The Grub-and-Stakers Quilt a Bee Read online

  They duly searched, but found no sign of malfeasance. As the days wore on and McNaster workmen kept showing up with offers of free carpentry, free electrical wiring, free washers for the dripping faucets in the Fairfields’ new kitchenette and a free plumber to put them in, their wonder grew.

  “Can you beat that, eh?” Hazel marveled. “He’s either got religion or gone soft in the head.”

  “In a pig’s eye he has,” Dittany insisted. “He’s up to something, you mark my words.”

  “Oh, Dittany, don’t be paranoid,” said Dot Coskoff. “Those workmen are on McNaster’s regular payroll. If he doesn’t happen to have a full day’s work for them, he packs them over to us so he can build up a reputation for philanthropy at no extra cost to himself. I wonder if we might finagle a few more feet of free shelving out of him before he gets tired of being Mr. Nice Guy.”

  Dittany scowled. “Don’t we have enough money to buy the lumber ourselves?”

  “Yes, but why should we if we can get it for nothing? We’ve got to think of the future, you know.”

  So they did. Thus far, the trustees hadn’t been plagued by fiscal woes, thanks to Osbert’s handsome donation and Arethusa’s determination not to let a mere nephew head her off at the pass. Still, there was a long, cold winter coming. Therese Boulanger talked of bake sales but it would take an awful lot of brandy snaps to keep the boiler running. Dot Coskoff came up with the truly brilliant plan of accepting everything everybody was hell-bent on donating, with the proviso that whatever proved inappropriate for exhibition could be peddled at an ongoing flea market, or marché aux puces. Donors’ names would, she stipulated, go down regardless in the handsome book provided for that purpose by Mr. Gumpert of Ye Village Stationer. Being a donor wouldn’t exempt anyone from having to pay membership fees, but it would keep the egos buttered.

  This was all very well but, as Zilla Trott pointed out, they weren’t going to get rich in a hurry peddling secondhand arm garters and cracked shaving mugs. Nor were people going to flock to join the museum until they had something tangible to flock to.

  Be that as it might, things were moving along well enough at the moment. Mr. Fairfield was finding a reasonable amount of wheat among the chaff. Mrs. Fairfield was cleaning and refurbishing what he found. By the first of August, the front parlor was actually painted, papered, and ready to go on view.

  To be sure, they’d zeroed in on the front parlor first because it was the easiest. No Architrave had ever been known to enter the room except for weddings, funerals, tea with the minister, or ritual cleaning back in the days when there was still a housewife to clean it. The furniture, of the carved grapes and horsehair period, was mostly salvageable. There was a square rosewood piano whose ivories required only to be glued back on and whose finish responded nicely to lemon oil and elbow grease. It wouldn’t play anything except a thunk, but it did look elegant under a gorgeously shirred and tasseled silk piano scarf Samantha Burberry’s mother-in-law donated. As to ornaments for the whatnot and mantelpiece, Mr. Fairfield had but to choose among a plethora of hair wreaths, wax fruit, souvenirs from Lake Louise, and bone china mustache cups.

  The rest of the house hadn’t been such a happy hunting ground. Once the place had been built and furnished, succeeding generations of Architraves had made do with what was already there. As tables and chairs wore out or collapsed, they’d been thrown down cellar or up attic and left to molder away. Thanks to Osbert’s dump truck, the cellar had now been cleaned out and was temporarily being used to hold the overflow of donations for Dot Coskoff’s flea market. Even the most zealous among the clean-up crew shied away from tackling the attic, though, until one day when Osbert Monk was off in Toronto seeing his publishers and Dittany was feeling specially bereft. To take her mind off the pain of separation, she wandered up and began poking around. Less than three minutes later, Mrs. Fairfield joined her.

  “Found anything interesting, Mrs. Monk?”

  Dittany would have preferred to be alone in her bereavement, but good breeding prevailed. “I just got here,” she answered. “Horrible, isn’t it? I’m going to fight my way over to a window and see if I can’t get a breath of fresh air in here.”

  “That would be a great help. Do you think you could?”

