Vane Pursuit Read online

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” said Helen. “People are blaming Cronkite’s brother Brinkley.”

  “Brinkley? I thought he worked there himself. Martha Betsy Lomax told me Brink was real high up in the sesses. Lucky I do the crossword puzzle when Daniel doesn’t beat me to it, so I knew what she was talking about. At least I think I did. I expect sesses are sort of like jelly molds, only for soap. Brinkley hadn’t been laid off or anything? Martha Betsy gave me to understand he was a good, steady fellow. Nice wife, pretty house, two kids, doing just fine and everybody happy. What makes anyone think he’d do an awful thing like that?”

  “Brinkley once made a silly joke about wanting to fire the old cannon that sat pointing toward the factory,” Helen explained. “And Cronkite rather dim-wittedly repeated the story to a youth group last Sunday night over at Lumpkin Corners. The cannon apparently did get shot off just before the blaze in the tallow room went up, which started the whole thing, as you’ve no doubt heard since you’ve been watching the news. Peter doesn’t believe the shot could have started the fire, but obviously a lot of other people do.”

  Iduna still wasn’t convinced. “How could they tell the cannon was fired? Did anybody see it happen? They didn’t say so on the news.”

  “Then you can bet there were no witnesses. I don’t know, Iduna, I suppose the firemen looked down the barrel and saw gunpowder smudges, or whatever it is one’s supposed to see. I myself happened to notice what Peter said must be gunpowder burning on the breech, or whatever they call it. I’m not much up on cannons. Anyway, the place at the back where they shove the stuff to make it go off. Remember how we used to get those packets of firecrackers with the fuses all twisted together that you had to untangle before you could light them? And if you happened to pull out a fuse, you’d break the firecracker in two and light the powder so you’d get a fizz instead of a bang? Well, that’s how it burned.”

  “I used to break mine on purpose,” said Iduna. “I liked the spits better than the bangs. I suppose it’s more sensible not to sell ‘em any more, but I can’t help thinking it’s kind of a shame kids can’t get to celebrate the Fourth of July the way we used to. What happens nowadays is, they get hold of ‘em anyhow, one way or another, and shoot ‘em off any old time they feel like it. Doesn’t mean anything and scares the dogs just as bad as it ever did. Land’s sakes, our old Rover used to crawl under my folks’ big double bed the afternoon of the third and not come out till noon of the fifth. We’d have to poke his food in after him with the end of a broomstick. Which didn’t stop me from having my fun like the rest of the crowd, I have to admit. Kids are awful, aren’t they? By the way, did you know I’m going to be a step-grandma again?” Iduna added just as proudly as though kids weren’t awful at all.

  Conversation drifted off into matters obstetrical, and Helen was as well pleased that it should. She was relieved to get away from the stench of burning fat that seemed to have got into her nose and lodged there; from the thought of Huntley Swope all bandaged up in a hospital bed and his worn-out wife huddled beside him; from the ugliness of that window in Brinkley’s pretty house, broken by somebody who believed the sess man had been fool enough to kill the old tallow man and throw half the town out of work for the sake of a silly joke.

  Those who hadn’t been too badly injured or too totally exhausted from fighting the fire would be heading over to the county seat by now, Helen supposed, to line up for unemployment benefits. The ones whose cars had been destroyed would have to beg rides from those who still had some means of transportation. Or maybe the town would let them use the school buses. That would be a sensible way to cope, but would anybody think of it? Were the buses still operable? They’d been parked out back of the school, Helen remembered, all too close to the fire.

  At least parents who’d worked at the factory would get to spend plenty of time with their children during the long school vacation this summer. That should make the youngsters happy, but how would they feel if Christmas rolled around and the unemployment benefits gave out and there was still no extra money for presents? It wouldn’t matter so much, she supposed, if they were all in the same boat. Not getting anything when others got a lot was what hurt.

  Well, Christmas was a long time from now and all sorts of things could happen in the meantime. The sky was blue, the road was wide, this was a great year for daisies and dandelions along the embankments. Helen relaxed in her seat and let the miles roll by. She’d take over the driving in an hour or so, and Iduna could spell her after they’d got up into Maine. Or was it down? No matter, they’d get there.

