The Grub-And-Stakers House a Haunt (15 page)

Dittany tagged along behind, partly to make sure Arethusa didn’t trip over her long skirt and partly because she was curious to see whether Hedrick Snarf really did intend to strew the flowers. She could see the innkeeper through the double parlor doors, sitting in one of the needlepoint-covered Queen Anne chairs, twitching his lips and flicking his eyes back and forth from the doorway to the ormolu clock on the carved marble mantelpiece.

Snarf was not a prepossessing man, but he’d made the most of what he had. He’d had his dull brown hair blowdried and fluffed out over his bald spot, he’d grown apologetic wisps of sideburns, and bought himself a high stiff collar, a black silk cravat and a black frock coat with a pinched-in waist. The gray striped trousers that accompanied his coat were not quite long enough in the leg. Dittany stopped short in the doorway and gasped. Along with the rest of his outmoded finery, Hedrick Snarf was wearing bright purple silk socks.

-Lxittany dumped the diaper

bag next to the cellar door, laid Rennie on the kitchen table, and began to divest him of his outer wrappings.

“You must admit, Osbert, that it’s an odd coincidence. I’d like to see what the Akashic Record has to say about reincarnation.”

“Perhaps there’s a more scientific explanation,” Osbert suggested. “There could be some gene in the Snarf family’s DNA cycle that predisposes them toward frock coats and purple legwear. I can see why Snarf had to settle for purple socks because where the heck could a man find purple gaiters these days? What gets me is why that hombre thought he had to get himself up like a third cousin of Rhett Butler just to throw a wingding for Aunt Arethusa.”

“And I further don’t understand why he didn’t invite any of Arethusa’s family or friends,” Dittany added with some acrimony. “Not that we’d have gone, needless to say, but it was pretty darned crass of Snarf not to ask us. I don’t believe one soul here in Lobelia Falls even knew this brawl was going to happen. Surely we’d have heard if anybody we know got invited. Now I suppose the whole club will be down on Arethusa, they’ll think she’s trying to snoot them.”

“No they won’t, darling. They all know she’s got pink marbles where her brains ought to be. Want me to light the campfire and open us a can of beans?”

“I’m not madly hungry after all those scones. Why don’t you go rope a couple of mavericks while Ethel and I get the wee bairns fixed up? Then we’ll decide what we feel like eating.”

“Sure thing, Miz Dittany, ma’am. Would y’all care to meet me out by the doghouse when the moon comes over the mountain? I’m fixin’ to throw you a little reception.”

“Why, thank you kindly, Deputy Monk. You know I’m always receptive to your receptions. Now scat and earn us some daily bread. I’ll let you know when the chuck wagon arrives.”

Husband and wife buckled down to their respective tasks. An hour or so later, babies bedded and cayuses corralled, they met for a preprandial libation, an amusing little vintage out of a jug picked up more or less at random in the Scottsbeck supermarket.

“That casserole smells awfully good,” Osbert remarked after a while in a hinting kind of way.

“It’ll be ready in about three more minutes,” Dittany assured him. “Think you can stand to wait?”

“I’ll steel myself. What did you put in it?”

“Oh, a handful of this and a pinch of that. I can’t remember.”

“Those are always the best ones. Your instincts about casseroles are unerring. Which brings up another consideration.”

Osbert gave them each a modest dividend out of the jug. “You remember Grandsire Coskoff mentioned that your great-great-grandfather was a dowser?”

“Yes, and it shocked me to the core, if you want to know. Though now that I’ve seen Hedrick Snarf, I realize there are worse things Charlie Henbit could have been.”

“Good for you, dear, that shows the power of positive thinking. But what I was getting at is, could the ability be hereditary? What if you’ve inherited old Charlie’s waterwitching gene? Have you ever tried to dowse?”

“No, frankly, the idea never occurred to me. I suppose I could give it a whirl, but where would I get a hazel twig?

The only hazel I know of around town is Hazel Munson.”

“It doesn’t have to be a hazel rod,” Osbert argued.

“What about that metal contraption Pollicot James was using yesterday? We might rig something up with a bent coat hanger and a few brass buttons. Not tonight, because it’s been a pretty busy day, but maybe tomorrow morning.

Or what about using a pendulum? It seems to me I’ve read somewhere about somebody who used to dowse with a gold watch and chain.”

“Did you really? Maybe that’s how Great-greatgrandfather used to do it. We’ve got his gold watch and chain upstairs, you know, in that little hidey-hole Gramp made where we keep the bankbooks and the rings Daddy gave to Mum that she gave to me when she married Bert and we’re keeping for Annie.”

