The Luck Runs Out (18 page)

“M’ yes,” said Shandy. “That’s a good point, Iduna. Anyway, it’s hard to believe any chap who can plow a straight furrow and understand the esoteric subtleties of cucumber scab would stoop to falsehood. That leaves us with a rather nasty alternative, doesn’t it?”

“Do you mean Birgit and that little Gables girl?” cried Helen. “Peter, they couldn’t!”

“No, the pair of them couldn’t pull it off alone, and Sieglinde maintains Birgit wouldn’t do such a thing, so let’s consider another hypothesis. We do know that the Gables kid is bright, unhappy, and not especially popular at Balaclava. Those are the ingredients of a potential troublemaker, right?”

“I suppose so,” Helen sighed, “but—”

“But me no buts. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Miss Gables hatches up a clever plot, inspired by that kidnapping episode in which we ourselves were so damnably involved, to purloin Belinda as a protest thing for the Viggies. Naturally, she goes to Birgit with her idea, but Birgit refuses to countenance it. She doesn’t want to hurt Professor Stott herself, and she doesn’t want Hjalmar involved in something that could put him out of the Competition and get him expelled two months before graduation. Having, as she thinks, put an end to Matilda’s plan, she dismisses it from her mind. Young Matilda is ticked off and decides to go ahead on her own hook. She manages to enlist the aid of at least one other Viggie, whom I picture as large, strong, doltish, and male. When she learns, perhaps by attending that same lecture, that Miss Flackley’s van is unexpectedly available, she whips into action.”

“How, for instance?”

“She lurks. As she sees Stott homeward wend his weary way and Miss Flackley turn out of the parking lot, she rushes out from wherever she’s lurking and flags down the van.”

“The confederate would have to do that Matilda would be too small to see in the dark.”

“I concede you the confederate. In any event, Miss Flackley is told in pretended agitation that one of the animals is sick up at the barns, and can she come right this minute? She goes, of course. Presumably she and the nagger ride up together. As she alights from the van, she’s seized from behind and muffled in her own mohair stole to prevent outcry.”

“All right, then what?”

“Miss Gables would have a second vehicle waiting up at the pigpens. Her plan would be to hustle Miss Flackley into conveyance number two and keep her prisoner while they loaded Belinda into the van and took her to a hiding place. They’d then join forces up on Old Bareface. Miss Flackley would then be put back into her own van, perhaps loosely bound as you were, in a spot where she wouldn’t be able to raise an immediate hue and cry when she worked herself loose. The conspirators would hightail it for the college, and by the time Miss Flackley got to a phone, they’d be snug in their dorms.”

“But she’d know who they were.”

“Not necessarily. She never mingled with the student body, except those who had occasion to frequent the animal barns while she was working there. It was dark, remember, and they’d have kept their jacket hoods or scarves or whatever up around their faces. At least they’d intend to, but being a bunch of silly young amateurs, they might flub it. Let’s deduce from the sunflower seeds found on the seat that Matilda is driving the van. The confederate, having locked Miss Flackley in the other car with her hands tied, or whatever, loads the sow aboard and away goes Matilda with Belinda. You follow me so far?”

“I follow you. Oh, Peter, you do make it sound horribly plausible.”

“It gets more horrible when the other person tries to get into the car with Miss Flackley. Perhaps she’s managed to get her hands loose or recovered from the whiff, of ether they’ve given her or—Well, anyway, they struggle. Miss Flackley must have been a lot stronger than she looked, considering her profession. Her opponent has more of a scrap than he bargained for. Perhaps he’s holding that sharp little knife of hers. He might have used it to prick the pig in the rump and make her climb into the van. I can’t imagine Belinda’s making that sort of effort without considerable persuasion. Anyway, somehow or other the knife gets into somebody’s hand and Miss Flackley’s throat is cut.”

“By accident, you mean?”

“Oh yes, I should think so. Deliberate murder would be no part of Matilda’s plan. However, Miss Flackley is dead. Naturally, the person who killed her panics, stuffs the body into the feeder and goes ahead with the original plan because he doesn’t know what else to do. When he reaches the rendezvous, he either confesses to Matilda or, more probably, pretends to be shutting Miss Flackley inside the back of the van and hustles the girl off before she has a chance to find out her plan’s gone wrong.”

