Oh, sure. Didn’t she send you a note?”

  “I’d like to send her one. Telling her how much I care for her.”

  “Why not?”

  “Would you help me to write it?”

  “Sure, OK. I am very good making love letters.” She cleared a space on the small table, then set out pen, ink, and paper. “I will tell you what to write.”

  Tomasz had hoped to use the specimen the German lady who smelled of lavender had handed him as a template. But when he translated the first paragraph for her, Mélisande dismissed it, holding her nose while making a sound of extreme distaste.

  “No, no. We do much better. Now, the object,” she explained, “is to nail the girl without giving her a chance to become acquainted or investigate.” This advice was taken directly from The Girl Proposition. She had known that someday Mr. Ade’s treatise on American romance would prove useful, but never expected it to be so soon. Luckily, she had circled the choicest bits so they’d be easy to find. Now all that was needed was to string them together. “This is what you will write: Dear Peacherette with the Kentucky Shape….”

  Here Tomasz stopped her to ask for clarification. She showed him the circled text and then they continued—she providing the vocabulary, and he adjusting the grammar—until finally arriving at this:

  My Dearest Peacherette, You of the Kentucky Shape,

  From the moment you crossed my pathway, I was stung in eight different places. You make Cleopatra look like Martha the sewing girl, and Venus arising from the sea, only squizzly old soap. You have a pair of incandescent headlights, a complexion like the sunset blush on a snowbank, and enough hair above for two girls your size.

  Dare I crave a word from those rosebud lips, and hope for a melting glance from those starlit lamps? I would very much like to execute a clutch swing into the slow and dreamy.

  The chickadees who chew gum on the trolley, and the mopey ones who wear wrappers and eat pickles, and the spindly ones in rainy day skirts, they are purty fair. But you make them look like the odds and ends of a rummage sale, in your exceptionally Gibson shirtwaist. I reach out my hot tentacles, O queen of the human race.

  The love microbe is all through my system. The fires of passion have got beyond control and it is time to call out the whole department. I want you so hard I look in the porthole of your boodwar at night and gnaw the palings of the front fence. It is the essence of googoo, double strength.

  Your omnibus of love…

  They read it aloud to each other several times and while Mélisande insisted it was the real Latin Quarter article, Tomasz felt sure it wanted for something—the something that the lover of the lavender-scented German lady had expressed so well in his very stimulating penultimate paragraph. Too embarrassed to attempt a translation himself, he showed Mélisande the German original. When it became clear its meaning was lost on her, he tried to convey it via complex metaphor—the word “vessel” taking the place of the principal referent. What resulted, after much confused input by his coauthor, was an ode to glassware. Tomasz added it as a postscript.

  “You will give this to your friend, the duchess?”

  “Oh, sure. I will give it to her.”

  “And tell her, I am always at her service. And that I love…”

  “Yes, yes.” Mélisande was beginning to find his misdirected devotion vexing. It was now past the hour of noon, so she hurried him on his way.

  Later that afternoon, while catching some sun on the boat deck, Mrs. Biddle encountered an anxious Dowling.

  “Enter into a conversation with me,” he whispered.

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “There’s an assistant purser who’s been watching me. Thrown me off my game—I had to leave the table.”

  “I don’t see why I should assist you in fleecing your fellow passengers at the card table.”

  “Don’t you? Well, if you want this scheme to come off…” He left his sentence unfinished, then changed the topic. “I heard Dexter offering you fifty thousand. I think it’s time now to arrange the auction. I’ll confront him and suggest it.”

  “No, it will be better if I tell him you proposed it. He needs to be handled very carefully.”

  An officer passed and eyed them, not at all subtly. Mrs. Biddle noticed Dowling tense.

  “So that’s your assistant purser? How did he know what you were up to?”

  “No idea. The fools at the table seem clueless. Well, I had better get back to it.”

