Something in the Water

by Charlotte MacLeod

  The kitchen was clean as a whistle. Thurzella was nowhere to be seen. A note on the scrubbed counter said “See you in the morning, Gram. I took two doughnuts for Daddy’s lunch box.”

  “Bless the child. Here, Mrs. Shandy, take this stool, it’s all there is to sit on. I don’t suppose you’d want a doughnut, this time of night. There’s a little of that lemon sherbet left, and some madeleines. I learned to make them for my husband.”

  “I’d love a madeleine, thank you.”

  Peter took one too, but the other men all opted for doughnuts. Constable Frank was wide awake by now, and ready to pick a bone with the innkeeper.

  “I don’t see why you’re so hell-bent and determined to make out that Jasper was murdered, Elva. Seems to me it would be a damn sight more to your advantage if you went along with what they’re sayin’ about suicide.”

  Sergeant Gilbert nodded agreement. “Mrs. Flodge makes out a reasonable case. According to her, Flodge got himself involved in some shady real estate deal, tried to outsmart the wrong people, lost all his money, and got in serious trouble with the mob. She maintains that he knew he was a goner and decided he might as well take his own way out before some gunman caught up with him, giving himself one last kick by doing her out of the insurance policy she’d been paying on ever since they split.”

  Elva still wasn’t biting. “You don’t have to remind me. The first thing Lucivee did after she hit town was barge into my dining room and make a big scene over the way Jasper had cheated her. If she’s so bound and determined to make everybody believe Jasper died penniless, why’s she so busy rooting around after whatever she thinks he’s got squirreled away? Would you kindly and gently answer me that?”

  “That’s an interesting question, Mrs. Bright,” said Sergeant Armand, “but it’s not what we’re here about this time. I guess what we’d better do now, Frank, is see what Mr. Withington has to say, then go take a look at Mrs. Flodge’s awful mutilations. She’ll be staying here in Pickwance for the night, will she?”

  “I should think so,” Elva replied. “She does have a flat in Portland, I believe, but it hardly seems likely she’d have gone there tonight, specially now that she’s found another excuse to make trouble up here. Most likely she’s at Jasper’s, just over on the next street. Frank can show you where. She claims the place is hers now, not that it’s anything to brag about. Will you be coming back here after you’ve seen her?”

  “That depends, I guess,” said Gilbert. “Look, Mrs. Bright, if I were you, I’d get hold of my lawyer first thing in the morning. I expect what Mrs. Flodge is angling for is an opening to sue you for damages. Considering the way you say she’s been acting in your dining room, I shouldn’t be surprised if you could bring a countersuit against her for defamation of character, disturbing the peace, and a few other things. It mightn’t be a bad idea for your lawyer to write her a pretty stiff letter, then you just wait and see what develops. Chances are she’ll back down in a hurry, otherwise she could find herself in a mess of trouble.”

  “Rather she than I. I suppose I’d better make that eggnog, seeing as how it’s what we’re here for. You watch me, now, I wasn’t joking about Claridge Withington. He’s quite capable of pulling some stunt just to keep the pot boiling.”

  She beat an egg, added milk, nutmeg, and a tablespoon of cooking sherry. “Well, poor soul, I suppose he has to get his fun one way or another. Here, you take this eggnog in to him. I’m not feeling any too sociable right now. Good night, Mrs. Shandy. You too, Professor. I’ll see you in the morning, if the posse here hasn’t carried me away.”

  “She’s quite a person, isn’t she?” Helen hadn’t taken time before dinner to do more than unpack her all-purpose dress and shoes. She was finishing the small task now, putting the hangables on hangers, hooking them over the rod hidden behind a chintz curtain that did duty as a closet, laying her underthings in a drawer, setting out her comb and cosmetics on the embroidered dresser scarf.

  “There we are. Now where’s the stuff I was going to wash?”

  Peter was regarding his wife with amusement. “I thought you wanted to leave tomorrow.”

