The Grub-and-Stakers Spin a Yarn (10 page)

“Darling, do you also realize why Mr. Gumpert’s store got broken into last night?”

“Why, dear?”

“Because of what Arethusa said when that man grabbed her.”

“What man, dear?”

“The one who shot VP Nutmeg. Or didn’t but the other one did. He asked her ‘What did he say?’ and she said—”

“I know. A jeweled dagger and a ream of plain white paper.” Osbert’s attention was fully caught at last. “But Mr. Gumpert doesn’t sell jeweled daggers, dear.”

“He does so! Don’t you remember those fancy paper knives in the shape of jeweled daggers he got in for Christmas? We gave one to Arethusa and she gave us back a penny because it’s supposed to be bad luck if you give somebody anything sharp. The penny’s to pay you back so it isn’t really a gift.”

“If it wasn’t a gift, why did we give it to her?”

“Because it was there to be given, I suppose. Arethusa’s not the easiest person in the world to buy a present for, you know. Anyway, Mr. Gumpert still had a few daggers left in his display case last time I was in the shop. I’ll bet they’re gone now, though. And while we’re on the subject of going, hadn’t you better go up and put on your best underwear? You’re supposed to be in Lammergen by half past eight, aren’t you?”

O
SBERT WAS AT THE
mincemeat factory right on the dot. So was Mother Matilda. Her eyes looked a bit red around the lids and she’d put on a black-and-white checkered gingham uniform with a black apron over it, but those were her only concessions to widowhood. She came out to the reception room to greet him, led him into her office, and shut the door.

The reception room had been folksy as all get-out with maple rocking chairs, rag rugs, red gingham curtains at the windows, and a large marmalade-colored cat serving as assistant receptionist. Osbert had expected more of the same here, but Mother Matilda didn’t have so much as a potted geranium on her well-ordered desk. She plunked herself down in her swivel chair, nodded him into the less than sybaritic armchair opposite, and said briskly, “Now then, Osbert, what have you to tell me?”

“Reginald, please. I’m incognito. First I have something to ask you.” Osbert pulled out his wallet and carefully fished out the slip of paper Dittany had found up Raggedy Andy’s sleeve. “We conducted a thorough search of the yarn shop last night, and my wife found this. Sergeant MacVicar says the thumbprint is your husband’s. Can you tell me whether that’s also his handwriting?”

Mother Matilda slid her eyeglasses farther down on her nose and held the paper out at arm’s length. “Charles usually wrote a lovely neat hand. If he was scribbling the note in a moving car while getting shot at and with a bullet in his back, though, I expect this might be more or less the way it would have come out. There are points of similarity, that’s the best I can say.”

“I understand. And does the name Quimper Wardle mean anything to you?”

“Oh yes. Mr. Wardle works here, in peel procurement. At least I think he does. Mrs. Pettigrew, his department head, says he hasn’t shown up for the last couple of days. Mrs. Pettigrew told me she’d telephoned Mr. Wardle’s landlady to ask whether he was sick, and the landlady said she hadn’t laid eyes on him since last Friday. If that man doesn’t show up pretty darn soon, I can tell you, he won’t be working for Mother Matilda any longer.”

“How long has Mr. Wardle been with the firm?”

“A little over three months.”

“And how long ago did the trouble with the VPs start?”

“Two months ago to the day.”

“Um,” said Osbert. “How did you happen to hire Mr. Wardle? He didn’t come up through the ranks, obviously.”

“No, he didn’t, although it is our normal practice to promote from within if we possibly can. Not every employee will accept promotion if it’s offered, you know. They get totally dedicated to a certain job and simply wouldn’t be happy anywhere else. And of course peel buying isn’t like mixing and stirring, for instance. There just isn’t the same aesthetic thrill in it. That’s why good peel buyers are so hard to find.”

“Wardle’s a good peel buyer, is he?”

“The fact of the matter is, he’d never bought a peel in his life before he came to us. He’d been buying anchovies for a well-known Worcestershire sauce manufacturer over in England. But he wanted desperately to get into peels because, as he explained, anchovies simply don’t offer the same scope. That was understandable to us, naturally. Mr. Wardle’s references were excellent, and we needed somebody in a hurry, so we decided we might as well give him a chance.”

“Why did you need somebody in a hurry?”

