Mrs. Merrill cast one of her contemptuous looks at the countess. But the countess just laughed.
“My dear, do not even think of ever crossing me.”
Thomas led Mrs. Merrill out the second door.
“I think we have a very prosperous future ahead of us, Frau Gräfin,” Easterly announced.
“Yes, Mr. Easterly, I think you’re right. But please use ‘My Lady.’”
“Aren’t you at all worried Mrs. Merrill will begin spreading rumors about your past, My Lady?” I asked.
“Oh, we’re counting on that,” Easterly explained. “You see, if you want to impress a congressman from Kansas, a countess is more than sufficient. But for the cynic from Philadelphia, you need something more. What better than a mysterious past?”
“What about the other items I took from Mrs. Merrill?”
“The letters? Mr. Easterly suggested if we discreetly return them to their authors, out of the goodness of our hearts, it will be worth more than Mrs. Merrill could have hoped to get through blackmail.”
“Good will—it’s worth much more than mere money,” Easterly added.
“Mr. Chappelle told me you’d given Mrs. Spinks a French inn.”
“As part of our trade. It’s a wreck, really. But near the sea, and in a place where they’ll be free from the torment they’d receive here.”
“Yes, I’m afraid they’d find it pretty tough,” Easterly said.
“Love seems to be in the air. Elizabeth is heading to Bangkok to take a position as a governess. She’s following that British fellow, Cox.”
“Oh, good. She deserves to have her heart broken.”
“You think the omens are bad?”
“I would bet one thousand dollars—and give odds—that this young man requested the move to Bangkok just to get away from her.”
“That hadn’t occurred to me. But he did seem the type. Makes a habit of enforcing petty rules at the billiard table. Perhaps we should warn her?”
“And spoil the fun?”
In the meantime, Easterly had reached for a decanter and poured out four sherries. He handed one to both of us and set the last beside the senator.
“To the future!” he said.
We all toasted, even the senator, stirring long enough to quaff his portion.
“Now I suppose we must face your Emmie,” the countess said. She opened the door and Emmie charged in, followed by Tibbitts.
“Where is she?” Emmie asked.
“Who, dear?” the countess answered.
“Mrs. Merrill.”
“Left, I’m afraid. Through the other door.”
“You had it wrong, Emmie,” I told her. “It was the general who bought the poison. He visited Pomerleau and poisoned him. Didn’t the sergeant tell you?”
“I told her, but she didn’t like it enough to believe me.”
“She was up to something, Harry. I found out she was in New York that same day. And the other night, at the ball, I saw her with the general. They were each holding a glass of champagne. Then Mrs. Merrill dropped her handkerchief and the general gave her his glass to hold while he picked up the handkerchief for her. But then she handed back the other glass.”
“Did you see her put anything in it?”
“No, but we can assume she did. And champagne would be the perfect drink, it tingles just like aconite.”
“Do you have the letter from Pomerleau threatening the general?” I asked Tibbitts.
He handed it to Emmie and she and the countess read it together.
“Where’d you find this?” Emmie asked.
“Alice Sachs found it in her father’s hand. She hid it before calling the policeman. Presumably, Mrs. Merrill had this letter. Then when she was in New York, she read about Pomerleau being poisoned. She either learned the general was in New York at the time, or perhaps she just guessed. And then she threatened to expose him.”
“Unless he turned over his profits from the deal,” Emmie added.
“I imagine so. Do you remember I told you I’d seen her leaving the Sachses’ that first day we arrived?”
“Yes.”
“The subject of the interview must have been blackmail. The general decided it was worth ten thousand dollars not to be hanged and, the night of the ball, he signed her contract. Then in return, she gave him the letter. So what reason would she have to kill him?”
“What about her switching drinks at the ball?” Emmie asked.
“I wonder if Mrs. Merrill isn’t more clever than I thought,” the countess said. “Here is the general, plagued by a blackmailer, and with a bottle of poison nearby. He offers to get her a glass of champagne. But he has also underestimated her. His solicitude makes her suspicious—perhaps she saw him put something in her glass. So she contrives the switch. I’ll need to be careful with her.”
“Well, then he killed himself just the same,” Tibbitts concluded.
“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” Emmie agreed.
“Poor Emmie. Come along and I’ll make it up to you,” the countess told her. “Harry, your wife will meet you at your hotel later. You and the sergeant may go.”
The two of them went off.
“You and the sergeant may go?” Tibbitts asked.
“She likes to remind people she’s a countess. Come on, let’s go get a drink.”
