Something in the Water

by Charlotte MacLeod

  Peter wondered if Miss Rondel was about to say grace or embark on some mystic ritual; but all she said was, “I made these this morning, I hope you like ginger and molasses. And now, Professor Shandy, do please tell me what’s going on at the inn. All I’ve heard is that Jasper Flodge died of cyanide poisoning with his nose in a plateful of Elva’s chicken pot pie, and that he was actually married to that woman from Portland who’s been making such an exhibition of herself. You’re going to think me an awful old gossip, but a person does like to know what’s going on in her own home town and you’re my best hope of a dispassionate account.”

  How could a man refuse? Peter took a sip of his water and groped for a beginning. “Of course the inn has been the—er—focal point of the action and, as a guest, I could hardly have escaped being in it. Some of it, anyway.”

  “The big ruckus started just about the time you arrived, didn’t it?” Miss Rondel prompted.

  “Pretty much. As you doubtless remember, I’d called on you last Monday, asking permission to take soil samples and gather lupine seeds, which you most graciously granted. After I left you—good Lord, was it only four days ago?—I went directly to the inn. By that time, it was later than I’d realized. Nobody was left in the dining room but a chap named Claridge Withington.”

  “Yes, I know Claridge. He’s been coming to Bright’s Inn for years.”

  “So he told me. Anyway, I ordered the chicken pot pie and had started to eat when this great hulk in a business suit and a loud necktie surged in with fanfare of trumpets and beating of drums. Once he found out there was only one piece of chicken pie left, which the waitress wanted herself, he demanded that and began shoveling it in as if he were scared she might snatch the plate away. Then, all of a sudden, he pitched forward, dropped his fork, made a sort of clawing motion with his right hand, and was dead before the rest of us fully realized what was happening. It was a dreadful thing to watch. I felt sorry for that nice child who was waiting or us.”

  “Thurzella Cluny, Elva’s youngest granddaughter. She is a dear, isn’t she. They’re a fine family, Jean-Luc must be proud of them, wherever he is. So great a spirit and so little time. But I mustn’t digress. So Jasper was dead. And then what happened?”

  Helen hadn’t heard the story either, Peter went whole hog. He repeated what he’d got from Withington, though in less tedious detail. He described that grim scene in the dining room while they’d waited for the body to be taken away. He told of Lucivee Flodge’s first appearance in the dining room, her rage at her husband’s having, as she insisted, committed suicide, her wild insistence that Flodge had killed himself on purpose to cheat her out of his insurance. Evidently she’d been keeping up the premiums on the chance that Jasper would oblige her by walking in front of a truck carrying a full load of logs.

  By the time Peter had finished with a full account of Lucivee’s tasteless failed attempt to throw a champagne gala in celebration of her widowhood, his goblet was empty and his throat was dry. Miss Rondel picked up the new pitcher and refilled Peter’s goblet.

  “Silly woman. According to Elva, her real name is Lucy Veronica, though the nickname seems the more appropriate. Lucivee is what we call a lynx around here. From the French loup cervier, you know. I’m told she assisted Jasper in that unconscionable swindle he pulled on poor little Iolanthe Wye. Is that true, Professor?”

  “Apparently so. Iolanthe recognized her going out of the inn dining room as the woman who’d passed herself off as having come from the Department of Human Services. It might be as well not to repeat this, Miss Rondel, I believe the Wyes are going to take legal action against her.”

  “Good for them. At least something positive seems to be coming out of that debacle. Were you on hand for the Wyes’ reunion, Professor?”

  “Front-row center. I played an insignificant role in that one, myself.”

  Peter explained how, on his way back from Sasquamahoc yesterday, he’d picked up a stranded motorist who’d turned out to be a cousin of the Wye brothers on his way to the funeral, not to mourn but to make sure that the bastard who’d wrecked Fred’s marriage got his final comeuppance. Peter described the confrontation between the estranged pair, trying to keep it from sounding too much like a soap opera and thus winding up with a Victorian melodrama. This must have been more to Miss Rondel’s taste because she offered him the last cookie and another drink of water.

