Always a Cold Deck (A Harry Reese Mystery Book 1)

by Robert Bruce Stewart

  “Yes, Mason.”

  “That’s not Mason. Your detective circled the wrong man. That’s Charles Elwell.”

  “You’re kidding me. Are you sure?”

  “Yes, Miss McGinnis is certain it’s her uncle.”

  Livingston had us meet him at the morgue, where Emmie confirmed it was Elwell who had taken the bullet. The skinny detective showed up and explained how he hadn’t marked the photograph until after he had visited the morgue. By then he wasn’t positive which figure Emmie had pointed to. But since the dead man matched one of them, he assumed that that had to be him.

  We went back to the Colonel’s office and explained who Elwell was, how he had disappeared, and what Emmie’s and my connections to him were. But something seemed a little odd to the Colonel.

  “If you’ll pardon me for bringing it up, miss, you don’t seem very upset at finding out your uncle has been murdered.”

  “Well, you see, I already suspected something along those lines. I was just a little early.” Emmie wasn’t making things any clearer. But at least she didn’t bring up the fact that her family’s coffers were greatly enriched by the murder.

  “What she means, Colonel,” I explained, “is that there was reason to believe the accident on the lake had been staged. Which meant it was staged either by Elwell, so he could take up his life elsewhere, or by someone who had killed him, in order to cover up the crime. Miss McGinnis favored the latter explanation. So, while she hadn’t anticipated this particular scenario, she was fully prepared for this outcome.”

  I wasn’t sure I had done any better than Emmie at enlightening the Colonel. He sat open-mouthed for a minute or so. Then he ushered us out, saying he could think more clearly if we were someplace else. I could see his point. We headed outside and I felt sure Emmie would be chagrined about our banishment. I was wrong.

  “This is probably for the best, Harry. I’m not sure the Colonel could be much help to us now.”

  “Couldn’t he? What course do you recommend?”

  “That we proceed in finding Sadie, naturally.” She had taken the map from me back at the Queen’s and was now setting a course for the nearest hotel. “You were right, Harry. Things did work out.”

  “Well, I guess they have for Aunt Nell. Your uncle’s death is now confirmed.”

  “Yes, but for you, too. This means Robert Mason is still at large.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” I agreed. “But I have no idea where.”

  At the American House, I was elected to make the inquiry. There was no Miss Sharp, but there was a Mr. and Mrs. Sharp. This was good enough for Emmie. She took over.

  “Yes, you forgot she married this spring, Harry….” Emmie caught her faux pas a few seconds too late. And she missed three others entirely.

  The clerk looked perplexed. “Mrs. Sharp, along with her husband and their three children, is spending the day on Island Park.”

  As we left, I tried to console Emmie by pointing out the children may well have been from Mr. Sharp’s prior marriage.

  At the Rossin House, a noticeably grander hotel, it was Emmie’s turn to venture forth. She asked the clerk if either Joseph Sedley or Rebecca Sharp was in. Unfortunately, the clerk’s literary tastes ran similar to Robert Mason’s.

  “Sadly, the Nabob’s party left for Belgium just an hour ago,” he said with a sardonic smile. “They’ve gone to wish the Iron Duke every success on the field, and if all goes well, they may be returning before the month is out. Is there any message, Mrs. Osborne?”

  Here was a man with a biting wit stuck in a position that demanded tact bordering on obsequiousness. It was probably the first time in months he’d been able to voice his true thoughts and he made full use of the opportunity.

  15

  We left the Rossin House in silence and walked rather aimlessly for a while. When we came to a cafe, I suggested we take a rest and order something cool. Emmie looked like she could use some cheering up, so I tried a dose of the usual.

  “There’s one thing I neglected to tell you, Emmie. About Keegan.”

  “What?”

  I told her about Keegan’s note saying he would be in town and how the clerk said he had sent his bags to the station. She made a miraculous recovery.

  “What do you make of it, Harry?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “He wanted to lead you in the wrong direction.”

