The Grub-and-Stakers Spin a Yarn (17 page)

“Now that you’ve heard Mr. Monk, you must surely all realize how handicapped we are around here by our wholesome, uncomplicated dedication to mincemeat-making. We can’t plug the security leaks ourselves because we don’t even know how to go about looking for them. We need somebody around the factory who’s got a real handle on perfidy, somebody who’s able to plumb the cesspools of rottenness that lurk in the hearts of evildoers. Is that right, Mr. Monk?”

“I guess so,” Osbert mumbled. He’d never thought of himself as a plumber of cesspools before, and he hoped to heck his Aunt Arethusa never found out he’d been called one in front of a whole roomful of vice presidents. Not that getting a handle on perfidy wasn’t an honorable calling in its way, he supposed. After all, somebody had to dig out the rottenness. He lifted his head, stuck out his chin, and turned his eyes steadfastly from one to another VP all around the table. “Anyway,” he said clearly and distinctly, “that’s what I do and I’m here to do it.”

“YOU GET A LEAK,
you call the plumber.”

That was VP Citron being flip, no doubt because Osbert was refusing to succumb to her wiles. He composed his features into an expression of semi-amused hauteur.

“Mother Matilda might have added that I anticipate everybody’s wholehearted cooperation in getting this matter straightened out as quickly as possible. Now I’d like to get down to business, if you don’t mind.”

He left them no time to say whether they minded or not, but plunged right into the midst. “Can we in fact establish at least a strong likelihood that Quimper Wardle was the sole perpetrator of the outrages committed against certain people here present, as evidence found in his discarded clothing—namely and to wit: a copy of the lemon peel formula written on a leaf from VP Lemon Peel’s personal memo pad—would lead us to believe? Was there, in short, any one of these incidents in which Wardle could definitely not have participated?”

Everybody looked blankly at everybody else. It was VP Currants who finally answered. This was a brawny giant of a man whose abundant gray hair suggested a powdered wig and whose fair-skinned, rosy-cheeked face was relatively unlined despite the weight of years he surely carried. Osbert would have expected somebody smaller, darker, and more wrinkled.

“That’s hard for us to answer, Mr. Monk. You see, we’re busy people. We have our own concerns to attend to, yet we’re used to a good deal of interaction. We’re all over the place, as you might say. In this profession you can’t just sit in your office and trust some computer to tell you how many currants you’ve got on hand at any given moment, or how many currants the third currant adder on the left is dumping into a particular batch of mincemeat. I have to be right out there among the currants: in the storeroom sampling the sacks to make sure each currant is up to standard quality-wise, keeping the currant sorters eternally vigilant lest a substandard currant slip through our stringent quality checks, making sure the currant adders are maintaining their exact measurements. … I’m here, I’m there, I’m everywhere. Like the Scarlet Pimpernel,” he added to clarify matters. “Right, everybody?”

Everybody nodded.

“Naturally I’m in daily conference with our currant buyer,” VP Currant went on, “but I don’t keep tabs on currant markets around the world or have the prices in, say, the latest Andalusian currant auction at my fingertips. That’s the buyer’s job. She knows what’s expected of her and she does it. If she’s out in the warehouse checking a delivery, I’m not there standing over her. She knows what she’s doing and I don’t have to.”

VP Currants refreshed himself with a sip of water but held up a hand to show he wasn’t through talking. “Right, everybody?”

Everybody nodded.

“So likewise, let’s say I happen to run into Wardle heading for VP Lemon Peel’s office. He’s a peel buyer, right? I figure he’s on legitimate business with my distinguished colleague, so I put him straight out of my mind because my job is currants and I can’t let myself be distracted from performing to the utmost of my ability. And it’s the same with all of us. Right, everybody?”

Everybody nodded again.

“But let’s say you’d happened to observe Wardle in the act of hauling your colleague’s er—garments down over his—er—person?” said Osbert.

“I suppose I might assume that my colleague had sat on a splinter or something and Wardle was about to administer first aid.”

“But suppose he’d put a typewriter cover over your colleague’s head?”

VP Currant shrugged. “If I happened to notice, I expect I’d surmise that my colleague suffered from an iodine phobia and Wardle was kindly attempting to spare him from having to look at the bottle. Since I’m none too keen on iodine myself, and since splinters aren’t my department, I’d leave Wardle to cope and go on about my own business. Right, everybody?”

