Something in the Water

by Charlotte MacLeod

  “Thurzella says you want to speak to me, Professor.”

  Peter hadn’t reckoned on this. Lucivee Flodge was taking a keen interest in the innkeeper’s appearance, now was not the time to bring up delicate subjects. He pushed back his chair and stood up.

  “I wanted you to meet my wife. Helen, this is Mrs. Bright, who’s been making my stay so pleasant.”

  “How do you do, Mrs. Shandy? I’m glad the professor’s found our place to his liking. It’s nice to have you with us, too bad you can’t stay longer. I understand you’re a friend of Catriona McBogle’s.”

  “Yes, Cat and I go back a good deal further than we’re admitting to these days. She’s just been down visiting me in Massachusetts, as my husband may have told you. That was a lovely curry you served us, by the way.”

  “I’m glad you enjoyed it, I expect Thurzella told you it’s an old family recipe. Maybe you’d like a scoop of my lemon sherbet to cool it down.”

  “That sounds marvelous. And you make everything yourself?”

  “I or my helper, who lives down the road. And Thurzella’s not a bad little cook when she puts her mind to it. Bright’s Inn has been a family business ever since my grandparents’ day.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve ever thought of retiring.”

  “Lord, no. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. I was born right here in this inn, I expect I’ll die here one of these days. I’ll get your sherbet.”

  “Wait a second, Elva.” Lucivee Flodge was on her feet, taking something out of her briefcase, darting over to where Mrs. Bright was still standing beside the Shandys’ table. “I’ve got something to show you.”

  It was a black-and-white snapshot, dog-eared and yellowed with age, showing a boy and girl on a dirt road. He was swinging a few books on a leather strap, she had a small wicker basket over her arm.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, wherever did you find that?” said the innkeeper. “That’s Jasper and me coming home from school when we were about twelve years old. He used to walk me home and carry my books because he knew my mother would have something good waiting. One thing about Jasper, he always knew how to get his share of whatever pickings were going around. And your share, too, if you didn’t keep a pretty sharp eye on him. Jasper never changed much, did he?”

  “You ought to know,” Lucivee answered. “You and he were pretty well acquainted there for a while.”

  “Jasper and I were acquainted all our lives, as you ought to know. I’m not so sure about the ‘well.’ If you’re trying to get at me for some reason, Lucy Veronica, or whatever you want to call yourself, you just spit it out right here and now. I’m sick and tired of your theatrics. Go on, say it and be done with it.”

  “Oh, it’s no big deal. I just thought your friends here might like to see how much Thurzella takes after her grandfather.”

  “How would you know? You never met her grandfather.”

  “Like hell I didn’t. I married him. Come on, Elva, be real. Everybody knows why your parents were so damned quick to marry you off to that doddering wreck of a Frenchman. Had a little something in the oven, didn’t you? And poor old Jean-Luc sure as hell wasn’t the guy who—”

  “Get out of here!”

  The crack of Elva Bright’s hand against Lucivee Flodge’s face was quite likely heard in Sasquamahoc. A few drops of blood trickled from a scratch left by Elva’s heavy rings. Lucivee stood stunned for a second or two, then raced for the telephone that stood next to the cash register.

  “I’m calling the state police!”

  “Call whoever you want to, but not on my phone. You get out of my house this instant and don’t you ever come back.”

  “Try to keep me out. I’ll make damned good and sure you lose your victualler’s license.”

  “Go.”

  “You others are all witnesses!”

  “Go.”

  Elva Bright was walking toward Jasper Flodge’s widow with a look on her face that could have routed an army. Peter, Helen, and Thurzella were right behind her. Withington was pulling himself half-upright, pawing around for his cane. Lucivee went.

  “I don’t know what came over me.”

  Now that the moment of truth had passed, Elva Bright was slumped into one of the dining-room chairs, her elbows on the table, her head in her hands. “What in God’s name would Jean-Luc have thought?”

  “Thurzella,” Peter said quietly, “is there anything alcoholic in the kitchen? Brandy, cooking sherry, liqueur?”

  “I know. Just a second. Oh, hi, Evander.”

