A Charm of Powerful Trouble (A Harry Reese Mystery Book 4) (14 page)

Just then I saw her being helped out of the baggage car by the smiling attendant.

“There you are, Harry. Shall we be on our way? There’s no telling where that conductor may be lurking.”

We went out to the street and then up to the L.

“He sent you to the baggage car?”

“No, I believe he never saw me. But when I saw
him
, I took refuge there. The fellows were upset that I left them when I was so far ahead, but I told them I heard my baby crying. Then I met Mr. Purdy in the baggage car.”

“He didn’t object to you entering his sanctum?”

“No, not at all. I let him win a few hands and he was most agreeable.”

We arrived home late that evening, just as Carlotta and Thibaut were doing the same.

“Still no sign of Nell?” I asked.

“NO, but
at
least
you
FOUND EmMIE.”

In the dining room, we found a note on the table.

My Dears,

Please forgive my behavior, but there are times when one must take the bull by the horns. Mr. Ainslie and I have decided to elope and we were afraid you’d make that difficult. Do forgive me for the knock on the head, Harry. I hope you’ll make a quick recovery.

Aunt Nell

“What on earth does that mean?” Emmie asked. “Did she know Ainslie?”

“She only said she’d seen him onstage. But come to think of it, she did become pretty melancholy after she heard the name. Maybe they were lovers back in Buffalo?”

“Ain’t that romantic,” Carlotta said. “Maybe Thibaut and I should elope.”

“You and Thibaut?” Emmie asked.

“A lot’s happened since you left, Emmie. Thibaut and I have a great act going. We’re working the Theatre Unique, over in Williamsburg. We go on just before the Dainty Paree Burlesquers. It’s the prime spot. By the way, what happened to your hair?”

Having kept it as a souvenir, I pulled the braid Emmie had made for me from my pocket. Carlotta looked at me, then at Emmie, then back at me.

“We’re working on a knockabout act with a Chinaman we met on a canal boat,” I explained.

Before Carlotta had time to query her further, Emmie gave a mannered yawn and said good night. I did likewise and followed her to our room.

The next morning I met Xiang-Mei Chen, the girl Lou Ling had been reunited with on Lake Champlain.

“Sooo
very
pleased to meet
you
, Mr. Reese!”

“And I’m pleased to meet you, Xiang-Mei.”

She was an exceptionally attractive, shapely woman, on the far side of twenty-five, but probably not over thirty, with a wide smile that seemed perennially on the point of laughter. She spoke English well, but always with an oddly placed emphasis and exaggerated enthusiasm that verged on the comedic. Her wardrobe was a stylish amalgamation of the traditional Chinese and the contemporary American, and she wore it to advantage. From Emmie’s account of her having been raised by missionaries, I had pictured a younger, more modest girl. But then, I’d never been to a Chinese mission.

While she helped Emmie prepare breakfast, I phoned Detective Sergeant Tibbitts to let him know he could call off the search for Nell and Ainslie.

“Yeah? Well, the truth is I never got around to it.”

“Didn’t I say it was urgent?”

“And now you’re telling me it was all horse. It’s a good thing for you I forgot about it. I did you a favor.”

“Very thoughtful.”

I said good-bye and was about to hang up when he stopped me.

“Wait a minute. You were there the night that actor got shot, at that sham Chinatown.”

“Yes, and Emmie and I’ve been hired by the producer of the sham to resolve the matter. Is that your case now?”

“More or less. You going to be around this morning?”

“I suppose so. Do you wish to consult us?”

“I could have you dragged over here if you want.”

“No, don’t go to the trouble. We’ll await you here.”

I hung up. Then we sat down to breakfast with our guest.

“Is Lou Ling here?” I asked.

“
Noo
, the farmer must go to work
very
early.”

“Did you have a difficult time getting here from Plattsburgh?” Emmie asked her.

“Oh,
nooo
. We had a
very
pleasant journey on the
steam
railroad. Quite okay.”

“I just spoke to Tibbitts,” I told Emmie. “He’s coming by in a little while. He may be working our case now.”

“What are you going to tell him, Harry?”

“We could just tell him the whole truth. That would certainly set him back some.”

“We can’t tell him Lou Ling is staying here. They’d arrest him.”

“And us, probably. No, we’ll just tell him Lou Ling made off to Plattsburgh.”

“And Xiang-Mei?”

“The
police
will come here?” Xiang-Mei asked.

“Yes, but don’t worry,” Emmie assured her.