The unanimity quotient around the conference table was truly amazing.

“So what all this boils down to,” said Osbert, “is that I’d better not expect any cooperation from any of you. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

“It certainly is not,” snapped Mother Matilda. “I’m sure personnel so well-trained in eternal vigilance during the pursuit of duty can’t help having made acute observations of certain matters perhaps not strictly germane to their particular spheres of influence but vital to the welfare of the business as a whole. Right, everybody?”

She glared around the table. After a moment’s startled hesitation, everybody nodded.

“So,” she went on, “how many of you saw Wardle in the vicinity of VP Lemon Peel’s office at the fateful moment? Don’t try to make believe you don’t know which moment I’m talking about and don’t give me any more iodine phobias. VP Citron, your office is next to VP Lemon Peel’s. Would it, in your opinion, have been physically possible for any male person bent on debagging to have passed your door without at least peeking in?”

“I shouldn’t have thought so,” VP Citron replied with a nasty glance at Osbert, “but one never knows. Now that you ask me, Mother Matilda, I do have a vague recollection of having heard Mr. Wardle’s footsteps approaching my office and pausing briefly by the door before proceeding on past.”

“You’re sure those were Wardle’s footsteps you heard?” Osbert asked her.

“Quite sure, Mr. Monk. I never make mistakes, as anybody here can tell you. It’s one of my less attractive traits. Besides, he did a little heavy breathing when he paused. Mr. Wardle has—or should I say had?—a very English way of breathing. Right, everybody?”

“Oh, definitely,” said VP Currants. It was a change from all those nods, anyway.

“And this was at the time of the—er—incident?” said Osbert.

“I believe so. Wasn’t that when Miss Flaubert fainted? I remember somebody—I believe it was you, VP Cinnamon—yelling ‘Cut her corset strings.’ I wondered what on earth you were talking about.”

“I’m not quite sure myself,” confessed VP Cinnamon, who was a young man as VPs went. “I’d happened to run against the expression in an old novel I read once and always thought it would be a rather marvelous thing to yell if one ever happened to find a suitable occasion. You know how odd bits of information stick in one’s mind.”

“Does it stick in your mind whether Mr. Wardle was in the area where Miss Flaubert was fainting?” said Osbert.

“I’m inclined to think he wasn’t, or he’d have been dashing over to cut her corset strings,” VP Cinnamon replied. “Wardle’s one of those Johnny-on-the-spot types. New broom, you know, trying to sweep all before him and make us Canadians feel like amateurs. Some Brits are like that.”

“Nonsense,” said Mother Matilda. “Naturally the reason Miss Flaubert fainted was that she came upon VP Lemon Peel in a state of—well, I don’t want to embarrass him any more than he’s been humiliated already. And naturally Wardle wouldn’t have stuck around to get caught once he’d done the uncouth deed, so his absence after the fact is more indicative of guilt than his presence would have been. Right, everybody?”

Even Osbert nodded. There were indubitably no flies on Mother Matilda.

“As for the hard cider incident,” he went on, “am I right in supposing just about anybody at all could have gained access to the cider storeroom?”

“Not just anybody,” said VP Cider, “but Wardle certainly could have. As a peel buyer, he had legitimate reasons to visit the storeroom area, checking on deliveries and inventory in the performance of his duties. For a new buyer to wander into the cider store either because he’d lost his bearings or just out of curiosity wouldn’t be at all unusual. The sweet cider we use in our manufacturing process would no doubt have been a novelty to him, since British cider is generally fermented.”

“Would it be possible for some of the cider in the storeroom to be fermented without your knowledge?” Osbert asked him.

VP Cider had to think that one over. “It might be possible,” he conceded at last, “but it would involve technical know-how and some pretty complicated flummoxing of the inventory. More to the point, fermentation takes time. Wardle hadn’t been with us long enough to have known the ropes or to have completed the process. My personal interpretation of the incident is that my all-too-literal downfall was brought about by the addition of some compatible alcoholic substance such as apple brandy to the cider I was to sample on that particular day.”

“How would that have been done, sir?”

“Easy as pie. All he’d have had to do was walk past and dump a slug of joy juice into the pitcher of fresh-pressed cider which the cider squeezers would have left on a small table near the entrance to the cider room, as they do every morning, and make himself scarce before I came along to drink it.”

