The Grub-and-Stakers Pinch a Poke Read online

  In Lobelia Falls there was no servant problem because nobody had any servants. People hired help when they needed it and the neighbors were always glad to pop over and lend a hand in a pinch. Things must be different in Scottsbeck. Anyway the Thorbisher-Freep mansion was not the sort of place a person would pop to. Murmurs of condolence arose but it was clear that not even Hazel Munson was planning to drop in on Wilhedra with a few cheery words and a bowl of fruit Jello-O.

  “So what happens to Carolus?” Roger was insisting.

  “I suppose one might telephone the hospital and ask for a report,” Jenson replied.

  He’d refused the doughnut on the grounds of extreme perturbation but accepted one of Dittany’s excellent muffins at Zilla Trott’s insistence that he had to keep up his strength. Perhaps the muffin had helped him to collect his wits and offer so cogent a suggestion. Roger went at once to make the call, the telephone being in the kitchen next to the pantry door where Gram Henbit had ordered it installed back when telephones were wooden boxes that had to be cranked before you could get Central to say, “Number, please?”

  While they were waiting for Roger to report back, Sergeant MacVicar asked Jenson to take a look at the blank cartridge that had been picked up after the performance. “Does it look at a’ familiar, sir?”

  “Oh yes, no question,” the older man agreed readily. “I couldn’t swear to it, of course; but as far as I can tell, this one’s identical to the other three that had been in my old Smith & Wesson ever since I played Jack Rance. I noticed how dingy and tarnished they looked, and how the color of the wads had been dulled by time. Frankly, I was a little ashamed to bring them along but I told myself it didn’t matter because the audience wouldn’t get to see them. It’s as well I overcame my scruples. The discoloration serves as an identification of sorts, wouldn’t you say? Ah, Roger. What news of Carolus?”

  “The doctor’s been in and says he can go home but he’ll have to go straight to bed and stay there.”

  “Dear, dear. Now what are we going to do? It’s absolutely out of the question for him to go back to his flat. Carolus was forced to move out of his house, you know, because of that ridiculous litigation with his ex-wife. Pending the settlement, he’s been living in bachelor quarters. The flat’s a third-floor walkup and he has no help except a professional cleaning service once a week. Wilhedra and I had planned to put him up for the duration, but now she’s immobilized herself and I can’t possibly ask the maid to wait on two invalids at the same time. She’d quit in a wink, then where should we be?”

  “But hasn’t Carolus any other friends in Scottsbeck?” asked Samantha Burberry.

  Jenson shrugged. “Professional friends, hardly the sort who’d care to fetch his breakfast and change his bed. I’m afraid the ex-wife has pretty well succeeded in alienating their former social acquaintances. No, it looks like a nursing home for Carolus, assuming we can find one willing to take him in on such short notice. Rather a dismal outlook for the poor chap, but what else can we do?”

  Minerva Oakes started to say something but Zilla Trott hissed at her so savagely that she kept quiet. Minerva had already had some spectacularly bad luck with temporary occupants of her spare room. It wouldn’t behoove her to add a shooting victim with a rampageous ex-wife to her list of calamities. Besides, Zilla had what she evidently thought was a better idea.

  “Arethusa, you’ve got plenty of room and Carolus is more your friend than any of ours. Why don’t you take him in?”

  Only Zilla could have made such a suggestion in all innocence. Andrew McNaster actually bared his teeth. Arethusa very nearly bared hers.

  “Zounds, woman, what kind of friends do you think we are? Methinks ’twould be the height of unseemliness. Me also thinks Wilhedra Thorbisher-Freep would hit the roof.”

  Jenson gave her a wry smile. “I’m afraid you’re right about that, dear lady. Furthermore, the distraction of nursing an invalid might keep you from being able to concentrate on your writing, and we can’t have that. Think of your vast reading public! No, I’m afraid our dear friend Carolus must e’en dree his ain weird, as the gracious Sergeant MacVicar would doubtless express it. Unless we might find some hospitable and as yet childless couple with a house as big as their hearts,” he added with a wistful sigh.