“We’ll just leave Xiang-Mei out of the story. And if he sees her we’ll say we hired her as our maid.”

“Oh, I will be a
very
excellent
maid!”

“I’d be careful what you ask for, Xiang-Mei,” I said. “This place hasn’t had a good cleaning since July. I dropped a dime on the floor this morning and it stuck.”

Half an hour later, Tibbitts showed up. He was a good deal brighter than the average cop, and at least marginally more honest. Though I imagine an audit of his accounts could prove embarrassing. He was about my age, but taller, and blonder, and had the cop’s knack for never looking credulous.

He asked us to tell him all that had happened. Emmie did the talking, telling him only the most pertinent facts and almost nothing he probably didn’t already know. The sole exception being Lou Ling’s flight northward on the canal boat.

Tibbitts listened attentively. But with that little smirk cops like to exhibit when they’re feeling skeptical.

“So you think this Lou Ling is hiding at his uncle’s up in Plattsburgh?”

“Well, that was his intent,” she said. “I can’t imagine where else he’d be able to find refuge.”

“Yeah. Well, I can have that checked pretty easy.”

“Why is it you’re taking over the case from Sergeant Eckel?” I asked.

“It looks like this shooting might be linked to one of mine. Did you read about a fellow named Twinem getting killed last week? Same night as yours.”

“Yes, we did come across that. You think Ernie Joy was the killer of Twinem?”

“Maybe.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “Well, I’ll give you the whole story. We got a report 10:15 that night that there was a shooting at the Cosmopolitan Hotel—that’s over at Chambers and West Broadway. The boys go over and find this fellow shot dead in his room and his wife all hysterical. They can’t get anything that makes sense out of her, but the clerk says they checked in just that evening, around eight. Then the shot came just after ten. Lots of people heard the shot, but no one realized what room it came from until Mrs. Twinem screamed from her door a few minutes later. Our boys searched the room and couldn’t find a gun. No one was seen going in or out of the room, but then no one was watching it.

“In the morning, I got the case and went and talked to the wife. She told me someone came to their room about ten. Her husband was expecting someone and let him in. But then this other fellow drew a gun and shouted, ‘Where is it?’ ‘You’ll never get it,’ he says back. Then the fellow shot him dead. He searched the room and found a manuscript that Twinem had hidden, put it under his arm and ran down the fire escape.”

“And this fellow was wearing the red and yellow plaid jacket?”

“Yeah. Only at the time, I didn’t know about the other shooting.”

“What was the manuscript?” Emmie asked.

“Twinem taught at a college, up in Syracuse. His book was about one of Shakespeare’s plays. The one about the mouse.”

“The one about the mouse?” Emmie asked.

“
The Taming of the Shrew
,” I said. “I have a copy.”

“You have a copy of
The Taming of the Shrew
? When did you start reading Shakespeare?”

“I’m not the cretin you make me out to be, Emmie. I’ve a lot of Shakespeare under my belt.”

“Is that where you keep it?” she smiled.

“This happens to have been a gift. A fellow I went to school with presented it when he heard I’d married. I expect to begin the program any day now.”

“Fat chance,” she muttered. “Sergeant, doesn’t it seem rather odd that someone would shoot a man just to get hold of a rarefied work of scholarship?”

“Yeah, but wait ’til you hear the rest. The Twinems had been staying at the Victoria, up on 27
th
Street, then took a room at the Cosmopolitan that evening. A big step down. Not a lot of college professors stay at the Cosmopolitan. But she says it was just so her husband could meet a man about his manuscript. Then, when he gets shot, she goes back to the Victoria.”

“Why were they in New York?” I asked.

“She says so her husband could show someone his book. But she doesn’t know who. The whole story sounds like bunk. My first theory is that she checked into the Cosmopolitan with her lover, the husband surprised them there, one of them shot the husband, and the lover fled.”

“That would explain a great deal,” Emmie said. Then she glanced at me.

“Yeah. But I had the clerk brought to the morgue to look at the body. He said he recognized Twinem. And it was Twinem who checked in at the Cosmopolitan.”

“Did someone else verify that it was her husband who’d been shot?” I asked.

“Yeah, I thought of that. His brother came over from Jersey. It was Twinem alright. I asked him about the manuscript, too. He’s another professor. Teaches chemistry. He said he’d seen it but it was all nonsense.” He looked down at his notebook. “Called it ‘
obscurum per obscurius
.’”

“Obscure by obscure?”

“My wife says it’s a rhetorical fallacy. It means trying to explain the obscure with the even more obscure.”

