A Dismal Thing To Do Read online

  Annabelle didn’t want any more wine. She had a café noir and a slice of gâteau that wasn’t up to her own standard, then began to fidget.

  “Madoc, don’t you think it’s about time we started back? Bert will be wondering where we’ve got to.”

  If Madoc knew Bert, Bert was pounding his ear quite peacefully and had been for some time. But Annabelle was right about leaving. They wouldn’t be the first, by any means. Some of the early dropouts from the dance floor were already gone. Others were getting ready to brave whatever might be happening outside. Madoc dropped money on the table, got their coats from the rack over by the stuffed bears, and helped Annabelle on with hers.

  As they made their way to the door, followed by a good many pairs of thoughtful eyes, Annabelle got stopped by various acquaintances wanting a final word. While Madoc was standing patiently in the background trying to look like a brother-in-law who’d taken out his sister-in-law merely from a sense of family duty and intended to take her straight home from the dance, as in fact he did, he noticed young McLumber being given a polite but firm congé. Pierre Dubois was doing the talking. Armand Bergeron was standing with his arms folded making it clear just by being there that McLumber needn’t try to put up an argument.

  And that was interesting, too. The hardware clerk had a pretty full load aboard, no question about that, but so did almost everybody else in the place. No doubt the cheap drinks were the main reason why many of them had come. This wasn’t a rowdy crowd, but it wasn’t what you’d call subdued. The kid hadn’t been acting any more boisterous than a good many others, including some of his fellow sash wearers. But perhaps he’d reached the limit of what he could handle and Armand knew it from previous experience. Or perhaps that innocent act he’d put on during the dance had alerted Pierre Dubois to what he ought to have realized before he let McLumber become a member of the sash society, or whatever the hell it was. Anyway, the kid was going, on a snowmobile to judge from the outfit he was wearing, and Madoc was still left standing.

  Not for long, though. Annabelle was really anxious to get back to her family, and kept working her way toward the door. They made it, and none too soon. A snow squall was just beginning to splat wet flakes into their faces.

  “I hope we get home before the worst of it,” Annabelle said nervously.

  “We’ll make it, never fear,” Madoc reassured her. “This won’t amount to anything.”

  A few other cars were already on the narrow lane. A couple more pulled out while Madoc was letting his engine warm up. These made it poky going. They were snug enough in the car once the heater began to function, but the sticky snow soon coated the windows until Madoc had hardly any visibility except for the two fans kept clear by the windshield wipers. He didn’t much like that, but putting on the defroster would mean freezing Annabelle’s legs, so he just kept poking.

  “It won’t be so bad once we get out on the road,” he remarked to Annabelle.

  She, to his surprise, didn’t answer and he realized she’d fallen asleep. The wine and the workout on the dance floor must have done her in, not to mention the lateness of the hour. She’d been up since half-past five or thereabout, most likely, and would be again in the morning, which was closer than he’d realized.

  He let her sleep and wished he could do the same, with Janet beside him instead of Annabelle. To keep himself alert, he thought about those twenty-three woven sashes. Armand Bergeron hadn’t been wearing one, but it was dollars to doughnuts he knew why the rest were. If he didn’t, he was a rotten innkeeper.

  Why were two of Armand’s young relatives involved and not the others? There’d been a lot of Pepsi-Cola floating around the bandstand, maybe that meant some of the boys were too young to qualify. And the girls would be out just because they were female. The feminist movement still hadn’t made much headway among the Bergeron clan, obviously, if a woman of thirty or more still had to bring her male friends home for the family to check out, and didn’t dare drink a beer in public.

  Cecile was too restful a topic. Madoc was beginning to nod when he was startled wide awake by a sharp crack not far off. It brought Annabelle upright, too.

  “Madoc, what’s that?”

  “Sounded to me like a rifle shot.”

  “Huh. Somebody jacking a deer, I’ll be bound.”

  Madoc didn’t contradict her, but his own thought was that this would be one hell of a time and place to commit the illegal act of startling a night-feeding animal with a sudden flash of light and shooting it down as it stood momentarily paralyzed by the glare. Maybe if the lead car happened to catch a deer with its headlights and there was a rifle handy and somebody drunk enough to yield to temptation—but the headlights wouldn’t be bright enough, not tonight. This damned sticky snow was coating the glass, reducing their beams to a gentle moonlight glow.

