The Grub-and-Stakers Spin a Yarn (8 page)

Dittany heaved a fairly good-sized sigh. “She never has so far, at least not that I can recall. Is Mum beginning to wear on your nerves, dearest? We can always telephone Bert and have him tell her she’s needed right away in Moose Jaw or wherever he happens to be at the moment. I’m sure he misses her terribly. Reasonably sure, anyway.”

“It’s all right, dear,” said Osbert. “The situation’s not that desperate. Anyway, it looks as though I may not be around much for a while myself, so I’d much rather have her with you while I’m off at the mincemeat factory. I do wish they had some kind of easy sit-down job you could do, though, like counting raisins.”

“I’m not sure how productively I’d be spending my time as a raisin counter, darling,” Dittany demurred. “Furthermore, I have a slight hunch one of us ought to be looking for the solution right here in Lobelia Falls, because this is where everything always seems to end up sooner or later. Aha, I see the welcoming committee’s right on time.”

Something large, black, fuzzy, and confusing was rushing toward them at what might best be described as a lollop. This was not a bear, a bison, or even a yak; it was Ethel, back from her nature walk and glad to be reunited with her family. Osbert stepped forward to intercept the charge before she could get too affectionate with Dittany, slapped her sides a few times, told her she was a good old mutt, and inquired whether she’d be interested in hanging around outside to practice her jumps in case Aunt Arethusa showed up.

Ethel signified that she wouldn’t like this at all. The only things she wanted were her food dish before her and her loved ones around her. They therefore entered the house all three together, Dittany taking precedence because of her delicate condition and her aching feet. Once inside the kitchen, she collapsed on the cot that had stood since time more or less immemorial by the far wall behind the old iron stove with one of Gram Henbit’s crocheted afghans thrown over it and another folded ready to hand at one end.

Osbert tucked her up tenderly between the two afghans, refilled Ethel’s bowl, helped himself to a couple of hermits, and decided he’d better get in a few more licks on the ostrich ranch while he could, since production would inevitably fall off once Mother Matilda took him on as Director of In-House Security. Dittany wished him happy birding and shut her eyes. When she opened them, people were tiptoeing to and fro.

Strictly speaking, Clorinda, Arethusa, and Glanville were tiptoeing to. Only Ranville was tiptoeing fro, as needs he must if he and his brother were to reach their joint objective, which was obviously the front parlor. Dittany closed her eyes again so they wouldn’t feel they’d tiptoed in vain or expect her to get up and make either conversation or tea, for neither of which she had any inclination at this time. She only hoped they wouldn’t disturb Osbert en route, as he was sure to be preoccupied with Ralph and might say something hasty which he’d later regret.

Osbert had formed quite an attachment to Ralph, the seven-foot king ostrich who played a leading role in the work so soon to be temporarily preempted by Mother Matilda’s awful business. Ralph was the name Osbert’s parents had intended to bestow on him until Arethusa, who was his father’s sister, had talked them out of that and into Osbert Reginald.

All through grammar and high school Osbert had hated his aunt with a hate that was worse than a hate for naming him Osbert. Once he got into college he hadn’t minded so much because he’d already decided to become Lex Laramie and indeed sold his first short story to
Wild-Eyed Western
magazine while still a sophomore. Now he didn’t mind at all because he knew Dittany would have loved him even if his name had been Shadrach, Meshach, or Abednego; but she could understand why he still retained a certain fondness for the name he’d never had.

Dittany was darned if she’d name the boy twin Ralph, though. No child of hers was going to play second fiddle to an ostrich. Once that was decided, she spent a minute or so wondering how her mother was coping with seating arrangements in the parlor. Then she thought, “Of course! The piano bench,” and went back to sleep.

She probably hadn’t been asleep very long before Clorinda stopped at the cot long enough to ask, “Are you asleep, dear?” but seemed content to accept Dittany’s “Yes, Mum,” and let sleeping daughters lie.

Ethel thumped around a bit in hope of conning Dittany into filling her bowl yet again, but soon realized the tactic wasn’t going to get her anywhere. She collapsed with a grunt and began to snore gently. To Dittany’s half-listening ears came the tap-tap of Osbert’s typewriter. It sounded like the patter of just-hatched ostrich feet.

Out from the front parlor rolled the strains of “Down Where the Wurtzbuger Flows.” Clorinda had the happy faculty of being able to play by ear any song she’d heard often enough to remember how it went. She’d passed on the talent to her lone chick. Dittany was properly grateful and loved to play, but was not eager to usurp her mother’s place at the piano just now; though it did occur to her to wonder what Mum was sitting on since the twins were presumably occupying the piano bench.

