Only in New England : the story of a gaslight crime (7 page)

"Now, look," Ed said, running his finger down the page. "Here we are again. July 23,1896. Otis Purdy—twelve pounds of cheese. And here. August seventh. Otis Purdy. Twenty-one pounds of cheese."

"The Purdys were certainly fond of cheese," I said.

"That's not the half of it. See, in September—here—Purdy bought fourteen more pounds. In October twenty-one pounds. In December, forty-five pounds of cheese, Otis Purdy."

"Did they run a boarding house?"

Ed shook his head. "And only four in Otis' family, not counting the baby. But that's nothing. Here's the Bryce family. Same period, Old Man Bryce bought twenty pounds of cheese in July, twenty-nine in August, twenty in September, same in October and November. In December, 1896, he bought sixty-one pounds of cheese! Same month, Saul Smeizer bought eighty-one pounds of cheese."

I had to laugh. "How could a family eat eighty-one pounds?"

"You think that's a lot?" Ed pointed. "Horatio Meek—local undertaker back then— he bought one hundred and four pounds of cheese in January, 1897. The following March he bought ninety pounds. For just him and his wife."

"But no man and his wife could consume one hundred and ninety-four pounds of cheese in three months!"

"It's like that all the way through the ledger." Ed grinned. "I estimated the Thorns bought almost a ton of cheese in 1900. Robinsons, that year, are charged for over a ton and a half. I added up the Ross total. Nine hundred eighty-six pounds."

I stared at the ledger. "What kind of cheese was it?" And then it dawned on me, and I looked at Ed Brewster.

"Sure," he nodded, closing the old account book. "You get it, don't you?"

"The kind you drink with hot butter on a winter evening," I said. "Or take on the rocks. It's good with branch water and ice in the summer."

"Most of the Pointers took it straight," Ed said. "It was good stuff up from Bermuda or the Bahamas way. There wasn't so much of it around when I come to the Point in 1905. But I recollect seeing some that come up from Jamaica labeled Jay Wray and Nephew."

"And that's how they could sell it for the price of cheese."

"The best," Ed said. "Tax-free contraband. Right off the boat. I figure from the code, here, that two pounds was a quart. . . . Notice that the Bridewells never bought any?"

"Didn't they drink?" I asked. "Or was it that they didn't approve of smuggling?"

Ed frowned at the ledger reminiscently. "Lionel was a toper on the sly. Drink whenever he could buy or cadge it. I recall seeing him propped up in the lobby of the Surf and Sand, stiff as a cigar-store Indian. Earnest would take a glass now and again, but up at the State capital he orated as a white-ribboner and voted for Prohibition. The old lady, she belonged to the Anti-Saloon League. Funny, too, when you consider it."

Ed considered it with a lopsided smile. "You see, the Bridewells were part owner of the store, so the old lady had an interest in smuggling."

The phone in the kitchen had begun to ring.

"That," Ed guessed, "will be Luke Martin down at the Anchor. Come on. You can see where most of that liquor was brought in."

A gang of rum-runners, tough as a fist full of spikes. A schooner as black as tar. Muffled oars and a yo-heave-ho in the dark of moonless nights. It had been going on for years. And then one night there came a pay-off—a weird pay-off in the light of a bull's-

eye lantern. Ed Brewster wove these elements into a folktale as we drove townward in his Kissel through steel-colored downpour.

He prefaced the story with the caveat that he could not vouch for its factuality. The events had reportedly occurred when he was "knee-high to a nipper." As far as he was concerned, he had heard of them through hearsay in a community where hearing and saying did not always add up to truth.

But this happened (it was said) in the summer of 1906. Theodore Roosevelt was President and times were bully. Quahog Point had not yet speculated in a trolley line. In the cities automobiles were stared at by jokers who shouted, "Hire a horse 1" Shore resorts were at their peak. All the Point hotels were full that summer, and so were many of the paying guests. In spite of Billy Sunday and Clarence True Wilson and little girls who recited "Lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine," the incidence of alcoholism reflected a booming traffic in the wares of John Barleycorn. At Quahog Point the gilded bars were at high tide.

