The Grub-and-Stakers Pinch a Poke Read online

  “Darling, don’t bug your eyes out like that. Of course she hasn’t. Arethusa may be a trifle absentminded, but she’s not plumb loco. I only made up that story about the goldfish bowl to take Wilhedra Thorbisher-Freep down a peg or two. She had no business being so snippy about Lobelia Falls.”

  “Was Wilhedra snippy?”

  “Certainly Wilhedra was snippy. She talked as if we were all a bunch of starving church mice.”

  “Now that you mention it, I am starving. Want to stop on the way home for a nibble of cheese?”

  “If we can find a place,” Dittany agreed.

  What she meant was a place that didn’t object to large doglike creatures with less than perfect table manners. Stopping at a restaurant was apt to mean either take-out hamburgers or hurt looks from Ethel for having been left alone while they ate.

  They settled for hamburgers and ate in the car, Dittany having first spread a large plastic tablecloth so they wouldn’t get meat juice all over the new upholstery. Back in Lobelia Falls, they put Arethusa’s two pink tapestry suitcases inside her front door, to which they had a key, and went home half expecting to see her and Andrew McNaster seated at their kitchen table with napkins in their laps and knives and forks at the ready.

  But Arethusa never came, not even at suppertime. The evening was peaceful, pleasant, yet somehow a trifle unsettling.

  Chapter 4

  WORKING AT FEVER HEAT, stoked by Dittany with cups of tea, stacks of cinnamon toast, bowls of stew, and molasses cookies which he wolfed down without taking time to bite off the crinkles one by one as was his wont, Osbert finished his play late Tuesday night. On Wednesday, he held a reading for the board of trustees and Desdemona Portley to tumultuous applause, even from Arethusa.

  Nobody doubted Dangerous Dan McGrew would win the competition hands-down. Mr. Glunck thought the theatrical collection would be just the ticket for the upstairs back bedroom provided the Thorbisher-Freeps threw in the display cases. Everybody was agog to get rolling.

  And roll they must. One thing Desdemona hadn’t happened to mention until she’d got the Grub-and-Stakers safely hooked was that they had only about a month left to put on their play. She’d already wasted most of the time allotted for the contest in vain efforts to get her old company back together. The new group understood her difficulties as soon as they started trying to assemble a cast.

  Specifically, the problem lay in the ingrained reluctance of the average Canadian male to make a fool of himself in public. Nobody’s husband had any particular objection to being one of the boys whooping it up in the Malamute saloon, as long as the rest of the boys would be right there whooping it up with him. Persuading any one of them to accept a role where he’d have to stand up on his hind legs all by himself and spout off a lot of high-flown guff was a far, far different matter. Yet the characters of the miner and Dan McGrew were absolutely central to the play.

  Osbert refused to take either part. He was proud to have written the play, as well he might be. He was not only willing but eager to direct his play the way it ought to be directed. But he was dad-blanged if he was going to act in it, and who could blame him? Anyway, he couldn’t possibly look dangerous enough to be Dan McGrew, and he just wasn’t the type to be a head feedbag man, much less a gold miner. Besides, there were enough members of the Monk family in the cast already.

  Ethel was to be the faithful dog, needless to say, since the role had been written for her and nobody else’s dog wanted to do it anyway. Dittany, inevitably, would be Evangeline.

  “But I don’t want to be Evangeline,” she wailed when she got hit with the casting committee’s verdict. “I’m too old to be a tiny tot. I’m a grown woman with a husband and a dog, for Pete’s sake.”

  “Dittany, the show must go on,” pleaded Desdemona Portley. “You’ve got to play the tiny tot. Your mother would play the tiny tot if she were here.”

  That was no argument. Dittany knew perfectly well, and Desdemona Portley ought to know she knew, that the former Mrs. Henbit would also have played Dan McGrew, the miner, and the man who wouldn’t give the horsecar horses any carrots if she’d been given the chance.

  “You’re not a bit too old,” Desdemona insisted. “I’ve still got your old baby-blond wig with the corkscrew curls. With that and a big pink hair ribbon, you could easily pass for ten years old. Twelve, anyway. Evangeline can’t be all that tiny a tot, eh, if she winds up tickling the ivories in the Malamute saloon. Besides, we have nobody else in the company who can look winsome while playing ragtime without a music book.”

