The Corpse in Oozak's Pond Read online

  Grace emitted something very like a snort. “Finally, he sent this real tearjerker. He’d fallen and broken his arm during one of his fainting fits and couldn’t even dress himself. He hadn’t eaten for days and was going to be turned out of his room, and if Sephy didn’t wire him fifty dollars PDQ, he’d be pushing up daisies by the end of the week.

  “So Sephy decided there was only one thing to do. She’d go to New York and bring him home. That was the only time in her life Sephy asked me to lend her money. I had two hundred dollars, so I gave it to her and off she went on the train, scared stiff to be traveling all that way alone when she’d never even been to Boston but determined to do her duty.

  “Well, to make a long story short, she got to New York and managed to find the Wayfarers’ Rest. It turned out to be a fancy nightclub. And there was her poor, sick brother, dressed to kill, out on the dance floor with some painted-up floozy, having the time of his life. Sephy gave him one look, turned around and came straight home, and gave me back my two hundred dollars. He had the nerve to write her another letter, but she threw it in the fire and then he quit.

  “I shouldn’t be surprised if he went right on dunning his parents, though. Every so often Uncle Trev would come to us with some hard-luck story about not being able to meet his taxes or something, which I’d know was a lie because Sephy and Purvis always kept track of the bills. We’d give him a little something if we happened to feel like it and charge it up to bread on the waters.”

  “Then you believe the parents had been in touch with Bracebridge all along.”

  “Peter, I really think you should be talking to Sephy about Brace instead of me. Right now I’m mostly concerned for my own husband. Will that lamebrain Fred Ottermole let me take Phil some supper? Or are they keeping him on bread and water?”

  “You might phone the station and ask. I expect Ottermole will let you see Phil if you want to.”

  “Peter Shandy, you ought to be shot! Why didn’t you say so in the first place? Since you’re the great detective, I expect you can find your way out. I suppose I ought to thank you for coming, but frankly I wish you hadn’t.”

  Grace was already in the next room, dialing. Shandy buttoned the coat he’d never been invited to take off and faced the gathering dusk.

  Chapter 14

  WHAT WAS A MAN SUPPOSED to make of this? Had he been talking with an innocent woman in a well-merited tizzy or a Mrs. Borgia whose ill-laid plans had backfired on her own husband? Shandy had been wont to think of Grace as Porble’s wife, Helen’s friend, his good neighbor. There was a Burne-Jones quality about her stately good looks and her winning ways with tiger lilies that he’d admired from a respectful distance. Should he go back and ask a woman who arranged lilies if she’d happened to arrange a triple murder, too?

  He’d been thinking of it as the crime of a shrewd plotter, but what if he was dealing with a series of bungles instead? Suppose that fleeting thought of his about Grace’s finding something about Oozak’s Pond in the Buggins Collection happened to be valid? Suppose she’d seen a way to prove the Ichabod claim legitimate or make it appear to be so? What if Grace, a fundamentally uncomplicated woman with do-gooding urges and perhaps some latent hangups from her mixed-up childhood, had decided to make her dear Sephy’s early dreams come true? And what if, through her own lack of sinister cunning and Porble’s unexpectedly violent reaction to the lawsuit, her plot had gone haywire?

  No doubt Grace had been over at the Enderbles’ looking at Chicken Inspector buttons that night, as she’d said. However, she hadn’t given him a definite time when she’d left, and Shandy doubted if Mary or John would remember. Grace wouldn’t have stayed late in any case. The Enderbles went to bed with the birds, and they’d have made a special point of turning in early on the first because of John Enderble’s 6:00 a.m. engagement with Beauregard on the second.

  Yet Porble had implied that Grace was out for the whole evening. Perhaps Porble was just being cussed, or perhaps she really had been. Grace had her own car keys. She could have picked up the car and gone out to the Forks after she left the Enderbles at, say, half past eight or even before. She could have heard about the carbon tet in Flackley’s barn. Miss Mink would have brought the neighborhood trivia home from the bingo, no doubt, and the Bugginses would have repeated it because they had nothing more interesting to talk about.

  She wouldn’t go prowling around the place at night and risk setting the huskies off. She’d have dropped in one day to borrow a piece of dogsled harness as a container for a flower arrangement interpreting the aurora borealis or something. Any excuse would have done.

