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

  Inspector Reginald Cropsey, Lancs. Constabulary

  Mr. Noakes left us soon afterward and Harry and I spent the rest of the evening, and many subsequent evenings, pondering the strange circumstances of Arden Coombs’s death.

  It was about this time I had my big haul at Mrs. Holden’s. I was particularly proud of it because it was achieved almost exclusively by bluff. I won over two hundred dollars that day, but of course could say nothing to Harry about it.

  That same evening, Harry flew into the apartment like an excited child and shouted, “Tontine!”

  “Are we speaking a foreign tongue this evening?” I asked.

  “Emmie, don’t you know what a tontine is? And you a college girl.”

  “All right, Harry. What is a tontine?”

  “A tontine is a kind of primitive insurance fund, combined with a sort of lottery. And while it has many flaws as a financial scheme, as a literary device…”

  “What is it, precisely?”

  “Well, it can take many forms. But in our case, suppose a man like Arden Coombs wants to provide for his years of dotage, or perhaps he has a wife he cares for and wants to see that she has a comfortable widowhood. But what holds him back is that he might die before his dotage. He will have saved for nothing, especially if his widow was of the quarrelsome variety.” He smiled, but I was impassive. “Well, what if he teams up with, say, two dozen of his fellows. All of about the same age, say forty. They all agree to put money into this fund, invest it, and then, in a set amount of time, say twenty years, distribute it to those who survive, with maybe third shares going to widows.”

  “Third shares?”

  “Emmie, I’m not responsible for the attitudes of hypothetical Englishmen towards their wives. Now, the actuarial tables would tell you that 37.4% of these men will die in the intervening twenty years.”

  “37.4%?”

  “Yes, give or take a tenth of a percent. So the 62.6% who survive will receive a sum at least 50% larger than they would have if they had depended on their own savings.”

  “Assuming no widows are allowed to survive.”

  “Apparently, they were all invalids and died tragically young.”

  “So you are suggesting that perhaps Mr. Coombs was a member of such a tontine and the other members conspired to kill him so they would receive a slightly larger share?”

  “I spent most of the afternoon on this, Emmie, and I have a scenario Mr. Stevenson himself would have to admire. Say there were only nine or ten men in the tontine. And say the men making the investments had chosen particularly well. Then, through pure chance, they suffer an unusually high mortality rate. So there are only two or three left as the date for the distribution approaches.”

  “So now each death would mean a much greater share for the survivors.”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “But why wouldn’t Mr. Coombs’s son know about the tontine?”

  “Well, say our culprit, Mr. Highbottom, was the one charged with monitoring the investments of the tontine’s trustees. Perhaps, years ago, he led Mr. Coombs to believe that most of it had been lost in one panic or another. Mr. Coombs, being a fairly prosperous and good-natured fellow, simply put the tontine out of his mind.”

  “Why cry over spilt milk? I see.” In fact, I had to go over it in my head once more before I did see. “Yes, that is a marvelous plot, Harry.”

  “I thought you’d like it. You can consider it your Christmas present, Emmie.”

  “I was hoping for something a little more tangible.”

  “There’s always hope, Emmie, when all else is lost.”

  I telephoned Mr. Noakes and suggested he ask Inspector Cropsey about the possibility of a tontine. He said he would and would let me know what response he received.

  Harry’s teasing me about my Christmas present had given me an idea. Harry had inherited a watch fob from a great uncle of his. In the locket, Harry had found a ticket from a Manhattan pawnbroker, which he assumed to be for the watch itself. A few years later, when he moved to New York, Harry looked up the pawnbroker, but the watch had been auctioned long before.

  Harry loved to wear his watchless fob. If someone asked him the time, he would pull out the fob and say, “Good Lord, I’ve been robbed!” Although sometimes, he would take the ticket out of the locket and tell a tale about having to sell the watch to pay for the fob.

  We’d only been married a few months and I’d grown weary of both versions. So I used part of my winnings from Mrs. Holden’s to buy him a very respectable antique watch. Then I had a truly wonderful inspiration. I had an inscription made, which read:

  Signor Reese,

  I am returning your uncle’s watch, as the Count says Mr. Worth’s keeps much better time.

