Authors: Charlotte MacLeod
When Bert got home a few minutes later, he found her in the bathroom vomiting. She wiped her face on a wet washrag and stood holding on to the sink, shaking and sweating. “I guess I did too much today. I’m all right now.”
“You sure as hell don’t look it.”
Her brother sounded frightened, and no wonder. The face in the mirror was enough to scare anybody. Her skin looked pale green, her eyes like a couple of overripe plums.
“Bert, I—” she swallowed what she’d been about to say. What good would it do to tell her brother everything? He’d be better off not knowing. So would she, but it was too late to think about that now.
*
Note to U.S. readers: Janet was talking about a girdle, not a deodorant.
J
ANET PASSED A WRETCHED
night. Bert wanted her to stay in bed the next morning, but she insisted on getting up. “I’d go crazy just lying there,” she told him.
She really would. It was going to be some job convincing Bert that she was well enough to drive the car down to the village by herself, but she must. Somehow or other, she had to see Fred Olson, alone.
For once, luck was with her. She was slopping around trying to do up the breakfast dishes with one hand when the marshal poked his head in through the back door.
“Bert around?”
“Oh Fred, thank God! No, Bert’s out back somewhere.”
“Good.” He came in and shut the door behind him. “You told him yet?”
“No, I haven’t breathed a word to a soul. I’m scared to, if you want the truth.”
He nodded, his pudding face creased with down-pulled lines. “Me too. Cripes, Janet, I can’t even think straight.”
“Here, Fred, sit down.” She got him a mug of tea and slid a plate of doughnuts across the table. “I’m afraid they’re kind of stale. I scalded my hand day before yesterday and haven’t been able to do much.”
“That’s all right. I’m kind of off my feed, anyway. Molly says she never thought she’d live to see the day.” Olson snorted. “She keeps askin’ what ails me. What am I s’posed to tell ’er? She’d either have me carted off to the booby hatch or pass the word without meanin’ to and get the whole dern village down on me like hawks on a hen roost. God a’mighty, if I could just get my grubhooks on one real piece of evidence!”
“I suppose you’ve gone over Gilly’s house?” Janet suggested. “You couldn’t find any sign the fire might have been set?”
“Hell’s flames, there wasn’t enough left o’ that place to put in your left eyeball. I stomped around in the ashes till I was black as the ace o’ spades an’ all I got out of it was another jawin’ from Molly. Ol’ wooden crackerbox with the wirin’ frayed worse’n a country parson’s shirt cuffs an’ nothin’ but them kerosene room-stinkers for heat, it’s a wonder the house didn’t burn long ago. Only it didn’t. It burned that same night Hank Druffitt was killed, an’ his daughter an’ his grandson damn near went up along with it. An’ that’s one coincidence more’n I can swallow.”
He took a swig of the cooling tea, set the thick white crockery mug down on the red-checked tablecloth, and stared into its milky dregs. Janet gave him another prod.
“What did the doctor say about that hole in Dr. Druffitt’s skull?”
“Said it was a fracture o’ the cranium.”
“Well, that’s a big help, I must say! We could have told him that ourselves. Didn’t he say anything else?”
“Said it must o’ killed ’im instant, which ain’t much help neither.”
“But what about the shape of the break? Didn’t you ask him?”
“To tell the truth, I never got a chance,” Olson admitted. “Elizabeth was there by the time he come with his daughter drivin’ an’ she was takin’ on somethin’ awful about how it was all her fault for leavin’ that rug there where a person could slip on it an’ she should o’ known better, which was no more than God’s honest truth, I must say, an’ she was blamin’ herself an’ gettin’ more an’ more worked up till he had to take ’er in on the sofa an’ give ’er somethin’ to calm ’er down an’ by the time he’d done that his daughter was all hot an’ bothered about him overstrainin’ himself an’ she hauled ’im off home an’ there I was. An’ just about then Ben Potts come along an’ by then Elizabeth was a little more like herself only she had to keep dabbin’ at ’er eyes with one o’ them fancy little han’kerchiefs the size of a postage stamp like she always carries, an’ they got to talkin’ about the funeral so I figured I might as well pull out an’ leave ’em to it.”
“Didn’t you ask Ben Potts?” Janet persisted. “What did he think?”
“Yep, I asked ’im later on when I got ’im alone. Ben looked me square in the eyes an’ says, ‘Fred, I never think. I just do what my customers tell me to,’ an’ you can make o’ that anything you please, but if I know Ben that’s all you’ll ever get out of ’im.”