  Hiding the bottle in the tennis-ball can would have made sense to Grace because only Lizanne played tennis, and Lizanne was away at school. The can had probably been kicking around the car’s trunk for months. Porble wouldn’t have bothered to open it. Only a simpleminded cop like Ottermole would do that. Grace wouldn’t have figured on Ottermole.

  She wouldn’t have thought of Marietta Woozle’s having to work late, either. Amateur criminals never allowed for the unexpected. Anyway, Grace wouldn’t have worried much about being spotted visiting her aged relatives on the night they died. She’d come to keep them company on bingo night and found them looking poorly. No, she wasn’t surprised at the doctor’s verdict of death from natural causes. Only by the autopsy.

  But why would she have to kill them? Because Uncle Trev was talking too much? Because she was afraid they’d let Bracebridge get Sephy’s share? Or would it be the renegade Bainbridge she had to stab? Anyway, with the rest of the family dead, everything would go to Sephy.

  Could that be why Persephone Mink had refused to identify the man from the pond as her brother? If Grace had killed for Sephy, then surely Sephy could have lied for Grace.

  It was an ugly theory, and Shandy didn’t want to believe a word of it. He wanted to sit down with a bag of beans and count them one by one. His own house was only two doors away. Jane Austen would be glad to see him. Helen would still be up at the library, though, so it was thitherward he turned his lagging steps.

  Helen was in full charge but looking frayed around the edges. She beckoned him into the librarian’s office, shut the door, and bared her teeth.

  “I hope you’re satisfied!”

  “What about?” Shandy asked, not wanting to hear.

  “Sending Fred Ottermole to arrest Dr. Porble and stick me with his job.”

  “I did nothing of the sort,” Shandy protested. “Ottermole acted on his own initiative. Look at the facts, Helen. He found the empty carbon tet bottle in Phil’s car, which had been seen coming away from First Fork with its lights out on the night the Bugginses were poisoned. He knew about the fight Phil had picked with Trevelyan Buggins that same morning. With that kind of evidence, he pretty much had to put the arm on Phil. I didn’t know till he’d done it. I hope to God he’s mistaken, and Grace has already hauled me over the coals, so I’d thank you to lay off my wounded sensibilities. “

  “But what’s going to happen to Dr. Porble?”

  “Nothing drastic, I hope. Ottermole’s being quite restrained, by his standards. When last seen, he was trying to turn the hoosegow into the Ritz Carlton with a folding cot and a bar of fancy soap.”

  Helen hadn’t meant to laugh, but she did. “Maybe we ought to take down a flower arrangement. Is Dr. Porble allowed visitors?”

  “Probably, but I’d suggest we wait till matters have simmered down a bit. Grace was on the phone with him when I left her, discussing the dinner menu. Speaking of which, what are your plans for this evening?”

  “I thought I might just sit in a corner and have a good cry, assuming I ever get out of here. I’d meant to go to the visiting hours at Goulson’s out of respect for Sephy, but I expect you’d rather I put in another whack at the Buggins material instead. Why does everything always have to come at once?”

  “Good question,” said Shandy. Through the clear glass panel in the office door, he could see the ultimate disaster
impending. “Brace yourself, Helen. Here comes the president.”

  “Why us, O Lord?” Helen moaned. “But why isn’t he roaring?”

  That, thought Shandy, was another good question. Moody was not the precise word to describe Dr. Svenson’s manner, but it was the best he could think of offhand.

  The great man’s greeting was delivered more in sorrow than in anger. “Damned shame. Sorry, Helen.”

  “I’m sorry too, Thorkjeld,” she replied, “but I’m sure we’ll soon have everything straightened out.”

  “Damned well better.” It was more a sigh than a threat.

  “You feeling all right, President?” Shandy inquired anxiously.

  “No. What are you lollygagging around here for?”

  “He’s winning your silly old lawsuit,” said Helen.

  “Urrgh.” But it was a spiritless urrgh. “Get Porble out first. Unseemly. Bad for morale. No reflection on you, Helen.”

  “And no umbrage taken. Thorkjeld, what’s the matter with you?”

