The Grub-And-Stakers House a Haunt (18 page)

“What plate?”

“One of a stack that were, one gathers, intended for serving the dessert we never got.” Arethusa did not hide her grief at the loss, as why should she? “Hiram started scaling them like Frisbees. At least I think he did. It was hard to tell since he was mostly invisible at the time. Or was he? He came and went, so to speak. In any event, upon reflection, I do see that it was somewhat on the eerie side to watch those plates apparently picking themselves up and sailing across the room. Zounds, that man can throw!”

“No, he can’t,” Zilla protested. “He couldn’t even have picked them up, they’d have passed right through his hands. He must have been using some kind of kinetic energy.”

“Then he’s a poltergeist!” exclaimed Dittany. “That’s what they do, you know. Just work themselves up to an inward simmer, then the umbrella stand starts shooting out canes and bumbershoots and Uncle Fred’s picture hops off the whatnot and skims over to the mantelpiece.”

“Well, he’d darn well better not simmer in my house, I’m not standing for any poltergeist nonsense. I’ll just tell the old buzzard to pack up his ectoplasm and-oh, darn it!

I think maybe I’d better get on home and put Michael’s hand-painted shaving mug someplace safe, just in case.

Michael set a lot of store by that mug.”

“Now, Zilla, you’re not walking home by yourself with that Peeping torn on the loose. You just wait right here till Osbert comes home. Here, have another cookie to calm your nerves. Molasses is good for you, full of iron. Arethusa, have you any idea how long the riot’s going to last?”

Dittany’s aunt-in-law shrugged. “As long as it takes, one assumes. Not any great while, surely, they’d already smashed every one of the plates by the time I left. As riots go, quite frankly, I found this a woundily dull affair. Stap me, one might have thought even that lackwit Snarf could have put on a livelier mill. If it hadn’t been for Mr. Jellyby’s spirited exhortations, the whole melee would have been a miserable hum.”

“Do you have to talk Regency all the time?” Zilla complained.

“What do you mean, a hum?”

“A sham, a humbug, a paltry imitation of the real thing. Gadzooks, does nobody speak the king’s English any more?”

“It has been quite a long time since we’ve had a king,”

Dittany pointed out. “What did Hiram say?”

“Very little that a gentlewoman would care to repeat.

He hurled epithets and insults right and left, thus engendering a mass spirit of unfocused hostility. Nobody could make out who was insulting whom, so everybody took Mr.

Jellyby’s remarks personally, no doubt with sufficient reason.

They were, in truth, an ill-conditioned assemblage. I cannot imagine where, or more importantly why, the Snarf creature dug them up.”

“And there was nobody at all in the whole bunch whom you knew?”

“Nary a one, save for that scurvy knave who lured me into it. Not even the waiters looked familiar, now that I think of it. Snarf must have engineered a complete turnover of help, if such it could be called, though the minions did sweep up the broken glasses ably enough.”

“How could they sweep,” Dittany demanded, “if the riot was still going on?”

“Oh, the glassware was long smashed by then. That happened during phase one, after the woman disguised as a carp screamed.”

Arethusa was well into her tale, or at least into a tale that might not have had much relevance to what had actually taken place but was at least interesting, when Osbert returned from the battle. He came not altogether unscathed, the left sleeve of his jacket was ripped from its armhole and his cheek was scratched, perhaps by the fingernails of some stalwart matron disguised as a carp. His mien, however, was jubilant.

“Leaping longhorns, what a brawl! Too bad you missed the party, Dittany. It would have warmed the cockles of your heart to watch Sergeant Mac Vicar arresting all those crooks.”

“Crooks, darling? Were they really?”

“The creme de la creme of the underworld,” Osbert confirmed. “All trying to pass themselves off as reputable dogcatchers, undertakers’ assistants, and various other pillars of rectitude. Even those new waiters Snarf hired have records as long as your arm, we discovered. I’d like to know what kind of joint that hombre thinks he’s running over there.”

“The question is moot,” said Arethusa, “since Snarf won’t be running it much longer once I’ve dropped a flea into Andrew McNaster’s aural orifice.”

“Give ‘em heck, Auntie. How did you know it was time to blow the whistle?”

“Woman’s intuition, of course. Dost suppose I don’t know a pack of caitiff knaves when I see them, jackanapes?

Furthermore, with the buffet wrecked, the china in shards, and champagne squirted all over the furniture, there seemed nothing to stay for. One did, however, feel a need to make some parting gesture. Did you in fact apprehend the entire party?”

