The Luck Runs Out (19 page)

The minister remembered Martha Flackley from Sunday school. He talked about what sort of girl she’d been then, how she’d picked berries to help herself through normal school, how she’d enjoyed her years as a teacher, and how she’d bravely and uncomplainingly taken up the torch of the Flackleys after her brothers, were killed and her father died.

He said a good many things that people who thought they’d known Martha Flackley for thirty years and more were finding out now for the first time in their lives. There must be many more than Peter Shandy who were mentally kicking themselves for never having taken the trouble to know her better. When the minister had finished his eulogy, Harry Goulson and his son, both of them fine singers, stood up and sang, “Beautiful Isle of Somewhere” in close harmony. That was when the sniffling really began.

The cemetery was less than a mile outside the village. After six of Martha Flackley’s oldest acquaintances—neighbors, classmates, and a chap who’d been her star pupil when she taught sixth grade out at the Forks—had borne the coffin out to the hearse, Loki and Tyr began their solemn march up Main Street. Harry Goulson handled the reins. He had his son up on the seat beside him because this was a day he wanted the boy to remember. Many followed the hearse on foot. Those who’d brought their cars from faraway places like the Seven Forks and Hoddersville offered rides to anybody who wanted one. Even that highfalutin crowd from Lumpkin Corners showed, as Mrs. Lomax later remarked to her cat, a streak of human decency she’d never thought they had in them.

Shandy managed to keep close to the Svensons, watching what he could see of Birgit’s face. She seemed to be neither more nor less affected by the ceremony than her peers, and this puzzled him a good deal. At last he could tolerate his own bewilderment no longer.

“Helen,” he murmured to his wife, “if you didn’t know that girl had been going through some kind of emotional crisis ever since Miss Flackley’s body was found, what would you think of her?”

“I’d think she was having a fight with her boyfriend,” she replied at once. “That’s been bothering me too, Peter. One would expect her to act more stoical to show she had nothing to do with Miss Flackley’s death, or more agitated because she did. In fact, it would have been quite in line with her recent behavior to stay in her room and sulk. Matilda Gables isn’t here. At least I don’t see her anywhere.”

Matilda’s absence didn’t necessarily mean anything, of course. Most of the students here were animal husbandry majors. The rest had snatched at an excuse to sleep late after the arduous past two days. Nobody had expected the entire student body to attend; the church wouldn’t have held them anyway.

Hjalmar Olafssen was visible, but making no attempt to get near the Svensons. He walked with a group of his buddies, all of them looking down in the mouth. Maybe they were feeling sad about Miss Flackley. Or maybe they were worried about how far the loss of her skill might affect Balaclava’s chances at the Competition. She’d shod the whole team last week so the horses would be used to their new footwear when the great day came, but what if one of them cast a shoe at the last minute?

Shandy was shocked to realize the Competition was now but three days away. Normally, Hjalmar and his cohorts would be out training like mad at this very minute. They were all seniors, and this would be their last whack at achieving immortality in the annals of their alma mater. No wonder they were glum.

He could be doing the upperclassmen an injustice. They might well be thinking not of the moment of glory that might be denied them but of Flackley the Farrier in her neat corduroys and bright gardening gloves: brisk, cheerful, competent, a quaint little figure with one gigantic horseshoe in her hand and its mate nailed up on the stall door behind her.

Those horseshoes. Why had they so mysteriously been turned wrong side up immediately before this ghastly thing happened to her? He remembered joking with Helen about them, but he hadn’t, down deep, thought it was funny at all. And many a true word was spoken in jest.

What if both the horseshoe switching and the kidnapping of Belinda had in fact been some archcompetitor’s fell design to throw Balaclava College into a turmoil and its team off its stride? Was that idea really any crazier than the one he’d had about the Viggies? Was it possibly a good deal saner?

In theory, the Annual Competition was run on pure and lofty amateur principles, with ribbons and trophies the only rewards. In general, that was the case or the college would not have competed. However, betting on the side was not unheard of, and the sums involved might be larger than any but the bettors knew. Shandy had never heard of an attempt to nobble an odds-on favorite, but that wasn’t to say it could never happen.

But no competitor, however evil-minded, would kill Flackley the Farrier! Every other team needed her as much as Balaclava’s did.