  Roger Munson cleared his throat. “Actually, Osbert, if you hadn’t written that shooting scene into the play—”

  All of a sudden the air was full of ifs: If the boys didn’t take up so much space at the Munson house, if Samantha Burberry didn’t have the Development Commission’s annual report to write, if the Boulangers’ daughter Felice hadn’t just got engaged and wanted a hurry-up wedding because her bridegroom was being transferred to Oslo, and a good many other variations on the same basic theme. What it all boiled down to was what Dittany had known in her heart of hearts it was going to boil down to, because everything in Lobelia Falls always did.

  Despite a last-ditch “What about Osbert’s vast reading public?” she found herself laying out the fancy towels and a fresh cake of soap in the upstairs bathroom. At least she wasn’t having to clean up the kitchen. A squad of her clubmates had volunteered to do the dishes, thus assuring that she wouldn’t be able to find any of her favorite cooking utensils for the next month or so.

  Osbert didn’t appear to share Dittany’s qualms about the prospect of having a casualty of the Malamute saloon shootout lying around. He went off quite happily, driving the ranch wagon with Roger Munson beside him and Ethel in the back, a small flask of brandy tied to her collar in case Carolus took a fainting fit on the way back from the hospital.

  Desdemona Portley had given Archie and Daniel a warm invitation to drop over and examine her scrapbook of earlier Traveling Thespians productions. Andrew McNaster had countered with a suggestion that he and Arethusa take the two visitors on a sightseeing tour of Lobelia Falls and environs. They’d asked for a raincheck on the scrapbook and accepted the ride. Desdemona wasn’t the least bit offended. She said in that case she’d just go home and put her feet up while her husband read the Sunday comics to her, as was his pleasant habit.

  By now, from around the corner and up the street, the sounds of church bells could be heard. Mrs. MacVicar was putting on her coat and giving her husband a look. A sudden dreadful recollection struck Dittany and she gave him a look, too. Her look must have expressed all the awfulness she was feeling, for the sergeant immediately came over to her.

  “What’s the matter, lass?”

  “I’ve got to talk to you. Can you stay a minute after the rest?”

  “It willna take lang?”

  “You know I wouldn’t make you miss the collection.”

  Muttering something to the effect that Dittany was getting more like her mother every day of her life, Sergeant MacVicar went off to have a word with his wife. Mrs. MacVicar drew on her gloves much more briskly, than he wished she would and said she’d walk on ahead with Minerva and Zilla.

  By now everybody else had gone, too, except for the cleanup squad, and they were all busy running back and forth between the dining room and the kitchen. Dittany drew the sergeant out into the front hall where they wouldn’t be overheard, and spoke her piece.

  “I didn’t want to say this in front of the rest, but you have to know. Carolus Bledsoe is Charlie.”

  “Oh aye?” The sergeant seemed less thunderstruck by her revelation than she’d anticipated. It occurred to her that he probably hadn’t the ghost of an idea what she was talking about.

  “Don’t you remember that time when we were trying to save the Enchanted Mountain from being developed and I eavesdropped on that meeting where Andy McNaster was trying to get his lawyer to pull a dirty deal for him? The lawyer said he’d done plenty of dirty deals for Andy but he wouldn’t do this one, though he knew somebody who would. Andy called the lawyer Charlie, and Charles is the same name as Carolus. And that’s who he is.”

  “Dittany, why did you no’ tell me this before?”

  “Becaus
e I didn’t realize it myself till day before yesterday. By then it was too late to get somebody else to play the feedbag man and I couldn’t bear to ruin Osbert’s play. I’d never seen Charlie, you know, I’d only heard his voice. I did get a sort of familiar feeling when Arethusa introduced us at the airport that day, but I couldn’t place him. I’d thought about it off and on ever since. Then all of a sudden while I was in the midst of making cookies, it hit me like a ton of bricks. You know how those things do.”

  Sergeant MacVicar scratched his chin.

  “Oh, stop scratching your chin at me! Why should I have told, with Andy being reformed all over the place and the pair of them working off their aggressions by insulting each other onstage? I didn’t even tell Osbert because he was so wound up about the play, what with Archie bringing Daniel and us trying to win the competition and everybody rushing in and out of here pestering him about one thing and another.”

  “Aye?”

