The Grub-and-Stakers Spin a Yarn (14 page)

Thereupon, Slapp said well, he guessed maybe what they’d better do was go out there with a boat and drag the mere. Osbert said that was a great idea, so he ordered another mincemeat tart while Chief Slapp and the waiter, who turned out to be VP Live Bait, held a lengthy technical discussion. Their talk eventually culminated in a decision to commandeer an aluminum rowboat belonging to one Zingbert Angelus and borrow a drag scoop from Zingbert’s brother-in-law whose name Osbert failed to catch.

Such complex negotiations would naturally take time. Probably quite a lot of time, Osbert suspected, considering Fridwell Slapp’s general modus operandi. Having by now finished his second tart and feeling no inclination toward a third, he suggested that he himself might fill in the waiting period by riding Wardle’s bicycle over to Wardle’s late place of residence and seeing whether Mrs. Phiffer could identify the vehicle and the clothing as her tenant’s. Both Chief Slapp and VP Live Bait thought that was a great idea, so he went.

Mrs. Phiffer acted pleased enough to see him. However, Osbert found it not easy to capture her full and undivided attention. The bow ties had been delivered during his absence and she was absorbed in sorting them as to color and pattern before putting them around the flamingos’ necks. In order to expedite the matter, Osbert took a hand in the sorting. He became so caught up in the creative process that he had to call himself sternly back to his original mission.

“Mrs. Phiffer, I want you to look carefully at these clothes and this bicycle, and see whether you can tell me whose they are.”

“But naturally I can tell you whose they are. They’re Mr. Wardle’s. If they weren’t, why would you bother asking me to identify them?”

“Mrs. Phiffer, this is now a police matter. You have to be absolutely certain. Are these exactly like the clothes you’ve seen before on Mr. Wardle?”

“No, of course they’re not. Any time in the past when I’ve seen these clothes, they were clean, dry, and occupied by Mr. Wardle. Now they’re wet, empty, and look as if they may have been sat on by some elderly person on a damp riverbank.”

“But you have the eye of an artist,” Osbert prompted. “Can’t you visualize the clothes as being dry, clean, and on Mr. Wardle? As for the bicycle, I’d be glad to wheel it around back and put it in the shed where Mr. Wardle used to keep it, if that will help any.”

“Oh yes, that will make all the difference,” said Mrs. Phiffer. “Excuse me, I’ll try the visualizing first. I have to shut my eyes. Do you want me to visualize Mr. Wardle in his underwear first and extrapolate from there?”

“Do whatever feels right to you, Mrs. Phiffer.”

“Then if you don’t mind, I’ll visualize him taking off his overcoat to reveal the slacks and jersey beneath. I don’t feel quite comfortable about confronting the eidetic image of a man I really didn’t know all that well in his underwear.”

“Understandably,” Osbert replied since she apparently expected him to say something. After that, he waited in silence until she opened her eyes, all excited.

“It worked! I saw Mr. Wardle plain as plain. Unfortunately, however, he was wearing his brown tweed suit. I’ll have to envision his coming from work and changing into the slacks and jersey.”

“By all means, do,” said Osbert.

“Yes! Yes, I have it now,” cried Mrs. Phiffer after a short period of intensive visualizing. “I cannot for the life of me imagine why he ever bought that jersey. Green is definitely not Mr. Wardle’s color.”

“But that is definitely his jersey?”

“Why else would he be wearing it? Of course it’s his.”

“And the slacks?”

“Absolutely. No question. And if you ask me, I say it’s high time he bought himself a new pair.”

It might well be past time, but Osbert thought he wouldn’t go into that. Mrs. Phiffer was urging him, “Now let’s do the bicycle. This is fun! You get on and I’ll try to visualize you as Mr. Wardle.”

Osbert was not at all keen on being mentally pictured as Mr. Wardle. However, he got on the bicycle and rode it around to the shed while Mrs. Phiffer trotted gamely after him, visualizing for all she was worth. She never did manage to convince herself that Osbert was Mr. Wardle, to his secret relief. Once he’d got the bicycle stowed in its customary slot beside the plaster duck mold, though, she not only recognized the vehicle but produced a crayon rubbing of its tire tread that she’d done one morning in a spurt of creativity. The front tire had a nick in its tread that she’d caught to perfection. She did a second rubbing of the nick while he looked on, thus establishing the bicycle’s provenance beyond question.