  “Or maybe he just changed his mind after writing the note,” I said. “You know, Emmie, there is one aspect of all this that doesn’t make any sense to me. Your uncle died carrying papers that identified him as Joseph Sedley. But we know Sedley had been sending postcards from Montreal, and elsewhere, long before your uncle disappeared. And if your uncle had created a second life here, why was he still corresponding with Sadie?”

  “Uncle Charles did travel a great deal. And maybe he was still smitten with Sadie.”

  “Yes, I suppose that must be the case.”

  Our lemonade arrived. A cold beer would have been more appropriate. No doubt there were dozens of places around Toronto where liquor could be had on Sunday—if you knew who to ask. Emmie had taken her little notebook out and throughout my ruminations was alternately reading and making notations.

  “You know, Harry, there is one explanation that would fit the facts nicely. Suppose Mason killed my uncle.”

  I pondered this for a bit. “And then switched identities with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Emmie, I think you have it. We need to go back to the Colonel’s.”

  “Why?” Emmie asked. “Don’t you think we can solve this ourselves?”

  “Well, he does have a police force. That might come in handy.”

  Emmie finally agreed and we walked back over to the police station. The Colonel kept us waiting outside his office for quite a while.

  “Aren’t you glad now I forced you to stay, Harry? If I’m right, it means Mason was in Toronto after all. You wouldn’t have known that if you’d left.”

  “Yes, Emmie, I’m in your debt,” I granted. “But did you say ‘forced’ me to stay?”

  “Well, let’s say ‘persuaded.’”

  When the Colonel did finally call us in, he didn’t seem altogether pleased to see us.

  “I thought you’d be off to Buffalo by now,” he said. “I hoped, anyway.”

  Emmie took no notice of his ill humor. “Colonel, I believe Mason shot my uncle and then switched identities with him. It’s the only way to explain why Uncle Charles was carrying Sedley’s papers.”

  “How so?” he asked.

  “You see,” Emmie explained, “Sedley had been Mason’s alias for several years, but he must have decided it had been compromised. He knew Mr. Reese was looking for him. He confronted my uncle and threatened to expose him unless he came through with some real money.”

  “Isn’t that a reason for Elwell to have shot Mason, rather than vice versa?” the Colonel reasonably asked.

  Emmie’s pause was a little long, so I piped up: “Elwell knew Mason well enough to know he would never be left alone as long as Mason was alive. So perhaps he shot first, but only wounded him. That was the bullet you found in the sill, and the blood there was Mason’s. Then Mason shot Elwell in defense. Unfortunately for Elwell, Mason was a better marksman. Then Mason must have left with both guns.”

  The Colonel stared at me for a while, and then said, “I suppose that would explain the second shot, and the multiple identities, but surely that’s an awfully roundabout way of explaining it. I mean, one man traveling under an alias kills another man traveling under an alias, then switches aliases. It sounds like a… I don’t know….”

  “Dime novel?” Emmie suggested.

  “Yes, exactly,” he agreed.

  “Mrs. Redstone should be able to confirm if her husband had been traveling to Montreal,” I pointed out. “Sedley checked out of a hotel there just Friday morning. In the meantime, you might put out an alert on Robert Mason, traveling as Lester Redstone.�
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  Emmie brought out the photo and we confirmed which was Mason. But the photo was old and neither of us had ever met Mason. Nonetheless, the Colonel sent out what information he had.

  “What about Whitner, Colonel?” I asked.

  “He caught a morning train to Montreal. I have a man on the train with him.”

  “Is there a Queen’s Hotel in Montreal?”

  “Yes, I believe there is.”

  “Can you have someone there check to see if Mason or Sadie Parker has been there yesterday or today?”

  “Yes, but why?”

  This required a recounting of the story of the postcards. Then I went over all the possible aliases Mason and Sadie might be using.

  “My God,” the Colonel stared at me again. “Do you know, the last murder I worked on was a man shooting his wife’s lover. That was all there was to it.”

