The Grub-and-Stakers Pinch a Poke Read online

  She’d rescued him and nursed him through the crisis, of course, but he was still convalescing on ptarmigan soup when the rustlers happened along and took advantage of his weakened condition, little recking what sort of dog they were up against. The movie producer was planning to replace the malamute with a trick poodle, turn the hero into a heroine, switch the setting to Palm Springs, and substitute alpacas for the yaks, but Osbert had been solemnly assured that the basic thrust of his story would be meticulously retained.

  Anyway, they hadn’t chosen the ranch wagon out of any illusion that the Henbit-Monk homestead on Applewood Avenue resembled the old Bar-None, but simply because the wagon had plenty of room in back for Ethel to stretch out and be comfortable. She probably enjoyed her ride to the airport more than either of her companions did. Osbert chafed to be back at his typewriter shooting it out with Dan McGrew, and Dittany was filled with a dire foreboding as to what Arethusa was going to think of having been committed in absentia to the Scottsbeck drama festival. Since neither of them felt like talking, they turned on the car radio to a station that played mostly bagpipe music and skirled into the airport to the poignant strains of “Macrimmon’s Lament,” which seemed appropriate enough.

  After a fair amount of sorting out, they located the gate where Arethusa’s plane was alleged to be coming in, and stood around. Other people were standing around, too. Lost in their own thoughts, Dittany and Osbert didn’t pay much attention to their co-standees, but Ethel did. She checked them over one by one, then she growled. This was unlike Ethel, who usually had a wag and a whoofle for just about anybody. Startled, Dittany took a firmer grip on her leash and glanced around to ascertain what ill-bred child had taken a notion to swing on the nice doggie’s tail.

  Chapter 3

  THERE WAS NO CHILD. There was, however, a large, red-cheeked man running a little to flesh. His black hair was slicked down, no doubt with some expensive he-man slickum. His blue overcoat was brushed to a fare-thee-well, his boots positively glittered. His arms were fully occupied with a huge bouquet of white chrysanthemums and what could only be a two-kilogram box of expensive chocolates. The box was covered in gold paper and had a multi-looped red bow on it that he was trying hard not to squash. When he caught Dittany’s eye, he gave her a nervous smile.

  She smiled nervously back and gave Osbert a surreptitious nudge. “Don’t look now, darling, but guess who’s here.”

  “Why shouldn’t I look if I choose to?” Osbert was still cherishing his snit.

  “Because your jaw would drop.”

  “I could pick it up.” Suddenly Osbert’s lips twitched upward in a knowing little grin. “Darling, you don’t mean it’s the lovesick swain?”

  “Don’t I, though? Andy’s got a bunch of flowers with him that would choke a horse.”

  “He must have stopped on his way and robbed a cemetery.”

  “And a big box of fancy chocolates.”

  “Snatched from an infant in its pram, no doubt. I wish Andy McNaster would quit chasing Aunt Arethusa. Or else catch her and take her far, far away,” Osbert amended.

  “He wouldn’t,” Dittany pointed out. “He’d move into her house and inveigle her into deeding it over to him.”

  “And they’d both invite themselves to supper at our house five nights a week.” Osbert clenched his jaw, perhaps to keep it from dropping. “I’d better mosey on over and tell him we’ve just got word Aunt Arethusa’s developed a virulent case of measles on the plane and will be oozing germs from every pore by the time she gets off. No, dad-drat it, that wouldn’t do any good. Andy’s so besotted he’d insist on catching them and sharing her tragic fate. Like what’s-her-name being walled up in the tomb with that soldier she’d been going around with. Would you let yourself be walled up with me, darling?”

  “They don’t wall you up for measles,” Dittany objected. “They just make you keep the blinds down and not read Peter Rabbit for fear you’ll strain your eyes. At least that’s what Gram Henbit did when I had them. It was right after my fourth birthday. Look, people are starting to come off the plane. Can you spot Arethusa?”

  Osbert, being so much the taller of the two, always handled the family neck-craning. He stood with his chin up, his mouth set in a thin, resolute line, and his eyes bravely fixed on the living stream of incomers. Dittany in turn gazed up at him, and was pleasantly surprised to see his lips return to their upward curve. Darling Osbert! For all his snapping and snarling, he did after all cherish a soft spot for his celebrated though often exasperating aunt.