25
We’d been inside only a few hours, but what had been a cool afternoon had already turned into a very cold evening.
“Where should we go?” I asked Tibbitts.
“My hotel. The Shoreham. Nice place.”
“You moved to the Shoreham?”
“The doctor insisted. He’s having the bill sent to him,” he said. “Might as well get my money’s worth.”
“His money’s worth, you mean.”
“You don’t mind drinking on his dime, do you?”
“No, no. I’m broad-minded about these things.”
We took a car down to the hotel and while we were crossing the lobby, Tibbitts stopped me.
“Hey, I was thinking of giving the papers the story. That way I can get my name in it. You see, if I wait until I get to New York, my captain will make sure he gets all the credit. Do you think I can get any of the New York boys to come by?”
“Let them know the drinks are free at the Shoreham and you won’t be able to beat them away with a stick. I’ll make some phone calls.”
The Syracuse Herald was out, but a goodly sampling of New York papers—the Journal, World, Tribune, and Sun—all expressed interest in attending.
“All set,” I told Tibbitts. “You better have a story ready.”
“I’ve already got it worked out in my head.”
“Any truth in it?”
“Sure, the general killed Pomerleau. But the rest is too complicated. I’ll just say he took a dose from the wrong bottle and killed himself.”
When we entered the barroom, just a minute or two later, the Sun was already waiting for us. And before the first round was served, most of the others I’d called had arrived to join the party. By the second, so had the Louisville Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, and Buffalo Evening News.
Tibbitts’s account left out most of the characters—including myself. Not to mention the burglaries, the land purchase, and Mrs. Merrill’s extortion. It was the kind of succinct, easy-to-follow story that readers of dime novels prefer, told in the undemanding language they can understand—with Tibbitts in the role of Nick Carter. But I didn’t begrudge him taking all the credit. It would have complicated my arrangement with the syndicate if he hadn’t. I suppose the only person who could have a legitimate complaint about it was the doctor. He’d be footing the bar bill.
When I finally got back to our room at the Normandie, Emmie was in the bath. I sent down for a late supper and we had our own celebration.
“You don’t seem too disappointed about missing the chance to finger the murderer, Emmie.”
“That was just a whim. But I did achieve my original
objective in coming.”
“The countess agreed to let you write her biography?”
“Yes, with certain provisos.”
“Such as?”
“Well, I am to write the story of Madame B____, international jewel thief, and only allude to her evolution into the countess.”
“And she’s willing to share the details of the thefts?”
“No, that was the principal condition.”
“Sounds like a rather dull book.”
“Oh, there will be plenty of detail. She just insists I use my imagination.”
“So yours will be an authorized, fictionalized biography?”
“Yes. But I imagine the only biographies that are authorized are those that are fictionalized.”
“I see what you mean. What sort of fool would approve of someone telling the truth about him?”
“Yes, and this way I won’t be restricted by banal realities.”
“I wasn’t aware you’d ever allowed yourself to be restricted by banal realities, Emmie.”
“The world forces itself on all of us.”
“Not the countess, so much. The timing of the count’s death seems suspiciously fortuitous. I believe her arrangement to swap abodes with Mrs. Spinks was inked well before the count encountered that chicken bone.”
“Oh, it isn’t the timing alone that’s suspicious. You see, there was no chicken.”
“I thought you told me he’d choked to death on a chicken bone?”
“Yes. During dessert.”
“What was dessert?”
“A Charlotte Russe.”
“How did they explain that?”
“They couldn’t. So they fired the embassy’s French chef.”
“Poor fellow.”
“Oh, the countess hired him immediately for her new home.”
“It’s almost as if it’d been planned out in advance.”
“Yes. Very much like that.”
“You don’t feel any compunction to solve that crime?”
“I prefer to think of it as a miraculous coincidence.”
“Quite miraculous. But that’s probably the safest attitude to take. I wouldn’t want to cross swords with the countess.”
“No. And I think she’ll prove a valuable ally.”
“Ally?”
“Friend, if you prefer.”
“You two aren’t up to something I should know about, are you?”
“We are not ‘up to something’ and if we were, I can’t imagine what reason there’d be for you to know about it.”
I took what little reassurance I could from that.
There was no reading that night and late the next morning we took a cab to the Pennsylvania depot. We were just handing our bags over to a porter when a policeman arrived on the scene. There were three clues that this was not an authentic policeman, and my subtle detective’s mind grasped them at once. First, he was wearing the costume I’d worn a few nights before. I recognized a tear on the sleeve I’d received while dragging O’Conner downstairs. Second, he spoke only broken English in a thick German accent. And lastly, he bore a striking resemblance to the countess’s driver, Thomas. He informed us that a valuable brooch of the countess’s had gone missing and asked to search our luggage. He started with mine, and it wasn’t long before he came across the countess’s book. He put it in his jacket and shook his finger at me.
