Something in the Water

by Charlotte MacLeod

  Chapter 3

  YET HERE PETER STOOD, trying to avoid looking at the blanket-covered heap on the stretcher while the constable, whose name was Frank something, heard the whole story from Elva Bright, with footnotes by Claridge Withington, embellishments from Cynthia and Albert, and a few words of corroboration from Peter himself. Frank greeted each utterance with a grunt, then pulled down the blanket and took a hard look at the corpse.

  “Homely bahstid. Shame to waste the pie.” He pulled the blanket back up. “He’s yours, Al. Might as well take ‘im along.”

  “Is that all you’re going to do?” Cynthia clearly didn’t think much of Frank’s performance as contrasted to the one she’d seen on the “Late Show.” “Aren’t you going to look for clues?”

  “What to?”

  “How’m I supposed to know? All mysterious deaths have to be investigated. That’s your job, isn’t it?”

  “Not if I can help it. Might have to get the state police in.”

  “And run up another bill for the town?” snorted Al. “You know what happened when the last constable overspent his limit.”

  “Well, I don’t care.” Cynthia was still in there swinging. “You’ve got to do something, Frank.”

  “I’ll know what to do when I find out what killed ‘im.”

  “But by then the clues will be gone.”

  “If there ever was any in the first place.” Albert was beginning to sound a bit testy, for which Peter didn’t blame him a particle. “Cynthia’s got it into her head that Jas chewed up a cyanide pill, like some bugger she seen in the movies.”

  “I didn’t say that at all,” his co-worker sputtered. “I just say I think it’s mighty darned strange, him keeling over all of a sudden, just like that spy.”

  “One way to find out.” Frank pulled away the blanket again and pried the dead man’s mouth wide open. “Help yourself, Cynthia. Take a sniff.”

  “What, me?”

  “You’re the one that wants to know.”

  “He’s right, Cynthia.” Withington was all excited. “Cyanide smells like bitter almonds, at least that’s what they always claim in the mystery novels. I was reading the other day—”

  Nobody was listening. Peter, Elva, Albert, and Frank were all giving Cynthia the eagle eye. She flushed, tossed her head, and bent over the open mouth.

  “My God!” She straightened up and backed away, her face now chalk white. “He does smell like almonds. Here, Al, you try.”

  “I think you’re nuts.” Nevertheless, Albert sniffed. “By jeezum, Frank, she’s right. Go ahead, call me a liar.”

  “Never knew a time when you wasn’t one.” However, the constable knew his duty, up to a point, and he did it. “Ayuh. Anybody else want to give it a go?”

  Claridge Withington was the only taker. He made heavy weather of it, fumbling with his cane and tripping over one of the stretcher wheels. The constable had to reach across the body and steady him with a massive hand; when he leaned over, he moved all of a piece, Peter noticed. He must have to wear some kind of body brace, poor devil. His sniff, when he’d at last got himself into position for it, was a halfhearted effort. When he straightened up, his face showed fastidious revulsion.

  “I fear I’m not cut out for detection. It’s almond, no question about that. Do you suppose you ought to—ugh—perhaps not.”

  “Not what?”

  “Search behind his teeth for the remains of a capsule, I was going to say. I wish I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “So do I.” Cynthia had clearly lost interest in hunting for clues. “If”—she swallowed—”there’s anything inside, Dr. Bee will find it. Right, Al?”

  “Stands to reason. Jas sure as hell isn’t going to swallow nothing now. Come on, let’s not keep Elva standing here all night.”

  “Er—” Peter had no more desire to keep the party going than anybody else, but there was still one question that ought to be raised. “Not to strain your patience, ladies and gentlemen, but is there any chance that Mr. Flodge might have been drinking Amaretto or eating salted almonds before he got to the inn?”

  It was Elva Bright who cracked up. Maybe her peals of laughter were mostly hysteria, she was entitled to a fit or two after the evening she’d put in; she showed no inclination to stop until Withington whipped out his grandmother’s smelling salts again and held the open flask under her nose, throwing her into a choking spell.