  The Countess de la Salsiccia

  The week before Christmas my mother arrived. She didn’t think much of Dorothy’s and my efforts at keeping house and spent much of her visit cleaning. One morning, while I was out shopping and she was disassembling the stove, Mr. Leverton stopped by and asked for M.E. Meegs. She told him there was no one by the name of Meegs residing here, and he apologized. When mother told me about it, of course I assumed it was some friend of Harry’s. But he came a second time a few days later, and this time left a card. I was at Mrs. Holden’s, and he interrupted mother giving Dorothy instructions on cleaning the crevices between the floor boards. I was relieved, because I had decided not to contact Mr. Leverton. If he was displeased with my story, the interview would be unpleasant. If he was pleased with it, he was liable to give me some attention that would upset Harry. I don’t mean out of jealousy, but because of his antipathy for all things Pinkerton.

  We had promised to take mother to the Christmas High Mass at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral—only later learning it began at four-thirty in the morning. It was truly impressive, and even Harry pronounced it quite a show. After the mass we returned home and had a large breakfast. Harry gave me my new typewriter and a copy of The Wrong Box. I presented him with the edition of Vanity Fair which commemorated Mrs. Fiske’s production of the play based on the book Becky Sharp. We gave mother a very colorful print of St. Patrick’s.

  Then Harry went down for a nap and I was able to take the opportunity to attach the watch to his fob without waking him. Later, I prompted mother to ask Harry the time. My memory of Harry’s expression when he found the watch on his fob is one I will always treasure.

  “Oh,” I said, “has it turned up?”

  “Yes,” he smiled, “apparently some kind soul has redeemed my heirloom.”

  “Do check the inscription, Harry, to make sure there’s been no mistake.”

  Though Harry enjoyed my joke immensely, I hadn’t solved the problem as I had intended. Harry now loved to pull his watch out, show the inscription, and tell the long tale behind it, beginning with his uncle’s demise and ending with the story of Mr. Worth’s robbery in the presence of the despised Pinkerton. All I had achieved was to turn his wearisome joke into a tedious anecdote.

  IV

  A few days later, we returned to the apartment from putting mother on the train to find Mr. Noakes waiting for us. He had had another letter from Inspector Cropsey. He read it aloud:

  Dear Noakes,

  You may tell Mrs. Reese that she was correct. There was a tontine. Michael Coombs, Arden Coombs’s son, found a record of it while going through his father’s papers. But since his father’s death rendered the family’s position moot, he thought it of no consequence. Yet it does seem likely the murder of Arden Coombs is tied to this tontine in some way, even if how remains for now a mystery.

  Thirteen men entered into the tontine in 1876. The accumulated investments of the group would be distributed to the surviving members in twenty-five years. However, if at any time all but one of the subscribers had passed on, the lone survivor would receive the funds immediately.

  By last March, there were three survivors. Then Mr. Seymour Whitley, one of the three, died of heart failure. There was nothin
g suspicious about his death, but we are looking again at all the evidence. This left only Mr. Coombs and a Mr. Joseph Brayton.

  I found that Brayton had visited the area of Rochdale not long before Mr. Coombs’s murder, though he had an alibi for the time of the murder itself. To my mind, this indicated that Brayton had entered into a conspiracy with someone close to Mr. Coombs. And, indeed, that proved to be the case.

  I confronted Mr. Brayton and told him it would likely end with him charged with murder. This was enough to compel him to tell his fantastic tale. It was, he says, Mr. Arden Coombs whom he had visited, at the latter’s summons. Coombs proposed that they draw lots, with the loser agreeing to disappear. And to do so in a way that would lead the authorities to presume this man was dead. Falling overboard on a cruise was mentioned as a possibility. Then, when the apparent sole survivor collected the tontine’s fortune, he would divide it equally with the other, who would be living somewhere in seclusion.