  They’d probably have made better time if Iduna hadn’t brought such a big picnic basket. The Massachusetts rest stops were nothing to write home about, but they did allow for getting out the thermos and an oatmeal cookie or two. Once the women were through the southeast corner of New Hampshire and over the bridge into Kittery, it was another story. They visited the handsome information center, went back outside to the pine grove, and carried their provender to one of the inviting picnic tables.

  They dawdled their way through jellied consommé in little plastic cups, then Iduna set out chicken sandwiches with watercress and thin-sliced roast beef on rye with dilled cucumbers.

  “There’s lemonade if you want it, Helen. I brought two thermoses. I figured we might be pretty well coffeed out by the time we got this far.”

  “I’d better stick to coffee. I didn’t get much sleep last night, thinking about that fire.”

  They ate their sandwiches, with sweet green grapes and a perfect brie to follow. The basket still wasn’t empty.

  “I’ve got some jam tarts I was taking up to Cat, and a few oatmeal cookies left, unless you want to save ‘em for later.”

  “Later, thanks,” said Helen. “I’m stuffed to the eyeballs. That was a wonderful lunch, Iduna.”

  “Well, I thought we wouldn’t need anything hearty since it’s just us women. How much farther do we have to go, Helen? I’m about ready for my nap.”

  “Cat said it would be a little over two hours from here. I’m not a bit tired myself, so why don’t I drive the rest of the way? We’ll go straight on through and be there for tea. Cat always did like her cup of tea in the afternoon, remember?”

  “As who doesn’t? Oops, looks as though we’re being invaded. We may as well stir our stumps.”

  Five youngish men were piling out of a big green van with a Massachusetts number plate that had pulled up beside the Stott wagon. Judging from the rods lashed to the top of the car, they were on a fishing trip. They must be either present or former servicemen, Helen thought, because they all seemed to be wearing assorted garments of olive drab or camouflage cloth and they all had their pantlegs tucked into the tops of heavy laced boots. Then it occurred to her that they’d probably been to L. L. Bean’s on a previous trip.

  Most of them were fairly unkempt about the heads and chins, but one, the only one whose fatigue jacket matched his pants, was both clean shaven and close-cropped. He swung his legs over the bench of the next table, looked squarely at the two women—he had round topaz-colored eyes like an owl’s, Helen noticed—and gave them a boyish smile as he waited for one of the others to bring him a Coke and a bag of corn chips out of the vending machine. Perhaps he was only smiling at the size of their picnic hamper. Anyway, they smiled back as they left the grove.

  “Nice-looking boy,” Iduna remarked.

  “He’s no boy,” Helen contradicted. “What do you want to bet he’s the oldest one of the bunch? It’s just that haircut and the catfish grin that fool you.”

  Helen spoke offhandedly, her mind on getting back into the mainstream of traffic. Was that tractor trailer truck going to veer over into the outside lane just as she pulled out? She decided she’d better wait till it got safely past.

  “He looked familiar, but I can’t think why. Probably reminds me of some student I’ve had a run-in with at the library. When some kid gives me that wide-eyed innocent look, I start wondering which of the
more expensive noncirculating reference books he’s trying to sneak out with. We librarians do tend to develop a strain of cynicism, I’m afraid. Let your seat back and shut your eyes, why don’t you? I’ll wake you when we get to Cat’s.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Cat, your hair’s as red as ever,” cried Helen.

  “Damned well ought to be. That stuff I use is up to five dollars and thirty-seven cents a bottle. Come on in and rest your toenails.”

  Catriona McBogle was about halfway between Helen and Iduna in both age and height. Her current weight could only be guessed at since she had on a pair of baggy gray cotton drawstring pants and an oversized white sweatshirt with black pawprints on it. They were, according to the caption that ran across what was presumably her bosom, the footprints of a gigantic hound.