Then trouble entered Paradise. At the height of the season a price war started. The Seagull featured imported Scotch at a dollar thirty a bottle. The Bayberry advertised it for a dollar twenty. At the Headlander the price went to a dollar. Waterfront cafes and beach restaurants joined the contest. Champagne, 90-proof rye, brandy, bourbon and other choice refreshments were equally reduced on the local market. Finally the Anchor Saloon offered Jamaica rum at ten cents a glass. That did it. Quahog Point was on the verge of civil war.

No one could or can gainsay that wars are, basically, fights for markets and for economic vantage. In our best of all possible worlds, price-cutting invariably leads to throat-cutting. That "Pointers" were at swords' points in their own fly-speck world— this facet of the story was (and is) known history. That the price war threatened to ruin the "cheese" business at Babcock's General Store remains a rumor plausible if not verifiable. But the tale had it that the Bridewell interests were thus jeopardized. And one of the throats threatened by the ugly situation belonged to Lionel Bridewell.

Just how Lionel became involved was a matter of considerable

conjecture. He was not the first frustrated baritone to take to drink, however. He had evidently early discovered (along with the people of Birmingham) that the quickest way out of town was a bottle. A year or two before the one in question, he had begun to imbibe with intoxicating frequency. In consequence his mother had reduced his allowance to a pittance and had instructed the staff at the Surf and Sand to serve him nothing harder than well water.

The same official mandate went to all the hotelkeepers and liquor dispensers in town. Whereupon Lionel discovered that he was stranded in a desert as arid as the fountain in Center Square. Still, there remained one dispensary source beyond the limits of "local control." This was the source that lay just outside the maritime three-mile limit. The offshore source of many a cargo of Scotch, rye and rum that reached the local beach.

This sub rosa fountainhead fed a pipeline to the Anchor Saloon —a lonely tavern situated about a mile from the village. Occupying the lee shore of a secluded sandspit, the Anchor was admirably suited for illicit operations. There, when the moon was up, you could find New York, Boston and Fall River businessmen enjoying lively evenings with their secretaries. There, when the moon was down, you could hear the plash of muffled oars, and if you looked toward a wharf at the end of the sandspit you could see dark activity. And moon up or moon down in the early part of the summer of 1906 you could glimpse Lionel Bridewell at the Anchor bar, his elbow in the semaphore position.

One of the hardest things to conceal is a pint of whisky in your system. Old Abby knew her son was drinking, of course. With characteristic promptitude and temper she set out to put a stopper to the proceeding. Woe betide the barman who had dared to violate her local decree.

It did not take the old lady long to get wind of Lionel's oasis. Three times within a week "she swept through the swinging doors of the Anchor Saloon, bursting into the taproom with the violence of a revenue raid. Three times she found no visible sign of her errant son on the premises.

For Lionel, exercising an alcoholic craft, had prepared for emer-

gency. He had cultivated the good graces of a girl in the establishment—an entertainer who sang ballads and strummed a mandolin. Facing the taproom's entry, this barroom balladeer sat on a platform with eye-level above the swinging doors. In that strategic position she had a clear view of the road which approached the tavern. Lionel arranged a warning signal. If the girl saw his mother coming, she was to break into a soulful rendition of Where Is My Wandering Boy Tonight? Whereupon the wandering boy would make a back-door dash to the concealment of the men's privy behind the tavern.

It worked three times, but a fourth attempt failed. For the simple reason that the escapee found the door of the outhouse bolted on the inside—an eventuality he might have foreseen— and Abby Bridewell caught him (as my story-teller phrased it) with his trousers up. On the spot there ensued an inelegant scene between mother and son (duly reported by the unseen eavesdropper offstage). And a violent climax followed when the old lady stormed back into the tavern to have it out with the publican who had dared to break her commandment in respect to thirsty Lionel.

Proprietor of the Anchor Saloon was elderly Jonah Grimes, described as a frayed individual who shaved with a clamshell and wore a soiled sweater tied around his middle for an apron. At first he protested that he had sold Lionel nothing stronger than tonic. Pinned down, he admitted to Moxie. Abby snatched up the conspiratorial mandolin. "Tell the truth, Jonah Grimes, or I'll crack your bald headl" His nerve unraveled. Cornered, he confessed to selling Lionel hard liquor.

To unregenerate Jonah, Abby delivered a temperance lecture that had the fiery eloquence of a Gatling gun. In conclusion she advised the victim that he was going out of business.

"You're through for good, Jonah. I'll close up this saloon of yours, sure as you're born!"

"But, Abby—! You can't!"

