Wrack and Rune (22 page)

Gaffson must know at least the rudiments of electrical wiring, since he was in the construction business. He’d surely know how to make a simple thermostat. He’d have the strength and no doubt the right tool for burrowing into the manure pile. If he didn’t care to take on the nasty job himself, he could have sent Fesky.

Or Loretta could have sent Fesky. Or Fesky could have got the bright idea of exercising his own initiative, and why in Sam Hill hadn’t Shandy gone out and tracked down Fesky Fescue this afternoon instead of listening to Millicent Peavey dither about heating up the turkey Tetrazzini?

Was it too late to go now? What the hell time was it, anyway? It suddenly occurred to Shandy that the sun had gone down, and this on the longest day of the year, which hadn’t occurred to him before. The summer solstice. A prickle much like the jolt he’d experienced when he tripped over the live fence wire jigged up his back. The old Norse had been rather big on solstices, hadn’t they? Could this sudden epidemic of bizarre happenings centered around the runestone have anything to do with the summer solstice? Oh, Christ! Was he back to Orm Tokesson again?

A
S HE WOUND UP
his cogitations, Shandy realized he’d absentmindedly seated himself at Miss Hilda’s kitchen table and consumed the tail end of Jolene’s layer cake. He wiped the crumbs off his mouth and went out into the yard, switching on the porch light as he went, for night was gathering fast.

Through the ensuing charge of moths and June bugs, he discerned a purple automobile in the yard. A large woman in a purple dress and hat stood beside it, talking down at a bent old man in ragged overalls. Loretta Fescue, thanks no doubt to her brother the police chief, had got through the cordon. She was pouring the old snake oil over Henny Horsefall for all she was worth. And Henny was caving in.

Shandy leaped across the yard and took a firm grip on Henny’s shoulder. He was not a moment too soon. The real estate agent was already taking a sales agreement out of her oversized purple handbag.

“So you see it’s really a remarkably generous offer, Mr. Horsefall. But I’m afraid Mr. Gaffson won’t wait any longer. He already holds an option on a piece of property over in Hoddersville that would suit his purpose almost as well as this. And with all the dreadful troubles you’ve been having here the past couple of days, and no telling what’s going to come next now that they’re digging up the runestone—not that I’m a superstitious person myself, but I don’t mind telling you I almost fainted when I heard on the news about the explosion killing Professor Ames.”

“Then you’ll be relieved to know that Professor Ames was not killed or even seriously injured, and that the explosion had nothing to do with the runestone,” Shandy told her. “That was merely another piece of vandalism, such as the Horsefalls have been subjected to ever since, by a curious coincidence, you first started trying to persuade them to sell their land.”

“What? Are you insinuating that I—”

“I’m not insinuating anything, Mrs. Fescue. I’m merely pointing out a curious coincidence.”

“Eh?”

For the first time since the explosion, Henny Horsefall looked more alive than dead. “What’s that about vandalism?”

“Horsefall, you were with me when I discovered that fence wire with current running through it, and Roy found the piece of metal that had been used to ground the detonator. Didn’t you realize how that manure pile was deliberately rigged to blow up?”

“Guess I didn’t quite take it in,” the old man mumbled. “Too many things happenin’. One right after another. That Swope boy—”

“Hit an oil slick somebody had conveniently arranged down at the bend in the road and took a header off his bike. Nothing supernatural about that either.”

“But ’twas Orm that flang the Swedish feller into the tree,” Henny argued. “He said so hisself.”

“Dr. Svenson’s a lot older than you are, Horsefall, and his English is none too good. He either didn’t grasp what had happened to him or didn’t know the right words to explain it.”

Shandy described the crude but effective catapult that had been made from the limber birch sapling. “It was a stroke of luck, good or bad depending on your point of view, that a light little chap like him instead of someone big and heavy like his nephew happened to lean against the birch and get tossed when it sprang back upright.”

“I’ll be danged!”

Henny was looking a great deal brighter now, and Mrs. Fescue showed clenched teeth as her smile became more and more forced.

“So it was just more o’ them cussed—great balls o’ fire, what’s that?”

From out of the night came a galloping of hooves. Into the yard burst a coal-black horse, greater than any living beast. On its back loomed the majestic figure of a woman more beautiful than any woman could be, her long, golden hair streaming out behind her like an outrun aureole. And right on her steed’s spurting heels came another rider, tiny atop another coal-black immensity, blond also but with hair cut into a curly nimbus. It was the Ride of the Valkyrie!