Dittany also wondered about supper. She knew she ought to get up and start fixing things, but didn’t want to for fear the twins might take the activity as a hint that she wanted them to stay, which she most assuredly didn’t. What they ought to do was get back to the yarn shop and take their cousin out to supper. Miss Jane must have had an utterly ghastly day, what with all that extra mopping and bodies on the sidewalk and those nosy hordes of customers pushing in on her.

The twins must have been thinking the same thing themselves, for soon she could hear them telling her mother and Arethusa that this had been absolutely super and they hadn’t had so much fun in ages but they really must be getting back to Cousin Pru because surely the tumult and the shouting must have died away by now and she’d be wondering where they were; which their hostesses had to agree she almost certainly was. Mum was letting them out the front door, thank goodness. Dittany got up and began padding around in her stocking feet. She was scrubbing new potatoes at the sink when the two older women came out to join her.

“Well,” cried her mother gaily, “the sleeping beauty has arisen. You ought to have something on your feet, dearie, that floor might be chilly. Did you and the twins have a good zizz? I remember when you were a dear little lump in my tum, I just wanted to rest and rest.”

“Sometimes for as much as ten minutes at a time, if recollection serves me,” said Arethusa. “You kept jumping up to change the trimming on the bassinet.”

“Oh my stars, the bassinet!” cried Clorinda. “It’s up in the attic still, I hope. Or did I lend it to somebody? But who? Dittany, what are we going to do about the bassinet?”

“Nothing, Mum. Osbert’s parents have ordered us a lovely double crib from Eaton’s.”

“But when the babies are so teeny-tiny, a sweet little bassinet with ruffles and flounces and a dear little pink-and-blue blanket with teddy bears on it—or kittens, perhaps? Tom kittens and Tilly kittens? Maybe Miss Jane has a pattern. I could whip one up.”

“Mum, you’ve already knit a lovely carriage robe, and so have Osbert’s Aunt Lucy and Zilla Trott and Dot Coskoff and about six other people. Besides, two twins wouldn’t fit into my bassinet even if you could remember what you did with it.”

“We could get another, dear, and just put them side by side. Unless the twins turn out to be Siamese, but I don’t suppose they would. We’ve never had Siamese twins in our family.”

“Twins come in the paternal line,” Arethusa pointed out, “so your family doesn’t count. Or is it the other way around and our family doesn’t count? But my father was a twin. And so,” she added after a moment’s thought, “was his brother.”

“Not Siamese, though?” said Dittany.

“Oh no, Canadian to the bone. Were you planning to cook those potatoes or keep them for souvenirs?”

“Possess your soul in patience, Arethusa. You’ll get fed. Why don’t you and Mum have a little sherry? Maybe it will refresh your memory about …” Dittany was about to mention VP Nutmeg, but remembered just in time that this was a clandestine operation and she still wasn’t supposed to know who the first grabber had been. “… about what that man with the bullet hole said to you before he died.”

“But I’ve told you what he said,” Arethusa protested.

“No, you haven’t. You’ve told Mum, you’ve told Sergeant MacVicar, you’ve told Miss Jane Fuzzywuzzy, I expect you’ve told Glanville and Ranville and no doubt a few dozen more, but you’ve never said one single word to me. Think, Arethusa. Precisely what were the exact words he uttered?”

“Stap my garters!” Arethusa accepted the sherry Clorinda offered and helped herself to a considerable amount of cheese. “A fine time this is to expect me to think, ecod.”

Any time was a fine time to expect Arethusa to think, as Osbert would surely have pointed out if he weren’t still preoccupied with the ostriches. Dittany dumped the potatoes into the pan, thus demonstrating that there would be supper as a reward for cogitation, but refrained from putting the pan on the stove as a hint that potatoes might not get served to certain persons if they refused to exercise whatever it was they used for gray matter.

Where food was concerned, Arethusa could be a great one for catching a nuance. She knit her brows. She nibbled cheese, she sipped her sherry, she pondered deeply. A watcher might almost have been able to hear the gears clanking. At last, they meshed.

