The Corpse in Oozak's Pond (12 page)

She didn’t answer, merely went to the door and held it open. After they’d gone out, they could hear her shooting the bolt.

“Anyways, she’s got sense enough left to bolt the door,” Ottermole remarked as they got into the car.

“I was a damned fool to push her like that,” said Shandy. “I should have remembered what a hell of a day she’s had. I hope we didn’t make a mistake leaving her here alone.”

“Ah, she’s a tough old bird. I bet she’s havin’ herself a slug o’ Trev’s oh-be-joyful right now.”

“If she can do that, she’s tough enough for anything and I shan’t feel like such a rat. At least she’ll have to open a fresh bottle. I can’t imagine whoever it was bothered to poison the whole batch.”

“We’ll know in the morning,” Ottermole replied through a jaw-splitting yawn. “You really think she was puttin’ us on about Dr. Porble?”

“I’m inclined to think she engaged in hyperbole.”

“Huh?”

“Exaggerating the truth for rhetorical effect. She tends to do that, I’ve noticed.”

“Oh, yeah, like when she was talkin’ about grindin’ the faces of the poor this morning. What the hell, I’m none too flush myself, but if some rich guy waltzed up to me an’ said, ‘I’m gonna grind your face,’ I’d damn well tell ’im where to head in. So would she, for all her mealymouth bitchin’. Where to now, Professor? Home, I hope?”

“I hope so, too, Ottermole. But first, since the night is still relatively young and since we’re in the neighborhood, I was thinking we ought to pay a call on Captain Flackley.”

“What for? We ain’t goin’ to pinch him, are we?”

“Not tonight, as far as I know. It occurred to me that it might be a good idea for some responsible neighbor to know Miss Mink is alone in the Buggins house.”

Then again, if it had been Flackley who murdered the Bugginses, it might be a spectacularly bad idea. Shandy couldn’t see any reason why the farrier would want to come back and kill the housekeeper, though. The fact that whoever spiked the vinegar jug picked a night when Miss Mink would be out playing bingo could be an indication that she wasn’t meant to die with the others, though it was more likely a matter of her absence making access to the jug a lot simpler. Anyway, if Flackley was in fact playing a double game, it would be more in keeping with his role to show the lone survivor every consideration.

Shandy knew Forgery Point well enough. The old Flackley place was out at the end of Second Fork. Getting there by road meant doubling back to where the Seven Forks met and submitting his car to another longish stretch of ruts and bumps. Cutting through the woods would be far shorter and a cinch for a man who was not only used to skis and snowshoes but even had his own team of huskies.

Dogsled racing had begun to catch on in Balaclava County. Captain Flackley had naturally been pleased to find out that the hardy canines who’d been with him aboard the
Hippocampus
would be, if not quite welcome, at least tolerated around Forgery Point. Roy and Laurie Ames would have liked a team, too, but public opinion at the Crescent, including the Shandys’ and Jane Austen’s, was against them.

One thing about huskies, though, they saved visitors’ having to hunt for a probably nonexistent doorbell in the dark. Shandy and Ottermole weren’t out of the car before a chorus of “Awoo” in eight different tones rent the air. The huskies were penned up behind a chain-link fence, but even so, the wolflike howls were somewhat unnerving.

Flackley himself opened the front door, bellowed “Shut up,” at which command all eight huskies miraculously did, and managed to tell his visitors that this was an unexpected pleasure without making it too obvious that while he was clear about the unexpected, he had his doubts with regard to the pleasure.

“Come in, come in. Don’t fret about your boots, this floor’s fairly slushproof. What can I get you? Yvette’s at her rug-making class, but I brew a great cup of instant coffee.”

“Thanks, but we weren’t intending to stay,” Shandy told him. “We’re on our way back to the Junction. We only stopped to speak to you about Miss Mink over at First Fork. I expect you’ve heard about the Bugginses?”

“Lord, yes, every place I worked today, I got an earful. The only ones who didn’t talk about it were the horses. Both husband and wife dying the same night and that poor old soul finding them all by herself. Must have taken an awful hike out of her.”

Captain Flackley was a big man, even bigger than Fred Ottermole, though, of course, nowhere near the size of President Svenson. His hair was the color of frost but didn’t make him look old. His face was ruddy, his brown eyes snapped, his well-muscled frame suggested vigorous motion even when he was sitting perfectly still. He could have passed for thirty-five or so, but Shandy knew he had two sons old enough to have assumed his work aboard the
Hippocampus
and a daughter studying animal husbandry with Professor Stott and farriery with her father.

