The Grub-And-Stakers Move a Mountain Read online

  Dittany had been proud and honored to join the Grub-and-Stake Gardening and Roving Club as a third-generation member. She’d honestly meant to be a credit to the organization but she was, after all, her mother’s daughter and the former Mrs. Henbit’s best-laid plans tended to gang agley as often as not.

  This had been one of those agley days. Dittany had started out to be beautifully organized. She’d remembered she was on the Tea Committee even before Mrs. MacVicar called to remind her. She’d prepared dainty sandwiches on thin-sliced date bread, filled with cream cheese and walnuts plus a dash of horseradish for zest and a sprinkling of paprika for color. She’d trimmed the crusts, carved her creations into neat triangles, and packed them between layers of biodegradable waxed paper in a Crawford’s biscuit tin. She’d set the tin in the fridge to keep the sandwiches fresh.

  She’d washed her hair and fluffed it with one of the four blow-dryers her mother had bought her in moments of forgetful benevolence. She’d thought of plucking her eyebrows but quit after a couple of experimental tweaks because Dittany was no masochist. Anyway they were so light a brown they didn’t show much. Dittany’s coloring was all betwixt and between: her hair more blondish than brownish, her eyes more green than blue, her complexion more fair than not, more peachy than pinky. Her face might never have launched a thousand ships, especially not on Lake Ontario, but it was a face most people would rather see than not.

  She’d got herself slicked up in the aforementioned camel-hair slacks and a matching cashmere pullover, being small and slim enough to wear such garments without bulging except where she was supposed to bulge. She’d added Gram Henbit’s gold chain and watch, which didn’t tell time anymore but was quite lovely to look at. Then she realized she’d done all these things hours too soon, so she’d dutifully sat down to stap Sir Percy’s buttons until she couldn’t stand that any longer. Then she’d gone for that catastrophic walk and now here she was with pawprints all over her clothes and huge questions in her mind and no time to do anything about either.

  She dashed into the house, grabbed her biscuit tin, and raced to the public library where meetings were now held since one member had resigned in a huff because she was forever being asked to have the group at her house and another had quit because she never got asked at all. She arrived one step ahead of the lecturer who was to present a program, with colored slides, on Larkspur and Lepidoptera, and flung herself into the tiny, inconvenient kitchen.

  There she found Caroline Pitz scowling into the recalcitrant recesses of a thirty-cup coffeemaker and Ellie Despard refilling the teakettle at what everybody had complained since the day it was installed was a grossly inadequate sink. Samantha Burberry was arranging lemon squares on a Crown Derby plate.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Dittany panted. “I’ve been having the most fantastically ghastly experience.”

  “When have you ever not?” drawled Samantha. “I hope you’ve brought sandwiches. Imogene Laplace was supposed to and she made these gorgeous lemony things instead. Not that I wouldn’t rather have them myself”—she suited deed to word by helping herself to one then and there—“but it says in the bylaws we’re supposed to have sandwiches.”

  Even with her mouth full of lemon square Samantha managed to sound coolly amused, although she herself was chairman of the Legislative Committee and would be first to pounce on any infringement of the club’s constitution.

  “Yes, I made sandwiches,” sighed Dittany. Realizing it would be futile to try telling her wild story now, she reached for another serving plate and began unpacking her goodies with a steady rhythm born of much practice. “Goodness knows what they taste like.”

  Samantha, having dispatched the lemon square, reached for one of the tiny triangles and nibbled with epicurean discernment. “Delicious,” she pronounced. Samantha had the remarkable faculty of being able to put away any amount of food without adding an inch to her tall svelteness. More remarkably still, nobody hated her for it. Esprit de corps was high among the Grub-and-Stakers, though never so high as to make things dull.

  Certainly the next half hour was anything but monotonous for Dittany. She ran her legs off bringing more sandwiches, more cream, more pastries to the tea table. She pestered the long-suffering library assistants for the loan of an extension cord so the lecturer could plug in her slide projector. What with one thing and another, she herself didn’t get any tea until the meeting had started, the Tea Committee were washing up the last of the cups, and there was absolutely nothing left to eat but some sandwiches Zilla Trott had made.