“Are we?” said Osbert in some surprise.

“Of course we are. Rennie can have the watch to even up. It ought to be chock full of Great-greatgrandfather’s vibrations, unless they’ve all leaked out by now. I wouldn’t mind giving that way a try. What’s a person supposed to do?”

“Just wander around dangling the watch by its chain till it starts acting funny, I should think.”

“But how would a person know what was funny? If I was walking along tripping over things, the watch would be bound to sway and jiggle anyway.”

“You don’t trip over things, sweetheart. At least not very often. Maybe you’d start feeling little electric shocks in your toes.”

“I’m not altogether certain I’d care to feel little elec-trie shocks in my toes,” said Dittany. “What about that chart Hiram’s supposed to have mailed to himself and we still haven’t done anything about? Do you think there’s any chance it could have survived?”

Osbert smiled. “I’d have said there was no chance for Hiram himself to have survived till I saw him last night with my own two eyes. At least I saw his two eyes with my two eyes. Unless I was really seeing with his eyes all the time. That was a dad-blanged odd experience, thinking back on it. Here were these two shiny blue eyes with no face around them. When I say shiny, I don’t mean shining.

They weren’t emitting light the way a light bulb does, but they somehow made you able to see clearly in the dark. I can’t explain how it was, dear, you’d have to experience it for yourself. Too bad Hiram isn’t here to demonstrate.”

“You lookin’ for me, Bub?”

No part of the speaker was visible at the moment, but Zilla Trott was just coming through the back door, looking embarrassed and flustered. “I’m sorry to butt in on you just at mealtime,” she fussed, “but this old goat insists you want to see him.”

“We do,” said Dittany. “I’ve been feeling slighted because Osbert got to meet Mr. Jellyby last night and I didn’t. We were talking about him only a second ago, as a matter of fact. Come on, Zilla, sit down. I was about to take our supper out of the oven and you know I always make extra. It’s just macaroni and cheese and a few other odds and ends. You can absorb that, can’t you, Mr. Jellyby?

Osbert, would you get the salad out of the fridge and bring a couple more plates? How about a sip of wine for starters? We were just having some.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have any homemade moonshine like your great-great-grampaw Charlie Henbit used to make, I don’t s’pose?” came that wistful disembodied voice.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Jellyby, I’m afraid his recipe died with him.”

“And a darned good thing it did, if you ask me,” said Zilla. “I’ll have a little wine, thanks, but don’t you go giving Hiram anything alcoholic, eh. He got lit up like a Christmas tree last night on a cup of coffee and one of Minerva’s doughnuts.”

“Then for Pete’s sake keep him away from that dandelion wine of yours,” Dittany retorted.

Out of the everywhere came the kind of sinister hehheh-heh noise that villains in the old melodramas are said to have gone around emitting. However, as none of the visible entities now present in the Henbit-Monk kitchen had ever been to a melodrama, except the one that they themselves had put on to benefit the Architrave,* they couldn’t have said for sure. Zilla, however, knew at once what the snickering was all about.

“Hiram Jellyby! So that’s the big attraction in my woodshed, is it? Don’t tell me you’ve been sneaking drinks out of that big crock I’ve put my dandelions to ferment in?

How in tarnation did you get the lid off?”

“I didn’t have to get the lid off. I got mysterious pow11

ers.

“Like fun you have. There’d better not be any mysterious shrinkage inside that crock when I go to bottle my wine, or you’ll find out who’s got the powers around here, mister. My own greatgrandfather was a medicine man. And a darned good one, from what I’ve heard tell of him.”

“How about that?” cried Osbert. “Could he dowse for water?”

“I have no idea. Purification rites and dream interpretations were his specialties, I’ve been given to understand, though he also had quite a sideline curing hunting ponies of buffalo gores. These days, I suppose, he’d be called a psychiatrist. Back then, a medicine man had to pitch in wherever he was needed. But dowsing, no, I hardly think * The Gruband-Stakers Pinch a Poke

so. He wouldn’t have had to go through any tomfoolery with a forked stick; every Indian worth his pemmican knew how to look for signs of underground water. Whatever made you ask, Osbert?”

“Because Pollicot James has gone to Toronto for an indefinite period and we still need to find that gold of Hiram’s. Dittany’s going to have a try tomorrow, we’re hoping she may have inherited the ancestral knack. We called on Grandsire Coskoff this afternoon and he mentioned that her great-great-grandfather was a dowser. Did you actually know Charlie Henbit, Hiram?”