No, by George, it was Sieglinde Svenson aboard Odin, largest and swiftest of the mighty Balaclava Blacks. And the attendant page pounding toward them on Odin’s consort Freya was none other than—

“Helen! Good God, are you trying to kill yourself?” roared her distraught husband.

“Don’t be silly, Peter. Whoa, Freya. She’s gentle as a lamb. A baby could ride her. Anyway, Sieglinde and I couldn’t get hold of a car because Thorkjeld’s got theirs and you’ve got ours and we didn’t dare ask Dr. Porble and you simply had to know right away.”

“This will be a blow the most shattering to Thorkjeld,” sighed Mrs. Svenson, reining in Odin as if he were a child’s hobby horse. “Be still, my noble steed. Peter, it is you who must tell him. I have not the heart.”

“Tell him what? Great Scott, what’s happened now? Is somebody dead?”

“Worse. Far worse. He has never lived.”

“Who? You don’t mean Birgit’s had a miscarriage already?”

“Peter, don’t be absurd,” said Helen primly. “She’s barely off on her honeymoon. It’s Orm, of course. He’s a fake.”

“What?”

“Orm was another of Belial Buggins’s little funnies, that’s all. After you’d pointed out that joke about the moonshine I got to thinking about what a person with an odd sense of humor and a hang-up on the
Kalevala
might do, so I went to the library and did some more research on those diaries. He had it all written down. See, I’ve even brought the right book with me, in case Thorkjeld won’t believe us.”

She pulled a small paper-bound volume out of her pocket and waved it under his nose. “It’s right here. Belial had also taught himself a little Old Norse, and boned up on runes. He thought it would be a barrel of laughs to carve that stone, get some archaeologists out here from Harvard, and make a big to-do, then reveal the hoax. This was about the time of the Cardiff Giant and all that, you know. They rather went in for intellectual whimsies in those days.”

“My love, will you quit flaunting your erudition and get down off that elephant?” Peter entreated.

“You can’t get down off an elephant. It grows on birds. I learned that old chestnut in second grade,” Helen replied lightly. “Anyway, Belial was going to do it up in grand style. He managed to acquire a couple of genuine Viking relics from some old collector he’d met somewhere. One was that piece of helmet Cronkite Swope found, of course. The other was a coin. Apparently they were both of a late period and in bad condition, so the other man didn’t mind parting with them. Anyway, Belial was going to bury them both under the stone. After they’d found them, the archaeologists were supposed to dig down a little farther and find a saga—or would it be an edda—that Orm had allegedly written. It was all about his voyage to this undiscovered land, only it had some pretty juicy local scandal worked into it and Belial was thinking of burying it inside a Lydia E. Pinkham’s bottle. The diary stops right after that, so I don’t know what happened next.”

“Most likely somebody shot the bastard,” said her husband with a good deal of feeling. “Belial must have been a public menace. Know anything about Belial Buggins, Horsefall?”

“Made the best white lightnin’ in Balaclava County is all I know. My ol’ grandpop used to go on about Belial’s booze when Granny wasn’t around. Aunt Hilda would likely remember some of ’is folks. Gripes, if we’re bein’ haunted by Belial’s ghost, we’re in a worse mess o’ trouble than I thought we was.”

But Henny chuckled as he said it and Mrs. Fescue quit trying to smile.

“Mr. Horsefall,” she wailed, “you as much as promised.”

“Like hell I did. Excuse me, ladies, I don’t gen’rally cuss in front o’ females I ain’t related to, but this woman’s been pesterin’ the daylights out o’ me so long she’s druv me to it. You get on back to Gunder Gaffson, Miz Fescue, an’ tell ’im he can build anywhere he dern well pleases long as it ain’t on my land. This is the Horsefall Farm, which it’s been for the past two hundred an’ forty-three years, an’ it’s goin’ to stay the Horsefall Farm while there’s a Horsefall alive to till it. Now if you folks’ll excuse me, I think I’ll step inside an’ have a little nip myself. I kind o’ feel the need.”

“Go ahead, Horsefall,” said Shandy, repressing an urge to kiss him. “Good for what ails you. We’ll go too, if you don’t mind. I’d like a few words with your aunt before we tackle the president.”