"Can't I? Wait until your license comes up at Town Council next October!"

"You wouldn't dare!"

"What?"

"You wouldn't dare padlock the Anchor."

"Wouldn't I?"

"No, you wouldn't," declared Jonah, his voice squeaking in fright. "I don't own the Anchor no more, Abby. It belongs to the Syndicate."

"Syndicate? What Syndicate?"

Jonah glanced around the taproom in alarm. He lowered his squeak to a hoarse, "You know . . . The Ox. I sold out just last spring. This place belongs to Ox."

Abby Bridewell had, indeed, known of Ox. Everyone in Quahog Point had heard of Ox. Heard, but few had seen. So far as most of the natives knew, the man called Ox was only a rumor.

But the image fixed in local mind was that of a hulking bucko who embodied the personality of Edward Teach with the craft of Captain Kidd and the morals of Beelzebub. This much about him was certain: he wore a beard and he was built like John L. Sullivan. And this: his was not a temper to tamper with.

Nobody knew where Ox came from. He had been coming from there for a long time. Some thought he haled from St. Kitts or Nevis; others thought his home port could be Bermuda. His cargoes indicated a West Indies origin, but Quahog Pointers who did business with him did not ask questions.

Dead of night—that was Ox's time of operation. The black schooner appeared out of nowhere like a shadow, and the flicker of a starboard light signaled the arrival. Presently the boats came in to the sandspit wharf beyond the Anchor Saloon. Presently they left. At daybreak the black schooner was gone. The "Pointers" spoke of these doings in furtive undertones. He moved warily and respectfully who dealt with Ox and Ox's syndicate.

"Ox!" exclaimed Abby Bridewell. "Syndicate! The next time he comes here, Jonah, you can put a flea in his ear."

"Ma'am?"

"Tell him," Abby Bridewell ordered, "that he's through!"

"Abby, I never see him."

"Tell his sailors, then! Send a carrier pigeon! Do what you want, but this tavern gets padlocked come October!"

According to local history, it was that ultimatum which started the price war. Whoever Ox was, he had no intention of being dictated to by eighty-year-old Abby Bridewell. No doubt his spies advised him that she was a power in Quahog Point; that her son was a State Senator; that the old lady must be handled with kid gloves. So this rich old granny thought she could scuttle the Syndicate, did she? Owns a big hotel, does she? Competing with us under the counter at that hick general store? We'll cut the business right out from under her. Next shipment that goes ashore, flood the market half-pricel

It was a combat Abby Bridewell had not anticipated. One that hurt, too, striking at her pocketbook as it did. She stood up to it grimly until late in August. Then she put out a peace feeler. The liquor war was ruining Quahog Point, and the old lady requested a truce. She was willing, it seemed, to vote another year's license to the Anchor Saloon provided its bar remained out of bounds to her son.

The message, conveyed through appropriate channels by Jonah Grimes, brought the sort of answer one might expect from a buccaneer. Never try to appease a pirate.

Ox agreed to call off the price war. But, borrowing a leaf from Barbary predecessors, he attached a littie rider concerning protection money. The Syndicate would make peace for an appropriate fee. Ox would not accept dollars for it, either. On this point he was explicit. His note specified that the pay-off must be made in British exchange—in short, pounds. The first installment would be due on the first night the moon was down. Ox demanded a payment of three hundred and fifty pounds.

And at this juncture the story blurs. Apparently negotiations were conducted by Jonah Grimes, manifestly an unreliable reporter. Still, as go-between he could conceivably have been a witness. Be that as it was, something happened on one moonless night late in the summer of 1906. It happened on the wharf at the end of the sandspit within listening distance of the Anchor Saloon.

A light winkering from the rail of a black schooner three miles out.

A springer-wagon coming down the beach road in pitch dark.

A ship's clock in the tavern striking four bells.

Time: 2:00 A.M.

Its wheels creaking furtively, the wagon moves out along the sandspit and halts in black-out at the wharf.

Shadowy figures sweat and strain in the pitchy dark. Then silence, broken only by the occasional stamp of a hoof, the faint twitch of harness. Silence and the sound of wavelets slapping the wharf's underpinnings.

Then presently the creak of oiled oar-locks. The silhouette of a dory stenciled against midnight. A glimmer of metal and the white of grinning teeth in the outer darkness. A low voice hails, "Are you there?"