The Grub-And-Stakers Pinch a Poke (25 page)

We don’t want to miss lunch, you know.”

“It’s only eleven o’clock,” Dittany protested. “I’ll tell you what, why don’t I run on ahead and buy the groceries while you and Jenson get on with your interesting exercise in vocabulary-building?

Oh, and I’d better stop at the bank while I’m out. I have all those cheques of yours to deposit.”

“What cheques, prithee?”

“Those royalty cheques I found scattered all over your office while we were looking for that emerald-studded silver paper knife you mislaid.”

Dittany turned to Jenson with an amused little chuckle. “That’s so like Arethusa, she never remembers to cash half her royalty cheques. They come in so fast that she can’t keep track of them. She just uses them for bookmarks or grocery lists or stuffs them away and forgets where she put them.”

“Ah, you famous writers.” Jenson edged even closer and boldly seized one of Arethusa’s hands in both of his own. It was, Dittany noticed, the hand on which Arethusa wore that nice diamond ring she’d inherited from her Aunt Melissa who married the railroad baron. “It’s plain to see you need somebody to handle those dull, mundane business details so you can devote yourself more fully to your muse.”

Arethusa turned her fathomless orbs of inscrutability first on Jenson, then on Dittany. Although one could never be sure what might be going on in that strangely convoluted brain of hers, Dittany thought it quite possible Arethusa was reflecting that (a) she didn’t own an emerald-studded silver paper knife and wouldn’t mislay it if she did, because Arethusa was surprisingly chary of her personal possessions, and (b) she would be most unlikely to use a royalty cheque for a bookmark or a grocery list because she was even charier about her financial returns, as her beleaguered agent could testify. Therefore (c) Dittany must be telling these egregious lies for some useful purpose and it behooved Arethusa to play along with them or risk having to cook her own meals for a week or two.

Arethusa Monk knew which side of the toast her beans were on. She nodded.

“Jenson, I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse us for a moment. I gather I’m constrained to endorse some cheques. One does endorse them, doesn’t one? I seem to recall having done something of the sort at various times in the past.”

Jenson assured her that endorsement of cheques was in fact standard procedure and that he’d be delighted to excuse her. “Certainly, my dear. Why don’t I leave you two to yourselves while I nip down to the kitchen and tell Norah to fetch us a cup of tea? We’ll have our elevenses while Dittany does her errands. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Lovely. With perchance a morsel of toast or a bun? Or two?”

Arethusa was fishing in her handsome leather purse for her gold pen, dredging up a tortoiseshell and gold comb case and a compact paved in brilliants as she fished. They were only rhinestones, but Jenson didn’t know that. Positively licking his chops at this casual display of wealth, he left the exhibition parlor, shutting the door behind him lest his prey escape.

“Now what’s all this balderdash about royalty cheques, ecod?”

Arethusa hissed.

“It’s a delaying tactic,” Dittany hissed back. “Arethusa, you’ve got to stall him along. Employ your feminine wiles.”

“What wiles?”

“Any wiles that will keep him here in this room till I get back. Let him draw you out about how much money you have stashed away.”

“What business is that of his?”

“He plans to make it his business. Lead him on. You needn’t tell him anything. Just hint vaguely of accounts in banks from here to Halifax and thousand-dollar bills tucked under the dining room carpet. But for Pete’s sake don’t commit yourself to anything. Ask yourself what Minnie Maddern Fiske would do in a case like this and act accordingly.”

“For how long, egad? Where are you going?”

“Not far. I’ll be back before lunch, never fear. Here he comes, start batting your eyelashes.”

Jenson breezed into the room, all smiles. Dittany made a feint of stuffing a handful of cheques into her pocketbook.

“All finished with your tiresome little bit of business, ladies? Norah has the kettle on, Arethusa my dear.”

“I’m all set.” Dittany patted her handbag and buttoned her coat.

“Ill pop up and see whether Wilhedra needs anything from the drugstore while I’m out, then 111 be on my way rejoicing. Do try to remember what you did with that lot of bond coupons, Arethusa.

Bye for now. Have fun.”

Dittany ran heavily up the front stairs, then lightly down the back.

In accordance with the popularly-held belief of an earlier generation that servants were better adapted to climbing stairs than the gentry, the ThorbisherFreeps’ kitchen was in their basement.

