The Grub-and-Stakers Quilt a Bee Page 11

  “Darling, you put me in mind of Isabella Bird Bishop.”

  “Who?”

  “You know, one of those intrepid Victorian lady travelers. Like Fanny Bullock Workman.”

  “Oh, of course. I couldn’t place her for the moment.” Dittany contrived to speak lightly for the blood of the Traveling Thespians was in her veins, but her heart was almost, though not quite, in her mouth as the canoe turned in toward shore.

  Now they could see the lean-to of which Mrs. Brown/Churtle had spoken. A dinghy with a small outboard motor was pulled up on shore. A cozy campfire burned within a ring of stones. Silhouetted against its light was a dark figure that could have been a bear but proved to be Frederick Churtle. Far from showing hostility, he acted pleased to have company.

  “Ahoy out there!”

  “Ahoy yourself,” Osbert called back. “Mind if we pull in?”

  “Not a bit. Here, let me give you a hand. Name’s Brown. Say, that’s some pup you’ve got there.”

  “Her name’s Ethel. I’m Osbert Monk and this is my wife, Dittany.”

  “Mr. Brown and I have already met,” Dittany said in the tea party voice she’d been practicing earlier. “What a pleasant camp you have here,” she added politely, since Churtle was gallantly extending a hand to help her ashore.

  Ethel naturally assumed the hand was meant for her and rushed to find out if there was a dog biscuit in it, giving them all a dunking. By the time they’d got sorted out and been invited to dry off at Churtle’s fire, the time for formality was past.

  “Yep,” Churtle was saying, “I come out here a lot. Roofing’s a nerve-wracking profession, you know. Or maybe you didn’t. But let me tell you, there’s an awful lot of psychological stress in a bucketful of hot tar. So I throw the old fly rod in the old buggy and come out here to unwind. Pity you folks didn’t happen along earlier. I caught me a nice mess of trout for supper. Right out of the stream and into the frying pan, that’s the only way to eat ’em. Say, what brings you out this time of night, if you don’t mind me asking? Unless you got a camp along here someplace?”

  “No, we haven’t,” Osbert told him. “Actually, what brought us was you.”

  “Huh? Cripes, don’t tell me you’re Renfrew of the Mounted in disguise.”

  “Oh no, nothing like that. Just Acting Deputy Monk of the Lobelia Falls Police Department.”

  “That so? Aha! Now I get it.” Churtle turned to Dittany. “You’re that young woman from the museum who’s been giving me such a hard time about my bill. Look, if it’s about those ropes of mine—”

  “It’s not,” said Dittany. “Not exactly, anyway. You talk to him, Osbert. It will be more official.”

  Osbert happened to be taking off his wet socks at the moment, but he straightened up and looked as official as he could manage in his bare feet. “The thing of it is, your van was seen leaving the museum last night just about suppertime, which was when Peregrine Fairfield is presumed to have fallen to his death.”

  “Not from those attic windows he didn’t,” said Churtle. “I told Evangeline so this morning in front of your wife, and I’m telling you now.”

  “You don’t have to convince us, Mr. Churtle. We don’t believe it, either. We think Mr. Fairfield fell off the roof.”

  “Well, then, that’s a different kettle of fish. And roofs being my field of expertise, eh, you’ve come for a consultation.” Mr. Churtle pursed his lips and put his fingertips together. “Now, I’ll grant you it could have happened, generally speaking. I could fall off that roof myself if I put my mind to it, which would be an unusual thing for a man in my profession, especially one naturally endowed with the surefootedness of a cat and the nerves of a lion tamer.”

  “I thought you said you were subject to severe mental stress.”

  “Not about being on roofs I’m not. The stress comes mostly from wondering whether I’m ever going to get paid for my work.” He favored Dittany with another reproving glance. “But getting back to old Perry, it just so happens that’s another subject on which I can speak with authority. As your wife here can tell you, it having been brought out this morning in the course of what for want of a ruder word I’ll refer to as a confrontation with Perry’s widow, I knew Perry Fairfield since him and me was toddling tots together. And I can tell you straight from the shoulder there’s no way Perry Fairfield could of fell off that roof because there’s no way on God’s green earth anybody could of got him to go up on it.”