  Now what? They could hear clashing and strong language up ahead. Madoc stopped just in time to avoid rear-ending the car in front of him, and prayed the car behind would do likewise.

  “Stay here, Annabelle. Sounds as if there’s been a pileup ahead of us. I’d better go see what’s happening.”

  “Oh, Madoc! What are we going to do?”

  “Sit tight till Armand gets a wrecker out here to clear the road, if we have to. It’s probably nothing much, though. Don’t worry. There’s a blanket in the back if you get chilly.”

  “But you won’t be long.”

  “No no.”

  Madoc put up the hood of his parka and braved the storm. It didn’t take all that braving, actually. Those big splatting flakes were more a nuisance than a threat.

  As he passed the car in front of his, its driver rolled down the window. “What’s the matter up there? We heard a shot.”

  “Could have been a tire popping,” Madoc told him. “I suppose the driver stopped short and the next one plowed into him.”

  The man said, “Hell,” and rolled up the window again. Madoc picked his way forward. There were more cars ahead than he’d realized. He counted six before he got to the pileup. Three cars were involved here, none of them seriously. None of their passengers appeared to be taking any interest in their smashed taillights and caved-in bumpers. They were all up ahead, standing around something Madoc couldn’t see. Was it the dead deer?

  No, it wasn’t a deer. It was the young fellow from McLumber’s in his snowmobile, with a hole in one side of his parka hood and a corresponding one coming out the other side. The hood was still on his head, or whatever might be left of it. The head was resting on the handlebars. There didn’t appear to be any blood to speak of. It must all be inside the hood.

  “Damn good shooting,” somebody remarked. Nobody answered him. They must all be in shock. No wonder. Madoc stepped forward.

  “I am Detective Inspector Rhys of the RCMP,” he said softly. “Could you tell me, please, which of you was driving the car just behind him?”

  “I was. Name’s Grouse. Harold Grouse.” He was one of the older, sashless men who’d been sitting at a table up near the bar, chatting with his companions, taking no part in the dancing, not punishing the whiskey. “My cousin Si here was with me, and my wife Enid.”

  “That’s right,” said a middle-aged woman in red nylon boots and a muskrat coat. “We were all three sitting in front together. Closer to the heater. You feel the cold, coming out of that warm hall.”

  Maybe she was feeling it now. Her teeth were chattering. Once she’d got started talking, though, she couldn’t seem to stop. “It was such a lovely time, the music and all. And now this. I never thought to see such a—”

  “But you did see,” said Madoc. “Exactly what did you see?”

  “Why, I hardly know what to say. We were just driving along, you know, slow and careful as you’d naturally expect, and Buddy was up ahead of us.”

  “Buddy. You knew this chap, then.”

  “Lordy, yes. Known him all his life and then some. Buddy McLumber. His real name’s Elwood. Was, I suppose I ought to say. But I don’t b
elieve I’ve ever heard anybody use it. Maybe his teachers, I don’t know. His uncle runs the hardware store. Buddy was named for his uncle. He just started working there a few weeks back. You must know Ed.”

  “I was in there today, as a matter of fact,” Madoc confessed. “Buddy here sold me some paint. He seemed like a friendly young fellow.”

  “Friendly.” She made a funny little sound. “Friendly isn’t the word for it. He’d talk the ear off a brass monkey. Poor Buddy.”

  She started to cry. Madoc tried to shut her off. “You still haven’t told me what happened. You saw Buddy on his snowmobile. Was he going fast or slowly?”

  “Wasn’t going fast.” That was the man called Si, taking up the tale Enid couldn’t finish. “He’d o’ shook the guts out of ’er if he’d tried to speed up over these here ruts. I dunno why Bud was in the road at all. Seems to me with a snowmobile he’d o’ done better to get off an’ run acrost the snow.”

  “Buddy never did have no sense,” said Harold Grouse.

  “Hal! That’s a fine way to talk about somebody that’s sitting here dead right in front of your face,” Enid scolded.