“Because Miss Eagleton, who’d been with us for fifteen years, all of a sudden inherited ten thousand dollars from a distant cousin she never even knew she had, and decided to blow the money on a trip to Australia. She’s going to spend a whole year with her brother who owns an emu ranch down there.”

“Is she, by George?” cried Osbert. “Gosh, I never thought of emus.”

“As why would you?” Mother Matilda rejoined somewhat haughtily. “I fail to see why emus are germane to the issue at hand.”

“A detective has to keep an open mind, Mother Matilda. You did check Mr. Wardle’s references, I assume?”

“Need you ask? We wrote to the factory—that is to say, our personnel director did—and they whizzed us back a reply that was even more glowing than the references he’d shown us in the first place. In fact, they begged us to let them know if we decided not to hire Mr. Wardle because the buyer who’s taken his place just can’t seem to get the hang of anchovies and they were hoping to wheedle him back. That’s not precisely how they phrased it, but that’s the gist. I can’t say we’ve found Wardle any great ball of fire ourselves. However, we realize peels are a major readjustment and we’ve been willing to give him a fair trial.”

“He hasn’t been handling the job adequately?”

“Oh, he’s adequate. Wardle’s not a bad peel buyer but he’s hardly what you’d call an inspired peel buyer. Miss Eagleton, now, there’s a woman who knows how to buy peel! I’m just hoping—selfishly, I grant you—that Miss Eagleton doesn’t meet her Mr. Right down under and fritter away her talents among the billabongs. Fred was saying just the other day—”

“By Fred you’re referring to VP Cider?” Like his wife, Osbert felt it essential to keep the facts straight from the outset.

“That’s right,” Mother Matilda confirmed. “Fred was sitting in the cafeteria with Charles and myself after she left, having a midmorning cup of coffee and a mince tart. You must try our mince tarts, by the way. They’re quite superb if I do say so. Anyway, Miss Eagleton’s name came up and Fred said to Charles and me, ‘I sincerely hope Miss Eagleton doesn’t throw away the distinguished career that’s ahead of her if she comes back. You mark my word, another few years’ experience under her belt and that young woman could become one of the legendary names in peel procurement!’ And Charles agreed with him. Charles was always quick to give credit where credit was due. Never was a VP Nutmeg more universally beloved.”

Mother Matilda permitted herself one brief sniffle before dragging herself ruthlessly back to the business at hand. “Osbert—excuse me, Reginald—why do you think Charles wrote Quimper Wardle’s name down like that?”

“Because he realized it was Wardle Who’d shot him, is the best guess I can make right now.”

“But that’s impossible! Quimper Wardle wouldn’t say boo to a goose.”

“Did you ever try him? That is, get a goose and—”

Osbert thought perhaps he’d better drop geese as a subject for conversation. He could feel another plot beginning to simmer, and it never did to talk about a plot till one got it written down. And often not even then, because they always sounded so totally ridiculous when one tried to explain them to somebody that one got discouraged before one even started. Besides, Mother Matilda was doing something rather ominous with her upper lip.

“Let’s abandon conjecture and look at the facts,” he said briskly. “Here we have a valued employee with a brother conveniently situated in Australia. This employee, namely Miss Eagleton the peel buyer, suddenly comes into a mysterious legacy from a relative she didn’t even know, and is therefore able to indulge a no doubt long-held dream of going to visit her brother. She thus creates a vacancy into which a hitherto unknown Brit, allegedly with excellent experience in a related field—sort of related, anyway, or related enough for practical purposes—is, as I was working up to say, able to step on the strength of glowing references that purport to be from a well-known British manufacturer of Worcestershire sauce.”

“But of course the references were from the well-known British manufacturer of Worcestershire sauce,” Mother Matilda retorted, angry that her acumen had been called into question, if only by inference. “We checked them. I told you that.”

“And precisely how did you check them? You did not, for example, send your personnel director over to chat about Mr. Wardle with their personnel director?”

“That would have been contrary to company practice. We sent an airmail letter, as I mentioned before.”

“And where did you obtain the firm’s address?”

“From their letterhead, naturally.”

Osbert nodded. “Naturally. If you’d decided to telephone instead, you’d naturally have got the number off the letterhead too, wouldn’t you?”

“Where else? We don’t happen to have all that many British telephone directories lying around our offices. You could hardly expect us to, could you?”