“I thought tasters only tasted,” said Osbert.

VP Cider shook his head. “Not me. I swig. It’s my invariable custom to drink at least one full glass of sweet cider every morning, not only because I find this the best way to do a thorough quality check but also because the cider keeps my rheumatics from acting up on me. It’s the malic acid that does the trick. Cider’s absolutely crawling with malic acid.”

“You don’t say.”

“Ask your doctor. Malic acid’s just the ticket for sloshing out the kidneys so you don’t get gout. Look it up in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. And look at me, spry as a cat despite my hereditary affliction.” VP Cider left his chair and cut a brief caper to demonstrate his agility, then resumed his place at the conference table and went back to being dignified.

“Very impressive, VP Cider,” said Osbert. “Then you think Mr. Wardle could have known of your commendable habit?”

“He’d have had to be deaf and blind not to,” growled VP Suet, a curmudgeonly-looking old fatty who was wearing his checkered cap pulled down over his forehead. “We get the therapeutic benefits of sweet cider drummed into us morning, noon, and teatime. VP Cider’s even stuck up a poster in the cafeteria that says ‘Drink More Cider.’ You don’t hear me going around telling people to eat more suet.”

Osbert glanced sharply at the speaker. Here, his detectival instinct told him, was an embittered VP. It must be the current fad against cholesterol, he thought. VP Suet could well be walking in daily fear that he’d be declared redundant and replaced by some upstart VP Soybean Derivative. A bleak prospect indeed for a VP to learn in late middle age that he’d devoted his life to clogging people’s arteries, though Osbert couldn’t imagine there was enough suet in Mother Matilda’s Mincemeat to do the eater any harm. Probably the malic acid in the cider sloshed away the fat before it could settle down to its sinister work. Nevertheless, he had a hunch VP Suet would bear watching.

Further exploration revealed that Wardle could indeed not be eliminated from suspicion as the perpetrator of all incidents, whereas every other one of the VPs had alibis up to the eyeballs, or claimed to have. Osbert would have to check them out as a matter of routine, but he thought it more likely than not that so competent a group of executives would either have had sense enough to stay out of trouble or have had guile enough to cover their tracks.

Time was getting on. The VPs were casting anxious glances at their watches. Still, Osbert had one more question that must be asked. “Not to harrow Mother Matilda’s feelings, but as you all know, your late colleague VP Nutmeg had his demise effected as the result of what must have been a pretty spectacular gunfight running all the way from here to Lobelia Falls. Did any of you happen to witness the start of that incident?”

Nobody nodded.

“Did anybody hear any shots?”

Nobody had.

“Did any of you happen to be inside the bank when VP Nutmeg went to get his part of the mincemeat recipe out of his safe deposit box?”

“You must remember, Mr. Monk, that VP Nutmeg enjoyed certain privileges not available to the rest of us,” VP Suet drawled oleaginously. “We here had all been hard at work since half-past eight. According to my information, VP Nutmeg didn’t reach the bank until around ten o’clock. By that time, I myself would have been out back in the cafeteria drinking a cup of tea. A well-earned cup I think I may say,” he added with a malignant scowl around the table.

“Nobody doubts your tea was well-earned, Suet old man,” said VP Apples, who until now had taken little part in the discussion. “I was having one with you, I expect. I generally do, as do we all. We VPs,” Apples explained to Osbert, “tend to gravitate to the cafeteria in the middle of the morning and hold what we call our round-table discussion. We just push a few tables together and sit down as a group for an informal chat about various matters pertaining to our joint functions. We find this a pleasant and useful way of keeping our fingers on the pulse of the business. We’re so busy otherwise that we don’t get much chance to communicate.”

“Do you participate in these daily meetings, Mother Matilda?” Osbert asked her.

“Not I. I prefer my tea at my desk. Anyway, I’m quite aware that my presence could be an inhibiting factor in a free-for-all discussion. Please continue, VP Apples.”

“Well, I was just going to add that at noontime we join up with people who work in our own departments for discussion at a more specific level, and by teatime we’re so pooped that we don’t want to talk to anybody. Anyway, I expect that’s why none of us happened to be at the front of the building where we might have heard some commotion from the street.”