Wrack and Rune (2 page)

“That’s right,” Professor Ames replied. “Very hygienic. Nothing left for the rats to gnaw on. Quicklime, because of its property of generating intense heat immediately after it gets wet, is useful in a number of ways. Back in the early days of telegraphy, for instance, they used it to set poles in frozen ground. They’d bust a barrel of lime where the pole was supposed to go, sluice a few buckets of water over it, come back in the morning and there’d be a circle of thawed earth under the lime deep enough to set the pole in. Of course, the men had to be damned careful how they threw the water. I had an uncle who used to be a lineman up in Aroostook County. Face carved up like a pirate’s from quicklime burns, and a black patch over one eye. No workmen’s compensation in those days, either. Your phone working, Henny?”

“Damn well better be. I paid the bill. Leastways I think I did.”

“Come back to the house with me, then. We’ll have to call for help.”

“Nothin’s goin’ to help that poor bugger now.”

“I know, but we can’t leave him like this and nobody’d better touch him till the police have seen what happened. I still don’t understand how—God Almighty, here comes your Aunt Hilda.”

“Go head ’er off, young fella,” Henny told Cronkite. “The Ladies’ Aid’s plannin’ a big wingding for ’er birthday. They’ll raise Old Scratch if I let ’er die o’ shock an’ ruin the party. Hustle ’er back to the house an’ call over to the police station. Better see if you can get hold o’ Doc Fensterwald, too, just so’s we can say we tried.”

Glad of an excuse to get away, Cronkite obeyed. The two old men covered Spurge as decently as they could with a tarpaulin, then followed. By the time they got to the house, Miss Hilda had the gin bottle out and the coffeepot on.

Timothy Ames did not like using the telephone because of his deafness, but after the police and the doctor had been duly notified and Henny had got Miss Hilda back to kneading her bread dough and ladling damson gin into Cronkite to settle his stomach, Tim made a call of his own.

“AND WHAT IS SO
rare as a day in June?”
*
inquired Helen Shandy, assistant librarian for the Buggins Collection.

“A drink on the house in a Scotch saloon,”
†
replied Peter Shandy, professor of Agrology and co-developer with Timothy Ames of
Brassica napobrassica balaclaviensis,
that super rutabaga which has brought fame to the college and wealth to its propagators. “I grant you the point, my own. Now, if ever, come perfect days, with Commencement finished and summer sessions as yet uncommenced. Do you realize I have three whole weeks to goof off in?”

“Big deal! Do you realize I have three whole weeks in which to catalog the Buggins Collection while nobody’s hanging around the library pestering me to look up hog statistics?”

“Must you? I’d rather thought we might spend our days in wanton play among the asphodels.”

“Don’t you get enough wantoning as it is?”

“No.”

Shandy made a grab for his wife but she eluded him and went on setting petunias. “Unhand me, you ruffian. I want the place looking nice for when Iduna and Daniel get back from their honeymoon.
‡
I’m planning to give a tea.”

“Hadn’t you better make it a potlatch? Iduna and Daniel like their grub, you know.”

“Speaking of potlatches, did I tell you we’re invited to the Ameses’ tomorrow night for dinner?”

“You did not. Who’s cooking?”

“Laurie. She’s decided to go in for the housewifely virtues.”

“Egad and a rousing forsooth. What are we having, fried penguin?”

Professor Ames’s only son, Roy, had recently married the former Laurie Jilles, a fellow biologist on an Antarctic expedition. Both had got teaching fellowships at Balaclava and moved in with Tim, to the relief of his neighbors around the Crescent, especially the Shandys, who lived directly opposite. The elderly widower had been far too preoccupied with his work on soils and fertilizers to bother with trivia like clean shirts, balanced meals, and keeping the lawn mowed.

The day Roy brought Laurie home, Tim had wiped the mud off his trifocals, taken a close look at the perky brunette, switched on his hearing aid, heard her warm young voice say, “Hello, Daddy Ames,” and decided she’d do. As Laurie herself was not the type to do things by halves, she’d adored the hirsute gnome on sight. Since Roy was understandably fond of both his wife and his parent, the arrangement couldn’t have been a happier one.