  “Take that fool thing away,” she gasped once she’d got her breath back. “If you want to be helpful, go stick your hand in Jasper’s pants pocket. You’d better do it, Frank, you’re the constable.”

  “An’ damn sorry I let myself in for gettin’ elected. You won’t catch me signin’ on for another stretch.”

  “Oh, all right, then, if you’re too finicky to search a dead man’s britches.”

  She stepped over to the stretcher, paused to slip her hand under the late Flodge’s chin and shut the gaping mouth, then began to rummage. It took her about thirty seconds to locate a small glass bottle and pull it out of his watch pocket. “There you are, folks. Here’s your cyanide pill.”

  Cynthia was the first to catch on. “I’ll be dipped! Almond extract, right? My mother puts it in her macaroon cookies. Are you telling us Jasper Flodge used to drink that stuff?”

  “Why not? I understand back during Prohibition lots of men used to swill it down by the jugful. Women too, for that matter. Vanilla, lemon, peppermint, whatever they could get their hands on. Naturally Jasper would pick almond, he was crazy about anything that had a flavor of almonds to it.”

  The innkeeper’s lips twitched in a grim smile. “After my husband passed on and Jasper found out that I wasn’t likely to turn into the poor, starving widow some folks seemed to think I’d be, he tried to shine up to me a little. Not that he got any encouragement but an innkeeper can’t be unneighborly. I remember one night he showed up on the doorstep with a box of marzipan candies shaped like different vegetables and colored accordingly, you know how they do. They were supposed to be for me and the girls, but Jasper plunked himself down on the sofa to watch some stupid television program and ate every one of those candies except a make-believe potato that old Rex managed to joggle out of his hand. Rex was an awful thief when he got the chance. But I still miss him, fool that I am.”

  This time, Peter sensed, Elva Bright’s flicker of a smile was for her own human frailty and for a dog long gone to the Happy Hunting Ground.

  “So, to make a long story short, after Jasper’d been arrested for drunk driving one time too many and the judge told him he could either stay sober or go to jail, he made a great show of going on the wagon.”

  “Still managed to keep a pretty good buzz on half the time, howsomever,” Albert put in. “I often wondered how he got by with it.”

  “Simple enough. He’d keep his little bottle of almond extract handy in his pocket and sneak a nip every so often when he thought nobody was looking. I’ve noticed him doing it time and again, though of course I never said anything. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if Jasper didn’t take a swig tonight, while Thurzella was in the kitchen picking up his supper. I don’t know why it didn’t come to me sooner. Softening of the brain, I expect. The way I feel right now, you two might as well haul me away along with Jasper.”

  “But then who’d cook breakfast for Professor Shandy and me?” Withington’s smile was not unattractive, his many wrinkles notwithstanding. “You’re just worn out, Elva. Things will look different in the morning.”

  This dining room was going to look a damned sight emptier, Peter thought cynically, unless Dr. Bee brought in a verdict of death from natural causes. People did tend to turn skittish about eating in restaurants where patrons dropped dead in their plates for no apparent reason.

  Well, it would be a crying shame if Mrs. Bright’s business failed on account of Jasper Flodge, but there was nothing Peter Shandy could do to help. This was not his territory, he was dratted if he’d let himself get involved. He said a last
and final good night, and went upstairs.

  Morning dawned clear as a bell, but Peter wasn’t awake in time to take note of its matutinal blushes. By the time he’d rousted himself out of bed and into the shower, shaved, got dressed in chino pants and a clean blue shirt, and wandered down to the dining room, it was close on to half-past eight. Judging from the clutter on some of the now-vacant tables, the place must have been jumping for the past two hours.

  Thurzella was on deck again, wearing black stirrup pants, a demure white blouse, and a suitably decorous expression. The few patrons still present, all of them men wearing feed caps, kept bombarding her with questions. She would only reply “We feel real bad about it” and keep on refilling their coffee mugs and stacking up dirty dishes. When she brought Peter his pancakes and offered the syrup jug in reverential silence, he decided there was hope for the younger generation.