  There were few things Dittany wasn’t willing to have a shot at, especially with Mrs. Fairfield standing there flashing those shiny pink gums in challenge. She squirmed a path through the debris and managed after several attempts to wrestle open a window that had perhaps never been opened before. The window promptly fell shut again because the cords had either rotted out or never been put in, so she reopened it and propped up the sash with a bit of wreckage that lay close to hand.

  The window was not very big, hardly more than dollhouse size, and recessed into the mansard roof to render it even less efficient at catching what breeze there was, but it did help a little. After a few refreshing whiffs and a brief rest, Dittany managed to reach and open a couple more. Gradually the air became almost breathable. Sneezing a good deal, for the dust lay half an inch thick everywhere, she and Mrs. Fairfield got down to business.

  Moths and mice, allowed to chew unchecked for half a century or so, can do a remarkable lot of damage. Most of the articles touched by the searchers crumbled to bits in their hands. Dittany did find a wrought iron trivet no predator had found palatable, and Mrs. Fairfield unearthed a flowered slop jar with only a minor crack in it. Spurred on by these small triumphs, they persisted.

  There is a fascination about hunting for hidden treasure, even in places like John Architrave’s attic. Dittany got filthy and sweaty, and knew she was doing dreadful things to the hands Osbert loved to touch; nevertheless, she kept going.

  Mrs. Fairfield put up a valiant effort, but she really couldn’t do much with that cast on her wrist. It was Dittany who forged ahead to where the dust lay thickest, Dittany who found the trunkful of old clothes, Dittany who almost had a heart attack when sixteen mice jumped out at her from among the shreds, and ultimately Dittany who came upon a package wrapped in brown paper, tucked between the remains of a redingote and a corset cover.

  “That trunk might do for one of the bedrooms,” Mrs. Fairfield was musing when Dittany hauled out her find. “The clothes are hopeless, I’m afraid, but—what have you there, Mrs. Monk?”

  “I don’t know. I’m scared to open it.”

  Mrs. Fairfield took the package out of Dittany’s hands. “It doesn’t look as if it’s been gnawed. Feels like a box of some sort. Perhaps it’s photographs or letters. Mr. Fairfield always gets excited over letters.”

  Very carefully, Mrs. Fairfield eased off the wrapping without tearing the paper or breaking the string. That was important, it seemed, although Dittany couldn’t imagine why. She was rooting for a Bible or a family album herself, for the perverse reason that she didn’t want Mrs. Fairfield to have guessed right about the box. A box, however, it was; and not just any box but a well-made little walnut chest with a neat hook-and-eye fastening. Mrs. Fairfield slipped the hook and opened the lid. The box was full of silk and satin scraps.

  “Why, it’s a bride’s quilt,” she exclaimed. “Or rather the pieces for one. You’ve never heard of those, I don’t suppose.”

  At least Dittany got to contradict her. “As a matter of fact, I have my own great-grandmother’s at home. She got it for a wedding present. All her girl friends took pieces of their best Sunday go-to-meeting gowns and embroidered pretty little doodads and whatnots on them. Then they featherboned them together into a crazy quilt for the nuptial couch.”

  The nuptial couch-rather slipped out. Perhaps she’d typed one too many of Arethusa’s roguish regency romances before Osbert lured her off to the wide-open spaces where men were men and didn’t go around stapping their garters. It didn’t matter, though, because Mrs. Fairfield wasn’t paying attention. She was turning over the charmingly embroidered patches, rubbing the satins and velvets between her fingers.

  “I wonder why the quilt never
got put together. Perhaps the bride-to-be died. No, it was more likely the groom. That’s why she’d have treasured the pieces even though it had become pointless to complete the quilt. We’ll have to do some research on who she might have been. What a pity the quilt never got finished. I can’t think how we’re going to exhibit all these loose scraps, but it would be a dreadful pity not to.”

  “Then we’ll hold a quilting bee,” said Dittany. “That will attract more people to the museum, and we’ll hit ’em up for donations. While we’re about it, we can make up a modern copy of this one, and raffle it off.”

  “But Mrs. Monk, that’s an extremely ambitious project. It would require a crew of expert needlewomen.”