  Brayton insists he saw Coombs’s proposition as a symptom of senility, but went along with the game to humor him. Coombs lost, and agreed to undertake the subterfuge. Brayton insists nothing was said about the details of the plan, only that Coombs would find a means of contacting Brayton after he had received the payment.

  When Brayton heard of Coombs’s death, he suspected that he had succeeded in his ruse. But the thought that Coombs had killed another man in order to use his corpse troubled him. He went to Coombs’s funeral and in paying his respects discovered that the dead man was in fact Arden Coombs. This is all on the word of Brayton, and he could offer no evidence, beyond his own testimony, that it had taken place as he described.

  It was a far-fetched story, but I thought I would see if any arrangements had been made by Arden Coombs that might indicate there was some truth in it. I could find nothing. Then it occurred to me to check on Mrs. Brinker, the widow I believe I mentioned earlier. She and Coombs had apparently been quite close for several months.

  As it turns out, Mrs. Brinker had made certain arrangements. She had rented a cottage in Cornwall in the name of a Mrs. Chesterton, for her husband and herself. How I found the evidence of this, I’d rather not say. But when I confronted her, she confessed that she and Coombs had planned to live in this cottage until they had acquired their share of the fortune from Brayton. Mrs. Brinker insists Coombs never confided how he planned to enact his death. She thought he meant to merely disappear, perhaps leaving a note indicating suicide.

  I believe I have come upon a solution. Suppose Mr. Coombs had decided that merely disappearing wouldn’t be conclusive enough. He decided a body would be necessary. Then he read Mrs. Reese’s article about using submersion to obscure the nature of a murder. He planned to find some tramp about his own age and size, kill him with a blow, and submerge him in the canal. In time, this body would be indistinguishable from that of Coombs. If he left his own watch and jewelry with the body, it would be assumed it was Coombs’s. There are several potential flaws with this plan, but perhaps they never occurred to Arden Coombs.

  But something goes awry during the execution of the plan. The tramp is able to defend himself and during the struggle, Coombs is bludgeoned. The tramp, knowing his story will not likely be believed, sinks the body in the canal and leaves the district. Since there is nothing else to go on, it may be necessary to leave it at that.

  In the meantime, Brayton has laid claim to the tontine’s fortune and there seems no reason that he won’t receive it in full. If by some chance there is a new development, I will write again.

  Regards,

  Inspector Reginald Cropsey, Lancs. Constabulary

  Again we were left with a mystery to ponder. Though we had no solution ourselves, Harry and I agreed that the Inspector’s was most improbable.

  The next day was New Year’s Eve. In fact, the eve of a new century. The celebrations were elaborate and long-lasting. There seemed to be a sense of optimism that infected everyone. It was while watching the fireworks from the bridge that I came upon my own answer to the riddle of Arden Coombs’s death. I once again contacted Mr. Noakes and had him relay a question to Inspector Cropsey. I was sure the answer would be the key to solving the mystery.

  While I was giving my attention to the important matter before us, Harry, as was often the case, had spent his time dwelling on some trivial detail. He came home one evening with the air of self-satisfaction he bore all too frequently.

  “There are no caves on Long Island, Emmie,” he said through a superior grin. “I consulted an authority: the entire coastline of Long Island is flat. You’d be much more likely to find caves along the Hudson.”

  “I hardly think it likely the subscribers of the Leek Times and Cheadle News have such a keen appreciation of the topography of Long Island that they will notice my indiscretion.” Of course, Harry had to concede my point and that put the matter to rest.

  As they so often do, some of the city’s nobles, including the editors of the Eagle, had declared a war on vice. The chronicles of their crusade, which had begun the previous fall, provided M.E. Meegs the basis for a whole series of stories. I was handicapped, however, as Harry was too cautious a sort to take me to any of the various “resorts” receiving attention.

  I’d been using my winnings from Mrs. Holden’s to supplement the household budget, giving Harry the explanation that my remunerations from my work as M.E. Meegs had increased substantially. So I was pleased when Mr. Sackett began sending me clippings of my stories and I had some material evidence of my work. But I was sorely disappointed at how they had been truncated by the graceless editors involved.