“Your wife?” I asked.

He held up his ring finger—as if a wedding band could explain a policeman’s wife interpreting Latin phrases for him, or their discussing rhetorical fallacies at the dinner table.

“But what was it about?” Emmie asked.

He looked down at his notebook. “The title is
What Species Kate?
”

“What species?”

“Yeah.” He read further: “Sorex araneus
or
Crocidura etrusca
: Would a shrew by any other name screech as shrill?
”

“He was speculating on what species of shrew Shakespeare was referring to,” I said. “The common shrew of northern Europe, or the Etruscan shrew endemic to Italy, where the play takes place. My money is on the former. Shakespeare wasn’t a man concerned with details. And his grasp of geography was only slightly better than Emmie’s.”

Tibbitts looked at Emmie.

“Harry is a font of obscurum,” she told him. “What a wonderful conundrum you’ve brought us, Sergeant.”

“I haven’t come to the best part. Later that next day, she calls me back over to the Victoria. ‘There’s one thing I forgot to mention, Sergeant. There was a second man, a Chinaman. He did the actual shooting. Then he held the gun on me while the other man took the manuscript.’”

“And you think she’s telling the truth?” Emmie asked.

“No, of course I don’t think she’s telling the truth. She had described the killer to us already and never mentioned he was a Chinaman. She must have read in the paper that Ernie Joy was shot by a Chinaman a little after her husband was shot.”

“But why would she change her story?”

“Obviously she wanted to make sure we linked the two shootings. I took her ’round to see Ernie Joy’s corpse and she swore it was the man who took the book.”

“Did you check on Lou Ling’s whereabouts at the time Twinem was shot?” I asked.

“According to the other farmers, they were catching crickets out there on Bowery Bay until about eight. Then he got to Yuan’s place about nine-thirty. They might be lying, but the Twinem woman definitely is. Anyway, I still need to find this Lou Ling. And the gun he used. I’m going back out to the farm on Bowery Bay after lunch.”

“You’ve been up there already?”

“Twice. I took that Jimmy Yuan with me to talk to the Chinamen. But I couldn’t find out anything. They told me Lou Ling left town last week and insisted they didn’t know where he went. You want to go out to the farm with me?”

I agreed to meet him at Hunter’s Point at two. Just then there was a knock at the door and Emmie let in our friend Willie, the lad who trucked produce for the Chinese farmers in Queens.

“I picked up the lotus seed paste,” he told her.

“Lotus seed paste?”

“Yeah, I was told to pick it up in Chinatown and bring it here.”

“Yes, of course. Let’s take it into the kitchen.”

While she escorted him there, Tibbitts looked at me quizzically.

“It’s great on toast,” I said.

I let him out, and Emmie returned.

“Apparently Xiang-Mei requested it,” she told me. “This explains everything, Harry.”

“The lotus seed paste?”

“Don’t be a gink. I mean the sergeant’s story. Ernie Joy was Mrs. Twinem’s lover. Her husband surprised them at the Cosmopolitan with a gun. There was a struggle, he was shot. Ernie fled and joined the tour just to make sure he wasn’t followed.”

“But it was the husband who checked in.”

“For goodness’ sakes, Harry. Ernie Joy was an actor. It would have been nothing for him to play the part of the husband.”

“I suppose so, provided they were of about the same build. But that was at eight. Wouldn’t he have been at the theatre?”

“His turn was in the second half of the show. And remember, the girl at the boarding house told us he left the theatre before ten o’clock.”

“So your theory is that Ernie Joy plays the husband, checks into the Cosmopolitan, runs up to the theatre to do his show, then comes back to the hotel. It makes no sense.”

“Why?”

“If they were meeting at the Cosmopolitan for a tryst, why would he pretend to be the husband?”

“Well, perhaps they lured the husband there with the intention of killing him.”

“Why come up with such a convoluted plan?”

“I don’t know yet. But remember how he acted when he joined the tour on Park Row? He jumped on the wagon as if in a panic. And he was especially anxious to get inside the warehouse. For him, the tour was simply a means of escape.”

“I suppose that would explain it. But if they had planned the thing together, why did she call Tibbitts back with the story about the Chinaman? Why wouldn’t she have left well enough alone?”

“I have a theory about that, too. Vengeance.”

“Vengeance?”

“Yes. She hated Lou Ling for having killed her lover. But if it were proven to have been an accident, he wouldn’t be punished. So she wanted to saddle him with an indisputable murder.”