“Schämen sie sich,” he admonished.
I was feeling pretty sore from the previous night’s studies, so I wasn’t overly upset at the loss. How it was that he recognized the book one can only guess. Then he turned to Emmie and asked the blushing belle for the key to her trunk. I was a little surprised how readily she complied.
I could tell Thomas’s heart wasn’t in his work, but he was doing a pretty thorough job of it anyway. At least, until the second cop showed up. He was suspicious of this unfamiliar colleague and began questioning him. The last we saw of Thomas, he was running up Sixth Street with the genuine cop in close pursuit.
“I hope he makes it,” Emmie said.
We packed our things back up and the porter took them away. Once inside the depot, I left Emmie and went off to buy our tickets. When I returned, she had on a decidedly odd expression.
“What’s the matter? Leave something behind at the hotel?”
“No, it’s just that I would have sworn I just saw Elizabeth leave the station.”
“I thought she caught an afternoon train yesterday?”
“Yes, it must have just been someone who looked like her. But even the coat….”
They called our train and once we had boarded, Emmie took off her own coat. She was wearing the brooch.
“It’s a good thing Thomas didn’t just ask you to open your coat.”
“Oh, I didn’t think that would be very likely.”
“You anticipated his coming?”
“I knew the countess was still upset I’d gotten the better of her. Then last evening she asked if I had a safe place to put the brooch. I told her there was a secret compartment in my trunk. That seemed to please her more than it should have. So I suspected she’d try to get it back, one way or another.”
It was a pleasant ride home. It always is when I’ve been successful. But this time even more so. Usually I need to wait weeks, or even months, to receive my payment from the insurers. This time I was going back with close to two thousand dollars in my pocket. At lunch in the dining car, I brought up Elizabeth again.
“I’m trying to imagine someone turning over their children to your old school chum, Emmie.”
“Oh, forging credentials would be the work of a moment for Elizabeth. And the children are twelve and fifteen. I have a feeling girls of that age will take to her.”
“You mean, take to being corrupted by her?”
“All children have to be corrupted sooner or later. Better by a sympathetic governess than a selfish lover.”
“I suppose that’s true,” I agreed. “But I never would have guessed Elizabeth would be the type to chase some officious ass half-way around the globe.”
“You’ve certainly developed an animus for this Cox fellow, Harry. Is it really only because he caught you cheating at billiards?”
“It isn’t cheating, Emmie. It was a friendly game of billiards. No normal man would stoop to enforcing a trifling rule like that. Suppose you were playing a friendly game of cards and someone misdealt. Would you insist they forfeit the hand?”
“That would depend.”
“Depend on what?”
“Well, if we were playing for money, and it was a close match, then yes, I would. But if I was trying to rope in a mark, then no, I would be magnanimous.”
“You really don’t know the meaning of a friendly game, do you, Emmie?”
“Oh, I’m always friendly about it, Harry.”
It started snowing just as we passed into New Jersey. This was only a week or so before Christmas, and Emmie’s mother arrived a few days after we got home. She left shortly after New Year’s, and a few weeks after that, Emmie received a letter from Bangkok.
All in all, it had been a satisfying, and enriching, case. The only thing troubling me was that Emmie began a regular correspondence with the countess. Her remark about their being allies had left me cold. Emmie is extremely adept at absorbing knowledge from people willing to impart it. I remember one afternoon on the New Haven, coming back from Providence. Emmie went into the parlor car a competent card cheat and came out a master.
Not that I could picture Emmie ever becoming as ruthless as the dowager Countess von Schnurrenberger und Kesselheim. In comparison, Emmie’s scheming seemed pretty benign. Still, I never again ate Charlotte Russe without first probing it with a fork.
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
The End
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
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If you’ve enjoyed this book, I hope you’ll take a look at the others in the series:
The Harry Reese Mysteries
A Charm of Powerful Trouble
Kalorama Shakedown
Crossings
Always a Cold Deck
Emmie Reese Mystery Short Stories
Psi no more…
Hidden Booty
The Birth of M.E. Meegs
For more information on the books—including a glossary, list of characters, maps and chronology—please visit my Web site at: StreetCarMysteries.com
Kalorama Shakedown (A Harry Reese Mystery) Page 22