  “Well, he didn’t. Anyway, Inspector, what happened was, I was driving along, taking it easy the way my wife said. There was Buddy up ahead of us leadin’ the parade, as you might say. I shouldn’t be surprised if that was why Buddy stuck to the road, so’s he could be first in line. It would have been like him. Never missed a chance to show off. Anyway, all of a sudden we heard a rifle crack and over he went, like you see him now.”

  “And the snowmobile stopped dead?” Madoc demanded.

  “Right in her tracks. So I hit the brakes myself, naturally, and the fellow in back o’ me didn’t, which was understandable enough and I don’t hold it against him in the circumstances.”

  “Wait a minute, Hal,” said his cousin. “I’m not sure but what Bud stopped just before he was shot. Seems to me he might of. You’d been keepin’ a proper distance behind, but you were darn near on top of him when he keeled over. Unless he’d been slowin’ down. Hard to tell, and I suppose I wasn’t paying much attention anyway, if the truth be known. But there he was, so we all piled out an’ came to see what was the matter.”

  “You didn’t move the body?”

  “Well, of course we did,” said Harold Grouse. “I did it myself. Didn’t know if he’d been hit or just passed out from too many beers. I took hold of his hood by the top. But then I saw the holes in the side an’ got a glimpse of—God! I hope I never see the like again. So I let it fall back the way it was. Didn’t know what else to do.”

  “You saw nothing of whoever shot him?”

  “Hell no,” said Si. “You couldn’t see a damn blasted thing except straight in front o’ the windshield wipers. Not on the side he was shot from. You can tell from the size o’ the hole in the hood. I remember that from the war.” He swallowed hard.

  “All I can say is, whoever did it must have been either drunk as a skunk or one hell of a good shot,” added one of the other spectators.

  “No doubt,” said Madoc. “Now, if you’ll just give me your names and addresses, perhaps we can get this line moving.”

  He wouldn’t gain anything by keeping them here. Probably nobody in the line had seen anything on account of the snow plastering their windows. The sharpshooter would have taken this factor into account. And be over the hills and far away before Madoc could go after him, but first things first. He copied down the information they gave him, then performed the revolting task of shoving Buddy McLumber’s body to one side so that he could squeeze himself into the snowmobile with the corpse and drive it up on the bank.

  The damned thing wouldn’t start.

  Si and Harold and the rest offered a fair amount of useless advice, then Madoc thought of checking the gas tank. It was bone dry. Luckily, Harold had a spare can in his trunk. Madoc cleared the way, waved on the three front cars, none of which, fortunately, was mangled badly enough to be inoperative. Then he worked his way back down the line.

  He hadn’t expected any luck in identifying the sniper and he had none, but he did find one couple from Pitcherville who said they’d be more than willing to take Annabelle home with them. When he got to his own car, he said, “Annabelle, I’ve got a bad one. Buddy McLumber’s been shot and I’ll have to stick around. The Phillipses are just ahead and they’re going to take you back with them. Do you think you could drive this car out to the road and leave it there for me?”

  “I don’t see why not.” She slid over into the driver’s seat. “I’ll leave the keys under the seat, shall I?”

  “Good girl.”

  “Is Buddy going to be all right?”

  Madoc didn’t answer that, just said, “Thanks, Annabelle,” and headed back to where he’d left the snowmobile. Buddy McLumber’s condition hadn’t changed.

  Chapter 14

  MADOC TOOK BUDDY AROUND to the back of the lodge. As he’d expected, he found a special parking area out there reserved for snowmobiles, and a reeking hole in the lumpy ice covering one of the vacant spaces.

  So it hadn’t even been a difficult shot. The sharpshooter had merely drained all but a few drops of gas from the tank, followed along within sight of the road, and waited till Buddy was sitting there wondering why his vehicle had stopped all of a sudden. It would be absurd to think there’d been a mistake in identity. Buddy’s was the only cockpit-type snowmobile here, and certainly the only one painted bright magenta with BUDDY in staring white letters along the sides. Nicely planned and faultlessly executed. Madoc found a door, went in, and tracked down Armand opening another case of Pepsi-Cola.