  But that wouldn’t be why Osbert was now grinning like a catfish. As Arethusa broke out of the pack and surged up the ramp, Dittany could see that she had an orchid corsage about the size of a sofa pillow pinned to the front of her billowing purple cloak and her arm linked to that of a personable gray-haired man almost as tall as she. Andrew McNaster, who’d spied her and begun to strain forward like a greyhound after a rabbit, froze. His lips formed a syllable that might have been “You!” or “Oo!” but was more likely “Who?”

  That was what both Dittany and Osbert wanted to know and indeed could easily step forward and find out. At the moment, though, they were riveted by the tableau before them.

  “He’s suffering,” Dittany murmured, surprised by the wave of compassion that swept over her. Even Ethel had stopped growling at McNaster and was whining in sympathy. She knew how Andy felt. She’d been through it with the woodchuck.

  Arethusa Monk was not the reigning queen of regency romance without knowing how to handle her beaux. She disengaged herself from the stranger and held out both purple-gloved hands, causing the large leather handbag she was carrying to swing dangerously close to the red bow Andy had been striving to preserve in its pristine splendor.

  “Zounds, Mr. McNaster, do mine eyes see aright? Prithee, what brings you here?”

  McNaster stammered something to the effect that he’d thought she might need a ride home. Then he remembered his tributes and thrust them forward. “I brought you a little remembrance, Miss Monk.”

  Arethusa accepted the armload with a swooping curtsey and a smile that caused McNaster’s knees visibly to wobble. “La, sir, you are a veritable preux chevalier. Actually, my mannerless lout of a nephew was supposed to—oh, there you are, Osbert. Come here, you caitiff knave.”

  “Go ahead,” hissed Dittany. “We’ll support you.”

  For once her urging was redundant. Osbert was just as curious as she to meet his aunt’s new acquaintance. He greeted her cheerily.

  “Hi, Aunt Arethusa, how’s the rheumatics? Had any trouble with that spavined hock this trip?”

  “Oafish jocosity, i’ faith. You should have been exposed on a barren hillside at birth. Hello, Dittany. In case you were planning to file for divorce, I’ve brought you a lawyer. At least I had one a moment ago.”

  She peered from under her vast lilac velvet hat with the artificial bird of paradise on it and located her recent escort standing a modest two paces rear right. “My unfortunate niece-in-law, Dittany Henbit Monk, may I present Carolus Bledsoe, Esquire?”

  “How do you do, Mr. Bledsoe?” Dittany replied politely. “And this is my beloved husband, Osbert, whom I have no intention of divorcing, and our dog, Ethel. And our local innkeeper, Mr. Andrew McNaster,” she added, remembering Ethel and the woodchuck.

  Osbert held out his hand, Ethel her paw. Andrew McNaster clenched his now disburdened fists. Carolus Bledsoe, Esquire, shook the hand and the paw and ignored the fist, acknowledging his introduction to the innkeeper with a decidedly stiff nod. McNaster’s nod was even stiffer. This was the kind of moment when everybody wishes he were somewhere else except Arethusa Monk, who was loving it.

  “Ecod, Mr. McNaster, since you’ve driven all this way to accord me welcome, I am right fain to ride back with you. Mr. Bledsoe has his own conveyance, he informed me.”

  “I was hoping I could persuade your aunt to share it,” Bledsoe told Dittany with a rueful smile.

  He had a voice li
ke a well-brandied fruitcake, she thought. Where had she heard it before? Maybe he’d been on the news. Lawyers were always giving interviews about why their clients ought to be pardoned for having done whatever they did.

  Osbert had no thought for Carolus Bledsoe’s shattered hope. “Where are your luggage checks, Aunt Arethusa?” he demanded.

  “Here. Somewhere.” Arethusa gave McNaster back his candy and flowers to hold while she explored the dark caverns of her handbag and emerged at last triumphant. “There you are, churl. You can pick up my cases and follow along behind. We’ll meet at suppertime.”

  “Where, for instance?” Osbert snarled.

  “At the inn.” Andrew McNaster had somehow come out on top in this encounter and was clearly eager to consolidate his position.

  “I regret,” Carolus Bledsoe was beginning when the sudden change of expression on his handsome middle-aged face made it plain he was only warming up for some real in-depth regretting.

  An older man with glistening white hair, a black homburg, a silver-headed cane, and a cape much like Arethusa’s, only black and without orchids, was bearing down on the party. Accompanying him was a less handsome, less elderly woman who looked enough like him to be his daughter and, as events transpired, was. They were smiling and waving.