“I suppose it’s no more nor less than you might expect,” Janet admitted. “What he meant was that Mrs. Druffitt would scalp him with a dull knife if he started any talk.”
“Damn it, Janet, can you blame the man? If Elizabeth was to find fault with the way Ben handled the funeral an’ decide to send for an undertaker from somewheres else, you know what would happen to him. Same thing as happened to Hank, only worse. At least Hank still got the odd jobs like bandagin’ sprains an’ takin’ fishhooks out o’ kids’ fingers, but an undertaker only gets one crack per customer.”
“No, I’m not blaming him, Fred, and I’m not blaming you, either. The only person I blame is myself, for shooting my mouth off when I should have kept quiet, but that’s water over the dam now. What really matters,” Janet wiped her good hand across her haggard face, “is that we’ve still got a killer loose in this town, and I’ve got a hunch Ben’s next customer is going to be me.”
Olson started to say, “How do you figure that?” then he stopped short. “Jee-hosaphat! If he was to get wind of you knowin’—”
“He has to know already, doesn’t he?” Now that the issue was out in the open, Janet found she could speak quite matter-of-factly. “By the time I got down there with that jar of green beans, Dot Fewter must already have started broadcasting the fact that I’d found it and taken it to show the doctor. We’ve already agreed Dr. Druffitt must have been killed to keep him from comparing that jar with the one that killed Mrs. Treadway, haven’t we?”
“I s’pose so,” Olson mumbled.
“And Mrs. Druffitt told me when I met her at the door that she thought she’d heard the doctor come home a few minutes before while she was upstairs. So that means he must have been killed just about the same time I walked into the waiting room, doesn’t it? How does the person who killed him know I didn’t see something I wasn’t supposed to?”
“Gorry, Janet, you could o’ been killed yourself, right then an’ there.”
“Yes, I could, though even Ben Potts mightn’t have been willing to swallow two accidental deaths in the same house at the same time. I figure the only thing that’s saved me so far is that the killer doesn’t know whether or not I believe Dr. Druffitt really slipped on that rug. Once he finds out I don’t, then I’m a dead duck. And I’m afraid you are, too. I’m sorry, Fred.”
Olson shoved away his mug and got up. “All right, Janet. Guess it’s time we called in the Mounties.”
E
VERYBODY KNOWS WHAT A
Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman looks like. He is lean, bronzed, straight-backed, steel-jawed, handsome as all getout, and stands six-foot-four in his socks. He wears a dashing red tunic, shiny boots, and blue jodhpurs with yellow stripes up the sides. Mounties are most apt to be found either astride magnificent stallions, singing, “Rose Marie, I Love You,” or else driving strings of huskies across frozen wastes of snow with the aurora borealis flashing behind them and repentant renegades lashed to their sleds.
Janet Wadman had no trouble whatever passing off Detective Inspector Madoc Rhys of the RCMP as Annabelle’s cousin from Winnipeg. He looked like an unemployed plumber’s helper. After a short but surprisingly reassuring interview, she left him to study the family album for background, and stepped across to the Mansion.
“I don’t know what to do, Marion. Bert and I never even knew the Duprees had any Welsh relatives till this Cousin Madoc appeared on the doorstep with his suitcase in his hand. And there’s Annabelle in hospital and here’s me laid up with this hand.”
“Couldn’t you shove him off on Annabelle’s folks?” was Marion’s kindhearted suggestion.
“I don’t know I’d care to do that. The Duprees already have the kids to cope with. Anyway,” Janet lowered her voice and glanced around though she knew perfectly well nobody was there to overhear, “I called up Aunt Maggie on the sly while he was washing up, and she says Madoc’s a bachelor with pots of money, though I must say you’d never know it to look at him. Besides, all Annabelle’s brothers and sisters are down there and—well, you know Annabelle’s not the sort to expect a handout from anybody but you also know the problems she and Bert have been having lately. I wouldn’t want to—”
“Sure, I understand.” To Marion, nothing could appear more natural than the urge to butter up a rich relative, even if he didn’t happen to be hers. “Say, I’ll tell you what: Why don’t you send him over here to sleep till your hand heals?”
Janet was not at all surprised by the offer, though she pretended to be. “Do you really mean it? It would be heaven if I didn’t have to make his bed and pick up after him. That’s the one thing that really bothers me. I can manage the meals all right.”
