Bedelia Read online

  “In the name of God, why?”

  “You’ll see soon enough. The new wife turned out to be a peach. In a week Mrs. Keene confessed that she was just as glad they’d lost out on the daughter of the Stock Exchange. Everyone loved Maurine . . . that was her name . . . Maurine Cunningham. At the whist club she was a howling success and all the ladies gave luncheons for her. Will Barrett had never been so happy in his life and he’d tell his brother every day what a wonderful woman his wife was. She was a wonderful wife, jolly, affectionate, even a good cook. They took one of those furnished hotel apartments, but Maurine wasn’t satisfied with the equipment, she was always buying new pots and dishes. Sometimes Will would work in the Minneapolis store at night, and Maurine used to come and sit on a stool in the prescription room to keep him company. On the way they’d stop in some garden or rathskeller for a glass of beer. Will was fond of his beer.”

  “I fail to see why you’re telling me all this,” Charlie interrupted. He was pounding his fists against the frame of the couch, preparing to strike a more satisfying blow. “Let me tell you this, Chaney, if you’re trying to avoid my questions . . .”

  “Keep your shirt on,” Ben ordered. “I told you there was a reason for my telling you this story. You’ll understand soon enough, maybe too soon for your own peace of mind.”

  “All right, but hurry. I don’t care for the trimmings. The domestic life of the Barrett family sounds pretty dull. What happened anyway?”

  “It was in March that he married her. Early in June there was a druggists’ convention in Chicago. The Barretts decided to make a holiday of it and take their wives along. They took a train to Duluth and there boarded a lake steamer. While they were sitting on a deck, a man came up to them. ‘How are you, Mrs. Jacobs?’ he said. They thought he was crazy, but he looked straight at Maurine and went on, ‘I always knew we’d find you. I’ve got some good news.’

  “She seemed utterly bewildered. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t know you,’ she said. The man asked if he wasn’t addressing Mrs. Arthur Jacobs of Detroit.

  “Will said, ‘You must have made a mistake, this lady is my wife.’ The man apologized and said he hoped he hadn’t offended anyone. There happened to be a remarkable resemblance between Mrs. Barrett and Mrs. Jacobs. This wasn’t extraordinary, it happens to everyone, and they thought little about it. Late that night, when the others had gone to bed, Keene Barrett was taking a walk on deck and this man took a turn with him, and told him why he was so disappointed at not finding Mrs. Jacobs.

  “He was an insurance agent and Arthur Jacobs, a jeweler, had been his client. Jacobs died and his wife collected around fifty thousand dollars. There were a few fees and assessments and costs deducted. Later on it was discovered that someone in the bookkeeping department had made an error and the company still owed Mrs. Jacobs two hundred and fifty dollars. They tried to communicate with her, but she had moved without leaving a forwarding address. The insurance company, knowing how much criticism is directed at the corporations these days, wanted to pay every cent it owed to any beneficiary, and asked this agent, who had originally sold Jacobs the policy, to find her. No one knew where she was, neither Jacobs’s people in Detroit, his lawyer, nor any of his friends.

  “As he remembered Mrs. Jacobs, the agent said, she seemed lighter in coloring than Mrs. Barrett, but since Mrs. Barrett had been wearing a hat, he might have been mistaken. Keene thought the whole thing a fake, for the man insisted upon giving him his business card, and it looked like an insurance agent’s trick to strike up an acquaintance. On his way back to his stateroom, Keene tore up the card and scattered the pieces over the rail.”

  Ben paused and poured himself another drink. Charlie winced. He was sick with impatience.

  “After they returned from the convention,” Ben continued, “Will rented a summer cottage on the shore of Lake Minnetonka. The Barretts were outdoor men, fond of boating and fishing, and winter sports, too, skiing and snowshoeing. Maurine wasn’t so fond of sports, but Will enjoyed teaching her to swim and sail. She enjoyed the country, though, insisted on doing her own housework, and when Will was in the city at his work, she’d bake cakes and sew and read novels.