  CHAPTER 14

  CHURTLE PUT ANOTHER STICK on the campfire and warmed to his thesis. “See, Perry had what you might call a fixation, or maybe a neurosis or even a phobia. I don’t think phobia would be too strong a term, though in most respects Perry was sound as a bell. The only other sign of mental aberration he ever showed was when he let himself get hooked and netted by Evangeline Sawn.”

  “That’s the present Mrs. Fairfield,” Dittany explained to Osbert. “I don’t know if I happened to mention her first name’s Evangeline. You know, the one who bore to the reapers at noontide flagons of home-brewed ale.”

  “L’enfer she did, if you’ll pardon my French,” said Churtle. “Evangeline never bore anybody anything except a grudge, only when she bore down on poor old Perry. Which she did, day and night, night and day from the minute he said ‘I do’ when he ought to of said ‘I don’t.’ The poor cuss couldn’t call his soul his own without her saying it wasn’t.”

  “Yes,” said Dittany rather nastily because she’d just got bitten by a mosquito the size of a hummingbird, “she told me how she used to get at him about lending you any more money.”

  “I figured she would,” said Churtle, quite unperturbed. “No skin off my nose. I was glad enough to do it for my old comrade. Yep, wasn’t much I wouldn’t of done for Perry Fairfield.”

  “You considered it a favor to relieve him of all his spare cash?”

  “Well, see, that’s not quite how it was. Look, would you folks care for a mug of tea?”

  “Why not?” said Dittany, feeling she might have been a bit hasty on account of the mosquito. “I’ve got some cookies in the lunch basket.”

  “I’ll get them,” said Osbert, heading for the canoe.

  “Bring Ethel’s dog biscuit, too, eh?”

  “I’ll go with you and fill the kettle, Deputy,” said Churtle, “if you two ladies don’t mind staying here alone.”

  “Oh, we might as well join the party.” Dittany wasn’t about to let Frederick Churtle sneak up behind Osbert and conk him with a paddle unbeknownst, though she didn’t care to say so for fear of spoiling this new atmosphere of bonhomie, spurious though it might be.

  However, it appeared Frederick Churtle had nothing more sinister on his mind than boiling up a soot-encrusted kettle, and the distance from the campfire to the canoe wasn’t more than twenty feet anyway. They completed their mission without incident, got the kettle balanced on an iron grid rigged across the stones, and resettled themselves.

  Churtle resumed his tale, or at least started to. “No, that’s not how it was at all. Poor old Perry.”

  He fell silent. Osbert waited a decent length of time for him to gaze into the campfire and heave a few nostalgic sighs, then said, “Were you intending to tell us how it really was?”

  “Why not? It can’t hurt him now, poor cuss. See, I did it for Perry.”

  “So you mentioned. We’re still trying to figure out why.”

  “Why? I’ll tell you why. Because Perry asked me to, that’s why. And if you want to know why Perry asked me, I’ll tell you that too. It was on account of Perry needed the money.”

  The kettle was boiling. Churtle got up and made the tea. Anybody with half an eye could have seen he was brooding darkly on this mysterious paradox. Or perhaps he was wondering how a tale so intriguingly begun might plausibly be wound up. Anyway, he waited until he’d filled and distributed three tin mugs and Dittany had passed the cookies. Then he took a sip and a bite, said, “Very good, Mrs. Monk,” and got on with his story.
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  “Like I said, Evangeline was trouble from the word go. Now, mind you, I’m not saying she was the worst wife in the world for Perry. Between you and me and the bedpost, Perry was so darned woolly-minded he’d forget which end his head was hitched on to if he didn’t have somebody around to remind him. He was always living in some other century than the one he was in, if you get what I mean. That’s how come he wound up in the museum business, I suppose. As far as his work was concerned, he managed fine, long as Evangeline was around to keep him up to snuff. It’s just that when it came to what you might call practical matters, Perry plain downright couldn’t cope.”

  “What sort of practical matters?” Dittany wanted to know.