According to the theory he’d been airing to Helen and Iduna at the table last night, Miss Flackley wasn’t meant to be killed. If one lot of amateurs could slip up, why couldn’t another?

Drat it, he didn’t want any more theories. All he wanted was a few plain, simple, irrefutable facts.

They were almost at the cemetery now. He could see the hearse turning in through the rusty iron gates, Frank Flackley in the borrowed college van right behind it. Goulson had wanted Flackley to ride in the funeral parlor’s one limousine, but the farrier had opted to drive himself. He’d begged the police to release the family van for the obsequies, offering to return it immediately afterward, but they’d hardheartedly refused. Or so he’d complained to Iduna when he’d dropped by earlier to ask if she’d ride in the van with him, on the paltry and improbable excuse that she, being the only other stranger and westerner in town, would be his most appropriate companion. Iduna had quite properly replied that it wouldn’t look right, and besides, she wasn’t ready yet, so he’d gone alone.

Flackley had tried again outside the church after the service. That had been a serious tactical error. Iduna had been too solicitous for the woe-weighted heart of Professor Stott to do more than shake her head, while Lorene McSpee, who happened to be right behind them, had brushed past with a glad cry of, “Well, if she won’t, I will. My feet are killing me. Come on, Professor.”

She’d then clambered into the cab, dragging poor old Timothy Ames after her like a rag doll. Shandy felt some satisfaction that the forward Flackley’s nostrils were being assailed by the fumes of bleach water, but not much. He didn’t like the way this good-looking stranger was hanging around Iduna, trying to snare her away from Tim, who was so desperately in need of rescue from that she-dragon.

Now they were gathering at the Flackley family plot. Now they were taking the coffin from the hearse. Now the pallbearers were carrying it to the freshly dug hole. Now Goulson and his son were heaping the many bouquets and wreaths around. Now the minister was opening his worn-out Bible. Now he was saying the words that had been said over Martha Flackley’s father and all the Flackleys before him. Now the Goulsons, father and son, stepped up to deliver their final tribute.

“ ‘All things bright and beautiful,’ ” they sang in strong, true harmony, “ ‘All creatures great and small.’ ”

“All creatures great and small” could mean to Professor Stott only one great creature and her unborn progeny. The composure he had striven so manfully to maintain now left him. He groped in his overcoat pocket for a clean handkerchief. As he drew it out, a tiny pattering of small, darkish, oval objects fell about his feet. Shandy knew without looking that they were sunflower seeds.

Out of nowhere, Lieutenant Corbin appeared and laid a hand on the department chairman’s shoulder.

“Professor Stott,” he said quietly, “would you mind just stepping over to the police cruiser for a moment? I’d like a private word with you.”

S
O DEFTLY WAS IT
done that hardly anybody noticed. The service was concluded, the benediction pronounced, the crowd began to disperse. The fact that Stott was already dispersed did not escape Thorkjeld Svenson. Few things ever did. As his wife and Helen stopped to chat, he maneuvered himself to Shandy’s side.

“What was that all about?”

Shandy glanced around to make sure nobody was trying to eavesdrop, then he said quietly, “I think Stott’s either been or is about to be arrested for murdering Miss Flackley. For God’s sake, don’t bellow.”

“Did he?”

“No.”

“Who did?”

“I don’t know. I will, soon.”

“Make it damn soon,” grunted Svenson. “Found out what’s wrong with Birgit?”

“Still isn’t talking, eh?”

“Not a yip except ‘No thank you, I’m not hungry,’ and ‘Please leave me alone.’ I keep telling her she’s making a damned fool of herself.”

“That ought to soften any daughter’s heart,” said Shandy. “I have a feeling, however, that she’s not. Mind seeing that my wife and her guest get home all right? If you ever succeed in getting a word in edgewise, please explain that I had urgent business elsewhere.”

He bummed a ride with somebody or other back to the college, and made a beeline for the girls’ dormitories.

Luckily for him, Balaclava clung to the old system of housemothers who kept track of their charges. Within ten minutes, he was face to face with a cowering Matilda Gables.

“I thought you’d be interested to know, Miss Gables,” he began without preamble, “that Professor Stott has been arrested for Miss Flackley’s murder.”