“Sit down,” Flackley urged. “You can stop a minute. I was just going over some figures, and all interruptions are welcome. That’s one job I hate, but it has to be done. Now what’s this about Miss Mink?”

“Simply that she’s got nobody with her and is in, er, considerable distress of mind.”

“Because the Bugginses were murdered?”

He hadn’t lost any time getting to the point. “So you’ve heard about that, too?” Shandy said.

“At least seventeen different versions. What happened? Were they stabbed, smothered, strangled with Mrs. Buggins’s corset strings, or poisoned by Trevelyan’s booze?”

“Actually, it was the booze.”

“You’re kidding! Good God, I’ve got a jug of the stuff right here in the house. Haven’t got up nerve enough to sample it myself yet, but I tried half a pint on a mare with a case of glanders the vet couldn’t seem to get rid of. Straightened her out fine as silk in three days. I told Buggins he ought to take out a patent, but he couldn’t remember what that particular batch was made of.”

“This must have been a different batch.”

Shandy decided he might as well tell Flackley the whole story. It would be all over the county by morning, anyway. “What we think happened was that somebody poured poison into an already opened jug, which naturally would have been the one Mr. and Mrs. Buggins took their usual bedtime drink from. Miss Mink didn’t drink any with them because she’d gone out to play bingo.”

“What was the poison?”

“Carbon tetrachloride.”

“I’ll be darned.” Flackley shook his head. “That’s one I’d never have thought of. Not a bad choice, though, I guess, if your mind was running that way. Hell, we’ve still got half a bottle sitting out in the woodshed because we can’t think how best to get rid of it. Toxic waste, you know. My aunt must have kept it to clean her gloves with or something. God rest her soul, she was a fine woman and a damned good farrier but no chemist. You want to impound the bottle for evidence?”

“Maybe we better go take a look at it, anyways,” said Ottermole.

Shandy didn’t see why. Flackley’s armchair was comfortable, Flackley’s fire was bright. He himself would have been content to sit and rest awhile, but he didn’t want to stifle the chief’s initiative, so he went.

The Flackleys were tidy people, he noticed as they walked through the back entry to the woodshed. People who lived aboard ship learned to be, he supposed. The shed was new since Miss Flackley’s time, though it probably replaced an earlier one that had been connected with the smithy. One side was hung with gardening implements, a dogsled harness, hand looms, upholstery stretchers, and other evidences of the family’s multifarious interests. The other side was lined with shelves, all stacked with neatly labeled boxes, bins, cans, and jars. Flackley glanced along the top shelves, reached up, and took down a somewhat rusty coffee can.

“I stuck the bottle inside this, for fear some neighbor’s kid might—” He shook the tin. “That’s funny, there’s nothing in it.” He took off the lid and peered inside to make sure. “Nope, it’s gone.”

“Who took it?” Ottermole asked.

“My wife or daughter are the only ones I can think of offhand. They might have heard about a toxic waste collection drive somewhere, or one of Yvette’s students got a bad stain on the piece he’d been upholstering—I don’t know.”

He slammed the lid down on the can and set it back on the shelf. “I’ll ask her when she gets home. No sense getting all worked up till we find out whether there’s anything to panic about.”

“None whatever,” Shandy agreed. “What time is Mrs. Flackley due back?”

“That’s hard to say. The class is supposed to be over at half past nine, but they get interested, you know, and then there’s the mess to clean up afterward. We can go over to the community hall and ask her if you think it’s important.”

And start every tongue in the place wagging at full speed? Shandy shook his head. “It can wait. Do you recall when you last saw the bottle yourself?”

“Gosh, I’m not sure. Let’s see. We had a red squirrel and his wife—at least I assume she was his wife—get in here last fall and try to set up housekeeping. They were running along the shelves, knocking things down and making a mess. This can was one of the things they kicked off, I know. I definitely remember looking inside to make sure they hadn’t broken the bottle because I didn’t want the fumes leaking out. It was all right, so I put the can back up there, which was stupid of me. I should have taken care of it then and there, but all I could think of were those pesky squirrels. You know what a job they can do on a place if you once let them get a toehold.”

Ottermole started a tale of woe about squirrels in his own attic, but Shandy headed him off. “Was anybody with you at the time?”