  Zilla’s donations were seldom popular. Today’s offerings were composed, as far as Dittany could determine, of wheat germ, grated raw parsnips, and homemade yogurt on bread made from oat hulls and cardboard. Having missed lunch, she ate them anyway and slipped into the meeting just in time to hear President Therese Boulanger ask, “And now is there any further business to discuss before I turn the meeting over to our Honorable Program Chairman?”

  Without in the least intending to, Dittany bounded to her feet. “The Conservation Committee wishes to inquire whether any member knows why the late Mr. Architrave ordered percolation tests done on the Enchanted Mountain.”

  “Perk tests? Late Mr. Architrave?” An excited gabble swept around the room. Therese thumped her gavel mightily.

  “Dittany, I’m sure we all want to know what’s happened to Mr. Architrave. Could you tell us very briefly?”

  “He was apparently shot by an out-of-town hunter who mistook him for a bear coming over the mountain.”

  She hadn’t meant to be funny, but a few people giggled hysterically. Therese thumped again. “Now can anybody give us a specific answer to Dittany’s question about the perk tests?”

  Nobody could.

  “Would someone care to make a motion that the Conservation Committee look into the matter and report its findings at the next meeting?”

  “I so move,” said Zilla Trott.

  “Second the motion,” said Samantha Burberry.

  There wasn’t a nay in the crowd.

  “I further move,” Zilla Trott went on, “that we get off our tails and start doing something to protect the wildflowers up there instead of sitting around saying we ought to as we’ve been doing for the past umpteen years, before some idiot does real harm on the mountain.”

  The ayes had it again. “And now,” said Therese in a voice that brooked no opposition, parliamentary or otherwise, “I shall turn the meeting over to our Honorable Program Chairman:”

  The speaker was formally introduced. The lights were dimmed. The slide projector was twiddled until it achieved a sharp enough focus to satisfy all but the really picky. The lecture began.

  No doubt about it, this lady knew her butterflies. Her slides were gorgeous, her delivery informative and amusing. Nevertheless Dittany viewed the Spangled Fritillary and the Zebra Swallowtail with a lackluster eye. She found her mind wandering from the Early Hairstreak and decided after due reflection that anybody who wanted her share of the Little Wood Nymph was welcome to it. She wished she’d kept her mouth shut about Mr. Architrave because she knew everybody would be pouncing on her like a Monarch on a milkweed as soon as the show was over. Before the Eastern Tailed Blue had waved its azure wings in farewell she was on her feet, ready to grab her biscuit tin and flee.

  Then Hazel Munson stepped quietly into her way and murmured, “Can I give you a lift?”

  This apparently commonplace offer stopped Dittany dead in her tracks. Hazel Munson knew perfectly well Dittany didn’t need a lift and Hazel was not one to put herself forward. Without hesitation Dittany climbed into Hazel’s car, slammed the door, and said, “Okay, what are you going to tell me that you don’t want anyone else to hear?”

  Hazel chuckled. “I thought I was being subtle. Let’s get out of here first.” She gunned her motor and swung around the corner. “I don’t know if there’s anything in this or not but, anyway, we had the Strephs over to dinner last night. They’d just got back from skiing
in the Laurentians and naturally they wanted to tell us about their trip.”

  Dittany nodded. The Strephs and the Munsons were always doing strenuous things either separately or together.

  “Anyway,” Hazel went on, “while I was cutting the pie, Jim Streph said out of a clear blue sky, ‘Don’t you think it would be great to have maybe five or six really nice homes up on the Enchanted Mountain?’ Dittany, I tell you I sat there with the pie knife in my hand and my mouth hanging open. Then I blurted out, ‘No, I think it would be awful!’

  “So Jim didn’t say any more and Margery asked for another cup of coffee, which surprised me very much because she always claims coffee keeps her awake. Though after the time she and I were sharing a tent and two raccoons got to fighting outside and she snored through the whole rumpus, I personally doubt if anything could.”

