The Luck Runs Out (12 page)

“Professor Ames? Oh, we managed fine once he remembered he was supposed to turn on that little switch. But I’d keep my own earphones shut off if I had to listen to that Mrs. McSpee nagging me about wiping my feet every time I turned around. She came over here looking for Professor Ames just before six o’clock because she claimed she had his supper almost ready, but between you and me and the gatepost, I think it was no more than an excuse to find out what was happening over here. Anyway, she sat here talking for maybe ten minutes, and I declare, if she’d stayed much longer I might have said something I’d have been sorry for. Nag, whine, fuss, complain, and such a smell of Clorox around her you’d think she dabbed it behind her ears for perfume. I just plain don’t see how that man stands her.”

“What was she crabbing about this time?” asked Helen.

“Oh, things in general, but especially the murder. She’s got some bee in her bonnet that it was a maniac who’s going around killing lone women. I said to her, ‘Why, Mrs. McSpee, you’re not alone. You’ve got Professor Ames right there in the house with you,’ and she gave him a look as much as to say, ‘What good would he be?’ I wanted to speak up and say she was safe because not even a murderer could stand to get close enough to kill her, but I managed to hold my tongue. I do think that’s an awful thing to do, though, ripping a man up the back right in front of his own face. Don’t you?”

Shandy choked on his drink. Helen gave him a look. Though probably not so scathing a look as Lorene McSpee had given Timothy Ames, it had its effect. He nodded his head in solemn agreement.

“You’re absolutely right, Iduna. No excuse whatever for her to make such a remark. If you needed a good man in a tight place, you’d never do better than count on Timothy Ames. Would she, Helen?”

“Peter, you know I’m hopelessly prejudiced about who’s the best man in these parts,” Helen replied lightly. “Now, I’m going to put the food on the table and you two are going to sit here and enjoy your drinks till I call you. Iduna, tell Peter about the time you and I decided to enter a jar of watermelon pickles in the county fair.”

Miss Bjorklund obligingly began some pleasant narrative, chuckling every so often at her own recollections. Shandy chuckled, too, not because he was paying any attention to her story but because he wanted her to keep talking. It was like having somebody sing him a lullaby. He was almost asleep when Helen summoned them to dinner, and ate his meal in an agreeable state of semi-somnolence while his wife and her friend reminisced.

That was by far the pleasantest interlude of that long, harrowing day. It lasted far too short a time. They had finished wedges of a custard pie angels might have envied, cleared away, and got themselves back to the fireplace when Mirelle Feldster blew in. As usual, she was in the midst of a sentence before Helen could get the door open. Without waiting to be asked, she flung her coat over a chair and plunked herself down in the middle of the sofa.

“So I expect it’s only a matter of time before they arrest the brute. Nice bit of publicity, I don’t think! Seems to me we’ve been in the news entirely too often for comfort ever since Peter decided to get cute with those Christmas trimmings of his.”

“One thing I’ll say for you, Mirelle, you certainly know how to get the most out of a grudge,” said Helen with no particular rancor. “Who’s going to be arrested, and why?”

Mirelle’s marshmallow features gathered themselves into a series of bunches intended to express regret and disapproval, but betraying only eagerness to spread the news. “Why, Stott, of course, for murdering that Flackley woman.”

“Well, that’s the nuttiest thing I ever heard!”

Iduna blushed. “Sorry to be so plain-spoken. I don’t know who told you that piece of foolishness, but whoever it was better go get his mouth washed out with brown laundry soap. Excuse me, Helen, I didn’t mean to butt in like this.”

“Not at all, Iduna. You took the words right out of my mouth. Oh, I beg your pardon, I don’t think you two have met Mirelle Feldster, our next-door neighbor; Iduna Bjorklund, an old friend of mine from South Dakota.”

Mirelle wasn’t a bit fazed. “We introduced ourselves this afternoon. I stopped in to see if there’d been any news about the pig. Jim wouldn’t tell me anything, naturally, and now he’s off to another of his lodge meetings.”

Jim Feldster, a member of the animal husbandry department, belonged to a number of fraternal organizations. It seemed odd that he’d take off to attend any such function at a time like this, but perhaps she went to enlist the aid of his lodge brothers in the search. On the other hand, perhaps he just couldn’t face the thought of an evening with Mirelle after the day he must have put in. It was generally understood that Jim sought fraternity as a relief from conjugality, and nobody blamed him much, though his being gone so often had the unhappy effect of turning his wife loose on the community at large for her diversion. She was always the first to know everything, and the likeliest to get it wrong.

