The Silver Ghost (23 page)

“So that leaves Tick and Lionel,” said Max.

“I know, dear. I tried everything I knew, but I couldn’t get any real line on either of them. Tick was here, there, and everywhere; they all agreed on that but nobody could offer anything definite. That man must have absolutely boundless energy. As for Lionel, when I asked him about it at the Whets’, he tried to make me believe he was right there in the pavilion. But I don’t buy it, Max, and none of the Tolbathys could vouch for him. I don’t know what to think. He’s such a pipsqueak!”

“You know him better than I do,” was the safest reply Max could think of. “What about the costumes? Did you get any line on them?”

“Yes, I did. I thought Lorista must have made them, but it turns out Professor Ufford borrowed them from some folk dancing group he was affiliated with. Normally the men wear more conventional costumes of black knee pants and red waistcoats with white shirts and stockings, and black straw hats they trim with flowers or ribbons or whatever, according to the season. They didn’t think much of the doublet and hose getup. Buck Tolbathy said it made him feel like a jack in the box.”

“I can imagine. So what happened to the costumes afterward?”

“Lorista picked them up Saturday from the woman who takes care of them for the folk dancers. She and Young Dork brought them to the Billingsgates’ Sunday morning about half-past ten so the dancers could change into them as they arrived. There wasn’t an extra one; I asked. The men kept their costumes on for the banquet and the dancing afterward, but changed back before they went home. All but the Abbotts, who had to leave early and change in the car, as you know. Buck said he helped Young Dork carry them out to Dork’s station wagon, and there were seven because he counted them to make sure. Lorista collected the remaining two from Lilias Abbott this morning and returned all nine to the woman she’d gotten them from, along with a check to pay for the dry cleaning. She counted them again when she got there to make sure she wasn’t overpaying. So that’s that, as far as I can see. Max, you don’t suppose Lionel was knocked out and had his costume taken off him, then put back on? That could explain the temporary amnesia about where he was at the start of the banquet.”

“It’s the only possible explanation.”

“All right, darling, you don’t have to get nasty. Did they find the bicycle?”

“I passed the word along from the radio station right after you called me but I don’t know what’s happened, if anything. When Abigail gave me your message I just said, ‘I’ll see you later’ and came straight to the Tolbathys’. What was this party you went to?”

“Remember I told you about bumping into Lionel and Young Dork at that store I phoned you from?”

“Yes, quite a coincidence.”

“I thought so, too, but it really wasn’t. The Kellings know scads of people in Milton. I suppose I was bound to run into somebody or other during rush hour at such a handy stopping-off place. Anyway, it turned out Bunny Whet had won three million dollars in the state lottery and Elizabeth felt like celebrating because now they won’t have to keep on turning over their dividend checks from the trust fund to Bunny’s bat preserves.”

“Sarah!”

“I know, dear. But you’ll be relieved to know he hasn’t been putting any bells in the belfries. He says the bats don’t seem to notice. Did you manage to get any dinner?”

“Not yet. I’m going to throw myself on Abigail’s mercy, which means we’ll never have the gall to send them a bill. How about you?”

“Elizabeth served soup and sandwiches.”

The soup had been canned tomato, slightly overwatered. The sandwiches had been single slices of processed cheese on spongy white bread. Sarah didn’t tell Max because she knew what he’d say. After all, Elizabeth had been fairly heroic about Bunny’s giving his three million dollars to the bats.

Nevertheless, she didn’t say no when they got to the Billingsgates’ and were pressed to partake of a light collation. They couldn’t see Boadicea Kelling yet because Dr. Maude was with her. Drusilla was standing by to let them know when to come up. Meanwhile, though the peacock pie had gone to the deserving poor, there was plenty of roast capon and Cook had made fresh baking powder biscuits. For once, Abigail wasn’t offering them any honey.

At the table, Sarah chatted, about Bunny Whet’s windfall and the people she’d seen at the party while Abigail and Bill made sociable noises and Max ate pretty much in silence. As soon as the plates were cleared, though, she got down to business.

“Did the police find the bicycle?”

Bill shook his head. “I believe they’ve given it up as a bad job. Grimpen stopped by about half-past six to say they were knocking off for the night. They did find a plastic container that had evidently been used to hold the syrup.”

“What kind of plastic container?” Max wanted to know.

