The Grub-And-Stakers Pinch a Poke (15 page)

I recognized her right away when she came into the locker room.”

“Then why didn’t you say something?” Desdemona Portley demanded.

“How could I? You were all so dithery by then, you’d have gone up like a bunch of skyrockets. Carolus had already told me he’d hired an off-duty policeman to ride herd on her in case she had any bright ideas about getting into the act tonight, so I just snuck out front and enlisted Sammy here to make Ormerod do his job. But if Mrs. Bledsoe had already got hold of the .38 and changed the bullet -oh, why didn’t I speak up before it was too late?”

“Darling, you mustn’t blame yourself,” Osbert protested.

“Chucking a tomato is a far cry from putting a live bullet into a gun that you know is going to be fired point-blank at somebody’s chest.

Why didn’t I jump on Leander Hellespont when I found him backstage?

He’s a darn sight likelier prospect than Mrs. Bledsoe.”

“But she bopped Carolus with a ham and macaroni casserole.”

“Hellespont uttered threats in public. You heard him yourself.”

“So did I,” said Andrew McNaster. “And I should of decked him then and there, eh, but I stayed my hand on the paltry grounds that it wouldn’t be good for business. Mea is the culpa.”

“Hold, sirrah,” cried Arethusa. “Tua is not the culpa, forsooth. If your nobler nature hadn’t prevailed, Carolus Bledsoe would by now be a well-ventilated corpse. The culpa is mea for having accepted his invitation to dinner when he was already engaged to Wilhedra ThorbisherFreep.”

“But how were you supposed to know he was when he never said?” Dittany reminded her. “Anyway, he wasn’t. Jenson told us they’re waiting till after the lawsuit gets settled. Isn’t that right, Jenson? Oh gosh, I wonder if we have any eggs left.”

It had occurred to her that she was talking to a man who hadn’t been present a moment ago and still wasn’t fed. “Is your daughter with you or over at the hospital soothing Carolus’s fevered instep?”

“Neither,” Jenson replied sadly. “Poor Wilhedra’s at home soothing her own fevered instep. She took a tumble on the stairs this morning, which is why I wasn’t able to get here sooner. The doctor assured us that it’s only a nasty sprain, but he insists she’s to stay off the foot for at least a week and maybe longer. He’s given her something for the pain and I’ve left her in the maid’s care just long enough to come here and let you know that the Traveling Thespians have been unanimously though still unofficially declared the winners of the ThorbisherFreep collection of theatrical memorabilia.”

“Oh, that’s marvelousl” Everybody put on a dutiful show of being tremendously excited by the news, though in fact nobody was.

Winning the contest seemed terribly unimportant compared to seeing a fellow player barely miss being shot to death in their midst.

Perhaps Therese Boulanger summed up their feelings best when she said, “But you’ll eat something now you’re here?”

Jenson seemed surprised that she could end the rejoicing so readily, but he agreed. “Perhaps a cup of black coffee if you have any left. It’s been an extremely trying time all around.”

As Therese fetched the coffee, Hazel asked Jenson sympathetically if he wouldn’t like a doughnut to go with it. Roger, though, was more solicitous for his ex-patient.

“Then what about Carolus? Hasn’t anybody been over to see how he’s making out?”

Jenson shook his silver mane. “Not to the best of my knowledge.

My daughter and I intended to go, of course, and I suppose I could swing by the hospital for a few minutes on my way home. But I do want to get back to Wilhedra. We’d already promised the maid she could have the day off to attend her great-nephew’s christening and I can’t very well insist she change her plans. You know what the servant problem is these days.”

In Lobelia Falls there was no servant problem because nobody had any servants. People hired help when they needed it and the neighbors were always glad to pop over and lend a hand in a pinch.

Things must be different in Scottsbeck. Anyway the ThorbisherFreep mansion was not the sort of place a person would pop to.

Murmurs of condolence arose but it was clear that not even Hazel Munson was planning to drop in on Wilhedra with a few cheery words and a bowl of fruit Jell-O.

“So what happens to Carolus?” Roger was insisting.

“I suppose one might telephone the hospital and ask for a report,”

Jenson replied.

He’d refused the doughnut on the grounds of extreme perturbation but accepted one of Dittany’s excellent muffins at Zilla Trott’s insistence that he had to keep up his strength. Perhaps the muffin had helped him to collect his wits and offer so cogent a suggestion.