  “In other words, she was trying to change the subject?”

  Hazel shrugged. “Margery doesn’t go in much for tact as a rule. She’s more for letting it all hang out, as the kids say. But if she thought Jim’s career might be involved—it sounds silly talking like this. I don’t know why I’m wasting your time.”

  “Hazel, you’re not. Jim Streph is an architect, isn’t he? Hasn’t he done some work for Andy McNasty?”

  “Why, yes. He’s designed four or five of those development tracts for McNaster Construction. Oh, Dittany! Look, maybe you’d better invite me in for a cup of tea, not that I need it but somebody’s sure to come along and see us talking like this and, after all, the Strephs are good friends of ours.”

  “Consider yourself invited. I could use something myself.”

  Hazel wiggled her somewhat too generous bosom out from behind the steering wheel, followed Dittany into the shabby roost of the Henbits, and headed for the tapestry-covered spring rocker everybody always tried to grab before somebody else beat them to it. As she plumped herself down, they heard a dismal, “Aw-oo!” from the rear of the house.

  “That’s just Ethel wanting her snack,” Dittany explained. “She and I generally have tea and dog biscuits about now. I have the tea and she gets the biscuits. Hold on a second, will you? If I don’t shut her up, she’ll sit there and howl till the Binkles come home.”

  Dittany sped kitchenward. The howling stopped. Moments later she was back with a tray bearing a bottle, two glasses, and a plate of sweet meal biscuits. “She gets bored, poor thing. I thought we might as well open the last of the sherry Bert gave me at Christmas when he and Mum were here. I’ve been saving it for an emergency and if this isn’t one, tell me what is, eh?”

  Hazel took a sip. “It’s lovely,” she pronounced, but not with untrammeled joy. “Dittany, you don’t honestly think McNaster would try to steal the Enchanted Mountain?”

  “After what he did to the Hendryx place?” Dittany took her own glass and curled up on the grape-carved sofa where she always sat if she had to be polite about the rocker. “Hazel, you know as well as I what that man’s capable of. He bought that lovely old house before anybody else even knew it was up for sale, and had it torn down that very same night. Nobody knew a thing till we heard the crashing and banging and by then it was too late to stop him.”

  “I know. And then what did he do but level off the lot and blacktop it to make more parking for the inn. That used to be such a nice place. Since he took it over, it’s nothing but a honky-tonk. And he never got a variance for the parking lot or a permit to demolish the house, which ought to have been preserved in the first place because it was one of the finest buildings in town.”

  “And furthermore,” Dittany snarled, “those exit and entrance signs are still sitting on town property even though McNaster was served with a writ to remove them ten months ago, and why?”

  “Because he’s got the darn town council in his pocket, that’s why,” said Hazel, letting Dittany refill her glass without even murmuring, “I shouldn’t be drinking this at all, I’m too fat already,” which showed what sort of state she was in. “But how could McNaster possibly get his grubby claws on the Enchanted Mountain? The Hunnekers deeded the land to the town in perpetuity. There’s simply no way.”

  “Oh yeah?” snorted Dittany. “What do you bet McNaster’s already convinced the Development Commission that the common weal would best be served by turning the grant into tax-producing private building lots? Why else would Jim Streph be talking about nice houses up there? Why else would Architrave send a new man who wouldn’t be expected to know any better up there to do perk tests? Hazel, I still haven’t told you what really happened about Mr. Architrave.”

  Dittany proceeded to do so. Hazel’s pleasant brown eyes grew wider and wider, her gasps more frequent. “Well, I never!” was her verdict. “I don’t see how you had the nerve to stay there. I’d have hightailed it for home and crawled under the bed. What makes you so sure it was a hunter?”

  “Who said I was sure? I said this man Frankland said it must have been a hunter and Sergeant MacVicar said that was a reasonable theory but you never know what Sergeant MacVicar’s really thinking till it’s about half a second too late. Anyway, it can’t have been McNaster who shot him because he’s the lousiest shot in town and poor old Architrave was drilled through the middle of the back as neatly as—as I could have done it myself,” Dittany finished in a sort of horrified whisper.

