The Grub-And-Stakers House a Haunt (26 page)

“You’re quite right, James, I should not care to brain this snarling behemoth. I should, on the other hand, be quite pleased to watch it take a hunk out of you. If I knew the proper form of address, I should assure the creature that it needn’t hang back on my account. I trust you realize that you have in fact put me in an impossible position, and probably ruined what would have been a highly suitable marriage between your son and Miss Arethusa Monk, who happens to be the reigning queen of roguish Regency romance.”

“With a queenly income to match, I trust,” sneered the incorrigible Cottle. “Sorry to queer your pitch, son, but some day your princess will come, assuming your mother doesn’t head her off at the pass. You don’t really suppose old clutchy-claws Penelope will ever let you off the leash, do you, Billy-boy?”

“Is that his real name?” Dittany asked.

“Oh, yes, William Bugglesby Cottle, named for his grandpa the railroad spike magnate. I don’t know where this Pollicot nonsense came from. Now, people, not to be rashly importunate, but do you suppose I could sit up and pick the knots out of my shoelaces? It’s damp lying here and I’m subject to rheumatic twinges. Look, how about if we work out a little deal?”

“What sort of deal?” Osbert asked him.

“A pecunarily viable one, shall we say? The gist of it is, as I’ve been frank to reveal, I am at the moment in an unfortunate position fiscally as well as physically. As you know, that trunkful of stolen pelf, not to put it too crassly, was accidentally dowsed by Billy here, not that I hold it against him because he didn’t know any better, poor simp.

According to information gained from my nocturnal researches around the neighborhood, the loot which I’d meant to be the prop and mainstay of my twilight years is now in the far too capable hands of the RCMP. Can you corroborate this, Mr. Monk?”

“Oh, yes, you’re quite right.”

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: it might have been. This was a disappointment to me, naturally, but not necessarily a catastrophe, since I was also hearing rumors of a chest of gold that had been buried out here by an old mule skinner. And almost but not quite retrieved by an ancestor of mine, interestingly enough. Mrs. Oakes might like to know that in my quest for my imaginary roots while disguised as Mrs. Melloewhich I’ve enjoyed very much, by the way-I discovered that I am in fact descended from a delightful fellow who was known to his fellow bandits and mule rustlers as Fancylegs Ford-Ford being an alias, of course-because of his penchant for wearing a pair of purple gaiters that he’d acquired from some Eastern dude during a train robbery.

Great-Uncle Fancylegs had had the misfortune to shoot the mule skinner dead while trying to intimidate him into revealing the whereabouts of the gold.”

“Got me spang between the eyes,” confirmed a voice from the dark. “What did the bugger do with my mules?

He better o’ treated ‘em right, or I’ll look ‘im up in the Akashic Record an’-“

“Take it easy, old scout. According to my researches, Fancylegs was dreadfully upset at having killed you, he hadn’t meant to do more than scare you into giving up the gold. He buried you as best he could, not very efficiently, I’m afraid, because he wasn’t used to manual labor. Then he tied his horse behind your wagon and drove off with the mule team. As it happened, he knew of a railroad baron who’d once been a mule driver himself and still hankered after a team of his own. Your mules being apparently somewhat outstanding specimens of the breed-“

“Best dern mules in all Canada, an’ I’ll lick the ha’nt that says they wasn’t.”

“Well, I expect they must have been, because the railroad baron built them a palatial stable with solid silver drinking troughs and all modern conveniences-modern for the times, that is. He also had your wagon gilded. He used to hitch it up to the team and drive across the prairies singing ‘Buffalo Gals.’ There was a story around that the mules used to sing along with the driver, but one suspects that may have been some drunken newspaperman’s flight of fancy.”

1 hat ain’t no flight o’

fancy, dag-nab it!” Hiram Jellyby was beside himself with anger, his eyeballs a flaming vermilion. “I learnt them mules to sing ‘Buffalo Gals’ myself, nights around the campfire after we was fed an’ watered an’ felt like havin’ a little hooraw before we turned in.” His temper softened.

“But you say they done all right for theirselves after I was kilt?”