  “Why shouldn’t Evangeline have a music book?” Dittany demanded.

  “Nobody carried a music book to the Yukon during the gold rush. For goodness’ sake, Dittany, even if we let the piano player use a music book she’d still have to act Evangeline convincingly, and that narrows it right down to you. You’ve played more tiny tots than anybody else in Lobelia Falls, you know all the old songs your grandmother taught you, and I never thought I’d live to see the day when a Henbit would let a personal whim stand in the way of her civic duty. “

  “Well, you’re seeing one now,” Dittany grumbled.

  But she gave in, of course. Osbert’s debut as a dramatic writer and director couldn’t be allowed to fall flat for lack of a kid to handle the music box. But Dittany would be dad-blanged if Desdemona Portley was going to stick her with another big pink hair ribbon. She’d wear a sober, matronly blue this time even if she could pass for twelve in her old baby-blond wig.

  Desdemona herself would fain have played the lady who came so regrettably to be known as Lou. Even in the former Mrs. Henbit’s day, however, Dessie Portley had got cast as the heroine’s dear old mother just as inevitably as Dittany had been dragooned into portraying the corkscrew-curled infant daughter. Trouper that she was, Desdemona put on a brave smile and accepted the unsympathetic role of landlady. Zilla Trott didn’t want it anyway; she was learning to make her own tofu and the effort was taking a lot out of her.

  As for Louisa, there was really no contest. All the former heroines of the Traveling Thespians had been snapped up by other companies or graduated, like Desdemona, to character parts. Only one member of the Grub-and-Stakers had the looks, the carriage, the dramatic intensity, and the black lace Merry Widow corset to essay the leading lady. Even Osbert had to admit Arethusa Monk would be a smash hit as the miner’s ill-fated wife.

  Casting Arethusa in the female lead brought a fringe benefit nobody could have anticipated. As a lawyer, Carolus Bledsoe must perforce have had a streak of the thespian in him already. Impressive in appearance, affable in manner, he was the very type to have experienced a meteoric rise from lowly groom to head feedbag man at the horsecar barns. As soon as Arethusa happened to mention that the role of her cruelly misused husband was still uncast, Bledsoe leaped for it as though it had been a twenty-thousand-dollar fee. And once Andrew McNaster got wind that Carolus Bledsoe was going to be in the play, he employed his well-known skill at connivance to obtain for himself the swashbuckling role of Dangerous Dan McGrew.

  That took care of the leads. A bit of rewriting on Osbert’s part eliminated the rival feedbag man from the first act, where he hadn’t had all that much to do anyway. The gap was easily filled by having the true feedbag man, as he’d then still be, pour out his heart to Louisa about the rival’s machinations while Evangeline strummed sentimental melodies in the background, little recking the woeful disruption in store for her family.

  Then Dot Coskoff’s husband, Bill, said he guessed he wouldn’t much mind playing the bartender at the Malamute saloon as long as he didn’t have to do anything but pour cold tea out of whiskey bottles and spread a couple of reasonably clean bar cloths over the faces of the demised as the final curtain was about to descend; and the show was on.

  It is perhaps worthy of note that the first hint about Andrew McNaster’s availability as Dan McGrew was channeled via none other than Jenson Thorbisher-Freep. This came about because while McNaster’s interests we
re in Lobelia Falls, he still maintained bachelor quarters in Scottsbeck near the Thorbisher-Freeps, of whom the Monks had been seeing a fair amount since that first meeting at the airport.

  Dittany, Osbert, and Arethusa had paid their call at the unpretentious mansion, which it certainly wasn’t, to check out the memorabilia. They’d had Mr. Glunck in tow that day. The curator had been impressed and Wilhedra had been gracious, not only to him but to Dittany and Osbert. She hadn’t had to be gracious to Arethusa. Her father handled that end of the operation with zeal and enthusiasm that Osbert thought might better have been applied to a loftier purpose.