  After the Colonel made the inquiries to Montreal, we all went out again. This time to speak to Mrs. Redstone at her home, 212 D’Arcy Street. We now knew that Whitey’s notation must have been the address. This was a more modest house than the Elwells’ Buffalo home, and in a more modest neighborhood. Elwell must have decided to keep a low profile. Mrs. Redstone’s parents were there and tried to prevent us from seeing their daughter, but the Colonel insisted. She was a thirty-year-old woman, with a face distorted by tears.

  “Please tell me, Mrs. Redstone,” the Colonel began, “about your husband’s trip to Montreal last week.”

  “Last week? My husband was here all of last week.”

  “Did he travel to Montreal?”

  “Up until this summer, my husband traveled frequently. Sometimes to Montreal. Sometimes to New York. He was often gone for weeks at a time. But he had recently retired from that work.”

  “I see. But this past week, you’re sure he didn’t go to Montreal? Even for a day?”

  “We had all our meals together. I don’t see how it would have been possible.”

  “Has your husband had any visitors recently?” I asked. “I mean, besides the man who came last evening about renting the office. Anyone you never met before?”

  “Earlier yesterday evening a man called at the house. He asked if this was the Redstone residence. But he was looking for a tall, young man, whose first name he didn’t know. I told him that it couldn’t be my husband he was seeking. He apologized for bothering me and went away.”

  I asked Emmie for her photograph, and then showed it to Mrs. Redstone, making sure to obscure Elwell’s face. I pointed to Mason and asked if that was the man who had come looking for a tall, young man. She took the photo from me, picked up a pair of eyeglasses, and went over to a window.

  “Yes, I think that was the man, but I only saw him for a minute or two. Why is the word ‘Mason’ written under Lester?”

  “That was our mistake, I’m afraid,” the Colonel confessed.

  “Who are these other men?”

  “Former business associates of your husband’s,” I answered. She handed me back the photo.

  “Was your husband home when this man stopped by?”

  “No, he came home not long afterward. He’d gone in a carriage to pick up my parents for dinner. They arrived about seven. We had dinner and then shortly after Lester excused himself and said he needed to meet a man about renting an office.”

  “Did he leave in a carriage?”

  “No, he had hired the carriage just for my parents. He walked over to Queen Street, as he normally did. Then, maybe ten or twenty minutes later, that other man stopped by and said he was to meet Lester about renting the office. So I gave him the address and directions there.”

  We offered Mrs. Redstone our condolences and then left without telling her the truth about her husband and his business trips. She’d have to find out from the newspapers like everyone else.

  “So that first man to visit the house last evening was Mason?” the Colonel asked.

  “Apparently,” I said. “Mason would have arrived here on Friday. I assume he knew somehow that Elwell was living in Toronto but only had the surname Redstone. Perhaps Sadie Parker had given him that information.”

  “So he visited Mrs. Redstone and asked for a tall, young man,” Emmie said. “Then when she told him her husband was neither tall nor young, he assumed it was Uncle Charles. Is that it?”

  “Yes, something like that,” I answered. “Then he could just wait out of sight until Elwell came home. But when Elwell returned in the carriage with his wife’s parents, Mason had to wait until they left. Then he had a stroke of luck, when Elwell left to meet the man about renting an office. Mason either followed him to the office or approached him outside the house and they walked to the office together. They went up, talked some, probably argued, and then had their shootout.”

  “But what about the man who wanted to rent the office?” Emmie asked. “Wouldn’t he have been there as well?”

  “Maybe he never showed up,” I suggested.

  When we arrived back at the Colonel’s office, he left us in the hall while he made some phone calls.

  “Do you think Whitey was sent to warn Uncle Charles that you were looking for him?” Emmie asked.

  “Yes, apparently Conners and your uncle were still in contact. Conners must have given Whitey instructions before we left Buffalo, but he didn’t have an address. Somehow he found that out in the course of the afternoon and wired it to the Queen’s Royal Hotel.”

  “What was the E for? If you make 212 D’Arcy out of the code, you still have an E.”

  “Maybe it was there to confuse prying eyes.”