“Couldn’t have done better, by all accounts. Every one of them lived to a ripe old age and was buried with solemn rites, including a beanhole barbecue and massed singing of ‘Buffalo Gals’ by mixed choirs imported all the way from Ottawa. Those mules used to get written up in the papers every so often, I’ve seen stories myself. My Uncle James, for whom I was named, kept a scrapbook. The man who bought the mules was the same railroad baron for whom Bill Bugglesby used to polish spikes. I rather think it may indirectly have been he and his mules who drew me to Penelope. I can’t think what else could have caused me to succumb to her charms, except possibly the size of the fortune Bill was willing to settle on his only child.”

“By gorry! My ol’ buddies writ up in the papers.”

Hiram was sniffling a bit, and who could have blamed him? Osbert and Dittany exchanged compassionate glances; Zilla and Arethusa beamed at Hiram with genuine affection. For all but the Cottles, this was a tender moment in what had thus far been a singularly untender evening. Dittany made a mental note to tell Mr. Glunck about the newspaper stories so that he could hunt them up and put copies on display with the platinum prints. Osbert began mentally recasting the eulogy he meant to deliver at the interment of Hiram’s bones, which had been set for the following morning. As they stood there, each with his own thoughts, James Cottle now upright but with his shoelaces still in a hard knot, a voice came out of the darkness.

“Noo then, what’s going on here?”

“Sergeant Mac Vicar,” shouted Osbert. “Howdy, Chief, you’re just the man we want to see. Here’s your Peeping torn, who also happens to be both the bank robber and the murderer who killed the bank guard by feeding liniment to his cow.”

“Not to mention the sneak thief who swiped Winona Pitcher’s purple gaiters out of Minerva Oakes’s attic while impersonating a respectable woman in search of her roots,” Zilla Trott prompted.

“Hoots toots, a veritable one-man crime wave. Wad you happen to hae found oot yon arch-villain’s real name?”

“It’s Cottle,” said Dittany. “Plain old James Cottle.

And Mrs. allegedly Pollicot James here is really Mrs. James Cottle and her son is William Bugglesby Cottle, named for his rich grandfather the spike-polisher.”

“I see. You couldna hae made the situation clearer, lass. Have you charged him, Deputy Monk?”

“No, Chief. To tell you the truth, I’m a bit nonplussed, not to say buffaloed, about the protocol. Mr. Cottle’s admitted in front of me and all these other witnesses that he robbed his own bank and cut off his own finger and tried to extort ransom from his wife. He carried part of the loot away in a sack and he’s pretty steamed at you for giving the Mounties that other trunkful of money he’d buried out here, which he’d planned to toss away in riotous living as he’s already done with the other half. He’s a thoroughgoing bad hat, Chief, I didn’t know whether the bank robbery charge or the manslaughter by cow ought to take precedence.”

“Aye, Deputy Monk, an interesting legal point to consider.

Cottle’s fingerprints being on the money wrappings, there can be nae doot of his guilt in yon matter of the bank robbery. As to the manslaughter charge, I fear we should have to find the liniment bottle in order to make it stick.”

“Ha! Ha!” crowed the one-man crime wave. “I deny the liniment. You can’t pin Wilberforce Woodiwiss’s death on me, you haven’t a shred of evidence.”

“Want to bet?” Osbert retorted smugly. “What about the golden whistle that was found on the floor of the cow garage and identified by Mildred Orser, sister of Wilberforce Woodiwiss and present owner of the cow, whose name happens to be Mossy, as having come from that very watch chain you’ve got strung across your ugly paunch right now?”

“A golden whistle!” Avid greed was written large now on the banker’s normally bland pink countenance. “Where is it? Let me see, quick!”

“Here it is.”

From his pocket Osbert extracted a small cardboard box lined with cotton that had originally contained a bracelet made from slices of kiwi fruit embedded in clear plastic which Dittany’s mother had mistakenly thought her daughter would like for a birthday present. Now lying on the cotton was the little golden whistle Mrs. Orser had given him, still bravely shining despite its battered and trodden-upon condition. The banker moaned.

“Damn that cow! Why couldn’t she have watched where she put her stupid feet?”

That did it. Sergeant MacVicar rose up in the full majesty of the law, read James Cottle his rights in a resounding Presbyterian tone, and arrested him with a verve and panache that none of the onlookers would ever forget.

Awesome was the moment when the sergeant snapped on the handcuffs. Held were several breaths as Osbert knelt to slash away the knotted shoelaces. The laces would of course have had to be removed anyway when Cottle got to the jail, so that he wouldn’t try to hang himself with them. Nothing, however, seemed further from the prisoner’s mind than suicide; he was already talking boastfully of getting a flexible-minded lawyer and beating the rap.