  “Ah, Carolus.” The old man’s voice was even fruitier than Bledsoe’s. “We were afraid we might have missed you. We got held up.”

  “We wanted to surprise you,” the not so elderly woman added with a baleful glance at Arethusa’s hat.

  She herself was wearing an uninspired though no doubt costly brown mink beret to match her brown mink coat and the brown mink tops of the brown suede boots that went with her brown suede gloves and brown suede bag. Her eyes were brown, too. But Arethusa’s were much browner, and it was into Arethusa’s that Carolus Bledsoe was gazing even as he bestowed the obviously expected salute on the other woman’s frost-nipped cheek.

  “This is indeed a surprise,” he replied, and nobody questioned his sincerity. “Ah—Miss Wilhedra Thorbisher-Freep and Mr. Jenson Thorbisher-Freep, may I present Miss Arethusa Monk and Mr. and Mrs. Osbert Monk and their dog, Ethel?”

  “And Mr. Andrew McNaster, our local innkeeper,” Dittany added briskly. “We’re glad to meet you, Mr. Thorbisher-Freep, because the trustees want to know what’s in your collection.”

  “The trustees?” Jenson Thorbisher-Freep appeared taken aback by Dittany’s direct approach, as people often tended to be.

  “Of the Aralia Polyphema Architrave Museum in Lobelia Falls,” she amplified, amazed that so well-traveled a man wouldn’t know. “Will it do for us, or won’t it?”

  Wilhedra Thorbisher-Freep emitted an amused little titter. “I can’t imagine my father’s collection of theatrical memorabilia wouldn’t do, as you so quaintly put it, for any museum in the civilized world. But I’m afraid it isn’t for sale, Mrs. Monk, assuming there’d be money enough in Lobelia Falls to buy it.”

  Now it was Andrew McNaster’s turn to emit an amused little titter. “I guess maybe you don’t know who you’re talking to, Miss Freep. Miss Arethusa Monk, if I may make so free as to allude to her by her given name, no offense intended, is reigning queen of the roguish regency romance. And her nephew here is Lex Laramie.”

  “I thought you said his name was Osbert Monk, Carolus,” said Wilhedra, not deigning to address the innkeeper directly.

  Dittany thought she might as well try an amused little titter, too. “He did and it is. Lex Laramie is my husband’s nom de lariat. If you should ever happen to go into a bookstore, you’d find both his and Arethusa’s books among the current best-sellers.”

  “What books are those?” Wilhedra demanded.

  Dittany shrugged. “Whichever ones they’ve most recently published. They’re always best-sellers. By the way, Arethusa, Osbert got the advance for that movie contract and we’ve bought Ethel a ranch wagon.”

  “You’ve bought your dog her own car?” Tittering now seemed the last thing from Wilhedra’s mind.

  Dittany arched her light brown eyebrows. “Doesn’t everyone? The Architrave has such an enormous endowment now that it doesn’t need our support, so we thought we’d give Ethel a little indulgence. After all, if Arethusa can order a custom-made lead crystal bowl on a solid gold base for her pet goldfish—but I mustn’t bore you with our silly family jokes. I expect you’re champing to be on the road.”

  “No, no,” boomed Jenson Thorbisher-Freep. “I’m wholly intrigued. We must get to know such enchanting new acquaintances better, Wilhedra. We’ll be delighted to show you the entire collection any time you care to visit our unostentatious mansion, Mrs. Monk. And Miss Monk, too, I hasten to say. Among its incomparable exhibits you’ll find the sword carried by Dame Sybil Thorndike in her first performance as Shaw’s St. Joan, Erich von Stroheim’s prompt book from the Berlin Staatstheater, the scarf Jeanne Eagles flaunted when she played Sadie Thompson in Rain, the pantaloons Claude Rains wore as a tiny tot in his Drury Lane portrayal of Little Nell, and the wood and enamel hand mirror used by Sarah Bernhardt in her last performance of Phedre.”

  Not her bustle. That would be a load off Zilla Trott’s mind. “My stars and garters,” Dittany replied politely, “I can see you’ve been a busy man, Mr. Thorbisher-Freep. How many artifacts does it contain in all?”

  “A total of one hundred and fourteen, not counting the used theater tickets. Some more valuable than others, of course. The total valuation is around six hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Very impressive,” Dittany said, trying not to look impressed. “You must have had a lot of fun getting it together.”