  “Leave your luggage in the car. Andrew can bring it in. He’s out hoeing the potato patch just now. I told the old coot to weed the flower beds, such as they are, but he’s deaf as a haddock when he chooses to be. It’s the bleddy old feudal system. Andrew hoed potatoes for the people I bought the house from, so he’s bound and determined to hoe potatoes for me if it kills us both.”

  “Why should it?” Iduna wondered.

  “It might if she ate too many of them green,” Helen pointed out. “Can’t you get him to hoe onions instead, Cat? None of the onion family is poisonous. Père Marquette and his exploring party lived on wild onions all the way from Wisconsin to what’s now Chicago in 1674. Did you know the name Chicago is taken from an Indian word meaning skunk place, supposedly on account of the wild leeks that grew there?”

  Miss McBogle grunted. “What do you want to bet it was on account of Marquette and his crew? Wild onions are good for bee stings, hemorrhoids, carbuncles, and ringing in the ears, I know that. You drop the juice into the ear canal. Want to see where you’re going to sleep?”

  “I want to see the bathroom first,” said Iduna. “You do have one? How old is this house, Cat?”

  “Two hundred years, give or take a twelvemonth or two. A good deal of inland settling took place in Maine around that time. The house has been modernized, otherwise you can jolly well believe I’d never have stuck myself with it. Straight through the kitchen, Iduna, that door at the back. There’s another John upstairs if you’re desperate, Helen. I’ll put on the teakettle and give you the grand tour.”

  They rejoined her a couple of minutes later, ready for their tour. The house wasn’t small, but the rooms were few.

  “It’s the reductio ad absurdum of the classic Federal style,” Catriona explained. “This big kitchen all the way across the back half of the downstairs, and two in front with a staircase between. Upstairs is the same except that the rooms are narrower because of the landing. And I’ve had the attic finished off because it was the only way to insulate without having the batts all custom tailored. Besides, I couldn’t bear not to. Come and see.”

  “I’m still gawking at this fantastic kitchen,” said Helen. “I assume that old wood-burning stove is piped into where the fireplace used to be. Imagine what it must have been like two hundred years ago with black iron pots hanging over the fire on cranes and a haunch of bear meat turning on the spit.”

  “And soot and cinders and flying sparks, and your face scorching and your bum freezing. And kindling to split and logs to lug in and smoke getting in your eyes and all the food tasting like finnan haddie,” Catriona finished.

  “Do you use the stove for heating?” Iduna asked.

  “Not unless the power goes off or Andrew happens to be in one of his wood-chopping moods. Do observe my picturesque Early American thermostat and the delightfully quaint baseboard radiation. You may also note that behind this divider thing are an electric stove, an electric refrigerator, and an electric dishwasher. There’s also a trash compactor that scares the heck out of me and one of those things that chop up the garbage and flush it into the septic tank, which I personally consider both impractical and decadent.”

  “Then why do you have them?”

  “I’ll tell you why. Because the people I bought the house from had an uncle in the appliance business and got them wholesale, that’s why. Generally, I bung the swill out on the compost heap, hoping Andrew will do whatever you’re supposed to do to make humus and then fork it out on the flower beds. But he never does,” Catriona added petulantly. “Mostly, the skunks eat the garbage. The garden’s not doing too well, but we do have handsome skunks. I see them pattering around the yard sometimes at night. They have the dearest little feet, like Helen’s.”

  “Don’t they bother the cats?” Iduna hadn’t seen any cats as yet but couldn’t imagine Catriona McBogle without a few.

  “No, skunks and cats manage to coexist quite peacefully. It’s dogs that get into trouble. Cats are much more intelligent than dogs, of course. Finished communing with the woodbin, Helen? Come on into the parlor, generally referred to as the living room.”

  “How lovely,” Helen exclaimed.

  It was. For either aesthetic or budgetary reasons, Catriona McBogle had kept the furnishings simple: cherrywood tables and a walnut rocking chair, an overstuffed sofa and chair with faded blue slipcovers that had known the touch of feline claws. A smallish oriental rug, figured chintz curtains, and a stenciled border on Wedgwood blue walls above a cream-painted wainscot made a pleasant background for a few pieces from Cat’s modest art collection. The room’s great beauty, however, came from its perfect proportions and the views of meadow and wood framed by tall windows.

