The Grub-and-Stakers Spin a Yarn (9 page)

The MacVicars were lingering over a postprandial cup of tea, watching a program about owls on their seldom-used television set. They appeared more pleased than not to be interrupted by Dittany and Osbert.

After the amenities had been dealt with, Mrs. MacVicar imparted the information that the Messrs. Bleinkinsop were dining with Miss Jane in her rooms. After the meal, they were scheduled to drive in Miss Jane’s car to Scottsbeck, where various cousins in the second, third, and fourth degrees were garnering to eat dessert with their far-flung but closely connected relations. Miss Jane was quite excited about being the one to introduce the twins, albeit somewhat frazzled by the events of the day thus far.

“We’d like to search the shop while she’s gone,” said Osbert.

“Arethusa’s remembered exactly what it was that VP Nutmeg said to her,” Dittany amplified.

“Oh aye?” said Sergeant MacVicar. “And what was that?”

They told him and he nodded. “I see the force of your reasoning. We’d best get on with it, then, ere Miss Jane and guests depart.”

Osbert hesitated. “I think, if you don’t mind, Sergeant, it might be better if we didn’t tell her precisely why we’re making the search now. To the untrained mind, that sleave business might sound a trifle on the goofy side. Maybe you could just say you have to check up on things as a matter of routine but hadn’t liked to interrupt while she was having such a rush of business.”

“Belike I should have closed the shop,” said the sergeant, “but it did not cross my mind that Cousin Charles would have hidden anything in so public a place. But needs must when the devil drives, though the idea does sound, as you so rightly remark, a trifle goofy. Come along then, lad. And lass, too,” he added generously. “I cannot go in there without Mrs. Derbyshire’s permission unless I swear out a warrant, which I could hardly justify doing on the basis of a quotation frae
Macbeth.
”

Leaving Mrs. MacVicar to mind the phone, the other three crossed the street. As it happened, they had not a moment to lose. The twins were already stowed in Miss Jane’s car, back to back on the rear seat with newspapers under their shoe soles to protect the upholstery, both happy as larks at the prospect of meeting a roomful of cousins. Miss Jane, dolled up in a fancy outfit crocheted of mohair and angora that made her look even more ovine than usual, was locking the side door that led up to her living quarters.

She didn’t see why people had to come pestering her at a time like this and she wished to goodness people could get it through their heads that this plaguey business was no business of hers; but she supposed she’d have to let Sergeant MacVicar and Deputy Monk in if it was the law only would they please for pity’s sake try not to make any worse mess than they could help because she and the twins had spent a whole solid hour putting the shop to rights after that mob had torn through it like a herd of wild elephants and if she’d known Lobelia Falls was going to be like this she’d have stayed in Scottsbeck.

Osbert, in one of those flashes of inspiration writers get at odd times, told Miss Jane not to worry as he’d brought along his wife to make sure he and the sergeant put everything back where it came from. His wife, he added, was downright persnickety about putting things where they were supposed to go.

Anybody who knew the former Dittany Henbit well would have greeted this assertion with a politely screened snicker. Miss Jane, being relatively new in town, took Osbert’s word at face value and even went so far as to say it was nice of Mrs. Monk to help out. She then reminded the search party that, while she herself did not normally draw the blinds over the shop windows at night, blinds were there to be drawn when need arose, and they’d better draw them before they got started or they’d have another pack of gawkers out on the sidewalk rubbernecking in at them.

This was undoubtedly true. Word of the bizarre happening at the yarn shop must have been on the evening news, though none of those present had thought to listen. News in Lobelia Falls was never hard to come by, one way or another. Sergeant MacVicar took the spare key Miss Jane handed him and promised to lock up carefully when they left. She got into her car. They waved her and her passengers off, entered the shop, drew the blinds, and prepared to search.

Osbert looked around at the bin-lined walls, filled with yarns of many kinds and colors. “There’s a heck of a lot to search through here. Mother Matilda told me the formula was written on a card that measures two by three inches and is sealed in plastic to keep it from wearing out. That means it’s roughly the size of a calling card and fairly stiff on account of the plastic. If VP Nutmeg shoved it into a ball of yarn, I should think he’d have had to choose a big one, so we may as well not bother with the baby yarn.”