There, she located a middle-aged woman wearing a faded print cotton dress, a much darned worsted cardigan, and a silly white cap.

The woman was setting out a tray for two people and looking none too pleased about it.

“Good morning,” said Dittany. “You must be Norah. Are you the maid or the cook?”

“I’m both, along with everything else that’s getting done around here now that poor Wilhedra’s laid up.” Norah measured a meager two teaspoonfuls of tea into the pot. “The mahster send you down?”

She made a drawn-out mockery of the vowel. “What’s the old blowhard want now?”

“Just his tea, as far as I know,” Dittany told her. “I’ve got to do some errands and I wondered if there’s anything you need in the way of groceries.”

Norah snorted. “You might bring me back a couple of everything they’ve got in the store, long as you don’t mind never getting paid back for ‘em. I’m darned sick and tired of living on cheese parings and peanut butter sandwiches as I’ve told him to his face and I don’t care who knows it. It it wasn’t for Wilhedra needing me so bad, I’d be out of here like a bullet from a gun. Say, you’re dressed pretty fancy for a district nurse. How come you’re not in uniform, eh?”

“Because I’m not the district nurse, just a friend of Wilhedra’s who stopped in to see how she’s getting along. My name’s Dittany Monk.”

“Monk, eh? Say, you’re not that rich woman he’s got on the string? Kind of young to be chasing around with an old goat like him, aren’t you?

“Perish the thought. You’ve got me mixed up with my husband’s aunt. And if Jenson ThorbisherFreep thinks he’s got her on the string, he’s got another think coming, but I’d as soon you didn’t let him know just yet. Tell me, Norah, is it true Jensen’s piddled away all his money in the stock market? I’m not asking just to be nosy. I’m i worried about my husband’s aunt and even more about Wilhedra.

• She’s in a mighty tough spot, if you ask me.”

“You don’t need to tell me that. If any woman alive ever needed a helping hand, Wilhedra’s the one. Here she is, eating her heart out for the man she loves, who’s a decent soul for all his la-di-da ways, and there’s old Jense trying to force her into marrying that Charlie Bledsoe who’s not fit to clean her boots, in my humble opinion. The old fool’s on his uppers all right, no doubt about that. He thinks Bledsoe’s going to win the lawsuit and he’ll use Wilhedra to get hold of her husband’s money, now that he’s thrown away his own trying to play the big millionaire. And Jense will win out, you wait and see.

Wilhedra’s scared stiff of her father and always has been. She’d never dare cross him. Oh, I could give you an earful.”

An earful was just what Dittany wanted. “You couldn’t for inj stance, tell me whether Jenson’s bought any new cartridges for that j old Smith & Wesson of his lately?”

“The one he carried when he played Jack Ranee?” Norah snorted again. “I can’t imagine what you want to know for, but as a matter of fact he did. He was mad as a hatter because he had to buy a whole box when he only needed one or two for the play. I heard him fuming to himself about it back there in the furnace room one day.

He talks to himself a lot when he can’t get anybody else to listen.

And then it turned out he’d bought the wrong color and he had to paint the tops red. He spoiled a few, getting them too bright at first, then having to tone down the color with some old stain that was kicking around from the Lord knows when. They had to be just like the old ones or the play wouldn’t go right, though how anybody could see from the audience was beyond me. But that’s him all over, which I wish he was.”

“Did you see him painting the cartridges?”

“I sure did. I went to put the garbage out, eh, and I was walking quiet so’s he wouldn’t hear me and start bending my ear. He’s worse than the ten years’ itch once he backs you into a corner and starts jawing at you. Anyway, I saw him fiddling around with those things and couldn’t figure out what he was up to, so I snuck behind the furnace and watched him unbeknownst. I know that sounds foolish, but there’s darned little else in the way of entertainment around here.”

“How long ago did this happen?”

“Seems to me it was a week ago Wednesday.”

“What did he do with the cartridges after he finished painting the tops?”

“Put the one that suited him into a little box and carried it upstairs.

The rest he put back in the box they came in and hid behind a beam back there where he’d been working. Ashamed for Wilhedra to find out he wasted good money on that kind of foolishness when she has to keep wearing those old suede boots of hers every time she goes out any place because she hasn’t got a whole pair of stockings to her name and he won’t buy her any.”

“You didn’t tell Wilhedra about the cartridges?”

