The Grub-And-Stakers House a Haunt (13 page)

“So that wad mean yon gold is still buried in Hunnikers’

Field?”

“Or not, as the case may be. I can see why whoever shot Hiram might have buried the cross with his body to hide it so that nobody would go digging him up and find that bullet hole in his head and know he’d been shot. This wasn’t exactly the Wild West, you know, even a hundred years ago. Hiram must have been a fairly well known character in the area. If they’d realized he’d been murdered, people might have taken umbrage and gone after the ornery rustler who killed him.”

“On what grounds do you designate yon killer also a rustler, Deputy Monk?”

“Well, he’d have had to rustle Hiram’s mules, wouldn’t he? He couldn’t just leave the critters wandering around by themselves singing ‘Buffalo Gals.’ Everybody would have known something had happened to Hiram and started organizing a necktie party.”

“Of course they would,” said Dittany. “So the killer must have taken the cross away from the place where the gold was buried, not knowing that the gold was in fact buried there. Unless the gold was really buried at that same water hole and the robber dug it up and took it away while he was burying Hiram and the china, assuming the same person did both. Which is possible, I suppose, because it was your great-great-grandmother’s china and it was your great-great-grandfather who took Hiram’s picture.

Is it nice china, darling?”

“Grade A Number One, according to Aunt Arethusa.

Chelseaware, I believe she said, imported from England specially for the wedding. And stolen while the bride and groom were on their honeymoon. Greatgreat-grandma must have been sick as a cat when she found out. Of course they got another set, but it wasn’t the same. Naturally Aunt Arethusa snaffled the china right away. You don’t mind, dear?”

“Oh, no,” Dittany assured him. “It will come to Annie eventually anyway. We must pop in at Arethusa’s and let her have a look at it, though I suppose it’s a trifle early to be thinking of Annie’s getting married and setting up housekeeping. Still, I can’t help thinking how nicely it works out that you have a grandson just the right age, Sergeant MacVicar.”

“Umph’a. It is, as you say, a wee bit airly to be posting the banns. But we never know, do we? Stranger things hae happened.”

Sergeant MacVicar smiled into the basket at his potential granddaughter-in-law and let himself out. Osbert went upstairs to shower and dress. Dittany went down cellar to put in a load of wash, then came back to the kitchen and started her cookies. Ethel sat guarding the big pink-and-blue-padded clothes basket that still served as the twins’ downstairs bassinet, though they’d be outgrowing it soon. “Oddly normal” seemed a contradiction in terms, but that was how the ancestral home felt to Dittany at that moment.

It did occur to her that she might call Zilla and ask whether Hiram Jellyby would mind having another look at the Akashic Record to determine whether the gold was still in its original hiding place, or whether it had been restolen at the time when his bones were interred with Greatgreat-grandmother Monk’s wedding china. However, she wasn’t sure whether Hiram might consider the request presumptuous, coming from a woman to whom he had not yet been introduced.

Furthermore, now that he was back here at the scene of his untimely demise, it might not be possible for Hiram to get to the records. From what little Dittany had been able to gather secondhand, Hiram himself was none too clear about how things worked on the astral plane; why risk causing him embarrassment? She was rolling out her cookie dough when she remembered what she’d been thinking a little while ago. Fortunately Osbert came downstairs as she was flouring the cutter, wearing his green and purple plaid flannel shirt and looking ready for anything, so she was able to share her thought.

“You know, Osbert, the person who buried that china most likely meant to dig it up again.”

“That would be the logical assumption, precious.”

“But he put Hiram’s marker in the grave, or somebody did. And it seems just too much of a coincidence that one person would have buried Hiram and another person come along after him and buried the trunkful of china in practically the same spot, wouldn’t you think? And the spring they were buried beside wouldn’t be any help as a landmark because it was underground. So that being the case, how would the bad guy have known where to dig when he came back for the china? Unless,” Dittany brought the old crinkle-edged tin cutter down on her dough with a small thump of satisfaction. “Unless he was a dowser, like Pollicot James?”