  “Pooh,” said Hazel. “You couldn’t kill anybody. You even threw a kitten fit when you found out Minerva Oakes was shooting those squirrels that had chewed their way into her attic.”

  “Well, I must say I’d never have thought it of Minerva.

  Anyway, I have an alibi because I was with that Frankland man when the other arrow came over the ridge and plunked itself in the tree. And he has one because he was with me, and Mr. Architrave—Hazel, what am I talking about?”

  “You’re having a delayed reaction, that’s all. Perfectly natural. Take a little more sherry. No, not for me, thanks. I won’t be able to find the stove to get supper as it is. You know, Dittany, I was just thinking. I read an Agatha Christie once where somebody was supposed to have shot somebody from a blowgun only it turned out he’d stuck in the poisoned dart with his hand instead. Why couldn’t McNaster have sneaked up behind John Architrave and—”

  “Hazel, the arrow went clean through his body and stuck out in front far enough to pin him to the ground. You couldn’t stab anybody that hard with an arrow, not just holding it in your hand. It’s not like one of those rapiers Arethusa’s always pinking the bad guy with, where there’d be a long, thin, sharp-pointed steel blade with a handle you could get a good grip on. Wait a second. I’ll get an arrow and you try to stab me.”

  “Dittany, you’re drunk! What if I succeeded? Go down cellar and fetch a pumpkin.”

  “I don’t have a pumpkin. Would you settle for a squash?”

  “A squash wouldn’t be fair. They have awfully tough skins.”

  “So did old man Architrave. Besides, he was wearing his overcoat and I don’t know what all underneath. A cardigan and a heavy shirt and a winter undershirt at least, wouldn’t you think? I’m telling you, Hazel, it wouldn’t work. Your hand would simply slide down the shaft. You’d have to take a hammer and pound the arrow in, and who’s going to stand still for that?”

  “I’ll bet your hand wouldn’t slip if you grabbed the arrow around the feathers.”

  “You’d mash the feathers all to heck, though, and these were standing up stiff and straight as you please. Gray ones. Do you think I wouldn’t have noticed? Besides, what about that arrow that hit the ash tree? It was sticking in at least three inches, and I defy anybody to throw an arrow that far and make it stick. Actually, those were two remarkably good shots for anybody to make by accident, even with a heavy bow.”

  “All right, Dittany, I grant you the bow.” Hazel nibbled thoughtfully at a sweet meal biscuit. “So if it wasn’t by accident, what was the sense of shooting at the backhoe man? This Frankland was doing the perk tests he wanted, wasn’t he?”

  “He wh
o?”

  “McNaster, of course, if he’s after the land.”

  “But so was Architrave. I mean, Mr. Architrave was the one who told Frankland to do them, so he had to be on McNaster’s side, didn’t he? Hazel, I’d adore to pin a deliberate murder on that scaly scaledrell. I mean scouny—oh, heck! That scurvy scur. Anyway, I wish we could, but I don’t see how. Besides, McNaster’s arrows have red and yellow stripes with purple feathers as you might expect from somebody who’s got a taste like a can of worms. This was a single inch-wide stripe of solid black.”

  “Nobody has an inch-wide stripe of solid black.”

  “Everybody knows that. That’s why they’re talking about a hunter from the States.”

  “Then I daresay they’re right and this is just one of those awful coincidences,” sighed Hazel. “It’s a mercy poor old John didn’t wind up stuffed and mounted on somebody’s mantelpiece. But I still say McNaster’s morally responsible, for having got him up there in the first place. That is, assuming we’re right in what we’re assuming,” she added, for Hazel was a stickler about not bearing false witness against her neighbor. “And I honestly don’t see how we can be wrong. Do you?”

  Chapter 4

  HAZEL HAULED HERSELF OUT of the rocker and began fiddling with her coat buttons. “By the way, you haven’t said much about this Frankland chap. What’s he like?”

  “On the tall and burly side. Thirtyish, I should think. I’m never any good at ages.”