  “What I can’t get over,” Helen put in, “is that Mrs. Wye, whom we knew as Mrs. Howard, has been working for several months as housekeeper to our dear friends and near neighbors, the Enderbles. Talk about serendipity!”

  “Some people might call it guidance,” Miss Rondel suggested gently.

  Helen accepted the correction with grace. “And they might be right. We don’t know, do we? She’s been a wonderful help to John and Mary, but she’s always looked—bereft, is the only word I can think of. I thought she must be a widow.”

  “And everybody thinking all this time that she’d run off with Jasper Flodge and gone to the bad.” This was the first time Peter had heard Miss Rondel come anywhere near raising her voice. “What a dreadful, dreadful shame! Anyone with half an eye should have seen it coming, what with that awful old Bible thumper dinning it into her from the day she was born that women are all born sinful and brainless. Between a sanctimonious know-it-all like Absalom Bliven and a scoundrel like Jasper Flodge, poor little Iolanthe never stood a chance. How true it is that the letter killeth. At least she hasn’t had to stand on her head in a river for twenty years like the fairy she was named for. I suppose one must be grateful for small mercies.”

  Helen awarded that last comment a well-merited smile. “Tell me, Miss Rondel, if Mr. Bliven is so righteously religious, how did he allow his daughter to be named after a comic-opera fairy? Was it his wife’s doing?”

  “Oh, heavens, no. That poor woman never got a chance to call her soul her own, much less express an opinion. She died of a ruptured spleen, and it’s easy to see why. But to answer your question, Absalom Bliven had an aunt Prunella, who’d married a lumber baron and inherited a good deal of money. She was a lovely woman. When she got too far along in years to drive herself, she’d have her hired man bring her over to Pickwance every so often in a great big old Packard that had been her husband’s. I was always glad to see her come, everybody was. She had the most delightful laugh, like a gurgling freshet in mud season, when the sun’s getting higher and the snow begins to melt. Prunella was the one who got to name the Blivens’ baby. She was a great Gilbert and Sullivan fan, as you must have guessed, though I think she did it partly to get a rise out of Absalom. She wasn’t any too stuck on him either as a minister or as a nephew, but her husband was gone and their only son had been killed in the war so there really wasn’t anybody else. And family’s family, after all. Absalom Bliven wasn’t about to cross a rich aunt over a mere infant daughter. He naturally assumed he was going to inherit Prunella’s money. It was a dreadful blow when she finally died and he found out she’d left the lot to Iolanthe, tied up so tight that he could never lay his hand on a penny of it.”

  “He’s managed so far to keep his daughter from getting any, however,” said Peter.

  Miss Rondel was surprised. “But how can he? Unless Absalom’s been working a fiddle, which I must say I wouldn’t put past him. Of course he’d think up some kind of sanctimonious twaddle to justify his cussedness, which is what it boils down to.”

  “M’well, I suspect Mr. Bliven’s about to get a lawyer’s letter that he won’t forget in a hurry. Fred Wye was waxing pretty wroth about that inheritance by the time he and his wife had got their various misunderstandings sorted out last night at the inn.”

  “Good for Fred. I’ve worried a good deal about that marriage. Iolanthe was such an innocent, and so desperately in love with Fred. Fred’s a fine, decent fellow, but he’s always had a tendency to fly off the handle and then wish he hadn’t. Poor boy, he’s learned a hard lesson. And she’s found out how to stand on h
er own two feet, which is something she’d probably never have known if she hadn’t had to get out and fend for herself. Perhaps it’s all for the best. They’re still young enough to start a family, I hope they do. He’ll spend the rest of his life making it up to her, and she’ll be the happiest wife in the State of Maine. Please remind them when you see them that I’m expecting a visit.”

  “Glad to. Mrs. Howard—er—Mrs. Wye’s asked us to drop by the house for a cup of tea before we leave. She seemed anxious to get back to keeping house for Fred. Will the brother stay on with them, do you think?”