  Contrariwise, her elders could have used a lesson or two in deportment. The participants in this impromptu wake, if that was what the gathering could be called, had clearly come to bury Jasper, not to praise him. Not being any too fluent in the picturesque vernacular of rural Maine, Peter was unable to catch all the nuances, but he got the general drift easily enough. Flodge could unload money faster than salts through a goose where his own pleasure and comfort were concerned but when it come to settling up for what he owed in honest wages or supplies, that was another and a sadder story. “Meaner than turkey-turd beer” was the general verdict on the so recently departed. By the time Peter finished his pancakes, he’d come to the conclusion that there couldn’t be a single person in the village, except maybe the minister, who did not consider it his or her civic duty to hate Jasper Flodge’s guts.

  He particularly noticed two men who were either brothers or ought to have been. One of them was spouting off like a kettle at full boil, the other just sat scowling into his empty mug. It was the talker who threw money on the table and shoved his chair back.

  “Come on, Ev, jawin’ won’t get us anywhere. Only thing to do now is sue the estate.”

  “Providin’ he never figured out a way to take it all with ‘im,” said a third man who wasn’t yet ready to leave. “Wouldn’t put it past the bahstid to have it all stashed away in asbestos bags, ready to go. Well, see you boys at the funeral. Be a pretty fair turnout, I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  “All comin’ to make sure it’s really him in the casket,” said another.

  “Huh! That twister won’t need a casket. He was so crooked they might as well just screw ‘im into the ground standin’ up.”

  The parting shot had been fired; the funeral party melted away. Peter refused another refill of coffee and put his own breakfast money on the table. There was no nonsense here about signing the bill with his room number and letting the charges pile up until he was ready to check out; Elva Bright’s rule was cash on the barrelhead, and very sensible of her. As Peter moved toward the door, Thurzella sidled up to him.

  “Professor, I’m sorry you had to listen to them talking so free about somebody who’s dead, even if it was Jasper Flodge. It’s a good thing my grandmother was in the kitchen, she wouldn’t have liked it much. Not that they weren’t telling the plain truth.”

  Thurzella was coming out of her shock. She even started to giggle, then caught herself, grabbed up her tray and sped from the dining room. A nice kid, Peter thought again. He checked his pockets to make sure he hadn’t left his wallet, his car keys, or his seed-collecting bags upstairs, and was all set to leave when Elva Bright hastened through the swinging door with a gallon-size glass jug in either hand.

  “Professor, I hate to bother you, but as long as you’re going out to Fran Rondel’s place, would you mind taking these two jugs along? Ask her to fill them with spring water, she’ll know. And—uh—before you leave, just kindly drop this envelope on the kitchen table or someplace where she’ll be sure to see it. Don’t try handing it over, she wouldn’t let you. I’m not giving you too much trouble, am I?”

  “Not at all, Mrs. Bright, I’ll be glad to do it. I hadn’t realized there was a spring on her property.”

  “You wouldn’t notice it. The spring’s sort of off beyond the house, hidden in the bushes. Miss Fran will insist on filling the jugs herself, so don’t waste your breath trying to argue her into letting you help. She’s awfully fussy about that spring, for which a person can’t blame her, considering.”

  Whatever there was to consider, Elva Bright didn’t pause to explain. “Thanks, Professor, I appreciate this. You won’t forget to leave the envelope?”

  “I won’t forget, Mrs. Bright. My wife has me very well trained.”

  Peter took the empty jugs, wondering why the innkeeper was making such a point of getting two gallons of water from Miss Rondel’s spring. She couldn’t be planning to serve it to her customers, two jugfuls wouldn’t be enough for even one go-round in the dining room. Maybe Mrs. Bright knew something about her own well that her patrons didn’t, and wanted to be sure of good spring water for her personal use.

  Maybe what she wanted wasn’t water, and maybe that could explain why Miss Rondel was so all-fired persnickety about letting outsiders get too close to her alleged spring. There were coins as well as paper in the envelope, Peter couldn’t mistake the feel of them. Well, it was no skin off his nose if two elderly countrywomen were running a little bootleg business on the side. He stowed the jugs in back so that they wouldn’t rattle around when he got off the paved road and laid the envelope beside him on the passenger seat where he couldn’t miss seeing it when he got out.