  “It’s Purvis Mink,” Svenson blurted. “Came to me just now and offered to resign. Conflict of interest. Friend against friend, brother against brother. Worse than the Blue and the Gray. God damn it to hell, Purve’s been on the security force ever since I got to Balaclava. Took my kids owl watching. Took me owl watching, blast it! Told him if he resigns, I’ll resign and it’ll be all his Goddamn fault if the Goddamn college goes down the tube. Got to go. Goddamn trustees’ meeting.”

  “Shall we have a chorus of ‘Just Before the Battle, Mother’ before you go?” Shandy volunteered.

  Svenson gave him a look. “Not funny, Shandy.” But there was more spirit in his snarl and more surge in his step as he left the library.

  “I think we did him good,” said Helen. “Poor Thorkjeld. Running this college is an awful responsibility, Peter.”

  “And how adroitly he made his point that we’re all in the barrel together. Do you think I’d get anywhere if I dropped over for a chat with Persephone Mink?”

  “Tonight? Are you out of your mind?”

  “I take it I’m to assume my query has been answered in the negative. What time might you be through here?”

  “Peter, I haven’t the remotest idea. Why don’t you go feed Jane and make yourself a sandwich? Or stop at the faculty dining room.”

  “Can I bring you something?”

  “With a horde of lackeys here to do my every bidding? Darling, just go.”

  The telephone rang. Helen gave him an absentminded kiss and picked up the receiver. Shandy went.

  Jane was annoyed at having been kept waiting so long for her preprandial stroll and told him so. “Ah, you women are all alike,” he replied, holding the front door for her and watching as she placed a dainty paw on the cold, wet top step, drew it back, gave it a shake and a lick, and tried again. “There’s no pleasing you. Give you what you say you want, and it turns out you don’t want it after all.”

  He was still standing there watching her pick and shake her way down the path when Jim Feldster, his next-door neighbor, came along. Feldster clanked a bit, from which sound Shandy deduced he was wearing some lodge regalia or other under his overcoat.

  “Hi, Pete. Walking the cat?”

  “Hi, Jim. Which meeting are you off to tonight?”

  “No meeting. I’m on my way to Goulson’s. Trev Buggins used to belong to the August Amalgamation of Amazonians, so the brothers thought we’d give him a little send-off.”

  “Er, not to be rudely inquisitive, but aren’t brothers the wrong sex for Amazonians?”

  Feldster thought that one over for a while, then shook his head. “Oh, I get it. Always got to have your little joke, eh, Pete? You must be thinking of Amazons. I saw some in the movies once. Big, strapping girls with shin guards and bare thighs clear up to their you-know-wheres. Supposed to be warriors. Heck, who’d want to fight ’em?”

  He permitted himself a mildly salacious grin before he remembered the solemnity of his mission. “You and Helen coming down later?”

  “I’m not sure. Helen has to work late at the library. By the way, were you ever acquainted with either of Trevelyan’s sons?”

  “Nope. They were gone before we got here. I can tell you who did pal around with them, though. At least I could if I could think of his name. It’ll come to me. See you later.”

  Professor Feldster clanked on his’ way. Jane Austen scurried back into the house, scolding Shandy for letting her get her paws wet. He picked her up and carried her to the kitchen.

  There was roast beef in the refrigerator. Shandy had his with rye bread and pickles; Jane took hers plain. They were sharing their supper in companionable silence when the phone rang. The caller was, rather to Shandy’s surprise, Jim Feldster.

  “It came to me, Peter. The gink you want to see is Hesperus Hudson. He usually hangs out at the Dirty Duck out on the county road. If he’s not there, they can most likely tell you where to find him.”

  Shandy didn’t ask how his colleague, a recognized expert in fundamentals of dairy management, happened to know a gink named Hesperus Hudson who hung out at the Dirty Duck. He did say, “What makes you so sure I want to see him?”

  “Why else would you have asked?” With a final muted clank, Feldster hung up. Shandy ate another pickle.

  Strictly speaking, he did not want to see Hesperus Hudson. He wanted to stretch out in front of the as yet unlit living-room fire with a mild Scotch and water to wash down his sandwich, and mull things over. He decided not to light the fire, but he did allow himself a short mulling period. This somehow turned into a nap, as his mulls too often did. He awoke after half an hour or so with a stiff neck and a guilty feeling that he ought to be up and doing with a heart for any fate.