  Dittany opened wide the eyes which Osbert had compared favorably to the azure-tinted skies which o’erspread the western deserts when gentle rains of spring awake the cactus buds to bloom. After the rains had done their thing, he’d meant, and gone away and let the sun come out, but that had been on their honeymoon when he’d been filled with too great a euphoria to boggle at meteorological detail. Nor had Dittany been in any mood to carp. Right now, her mood was less yielding.

  “Mrs. Fairfield, there isn’t a woman in Lobelia Falls who can’t embroider. Minerva Oakes featherbones like a house afire. My mother does, too, when she puts her mind to it. She’s at an optical convention with my stepfather just now, but they may stop over for a while on their way back to Vancouver. Then again,” for Dittany knew the nomadic habits of Mum and Bert, “they may not. But anyway, I’m sure we can manage a quilting bee. We even have a bee to quilt. Look.”

  She pointed a grubby index finger at one of the scraps Mrs. Fairfield was still fingering. “Two bees, in fact. There’s another on that piece of blue velvet stuck to the inside of the lid. I wonder why.”

  Mrs. Fairfield flashed her gums. “Why the bees, you mean? I should venture to say it was because the bride’s name happened to be Beatrice and people nicknamed her Bea. Or else she had several friends called Betsy and Bertha and so forth, and they called their sewing circle the Busy Bees. This really is a nice find. I’m sure Mr. Fairfield will be pleased.”

  She shut the lid and tucked the box under her cast. “Now don’t you think we’ve earned the right to get out of this filthy old attic? I’m longing for a bath and a change, myself. We can leave the windows open to air out the dust we’ve stirred up. I’ll leave word for somebody to close them before nightfall. Don’t you think?”

  The “don’t you thinks” were rhetorical. Dittany knew perfectly well that Mrs. Fairfield didn’t give a hoot what she thought. Dittany was to take it for granted Mrs. Fairfield knew best. Dittany reached over and took the small wooden chest gently but firmly into her own hands.

  “I’m quite ready to quit, and I’ll take this with me. I want the other trustees to see the quilt pieces.”

  “But Mr. Fairfield should look them over first, surely? They may need special treatment to preserve them.”

  “I don’t see why. That can’t be all that old, and they’ve been well protected Anyway, Arethusa will know. She’s a shark on this sort of thing because her heroes wear satin waistcoats and velvet knee breeches. Or vice versa, as the case may be.”

  Dittany made sure all the scraps were safe inside, shut the lid with a businesslike snap, fastened the hook, and tucked the box under her own arm. It was high time she got home anyway. Osbert was due back at suppertime and she wasn’t about to welcome him in the guise of a chimney sweep who’d had a rough day among the cinders.

  Mrs. Fairfield looked a bit sniffy when they parted, but Dittany merely gave her another wide-eyed smile and went home. She’d got herself prettied up and had supper on the table when Osbert came in eager for their joyous reunion. They were still reuniting two hours later, when Arethusa rushed in with a message of doom.

  CHAPTER 3

  “ARETHUSA, YOU’RE BONKERS” was Dittany’s reaction.

  “And why, prithee?”

  “You just told us Mr. Fairfield fell out an attic window at the museum and killed himself.”

  “‘Demised’ seemed a bit literary, and ‘met his end’ had overtones of flippancy, considering that he landed on his head.”

  “Arethusa, stuff it. How could he? Those attic windows aren’t big enough to swing a cat through. Besides, they’re set into the roof. There’s a ledge outside he’d have had to crawl over, for Pete’s sake.”

  “You’re mighty cocksure, forsooth.”

  “I ought to be. I opened the windows myself, this afternoon. Mrs. Fairfield and I were up there scrounging around. We found a box of quilt pieces.”

  Dittany’s lip quivered. She wished now she hadn’t been so mean about letting Mr. Fairfield see them. Osbert rushed to comfort her.

  “Darling, you’re not feeling guilty about opening the windows?”

  “Will you two cease canoodling?” snarled Arethusa.

  “Why the heck should we? Those idiotic characters of yours are always hurling themselves at each other in fervent embrace and all that garbage,” her nephew argued, juggling his wife into a yet more fervently embraceable position to illustrate his point.