  “One Saturday the Keene Barretts came out to have dinner with Will and Maurine. Will drank a few bottles of beer and got sort of jolly. He wanted them to go out for a sail in his canoe. Mrs. Keene was horrified. She told Will that he must not, in any circumstance, take Maurine canoeing late at night in her condition.”

  For the first time Charlie showed an interest in the story. “She was pregnant, too?”

  Ben nodded. “Will got angry at his sister-in-law for scolding and said the sail had been Maurine’s idea. They often went canoeing at night. Anyway, as the evening progressed, Will got drowsy from the beer and nothing more was said about going out on the lake. At eleven the Keene Barretts left. Maurine was tired and said she’d be asleep in five minutes.

  “The next thing Keene Barrett heard, his brother was dead. In the morning Maurine had run a quarter of a mile to the nearest neighbor’s, pounded on their door and asked for help. Her husband had disappeared, she said. His bed hadn’t been slept in all night. The neighbors and his sons came back with her. One of the boys saw the canoe floating on its side. They found Will’s body under the pier. It looked as if he’d tipped over while getting into the canoe, had fallen into the water and had been caught between the posts. That could have happened to a man used to boating if he’d been drowsy and fuddled after too much beer.”

  Ben waited then for Charlie to say something.

  Charlie cleared his throat. “What about the wife?”

  “She collapsed. Keene was cut up about it himself, but he and his wife felt it their first duty to look out for their brother’s widow. Financially Maurine was provided for. Will had taken out a thirty-five-thousand-dollar life insurance policy. The amount staggered Keene. It was a big load for Will to have carried. The drugstores were prosperous, but they cost a lot to run and the brothers’ incomes were mostly from the salaries they drew. Still, Keene was glad that Maurine and her unborn child would be taken care of and there’d be no burden on him.

  “About six weeks after Will’s death, Maurine decided that a change of scene would take her mind off the tragedy and went to visit an aunt in Kansas City. She’d given up the cottage and had been staying in St. Paul with the in-laws, and she left a lot of stuff in their attic, pans and fancy dishes, winter underwear and her fur coat. The whole family took her to the train. She kissed them fondly and there were tears in her eyes when she thanked them for their kindness.

  “That was the last they saw of Maurine.”

  “What! You mean they never saw her again?”

  “Never.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “They had a couple of letters, one written on the stationery of the Mühlbach Hotel, and one written on the engraved paper Charlie had bought her from one of the salesmen who sold gift stationery to the drugstore.”

  “You said Charlie.”

  “I meant Will Barrett.”

  “The room’s getting chilly,” Charlie said, and turned on the radiator. “I’ve been keeping the fire high on account of my wife’s cold, but it got too hot down here and I turned off the heat.” Steam hissed through the pipes.

  “One day,” Ben went on, “Mrs. Keene said she was worried about Maurine. The poor girl had borne the shock bravely, but her nervous system might have been affected more than they thought. Mrs. Keene called the family doctor and asked when Maurine’s baby was due. The doctor said he hadn’t known she was pregnant. Not that it wasn’t possible. He’d taken care of her for a nervous collapse, but there’d been no trouble on the other score so he hadn’t made an examination.

  “Keene got to worrying about it then. He wired Maurine at the Mühlbach. His telegram was returned with the information that Mrs. Barrett was not at the hotel. Keene sent another wire, asking if she had left a forwarding address and was informed that she had never
been registered there. They were holding mail for her, however. This turned out to be mail from Hazel and Keene Barrett.

  “Time passed. Keene tried to keep his wife from worrying by saying that Maurine was careless and lazy, and some day she’d surprise them by wiring them to meet her at the railroad station. She’d want her winter things and the fur coat she’d left behind.

  “One day, when Keene was cleaning out his desk, he came across an envelope containing the stubs of the stateroom reservations from the Chicago trip. He showed them to his wife, who cried and remembered how happy they had all been and wondered if poor Maurine had been killed in a streetcar or railroad accident and been buried without identification in some potters’ field. To Keene the ticket stubs brought back another memory; the insurance agent, the story of Mrs. Jacobs, and the curious similarity of the two cases.

