The Grub-And-Stakers Pinch a Poke (22 page)

Ethel could be sprawled out here by the kitchen stove where she’d always loved to lie before traffic got so thick as to make the floor unsafe for tail and paws. Arethusa could wander in unescorted with no thought in her head beyond snaffling the little pearl onions out of the mustard pickle dish before Osbert beat her to them. All these lovesick swains cluttering up the place were a plain bloody nuisance. Dittany went and got the plates herself. Archie wandered over to the rocking chair and sat there brooding. She let him sit.

As she was putting the plates around, Osbert and Arethusa came down from the sickroom together. Their respective utterances were, “Hope we didn’t keep you, darling,” and “Gadzooks, not ready yet?”

“Another few minutes,” she replied curtly. “I was interrupted.

Namely and to wit by Leander Hellespont, who wants to mold Arethusa, and by Jenson ThorbisherFreep, who says he can’t.”

“Does he, i’ faith?” Arethusa replied absently, her fathomless gaze on the table. “Were you planning to set out some of that plum jam Therese brought? And perchance bread and butter and a few rolls and biscuits? And pickles and preserves and a simple appetizer like pat& en croute or oeufs en gelee?”

“We’re having warmed-up dindon au sauce d’abatis and passion fruit ice cream in honor of your recent coronation. If that doesn’t appeal to you, there’s always the pizza parlor.”

“Don’t be absurd.” Arethusa fished in the pot with the stirring spoon, managed to trap a slithery noodle, blew on it, and bit. “Not quite done. Whatever possessed you to invite Leander Hellespont here, ecod?”

“I didn’t invite him. He came. As did Jenson, ostensibly to inquire after Carolus, which he could perfectly well have done by telephone.

Arethusa, you haven’t really gone and got yourself engaged to that man?”

“What man?” Arethusa spoke abstractedly, being engrossed with trying to snare another noodle.

“Will you get your head out of that pot and answer Dittany’s question?” snapped Osbert. “Are you or are you not engaged to Jenson ThorbisherFreep?”

“I thought she said Leander Hellespont.”

“Either or both. Or anybody else,” Osbert added in the hope of getting to the crux without further preamble.

Arethusa secured her noodle, nibbled at it, and pondered. At last, with Archie watching in an agony of suspense, she shook the purple turban she’d taken to wearing draped tiara-wise atop her raven tresses. “To the best of my recollection, no.”

“Then why was Freep talking as if he had an option on you?”

Archie cried hotly.

“Perchance because he likes to hear himself talk? You can drain the noodles now, Dittany.”

“Thanks for letting me know. Fix Carolus a tray, why don’t you?

There’s a jug of white wine in the fridge if anybody wants some.”

They all decided they did, so the euphoric Archie poured while Dittany dished up and Osbert made a fast trip upstairs with the invalid’s tray. The food was good, the wine agreeable. The fire crackled in the old wood stove. Ethel returned from her wanderings, had a companionable bowl of dog food laced with the leftover giblet gravy, and stretched out in her favorite spot. Now and then she emitted a contented whoofle or thumped her tail to let the others know she was with them in spirit. She would have been content to lie there all evening long, thinking doggish thoughts, but Osbert decided she’d better go up and guard Carolus, so she went.

This was the first peaceful time the Monks’ house had known in weeks. The diners chatted in soft, slow voices. Osbert talked of archery and last roundups, Dittany of archery and the Grub-andStakers’

plans for expanding the beds of plantain-leaved pussytoes on the Enchanted Mountain if spring ever came. Arethusa talked of archery and the Moonlight and Roses coronation. Archie talked lovingly of royalties. They were all in a state of utter content when the knock came at the door. Osbert got up reluctantly.

“I’ll go.”

“Maybe it’s Roger Munson coming to tuck Carolus in for the night,” said Dittany, though she really couldn’t believe they were going to get off that easily. They weren’t.

“Good evening,” a high-pitched, somewhat nasal voice shrilled from the doorstep. “This is the Monk residence, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Osbert found himself confronted by a great deal of mink. He stepped back instinctively, and the mink stepped in.

“Carolus Bledsoe is staying here, I’m told,” said its occupant.

Osbert agreed cautiously that such was indeed the case.

“Then could I just run up and say hello to him? I’m his former wife, Ermeline Bledsoe. I’ve brought him some fruit.”

“I’m sorry,” said Osbert. “Carolus isn’t allowed visitors. Or fruit.

Doctor’s orders.”

A burst of incredulous laughter greeted his words. “No fruit?

That’s crazy. All invalids are allowed fruit. It’s the rule in every hospital. For the vitamins, you know.”