  “Unhand me, sirrah,” Dittany told him absentmindedly, though making no effort to be unhanded. “Why should I feel guilty? If I hadn’t opened the windows, we’d have been stifled. I’d have shut them myself when we left, but Mrs. Fairfield said we should leave them open to air the place out. I suppose she sent him up to shut them before they left. I cannot for the life of me imagine how he managed to fall out.”

  “I suppose he was struggling with a sticky sash.”

  “Struggling, my left eyeball! I had to prop the silly things open with bits of old chair rungs. All he had to do was snatch away the props and mind his fingers. Besides, the openings would have been down around his waist and only about a foot square. He’d have had to double up and wiggle out on his belly. In so doing, he’d have knocked out the prop, eh, and the window would have come crashing down and pinned him to the ledge. I think we ought to go and talk to Sergeant MacVicar.”

  Osbert repressed a sigh. The homecoming that had begun so auspiciously was not turning out in the way he’d envisioned. However, he knew his Dittany. When duty whispered low, “Thou must,” she was constitutionally incapable of murmuring back, “Sorry, I had something else on the agenda.” He contented himself with tucking her into a cardigan to assert his role as manly protector, but missed out on the fun of fastening the buttons because his Aunt Arethusa kept her eye on him and something of the old terror still remained.

  Arethusa was not wearing her purple cape on so warm a night, merely a Spanish shawl some six feet square with a pattern of exotic flora done in reds and pinks and a black silk fringe nine and a half inches long. As an act of defiance, Osbert put on his buckskin vest with the Indian beadwork. Thus accoutred, they set off for the museum.

  They found Sergeant MacVicar standing like the stag at eve on Monan’s rill, two points north-northeast of a recently pruned viburnum on what had erst been John Architrave’s front yard. He vouchsafed a greeting with stately affability.

  “Ah, Dittany.”

  The wee, fatherless bairn, as he still tended to think of her, was a special favorite of Sergeant MacVicar’s. Osbert, who had served as his special deputy on an earlier occasion*, rated a comradely nod and Arethusa a gallant though far from subservient bow.

  “This is indeed a direful and inauspicious beginning to your new venture.”

  Sergeant MacVicar intoned the words through his impressive Highland nose in a way that not only gave due emphasis to the awfulness of the event but conveyed to Dittany a hint that Sergeant MacVicar knew pretty well what it was she’d come to tell him, and why. She gave him the briefest possible glance, and he replied with the merest hint of a nod. Since a fair-sized crowd had by now gathered on the sidewalk around the museum, no more overt communication would have been politic, nor was it needed.

  “I was the one who opened the windows in the first place,” Dittan
y decided it would be safe enough to say. “I thought I’d better come and tell you.”

  “And rightly so. You did not, I gather, shut the windows again before you left the attic?”

  This was purely for the benefit of the assembled multitudes. Sergeant MacVicar knew when to dispense a few loaves and fishes.

  “No,” Dittany replied in a good, clear voice so nobody would miss anything. “Mrs. Fairfield was with me. We were just hunting around. We found the pieces for a bride’s quilt,” she threw in because naturally people would want to know.

  “Anyway, the air was pretty bad up there as you can imagine, so I opened some windows. When we decided to call it quits, Mrs. Fairfield said to leave them open and she’d have somebody shut them later.”

  So that was what the husband had been doing in the attic. No question who’d worn the trousers in that family, eh. A comfortable buzzing went through the crowd. Now was the strategic moment for Sergeant MacVicar to suggest ever so casually, “Ah, yes. Suppose we step inside so you can show me just how you left the windows.”

  Leaving the spectators well entertained, with Sergeant MacVicar’s two henchmen Bob and Ray keeping them under benign surveillance, Dittany and her entourage followed the leader into the museum. Nobody else was inside the place now. Earlier on, Dittany recalled, the Munson boys had still been painting woodwork in the bedroom Mr. Fairfield was to have occupied with his spouse, and a plumber she’d recognized as one of McNaster’s men had been gazing despondently into some piece of equipment he’d removed from the kitchen piping.

  It was surprising, the amount of interest McNaster had been showing in the museum all this time. Some were theorizing that he expected the place to be a drawing card for his restaurant. Others thought he was intending to stick the Grub-and-Stake Gardening and Roving Club for a hefty bill once work had been completed.