  It was one evening when we were both at home that we finally heard from Mr. Noakes. That was about the fifth or sixth of February. This was just a couple weeks after the death of Queen Victoria and Mr. Noakes was still wearing a crepe band of mourning. Once again, he came bearing a letter from Inspector Cropsey, which follows:

  Dear Noakes,

  Please give Mrs. Reese my hearty thanks. Her question proved to be the key and we now have unraveled the conspiracy. I will begin by going back to June of 1898. That is when a Miss Alice Hooper married Arthur Mulvihill, a member of the tontine and a man thought to be quite wealthy. She was his junior by some twenty years. In March of 1899, Mr. Mulvihill’s business interests suffered a major reversal. Six months later, he was killed in his home when he confronted a burglar, who was never apprehended.

  Though there was evidence that a burglary had taken place, there was also some contradictory evidence. The local inspector had some suspicions regarding Mrs. Mulvihill, but there was no clear motive. They had few assets left at that time and without her husband’s income, she was in a somewhat precarious position financially. Afterward, she moved in with a widowed sister some distance away.

  Then, as I mentioned in my earlier letter, Mr. Whitley, one of the last three subscribers of the tontine, died of heart failure in March 1900. This left only Arden Coombs and Joseph Brayton.

  As you have no doubt already surmised, Mrs. Mulvihill and Mrs. Brinker are one and the same. In addition, I have learned that she visited Mr. Whitley at least twice not long before his death, presenting herself as Mrs. Mulvihill, the widow of his old friend.

  She has now confessed to her involvement, but insists that it was all Brayton’s scheme from the very beginning. She says he contacted her sometime after her husband lost his fortune. He told her of the tontine and that there were just four members left. Even by her own account, it wasn’t difficult for Brayton to persuade Mrs. Mulvihill to join him in his scheme. He then helped her to stage the burglary, and he actually struck the blow that killed Mulvihill.

  Later, she says, Brayton provided her with some sort of drug that induced Whitley’s heart failure. With Brayton’s backing, she then moved to the Rochdale area and contrived to meet Arden Coombs. She was now posing as Mrs. Brinker. She is a woman of just over forty years, and still attractive, so she had no trouble gaining the attentions of Mr. Coombs.

  Then, s
he says, Brayton visited her and she showed him the story by M.E. Meegs in her local newspaper. He insisted he would need an alibi, since the motive of the tontine would so clearly direct suspicion at him. He told her she would have to perform the act. She says she demurred, but he threatened to expose her to Coombs, and that would certainly have brought the law down on her, while he would be safe, as he had been careful to avoid leaving any clue to his involvement. Feeling trapped, she did as she was told. She led Coombs on a walk along the canal. When she was sure they were unobserved, she took a spanner from her coat pocket and hit Coombs with such force he was rendered unconscious. Then she filled his pockets with stones and rolled him into the canal, just as Brayton instructed.

  Brayton, of course, tells a different story. He says he had never heard of Mrs. Brinker, or Mulvihill, until he received a letter about a fortnight before Coombs’s murder, just as he had said earlier. But now he admits the letter came from Mrs. Brinker, saying that there was a confidential matter of mutual concern about which she wished to confer with him. He visited her, as requested, and she laid out the scheme. She would kill Arden Coombs, if Brayton would give her half of the tontine. He says he was shocked at her plan and left immediately. When asked why he didn’t report the matter to the police, he gave an unconvincing explanation about the trouble it would cause him.

  He says that the day after he read of Coombs’s death, he received a visit from Mrs. Brinker, but under a different name. She informed him that she had switched coats with him when he visited her cottage. It was his coat Coombs was wearing when he died. Brayton hadn’t noticed any difference, but when he checked, he realized this was the case. He remembered now that during his visit, Mrs. Brinker had contrived to spill something on his coat and took it into another room to sponge it.

  He explained that he now felt compelled to go along with her scheme. She provided him the story that it was Coombs who had contacted him and offered a conspiracy, which is the account he gave me originally.