  “Ha-ha. You don’t think he could have been involved in the murder? The Colonel doesn’t seem to think so.”

  “Not unless he shot it out with your uncle, left with the guns, hid them, and then returned to lead the police to the crime. I can’t see Whitey coming up with something so convoluted. He’d have to count on no one seeing him the first time he entered the building, on his exit, or when he was hiding the guns.”

  “What if he just tossed the guns out the window and never left at all?”

  “Then why was he seen entering after the shots? And there’s also the papers in Sedley’s name.”

  “Yes, I forgot that,” she admitted. “That was my own feeling, too. I mean that Whitey wouldn’t kill someone. I know he’s a sort of tough guy, but I don’t think he’d kill someone in cold blood.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t be too quick with the testimonial. Maybe he would, and maybe he wouldn’t. Men with his background tend to have a liberal definition of justifiable homicide. It might include the killing of someone causing him an inconvenience. Nonetheless, I don’t think Whitey fired any shots.”

  “You know, the Colonel is right. This has gotten a little complex. Did you expect to find my uncle here in Toronto?”

  “I was hoping that Mason and Sadie were meeting to confront your uncle. I felt sure your uncle had set something up in another city and I assumed it couldn’t have been too far from Buffalo. And I seem to have been right. Imagine if I had been there before the shots were fired. I would have had them both.”

  “But you aren’t armed, and they both were.”

  “That’s a good point. I appreciate your concern for my well-being, Emmie.”

  “Well, if Uncle Charles had shot you, he probably would have been discovered. And where would that leave Aunt Nell?”

  “Destitute. I see. But you would also feel some loss over my death?”

  “Oh, I should think so.” She paused, then added, “I might never see my fifty dollars again.”

  “What an odd sense of humor you have, Emmie.”

  Just then a detective came down the hall escorting Sadie Parker. She was directed to a seat opposite us and gave me a friendly smile.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Parker,” I said.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Reese.”

  “No talking, please,” her escort cautioned.

  A little while later, Sadie was led into the Colonel’s office
. And a little while after that, we were. We sat down and the Colonel looked over at me.

  “Miss Parker says she came here to meet Elwell, as he was Joseph Sedley.”

  “Really? Why did she leave Buffalo Friday evening on an eastbound train?”

  “I took the night train to Albany, and yesterday I traveled from there to Montreal. Then I caught the train this morning in Montreal,” Sadie said.

  “That’s a pretty roundabout route,” I said. “Where’d you spend last night?”

  “At the Hotel Balmoral, in Montreal.”

  I hadn’t expected her to answer that with such alacrity. “Can you check that, Colonel?”

  “Yes. In what name did you register?” he asked.

  “Oh, I don’t even remember. I just made something up. Stevens, I think. Mrs. Stevens. Or maybe it was….”

  “Sharp?” I offered.

  “No, I don’t think it was,” Sadie answered.

  “Where were you to meet Elwell?” I asked.

  “At the Queen’s Hotel.”

  “You had met him at the Queen’s Hotel here before?”

  “Yes, once or twice before.”

  “Did you know about his family here?”

  “Yes. But you see, my relationship with Mr. Elwell was no longer….”

  “You were no longer his mistress?”

  “No longer as intimate as it once was. We were simply old friends.”

  “Old friends conspiring in an insurance fraud?”

  “I don’t think I should say any more. Am I under arrest, Colonel?”

  “No, but you’ll need to stay in town. Will you be registering at the Queen’s?”

  “Yes, you can find me there.”

  She left and the Colonel sent a man to watch her. I suggested he also monitor any communications she might receive. Then the plain-clothes man who had brought Sadie in spoke up.

  “You know, sir, I didn’t so much spot her at the station as she spotted me.”

  “How do you mean, Rawlins?” the Colonel asked.

  “Well, I was looking for someone leaving, not coming. So I was watching from a place everyone getting on the train would have to pass. She must have come off the train and passed me. Then she turns and looks straight at me for a second or two and asks me if I know where the Queen’s Hotel is. But she just said she’d been there before.”