  “I need some help outside. One of your customers has been shot.”

  “Huh? Who?”,

  “A young fellow named Buddy McLumber. The one you got Pierre Dubois to bounce.”

  All Armand said was “How did it happen?”

  “Somebody picked him off, most likely with a deer rifle, as he drove his snowmobile up the land.”

  “Picked him off? You trying to give my place a bad name? Who the hell are you, anyway?”

  Madoc told him, and Armand simmered down a little. “How bad is he hurt?”

  “He’s dead. Shot through the head.”

  “Oh Jesus. Wait here.”

  He left the door into the dance hall open. The crowd had thinned out considerably by now, but Madoc could see a few Grouses and McLumbers clustered around the piano with Dubois.

  Armand selected the one who didn’t appear to have too much of a load aboard and steered him out back.

  “Sorry to drag you away, Alf, but the inspector here tells me Buddy’s had an accident.”

  “Goddamn snowmobiles. Dumb kid ought to know better. Where is he?”

  “Just outside.” Madoc jerked his head and stepped to the door by which he’d come in. Armand and Alf, who must have been a McLumber, followed.

  “Hey, Bud, what the hell’d you do now?” Alf said, and waited for an answer that didn’t come. “What’s wrong with him? Out cold, is he?”

  “Let’s get him inside.” Madoc didn’t add: “Before he starts to stiffen.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t be lifting him.” Alf was sounding worried now. “If it’s a broken back or something—” He pushed back the hood, and started to retch.

  “I’ll get a blanket.” Armand practically ran away from the snowmobile, but he was back again, gritting his teeth, in a minute or so. Together, he and Madoc got the body into what he called the rec room, and laid it out on the Ping-Pong table. The place was cold as a barn.

  “He’ll do till morning,” Armand remarked, not irreverently. “Must have been a rifle, all right. Anybody see who shot him?”

  “No, the snow was coating everybody’s car windows. The sniper would naturally have kept his back to the wind, especially if he was using a telescopic sight. I asked all down the line, but had no luck.”

  “Natural enough. Driving in snow, you keep your eyes glued to the road in front of you.”


  “What I can’t figure out is who the hell would want to kill Buddy,” Alf burst out. “Didn’t have much sense and you couldn’t shut him up with a sledge-hammer, but there was no more harm in him than a kitten. What am I going to tell his mother?”

  “Don’t ask me,” said Armand, “but you better go tell her fast before somebody beats you to it and starts a family feud. Could you try to get out of here without broadcasting it in the bar that there’s a crazy sharpshooter loose on the hill?”

  “There isn’t,” Madoc assured him.

  “What makes you so cussed sure?” Alf demanded.

  “Because I can show you evidence the gas was drained out of Buddy’s tank. That indicates to me the snowmobile was deliberately caused to stop when its rider didn’t expect it to, and thus make him a sitting target. According to one person’s testimony, this appears to have been what in fact happened. You’re quite sure nobody was out to get Buddy?”

  “Hell no. Who’d want him? I guess you must know what you’re talking about, Inspector, but it don’t make no sense to me. All right, Armand, I’ll just sneak out the back here and go on out to Bigears. If any of the boys come looking for me, tell ’em I left because I wasn’t feeling well, which is no more than the God’s honest truth. Lord a’mighty, what next?”

  “Next,” said Madoc sadly, “I request the loan of a hand lantern and a pair of cross-country skis and see if I can track the killer down.”

  “All by yourself, in the dark?”

  “Unless you’d care to help me.”

  “Huh. Pretty damn funny, aren’t you? What you want done about Buddy’s snowmobile, Armand?”

  “I’d suggest you run it into a woodshed, if there is one handy, and throw a tarpaulin over it, Mr. Bergeron,” Madoc said. “I’m sure you don’t want people noticing it and asking questions. Some of his friends out in front there might be inclined to take umbrage if they knew you’d chucked him out into the path of a bullet.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I had Pierre tell him to go home because he’d had all he could handle and was starting to act up. Buddy could make a pest of himself when he got drunk, and I didn’t want my customers bothered. I’ve got a right to run a decent place, haven’t I?”