“Hell’s fire, everybody knew Charlie Henbit. Charlie was a magician, you know. He could charm the birds right out o’ the trees. I seen ‘im do it more than once.”

“What’s so magic about that?” said Zilla. “I can charm birds myself. Some birds, anyway. All you need is a handful of birdseed and the knack of standing perfectly still. And remembering not to sneeze if a feather brushes too close to your nose.”

“Charlie could bring ‘em without the birdseed,”

Hiram insisted. “Birds just plain liked ‘im, is what it was.

Even birds that wouldn’t o’ guv the time o’ day to no other livin’ critter, they got on fine with Charlie. I seen Charlie Henbit call down a Swainson hawk an’ a damn great mean-lookin’ raven that would o’ pecked a person’s eyes out if they’d been anybody else’s. Even a bald eagle.

Mighty Jehu, Zilla, you ought to o’ seen the talons on that critter! But all it done was wrapped ‘em around the sleeve o’ that ol’ bearskin coat Charlie used to wear an’ perched there on ‘is arm cawm as a cucumber.”

“Greatgreat-grandfather must have been awfully brave,” said Dittany.

“Oh, Charlie Henbit wasn’t afraid o’ nothing. He’d get up before daylight an’ go walkin’ in the woods before it was time to open the store. I followed ‘im a few times just for the fun of it, an’ I never seen nothin’ like what he could do. He’d hunker down on ‘is knees an’ talk to anything that come along. Weasels, skunks, squirrels, wasn’t no thin’ uppity about Charlie, he’d even talk to mice.

Wildcats, elk, grizzly bears, nothin’ fazed ‘im, he just took ‘em as they come an’ they done the same by him.

Might o’ been partly the bearskin coat, I-Godfrey mighty! Here comes Charlie now, wearin’ that same ratty ol’ bearskin. Hey there, ol’ pard! How’s your feet an’ ears? Still runnin’ the store?”

As tactfully as possible, Dittany corrected Hiram’s no doubt justified misapprehension. “Actually, this is Ethel.

She’s been upstairs minding the children. Here’s your supper, Ethel. Come on, the rest of you, haul up and set.

Hiram, you take this chair beside me. Zilla, you sit next to Osbert. Do you eat salad, Hiram?”

“I don’t even know what it is. I might try a spoonful o’

whatever’s in that fancy bowl with the steam comin’ out of it, just to see what happens. Don’t gimme much, missus, I wouldn’t know where to put it. Mind tellin’ me how come you make the hired girl eat on the floor like a gol-durned dog?”

“Well, you see, Ethel is a dog. At least we think she is.

Partly, anyway. Our neighbors got her from the dog pound and the town clerk makes us pay for a dog license every year, so we give her the benefit of the doubt. On the floor beside the stove is where Ethel prefers to eat and we’re very fond of her so we just go along with whatever makes her happy.”

“Just like how it used to be with me an’ my mules.

You don’t s’pose Ethel might have a little mule in ‘er somewheres?”

“I suppose it’s possible; she can be pretty stubborn sometimes. Most people seem to think she’s a cross between a black bear and a musk-ox. So birds and animals liked my great-great-grandfather, you say. How about people?

Did they like him too?”

“I’ll tell the cockeyed world they did. I can’t remember one single soul in Lobelia Falls, nor Scottsbeck neither, even countin’ his wife, that ever had a hard word for Charlie Henbit.”

“You say he used to act out plays and things,” Zilla prompted.

“That’s right, Zilla. I tell you there was never a dull moment when Charlie was around. He plumb loved to dress up an’ make the folks laugh, Charlie did.”

“I don’t suppose he ever dressed up in a black frock coat and purple gaiters?”

Dittany hadn’t meant to ask that question, it just upped and asked itself. Hiram Jellyby took umbrage.

“You can quit thinkin’ what you’re thinkin’, young woman, ‘cause it ain’t so. Whoever that geezer might o’

been who followed me from the saloon, he sure wasn’t Charlie Henbit, an’ you can bet your bottom dollar on that.

Hell, Charlie wouldn’t even o’ swatted the horsefly that kilt me. He’d o’ just talked to it nice an’ told it to go sting one o’ them highbinders that come around with their medicine shows. Half a dollar for a bottle o’ river water with a little port wine an’ laudanum mixed in, an’ a pinch o’ cayenne pepper to give it a kick. I tell you they was highway robbers.