  “Any sort. Take a for instance. When Perry got married, he still had a little life in him Evangeline hadn’t squoze out yet. He might decide to stop in and hoist one with the boys on his way home from the museum even as you and I, like the poet says. Only with Perry, the first thing you knew, he’d be setting ’em up for the house and bang would go his paycheck. So then Evangeline got to collaring his week’s pay and just giving him enough to get by on, but Perry’d forget he didn’t have the money and set ’em up anyway. So he’d wind up with a bad case of the shorts.”

  “I can imagine,” said Osbert.

  “Yeah. So what Perry did, he started stealing from himself, as you might say. He’d tell Evangeline I was in a jam and he had to lend me ten or twenty, however much it was he needed himself. What the heck, my shoulders were broad. I didn’t mind. So this went on for a while and naturally these so-called loans never got paid back. I wasn’t about to fork over what I’d never got in the first place, not to Evangeline I wasn’t. I was just about getting by, myself, in those days.”

  Dittany passed him another cookie in silent compassion for those lean times of yesteryear. It was easy to feel mellow out here under the stars with the stream gurgling gently by and the pine knots hissing in the campfire and Ethel snuffling peacefully at one’s feet instead of howling her plaintive love notes at an unresponsive mammal.

  Osbert must have been less affected by the romantic atmosphere or more conscious of his duty as Sergeant MacVicar’s deputy. He inquired coldly, “What about the five thousand dollars?”

  “Huh? Oh, that. Poor old Perry.”

  Churtle poked up the fire, then reached over to rub Ethel’s ears. “I guess you might call that Fairfield’s Folly.”

  “How so?”

  “See, what happened was, this nice-looking old geezer wearing gray spats and a little white goatee came into Perry’s office at the museum one day with a couple of artifacts. Had ’em in an old tapestry valise, Perry said. Don’t ask me what an artifact is, but I guess it’s something museums like to get their hands on because Perry was all het up about these two. Anyway, Perry authenticated ’em six ways from Sunday, then he asked the old geezer wouldn’t he like to donate ’em to the museum?

  “Well, the old geezer showed Perry a darn in his spats and said he couldn’t afford to, and he didn’t have time to hang around trying to strike a deal with any museum committee because he was just passing through town on his way to visit his dear little golden-haired granddaughter. But he’d sell ’em cheap to a private party who’d give ’em a good home. But he’d only take cash because somebody’d given him a bum check once and he’d vowed a solemn vow he’d never take another, being too honest and innocent himself to spot a crook when he run into one. So what did Perry do but trot himself over to the bank and draw five thousand bucks out of the bank without telling Evangeline.

  “Perry’s idea was, he’d buy the artifacts himself and turn ’em over to the museum. That way he’d get back his five thousand bucks and make himself a little something on the side. What they called a finder’s fee. It was strictly on the up-and-up. Perry was so honest himself it was pitiful.”

  “Except when he lied to Evangeline,” Dittany pointed out.

  “Ah, but that was in self-defense. So anyway, he went up to the old geezer’s hotel room and they had a sociable drink or two and sat around authenticating for a while. Then the old geezer took the artifacts and wrapped ’em up in a couple of racing tip sheets he had lying around the room and put ’em back in the valise and handed it over to Perry. So Perry forked over the five thousand and took the valise and scooted back to the museum with it before the old geezer could get to feeling sentimental and change his mind. But when he opened the valise and unwrapped the artifacts, all he had was a couple of busted sidewalk bricks with mortar on ’em.”

  Churtle shook his head at the folly of those who put their faith in nice old geezers wearing gray spats. “So he hightailed it back to the hotel figuring the guy’d made a mistake, but as anybody but Perry might have expected, the guy’d already checked out and vamoosed. So there’s Perry up a gum tree and stuck there. And here comes Evangeline with blood in her eye because she’s gone through his pants pockets and found the bank book with five thousand dollars taken out, which he forgot to hide. So what’s he going to do? So naturally he thinks of his pal Fred Churtle and spins her a yarn about me being in a real bad jam and needing to be bailed out. So what could I do? Cripes, the poor bugger was bawling his eyes out when he snuck over to the shop and told me what he’d done.”