“Of course not, that would be quite unreasonable. Mr. Wardle wouldn’t have expected you to, either. The thing of it is, Mother Matilda, it’s not at all difficult to filch a letterhead from a well-known company, and get some printer who’s not too long on business ethics to run off some new letterheads using the same artwork with a different address and phone number. You then write your own references on the new letterhead, which means that the company you’re applying to will write back to the wrong address. You’ve arranged for a confederate at that address to get hold of their letter, write a glowing reply signed with a forged name, and mail it back to the inquirer. If you’d telephoned instead of writing, they’d no doubt have been waiting for the call and have given you the same kind of snow job over the phone.”

“But how can we find out if we’ve been taken in?”

“Easily enough. Show me the letter. I’ll telephone my British agents and get them to check out the company address and the names of the alleged writers.”

Mother Matilda shook her head. “I do declare, that’s one trick I’d never have thought of in a million years. I still can’t believe Mr. Wardle would do such a thing, though.”

“I’m not saying he did,” said Osbert. “I’m only pointing out the obvious possibilities for fraud. You say the attacks on personnel didn’t start till a month after Wardle arrived. Is he your newest employee?”

“No, we’ve had two more changes since then. Dear old Willie Phee in Brooms and Buckets finally retired, and young Eppie Elias on the raisin belt left to have her baby. We had a lovely party for Willie and gave Eppie a baby shower. We’d been planning them for weeks.”

“And you’ve replaced both Willie and Eppie?”

“Oh yes, right away. We had to.”

“But those two were people you’d been expecting to lose, and they don’t sound as if they were in positions where they’d have the same opportunity for access to the vice presidents as a peel buyer might.”

“No, I have to grant you that,” Mother Matilda agreed. “Also, their places were taken by our own people. Willie’s assistant was moved up to take his place. Edward, his name is. Then Edward’s nephew Throgwold decided there wasn’t much of a future for him at the Scottsbeck car wash, so he applied for Edward’s former job, which we were to glad to give him. Throgwold’s a lovely boy,” she added in parenthesis.

“And Eppie’s cousin Bern’s wife Phillida, who worked for us before she was married, offered to hold Eppie’s job on the raisin line till the baby’s old enough to be left with Eppie’s mother, who’s a perfectly lovely woman and keeps a day nursery; so that worked out just fine. I’ll grant you there might have been something fishy about that legacy of Miss Eagleton’s, but who’s going to start sniffing around to see what’s wrong with ten thousand dollars? So you think Charles caught on to Quimper Wardle, eh, and went after him bullheaded, like the brave soul that he …”

The composure she’d been so rigidly maintaining broke at last. She fumbled wordlessly in her desk drawer for a box of paper handkerchiefs.

“I think Mr. Wardle will bear looking into, at any rate,” Osbert replied gently after Mother Matilda had blown her nose and wiped bitter tears off her eyeglass lenses. “If you’ll give me Wardle’s letters and the address where he’s been living, I’ll see what I can find out and report back to you later in the day. By the way, here are my own references about the security job in case you want to show them to the personnel director. I faked up a couple of letterheads out of the Toronto telephone directory with the help of my home copier.”

That was actually how it had occurred to him that the enigmatic Quimper Wardle might have pulled the same trick with the Worcestershire sauce company, but Mother Matilda didn’t have to know that. She took the letters from him and put them inside a red morocco folder that lay on her desk.

“Thank you, Reginald. I’ll just hang on to these till I see what you come up with at the boardinghouse. No sense going through the fuss and bother of putting you on the payroll if we can get this awful business wrapped up right away.”

“The sooner the better, as far as I’m concerned.”

Hearing about that emu ranch of Miss Eagleton’s brother’s had been raising the Old Ned with Osbert’s sense of priorities. He loved being Deputy Monk, he sincerely craved to help Mrs. MacVicar’s newfound cousin out of her dreadful predicament. He knew Dittany felt the same way, and he loved working in harmony with the wife of his bosom.

Yet there was the lure of the old Remington. It would not have been fair to say Osbert cared more for his typewriter than he did for his wife; he loved Dittany with a love that was greater than love, and the typewriter was only a machine. But the fact remained that he’d known the typewriter longer. And meanwhile, back at the ostrich farm …