  Mrs. Biddle was now left to her thoughts, and her first thought was not a pleasant one. It dated back to Dowling’s suggestion a few moments earlier that the success of the scheme somehow depended on his success at the card table. She could think of only one explanation: he did not have the four thousand dollars he had claimed or anything like that. And so, her reasoning continued, his checking of the bag wasn’t to keep his bankroll safe from the others, but to keep them from learning he had no bankroll. In all likelihood, the old buzzard knew Cobb was observing him when he sent it to the vault. Now he was frantically trying to raise the seed money. The money she had set her sights on. Once again, she would need to revise her strategy.

  I am sure, precious reader, that you will not be surprised to learn that Mrs. Biddle has deduced correctly. She is, after all, herself a virtuosa of deceit. And I hope you will find it in your heart to forgive me for having neglected to mention an episode that transpired three days earlier which sheds some light on the situation. It’s just that it’s been such a chore trying to keep it all straight. You honestly wouldn’t believe what I have to contend with. But this is hardly the place to voice complaints.

  It all began prior to Dowling and his lady friend, Céleste, leaving the Hôtel de l’Aigle. Céleste had never thought much of Dowling’s scheme, or, indeed, of Dowling himself. But she did think a great deal of his four thousand dollars. While Dowling was meeting with Mrs. Biddle in the hotel’s lobby, she was upstairs in room 517 replacing his four thousand dollars with cut-up strips of newspaper. Her plan was to board the tender with him, then exit at the last possible moment. When she had disembarked after approaching “Miss Duncan,” it was her intention to keep on walking, into the Gare Maritime and onto the 5:23 express to Paris.

  Because Dowling understood that Mrs. Biddle had engineered Céleste’s arrest, he didn’t realize that his money had been stolen until he opened his bag the next morning. And by then, they were well out to sea.

  My, my, what a tangled web of intrigues….

  6

  It was late on a grey, but calm, Sunday morning and Archie Cobb’s thoughts had fixated on the Vienna Café’s pastry cart. He’d just made his way through a small knot of Calvinists indulging in a service en plein air, which at that moment meant fog and drizzle, when he saw a man leaving the purser’s office with a small brown leather bag. A bag seemingly identical to that recently checked in by his confederate Dowling.

  This one belonged to the lavender-scented German lady. She used it as a travel case for the exquisite collection of jewelry her once-devoted husband had lavished on her—the very man who had just retrieved it from the purser’s vault. I say “once-devoted” because more recently suspicion had taken the place of devotion. He suspected his wife was having an affair with an artist of her acquaintance, and he further suspected written evidence of the affair had been hidden amongst her jewelry. He was correct on both counts, as he would have soon learned had he not been startled into dropping the bag by the first blast of the fog-horn.r />
  He turned to retrieve it, but just as he did his wife called to him. She was herself suspicious and had followed him up to the boat deck, though not in time to see that he had already taken possession of the bag.

  “What are you doing up here in the rain, my dear?” she asked.

  “Just getting some air—feels quite refreshing, don’t you think?”

  “But you’ll catch your death of a cold. Come back down, please. I’m so lonely by myself.” She took his arm and gave him a look he’d not once resisted in seven years of marriage.

  “You go, dearest, and I’ll be down in a little while. Just a few minutes more.”

  “Then I’ll stay with you….”

  They had reached a stalemate. He was afraid to reveal that he suspected his fetching little wife until he was sure his suspicions were warranted, and so dared not retrieve the bag a few feet behind him. She was afraid to leave lest he reclaim the bag she thought still in the purser’s vault, and her mad but doubtless transitory affair be exposed.

  Archie, however, was under no such inhibitions. The fog had thickened and he crept silently toward his prey. When the horn next blew and the lavender-scented lady jumped into the arms of her husband, Archie seized both moment and bag. In a quick succession of cat-like bounds, he crossed to the far side of the boat and made his way down to the upper cabin deck.

  There he came upon Mrs. Biddle just returning to her compartment. She looked down at the brown leather bag.

  “Dowling’s?” she asked softly.

  “No, but just like it.” Archie looked back over his shoulder. “Perhaps we can discuss it inside?”

  She led him in and closed the door. Seeing Eugenia fast asleep in her cradle, she looked in the bath and found Mélisande immersed in the tub. They exchanged a brief word, then she closed that door and turned to Archie with a finger over her lips.