  Catriona took her friends’ praise as a matter of course. “It’s not me, it’s the house. Come and see my Early Bunker Bean dining room set. Fumed oak, I believe they called it when Mother was a girl. I fumed enough while I was stripping off all that dark brown gunk they’d covered it with, that’s for sure.”

  “But the result was worth the effort,” Helen said. The bold grain and soft taupish brown of the exposed oak was exactly right with the boxy lines of the table, buffet, and funny little squarish chairs with somewhat crudely carved backs. Fake William Morris via Grand Rapids, circa 1923, she guessed. The curtains were a different chintz, pink flowers and purple birds in a pale green jungle. The painted green walls had a different stenciled border that picked up the formal leafy shape of a large potted palm that stood on the buffet.

  “I raised that palm from a pup,” Catriona bragged.

  There were more plants in raised stands that ran the whole length of one wall under more tall windows. Most of them looked as if they’d been through a tough winter.

  “Carlyle and Emerson practice their stalking in them when it’s too stormy to go out,” she explained. “I usually eat my lunch in here. It’s lovely in winter with the sun shining off the snow. Free solar heat. Come on upstairs.”

  “Hadn’t we better do something about that teakettle first?” Iduna suggested gently.

  “Oh, hell, I always forget.” Catriona ran for the kitchen. “Damn thing sits here shrieking its head off. I don’t know why the bloody scientists can’t make them self-pouring. Have you noticed people have pretty much quit going around saying, ‘If we can put a man on the moon’? Maybe you’d like your tea right now, before it turns to tannic acid. I made a batch of Joe Froggers.”

  She began taking down cups and filling a plate with fat molasses cookies the size of saucers.

  Iduna opened the hamper she’d refused to leave in the car. “I brought some jam tarts.”

  “Gad, the expedition’s well equipped. Anybody take milk and sugar? Neither of you ever used to, as I remember. How long can you stay?”

  “We have to leave Friday morning so Iduna can cook a fatted calf for Daniel,” Helen told her. “Do you think you can stand us till then?”

  “Probably, if I strain myself a little. Oh, it’s so good to see you! Here, Iduna, you pour our tea for us the way you used to do in South Dakota when we mushed in out of the blizzard with icicles hanging off our noses. What lovely times we had.”

  “It seems as if we’d
never been apart,” said Helen. “I must say I’ve never fully accepted the time-like-an-ever-rolling-stream concept.”

  “Why should you?” Catriona passed her the Joe Froggers. “Time has been abolished. It’s nothing but a bunch of quarps and quiffs these days. Quarps and quaffs, in Andrew’s case. I personally can’t make head nor tail of quantum mechanics, but it certainly is thought-provoking, as Professor Haseltine used to say about the hash at the college cafeteria. How did you two ever wind up married to professors? I suppose they both know all about quantums.”

  “What Daniel knows about is hogs, mostly.” Iduna bit into one of Catriona’s giant cookies. “My, these are good. Do you ever hear from Professor Haseltine?”

  “Speaking of professors,” said Helen, “I’d better call Peter and let him know we’ve arrived before he has the state police out looking for us. May I use your phone, Cat?”

  “Of course. Use the one in my office, why don’t you? It’s straight at the top of the stairs.”

  Catriona McBogle’s office was thirty-odd feet long and about nine feet wide. Which was typical of Cat, Helen decided. At first she thought working here must be like writing on a streetcar, then she decided it was more like being on the deck of a ship. There was a window on the front, and two more on one side, along with a huge chimney and a dinky little stove inside the fireplace. The other side was all bookshelves. Cat’s own books had three shelves to themselves; Helen hadn’t realized how prolific her former fellow boarder had been during the intervening years. She was interested to notice how many different editions of a single book there could be. The translations were a bit disconcerting. Whatever must The Case of the Undarned Sock or The Baffling Affair of the Spearmint on the Bedpost read like in German or Japanese?