She’d have to. There was probably some government law against feeding a Mountie the kind of food Marion Emery cooked. However, he’d have to decide for himself whether to face that peril. Her orders had been, “Just get me into the Treadway house without letting anybody know who I am. I’ll carry on from there.”
She presumed he’d be able to. Janet had been grateful when Fred Olson came back and told her the RCMP were sending a plainclothes man, but she hadn’t expected one quite this plain.
Detective Inspector Rhys knew what she was thinking as he sat back at his newly adopted cousin’s house turning over the pages of the family album and memorizing enough names for plausible conversation. It was what people always thought. Not yet thirty years of age, Rhys had already faced mad trappers, salmon poachers, alien smugglers, rioters, ax murderers, and irate wives. He had tracked down snipers, airplane hijackers, foreign spies, and illegal parkers. He had survived blizzards, black flies, stabbings, shootings, and being hit over the head with an electric guitar in a Moncton restaurant.
Through all these adventures, he had remained a sad-faced wisp of a Welshman, barely the minimum five feet, eight inches in height and so thin you had to look at him twice to make sure he was really there. He had gentle, downtrodden brown eyes and a reddish mustache that contrasted oddly with his dark brown hair and was often thought to be false. His voice was so soft and gentle that he couldn’t sing “Rory Get Your Dory There’s a Herrin’ in the Bay” without making it sound like “
Ar Hyd Y Nos.
” Even for the RCMP, his record of achievement was fantastic.
Rhys took to Janet far more quickly than she to him. He had known very good women and very bad women and a great many who were neither one nor the other, though some of the variations had been interesting. This was his kind of woman. He liked the way Janet came back from the Mansion, told him it was all settled, sat him down at the kitchen table, filled his mug with tea, his saucer with pie, and his head with facts.
She talked the way she cooked, leaving out nothing that mattered and not trying to spoil the flavor with a lot of fancy touches. Half an hour later, he had a reasonably clear picture of the village, its inhabitants, and the events that had led up to his being called in. He also had another piece of pie. At last he was, for the time being, satisfied.
“Thank you, Janet. I must call you Janet, you know, and you must call me Madoc. Now I expect I’d better move my suitcase over to this house you call the Mansion before Miss Emery changes her mind.”
“I told Marion you’d be eating with us, Madoc,” she replied, trying out the name to get used to it. “A few days of her cooking and you’d be another case for Ben Potts.”
“Ah yes, the undertaker. You haven’t said much about him.”
“I don’t know there’s much to tell. He’s one of those three-monkeys types who see no evil and so forth, and his wife belongs to the Tuesday Club with Elizabeth Druffitt. The Pottses are an old Pitcherville family like the Druffitts and the Treadways and the Emerys. And the Wadmans, for that matter. I guess I told you Mrs. Druffitt was an Emery. She and Marion are first cousins. Mrs. Druffitt’s father got the house, and Marion’s father got most of the money and squandered it away, which is why Marion spent so much time hanging around Mrs. Treadway in the hope of another windfall. Mrs. Treadway was an Emery, too, a sister of Marion’s and Elizabeth’s fathers. I hope I’m not mixing you up with all this. And the Druffitts have always had a son who was a doctor, up till this generation, and the Pottses have always buried the Druffitts’ mistakes for them.” She attempted a laugh. “Do you suspect Ben of trying to drum up trade in a dull season?”
“It’s my job to suspect everybody,” he replied sadly. Even you, he thought, with your sweet voice and your cuddlesome little body and your light hand with pastry. How do I know you didn’t lift that secret cache you’re making such fun of, and kill the old woman and the doctor and get me up here as part of some elaborate game you haven’t finished playing yet? Rhys had known even prettier women to do even stranger things.
“I suspect I’d better warn you, Madoc.” Ah, now she was blushing. The rosy flush made him realize how lovely she must be when she wasn’t looking so haggard. “The reason Marion’s so keen on having you is that I told her you’re a rich bachelor. You may be in for a pretty warm welcome.”
“The warmer the better,” he replied with that sad little smile. “I am in fact a bachelor, though not a very rich one. You were clever to think of such a plausible story.”
“I only wish I’d been clever enough to stay out of this mess in the first place,” she sighed. “Come on, I’d better walk you over and introduce you. It wouldn’t look right if you went alone.”