“These rubbings are really delightful,” she remarked, holding them up side by side. “One could do something interesting with them, don’t you think?”

“I certainly do,” said Osbert, “and I have every intention of doing it. Would you mind signing your name at the bottom and, if possible, adding the date when you did that first one?”

Mrs. Phiffer couldn’t quite remember but she thought it must have been sometime around the end of July. Osbert said that was close enough, so she put down “July 30 approx.” and drew a little flamingo after it. Osbert thanked her profusely and folded the two rubbings carefully inside his wallet. He then requested use of the telephone to call his wife, while his new acquaintance went out to start putting the bow ties on her flamingos.

Dittany was at home by herself and sounded glad to be so. Clorinda, she told him, was attending a luncheon party at Arethusa’s with the Bleinkinsop twins and Miss Jane, who’d sneaked a couple of hours off from the Yarnery to enjoy her cousins who in turn appeared to be enjoying her. All was peace and amity. Miss Jane must have decided to forgive Arethusa for calling her Miss Wuzzy, which was the only sensible thing to do. After Miss Jane went back to the Yarnery, the other four were planning to play cribbage, using two boards and changing partners every other hand.

Dittany had been invited to join the party, but had declined on the excuse that she had to stay home and count her bed jackets. She was fascinated to hear of Osbert’s discoveries, and promised she’d pass them on to Sergeant MacVicar as soon as she could get hold of him. Osbert in turn promised to drive her over to see the flamingos as soon as Mrs. Phiffer got all their bow ties satisfactorily adjusted, and closed with many fond professions of a private and personal nature.

Before leaving, Osbert went up and got the note from the pillow. He’d decided he’d better add this to the rest of the evidence before Mrs. Phiffer thought of something more interesting to do with it. He got her to sign a receipt, locked the note with the wet clothing and the impounded bicycle in the back of his station wagon, and drove back to the Du-Kum-Inn to ascertain whether any progress had been made on the dragging.

To his amazement, he found the expedition ready to roll. A large yellow truck with a large yellow driver—which is to say a large man with yellow hair, a yellow beard, and yellow overalls—was sitting directly under the Live Bait sign. In the back of the truck were an aluminum rowboat, a great deal of rope, and a something or other that must be the dragger.

As Osbert soon learned, the large yellow man was none other than Zingbert Angelus. VP Live Bait, whose own name turned out to be Frank, took pleasure in introducing them. Zingbert said he was pleased to make Osbert’s acquaintance, although of course he said Reginald’s since Osbert was still maintaining his pseudonymity, and Osbert replied in all sincerity that he was happy to make Zingbert’s.

On this harmonious note, they set out. Frank, who’d got his nephew to mind the shop for the afternoon, joined Zingbert in the truck while Fridwell Slapp rode with Osbert in the station wagon. There was, Osbert learned, a road leading into Bottomless Mere from North Lammergen which was navigable by four-wheel vehicles most of the way; and this they took.

Before leaving the café, Osbert had thought to purchase a large bag of cheese popcorn. By scattering handfuls at strategic locations, he was able to divert the ducks’ attention while the other three got the boat in the water and organized the dragger. This was essentially just a big scoop weighted with rocks to hold it on the bottom, or where the bottom would be if the mere had one. Osbert asked Chief Slapp about this.

“Heck, no,” was the chief’s reply. “Bottomless Mere ain’t bottomless. If it was, we wouldn’t let the kids swim there, would we? Answer me that.”

Obediently, Osbert answered that no, he didn’t suppose they would. He certainly wouldn’t let any child of his own swim in any bottomless mere and Chief Slapp could bet his bottom dollar on that, assuming he had no moral scruples against gaming.

Chief Slapp asked Osbert how many kids he had, and Osbert, forgetting for the moment that he was supposed to be Reginald, said two, only he didn’t quite have them yet. Chief Slapp said kids one didn’t have yet were the best kind and wasn’t it a shame they couldn’t stay unhad. Osbert essayed a light laugh in the interest of diplomacy although he didn’t think Slapp’s remark the least bit funny, and asked how deep in fact Bottomless Mere really was. Slapp said not very except for here and there, which failed to clarify the matter. Then the conversation lapsed.