“Nonsense, James,” his wife retorted sharply. “You are now a jailbird and I am going to initiate divorce proceedings tomorrow morning.”

This statement, regrettably, elevated Cottle’s spirits to a new high. He was singing “Buffalo Gals” at the top of his untuneful voice when they loaded him into Lobelia Falls’s official and only police car. Hiram Jellyby remarked scathingly that his mules had sung it better, and was quite likely right.

The box of gold pieces that Cottle had hoped to steal to make up for his confiscated bank loot was loaded into the back of the police car. Cottle had clamored to sit beside the gold but Sergeant MacVicar wouldn’t let him and it served him right, as Penelope Bugglesby Cottle was the first to remind him.

“Pollicot,” she went on, “take me home. I am totally prostrate.”

She neither looked nor sounded even moderately prostrate.

Her son glanced uneasily from his mother to Arethusa and back again. “Ah-er-mother-“

“Now, Pollicot!”

The son cast one last, yearning look at the lady of his heart and helped his mother into the red sports car. Arethusa didn’t even notice.

“Well/’ said Zilla, absentmindedly polishing the blade of her trusty hatchet on the hem of her skirt, “I guess that’s it for tonight. Might as well mosey along home.”

“Drop by the house in a while for a cup of camomile tea if you’d like to,” said Dittany. “We’ve got to get the kids to bed first. They’ve been out too late, the little rounders.

Now what did I do with Cramp’s wishbone?”

“Here it is, dear,” said Osbert.

“But where are the gold cuff links I’d tied on to the tip? That ornery sidewinder Cottle must have pinched them from force of habit.”

“A knave of the first water,” remarked Arethusa. “One can hardly admire so thoroughgoing a scoundrel, but one does have to feel a certain grudging respect for his audacity.

Have I mislaid an escort around here somewhere? Meseems I came with some chap driving a red car.”

“William Bugglesby Cottle,” Dittany reminded her.

“Previously known to us all as Pollicot James, for reasons that may never be fully explained. And his mother, who claims to be totally prostrated. I have a feeling you won’t be seeing much more of that twosome, Arethusa. You weren’t really planning to marry him, were you?”

“Marry whom, prithee? What was that you were saying about tea?”

“Come on, Dittany,” said Osbert. “Climb in with the kids and I’ll give you a ride home.”

“Thank you darling, but somebody has to carry the turkey bone. Oh well, those cuff links were ugly anyway.

Then we’ll see you later, Zilla?”

“No, I don’t think so, thanks. I’m not trusting Hiram with that sherry bottle of yours a second time. What do you think will become of the gold? Do you suppose we’ll ever find out where it came from?”

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” said Osbert. “Sergeant MacVicar will get his sons working on it. Look at that moon up there. Doesn’t it make you want to sing?”

It did. They all joined in on “Buffalo Gals”: Dittany, Zilla, Arethusa, Hiram, Annie, Rennie, and Ethel. It was a merry party that walked home from Hunnikers’ Field that night.

And it was a record crowd that met the following morning to hear Mr. Pennyfeather preach his memorial sermon over the aged and eroded bones of the late Hiram Jellyby. Hiram’s mortal remains were gathered into a nice mahogany box that Michael Trott had made in manual training class when he was a boy. Zilla and Minerva had lined it elegantly with the remains of a silk-covered down comforter that had been purchased by Minerva’s mother in 1927. Mr. Glunck had lent the platinum print to be displayed in front of the box during the service. Hiram was deeply moved by this public show of concern and compassion. He was attending the service but did not plan to materialize in front of the congregation because he didn’t think it would be quite the thing for the ghost to hog the show away from the bones. Zilla didn’t think so either.

It was, as everybody later agreed, a lovely service even though Mr. Pennyfeather had drawn the line at “Buffalo Gals” and substituted “Shall We Gather at the River,”

which was appropriate enough in its way. Osbert delivered his eulogy with grace, brevity, and a touch of humor.

When he mentioned the faithful mules and their meaningful relationship with their devoted driver, a few heartfelt sniffles came from what appeared to be an empty space in the front pew, but nobody noticed those because so many others were sniffling too.

A light collation in the vestry after the bones had been reverently interred in the graveyard beside the church gave people a chance to recruit their inner persons on lemonade and brownies, tell each other how nice it had been of them to come, and speculate about what was going to happen to all that gold.