  Thurzella was off and back with a tiny glass and a bottle of Grand Marnier before the swinging door to the kitchen had quit swinging. Peter took the liqueur bottle from her and poured out a healthy tot; Helen picked up the glass and held it to the innkeeper’s lips.

  “Here, take a sip. It will do you good.”

  Mrs. Bright sipped, coughed, picked up a clean napkin and wiped her face with it, took another sip and coughed again. “Pour me a glass of water like a good girl, Thurzella. What was that you were saying about Evander Wye?”

  “Nothing special, Gram. I just caught sight of him coming in and then he disappeared. Maybe he’s using the pay phone. Shall I go and see?”

  “It wouldn’t hurt any. You know what he’s like when he gets into one of his moods. I’ve had about as much as I can put up with for one night.”

  “I’ll go,” said Peter. He reconnoitered, but found nobody.

  “Thank you, Professor,” said Elva. “I’m sorry I’ve let you in for all this. But to hear that she-devil talking about my husband as if he’d been less than a man, trying to make out that I’d ever have let Jasper Flodge so much as—oh, I don’t know what I’m saying. Jean-Luc Mercier de L’Avestant-Portallier never needed any defending from me nor anybody else. He was the best husband a woman could ever want, and a wonderful father to his own two begotten daughters for as long as he was spared to us, as they themselves would be the first to tell you. Thurzella does take after her grandfather, I’m proud to say, and so does her mother. My other daughter favors my side of the family, but you can’t hang her for that. Victualler’s license or none, if that harridan ever tries to set foot in this inn again, she’ll darn soon wish she hadn’t. Are you sure you saw Evander, Thurzella?”

  “Either him or his ghost.”

  “Now, don’t start on that nonsense. I’ve got troubles enough without Claridge here spreading some yarn about the inn being haunted.”

  Withington had hauled himself out of his corner and across the room. He was standing braced against the front counter looking wounded. “Elva, how can you say that? I’d never do such a thing.”

  “Oh yes, you would, if you took the notion. And I’d know right where it came from, so just you watch that tongue of yours, mister. Furthermore, I can’t say I greatly relish having my family’s personal business spread the length and breadth of Rondel County; so why don’t you go to your own bedroom for a change and read a book or watch your television instead of watching to grab the first poor fish who walks in the door and give him an earful about Lucivee Flodge’s latest piece of viciousness? I’ll bring you an eggnog when I get around to it.”

  “A man in my condition has to be humbly grateful for small favors. Thank you, therefore, Elva, and good evening to you all.”

  It was not an elegant leave-taking. Withington’s way of moving along was neither so swift as a crab’s nor so graceful. By tacit accord, the other four stayed in the dining room until he might reasonably be expected to have got himself tucked away. Thurzella, with great presence of mind, went back to the kitchen for a couple more liqueur glasses.

  “Have a little, Mrs. Shandy, it’ll help take the taste away. Here’s yours, Professor. Mind if I take a sip, Gram?”

  “No, go ahead. Just don’t think you can make it a habit.”

  “I know, liquor’s a good servant but a bad master.”

  “And don’t get carried away with your own cleverness. Go clear out the dishwas
her if you’re still hankering for something to do.”

  “Will that mean I get to turn up late tomorrow morning?”

  “I expect likely I can manage by myself an extra hour if you want to sleep in. You’ve been a pretty good girl, all things considered. I hope I wasn’t too hard on poor Claridge just now, but he does get my goat sometimes. I must be getting crabby in my old age. Well, where do you suppose all those policemen are that Lucivee said she’d send to drag me off to jail?”

  “I expect she was just blowing off steam.” Helen always knew when troubled waters could use some oil. “Tell me about your husband, Mrs. Bright. He must have been a truly remarkable person.”

  “Oh yes, he was.”

  Tactfully drawn out, the innkeeper chatted on, easing her mind of the painful confrontation that had led her, for the first time in her life, to assault a patron of the inn. She talked of her beloved Jean-Luc, of his care for her and their two precious daughters, of the good men they’d married, of the grandchildren in whom her heroic husband lived on although he had never got to see them in the flesh. She spoke of his benefactions to the town, of the lives he’d enriched by the example he had set. By the time Constable Frank showed up with a couple of state troopers in tow, the four in the dining room had forgotten all about Lucivee’s threat to call out the troops.