“But—but why?”

“On account of those sunflower seeds you spilled in her van last Friday night while you were sitting there meditating your clever little trick on Birgit Svenson.”

“I wasn’t meditating anything,” cried Matilda. “Not—not then, anyway.”

“I see. Only to kiss the air that lately kissed thee, eh?”

“S-something like that.”

“Perhaps we’d better recapitulate. Correct me if I stray from the facts. You attended that dull lecture in the Home Arts Auditorium. You slipped out, probably shortly after Olafssen and Miss Svenson did. You may or may not have had the intention of spying on them.”

“I didn’t! Truly I didn’t. It was just that the hall was so stuffy and the speaker such a bore, and all the girls around me were holding hands with the boys they were sitting beside, and I—I wasn’t sitting beside anybody.”

“I see. So you went out, and what to your wondering eyes should appear but the chap you’ve been worshipping from afar, going at it hot and heavy with the President’s daughter in Miss Flackley’s van.” Miss Gables nodded miserably. “Then what did you do?”

“I—I walked off a little way and sat down on a bench. I wasn’t spying. I was just—feeling rotten.”

“Yes, I daresay you were. Well, you weren’t the first and you won’t be the last, if that’s any consolation, which I don’t suppose it is. So then the two lovebirds flew the coop and you went over and sat in the van, right? Making believe.”

“Yes, making believe. It sounds so utterly stupid when you say it like that.”

“Oh, come now, Miss Gables. There’s nothing wrong with imagining things,
per se.
If one didn’t preface the reality with the dream, nothing would ever get accomplished. The only complication arises when we—er—dream the impossible dream. You managed somehow to persuade yourself that if Olafssen weren’t so totally—er—wrapped up with Birgit Svenson, he might switch his attentions to you. Common sense ought to have told you that no such thing would ever happen.”

“But he smiles at me in the library!”

“He smiles at my wife in the library too. One of Olafssen’s charms, which I grant you are many, is his naturally sunny disposition. He smiles at you not because you’re Matilda Gables but simply because you’re there to be smiled at. In this he differs from Sergeant Lubbock, who smiled at you for—er—definite and specific reasons.”

“What reasons?” said Matilda sullenly.

“As the information was imparted in confidence, I do not feel free to repeat it. However, I expect he’d be willing to tell you himself, given the opportunity. Getting back to more immediate subjects, how long did you stay in Miss Flackley’s van?”

“Not very long, I shouldn’t think. I saw the lights go up in the lecture hall and I knew people would be starting to come out soon, so I split. I—didn’t want anybody to see me sitting there by myself. They think I’m whacked out enough already.”

“You did have sunflower seeds in your pocket when you got into the van?”

“I suppose so. I generally do. They’re rich in natural oils and vitamins and stuff.”

“I observed that none of the hulls had been split open, so I gather you weren’t munching on them?”

“No, I expect not. Frankly, I don’t much care for them. I just keep thinking I ought to.”

“That’s pretty much how you feel about this college, isn’t it?”

Miss Gables sighed. “Since I’m going to be expelled anyway, I might as well say yes.”

“Whatever possessed you to come here in the first place?”

“I felt the need to make a contribution to life,” she replied primly.

Shandy nodded. “I see. And you thought this was the only kind of contribution that mattered?”

“Well, I knew I’d hate medicine or social work, and how many alternatives are there?”

“How many kinds of work are there?” he snapped back. “What makes you think one job is any more important than any other? If you’re doing something that makes you miserable, you’re apt as not to turn nasty and try to make somebody else miserable, too. That’s what happened to you Friday night, isn’t it? You got to stewing over why everything went right for Birgit and wrong for you, and you decided to take Olafssen away from her to even the score. So then you wrote an anonymous note and slipped it into her pocket on the way to the assembly next morning.”

The young student looked frightened. “How did you know?”

“I didn’t know, I guessed. Why else would she have come bouncing down and gone crawling back, and stayed crying in her room ever since? Get your coat.”

Miss Gables turned white as a shirt that had been washed by Lorene McSpee. “I couldn’t.”

Shandy considered her. No, he decided, she really couldn’t. The child had been punishing herself as well as Birgit, and she was on the edge of collapse.