The Grub-And-Stakers Move a Mountain (12 page)

“Thanks, I will. Did I or did I not see a campaign poster for Samantha in Mr. Gumpert’s window as I came past?”

“I expect you did. Ellie said she’d put them around. We made six.”

“But Ellie was supposed to be making the butterflies!”

“Yes, Hazel. Have some more cheese, eh? They’ll get done.

Somehow.”

Samantha didn’t arrive until close to noon. “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t get off the phone,” she panted. “Everybody and his grandmother was calling up about the election.”

“What did you tell them?” Dittany asked as she handed Samantha a glass of sherry with one hand and turned on the broiler over some cheese sandwiches with the other.

“It depended on who they were. This is good, Dittany. To the women’s righters, I said I thought it was time we had some female representation in town government, which in fact I do. I reminded those who are always crabbing about kids and noise that Sam Wallaby had got the Development Commission to cut down those nice old trees that used to be in front of his store so he could have more parking space, which was neither necessary nor desirable since it pollutes the air and brings a gang of outsiders in here on their motorcycles throwing beer cans all over the street. I said if this was Sam Wallaby’s notion of civic development it certainly wasn’t mine.”

“Great!”

“And naturally we’re all up in arms about taxes so I got in a good lick about town projects that wind up in private hands and you can jolly well bet I cited that so-called high school annex as a prime example.”

“You didn’t mention McNaster by name, I hope?” Dittany gasped.

“Oh no, I was most careful not to. Joshua warned me about that. But he said I could jump on Sam Wallaby as hard as I liked because that’s how you play politics unless you go in for the high-minded approach, which we don’t have time for. This isn’t by any chance Wallaby’s sherry we’re drinking?”

“I’m afraid it is,” Dittany confessed, “but I shan’t buy any more. Here, have the last drop in the bottle and drink confusion to your enemies, eh? And from now on we spread the word to boycott Wallaby till he either withdraws from the election or we lick the pants off him, eh?”

“Right on!” cried Therese, who wasn’t used to drinking anything stronger than cambric tea with her lunch.

“Well, I don’t know what you thought you needed me for, Samantha,” said Dittany, rescuing the toasted sandwiches and beginning to dish up the soup. “Tell that reporter what you’ve told everybody else and you’re all set. I must say Arethusa didn’t lose any time.”

“Arethusa Monk? What’s she got to do with my interview?”

“Everything, naturally.” Dittany explained the midnight encounter.

“And she says she’ll donate to the Enchanted Mountain and do whatever else she happens to think of.”

“Lord have mercy!” exclaimed Hazel. “Who’s to say what that woman will think of?”

“Well, that’s the chance we take, eh?” said Dittany. “Eat up, everybody. As Gramp Henbit used to say, a full belly maketh a stiff upper lip.”

Samantha departed for her interview, her customary sang-froid quite restored. Hazel and Therese adjourned to the cellar for an ad hoc session on sheet dyeing. Dittany washed up the dishes, found her gardening gloves and a field mouse who was using the left one for a sleeping bag, apologized to the mouse and put on an old pair of mittens instead, loaded Gramp Henbit’s wheelbarrow with every implement that came to hand, and clanked off toward the Enchanted Mountain.

She realized she was walking more slowly than usual. No doubt Zilla was right about conquering one’s fears by doing what one was afraid of. Zilla hadn’t seen that arrow quivering in the ash tree, or old John Architrave pinned to the ground by its mate. It was perhaps just as well that Ethel upset the wheelbarrow, appearing to enjoy the resultant clash of mattocks and shears and giving Dittany something tangible to fuss about.

Ethel at least had a lovely afternoon getting in everybody’s way and barking at the Boy Scouts, who might never earn their Nature Lore badges but were putting their youthful energies to good use wresting up rotted stumps and hurling dead branches into a gully where nothing grew but the weediest of weeds. Dittany kept busy enough so that she wouldn’t have time to think and was getting wobbly in the knees with fatigue by the time Minerva decreed it was too dark to work any longer.

With profound gratitude on Dittany’s part and some reluctance on Ethel’s, they led the rattling, squeaking wheelbarrow brigade back to the tool shed and got the gear stowed. Dittany would have been glad to collapse and put her feet up after that, but she still had to replenish her larder and get square with the Binkles. That meant a trip to the shopping mall at the worst possible time of day.