“Peter, you could be right. So when her father called her to the assembly next morning Birgit would conclude that Matilda went ahead with the plan despite her veto, and come charging down with fire in her eye to straighten out the Viggies. When she heard about Miss Flackley’s horrible death and realized she might have prevented it if she hadn’t been so cocksure about being able to control her little band of serious thinkers, she went into a tailspin. I wonder whether Thorkjeld told Birgit about the murder or just said, ‘Come and hunt the pig.’ He won’t remember and she won’t tell you. Unless her mother happened to overhear. You might ask Sieglinde.”

“Later, perhaps. What difference does it make? I could sit here spouting theories till your ears fell off and none of them would amount to a hill of beans unless I could come up with some tangible evidence. Please pass the cranberry sauce.”

“Oh, Helen,” said Iduna, “were you with me at that church supper when Reverend Spottswold handed the cranberry sauce to Mrs. Olson just as she took a sneezing fit and her store teeth fetched loose and bit a big chunk out of that emerald-green rooster feather boa Mrs. Pleyer had got herself gussied up in?”

As a change of subject, it was a wow. Either because she sensed her husband was fed up with doom and gloom or because she herself couldn’t take any more, Helen began to fill in the details with hilarious effect. Soon all three were in near convulsions. By the time they’d sobered down enough to start thinking about dessert, Timothy Ames dropped over to get away, as he explained, from the smell of chlorine bleach for a while. They played four-handed cribbage and gorged on chocolate cream pie and passed a generally pleasanter evening than any of them had expected.

In the morning, however, was the funeral. While Iduna was still adjusting her hat and Helen hunting for her best black kid gloves, faculty members and student representatives in sober attire began filing down the Crescent on their way to the Baptist church.

The animal husbandry department appeared in force. Jim Feldster, as a senior member, evidently felt himself obligated to take a leading part in the affair. Mirelle, in spite of the catty remarks she’d been making about Miss Flackley ever since the murder, trotted right along beside him, laying it on, in Iduna’s apt phraseology, for all she was worth.

Lorene McSpee, who could never have had occasion to know Miss Flackey but didn’t intend to miss the show, joined the profession herding Professor Ames. Tim was looking wretchedly respectable in a dazzling white shirt and sharply pressed trousers, although he clung to his ratty old jacket as a child to its security blanket. Shandy, fidgeting by the window and wondering what took two grown women so long to get their coats on, was relieved to see John and Mary Enderble, twin souls of kindness, come out and form a protective bodyguard around Tim. John did not appear to have his mouse along. Had they hired a sitter, or did the mouse no longer require such frequent feedings? Probably the latter, mice being precocious creatures.

Now the Svensons loomed into view, Sieglinde looking inexpressibly beautiful and noble and faintly sad, as became the occasion. She had on her familiar blue tweed coat, but a new beret of a pale flax color since Thorkjeld had found he could no longer endure the sight of her old blue one and had torn it to shreds with a wild cry of “Arrgh!” for reasons she fully understood as a welling up from the unplumbable depths of his adoration.

Birgit and her two younger sisters were with their parents. Shandy couldn’t see much of Birgit’s face because she’d turned up her coat collar, wore a felt hat with its brim pulled down over her face, and had on dark glasses. She looked like a young Greta Garbo, and was being about as sociable and forthcoming as the Swedish star would have been under similar circumstances.

Just as Helen and Iduna at last announced themselves ready to swell the throng, Professor Stott lumbered along. He was impeccably garbed in a dark gray overcoat and a deep brown suit. His jaunty green porkpie hat had been replaced by a sober homburg that matched the suit. Had his head borne hair, not a strand would have been out of place. Nevertheless, he managed to convey a general effect of dishevelment. When they fell into step with him, he hardly seemed to notice he had company until Iduna ventured a remark that Miss Flackley would have been pleased by such a turnout.

His mien became perhaps half a degree less somber.

“Perhaps it would indeed have been a source of gratification. One hopes so. As the poet hath expressed it, the heart bowed down by weight of woe to weakest hope will cling, to thought and impulse while they flow that can no comfort bring. For myself, I confess, I see no comfort. Please forgive this unmanly urge to share the aforementioned weight of woe.”

“What are friends for?” said Iduna. “Anyhow, I reckon my shoulders are broad enough to hold an extra woe or two.”