“Why, yes, a fellow named Zack Woozle who helps us around the place quite a lot. He saw me open the can and made some crack about ‘What you got in there, Cap’n? A jar of Buggins’s booze?’ So I thought I’d better explain what was in the bottle and why I’d hidden it away so Zack wouldn’t be tempted to try a snort.”

“Zack Woozle?” said Ottermole. “Isn’t he a brother or cousin or somethin’ of the Mike Woozle that held up the gas station over at Lumpkin Upper Mills?”

“I expect so,” Flackley replied. “There are a good many Woozles around the Seven Forks, and chances are they’re all connected one way or another. Zack’s okay. Most of them are, and there’s nothing much wrong with the rest except poverty and lack of effective training, as far as Yvette and I can see.”

“Is Zack Woozle married?” Shandy asked.

“Yes. His wife’s a nice woman. Rather dressy.”

“Does she play bingo?”

The farrier blinked, then smiled. “I see what you’re getting at. Sure, I daresay she and Zack both do. Bingo’s the big thing around here, you know. They play for a dime a card, something like that. Silly waste of time, to my way of thinking, but I can’t see any real harm in it. At least it’s sociability of a sort. And, yes, I shouldn’t be surprised if Zack was joking at the hall about thinking I had a bottle of liquor hidden in the woodshed and it turned out to be carbon tetrachloride.”

“Do you keep the woodshed locked?”

“Not during the daytime and seldom at night, if you want the truth. There’s the forge, you know, and we’re always needing one thing or another out of the shed. Anybody could have come in and taken it, if he’d a mind to. Maybe some kid, thinking he’d get high by sniffing the bottle, poor little jackass. Or maybe some grown-up with a grudge against the Bugginses. Damn, I wish I’d poured the stuff out on the ground and been done with it. That’s what comes of having principles. “

“Nobody’s going to fault you for not wanting to pollute the environment,” Shandy assured him. “We can’t know for sure that yours was the carbon tetrachloride that killed the Bugginses. If it was, you can console yourself with the thought that if it hadn’t been handy, they could easily enough have found something else.”

“That doesn’t excuse my carelessness,” said Flackley. “I’m afraid I haven’t been much help to you.”

Shandy was afraid not, too. Much as he’d have preferred to take the explorer at face value, he didn’t feel encouraged to do so. Naturally Captain Flackley had had to admit there’d been carbon tetrachloride on the place if his hired man had gone snickering about it to his bingo buddies. Keeping a toxic substance inside a rusty coffee can didn’t strike Professor Shandy as a particularly intelligent solution to what had, after all, been an insignificant problem. Granted, it was the sort of thing any householder might do, but Amos Flackley wasn’t just anybody.

Unless the farrier had kept the bottle as a subconscious act of piety toward his late aunt’s memory. The premise was a doubtful one at best. Shandy was not happy as he slid back behind the steering wheel.

Chief Ottermole wasn’t happy, either. He’d begun chewing gum with what might have been perhaps overdramatically described as savage intensity, blowing little bubbles and popping them back as if he hated them. Shandy turned on the car radio hoping to drown out the pops, but Ottermole only began puffing and snapping in time with the music.

This unceasing spearmint roulade might perhaps have been inspirational to a composer. To a middle-aged professor who’d had a long, bad day, it was next to unendurable. He was to no end relieved when at last he dropped his eruptive passenger off at the blue house with the white shutters, where Edna Mae was doubtless waiting with arms outstretched and ears atilt for the latest thrilling adventure in the ongoing saga of Fred Ottermole, Supercop.

Helen was waiting, too, in front of the living-room fire with Jane Austen curled up on her lap and a bundle of Bugginsana on the lamp table beside her. She’d been napping but woke when she heard Shandy’s step and held up her face for a kiss.

“Hello, darling. How did you make out?”

He sighed and flopped down on the settee beside her. “Who knows? Miss Mink claims Phil Porble was out there yesterday throwing a tantrum over the lawsuit. She claims she was afraid he’d tear the place apart with his bare hands.”

“Did you believe her?”

“In a word, no. She didn’t take kindly to my dubiety.”

“So then what did you do?”

“Folded my tents like the Arabs and as quietly snuck away. I think that allusion is a trifle outdated. So’s Miss Mink. She was in fairly wan condition by then. As am I.”