“But he could have hidden something other than the formula,” Dittany objected. “Something tiny, like a rolled-up slip of paper. Or maybe he grabbed Miss Jane’s scissors off the counter there and cut the formula into little pieces.”

“He was hardly here long enough for that, according to Mrs. Derbyshire’s testimony,” said Sergeant MacVicar, “but we must not ignore any possibility. I do think, howsomever, we can forget about the highest and lowest shelves. Cousin Charles was not a tall man, nor a young man, as I found out when I saw him this afternoon at the Scottsbeck morgue. With a bullet in his back it does not seem likely he’d have been able to do much in the way of stooping or stretching.”

“What if somebody accidentally bought the yarn he’d put whatever it was into?” Dittany suggested.

“If VP Nutmeg was anywhere near as bright as Mother Matilda cracked him up to be,” said Osbert, “he’d have tried to guard against that chance as best he could. Suppose we begin by checking the bottoms of the bins in the middle rows. We can squeeze each ball of yarn as we put it back and see of anything crackles inside. Dittany, why don’t you tackle that table of baby yarn in the middle of the floor, just in case you’re right about the small object? Here, I’ll pull this stool over to the table so you won’t have to stay on your feet.”

“Thank you, dear.”

Dittany settled herself and began a tiresome routine of search and squeeze. By the time she’d finished her stint, she was as heartily sick of the way acrylic felt as the others must be of wool. They were all three sneezing from the fuzz, Sergeant MacVicar most impressively because he had the greatest expanse of nose to sneeze with. Furthermore, Dittany supposed, his ancestors must have been trained on snuff; perhaps the MacVicar sneeze had become hereditary.

Her back ached from perching so long on Miss Jane’s stool; she got up and walked around the shop to work out the kinks. Not being a knitter herself, and certainly having no immediate need to learn, Dittany had hardly set foot in the place before except to attend the grand opening back in July. Miss Jane had done a good deal of fixing up since then. Dittany didn’t remember having seen the cute little knitted animals and dolls which were now perched here and there with neat little cards beside them saying “Not for sale … but I’ll show you how to make your own.” She quite lost her heart to the Raggedy Andy doll with his red knitted overalls and his blue-and-white-striped turtle-neck jersey. Too bad the sleeves weren’t raveled, she thought absently. She took the doll down from the shelf and ran a finger up under the jersey, just in case. Raggedy Andy crackled.

“Osbert,” she gasped, “I’ve found something!”

“What is it, dear?”

“A leaf from a memo pad that has ‘From the desk of VP Nutmeg’ printed on top, with two scribbled words and a bloody fingerprint.”

“Tumultuous tumbleweeds!” He came racing over to her, Sergeant MacVicar right behind. “What does it say?”

“Just a second, let me see. Q something. Quimper, it looks like. Quimper Wardle. Could that be somebody’s name?”

“Mother Matilda would probably know. I can show it to her in the morning,” said Osbert. “Is it all right for us to keep this, Chief? She might be able to recognize the fingerprint.”

Sergeant MacVicar was too big a man to take umbrage, but he did sound a wee bit more Scotch as he replied stiffly, “I myself have the ability to recognize yon fingerprint, Deputy Monk. As a matter of routine, prints were taken in Scottsbeck from the sad remains of Cousin Charles and I obtained a set, also as a matter of routine. That loop and whorl pattern with the small diagonal scar across it is unmistakable.”

Osbert blushed. “Sorry, Chief, I meant to say handwriting.”

“Oh aye. Cousin Matilda would indeed be the one to know about that.”

“Why don’t we phone her right now and find out whether the name Quimper Wardle means anything to her,” Dittany urged. “Miss Jane won’t mind if we use her telephone, Lammergen’s not a toll call.”

Sergeant MacVicar shook his head. “We’d best wait till morn, lass. The poor lady needs a wee bit of time to be alone with her grief.”

“Or with her board of directors, as the case may be,” said Osbert. “Do you think we’d better complete the search, Chief, just in case VP Nutmeg left something else?”

“It would not hurt.” Doggedly, Sergeant MacVicar pulled out an armload of four-ply worsted and went on squishing.

They kept on with the job until they’d covered every spot in the shop that the wounded VP Nutmeg might reasonably be supposed to have been able to reach in his valiant last-ditch attempt to save the mincemeat recipe. However, they unearthed nothing else except a couple of gum wrappers carelessly discarded and a blue button that looked to be off some woman’s raincoat. At last they raised the blinds, turned out all but the night-lights, locked the door, and called it a night. Out on Queen Street all was serene now. It was time to go home.