Nevertheless, her tongue could do harm, and often had done. Likely as not it was she herself who’d thought up this balderdash about Stott’s getting arrested. The important thing was to squash her before she could spread the word around.

“Why, it’s all over campus,” she hedged. “As soon as people heard about your having the pair of them to dinner last night—”

“What?” cried Helen. “Why would anybody think anything of that?”

“Helen, dear,” said Mirelle sweetly, “we may be hicks from the sticks compared to the clever sophisticates you used to know in all those other jobs you got fired from, but we’re not quite the mental incompetents you seem to think we are. How did you ever manage to worm it out of them, after they’d managed to keep it quiet for so long?”

“Keep what quiet? Mirelle, do you have the remotest idea what you’re talking about?”

“Why, about Stott and the Flackley woman, of course. To think of its going on year after year right under our noses, and her passing around as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. I understand now there’s some talk of exhuming Elizabeth Stott. I suppose Flackley figured after Elizabeth died he’d make an honest woman of her, but he let things drag on for fear of jeopardizing his position with Svenson. Then when you brought it out in the open the way you did, they had a big fight and—”

“Mirelle Feldster, you ought to be certified!”

Helen was blazing now. “Do you mean to sit here in my own house and tell me you’ve cooked up a big scandal out of nothing but the simple fact that I happened by the merest chance to invite two people to dinner on the same evening?”

“I’d hardly call it nothing, Helen. After all, the poor woman’s dead. We might as well be charitable.”

“Then your charity had better begin at home! I stopped to chat with Miss Flackley the other day while I was over looking around the animal husbandry barns. She struck me as an interesting woman and I invited her to dinner so that I could get to know her better. Professor Stott came along to look at his pig and stopped to say hello to us, so I asked him, too. Peter and I often do, as I’m sure you’re aware, since he’s alone at home and I enjoy his company. So does my husband, in case you’re wondering.”

“For that matter,” said Iduna, casting a cold eye at Mirelle, “who wouldn’t? I took to Professor Stott right away, myself.”

“There, see,” crowed Mirelle as if her point had been proved. “It’s all right, Helen dear. I quite understand how upset you must be at getting your husband into another fix when he’d barely crawled out from under the last one. I simply thought I’d drop over and offer my sympathy for what it’s worth, which doesn’t seem to be much. I’ve got to run.”

She picked up her coat and was gone before anybody could have the pleasure of slamming the door behind her. It was Iduna who found her voice first.

“Well,” she said placidly, “can you beat that?”

“I’d like to,” said Helen through clenched teeth. “Peter whatever happened to those ducking stools they used to have for scolds and gossips?”

“Good question. I’ll bring it up at the next faculty meeting. Good God, Helen, do you realize she’s probably spouted that filth to the police?”

“Of course she has, and Heaven only knows how much more. Iduna, I hate to say this, but by this time tomorrow that woman will have told at least thirty people about how Professor Stott murdered Miss Flackley so he could start a red-hot love affair with you.”

“That’ll be something to write the folks back home, won’t it? Helen, why don’t I go tidy up in the kitchen and give you and Peter a little time to yourselves? That silver of yours is so gorgeous it’s an honor to wash it.”

“Speaking of silver,” Helen said to get the taste of Mirelle out of the air, “did you happen to hear anything about that robbery on the news?”

“They had an interview with a Mr. Birkenhead. The reporter asked him what the value of the gold and silver was, and he said as far as he was concerned, the main value of the metal lay not in its monetary cost but in the skill of the artisans who fashioned it. Therefore, he didn’t consider his company to have been seriously affected by the robbery. I thought that was pretty classy, myself. Anyway, he wouldn’t come right out and say how much those men stole, but it seems there was an extra lot of gold in the place just then because they’re making a special dinner service for one of those Eastern potentates, so it’s estimated they must have got at least half a million dollars’ worth, all told.”

“And to think I rode off in the van with it,” said Helen in some awe.

“And to think I helped lug it out,” said Shandy, pulling his wife closer to him. “Helen, do you think I’m some kind of Jonah?”