Roger went at once to make the call, the telephone being in the kitchen next to the pantry door where Gram Henbit had ordered it installed back when telephones were wooden boxes that had to be cranked before you could get Central to say, “Number, please?”

While they were waiting for Roger to report back, Sergeant MacVicar asked Jenson to take a look at the blank cartridge that had been picked up after the performance. “Does it look at a’ familiar, sir?”

“Oh yes, no question,” the older man agreed readily. “I couldn’t swear to it, of course; but as far as I can tell, this one’s identical to the other three that had been in my old Smith & Wesson ever since I played Jack Ranee. I noticed how dingy and tarnished they looked, and how the color of the wads had been dulled by time. Frankly, I was a little ashamed to bring them along but I told myself it didn’t matter because the audience wouldn’t get to see them. It’s as well I overcame my scruples. The discoloration serves as an identification of sorts, wouldn’t you say? Ah, Roger. What news of Carolus?”

“The doctor’s been in and says he can go home but he’ll have to go straight to bed and stay there.”

“Dear, dear. Now what are we going to do? It’s absolutely out of the question for him to go back to his flat. Carolus was forced to move out of his house, you know, because of that ridiculous litigation with his ex-wife. Pending the settlement, he’s been living in bachelor quarters. The flat’s a third-floor walkup and he has no help except a professional cleaning service once a week. Wilhedra and I had planned to put him up for the duration, but now she’s immobilized herself and I can’t possibly ask the maid to wait on two invalids at the same time. She’d quit in a wink, then where should we be?”

“But hasn’t Carolus any other friends in Scottsbeck?” asked Samantha Burberry.

Jenson shrugged. “Professional friends, hardly the sort who’d care to fetch his breakfast and change his bed. I’m afraid the ex-wife has pretty well succeeded in alienating their former social acquaintances.

No, it looks like a nursing home for Carolus, assuming we can find one willing to take him in on such short notice. Rather a dismal outlook for the poor chap, but what else can we do?”

Minerva Oakes started to say something but Zilla Trott hissed at her so savagely that she kept quiet. Minerva had already had some spectacularly bad luck with temporary occupants of her spare room. It wouldn’t behoove her to add a shooting victim with a

The Gnib-and-Stakers Pinch a Poke 95

rampageous ex-wife to her list of calamities. Besides, Zilla had what she evidently thought was a better idea.

“Arethusa, you’ve got plenty of room and Carolus is more your friend than any of ours. Why don’t you take him in?”

Only Zilla could have made such a suggestion in all innocence.

Andrew McNaster actually bared his teeth. Arethusa very nearly bared hers.

“Zounds, woman, what kind of friends do you think we are?

Methinks ‘twould be the height of unseemliness. Me also thinks Wilhedra Thorbisher-Preep would hit the roof.”

Jenson gave her a wry smile. “I’m afraid you’re right about that, dear lady. Furthermore, the distraction of nursing an invalid might keep you from being able to concentrate on your writing, and we can’t have that. Think of your vast reading public! No, I’m afraid our dear friend Carolus must e’en dree his ain weird, as the gracious Sergeant Mac Vicar would doubtless express it Unless we might find some hospitable and as yet childless couple with a house as big as their hearts,” he added with a wistful sigh.

Roger Munson cleared his throat. “Actually, Osbert, if you hadn’t written that shooting scene into the play-“

All of a sudden the air was full of ifs: If the boys didn’t take up so much space at the Munson house, if Samantha Burberry didn’t have the Development Commission’s annual report to write, if the Boulangers’

daughter Felice hadn’t just got engaged and wanted a hurry-up wedding because her bridegroom was being transferred to Oslo, and a good many other variations on the same basic theme.

What it all boiled down to was what Dittany had known in her heart of hearts it was going to boil down to, because everything in Lobelia Falls always did.

Despite a last-ditch “What about Osbert’s vast reading public?”

she found herself laying out the fancy towels and a fresh cake of soap in the upstairs bathroom. At least she wasn’t having to clean up the kitchen. A squad of her clubmates had volunteered to do the dishes, thus assuring that she wouldn’t be able to find any of her favorite cooking utensils for the next month or so.

Osbert didn’t appear to share Dittany’s qualms about the prospect of having a casualty of the Malamute saloon shootout lying around. He went off quite happily, driving the ranch wagon with Roger Munson beside him and Ethel in the back, a small flask of

96 The Gnib-and-Stakers Pinch a Poke

brandy tied to her collar in case Carolus took a fainting fit on the way back from the hospital.