Worse still, as she was coaxing Old Faithful along the highway she was passed at an alarming rate by a huge baby-blue car that cut in front of her so abruptly that she had a narrow escape from being forced off the road. She knew the car and she recognized its driver. That burly hulk with the bright red neck and the shiny black hah-could be no other than Andrew McNaster.

Had he deliberately tried to wreck her, or was this just his usual way of showing courtesy on the highway?

Anyway, he wasn’t waiting to find out what happened to her.

He zoomed on ahead, and as she entered Scottsbeck she saw the baby-blue car parked in front of a block of offices. He must be having an urgent conference with that slimy friend of his crooked lawyer. No doubt McNaster was perturbed at Samantha’s suddenly-announced candidacy and the burst of activity up on the Enchanted Mountain. But he couldn’t do anything drastic at this late date without tipping his hand and putting Sam Wallaby’s chances of election down the spout. Could he?

He could if he thought of something sneaky and rotten enough, and if anybody excelled in the sneaky and rotten department, it was Andy McNasty. Well, they’d just have to maintain eternal vigilance, which reminded Dittany she mustn’t forget the peace offering for the Binkles, though she wasn’t really all that concerned about their wanting Ethel back.

At half past six she was ringing then: doorbell, clutching a gift-wrapped bottle she’d brought from the mall. “This is by way of apology,” she explained when Jane Binkle came to the door. “In case you were wondering who kidnapped Ethel last night, I’m the guilty party.”

“Heavens, you don’t have to apologize,” said Jane. “We merely assumed our prayers had at last been answered. Far be it from me to turn down a bottle of Duff Gordon. Come in and have one with us.”

“Well, just one. I don’t want to butt in on your supper.”

Dittany knew Jane and Henry were folk of settled habits. In fact there wasn’t much she did not know about the Binkles.

She’d lived next door to them all her life and cried on Jane’s shoulder when her father died, although Ditson Henbit’s passing had been neither sudden nor unexpected. He’d been the middle-aged son of elderly parents when he’d taken unto himself a wife something less than half his age. Though it was claimed by some that Ditson’s mortal span had been curtailed by his efforts to keep up with his young bride, nobody could say he hadn’t enjoyed the experience while it lasted.

Because of their retiring natures, the Binkles were probably the only people in Lobelia Falls who still hadn’t heard the full story of McNaster’s perfidy. As they sipped their drinks, Dittany told it with all the trimmings. By the time she finished, Jane was gasping and Henry was gazing down thoughtfully into his half empty glass. His initial reaction surprised both women.

“I wonder who gets John Architrave’s money?”

“Why, Henry,” exclaimed his wife, “whatever made you think of that?”

“Consider the facts, Jane.”

Jane considered, then nodded. “Henry, no wonder you beat me three games out of five. There’s that big house of John’s sitting right smack cheek by jowl with McNaster’s den of iniquity that used to be such a nice old inn. You took Papa and Mama and me to dinner there the day we got engaged. Do you remember, Henry?”

“I remember.” Henry Binkle smiled his sweet, shy smile. “You had on one of those big floppy hats they used to wear and a pink dress with the roses I gave you pinned to your shoulder. And you were almost as pretty then as you are now.”

“Why, Henry!” Jane Binkle smiled back as sweetly and shyly as her husband and reached across the chessboard to touch his sleeve.

Dittany cleared her throat. “Would you two lovebirds prefer my room to my company, eh, or might I stay and pursue this interesting train of thought for a moment? I must say it hadn’t crossed my mind. Didn’t Mr. Architrave have any family at all?”

“Let me think.” Henry Binkle flushed a bit and folded his hands across his vest. “As you of course know, he was married for many years but never had any children.”

“Typical of John, eh?” said Jane. “I expect he had some vague understanding of the general principle but never got round to applying it.”

“I must say, Jane, you’re getting very advanced in your views lately,” her husband retorted with a twinkle that suggested their own childlessness was not due to any lack of application. “Getting back to Dittany’s question, John was one of three brothers, if I’m not mistaken. He was the only one too young to go. The others didn’t come back.”

Dittany knew what he meant. Canadian boys of John Architrave’s generation had gone to places like Vimy Ridge and Chateau-Thierry.

There’d been sentimental songs like “Keep the Home Fires Burning” and “Roses of Picardy” that Gram’s and Cramp’s friends had liked to sing around the piano, and another about “Hanging on the Old Barbed Wire” that nobody ever cared to remember.