“No, but if you don’t go easy on Iduna’s cooking, you may turn into some kind of whale,” she replied. “Peter, you’re not going to let yourself be influenced by anything Mirelle Feldster said, are you? You know she’s got scrambled eggs where her brains should be.”

“Yes, I know. But it seems lately that—Oh, Christ, what now?”

The brass knocker was being thumped again, this time in a slow, reverberating knell. Shandy untangled himself from his wife and got up to answer the door. To his unconcealed amazement, the caller was Harry Goulson, Balaclava Junction’s friendly neighborhood mortician.

“Good God!” was Shandy’s suave and polished greeting.

“Nope, just the guy who comes to pick up the pieces afterward,” Goulson replied cheerfully. He was a jolly soul with a quip for every occasion, except when engaged on professional business. “I was wondering if I could bother you for a few minutes, Professor?”

“Why not? Everybody else does. Come in, Goulson, take a pew. Forgive my abruptness just now. I was—er—surprised to see you because I thought you’d be at the lodge meeting with Jim Feldster. Mirelle was just here and she mentioned that he’d gone. Have you met my wife, by the way?”

“Evening, Mrs. Shandy. The pleasure’s probably more mine than yours.”

“Not at all,” said Helen politely. “May I take your hat? Would you care for a cup of coffee?”

“Gosh, no, thanks. I just wanted a word with the Professor, here.”

“Then I’ll go help Iduna in the kitchen and leave you to it.”

Helen left the room. Goulson took a straight chair and leaned forward, still wearing his good-quality black overcoat, still clutching his well-brushed black fedora.

“The thing is, Professor, Fred Ottermole tells me you’re sort of the go-between on this awful thing that happened up here last night.”

“President Svenson—er—appointed me in some such capacity, yes.”

“Well, that’s why I thought I’d come to you. To tell the honest truth, I didn’t have nerve enough to tackle the President about this, but—well, I sort of thought you might understand.”

“It’s possible I might, if you’d care to explain,” said Shandy rather pointedly.

Goulson drew in his breath. “The long and short of it is, I’d like to handle Martha Flackley’s funeral.”

“I don’t know why you shouldn’t. You’re not exactly—er—pressed for competition around here, are you? However, I should think the proper person for you to speak to is Frank Flackley, the nephew who’s staying at her house. He seems to be next of kin.”

“Yes, but who is he?” said Goulson. “I mean, I know he’s a Flackley and all, but he doesn’t know me from a hole in the wall, and I don’t even know which branch of the family he comes from. Now, with Martha it was different. I knew her father and my father before me knew his father before him, and that’s the way it’s been right down through the years. I’m not trying to claim the Goulsons and the Flackleys were ever what you’d call lodge buddies or anything like that, but what with old families dying off, we’re the two longest-established family businesses in this neck of the woods and we’ve always had respect for one another.

“I was standing right there in the shed the day my father told Will Flackley he was buying a motorized hearse. ‘Will,’ he says, ‘I can’t tell you how bad I feel about this, but my clients expect it and I’ve got to move with the times. But I tell you what I’ll do, Will, when your time comes, I’ll see that you get a proper send-off with two good horses and the old high-sprung hearse, same as your father and your grandfather before him. And if I go before you, my son here will honor the promise. Won’t you, Harry?’ And I said, ‘Yes, Pop,’ and I meant it.

“Well, to make a long story short, we buried Will Flackley the way we said we would, and we didn’t charge the family one cent for it, either. Father was still alive though failing then, and he sat on the seat with me while I handled the reins. That was the last time we used the old horse-drawn hearse, but I’ve kept her in the shed as a family heirloom and she’s all shined up and ready to go tomorrow.

“What with modern progress and all, Martha and I never had any business dealings. We used to pass the time of day now and then when we’d happen to bump into each other, and she never forgot what we did for her father, but we both had our businesses to tend to and she was never one to mix in much. Be that as it may, she’s got nobody left now except this foreigner out of God knows where, and I just figure it’s up to me to see she gets a decent funeral. I’m not looking for any pay and I wouldn’t take it if anybody offered. One of these days, the Lord willing, I’m going to meet Father on that bright and shining shore and I want to be able to walk up to him and say, ‘Pop, I kept my promise.’ I suppose that sounds crazy to you, eh?”