  “Aye, darn it. And yesterday there wasn’t even time to breathe, and to top it all off, Osbert went ahead and invited the whole crowd here for breakfast without even bothering to ask me whether we had anything in the house to feed them. Those four dozen eggs of your daughter-in-law’s saved my bacon and I hope you’ll be kind enough to tell her how grateful I am when you see her. The fact that you had four dozen eggs to give might also suggest to her the possibility that she ought to find somebody else to wish off her surplus eggs on.”

  Dittany paused to reflect. “On the other hand, maybe you’d better not say anything. I’ll probably have to be making a lot of eggnogs for Roger to feed Carolus. I don’t know why the heck I always have to be the one left standing on the burning deck.”

  She got no sympathy from Sergeant MacVicar. “Did it ne’er occur to you that considering their earlier pairfidious association and wi’ the two of them presently at loggerheads over Arethusa, that the ill-feeling between McNaster and Bledsoe might develop into a serious confrontation?”

  “Of course it occurred to me. It also occurred to me that they only had the dress rehearsal and the actual performance left to play, and that neither one of them was loopy enough to start mixing it up in front of an audience, specially since Arethusa was their co-star and would have stapped their garters good and proper if they loused up her act. Sergeant, you don’t honestly believe Andy McNaster deliberately went out and bought himself a real .38 caliber bullet so he could shoot off Carolus Bledsoe’s left middle toe and keep him from chasing after Arethusa?”

  “I can believe there may be other reasons why Andrew McNaster might commit an assault upon the former partner of his skulduggerous machinations.”

  “So can I,” Dittany had to admit. “But whatever else Andy McNaster may have been in the past and may still be for all we know, I’ve never heard anybody call him stupid. Besides, it’s not as if he were the only one clamoring for Carolus Bledsoe’s guts in a bucket. What about Leander Hellespont? What about Carolus’s ex-wife? What about Wilhedra Thorbisher-Freep, for that matter? Though I’ll grant you it seems a bit premature for Wilhedra to try to kill Carolus when they’re not even married yet.”

  “The point is well taken,” Sergeant MacVicar conceded with a nervous glance at his watch.

  “And what about some stranger we don’t yet know anything about?” Dittany went on. “Carolus in his Charlie persona could still be pulling dirty tricks for other skulduggerers, couldn’t he? In fact I should think he’d pretty much have to if he expects to keep eating now that he’s lost Andy’s business.”

  “All avenues shall be explored,” said the sergeant with his hand on the doorknob. “I’ll be back to interrogate yon Bledsoe once he’s recovered frae the trauma of being brought from the hospital and I hae succeeded in placating my leddy wife. In the meantime, lass, keep mum an’ gae canny.”

  Chapter 13

  KEEP MUM AND GO bonkers would be closer to the mark, Dittany thought as she watched Osbert help Roger Munson and his sons Ed and Dave juggle Carolus Bledsoe up her front stairs lashed to a stretcher. Everybody but Carolus appeared to be having a good time. He, on the other hand, was looking pretty much the way he’d looked last night when he’d caught sight of the hole in his boot.

  “His bed’s all turned down,” she told the rescue squad. “Is he going to need pajamas and things?”

  “No,” said Roger. “We stopped at his apartment and packed a bag. It’s all organized.”

  Naturally it would be. “Then we girls will leave you to get him tucked in. Come on, Ethel, let’s put the kettle on. I expect everybody would like a cup of tea.”

  “I’d like a stiff drink,” said Carolus through clenched teeth.

  “Sorry,” Roger told him. “Not while you’re still on antibiotics.”

  Dittany didn’t wait for the discussion, if there was going to be one. She went back to the kitchen, filled the kettle, let Ethel out for a run, and started wondering where the dishwashers had hidden the cream jug. In a couple of minutes, Osbert came down and kissed her on the back of the neck.

  “That the best you can do?” she grumbled. “What’s happening upstairs?”

  “Roger’s getting Carolus organized. Where’s Sergeant MacVicar?”

  “Gone to church. He’s coming back to grill Carolus later on, assuming there’s anything left of the man by the time Roger gets through playing doctor. Osbert, there’s something I have to tell you.”