“Not me. No sense in making her feel any worse than she did already, was the way I looked at it.”

“And how right you were. Did you tell anybody else?”

“When would I have got the chance? I don’t set foot out of this house from one week’s end to the next, and old Jense throws a fit if I use the phone.”

“I thought you had yesterday off to go to your great-nephew’s christening.”

“I was supposed to, but then Wilhedra fell on those pesky stairs and hurt her ankle. He made me stay here to take care of her so’s he could go out and run the roads with his rich lady friend, no offense to your husband’s aunt. How could she know? But I might as well be a slave with a chain around my leg for all the consideration I get from him.”

“You’re not the only one,” snapped Dittany. “He told us he couldn’t have Carolus Bledsoe here after coming out of the hospital because it would have made too much work for you and he was afraid you’d quit, so we got stuck with the job.”

“Huh! One excuse was as good as another, I suppose. All Jenson was afraid of was that he might not be able to hit Bledsoe up for the grocery money, or else he was scared Bledsoe would catch on to how broke he is and back out of the wedding. Though why Jensen thinks Bledsoe’s going to save his bacon is beyond me. That exwife’s going to skin the pants off him before she’s through. Of course there’ll be the insurance eventually, but the way Wilhedra’s been sliding downhill lately, poor soul, I shouldn’t be surprised if Bledsoe turns out to be the one who collects instead of her.”

“Insurance?” Dittany pounced on the word like a hawk on a mouse. “Norah, are you saying Wilhedra and Carolus have insured their lives in each other’s favor?”

“I’m saying old Jense did it for them. It’s customary practice in a union of such unusual significance as this one. Those were his very words. You’d have thought they was royalty, the way he carried on about it. Made a big ceremony of them signing the policies with him and Bledsoe wearing their black dress suits, drinking champagne and eating them little fish eggs, and Wilhedra all decked out in her mother’s diamonds. And the next morning Jense took and hocked the diamonds so’s he could pay the premiums. Wilhedra bawled her eyes out, but a fat lot he cared. He’d got his own way and that’s all he gives a hoot about.”

Dittany shook her head to settle her scrambled thoughts. “Norah, would you happen to have a telephone down here? I’ve got to call my husband.”

“You go right ahead. It’s around the corner in the scullery. I’m s’posed to take the calls when his majesty’s out gallivanting in case it’s the prime minister wanting him to take over running the government or something.”

“Thanks. Look, I’d better not keep you talking any more. Why don’t you take tea up for Wilhedra while you’re about it, and a cup for yourself? She’s got some cookies we brought her. Nice to talk with you, Norah.”

Dittany waited till the maid had clumped up the stairs with the tray then made her call. “Osbert, get Sergeant Mac Vicar and the Scottsbeck police with a search warrant and come straight to the ThorbisherFreeps’. Quick, before Arethusa’s perfume wears off.

I’ve got to go.”

Jenson would smell a rat if she didn’t get into her car and drive off.

Osbert and the troops couldn’t be here in much less than half an hour anyway. She made a quick trip to the nearest grocery store, then parked down the street from the mansion and waited.

She was eating an apple out of the grocery bag when the official Lobelia Falls police car drew up beside her. Osbert was at the wheel wearing his deputy badge on his parka, Sergeant Mac Vicar in uniform beside him wearing a grim and Scottish expression. Right on their tail was a delegation from the Scottsbeck police, the officer in charge waving a search warrant.

“Noo then, lass,” said Sergeant Mac Vicar, “what’s up?”

“Jenson ThorbisherFreep’s broke to the wide. He’s pawned the family jewels to pay for a big insurance policy on Carolus Bledsoe’s life, bought a new box of .38 cartridges the wrong color and repainted the wads to match the old ones. He set a tripline on the back stairs to take Wilhedra out of commission and lied to us about the maid so that we’d get stuck with Carolus instead of him. Good enough to go on?”

“Aye, good enough. Hoots awa’, lads!”

“You’d better let me go in first,” said Dittany. “I’ve got the groceries.”

“What’s she talking about?” demanded the Scottsbeck officer in charge.

“I dinna ken,” Sergeant Mac Vicar replied. “But dinna fash yourseF.

Lead on, Dittany.”

She was just in time. Jenson had Arethusa bent backward over a easeful of old theater programs and was panting words of passion straight out of Elinor Glyn at her.