“A brilliant deduction, darling. So that’s why you’re so het up to see Grandsire Coskoff, eh? You want to ask him whether there were any dowsers living around here during the platinum-print era. Grandsire himself wouldn’t have known such a person, I don’t suppose, but his parents might have. And they’d have told him about the water witch because they seem to have told him every dad-blanged thing that ever happened in Lobelia Falls from the time they’d got here as settlers to the time they died at incredibly advanced ages. He’s told me about fifty times, but I still can’t remember whether it was the mother who died at ninetyseven and the father who lived to be a hundred and five, or vice versa. Do you suppose I’m growing senile, dearest?”

“No, darling. I think you automatically switch to brooding on distant mesas whenever the subject comes up, as people naturally tend to do when Grandsire gets started on the old folks’ reminiscences. Speaking of families, did I happen to mention at suppertime last night that I’d met Mrs. Melloe at Minerva’s house yesterday afternoon while I was polling the trustees about Hiram Jellyby’s picture for Mr. Glunck? She wants to be a Henbit.”

“Did you tell her she could?”

“Nope,” Dittany confessed. “I was pretty sniffy to her, if you want the truth. Minerva said I was, anyway. It was Mrs. Melloe’s own fault. She was being a pain in the neck, hanging around asking dumb questions when any fool could have seen Minerva was itching for the old pest to get the heck out of there so she could start her supper. But you know Minerva. She wouldn’t so much as drop a hint even if she was in the last extremity of boredom. So I thought it would be an act of charity to give Mrs. Melloe the bum’s rush.”

Osbert gave her a kiss. “That’s one of the things I love about you, dear, you’re always doing something nice for somebody. Not to be hinting, but what time is lunch?”

“As soon as the cookies are baked. Another half or three quarters of an hour.”

“Then you won’t mind if I just nip in and see what’s happening around the old corral?”

ti ~r*^ tt

Do.

Dittany smiled fondly as she heard the antique Remington galloping happily westward, and went on greasing her cookie sheets.

Cjrrandsire Coskoff’s communication

systems were functioning beautifully today.

His hearing-aid batteries were all juiced up and raring to go, he caught Dittany’s question first time around. “Hiram Jellyby, eh? My stars, I hadn’t thought of Hiram Jellyby for years. Never met Hiram myself, of course, but Father used to talk about him when I was a boy. Something of a mystery man, Hiram was.”

Grandsire was looking spruce and peppy as usual in his green velveteen smoking jacket and his red fez with the tassel cocked jauntily over his left ear. These garments were relics of the days when Turkish corners were in vogue, though they’d never been exactly rife in Lobelia Falls. It had been Grandsire’s father, actually, who’d acquired the fez and jacket back in his salad days, when he’d done the Grand Tour all the way to Quebec City and back.

He’d never got around to fixing up his own Turkish corner, and Grandsire had only taken to wearing the clothes during the past twenty years or so. Everybody knew he wore the fez mainly to cover his bald spot but it was generally conceded that, at the age of a hundred and one, a man might be pardoned his little vanities.

“Yes indeed,” Grandsire went on.“Hiram was a muleteer, working mostly out of Scottsbeck. Scottsbeck was on the railroad by then, you know.”

They did know, but listened patiently while he told them anyway, and tried to look adequately amazed when he described with fine dramatic flair how Hiram had driven off from Mountie headquarters into oblivion, taking his mules with him. It was quite a while before Dittany managed to get in, “What about the man in the black frock coat and purple gaiters who was infesting these parts at that time? Wasn’t he supposed to be a water witch or something?”

Grandsire shook his fez. “I’m afraid you’ve got me there, Dittany. I never heard of any such person. The only water witch I knew of in’ those days was your own Greatgreat-grandfather Henbit. Charlie, that was.”

The old man chuckled. “Not that I’d have put it past Charlie Henbit to get himself up in a frock coat and purple gaiters if he’d taken a mind to. Charlie was a great one for acting, you know, always getting up shows and concerts.

Folks made their own entertainment back then, none of this running off to the nickelodeon or the ice cream parlor the way kids do nowadays. Mainly because there wasn’t one to run to, I expect, but anyway, that’s how it was.

Charlie was also one of the founders of the Male Archers’

Target and Game Shooting Association, as of course I don’t have to tell you. Yes indeed, he was a card, old Charlie Henbit.”