  Careful not to disturb Jane, he went and got his old plaid mackinaw and his baggy tweed hat. These ought to be proper attire for the Dirty Duck. Helen still wasn’t home, and he debated calling the library but didn’t. It wasn’t late and she had enough on her hands without an overprotective husband trying to make believe she couldn’t manage without him. He scrawled her a note reading, “I’ve gone to whoop it up with the boys in the Malemute Saloon,” and went to get his car.

  Maybe Charlie Ross was an Amazonian, too. Anyway, he’d closed up even earlier than usual tonight. There was only the one dim light inside the garage to illuminate the parking lot. It would be a piece of cake to swipe a car from here, only nobody ever did because stealing cars was not the done thing in Balaclava Junction. Betsy Lomax would be sure to find out who did it because she lived right around the corner and ran the most effective bush telegraph in town.

  Shandy wondered whether Mrs. Lomax might in fact know something about Dr. Porble’s car that Porble himself didn’t. If so, why hadn’t she taken steps to make sure the car thief got his comeuppance? Betsy Lomax was no self-appointed vigilante, but she did hold firm and often expressed opinions about civic responsibility.

  This time, though, there could be a conflict of interest. Mrs. Lomax must be feeling an obligation toward her friend Sephy, but she also had to consider the fact that she herself was landlady to one of Purvis Mink’s fellow security guards and cousin-in-law or something to a couple more. Among the townsfolk, she was chairman of this, president of that, and related in one way or another to almost everybody. Around campus, she was the highly respected, well-paid domestic prop and mainstay to several faculty families. Shandy didn’t think she’d deliberately cover up a crime involving town against gown, but she’d be a fool to open her mouth before she was damned sure of her facts.

  Betsy Lomax was no fool. Sighing, Shandy started his car and headed out for the county road.

  Chapter 15

  SHANDY WAS IN NO mood for the Dirty Duck. To be sure, he’d never been inside the place before, but he’d driven past it often enough, and past it was the obvious place to go. Scowling at its repulsive dark-brown facade, its filthy windows behind which a couple of neon signs advertising beer glowed dully in the places
where they glowed at all, he could not imagine anybody going there to have a good time. They must go solely for the purpose of getting drunk.

  Men—probably no women—would be slouched over the bar having endless, dreary arguments about nothing in particular. The bar itself would be chipped plastic laminate, most of its pattern worn off, smeared with dirt and puddled with stale beer. Messy ashtrays would be sitting around full of soggy, stinking cigarette butts. Maybe there’d be a bowl of stale cheese popcorn, kernels spilled over the edge by unwashed hands that had glommed into the bowl when their owners had stopped in for a couple of brews after pumping out somebody’s septic tank.

  It would be the kind of scene angry young dramatists liked to present to their angry older audiences as stark realism. Who the hell needed it? Not P. Shandy, for sure. He’d thought of another fish to fry. He’d get on to the next place first, giving his dinner a chance to settle, and come back later. If Hesperus Hudson was already inside here, he’d be set for the evening. If he hadn’t yet arrived, why suffer the agony of having to sit there smelling the cigarette butts while waiting for him?

  Shandy supposed Budge Dorkin’s testimony with regard to the proofreader from the Pied Pica didn’t really need to be checked, but Dorkin was young and inexperienced, and one excuse to procrastinate over the Dirty Duck was as good as another. He kept straight on to Second Fork and had no trouble, as who could, finding the white house with the red-and-blue barber-pole trimmings.

  Nor was the proofreader herself far to seek. Marietta Woozle was at home relaxing. At least Shandy assumed she was relaxing. The fitted ankle-length gown she had on didn’t look like the sort of garment a person would wear to check copy in. All those blue feathers around the edges of the flowing sleeves would be awfully in the way, he should think, if Mrs. Woozle tried to use her arms for anything more strenuous than peeling a grape. Shandy was reminded of the gowns Mae West used to wear in the movies he’d snuck into as a boy, except that Miss West’s gowns had always shown up on the screen as black or white, whereas Mrs. Woozle’s was scarlet with blue feathers. Dyed chicken feathers, he thought, but he couldn’t be sure. Dan Stott would have known at a glance.