For a wedding present Tim had handed Laurie his checkbook, waved a hand around the fine old house his late wife had so dismally neglected, and said, “Fix it up to suit yourself.” Roy and Laurie were spending a glorious summer obeying their father’s wish. They’d picked out a living room carpet in a wavelike design of blues and greens. They’d bought white leather furniture that loomed up like a field of midget icebergs from the sea of blue-green shag to remind them of those halcyon days when love had bloomed on the Ross Sea. They’d selected wallpaper with a design of diatoms and coelacanths. They’d done over Tim’s bedroom and study in earth tones of umber, ocher, and terracotta to make him feel truly at home. Their own bedroom had a frieze of Emperor penguins and a pinup poster of Jacques Cousteau.

The kids had also got a car which they were paying for out of their own meager stipends because they didn’t want to take unfair advantage of Tim’s generosity. The clunker once driven by Jemima Ames and later, briefly, by the infamous Lorene McSpee had flunked its last sticker test and been reduced to a foot or two of squashed recyclement. Now President Svenson had undisputed possession of the crummiest car in Balaclava County.

“I do think it’s sweet that Laurie and Roy are taking such marvelous care of Tim,” Helen remarked as she reached for another petunia.

“Tim’s taking pretty damn good care of them if you ask me,” Peter grunted, forking in a handful of 5-10-5. “Where are they all off to today?”

“Laurie wanted to look at more wallpapers. She and Roy dropped Tim off at some old farmer’s over in Lumpkin Corners and they’re going to pick him up on the way back. I wonder if he took his soil auger with him? Darling, do you remember back in May when we had that gaggle of visiting congressmen up at College? Tim came wandering by with that huge drill in his hand, almost as tall as himself, and one of the congressmen asked him what he used it for.”

“And Tim said, ‘Constipation.’ That’s what is known as a Great Moment in History, my love. Would we happen to have any cold beer in the house?”

“Yes, but you’re not getting any till we finish planting this border. You’ll just get besotted and pass out in the hammock. Take a slurp of water from the hose if you’re thirsty.”

“What am I, a petunia? Strong men need strong drink. Is that the telephone I hear?”

“If it is, I’ll answer it. I don’t trust you alone with the fridge.” Helen brushed peat moss off the knees of her gardening pants and went into the charming little brick house of which she had been chatelaine for six intermittently halcyon months. The telephone was indeed ringing and the voice on the wire was Tim’s. He was, she realized at once, in a dreadful taking.

“Pete, get out here!”

“It isn’t Pete,” she screamed. “What’s the matter, Tim? Where are you?”

All she received for an answer was, “Get Pete!” She could still hear him yelling the same words over as she laid down the phone and rushed to the front door.

“Peter, come quickly. It’s Tim and he’s frantic.”

“What about?”

“He won’t tell me. He just keeps howling for you.”

Shandy was in the house and at the telephone in three bounds. “Tim,” he bellowed over the tumult, “what’s wrong?”

Helen stood by, watching her husband’s face slowly lose color as he listened. “Okay, Tim,” he shouted at last, “I’m on my way,” and hung up.

“What is it, Peter? Roy hasn’t had an accident with their new car?”

“No, nothing like that. Tim’s out at Henny Horsefall’s. Henny’s hired man just got burned to death by quicklime.”

“Quicklime? That’s ghastly! But how?”

“That’s what Tim wants me out there for. Henny claims there was no quicklime on the place and hadn’t been since God knows when. No damn reason why there should have been. Helen, I’ve got to go right this minute. There’s no telling when Roy and Laurie will show up. Henny’s over eighty and he has nobody else left on the place but an aunt who’s going to be a hundred and five next week.”

“Then maybe I ought to go with you. I could help take care of the old lady or something.”

“I expect the neighbors will rally around. You stay here and finish the petunias. We’re late getting them in as it is. I’ll give you a ring as soon as I see how the land lies.”

He gave her a quick kiss and ran down the hill toward Charlie Ross’s Garage, where they kept the car, since they had no driveway and to park around the Crescent was not the done thing. Helen stood looking after him, her fair-skinned face tender and her bluebell-colored eyes a little moist. Peter wasn’t a big man and he could have stood to lose a pound or two around the waist, but he could move like Paavo Nurmi in an emergency. How intelligent she’d been to marry him.

And how remarkably sweet of him to have married her. There was a lot to be said for monogamy, she thought, getting back to her petunias. Peter had begun developing a new strain just because Helen had remarked how elegant it would be to have flowers along the front walk that were exactly the same rosy old-brick shade as the house. These were not yet a perfect match, but they were going to be lovely all the same.