Grandsire allowed himself a pause for chuckling, then went on. “But a good businessman, mind you. Charlie never let his family go in want no matter how tough the times were around here, nor anybody else who needed a handout, for that matter. Or who needed a well dug. He’d get out there with his hazel twig and find water every time, if there was any to find. People would send for Charlie Henbit clear to Scottsbeck and Lammergen, not that Lammergen was much of a place till the mincemeat factory started up.”

“We know about the mincemeat factory,” Dittany tried to interject, but Grandsire wasn’t listening.

“Charlie started a little general store and trading post just about where Gumpert’s store is now, and did well right from the start. After a while, he built on a big extension and took his sons Fred and Ditson, the one your own father was named for, as partners. They built another store or two and branched out into dry goods and notions. Then Fred died of the measles and Ditson’s three sons went off to the war. Your grandfather was one of them.”

Dittany decided they really had to hurry this visit along. The twins were starting to fidget and she herself was feeling a trifle twitchy about old Charlie and his hazel twig.

“That’s right, Grandsire. Three went off but only Gramp came back, and he was half a leg short. He couldn’t have stood on his stump all day to wait on customers even if he’d had the heart to run the store without his brothers.

Besides, Scottsbeck was built up by then, people were beginning to have cars and drive over there to shop, so Gramp sold the store and started a real estate business in Scottsbeck. Daddy went to business college and went in with him and married Mum and had me. Then Daddy died and Gramp sold the real estate business and we lived on the money and his war pension. Then Grammy and Gramp died and Mum married Bert and that left just me. I married Osbert and we’ve had the twins and now I think we’d better get going. Thanks, Mrs. Coskoff, but we can’t stay for tea. Arethusa’s expecting us.”

Left a widower a decade or two previously, Grandsire had, after a decent interval, married a much younger woman. The second Mrs. Coskoff was a mere seventy-nine, a pretty little dumpling with curly white hair, a cheery disposition, a dab hand at pastry, and some loss of hearing; the pair were blissfully happy together. She expressed regret that the Monks had to run off so soon, urged them to come again, reminded Dittany to be sure and keep the babies’ feet warm because you never knew, and waved them off from behind the front-door window, which had little squares of colored glass set in around the edges as was a time-honored custom in Lobelia Falls.

“Well, Osbert,” Dittany said when they got outside, “it looks as if there’s an off chance you may be married to the great-great-granddaughter of a highwayman. Would you care for a divorce?”

“Perish the thought, darling. I’ve held up plenty of stagecoaches in my time too, you know.”

“But only on paper,” Dittany argued. “This holdup was the real McCoy, unless Hiram Jellyby remembered it wrong.”

“Which he may well have done, darling. It didn’t occur to him that I was digging at the wrong water hole until I’d rubbed half the skin off my best typing finger.”

The tinge of rancor in Osbert’s voice soon disappeared, for he was a happy soul by nature and eager to raise the pall of gloom that Grandsire Coskoff’s words had engendered.

“Furthermore, we don’t know for sure that your great-great-grandfather ever actually did wear purple gaiters.

Even if he did, why couldn’t whoever killed Hiram have been somebody else dressed up in purple gaiters, pretending to be Charlie Henbit? In fact, it would have been somebody else, because Charlie would have had to stay and mind the store.”

Osbert warmed to his theme. “Storekeepers in those days had a stern responsibility to their customers, you know, dear. If you’d driven old Nellie ten miles over a dirt road with ruts as deep as your buggy wheels to buy a pound of tea and a new pair of braces, you’d darn well expect the storekeeper to be there to wait on you and give you a free pickle out of the barrel and some Jujubes for the kids and pass the time of day and ask how the folks back home were making out. And if the storekeeper wasn’t around, you’d sure as heck want to know why. And if the kid he’d left to guard the till told you the old man had taken the afternoon off to ride out to Hunnikers’ Field and rob a mule skinner, it would be bound to cause talk and have a deleterious effect on customer relations. Grandsire said explicitly that Charlie Henbit was a good businessman, so it stands to reason he’d have been attending to his own affairs and not gone looking for trouble. You do see that, don’t you, dearest?”

“Yes, darling. You’re such a comfort. And when you come right down to it, we don’t even know whether the man in the purple gaiters actually stole anything. Hiram may have been his first and last attempt at robbery, and he fluffed that one on account of the horsefly.”