  “One never knows what Evander will do, but I don’t see why he shouldn’t. There are just the two brothers, they own both the house and the mine jointly and they’ve always been close. I don’t know what Fred would have done these past few years without Evander to keep him on an even keel.”

  “You surprise me, Miss Rondel. I’d got the impression that Fred was the strong one.”

  “You’re not the first to think so, but they’re neither of them weaklings. Evander is by far the more self-sufficient of the two, Fred needs very much to love and be loved. Iolanthe’s apparent defection took a dreadful toll of him, I very much doubt whether he could ever have brought himself to trust another woman. That anyone should have tried to link him with Lucivee Flodge is simply bizarre.”

  “This whole affair seems totally bizarre to me,” said Helen. “It’s hard to believe that one small-town shyster could have wrought such havoc just by forging a marriage license.’”

  “Jasper never forged that license, nor the power of attorney either.” Miss Rondel’s voice carried total conviction. “He was a bad one all right, I found that out by the time I had him in my third-grade class, but he was no great thinker. He’d never have had the subtlety of mind to hatch up such a scheme on his own. And even if he had, he couldn’t have forged the papers for the plain and simple reason that he never learned to read or write. Jasper Flodge was completely illiterate. He couldn’t even sign his own name properly, he just made a meaningless scrawl.”

  “Good Lord!” said Peter. “How did he get by?”

  “The same way lots of other folks do. Being illiterate doesn’t necessarily mean being stupid, you know. With Jasper, I believe it was a mixture of dyslexia and laziness. He did understand figures; he had a retentive memory and a good deal of cleverness, though cunning might be the more appropriate word. Most people never caught on to his disability. He’d pretend to have mislaid his eyeglasses or something of the sort and ask somebody else to read for him. But it’s hard to fool a schoolteacher.”

  “As many a pupil has learned to his sorrow,” Peter agreed. “Then you think Lucivee managed the whole affair?”

  “No, I don’t think so at all. Perhaps I underrate her, but in my opinion Lucivee lacks the insight, the logical mind, and the self-control to have organized so complicated and drawn-out a swindle. We must realize, Professor, that its success rested entirely on the psychological pressure that had been brought to bear on Iolanthe by her father’s constant preaching about the hideous doom that awaited any woman who transgressed against what he called God’s law.”

  “Which I suppose translated into Absalom’ law,” Helen put in.

  “Precisely. Absalom was very much against Iolanthe’s marrying Fred Wye. Nobody could understand why because Fred was, and remains, a man of good family and sound principles, able and willing to give her a far better life than she’d been used to. Whether or not Absalom’s disapprobation had anything to do with the fact that Fred’s too good a businessman to have let him play games with his daughter’s inheritance should be left open to question, I suppose, but I wasn’t the only person around these parts who had a rather cynical view of what the answer ought to be. Anyway, Iolanthe defied her father for the first time in her life and married the man she loved. It’s quite likely, however, that she suffered a good deal of guilt, if only at a subconscious level, in going against what she’d always been taught. Don’t you agree, Mrs. Shandy?”

  “Please call me Helen. Certainly I agree. Iolanthe wouldn’t be human if she hadn’t felt some guilt. And naturally that would have predisposed her to put credence in Jasper Flodge’s dirty story. It’s a plot straight out of a gothic novel. Who around here reads Sheridan Le Fanu?”

  Miss Rondel shrugged. “Surely not Lucivee Flodge.”

  “Then what it comes down to,” said Peter, “is that we’ve got to start looking for a third person who masterminded the swindle but took no active role in carrying it out.”

  His hostess looked slightly amused. “I take it that ‘we’ is to be taken as rhetoric, Professor. It does seem a shame that you won’t be here to lend your expert assistance. Catriona’s told me about some of your exploits, particularly that remarkable affair of the Lumpkin weather vanes.*”

  “Never believe what a fiction writer tells you. It’s just a matter of getting all the data and sorting it out. For the sake of argument, let’s see where the matter stands so far. Fred Wye mentioned last night—this was before Iolanthe showed up—that his friend Ed Whitbread, whoever that is—”

  “Assistant to the county medical examiner.”