  He seized her in fervent embrace. “Darling, you don’t mean—”

  “Of course I don’t mean. Quit looking so happy. It’s Carolus. He’s Charlie.”

  “What’s so awful about being Charlie? I’d be Charlie too if I were Carolus. That’s the trouble with Osbert, I’m darned if I’ll be Ozzie and we’ve already got a Bert. What I’d really like to be is a Luke. I wish I’d picked Luke Laramie instead of Lex for my writing name. Luke means bringer of light.”

  “But Osbert means divinely brilliant, which suits you much better. Besides, Luke makes me think of lukewarm, and you’re certainly not that.”

  “I am sometimes,” Osbert insisted. “I’m sort of lukewarm about having Carolus here now that me initial euphoria has died, if you really want to know. I wish we hadn’t said we’d take him.”

  “Not to be contentious,” Dittany replied, “but I don’t recall that we did, if by we you mean to include me.”

  “Of course I do, dear. There’s only one we for me, you know that. I always think of us as two hearts that beat as one. Which ventricle would you rather be, right or left?”

  “I honestly haven’t given it much thought. Listen, Osbert—”

  “How’s the tea coming?” That was Roger, bustling into the kitchen, fairly radiating efficiency. “Carolus needs a stimulant.”

  “Who doesn’t? Fix the tray since you burn to be helpful.” Dittany slapped loose tea into a small pot and peeked to see if the kettle was boiling yet. “What happened to the boys?”

  “They’ve gone along home. They thought they might get in a few shots before Hazel calls us to dinner.” The Munson boys would soon be eligible for promotion from the Junior to the Senior Male Archers’ Target and Game Shooting Association and were naturally eager to hone their skills. “Where’s the little cloth that goes on the tray?”

  “What little cloth that goes on the tray, for Pete’s sake?” Dittany exploded. “Roger, this is not the Royal Hotel and I don’t give two hoots in heck whether Carolus Bledsoe likes the way I set a tray or not. Just take this tea up to him and tell him for me he’s darned lucky to get it.”

  “Well, I just wondered. Hazel always puts on a little embroidered cloth.”

  “Dittany never does,” said Osbert. “She maintains tray cloths are inefficient.”

  “Bless my soul,” cried Roger. “So they are. And to think I never realized that myself! I must tell Hazel.”

  “I hope she beans you with a tray if you do,” Dittany snarled. “Scat, Roger.”

  Roger picked up the clothless tray and scatted. Osbert turned to his somew
hat distraught wife.

  “Darling, why don’t you sit down in the rocking chair and let me bring you a cup of tea? Better still, why don’t we both curl up on the couch and have a nice little snuggle while you tell me all about Carolus being Charlie?”

  “There, see? I said you were divinely brilliant,” Dittany replied. “The only flaw I can see in your highly attractive scenario is that in about thirty seconds Roger’s going to come cavorting back to say Carolus wants a ham sandwich.”

  “Why should Carolus want a ham sandwich?”

  “As a hypothesis, because he’s hungry. Maybe it won’t be a ham sandwich, but it’ll be something. Want to bet?”

  Actually it was almost a minute. They’d had the chance to get their own tea poured and were even set to drink it when Roger did indeed return. What he wanted was a little handbell that Carolus could ring whenever he needed attention.

  “Carolus just had attention,” Osbert protested. “Is he asking for more already?”

  “Well, he did say something about a ham sandwich,” Roger answered. “Apparently the hospital breakfast was not to his liking.”

  “There, see,” said Dittany, “what did I tell you?”

  She checked the fridge and managed after considerable pawing around to locate all that was left of the ham. There was just about enough for one respectable sandwich. She might have sent Roger back up to find out which kind of bread Carolus preferred, but she felt just mean enough not to. He’d take white because that was the kind she and Osbert were least fond of, and if he didn’t like it he could darn well lump it.

  Dittany did add lettuce and mustard pickle because after all one had one’s standards even if one didn’t go in for embroidered tray cloths. She also fixed Carolus a sauce dish full of leftover fruit compote that somebody had contributed to the breakfast. It had to be eaten up anyway because it wouldn’t keep, and the extra vitamins might help to speed the healing process.