“Vitamins disagree with Carolus,” Osbert insisted doggedly.

“They do, eh? Then how do they strike you?”

Again Dittany watched the mink-clad arm fly up, again she saw an object hurtle through the air. Osbert ducked aside. The object flew across the kitchen to impale itself on the damper handle in the stovepipe. Another followed, and another and another, in rapid-fire succession.

By now, Osbert had stationed himself at shortstop and was catching them on the fly. Archie, playing the outfield, intercepted the few Osbert missed. Dittany, with great presence of mind, fetched out the dishpan so they could dump their catches and leave their hands free for the next. By the time Mrs. Bledsoe quit pitching, the pan was full of fruit. All lemons.

“Feel better now that you’ve let off steam, Mrs. Bledsoe?” said Osbert not unkindly. “You’re under arrest, of course.”

“Arrest? Who do you think you are, Renfrew of the Mounted?”

“Nope. Just Deputy Monk of the Lobelia Falls police force. The charge is assaulting an auxiliary officer of the law and making a mess of my wife’s kitchen. Of course if we should happen to find any bombs or anything of that sort inside these lemons, we’d have to book you on a more serious charge. Dittany, darling, why don’t you give Sergeant Mac Vicar another buzz?”

“Wait a minute,” shrieked Mrs. Bledsoe. “Can’t you take a joke? I was just having a bit of good, clean fun. It always amuses Carolus when I throw things at him.”

“It doesn’t amuse me a bit,” Osbert said obdurately. “Flirthermore, I don’t remember Carolus being particularly overcome with glee when you bopped him with that tomato at the dress rehearsal.”

“And what about that ham and macaroni casserole you forgot to take out of the dish, forsooth, before you chucked it?” Arethusa put in. “Carolus will carry the scar to his grave.”

Mrs. Bledsoe favored her with a haughty sneer. “I suppose he showed you his scar?”

“Did he? I don’t recall.” Arethusa had located a cookie which had hitherto escaped her all-devouring gaze, and was giving it most of her attention. “Was yours a good casserole?”

“It was a superb casserole! And he had the nerve to say it tasted like wallpaper paste.”

T fegs? What did you put into it?”

“Oh, ham and macaroni and a bit of this and that. You know how it is with casseroles.”

“I always add a few dashes of Worcestershire sauce, myself,” said Arethusa. “And a good pinch of dried basil if it’s anything fishy or chickeny.”

“A dollop of mustard in the cream sauce works wonders with ham and macaroni,” Mrs. Bledsoe responded. “I also put in about a tablespoonful of marmalade more or less, depending.”

“Marmalade? Stap my garters, what an excellent idea. Was there marmalade in the casserole you slugged Carolus with?”

“No. The brute had pigged it all up at breakfast. So it was his own fault, really. Carolus never understood me. I’ll bet he doesn’t understand you, either, for all his big talk. I suppose he goes on and on.”

“Perchance he does,” Arethusa conceded willingly.

That wasn’t enough for Mrs. Bledsoe. “What do you mean, perchance? Don’t you listen?”

This, like the marmalade, was clearly a new concept to Arethusa.

“Oh, is one supposed to listen? I’ve been thinking of his voice more in the context of background music. Be fair, Mrs. Bledsoe. The worm may have entered the bud and the bloom be off the rose, but surely even you have to admit that Carolus’s timbre is more agreeable than the banal bleats and squawks one hears over the telephone when one’s waiting for an airline reservation.”

The former Mrs. Bledsoe paused to reflect. “I must confess I’d never thought of Carolus as Muzak. Perhaps if I had, things might have been different between us.”

“Even now it may not be too late,” Arethusa urged.

“Stuff it, Arethusa,” said Dittany. “Not to dash any hopes of a reconciliation, but isn’t Mrs. Bledsoe aware that Carolus is about to become engaged to somebody else?”

Mrs. Bledsoe emitted a short, bitter laugh. “Oh, that silly business with Wilhedra ThorbisherFreep? Forget it, that’s just another of her father’s bright ideas. Jenson’s been encouraging Carolus to think he’s going to get his grabby mitts into the ThorbisherFreep family money the way he did into mine, but what those two don’t know is that Wilhedra’s already secretly engaged to Leander Hellespont.”

“You’re kidding!”

“Ask the girls at the bridge club. Wilhedra’s had the hots for Leander ever since she saw him in his kilt as Macbeth. You wouldn’t believe it, but that wilted string bean has the sexiest knees a woman ever dreamed of.”