“Eureka!” Thus exclaiming, Arethusa choked on a crumb and had to be thumped on the back. Fortunately her recollection was not lost with the crumb. As soon as she was again able to articulate, she croaked, “His exact words were: ‘The raveled sleeve.’ ”

Clorinda shook her head. “Not ‘the raveled sleeve,’ dear. It’s ‘the ravell’d sleave.’ From that time when Macbeth murdered sleep, you know. Sleep that knits up the ravell’d etcetera. I could go on, but it’s considered unlucky in theatrical circles to quote from Macbeth. Maybe that’s why the man got shot.”

“Are you intimating that his assassin was a disgruntled thespian, forsooth?” demanded Arethusa.

“It’s a possibility that should definitely be explored,” said Clorinda. “I expect he’ll turn out to have been a member of some Shakespearean touring company. Leander Hellespont over in Scottsbeck would know, he’s still in charge of the Shakespearean festivals, isn’t he? Of course ‘ravell’d sleave’ is a redundancy because ‘sleave’ already means fibrous material that has been raveled or matted. This is very baffling, is all I can say. If you’re looking for the chops, Dittany, they’re in that plastic box marked ‘eggs.’ ”

“And the applesauce is in the meat safe, no doubt,” said her dutiful daughter. “Sit still, Mum. I’ll manage.”

“THE RAVELL’D SLEAVE, EH?”

Supper was over. Clorinda and Arethusa had gone off to Scottsbeck in the Monks’ station wagon to find out whether Leander Hellespont and his wife, Wilhedra, might have any information about traveling Shakespeareans. Osbert was alone with Dittany in the kitchen and intrigued by what she’d managed to worm out of Arethusa.

“And your mother claims a sleave is a—do you remember where we left the dictionary, pet? And what did I do with Mother Matilda’s phone number? Ah, here it is.”

Dittany brought the dictionary into the kitchen so she could eavesdrop while she checked her mother’s definition, but Osbert’s call was so short it was hardly worth the effort.

“Hello, Mother Matilda? This is Osbert Monk. I need to know whether your husband was given to reciting Shakespeare, He was? He did? Yes, he must have been. Thank you very much! I’ll see you in the morning.”

He hung up the phone and turned to Dittany, all agog. “Charles McCorquindale played Macbeth in his college dramatic society. I’ve got to see Sergeant MacVicar right away. Maybe you’d better come with me, if you feel up to it. I wouldn’t know a sleave from a pocket. Was your mother right about that quotation, by the way?”

“Oh yes,” Dittany assured him. “Mum’s seldom wrong about anything to do with the theater. Darling, do you think Mr. McCorquindale was trying to tell Arethusa where he’d hidden the nutmeg formula?”

“If he wasn’t, it seems odd he’d have been quoting Macbeth at a time like that. We know those other two men searched Mr. McCorquindale’s clothes while he was either dead or dying on the sidewalk, men took him away in his own car. I can’t think why they’d have bothered to lug him off if they’d found the formula then and there, can you?”

“No, dear. It can’t have been because they wanted to conceal his identity, or they wouldn’t have abandoned his body so close to Lammergen.”

“So,” Osbert continued, “it looks as though they had to take him and his car along for the simple reason that they hadn’t completed their search, don’t you think? And they ditched both the body and the car afterwards either because they’d found the formula or because they hadn’t. Which, come to think of it, doesn’t get us very far.”

“But it was a brilliant piece of deduction, darling,” Dittany consoled him. “You know, that end of the Lammergen Road does seem a lonely stretch because of the woods around it, but if you looked on the map you’d see that it runs quite near to the Scottsbeck shopping mall. I’ll bet you a nickel what those men did was leave another car parked in the mall.”

“Good thinking, pet,” Osbert agreed. “Then after they’d got rid of the cars with the bullet holes in them, all they’d have had to do would be to run through the woods to the parking lot, pick up the other car, and drive away pretending they’d been doing the stores. Nobody would notice because there’s always so much coming and going.”

“Speaking of going,” said Dittany, “why don’t we? The MacVicars will have finished their supper by now. We can at least talk to the sergeant and see what he thinks.”

“Right on, pardner. We’d better take the truck in case your feet give out again.”

The Monks owned two vehicles. One was the big, newish station wagon which Clorinda had taken over to Scottsbeck; chosen by Osbert and Dittany not out of ostentation but so that Ethel could take her ease in the back. The other was a small, aged pickup truck in which Osbert had been wont during his bachelorhood to go camping; it was now used mostly for taking the trash to the dump. By happy coincidence, the truck also had room in the back for Ethel to spread out comfortably. Refreshed by all that supper and a pleasant snooze, she hopped up and unfurled her shaggy ears to the evening breeze as they cruised down to the police station.