“Miss Bjorklund, you are a tower of strength. I am emboldened to term you the star that illumines my dark night of tribulation. That you are so gracious as to employ the word ‘friend’ is, however, a felicity of which I find myself at this juncture undeserving. Miss Flackley has given her life in a vain effort to save Belinda, while I—I have striven, Miss Bjorklund, truly striven with every fiber of my being, but—”

He choked, and had to pause for recovery. “At this moment, I am so totally overwhelmed by a sense of failure that your kindness turns to gall. I feel degraded, unworthy.”

“Now, now,” said Iduna, laying a hand on his arm, “you won’t be helping Belinda any if you let yourself get down in the dumps like this. You’ve just got to do like Columbus, sail on, sail on, sail on and on. We had to learn that piece in school when I was ten. They made me recite it at assembly. Oh my, was I scared!”

Stott’s backbone stiffened. His shoulders squared. His majestically porcine features settled into a more resolute mold.

“You have great wisdom as well as a great heart, Miss Bjorklund. Sail on, sail on, sail on and on. That must indeed be our watchword until this grievous wrong has been righted.”

Shandy personally didn’t think much of that watchword, the nearest water being Cat Creek, which was un-navigable except by toy sailboat. He had an excellent memory for verse as a rule and was sure he could dredge up a better one. However, the only line that came to mind was from
The Cremation of Sam McGee.

“Then I made a hike, for I didn’t like to hear him sizzle so,” hardly struck the note he was looking for. He wisely decided to leave Stott to Iduna and concentrated on piloting his wife safely into the church.

This was no small feat. Harry Goulson had certainly kept his vow to do Martha Flackley proud. The old hearse was waiting at the side door, shined up and ready to go as advertised. Loki and Tyr were in double harness, Loki wearing that sad, contemplative expression so appropriate to the occasion, Tyr quietly asleep standing up. The pair, were groomed as for a competition, but with black leather bosses replacing the usual brass on their harnesses and slightly moth-eaten but still impressive plumes of black ostrich feathers adorning their heads. They looked magnificent. As Shandy waited his turn to enter the sanctuary, he caught many an envious glance fixed on the team, and no wonder.

Ninety and a hundred years ago, such owners of purebred Belgians, Clydesdales, and Percherons might have been joking about “Buggins’s Bastards.” The earliest interbreeding efforts of Balaclava Buggins and his twenty-three students had produced some odd-looking specimens, but now a single Balaclava Black colt might fetch a sum that would make a Shire horse look like a Shetland pony.

Exactly what the Balaclava Black bloodlines were only those in the highest college echelons knew, and they were sworn by a mighty oath to utmost secrecy. The Flackleys might have known. From earliest days, Flackleys had shod and doctored these mighty steeds that combined the size and stamina of a heavy draft horse with the agility of a trotter. There wasn’t a horseman present who wouldn’t give his eyeteeth to own Loki and Tyr, and Shandy knew it.

Just about every one of Miss Flackley’s customers must be here. He recognized many of them from previous competitions: lean little men with lined faces and straight, thin lips; handsome women with straight backs, strong arms, and weather-beaten complexions; jowly men with enormous bellies; people of all sizes and descriptions, old, young, middle-aged. There were teen-aged girls who weren’t trying to hide their tears; teen-aged boys with silver belt buckles in the shape of galloping mustangs, trying to pretend they weren’t scared because somebody they’d depended on to show up on schedule as surely as they’d depended on morning to break and night to fall was never going to come and shoe their beloved horses again.

Frank Flackley was taking on an awesome responsibility. Shandy found himself wondering uneasily if the man was up to it. At any rate, Martha’s nephew was behaving today with all the punctilio Harry Goulson could have desired. He was dressed in a decent suit of dark blue and had been down to Mac the Barber’s. His hair was shorter, his beard neatly trimmed. He looked alone, bereft, and handsome enough to provoke fresh outbursts of weeping among the more susceptible women in the congregation.

Shandy sneaked a peek to see if Iduna was weeping, too, but she wasn’t. Sitting beside Professor Stott, she looked suitably grave but composed. In fact, she looked surprisingly like Sieglinde Svenson, though more dashingly dressed. South Dakota must be a sartorial step ahead of Massachusetts, or at any rate of Balaclava County.