  “Understand you’ve had a little foofaraw around here tonight, Elva,” said the constable. “Mind tellin’ us what happened?”

  “Not at all. What it boils down to is that Lucivee Flodge, as she claims to be nowadays, called me a whore and I slapped her face.”

  “Called you a—I never heard such a spout o’ bilge! Was she drunk?”

  “Don’t ask me, Frank. If she was, she didn’t buy it here, as you well know. Last evening she blew in with two bottles of champagne, all dressed up like a hog going to market, and tried to throw a party to celebrate Jasper’s funeral, but she didn’t get many takers. She may have been haired up because I made it pretty plain that I didn’t care for such goings-on in my dining room. But I don’t know, she’s been acting pretty strange ever since she blew into town.”

  “Which was when, Mrs. Bright?” said one of the state troopers whose name was Gilbert and whose Uncle Evon did odd jobs around the inn when the spirit moved him.

  “Day before yesterday, sometime in the midst of dinner is the best I can tell you, though she may have been around for a while before she came here. Claridge Withington probably knows, he’s in his room if you want to talk to him.”

  “Maybe in a little while,” said Sergeant Gilbert. “Just to get things straight, this Jasper you’ve mentioned, he’s the man who bit into a cyanide pill and died here in the dining room, right?”

  “Yes. He’d been sitting at that table right over there. Frank knows all that. Can’t we get on to what you came for?”

  “Oh, sure. You’re probably tired. Why don’t you just tell how the—er—incident came about?”

  “Well, Lucivee—it’s Lucy Veronica, but that’s what she calls herself—came in here a while ago, loaded for bear. She’d come across an old snapshot while she was rooting around Jasper’s house, which she’s claiming is hers, trying to find all the money and securities she’s bound and determined he must have had hidden away someplace. The snapshot showed Jasper and myself walking home from school. I must have been about twelve years old at the time.”

  Elva Bright drew a long breath. “As I tried to tell her then and as I’m telling you now, the only reason Jasper ever bothered to pay me any attention was that it gave him an excuse to bum a nice snack off my mother when we got here. He knew he wouldn’t get much at his own house but a drink of water and maybe a piece of bread and molasses if his own mother happened to be in a generous mood, which she generally wasn’t, and who could blame her? Old Flodge was generally at one racetrack or another, trying to palm off a broken-down nag on some poor fool who had no more sense than to trust him. And getting away with it, often as not; Jasper didn’t get his conniving ways from anybody strange. But you don’t want to hear all this.”

  “It’s interesting,” said the other state trooper, whose name was Armand and whose cousin Lurline sometimes helped out at Michele’s shop, “but we’re running sort of late. What was Mrs. Flodge trying to make out of this snapshot, Mrs. Bright?”

  “A darn sight more than she had any business to. Thurzella, Michele’s youngest, you know her—was here setting up the tables for breakfast and Lucivee started comparing her to the snapshot, making out she was the image of Jasper when he was a young fellow which was nonsense. Then didn’t that hussy tell me to my own face that everybody in Pickwance knew my parents had married me off to the first sucker who came along because I was already carrying Jasper’s child and they didn’t want a scandal.”

  “But I’ve always heard your husband was some kind of a nobleman or something.”

  “He was noble in every sense of the word. I’m not saying Jean-Luc and I didn’t jump the gun a little because we did and I’ve never been one bit ashamed of it. But for that wretch to come up with such a blatant yarn after all these years—I couldn’t take that, I just hauled off and landed her one to shut her lying mouth. If you want to arrest me for that, you go right ahead.”

  “According to what Mrs. Flodge said when she phoned the station, you’d slashed her face with some kind of weapon and she was losing blood.”

  “That so?” Elva held up her left hand, with her heavy gold wedding band and her impressive diamond engagement ring in a handsome though somewhat cumbrous Belcher setting. “I’m left-handed, as Frank can tell you. These are the rings my husband gave me when we were married, I seldom take them off unless I happen to be kneading dough or gutting fish. As you see, this is a fairly good-sized stone and right now the ring’s a little bit loose on my finger. I expect what happened was that the diamond swiveled around toward my palm and scratched her on the cheek.”