Desdemona Portley had given Archie and Daniel a warm invitation to drop over and examine her scrapbook of earlier Traveling Thespians productions. Andrew McNaster had countered with a suggestion that he and Arethusa take the two visitors on a sightseeing tour of Lobelia Falls and environs. They’d asked for a raincheck on the scrapbook and accepted the ride. Desdemona wasn’t the least bit offended. She said in that case she’d just go home and put her feet up while her husband read the Sunday comics to her, as was his pleasant habit.

By now, from around the corner and up the street, the sounds of church bells could be heard. Mrs. Mac Vicar was putting on her coat and giving her husband a look. A sudden dreadful recollection struck Dittany and she gave him a look, too. Her look must have expressed all the awfulness she was feeling, for the sergeant immediately came over to her.

“What’s the matter, lass?”

“I’ve got to talk to you. Can you stay a minute after the rest?”

“It willna take lang?”

“You know I wouldn’t make you miss the collection.”

Muttering something to the effect that Dittany was getting more like her mother every day of her life, Sergeant Mac Vicar went off to have a word with his wife. Mrs. Mac Vicar drew on her gloves much more briskly than he wished she would and said she’d walk on ahead with Minerva and Zilla.

By now everybody else had gone, too, except for the cleanup squad, and they were all busy running back and forth between the dining room and the kitchen. Dittany drew the sergeant out into the front hall where they wouldn’t be overheard, and spoke her piece.

“I didn’t want to say this in front of the rest, but you have to know.

Carolus Bledsoe is Charlie.”

“Oh aye?” The sergeant seemed less thunderstruck by her revelation than she’d anticipated. It occurred to her that he probably hadn’t the ghost of an idea what she was talking about.

“Don’t you remember that time when we were trying to save the Enchanted Mountain from being developed and I eavesdropped on that meeting where Andy McNaster was trying to get his lawyer to pull a dirty deal for him? The lawyer said he’d done plenty of dirty deals for Andy but he wouldn’t do this one, though he knew somebody who would. Andy called the lawyer Charlie, and Charles is the same name as Carolus. And that’s who he is.”

“Dittany, why did you no’ tell me this before?”

“Because I didn’t realize it myself till day before yesterday. By then it was too late to get somebody else to play the feedbag man and I couldn’t bear to ruin Osbert’s play. I’d never seen Charlie, you know, I’d only heard his voice. I did get a sort of familiar feeling when Arethusa introduced us at the airport that day, but I couldn’t place him. I’d thought about it off and on ever since. Then all of a sudden while I was in the midst of making cookies, it hit me like a ton of bricks. You know how those things do.”

Sergeant Mac Vicar scratched his chin.

“Oh, stop scratching your chin at me! Why should I have told, with Andy being reformed all over the place and the pair of them working off their aggressions by insulting each other onstage? I didn’t even tell Osbert because he was so wound up about the play, what with Archie bringing Daniel and us trying to win the competition and everybody rushing in and out of here pestering him about one thing and another.”

“Aye?”

“Aye, darn it. And yesterday there wasn’t even time to breathe, and to top it all off, Osbert went ahead and invited the whole crowd here for breakfast without even bothering to ask me whether we had anything in the house to feed them. Those four dozen eggs of your daughterin-law’s saved my bacon and I hope you’ll be kind enough to tell her how grateful I am when you see her. The fact that you had four dozen eggs to give might also suggest to her the possibility that she ought to find somebody else to wish off her surplus eggs on.”

Dittany paused to reflect. “On the other hand, maybe you’d better not say anything. I’ll probably have to be making a lot of eggnogs for Roger to feed Carolus. I don’t know why the heck I always have to be the one left standing on the burning deck.”

She got no sympathy from Sergeant Mac Vicar. “Did it ne’er occur to you that considering their earlier pairfidious association and wi’

the two of them presently at loggerheads over Arethusa, that the illfeeling between McNaster and Bledsoe might develop into a serious confrontation?”

“Of course it occurred to me. It also occurred to me that they only had the dress rehearsal and the actual performance left to play, and that neither one of them was loopy enough to start mixing it up in front of an audience, specially since Arethusa was their co-star and would have stapped their garters good and proper if they loused up her act. Sergeant, you don’t honestly believe Andy McNaster deliberately went out and bought himself a real .38 caliber bullet so he could shoot off Carolus Bledsoe’s left middle toe and keep him from chasing after Arethusa?”