“Pretty much. Most of them were actively engaged in disturbing the peace, you know. Then there were a few who weren’t actually doing anything at the moment but happened to have warrants outstanding on them. The Scottsbeck police had to borrow Brown the Roofer’s van to help cart away the overflow. Remember Fred Churtle,*

Dittany? He sends you his regards.”

“I hope you sent mine back, dear. How nice that you got to see Fred again. I suppose it’s no good asking him and Mrs. Churtle over to Sunday night supper sometime, she wouldn’t want to leave her programs. This ought to be a lucrative night for the bail bondsmen. Don’t you feel a warm glow, Arethusa, thinking of all the joy you’ve spread?”

“In a word, no. I feel, if you really must know, a dash of apprehension about that Peeping torn who was lurking around. What did he do, Dittany?”

“What do they always do? He peeped.”

“Dittany!” exclaimed Osbert. “You don’t mean the Snooper’s been here? When did you see him?”

“To the best of my recollection, about six and a half minutes after you’d charged out the door.”

“Great galloping garter snakes! I’ll never dare let you out of my sight again. I’d better call Sergeant Mac Vicar first thing in the morning and tell him I’m on permanent assignment as your bodyguard. Did that sidewinder frighten the twins?”

“No, but Ethel did. She was only trying to protect them, of course, not that any of us needed protecting. It was nothing, really, just a glimpse of a dark figure out by Ethel’s doghouse, which you know she seldom uses anyway.

Once she started raising the roof, he fled.”

“Fled where?”

“I don’t know, dear. Wherever Peeping Toms flee to.

He tinkled a little, that’s all I can tell you. Zilla meant to chase him with the carpet beater, but he’d got away before I remembered where I put it. Hiram’s gone looking for him.”

* The Gruband-Stakers Quilt a Bee

“Mr. Jellyby is a veritable diamond in the rough,”

Arethusa interjected.

Zilla sniffed. “I’ll grant you the rough, but I can’t see the diamond. Being a hero’s no strain on somebody who can’t be killed because he’s already been. Hiram can’t even be hit, he just flies apart and comes back together.”

“How do you know that, Zilla?”

“Because I’ve tried, darn it. That first night, he got me so exasperated I took a whack at him with the kitchen poker. Aggravating old bugger!”

“Ecod,” remarked Arethusa, “meseems that’s the first time I’ve heard you say bugger.”

“That so? I must have picked it up from Hiram, he says it all the time. Anyway, bugger’s not really a cussword unless you happen to be romantically involved with a sheep. I expect you folks would like me to get out of here, eh, so you can go to bed.”

“Don’t you want to wait till Hiram comes back?” said Dittany.

“What for? You know I like to get to bed at a reasonable hour, and there’s no telling how long that old goat’ll be floating around out there. ‘Tisn’t as if I’d have to get up and let him in, the way I would Nemea. I’d just as lief take the carpet beater with me, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” said Dittany, “but you’re not walking back by yourself in the dark. Osbert’s going to drive you home. Or I will, dear, if you’re suffering from battle fatigue.”

“No, you won’t,” Osbert replied stoutly. “What do you say, Aunt Arethusa, want me to drop you off on the way?”

“Meseems I distrust that ambiguous phraseology, varlet.

Just hand me a brace of charged dueling pistols and I’ll manage nicely by myself, thank you.”

“I’m afraid we’re out of charged dueling pistols at the moment,” Dittany replied. “But we’d be happy to lend you the flyswaiter.”

Cxsbert delivered Zilla and

Arethusa to their respective abodes and returned without incident. For the rest of the night, peace reigned on Applewood Avenue, at least as far as the Monks were concerned.

Ethel never woo-wooed once. The twins slept like angels. Nobody came thumping at the door to report a fresh calamity. As Dittany observed the following morning at breakfast, it almost seemed a trifle dull.

“Not that we can’t use a spot of boredom, considering the way things have been going these last couple of days.

Who the heck do you suppose that Peeping torn can be?

Surely he’s nobody local.”

“Why not, dear?” said Osbert through a mouthful of bacon.

“What would be the point? Everybody around here already knows all about everybody else, right down to the last safety pin in their undershirts. Speaking of which, you need some new underwear.”

“Do I?” Osbert favored his wife with a dreamy smile and reached for the marmalade. “You’re so perspicacious, dear. Does that mean I ought to go and buy some? I’ll get around to it, sooner or later.”