“The ordinary sort that gets used in a kitchen,” Abigail told him. “Squarish, with a colored plastic top. You can buy them in any supermarket. We have a bunch of them around. I expect you do, too.”

“Oh yes,” Sarah agreed. “They’re handy for leftovers and freezing things. Or bringing soup to the afflicted.” Both Miriam and Mother Bittersohn were fairly big on plastic containers. “Where did they find it, Bill?”

“In among the clover, not far from where—” Bill hesitated.

Abigail squeezed his hand. “Sarah and I aren’t squeamish, dear. Naturally it would be near Versey’s body. You couldn’t throw one of those things very far because they’re too light to pick up any momentum. But what’s all this about a bicycle, Sarah? We haven’t had one of those on the place since Melly was a little girl. She fell off and broke her collarbone and we decided to go into beekeeping instead.”

“It’s just a hunch I have. And I’ll bet I know one place where Grimpen didn’t think to look. Would you excuse me, please?”

“But don’t you want to see Bodie?”

“Yes, of course, but this will only take a minute. Has Cook gone home?”

“I believe so. If you’re concerned about helping with the dishes—”

“No, they can wait. Coming, Max?”

“Sure, kid.” He was on his feet and they were out the door. “Where to?”

“Down there.”

“You don’t mean that other shed where the gardener keeps his mowers? Grimpen can’t have been dumb enough to overlook that.”

“I expect he could have been if he’d tried hard enough, but that’s not what I had in mind. Can’t you think of another place on this estate that must have been tacitly put out of bounds for the time being?”

Max gave her a startled look. “Yes, I can. Okay, let’s have a look.”

C
OOK AND BOB WERE
both at home. Both put on a decent show of being pleased to see them. Cook didn’t get out of her oversized rocking chair, they wouldn’t have expected that, but she did vouchsafe them a gracious nod.

“I hope you got enough to eat up at the house? I made extra biscuits just in case.”

“Thank you, yes,” Sarah replied. “I must beg you for your recipe when we don’t have more pressing business at hand.”

“Ah, but it’s not merely the recipe, it’s the frame of mind. Biscuits require tranquility. I have a special mantra I keep for biscuits. For deviled eggs, on the other hand, I really have to work myself up. Fortunately Mr. and Mrs. Billingsgate aren’t overly fond of deviled eggs. It’s mostly when the grandchildren come and want a picnic lunch. Not that I mind, you understand, but those deviled eggs do take a lot out of me. Green tomato mincemeat’s the worst, though. Melisande always loved my green tomato mincemeat. She was at me last fall to put some up for the holidays, but I had to tell her flat out: ‘Melisande,’ I said, ‘I simply cannot risk total destruction of my equanimity. I’m not so young as I was, Melisande’ I said. ‘I don’t bounce back the way I used to.’”

“Happens to us all sooner or later,” Max sympathized.

Cook was gathering her forces for further remark, but Sarah had had enough small talk that evening to last her a while. “Cook,” she said, “have you been in Rufus’s bedroom today?”

Cook managed a quarter turn of her head and the raising of an eyebrow, which probably raised hob with her equanimity. “I have not.”

“Have you, Bob?”

“Not me,” said the gardener. “See, Monday’s my regular day for Mr. Hohnser and I’d promised him I’d work with him today on his roses. Mr. Hohnser’s got this big rose garden, see, with over a hundred different varieties, some of them rare specimens. As you might expect, he’s pretty fussy about who takes care of it. So anyway, I’d promised him definitely that I’d be with him all day today, rain or shine, the revel notwithstanding. Mr. Billingsgate said I’d better go as usual because we were trying to maintain the illusion that there was nothing wrong here, as you know.”

“So you were gone all last Monday and all day today?”

“I was. And the week before and the one before that and so on back into March, as soon as it got so we could work outside. I leave here at a quarter past eight in the morning and don’t get home till a quarter to seven at night. They give me my meals over there, and coffee breaks and all that. It’s not as if he worked me like a dog, as you might think. We do put in a full day, I’m not saying we don’t, but what takes me so long is that Mr. Hohnser doesn’t just like to grow roses, he likes to talk about roses.”

“Mr. Hohnser is a fund of information on roses,” said Cook.

“He is that,” her husband confirmed. “I’m primarily a dahlia man myself, but roses are a fascinating subject, as you no doubt well know. We can’t grow them here except for a few ramblers down back that don’t offer much scope for horticultural finesse, so when Mr. Hohnser wants to talk roses, I’m perfectly happy to listen.”