“Do women actually dream about men’s knees?” Archie was obviously making a mental note to send back to Toronto for his own kilt at the earliest possible moment should Arethusa reply in the affirmative.

However, Arethusa voiced no opinion on the matter. Dittany, on whom the modest amount of wine she’d drunk was having an unusually mellowing effect because by now she was so desperately in need of mellowing, did.

“I never dream about knees. I dream about that adorable cowlick behind Osbert’s left ear.”

“Shucks, ma’am, you didn’t ought to say things like that in front of mixed company.” Blushing so furiously he forgot he was Deputy Monk, Osbert allowed his arms to encircle Dittany’s torso.

What might then have transpired became moot as Sergeant MacVicar came along and Osbert had to switch back to being Deputy Monk. The sergeant was carrying a green plastic bowl full of lovely brown eggs.

“Margaret sends these in case I wind up staying for breakfast.”

Dittany took the bowl. “Thanks, but do I detect a note of acrimony?”

“Aye, lass, you do. I hae a wee suspicion that my guid wife is nane too pleased wi’ the events of this weekend. Nor am I, gin you want the truth. Is this our latest miscreant? Mrs. Bledsoe, I believe?”

“She was chucking lemons,” Osbert explained.

“Only in a spirit of japery,” Arethusa intervened. “In my opinion, she’s more to be pitied than censured. She says Carolus told her the ham and macaroni casserole she threw at him tasted like wallpaper paste but it was his own fault because he’d eaten all the marmalade.”

“An’ how does she explain yon lemons?”

“She meant them for Carolus. To cheer him up. Can’t you see her as a woman grievously wronged?”

“I can see her as a woman wi’ a most peculiar sense of humor,”

Sergeant Mac Vicar replied severely. “Mrs. Bledsoe, gin sae you still style yoursel’, you are known to hae committed an assault upon your former husband in the Scottsbeck opera house on Friday e’en.”

“I beaned him with a tomato, if that’s what you call an assault.

Any ex-wife in my position would have done the same.”

“Other ex-wives would hae conducted themsel’ wi’ dignity an’

propriety, Mrs. Bledsoe. What were you doing backstage at the gymnasium last night?”

“Who says I was there?”

“I do, for one,” Dittany told her. “You poked your head into the girls’ locker room while we were dressing. I recognized you from the opera house. I was the piano player, you know, and I’d been watching you all evening.”

“So what if you were? How was I supposed to know it was the girls’ locker room? I was looking for the loo. The fact that I happened to have a package of itching powder in my hand at the time was merely an amusing coincidence.”

“Amusing to whom, for instance?” asked Osbert.

“Your question is irrelevant and immaterial,” Mrs. Bledsoe retorted, “since I never got to use the itching powder.”

“Was that because you happened to catch sight of Jenson ThorbisherFreep’s old sixshooter lying on the props table? Recognizing it as the one he’d carried when he played Jack Ranee, because it’s unthinkable Jenson wouldn’t have told you if he ever got the chance, and deducing that it carried a blank cartridge Andy McNaster was going to shoot at your exhusband, did you or did you not decide to play an even merrier prank and substitute a live bullet for the blank?”

“I don’t carry live sixshooter bullets around with me! Even if I did, how was I to know Andy was going to fire the gun at Carolus? I left the dress rehearsal before the shooting began, as Little Mary Sunshine here should be able to tell you since she’s so darned observant.”

“You could have lurked in the vestibule,” Osbert insisted.

Mrs. Bledsoe sneered. “Planting stink bombs, maybe? I suppose you’ll try to hang that on me, too.”

“Er-hm.” Sergeant MacVicar wasn’t about to let the situation get out of hand. “Mrs. Bledsoe, what is your relationship wi’ Andrew McNaster?”

“That chiseling two-timer? Whatever he says about me, it’s a lie!”

“Then it’s no’ true that yours has been a mere acquaintance based solely on Mr. McNaster’s business connecton with your former husband?”

The ex-Mrs. Bledsoe goggled. “Is that what Andy says?”

“I’m spiering the questions, Mrs. Bledsoe.”

“Oh. Well, sure, that’s true. Certainly it’s true. Why shouldn’t it be true?”

Mrs. Bledsoe fumbled in her handbag. The others watched her nervously, but all she brought out was a lipstick with a little mirror attached to it, which she proceeded to use in the customary manner.

“I’ve barely laid eyes on Andy since Carolus and I split up,” she told them, speaking through clenched teeth and holding her lips stiff so she wouldn’t smear her paint job. “I went away to nurse my broken heart. But then Carolus started trying to get funny about Auntie’s property, so I came home to Scottsbeck.”