  “He wrote the insurance company and asked if they had the address of the widow to whom they had recently paid thirty-five thousand dollars. A few days later he was visited by two men, one the vice-president and general manager of the insurance company and the other a private investigator.”

  “Go on,” Charlie said.

  “Keene had not mentioned the Jacobs incident in his letter, but the insurance people connected it at once with Maurine’s disappearance, and told him of another case in Memphis. These stories had certain points in common with the story of Will Barrett’s courtship, marriage, and sudden death. McKelvey, the Memphis man, died of ptomaine poisoning after a fish dinner. His wife had eaten a warmed-over chop, as she had always disliked fish. Several of McKelvey’s friends and relations remembered that, when they went to the Peabody Hotel for those famous frogs’ legs or red snapper, she ordered chicken or pot roast. There was no autopsy. Too many people have died from eating bad fish.

  “Jacobs, the Detroit husband, fell asleep in the bathtub and was drowned.”

  “Indeed,” said Charlie.

  “McKelvey, the first husband on our list, was a newspaper editor who had gone to Asbury Park for a summer holiday and there met a charming widow named Annabel Godfrey. Jacobs met Chloe Dinsmore on a train bound for the Kentucky Derby, took a cinder out of her eye, and told her how to place her bets. His people were pleased with the marriage, although they were Jewish and the bride a Gentile, because she was a sweet, steady girl and they thought she’d keep him from gambling away so much of his money.

  “In every case the woman was pretty, winning in her ways, and quite able to charm the man’s family. In every case she was a widow who met her husband at a resort, or, in Jacob’s case, on the way to the races. Mrs. McKelvey and Mrs. Barrett said they were pregnant when their husbands took out these big insurance policies. We don’t know about Mrs. Jacobs. Although she had dinner with her mother-in-law every Friday night, she whispered no secrets. But men like Jacobs are good providers anyway, and since he gambled away a large part of his income, it wasn’t remarkable that he’d insure his life for fifty thousand dollars.”

  In an even voice Charlie asked, “Why are you telling me this story?”

  Ben looked up. On Charlie’s lip curved the stain left by Bedelia’s lip salve. “Arthur Jacobs was a jeweler. He collected black pearls.”

  “AN INTERESTING STORY. Have another drink?” Charlie tipped the bottle over Ben’s empty glass. His voice and hand were steady, his expression calm.

  It was Ben who showed nervousness. He scorched his throat with the drink, shook his head and grimaced. “I don’t like telling you this, Horst, you’re a hell of a nice fellow, and since I’ve been living here, I’ve . . .” he broke off and brought his fist down upon the arm of the chair. “The hell with it, you’d have to know sooner or later.”

  Charlie looked at the floor.

  “I paint,” Ben said grimly, “only as a kind of hobby. It helped me in this case. She said her first husband was an artist. Let me give you my card.” He took out his wallet and gave a card to Charlie. On it was printed “Benjamin Wallace Chaney & Sons, Private Investigators,” and an address on Broad Street, New York, and in the lower left-hand corner, “Mr. B.W. Chaney, Jr.”

  Charlie threw the card into the wastebasket.

  “At present we’re doing a job for the Federal Insurance Company, the South & Western, The Household, and the New Colonial & Family Life.” The last named was the company in which Charlie’s life was insured for sixty thousand dollars.

  “Since last winter these companies have combined in an effort to trace the woman or women involved in these cases. It’s been mostly a routine job because we’ve been looking into the lives of women whose husbands have taken out policies or increased their coverage to a figure which is out of proportion to their earnings. Mostly the wives of overinsured men are nervous, spoiled, and afraid of being left alone. You can check up on these women in a few days. They have families, friends, school records. But when a woman tells you about a past that can’t be checked, when you can’t locate a single old friend, nor a house in which she’s lived, nor a store where she’s traded . . .”

  Charlie had controlled himself admirably through the earlier revelations, but all of a sudden, he began to shout. “Get out of here! Get out!”