  He was giving his car a second or two to warm up when his chatty acquaintance of the previous evening came limping out the inn door. Withington had mentioned that he hadn’t seen Miss Rondel’s lupines in years; Peter supposed it would be an act of kindness to take his fellow guest along for the ride but he was damned if he was going to. In the first place, that cow track Miss Rondel called her driveway was so rough and steep that he planned to leave his car down below the house and walk up rather than risk a broken spring or a banged-up fender. Withington wouldn’t be able to make the grade and P. Shandy was not about to give that human squawk-box a piggyback.

  Furthermore, Peter was on serious business. Collecting seed from the various shades of lupine, labeling the bags, and wheedling information out of Miss Rondel as to how in tunket she was able to grow such voluptuous specimens in so unpromising a location would take the whole morning, and maybe longer. He’d have a fine chance of getting Miss Rondel to talk with a gasbag like Withington monopolizing the conversation. He waved and drove off, solacing his conscience with the thought that Miss Rondel might let him have a few of the blooms to bring back to the old man.

  There was no sense in even thinking of taking a bunch to Helen, assuming Miss Rondel would let him. The lupines were all but ready to quit. They’d have dropped their blossoms, more than likely, before he could get them home, especially considering that he didn’t yet know how long that all-female bacchanalia back home was likely to last. He’d taken a number of color photographs on yesterday’s visit, he might take a few more today to give Helen an idea of what she’d missed.

  Anyway, there would be other trips. He and Helen had begun coming to Maine fairly often now that they’d reestablished connections with her old friend Catriona McBogle and his college roommate, Guthrie Fingal. Pickwance wasn’t all that much farther up the coast from Sasquamahoc. He’d telephone Helen after he got back and try to ascertain, tactfully if possible, how soon the party would be over. If the prognosis was not hopeful, he had a good notion to leave the inn tomorrow anyway and bum a bed from Guthrie for a night or two.

  He didn’t quite know what was bothering him. Maybe it was being away from Helen. Maybe it was having Jasper Flodge drop dead last night just after he himself had finished a helping of that same chicken pot pie. Maybe it was a little of both.

  Peter was not a squeamish man. He’d grown up in farming country and seen animals slaughtered. He’d seen an uncle
squashed to death under a fallen tractor and had crawled in to drag out the corpse while older and stronger men levered the heavy machine up enough to give him workroom. He’d ripped up his shirt for a tourniquet when a hired hand lost part of a leg to a gasoline saw that broke loose. Since getting stuck with being Balaclava Junction’s unofficial man-about-the-trouble he’d seen corpses in various states of demise. Even counting the chicken gravy, Jasper Flodge’s was one of the less messy deaths, and more than likely an unassisted one.

  Dr. Bee’s verdict ought to be in by the time Peter got back to the inn. His diagnosis would be something like hobnail liver, clogged arteries, and general cussedness. Whatever it was, Peter Shandy wouldn’t like the feel of it. He’d get his seeds, bring Elva Bright back her jugs, and maybe stay for supper and breakfast so she wouldn’t think he was afraid of her cooking, but that would be all. He wasn’t going to hang around Pickwance another day, not by a jugful he wasn’t.

  Chapter 4

  IT WAS AS WELL that Peter had hardened his heart against bringing Withington along, the path up to the old Rondel place was even worse than he’d remembered it. Yesterday, he supposed, he’d been too pumped-up over these incredible lupines to notice. Today his chief interest lay in collecting the promised seed as expeditiously as possible and hightailing it off to Sasquamahoc and points south. He pulled off into the nearest excuse for a lay-by that presented itself in case somebody else might happen along with a jug to be filled, checked to make sure he had his seed bags, a marking pen, and his landlady’s envelope, and picked up the canvas shoulder tote that had been his companion on many a seed-scrounging expedition.