“My husband is an excellent listener,” Cook further exerted herself to remark.

“I may say the same of yourself, my dear,” Bob replied courteously. “Anyway, Mrs. Bittersohn, what I’m getting at in my circumlocutious way is that I wouldn’t have had time to go into Rufe’s bedroom even if I’d had the inclination, which frankly I didn’t. It would seem like an intrusion, if you see what I mean. I’d never have gone without being invited while he was alive, so why should I take the liberty now? I grant you the notion is emotional rather than rational and I expect I’ll feel different once he’s properly planted, but there it is.”

“What about you, Cook?” Sarah asked. “I was thinking perhaps someone from the house asked you to choose the clothes to lay him out in.”

“Mrs. Billingsgate did consult with me in the matter. I told her, ‘Mrs. Billingsgate, I said, ‘Rufe never had any clothes except his working clothes and that old tweed jacket with the elbows out. Why don’t we bury him in that suit you made him for the revel? That’s what Rufe would have wanted, Mrs. Billingsgate,’ I said. ‘He was proud of that suit. It touched him, Mrs. Billingsgate’, I said, ‘you going to all that work of making him a suit with your own two hands.’ Rufe was talking of it Saturday night in this very room,” she added with a decorously suppressed sniffle.

“He was,” Bob confirmed. “And I made a jocose remark, I’m ashamed to admit. And Rufe said, and I honored him for it, ‘It’s what she wants’, he said, ‘and it’s what he wants.’ Meaning Mr. Billingsgate, you understand. ‘Mine not to question why, mine but to do or die.’ I thought that was putting it a little steep over a fancy vest and a pair of velveteen bloomers, myself, which just goes to show how little we know. All flesh is as grass. It cometh up and somebody gets stuck with mowing it down, though I suppose I shouldn’t digress into shoptalk at so solemn a time. Anything else you’d like to know, sir and madam?”

“Yes,” said Sarah. “We’d like to know which room was Rufus’s. And we’d like to take a look inside. Under Mr. Billingsgate’s orders,” she added in deference to the feudal system.

Bob said Mr. Billingsgate’s wish was his command. Cook compressed her chins in willing acquiescence. Thereupon, the gardener showed Sarah and Max through the immaculate kitchen to a room at the back of the house.

“This used to be Rufe’s bedroom when his folks were alive,” Bob told them, “and he kept it for himself when the wife and I moved in. It’s got a separate outside door, as you see, which made things handier all around.”

“I’m sure it did.” Sarah bent over and lifted one edge of the patchwork quilt that had served the old retainer for a bedspread. “What’s that bicycle doing here?”

Bob was flabbergasted, and said so. “That can’t have been Rufe’s. He knew Mrs. Billingsgate didn’t want bikes around on account of the kids. So where the heck did it come from?”

“Let’s have a look.” Max took hold of the wheels by their spokes and eased the bicycle out from under the bed. It was a spidery foreign ten-speed model painted a particularly unpleasant shade of olive green, and it had a small wire carrier strapped to the handlebar. “Whose was it, Sarah?”

“Professor Ufford’s, don’t you think? He had no car, he can’t always have been able to cadge rides, and Bill says he hated spending money on taxis. In Italy, everybody uses a bicycle for getting around, so I suppose Ufford picked up the habit. He rode it out here during the early hours, I should say, wearing that all-black outfit so he wouldn’t be noticed, which would be theatrical and stupid and sounds just like him.”

“I’ll buy that,” said Max. “He’d have gone straight to the honey shed, I expect. Your aunt was talking about some silly fellow in black who tied her up. I shouldn’t be surprised if Ufford spent the rest of the night in the shed with her.”

“Sleeping in the New Phantom,” Sarah agreed. “Then his accomplice came along, sent him out into the bee fields on foot for some reason, and rode the bike after him to douse him with the syrup.”

“How come Professor Ufford let the other guy ride the bike?” Bob wanted to know.

“I don’t suppose he realized what the accomplice had in mind. Whoever it was must have taken an awful chance, bringing the bicycle back here in broad daylight.”

“Not if the rider took the direct path from the honey shed,” said Max. “I noticed today that it goes through the hedgerow all the way. Bob, you’d better lock both doors to this room and make sure nobody touches the bicycle until we can get it checked for possible fingerprints.”