  The roofer shrugged. “Evangeline swallowed his yarn hook, line, and sinker, which was fine for him but not so hot for me. She went yapping all over town about me being a crook and a drunkard and a no-good bum and a few other things I better not mention in front of a lady. So naturally the stories got back to my boss, and he fired me for giving his business a bad name.”

  “But couldn’t you have simply told the truth?” Dittany protested.

  “Sure, and who’d believe me? Here’s Perry in a nice blue suit and a clean white shirt, sitting there in his office among the high muckymucks, and here’s me in my overalls with my bucket of tar. Besides, even if I did manage to convince anybody, the damage was done. All I’d accomplish would be to get Perry fired as well as myself, and what was the sense of that? So I just said what the heck, kissed my landlady good-bye, came as far west as my old flivver would carry me, changed my name, and set up in business on my own. This way, I figured nobody could fire me but myself.”

  “You never tried to keep up with your old chum?” Osbert asked him.

  “Heck, no. Couldn’t afford to. With a friend like Perry Fairfield, I’d never need an enemy, would I? Not that I held anything against Perry, mind you. I knew it was all Evangeline’s fault, in a manner of speaking. Perry and I were just pawns of fate, but I was tired of being a pawn by then. Besides, what the heck, if I’d written to Perry, she’d have burned the letter. If I’d called him up, she’d have ripped the phone off the wall and sent it out to be fumigated. No sense beating a dead dog, is how I looked at it. Sorry, Ethel. More tea, anybody?”

  “Not for me, thanks,” said Osbert. “There’s still one thing you haven’t explained, Mr. Churtle. If you never saw your friend Perry again, what was your van doing in the driveway of the museum yesterday at the time he died?”

  “I was wondering when you were going to get back to that,” said Churtle. “Now, I’m not going to try to make you believe I didn’t know Perry’d been hired by the museum, because I saw it in the papers. And I’m not going to try to make you believe I wouldn’t have liked to get together with my old buddy and chew the fat a while, because I would, in spite of everything. But I was darned if I was going to tangle with Evangeline again.”

  He spat reflectively into the fire. “I’ve got a nice business built up here in Scottsbeck, and I’ve got a family to think of which I didn’t in the old days. I’m not about to have her stirring up trouble for me again with that viper’s tongue of hers. But there I was with my gear still in the museum and it put me kind of between a rock and a hard place, if you get what I mean. So yesterday late afternoon I happened to be over to Lobelia Falls trying to get a check out of Andy McNaster, if you want the truth, so I figured seeing it was getting late and Perry w
ould most likely have knocked off for the day, I’d just swing by and take a chance on collaring my gear when nobody was around.

  “So I went over and parked in the driveway, which there was no reason I shouldn’t, me being on legitimate business as Mrs. Monk here can tell you. The place looked empty, but I thought I’d just take a stroll around the outside to make sure. See, knowing Evangeline of old, I knew if she was there, I’d hear her talking because the windows would be open on account of the heat. If she was I’d just pussyfoot the heck out of there. So anyway, I’m walking around the building looking up at the roof, making as if that was what I was there for in case anybody happened to be watching. All of a sudden I’m stumbling over something and be darned if it isn’t Perry.”

  Dittany gasped and Churtle nodded. “Yep, it sure took a hike out of me, I can tell you. There he was, dead as a mackerel. I could tell just looking at him. Cripes, what a jolt!”

  “What time was this?” Osbert asked him.

  “’Bout a quarter past six. I’d waited till then, see, because I knew it would be close to suppertime and I figured they’d have left, like I said.”

  “But the place would have been locked up,” Dittany protested.

  “Oh, I’d have just pried open a window and crawled in if I had to. Happens all the time in our business. People are always going to leave keys for you, and they never do. But anyway, there I was and there he was and I knew darned well what would happen if Evangeline came along and caught me there, so I just said, ‘So long, old buddy,’ and hightailed it out of there. And that’s my story and you’ll just have to take it or leave it ’cause I can’t do any better.”

  CHAPTER 15

  “DO YOU THINK HE was telling the truth?”

  It was morning. Dittany had spent a not uncomfortable night with Osbert in Fred Churtle’s lean-to, the roofer himself having gallantly insisted he often preferred to sleep outside in the warm weather anyway, and that he’d enjoy having Ethel for company.