  Nor had the old actor’s zeal abated. Jenson, as he insisted the Monks call him, had made it plain to all entrants that because he knew so much more than they did, he was willing to act as consultant on any general problem where theatrical expertise was needed. Naturally, Jenson explained, he could not become personally involved with any one of the six productions that were by now formally entered in his competition. This led a good many people to wonder what general problems were causing the theatrical expert to turn up so often in the immediate vicinity of Miss Arethusa Monk.

  I’ faith, as Arethusa herself might say, the reigning queen of regency romance who for years had asked only to be left alone with her typewriter and her fantasies when she wasn’t practicing her archery, attending a club meeting, or inviting herself to one meal or another with Dittany and Osbert, had suddenly become the eye of a veritable social hurricane.

  Neighbors who’d started patronizing the inn now that Andy was running his Bargain-Buffets (all you could eat for six dollars a head) and his Family Specials (kids at half price and free cocktails for the grown-ups) reported seeing Arethusa at the best table, being plied with filet mignon and imported champagne by the infatuated innkeeper. Andy had even taken to wearing a dinner jacket that Hazel Munson said made him look like the bouncer in a gambling casino. It wasn’t as though she’d ever been to one herself, but Hazel, normally the most down-to-earth of women, could sometimes startle her intimates with amazing flights of imagination.

  As for Carolus Bledsoe, who could have dreamed a man trained to wade through a writ of attainder or a habeas corpus without batting an eyelid would have so much trouble mastering his part that he required private rehearsals with his leading lady twice and, sometimes thrice a week? Jane and Henry Binkle, close friends of the Monks who kept the bookshop over at Scottsbeck and were kept au courant on town gossip by customers who used the shop as a sort of clubhouse, reported that Wilhedra Thorbisher-Freep was having an awful time lately remembering to be gracious.

  “She lives in the mansion of aching hearts,” remarked Dittany.

  Young Mrs. Monk, alias Evangeline, had been boning up on her tearjerkers in preparation for the opening scene at the Malamute saloon. The dance hall girls and the miners were to have a merry fling which should heighten the tragic impact when the miner entered fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty and loaded for bear. Hazel Munson was to be one of the dancers, as were Dot Cosksoff, Therese Boulanger, Ellie Despard, and several more of the Grub-and-Stakers. They were planning to wear red skirts, black stockings, and a good many ruffled petticoats. This superabundance of undergarments would be the reverse of slimming, but Osbert assured the complainers that in the eyes of a gold rush miner, the fattest had shone the brightest.

  Getting back to Wilhedra, however: “I shouldn’t be surprised if she does,” said Jane Binkle, who’d dropped over to bring Ethel a box of dog biscuits for auld lang syne. “Wilhedra’s been after Carolus Bledsoe ever since he got divorced. She thought she had him all thrown and hog-tied, if I’ve phrased the expression correctly, until Arethusa happened along.”

  “I rather think it’s roped and hog-tied,” said Osbert, gallantly passing Jane the cookies. “I can look it up in Louis L’Amour if you like. When did Bledsoe get divorced, Jane?”

  “Not too awfully long ago because some question about jointly held property still hasn’t been resolved, from what we’re hearing around the shop. According to the terms of the divorce, there’s a building that’s supposed to be sold and the profits divided between Carolus and his former wife, but he’s using some kind of legal maneuvers to hold up the sale and contest the ruling in the hope of getting it all to himself. I gather she’s not taking his shenanigans any too calmly.”

  “What’s she like?” Dittany asked.

  “Excitable, I’d say offhand. They say she used to throw things at him.”

  “What things?” Osbert wanted to know.

  “Books, slippers, dishes, assorted produce, whatever came handy. She alleges the judge showed unfair prejudice in the defendant’s favor because Bledsoe carried the scars of a ham and macaroni casserole into the witness box with him. Otherwise, she claims, she’d have been awarded the property free and clear, so Bledsoe has no right to hold up the sale.”

  Jane paused to hold out her teacup for a proffered refill. “Thanks, Dittany. The crux of the matter seems to be that the property was left to them jointly by the terms of an aunt’s will. However, the aunt was hers, not his. Bledsoe had been handling the old lady’s legal affairs while she was alive and Mrs. Bledsoe, as she’s still calling herself because her maiden name was Whiffenpoof or something in that general vicinity, maintains her husband exerted undue influence. She says the aunt had told her several times in the past that everything would be left to her. Bledsoe, on the other hand, insists the aunt wanted him to have the property because she didn’t approve of the way her niece was carrying on with the postman.”