  Ben noted the red stain on Charlie’s lip, the scar left by Bedelia’s affection, and he smiled a little. That smile was too much for Charlie. He leaped and struck. Ben was unprepared. The breath was knocked out of him. Charlie stood above the Morris chair, his clenched fists raised and ready to strike again. This was not decent fighting. But Charlie had no regard now for the rules of the game. His anger was hard and hot and every instinct urged him to punish his enemy.

  He lunged forward, fist aimed at Ben’s chin. Ben was on his guard and, although still seated, he struck hard. Charlie lurched backward. Ben leaped up. Charlie recovered and moved forward again. Ben was a smaller man, but he had training and experience in fighting. Charlie had not used his fists since he was a freshman and had only anger to guide him. He fought ruggedly but ineffectually. Ben caught him around the waist and with a twist of his right arm threw Charlie to the floor.

  Charlie started up, but Ben was upon him. His every movement was easy, economical of effort, swift and certain. Charlie would not give in until his rage was satisfied. He fought wildly. They rolled the length of the room. Finally Ben pinned him down and kneeled upon him in a way that left him completely helpless. Charlie was red-faced and weary while Ben seemed hardly to have exerted himself. He got up, straightened his coat, pulled at his tie and smoothed his hair. Until Charlie was on his feet, Ben kept his back turned so that Charlie should not feel his humiliation too keenly.

  Charlie stood in the center of the room, his hands hanging loose and his arms suspended weakly from his defeated shoulders. He had lost the fight and had been allowed to dust himself off. He saw that the struggle had been senseless. Even if he had trounced Ben, he could not have changed any of the detective’s facts.

  When Charlie spoke again, he chose his words with care and enunciated clearly. “I think I know why you told me that story and what you want me to believe. But you’re wrong. You’ve followed a false lead. I don’t want to hear any more about it.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Ben said smoothly. “I’d have done the same thing to anyone who made that kind of remark about my wife. But the fact remains . . .”

  “I don’t want any more of your facts!”

  “Maybe they’ll seem more interesting after you’ve had a dose of poison in your boiled rice.”

  “You can go to hell!” Charlie shouted.

  “There had probably been a sedative in Will Barrett’s last stein of beer. She could have got hold of all the opiates and poisons she needed while she sat in the prescription room with her husband. If he went to the toilet or out to wait on a customer, she could have sneaked a little out of this jar or that. Probably cached away plenty of it for future business.”

  “That’s just a conjecture. Proves nothing.”

  “A fellow in Topeka, Kansas, Alfred Hall, a meat jo
bber, died after sprinkling insect powder on his French toast instead of powdered sugar. He was off on a fishing trip and cooked his own meals. His wife had planned to go with him, but she was having heart palpitations and the doctor warned her against all exercise. So the poor husband had to go alone. The night before he left, he packed his kit, a very handsome and expensive kit it was, all fitted out with tin plates and containers for food. His wife had given it to him for his birthday. Some neighbors had stopped in that evening and Hall showed them the new kit before he went into the kitchen to pack it. A few days later, some Boy Scouts found his body beside his dead campfire. And there was insect powder in one of his tin shakers. Hall was nearsighted and must have mistaken it for powdered sugar when he packed.”

  “Accidents happen,” said Charlie.

  “Indeed they do. And nobody blamed the poor wife. This isn’t one of our cases, so we’re not investigating the widow. Hall had neglected to insure himself properly and all she got out of it was about forty thousand in cold cash. I’m only telling you about Hall to show you how careful a man’s got to be with French toast.”

  Charlie tried to show indifference.

  “You’re not nearsighted, but you have indigestion. Now don’t get sore again,” Ben hastened to say. “It’s only that a lot of men have been trapped by their weaknesses, one nearsighted, one with a taste for fish, one who couldn’t take his beer without getting drowsy. And always such careful planning. Palpitations of the heart, doctors’ warnings, convenient birthday presents, an aversion to fish, a passion for moonlight sails.”

  “So that’s where Meyers got the idea? From you?”

  “I wanted to get my operative in here, not only to keep an eye on things, but to see that nothing was slipped into your food or medicine. If you had died after all those authentic symptoms, it would have been the most natural thing in the world for the doctor to write Acute Indigestion on the death certificate and let it go at that.”