“Did either of the older boys marry before they went overseas?”

she asked.

“Not that I ever heard of. Do you know, Jane?”

“I don’t think so, but wasn’t there a half sister who sort of went to the bad and left town? Seems to me she ran off with that red-haired masher who worked in the hardware store. I can just barely remember him.”

“By George, you’re right! Architrave’s old man was married twice, and the second wife was a sister of Minerva Oakes’s mother. Good Lord, I never thought. That makes Minerva John’s step niece or something, doesn’t it? I wonder why neither of them ever mentioned the connection?”

“Who’d want to be connected with a juggins like John Architrave?

Anyway, I believe he took a dim view of his father’s remarrying, and an even dimmer one when his half sister disgraced the family as she did. I suppose Minerva’s folks were none too happy either, if it comes to that. But anyway, if John died intestate, doesn’t that make Minerva the next of kin?”

“Not if the half sister married and had children. Or if she’s still alive herself, for that matter. She could be. She must have been at least ten years younger than John.”

“Women who run off with hardware clerks come to sticky ends,” said Jane sententiously. “Not that I’m wishing her any hard luck, but wouldn’t it be lovely if Minerva came in for John’s money? She’s had a hard row to hoe all these years with her husband dying young and those four boys to raise by herself, and now the grandchildren to help educate. She can’t have a cent to bless herself with. Any woman who has to let out her best bedroom to strangers isn’t doing it for the sake of having company in the house, no matter how brave a face she puts on. You see more of Minerva than we do, Dittany. You wouldn’t happen to know if she keeps in touch with any of her mother’s folks?”

Dittany shook her head. “I remember being down at Mr.

Gumpert’s a while before Christmas. Minerva was there picking out cards and she was moaning a bit about how she needed fewer each year because so many of the old folks were dying off. I’m quite sure there’s only her Aunt Nellie left down in Oshawa, and that’s on her father’s side, so Aunt Nellie wouldn’t count. But would Mr. Architrave have had any great fortune to leave?”

“Oh, I don’t suppose you’d call it a fortune,” said Henry Binkle, “but he must have got something from his folks, with both his brothers gone and the sister flown the coop. And he made a week’s pay out of the Water Department all these years and John was never one to chuck the dollars around, eh? Then there’s the house, which must be worth something at today’s prices. I don’t suppose many people would care to live right there next to the inn but it’s in the area that’s zoned for business.”

“Uh-huh, and it’s not going to surprise me one particle when Andy McNasty presents himself as the long-lost heir.” Dittany set down her empty glass. “And if nobody swallows that yarn he’ll think of another, you mark my words. Well, I must say this has been an interesting discussion. And you won’t mind my keeping Ethel with me?”

“Heavens, no!” Jane assured her. “Unless you’d rather come over and sleep in our spare room.”

“If I did, half the town would probably follow me over. What with the park and the election and Samantha’s anniversary party, it’s wall-to-wall pandemonium at my place. Oh, and while I think of it, could you bake something for the sale on Saturday if Therese Boulanger hasn’t already asked you?”

“I’ll be glad to. And I expect Henry wouldn’t mind keeping the books on what you’re going to raise. You’ll have to keep careful track of the cash or the McNaster-Wallaby crowd will be trying to run you in for embezzling, like as not. Henry’s awfully good at figures.”

Mr. Binkle murmured something into the back of his wife’s neck and she turned a patriotic scarlet. “Henry Binkle, I don’t know what’s got into you tonight! Go work some of it off carrying Ethel’s food out to the car for Dittany.”

“Want the doghouse, too?” Mr. Binkle offered gallantly, but Dittany told him she thought she could do without it. She was a little preoccupied as she avoided Ethel’s frenzied whooflings and tail-thumpings and filled a huge plastic bowl her mother had once been unlucky enough to win at a euchre party with some of the Binkle dog food.

It would indeed be nice if Minerva Oakes turned out to be an heiress. Dittany only wished she could feel a totally unalloyed joy at the possibility. Maybe she could if she’d never seen that sweet little elderly lady skewer a squirrel at a hundred paces, and if that sweet little elderly lady were less familiar with the Enchanted Mountain and less fit to spring up and down its precipitous slopes and if that sweet little elderly lady weren’t so hard up for cash and didn’t have all those grandchildren to educate and hadn’t regarded John Architrave as such a blot on the local landscape.