  “Was she really?” asked Dittany.

  “Mrs. Bledsoe says not and the postman says not, but he’s got quite a reputation as a roving Romeo. The consensus at the bookshop appears to be that there’s no smoke without fire. Anyway, Mrs. Bledsoe moved to Toronto after the divorce and Wilhedra moved in for the kill. Now Mrs. Bledsoe’s back raising the dust and goodness knows what will happen, especially with Arethusa in the picture. Wilhedra Thorbisher-Freep’s love life is none of my business, of course, but a person can’t help being interested in the ever-changing kaleidoscope of human relationships.” Being around so many books sometimes lent a literary tinge to the Binkles’ conversation.

  The ever-changing kaleidoscope of human relationships was a never-ending source of interest around Lobelia Falls, too. Dittany got pretty sick of being backed into corners and being asked, “Which of them do you think she’s going to take?”

  “She who?” Dittany said to Margery Streph, who’d got her pinned behind the greeting card rack at Mr. Gumpert’s stationery shop while she was trying to pick out a birthday card for her mother-in-law. Margery was the seventeenth pinner so far, and Dittany didn’t care much for her anyway.

  “Your Aunt Arethusa, of course,” Margery replied with a little laugh.

  “She’s not my aunt. She’s Osbert’s aunt.”

  “Well, it’s all in the family, isn’t it? Come on, Dittany, who’s leading the pack? Jim says Andy’s so wound up he doesn’t know which end he’s standing on.”

  Jim Streph was an architect who designed the houses McNaster Construction built. He’d also not got to design a few that Andy had been prevented from building in the wrong places as a result of a public outcry spearheaded by the Grub-and-Stake Gardening and Roving Club. Dittany didn’t have a good deal of use for Jim, either.

  “As far as I know,” she replied shortly, “Arethusa’s still wedded to her art and intends to remain so. The reigning queen of regency romance has a responsibility to her vast reading public, you know.”

  Margery had the bad judgment to snicker. “Where did that reigning queen stuff come from? Her press agent?”

  “Arethusa has no press agent. She’s never needed one. The title came out of a worldwide poll held by the International Moonlight and Roses Writers’ Organization. She was crowned last month at their convention in New York.”

  “What do you mean she was crowned?”

  “Really, Margery, I should have thought you’d
know the meaning of a common transitive verb. She had a coronation. Sort of like when they crowned Elizabeth the Second only a good deal flossier, Arethusa says.”

  “How could it be, for heaven’s sake?”

  “Well, for instance, they didn’t release two hundred snow-white doves wearing frilly pink pantalettes in Westminister Abbey, did they?”

  “Not to the best of my recollection,” Margery had to concede.

  “And Elizabeth wasn’t borne to her throne on a palanquin draped in purple velvet, balanced on the shoulders of eight Nubian slaves wearing leopard skins, was she?”

  “Of course not. Prince Philip would never have stood for having eight leopards killed to make work shirts for Nubians. He’s a big gun in the World Wildlife Fund, you know. A big anti-gun, I suppose I should have said. Arethusa should have known better.”

  “It was only fake fur made to look like leopard, for Pete’s sake,” Dittany said crossly. “I doubt every much they were real Nubian slaves either, if it comes to that. One had red hair and freckles as big as the leopard spots. Arethusa says it’s the symbolism that counts with the Moonlight and Roses crowd. She had a rose-colored velvet coronation robe with a train about five metres long, all trimmed with ermine.”

  Margery sneered. “For ermine, read rabbit, I suppose.”

  “If you find rabbit easier to read, certainly. Her crown was of golden filigree in the fairy princess style, not one of those big bulbous affairs, and her scepter a slender gold rod with a big pink glass heart that lit up and had diamonds all around the edge.”

  “Symbolic diamonds, no doubt.”

  “No doubt whatsoever. There were also symbolic pink cupids circling above the throne wearing baby-blue satin diapers. They had golden curls and cute little white wings. Arethusa says they were too utterly precious for words.”