  “Thank you. Anyway, Whitbread’s report was that the verdict on Jasper Flodge so far is death by cyanide poisoning, as we already knew, with no decision as to how it was administered. There was some talk about Elva Bright’s being the only one who’d had an opportunity to poison the chicken pie, but nobody could come up with a motive. Besides, Mrs. Bright’s reputation is such that nobody would believe it if they did.”

  “I should hope not! And that’s as far as they’ve got?”

  “No, it appears that they’re taking Lucivee Flodge’s allegation of suicide seriously. They’ve checked into Flodge’s bank statements plus some business records that she’s supplied them. It looks as if his credit was in fact shot to perdition and he had every reason to be despondent. They’re even prepared to swallow Mrs. Flodge’s yarn about his killing himself to spite her out of collecting his insurance. She’s got receipts to show she had in fact been keeping up the premiums. By the time she’d finished making her case in her own sweet way, the consensus seems to have been that anybody fool enough to tie himself to that besom would naturally have preferred a quick and merciful ending to the prospect of crawling to her to bail him out.”

  “Which doesn’t surprise me any.”

  Miss Rondel’s hands were lightly folded, resting on the table. Peter noted that the fingers showed not a sign of the arthritic bumps and gnarling to which people of her age were generally prone. “They’d rather it was suicide, you see. We do have murders in this county as elsewhere, but they’re usually the obvious kind. A drunken brawl gets out of hand and somebody grabs a hunting knife. A man finds his wife in bed with someone else, picks up his hunting rifle, and blazes away. Simple, brutal crimes of passion, horrible enough when they happen, but easy to understand.”

  She refolded her napkin and began drawing her fingers through its fringe, comforting herself with the familiar touch of weaving thread. “Poison is silent, treacherous. A person can die from it and never know why, or how, or who put it where it could be swallowed unbeknownst. We don’t even want to think of such things, much less find them happening to people we know in a place we’ve always before found safe and respectable. I don’t suppose Lucivee meant to do Elva a favor when she made that scene about Jasper’s having poisoned himself, but the fact remains that her doing so probably saved the inn from having to shut down.”

  “There’s no question about it.”

  Peter described the pathetic scene he’d walked into the night after Flodge’s dramatic end. He told of Elva’s magnificent roast going begging, of young Thurzella almost in tears, of the sudden rush of business once Lucivee began insisting that Jasper Flodge had killed himself to spite her, his wife. The simple fact that nobody died from the roast beef had become proof enough that the food at the inn was wholesome as usual. Last night’s melodrama had been played to a
full house; it was safe to bet that there’d be no dearth of customers tonight.

  “The Wyes won’t be there, though,” Helen predicted. “She’ll want to cook him the best meal she can think of.”

  “And he’ll want to tell her all about the lawsuit they’re going to bring against Absalom Bliven for cheating on her inheritance,” Peter added. “The way Fred was talking last night, he’s also fixing to slap a lien on Jasper Flodge’s estate just in case there might be a chance to salvage some of the money and jewelry that Flodge stole. I shouldn’t be surprised if Fred went a step further and laid a charge of criminal conspiracy against Lucivee.”

  “But none of that is going to tell us who organized the operation,” Miss Rondel fretted. “That’s what concerns me more than anything else. I’ve lived in this town all my life, I thought I knew the history of just about everybody in it and had a fairly sound idea of what they were capable of and what they weren’t. Now along comes a situation like this, and I feel myself standing on foreign soil. Jasper Flodge was a nasty little boy and he didn’t get any nicer as he grew up. I can believe him only too ready to join a scheme to fleece Fred Wye of his money and destroy Iolanthe simply because she was an easy target. What I cannot believe is that Jasper committed suicide. He was too cocksure of his ability to lie his way out of any jam he got into. As for that cyanide pill, he wouldn’t even have known where to look for one. Such things aren’t sold over drugstore counters, you know.”