Back on Applewood Avenue, Dittany and Osbert found Clorinda comfortably tucked up in bed with Ethel and a bag of gumdrops, reading
Macbeth.
She reported no progress in the matter of traveling Shakespeareans, which didn’t surprise them a bit. She added that the station wagon had been making a funny little noise halfway between a squeak and a rattle, and what did they think it might be? Osbert suggested a rattlesnake singing soprano, and led his by now semiconscious wife along to bed.

Osbert and Dittany both slept soundly and arose betimes, but not so betimes as their nearest neighbors. Jane and Henry Binkle appeared on their doorstep spruce and wide-awake in their business clothes, carrying a fresh-baked pan of muffins, while the Monks were still bathrobed, unkempt, and wondering what had happened to the lid of the teakettle.

“Isn’t it awful about what happened?” was Jane’s greeting. “Who do you suppose did it?”

“Are we still talking about the episode at Miss Jane Fuzzywuzzy’s yesterday morning?” Dittany asked. Things could get awfully confusing if you didn’t keep them straight from the beginning, as she knew from a lifetime’s experience with Clorinda.

“Heck, no,” said Henry Binkle. “That’s stale news. We’re talking about the robbery last night at Ed Gumpert’s stationery store, though Ed’s not even sure there was a robbery. More like vandalism, it sounds like to me—every darned ream of paper in stock torn open and scattered all over the floor. Ed’s beside himself, I understand. Which would add up to quite a lot of Gumpert,” he added reflectively. A life spent behind a counter with a box of biscuits and a cup of tea always ready to hand had not tended to make the stationer’s shadow grow less.

“Oh, my stars and garters!” cried Dittany.

The ejaculation could have been interpreted as an appropriate reaction to the Binkles’ shocking news or to her finally locating the teakettle lid behind the strawberry geranium plant on the kitchen windowsill. In fact, her outcry stemmed from a far different cause, one which she couldn’t explain to the Binkles, dear old friends though they were, without breaking the vow of secrecy she’d made to Mother Matilda.

On the subject of the missing segments of the mincemeat recipe Dittany’s lips must perforce be sealed, at least until Osbert had had a chance to get in some detecting over at the factory. She burned to know which color gingham Mother Matilda planned to dress him in. A houndstooth check, something along the color of Grimpen Mire, would really be more appropriate; but perhaps Mother Matilda wouldn’t have been able to get any made up on such short notice.

That question, at least, would be cleared up when he got home tonight. She must be sure he put on his new underwear. Osbert was apt to be absentminded about sartorial details and it would hardly become his new office to get debagged in shorts that had seen their best days back when he was still a bachelor. Not that Deputy Monk would allow such an affront to happen as a general rule, but one couldn’t be too careful the way things were going lately.

The Binkles said they couldn’t stay for the kettle to boil, they had to get over to Scottsbeck and open their bookshop. They’d often wished there were enough customers in Lobelia Falls to have the shop nearer their home, but today they were grateful that it was safely tucked away in a quiet, peaceful shopping mall where nothing ever happened except burglaries, shoplifting, bomb threats, and the occasional riot during the markdown season. Dittany thanked them for the muffins and promised to give them a buzz if any Martians landed during the course of the day.

By the time she got through wishing Jane and Henry a happy day among the tomes and showing them to the door, the kettle was boiling and Osbert had the muffins toasting nicely. She made the tea while he got out the plates and mugs. They didn’t bother setting a place for Clorinda. She’d be down when the spirit moved her, which wouldn’t be for another hour or two and just as well under the circumstances. Ethel, needless to say, had already breakfasted and was off for her morning stroll around the neighborhood hedges and hydrants.

“I must say it’s cozy with just the four of us,” Dittany observed as she filled Osbert’s mug. “Darling, do you realize what mornings are going to be like around here once the chicks get hatched?”

“Yes, dear.” Osbert’s reply was indistinct, not only because his mouth was full of muffin but because his mind was no doubt drifting off to the ostrich ranch, where he’d have spent another hair-raising morning among the feather rustlers had not Mother Matilda’s need been more pressing. Dittany tried again a little harder.