“Come right ahead. She was in the parlor with Dr. Svenson last I seen of ’er.” Henny led the way, then turned to apologize. “She’ll raise ol’ Ned with me for takin’ you ladies in through the kitchen. Ain’t been time to keep it picked up, what with all the goin’s-on.”

The room was in a certain amount of disarray. The cake plate Shandy had been eating from stood on the square pine table, a crudely painted, garishly colored bird against a dull red spatterwork background showing through a smear of frosting and crumbs. The pierced tin door of the dark pine pie cupboard hung open, revealing shelves cluttered with odds and ends of pastry that hadn’t got eaten up during the onslaught after the funeral. About five generations of plates and teacups lay around the soapstone sink. Sieglinde and Helen exchanged looks.

Shandy caught them and scowled. “I think Miss Horsefall manages very well, all things considered.”

“She has managed perhaps far better than she knows,” said Sieglinde, carefully moving the worn comb-back rocker in order to get her large though elegant form through the narrow doorway into the hall. “We shall find her in here?”

They found her, all right. They could have chosen a worse moment to burst into the parlor, but it was obvious they hadn’t missed that moment by much. Miss Hilda hadn’t quite finished rearranging her garments and Uncle Sven’s mustache was in a state of total dishevelment. As he tried to comb it out with his fingers Sieglinde said something sharp to him in Swedish and the ends drooped for a moment, but they snapped right back into a tight upward curl. Shandy thought he’d never seen a happier mustache.

“Er—don’t disturb yourselves, folks,” he said. “We’ll be back a bit later. Mrs. Svenson just wanted to make sure the president’s uncle was all right before we go down to the dig.”

They backed out, all trying to pretend they hadn’t seen what they’d indubitably seen, rounded up a few flashlights, and remounted Odin and Freya, Shandy riding pillion behind his wife. There was traffic on the hill road again tonight, but the police were being extremely severe with anybody who tried to loiter. The Balaclava Blacks, not to mention the spectacle of the president’s wife with her hair down, awed them into easy submission, however. This time, Shandy had no trouble being let into the logging road.

The archaeologists were still at it. Shandy and his party could see them up ahead working under a couple of floodlights that must have come from the college. They’d completed what appeared to be a ridiculously small excavation considering the long day they’d put in. Thorkjeld Svenson looked fresh enough, but the other two were obviously ready to call it quits.

Sieglinde nodded at Helen. Helen winked back at Sieglinde. Both nudged their mounts into a gallop and swooped down upon the runestone with a Wagnerian “Ho-jo-to-ho!”

“My God, he’s sent Brunnhilde after us!” shrieked the elder archaeologist, falling back in awe and terror.

“I—I’m not sure it’s—”

The younger archaeologist’s voice failed him as Thorkjeld Svenson plucked the Viking queen of battles from her saddle, kissed her mightily and at great length, then began to roar like Boreas through the pines of Norway on a night in January.

“You—you
know
this—-this goddess?”

“Hell, I ought to,” bellowed the president. “I’ve been sleeping with her for thirty-four years.”

“In lawful wedlock,” Sieglinde added primly. “I am the wife of President Svenson and how do you do? It is only that I have lost my hairpins because Odin runs so fast.”

“I hope you appreciate the honor that’s being done you, gentlemen. My wife doesn’t let her hair down for everybody.”

Svenson was still laughing as he gathered up the radiant masses in his great hands. “Here’s the purest Viking gold you’ll ever see.”

Sieglinde rescued her tresses and twisted them into a knot behind her neck. “Thorkjeld, could you not first have wiped the leaf mold off you hands? But what you say, alas, is true. Here is no Viking treasure, gentlemen, only Belial Buggins.”

“What?” roared the president.

“I’m sorry, Thorkjeld,” said Helen. “I found it in his diaries.”

“Found what? I never knew Belial could write. Thought he was a moonshiner.”

“He was, but he was also a number of other things, including a remarkably erudite practical jokester.” Helen produced the foxed little book in which Buggins had recorded his secret japeries. “See, here’s where he tells how he’s carved the runestone, and where he bought the Viking relics he plans to bury.”

The president studied the sputtery browned handwriting first with suspicion, then with fury. “Why, that son of a—”

“Thorkjeld!” chided his wife.

“But damn it, Sieglinde, I—I’m—Helen, you mean there never was an Orm Tokesson?”

“Not in Lumpkin Corners there wasn’t. I’m sorry.”