Dragging meres is a boring business, as Osbert was soon to find out. Only the ducks appeared to get much out of the proceedings and that was mainly on account of the cheese popcorn. Zingbert and Frank manned the drag ropes while Osbert rowed the boat. Chief Slapp hunkered down on the bank beside the elderly person to direct the operation. This was a euphemism for taking a nap, as the three men in the boat and no doubt the elderly person as well all realized.

“If this guy’s been missing since Friday, you’d think he’d be coming to the top by now,” Frank said after a while. “What usually happens is, after a period of immersion, they start to bloat. The noxious gases contained within the cadaver impart a buoyancy which causes it to rise, by which time it’s a ghastly spectacle and generally has a few parts eaten off by the fish, of which there are quite a few in Bottomless Mere, the walleyed pike being particularly mean buggers, eh, in their pleasanter moods and even nastier at their worst.”

Frank embroidered his theme at such length and with such enthusiasm that Osbert began hoping they wouldn’t find Wardle after all; and in fact they did not. True, their dragging equipment was not of the best and their technique probably left something to be desired since, as Zingbert Angelus trenchantly expressed it, none of them had ever dragged anything before except their feet. They did bring up a number of ancient artifacts, including part of a 1926 Essex Super Six which Mrs. Phiffer might have been able to do something with if they could have figured out how to get it ashore without swamping the boat, but they found no evidence of the missing Wardle.

Zingbert Angelus suggested that this might be due to the erose nature of the bottom which, though not really bottomless, did have a few deep holes here and there either on account of being fed by springs or just out of general cussedness. Frank offered the further hypothesis that Wardle might have put some rocks in his socks or possibly encased himself in quick-hardening concrete before taking his final plunge, in which case it would take quite a while for him to disintegrate to the point where some portions might become salvageable.

None of the three expressed any inclination to wait around and find out. Osbert was particularly glad to get ashore. In accordance with protocol among cooperating law-enforcement bodies, even though he’d continued to present himself as merely an interested bystander doing a little favor for Mother Matilda, he turned over Wardle’s clothes and bicycle to Chief Slapp. This took a bit of doing, as Chief Slapp didn’t want either the clothes or the bicycle, thought Osbert was being unreasonably picky in wanting a receipt for them, and was still demanding petulantly to be told what anybody thought he was going to do with the plaguey things when Osbert bade an amiable good-bye to Zingbert Angelus and Frank the bait man and headed for home.

I
T WAS BY NOW
far too late to stop at the mincemeat factory. Mother Matilda was probably over at the funeral parlor with her apron off, receiving the condolences of other mincemeat magnates. Osbert decided he might as well make his report to Sergeant MacVicar and leave the rest till morning. Right now, he wanted his Dittany and he wanted his supper. Those two mincemeat tarts hadn’t stuck to his ribs the way he’d thought they would. In fact, about the time the draggers had hauled up that old Essex, he’d found himself churlishly begrudging that cheese popcorn he’d bestowed in such lavish handfuls on the ungrateful ducks. Had Mrs. Phiffer been present now, he thought, she wouldn’t have had any trouble envisioning his stomach as an empty cavern.

That got him to thinking about some of VP Live Bait’s more graphic anatomical observations. A person might have thought these would take away his appetite, but they only made him feel both hungry and depressed.

Even the longed-for homecoming was less delightful than Osbert had envisioned. Dittany’s arms were as warm and her lips as sweet as a husband could wish, but they weren’t all that easy to get at with the twins in the way. Furthermore, it was hard to put much brio into his embraces with Clorinda cheering him on from the sidelines and Arethusa snarling remarks that would surely have got her kicked out of the International Moonlight and Roses Writers’ Organization did its members but reck how their reigning queen talked to her own nephew when she wasn’t swishing around the convention hall in her pink velvet robes with the fake ermine trim.

Adding injury to insult, the women had gone ahead and eaten without him and Arethusa had snaffled all the little onions out of the mustard pickles as she always did if he wasn’t around to beat her to the draw. Dittany had at least managed to save him a goodly portion of stew and some dumplings, not to mention salad, biscuits, cheese, and approximately seventy-five degrees of an apple pie she’d baked that afternoon because she thought he might want a change from Mother Matilda’s mincemeat. Osbert ate as a man with a purpose, pausing only to bestow an occasional pat on the back or peck on the cheek of his beloved spouse, and trying not to listen to the ever-running stream of dialogue between his aunt and his mother-in-law.