When Peter had got precisely the tone he was after, he intended to market the seed as Helen’s Fancy and rake in another pot, no doubt. Then perhaps they’d blow themselves to a trip. The Galapagos Islands would be fun, or Vermillion, South Dakota, or some other exotic and romantic spot. Unless Peter got himself embroiled in another mess such as wifely intuition told Helen he was heading toward at the moment.

Now that Shandy had revealed an unexpected talent for detection, somebody was always after him to unravel an insoluble mystery that usually turned out to be nothing of the sort. But Timothy Ames was not one to panic over trivia, and Tim had been definitely panicking. Quicklime, ugh! “And all the while the burning lime eats flesh and bone away.” What blasphemy, on a day like this.

Helen’s joy in planting the petunias that were to be named for her was gone. A cloud passed over the sun. She felt it only right and proper that the glorious light should be veiled.

Some fifteen minutes later, over in Lumpkin Corners, her husband was thanking God he’d made Helen stay behind. This was no sight for a woman’s eyes, or a man’s either.

Shandy didn’t see any way Spurge’s death could be due to an honest mistake. Henny Horsefall, despite his years, was as bright as he’d ever been and at least one of his eyes was in good working order. Henny hadn’t got around to throwing out the big, heavy paper bags from which he and Spurge had originally filled the spreader. They were stamped “ground limestone,” and Shandy and Tim had tested the residue, proving conclusively that the bags had contained only the harmless white powder they’d been supposed to hold. Traces of plain limestone were still caked on the bottom of the spreader. It was obvious the quicklime had been dumped in on top of the clogged openings, but why? How could one human being do this to another?

“Maybe they didn’t mean to kill ’im,” Henny Horsefall replied to the question Shandy must have asked aloud. “Wouldn’t nobody ’cept a dern fool like Spurge stick their face down inside to see why ’twas bubblin’, would they?”

“You might if you didn’t have your specs on,” said his aunt, who had refused to be shooed back to the house. “I would of myself, like as not.”

“You wouldn’t of been hosin’ down the spreader, Aunt Hilda.”

“Only because I’ve got one pair o’ hands instead o’ six. The way you let everything slide around here, maybe you let the lime go bad afore you got around to usin’ it.”

“That wouldn’t happen, Miss Horsefall,” said Shandy. “Quicklime is an entirely different thing from what your nephew was using. The only way it could have got into the spreader, as far as I can see, is for it to have been put there between the time the spreader was last used and the time Spurge Lumpkin started washing it out. From the violence of the reaction, I’d say the lime hadn’t been exposed to the air very long. Can you remember what day you last used the spreader, Mr. Horsefall?”

“Thursday, I think it was. Four, five days ago anyway. I told Spurge to clean it time and again, but he forgot.”

“Might o’ known he would,” sniffed the aunt. “Why didn’t you keep after ’im like you should of? If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a million times—”

“Well, don’t tell me again,” her nephew snapped back. “I’m in no shape to listen. Neither’s Spurge, poor bastard.”

“I s’pose we’ll have to lay out for the funeral.” Miss Hilda was determined to get the last word one way or another. “Not that we can afford it. Times is hard, in case you don’t know.”

“You seen ’em a dern sight harder an’ so have I,” grunted Henny. “You go to bed with a full belly every night, don’t you?”

“Nice way to talk in front o’ strangers an’ learned men, I must say. Couldn’t you at least o’ said ‘stomach’? Won’t nobody around here get nothin’ this night if I don’t bestir myself in the kitchen.” She grumbled herself off toward the house and nobody tried to prevent her leaving.

“As to the funeral,” said Shandy, “I shouldn’t be surprised if the college could finance it out of the Agricultural Laborers’ Assistance Fund. Eh, Tim?”

“Huh?”

Professor Ames looked blank for a moment, as well he might, since his colleague had invented the Agricultural Laborers’ Assistance Fund as of that moment. Then he nodded. “Sure, Pete. Why the hell not? We’ll get Harry Goulson over here from Balaclava Junction. Let him handle the doings and send the bill to me. I’ll put the arm on Svenson.”

“I ain’t takin’ no charity,” Horsefall protested.

“What charity? Spurge would be as much entitled as any farmhand in Balaclava County, far as I know. It comes out of the endowment, doesn’t it, Pete?”