  “It has been the labor of a lifetime. A labor of love, I hasten to add. But now the flame burns low. It’s time for me to think of sharing my great responsibility with the vast theater-loving public. To that end, my daughter and I have decided upon a plan of which I gather you may be aware.”

  “Oh, yes, the drama contest. We’re going to win it. But we really mustn’t keep you here any longer,” Dittany added, for she could see Osbert was champing at the bit and she herself was getting a bit sick of being smarmed over.

  “A bientôt, then.”

  Jenson Thorbisher-Freep was ready to leave, but Wilhedra wasn’t. As he took her by the arm to lead her away, she looked back at Carolus. “Aren’t you—my God, what’s that on your back?”

  Wrenching free of her father, she swung her brown suede handbag and dealt Bledsoe a mighty thump. Something black, fuzzy, and many-legged tumbled to the concrete floor.

  “Holy dogies, it’s a tarantula!” cried Osbert.

  “A deadly giant spider!” Wilhedra breathed hard through distended nostrils. Like a winded mustang, Dittany thought unkindly. “Carolus, you could have died from its bite.”

  “But I didn’t, you see.”

  The lawyer was putting up a good front, but he was distinctly white around the gills, as who wouldn’t have been? The tarantula must have measured fully six inches across, though it was hard to tell because Wilhedra had swung with verve and purpose.

  The elder Thorbisher-Freep stirred the carcase with the tip of his silver-headed cane. “Where do you suppose it could have come from?”

  “Out of that—er—floral tribute Miss Monk is wearing, I should think,” his daughter answered spitefully. “They’re exotic tropical creatures, aren’t they?”

  “Not necessarily,” said Osbert. “The lycosidae are quite widely distributed, and they’re not really all that venomous. Some people keep tarantulas as pets. It would have suited you just fine, Aunt Arethusa.”

  “Poor bug.” The reigning queen of regency romance stooped and picked up the mangled remains by the tip of one furry leg. She laid it gently in a nearby ash receiver, detached one of her many orchids, and placed it on top of the corpse. “I would have made a home for it,” she murmured brokenly. “Well, Osbert, stir your stumps. I’m starving.”

  The Thorbisher-Freeps swanned off, dragging the still wobbly Bledsoe with them.


  “Whoopee,” said Andrew McNaster jocosely. “Those Freeps saved me the trouble of poisoning Bledsoe’s soup. You two are coming to the inn, though, I hope?”

  “We can’t, I’m afraid,” said Dittany, who in truth wasn’t afraid at all but pleased to have an excuse. “Osbert’s writing a play.”

  “A play, forsooth?” exclaimed Arethusa. “You mean an oater? One of those claptrap and balderdash horse operas where the cayuse lynches the maverick?”

  “Surely you jest, Aunt Arethusa.”

  Because if you don’t, you can darn well go and collect your own suitcases, eh. Osbert didn’t come straight out and say so because strong men of the west don’t go around threatening their aunts with retribution in front of shady contractors who run ill-gotten inns. However, the steely glint in his eye made the implication plain. Arethusa didn’t miss it.

  “La, the creature’s in a bait,” she cried. “Fetch the luggage like a good nephew, Osbert, and I won’t cut you out of my will.”

  “A fat lot I care whether you do or not,” Osbert replied with immense dignity. “Come on, Ethel, it’s a good dog’s duty to assist the aged and infirm. You’d better be careful Aunt Arethusa doesn’t slip on the ice getting out to the car, McNaster. She probably forgot to put her arch supports in. Her memory’s not what it used to be.”

  “Stinker,” Dittany said fondly as they walked away to the luggage pickup. “What did you think of Carolus Bledsoe, Esquire? Do you suppose he’s the one who bought her all those orchids?”

  “If he did, he needs to get his head examined,” was Osbert’s considered opinion. “I expect what happened was that some editor who’s trying to persuade her to switch publishers gave her a bunch, and then her own editor gave her another bunch not to go. They put them on their expense accounts.”

  “Did anybody ever give you any?”

  “They wouldn’t dare. What do you think we Western writers are, a bunch of sissies? I’ve never even been offered a tarantula. By the way, when did Aunt Arethusa order a custom-made crystal bowl for her goldfish? Į didn’t know she had a goldfish. How come she didn’t expect us to fish-sit while she was away? Don’t tell me she’s given McNaster the run of her house?”