“A likely story, forsooth! What about that time before we were married when the billy goat ate your belt and you kept meaning to get a new one? I fully expected you to waltz yourself up to the altar with that old hunk of frayed clothesline still holding your pants up.”

“And what if I had? A man’s a man for a’ that, as Sergeant Mac Vicar would be the first to tell you if I hadn’t just beaten him to it. I tell you what, darling, why don’t I drop a note to Santa Claus?”

“It’s rather a long time till Christmas, dear,” Dittany pointed out. “You’d be in rags by then. As an alternate suggestion why don’t you write us a nice, fat check and take care of the twins for a couple of hours so that I can go shopping in Scottsbeck?”

“Would you really buy undies for me, sweetheart?”

“My devotion knows no bounds, darling. Besides, if I let you loose in the stores by yourself, you’d forget what you went for and come back with a stuffed emu.”

Osbert nodded. “As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking a stuffed emu might look rather fetching on the parlor mantelpiece.”

“So it might,” Dittany agreed. “We’d have to extend the mantel shelf out into the room about four feet and cut a hole in the ceiling for the neck to stick up through, but what the heck? Were you planning to scoff all that marmalade, or could you spare a dollop for a poor, tired mother of twins?”

“Oh, sorry, dear. Want me to help you slather it on?”

“Thanks, dear, but I daresay I can cope. I wonder whether Hiram ever got back to Zilla’s.”

Dittany spread marmalade on toast with an air of abstraction.

“Osbert,” she said after a bite or two, “does it strike you as being a trifle unusual that we’ve become so pally all of a sudden with a mule skinner who’s been dead for over a hundred years?”

“I suppose some people might find it so, in a way,” her husband agreed after a moment’s reflection. “Of course when you’re used to having characters wander into your books before you’ve even had a chance to think them up, I suppose you adjust more easily to eating supper with a ghost than a certified public accountant or a geography teacher might, though you never know with geography teachers. As a matter of fact, I’m hoping some wayfaring stranger will mosey along to the old corral this morning. I can’t think what to do with that mysterious trunk that’s shown up in the chuck wagon where the case of canned peaches ought to be.”

“You’ll think of something, darling, you always do.

Here’s Ethel, back from her morning stroll. I’ll get the twins dressed while you write the check.”

Two hours later, Dittany was at the Scottsbeck Mall, dealing capably and efficiently with Osbert’s underwear and various other matters. Unlike her mother, Dittany was not a compulsive shopper. Since she didn’t get around to the stores all that often, however, it was close to noontime before she’d checked off everything on her list. She’d left the groceries till last because she didn’t want to keep them sitting in a hot car, she felt the need of sustenance before tackling the supermarket. The Cozy Corner beckoned, she went in.

Dittany had barely picked up the menu and commenced an inner debate between the vitamin-packed Vegetarian Medley and the nitrite-laden Bratwurst Bow-Wow when a voice like the whine of a dentist’s drill reverberated on her eardrums.

“Why, Mrs. Monk, how nice! May I join you?”

“Eh? Oh hello, Mrs. Melloe.”

Dittany glanced around. Lunchers were swarming into the small restaurant; there wasn’t a table left free.

What could she decently say?

ti/-\r >f

Of course.

With a sigh of relief, Mrs. Melloe sat. The amateur genealogist’s relief was not, Dittany wisely surmised, at being granted permission to share the table. Mrs. Melloe would surely have sat down anyway, there’d have been no way to stop her short of physical violence or snatching the chair away. Mrs. Melloe was wearing pointy-toed pumps with two-inch heels, her relief was simply at getting the load off her feet.

“What a quaint little place! Do you come here often, Mrs. Monk?”

The Cozy Corner was about as quaint as several thousand others of its ilk scattered all across the North American continent, each contributing its share of uninspired decor and gastronomic outrage to the decline of the West.

Dittany ignored the observation and addressed herself solely to the question.

“Not if I can help it. But I haven’t finished my shopping and there’s no place else handy.”

“Well, the food here surely can’t be any worse than it is at that inn of yours. I couldn’t even get a halfway palatable breakfast this morning. The coffee was cold, the orange juice was lukewarm, and I don’t even want to think about the omelet. Furthermore, the place looked like the morning after a barroom brawl. I tried to complain to the manager but the very snippy desk clerk informed me that he hadn’t come in yet. Isn’t anybody ever going to wait on us?”