  “But it was no more than a scratch,” Helen insisted. “My husband and I were right here when it happened. We noticed a drop or two of blood, but that was all.”

  “So that’s how it was, Mr.—er?”

  “Shandy,” said Peter. “I’ve been here since Sunday night. My wife just arrived today and Mrs. Bright had come out of the kitchen to welcome her to the inn. We were exchanging a few pleasantries when Mrs. Flodge barged in on us with that snapshot in her hand and started making offensive remarks, as Mrs. Bright has just told you. This was the third time since Flodge’s death that Mrs. Flodge has made a major nuisance of herself here at the inn, I expect tonight’s episode was simply one too many for Mrs. Bright. I felt like swatting the woman myself, if you want to know. So would you, if you’d been subjected to her goings-on.”

  “But you took no active part in the swatting tonight?”

  “Of course not. The whole incident was over within a matter of seconds. Mrs. Bright had been goaded into reacting and was shocked that she’d done so. There was no question of a—er—slugging match.”

  “Do you agree with that, Mrs. Shandy?”

  “I certainly do. As my husband says, it was merely an instant’s flare-up. Mrs. Flodge had behaved unpardonably. She should have been apologizing to Mrs. Bright, rather than trying to set the police on her.”

  “But she didn’t. So then what happened?”

  “Mrs. Bright told Mrs. Flodge to leave the inn and never come back.”

  “Did she yell at her, try to shove her out the door, anything like that?”

  “Not at all. Mrs. Bright had herself under perfect command by then, she simply told Mrs. Flodge to go. Mrs. Flodge shouted a threat about having the inn’s victualling license taken away. Mrs. Bright said ‘Go’ again, and this time Mrs. Flodge went.”

  “Were you two the only witnesses?”

  “No,” said Peter. “Thurzella was still here and so was Claridge Withington, whom you may know. I understand he’s been a regular summer boarder here for—how many years is it, Mrs. Bright?”

  “Too ma
ny, I’m beginning to think. I’d have to look it up in the old registration ledgers. Claridge wasn’t in very good shape when he first came, he’s a little worse every year, and has come to expect more attention than I have time or staff to give him. The upshot is that he tends to involve himself with other people’s affairs more intimately than some of us appreciate. I may as well tell you that he got huffy with me tonight after Lucivee went.”

  “Why was that?” asked Armand.

  “Because I warned him that I didn’t much care for his habit of broadcasting my personal affairs to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who’ll stop to listen. I further told him I’d just as soon he went to his room, which didn’t set any too well, I don’t suppose. Which reminds me, I did say I’d bring him an eggnog. Maybe I’d better go fix it while you three are here. You can watch and make sure I don’t slip in any cyanide pills.”

  Chapter 16

  “DON’T SUPPOSE YOU’D BE fixin’ to warm up the coffeepot while we’re in the kitchen?”

  Constable Frank, who’d been lounging in one of the dining-room chairs with the brim of his cap pulled down over his eyes so that it was impossible to tell whether he was awake or dozing, was now sitting up and taking notice. “Might kind o’ sharpen our minds a little.”

  Elva Bright’s mind was already sharp, and so was her tongue. “I wish to goodness you folks could get the matter settled once and for all so that I can sleep of nights. I’ve said before and I’ll say again that I don’t for one minute believe Jasper Flodge would ever have committed suicide no matter what kind of fix he was in. He was too fond of his own skin for that. Furthermore, he’d been lying his way out of one scrape after another ever since he stole my slate pencil our first day in school and claimed I’d poked it down a chink in the floor. He’d have trusted his luck to come through again, no matter how big a mess he’d got himself into.”

  She headed for the kitchen. “Come on, I’ll make the coffee. You and Mrs. Shandy come too, Professor, if you’re not too tired.”

  Both the Shandys realized that Mrs. Bright must be thinking she’d feel more comfortable having witnesses along who were unequivocally on her side. How could they not go?