  “Did I?” Helen rooted in the suitcase that Peter had by degrees been turning into a hamper and began to fill the bathroom sink. “Give me that shirt, for goodness’ sake. It looks as if you’ve been wearing it all week.”

  “Only since yesterday. I meant to borrow one of Guthrie’s.”

  “His shirts would swim on you. Bless that woman, she’s put a folding laundry rack in here. You weren’t planning to take a shower tonight, were you?”

  “Am I to deduce from your query that the clothes rack is in the shower stall?”

  “You’re so clever, dear. I’ve missed you.”

  “M’well, we might play duets if you’d thought to pack us a couple of pianos.”

  “So we might, I knew there was something I’d meant to put in. What have you done with your other sock?”

  “Helen, is that sock germane to the topic under discussion?”

  “It’s germane to the fact that you’re going to feel awfully silly tomorrow morning going down to breakfast with one foot covered and the other one bare if we don’t find it.”

  “Do you honestly think so? Am I so abject a slave to fashion? Is it my life’s crowning ambition to become known as the Beau Brummell of Pickwance? I suppose you’ll be nagging at me to buy myself a feed cap next. One with velveteen antlers sticking up out of it and a slogan across the front that says ‘The Moose Is Loose,’ perchance? Here’s your dratted sock. I seem to have been using it as a bookmark, for some reason that escapes me at the moment. What in Sam Hill is going on down there?”

  Perhaps because it had once been a pesthouse, if Withington’s history could be trusted, the squarish, two-storied, gambrel-roofed gray clapboard building that had been known for the past half-century and more as Bright’s Inn was set off a little from the other buildings along the main street. The three broad slabs of granite that served as its front steps came right out to the edge of the sidewalk, as was to be expected in a latitude where snow fell thick and often in the wintertime and nobody wanted to do any more shoveling than necessary. At each side, however, a strip of land about six feet wide had been left bare beside the foundation, and a paved alleyway broad enough for two cars to pass, unless one of them was a truck, led around behind the inn to a parking lot big enough to hold as many as twenty vehicles.

  These side strips, and the narrower ones that ran along the front from the alleyways to the steps, had been filled in with a deep mulch of beach stones about the size of eggs, tumbled smooth by the in-and-out of countless tides, kept in place by a white-painted wooden picket fence about a foot high. The noise that Peter and Helen were hearing was of footsteps rattling over the stones.

  “Sounds as if the constable’s dropped his car keys,” Helen giggled. “Do you think we should go down and help him hunt for them?”

  “I think you should eschew frivolous remarks and either put your dress back on or take off the redundancies. My own inclination is toward—”

  “Sh-h! I think they’re saying something about asking the professor. Why don’t you poke your head out and see what’s going on? Can you raise the screen?”

  “It seems to be fastened on with rusty hooks and eyes. Drat, they’re stiff as—ah, here we go. Long as I don’t drop the thing and brain the constable. These old wooden frames are heavy.”

  Having checked to make sure the hooks at the top were still secure and could serve as hinges, Peter eased the lower part of the screen far enough out so that he could see what the commotion was about. The state police cruiser was still parked at the curb, Sergeant Gilbert was sitting in the driver’s seat with the door open, talking into a hand-held microphone. Frank was patrolling the sidewalk, shooing away pedestrians who wanted to stop and see what was going on. Sergeant Armand was inside the picket fence. He appeared to be standing guard over something black that was sprawled over the stones just around the ri
ght-hand corner of the building. As Frank waved a car on by, its headlights picked up a flash of red against the black. Peter pulled in his head and hooked the screen.

  “You’d better get dressed, Helen. I think it’s Lucivee Flodge.”

  “Peter, no! You mean she’s—”

  “She’s something. Passed out, maybe. Mrs. Bright mentioned that she’d been drinking a lot.”

  Helen didn’t believe this. Peter didn’t either. A drunk with a nearby home to go to would mean nothing worse than a distasteful task for the constable or some helpful neighbor who knew where her door key was hidden. A state policeman sending a radio message meant a situation that he and his partner either couldn’t or shouldn’t try to handle by themselves. Such as a bad accident or a case of homicide.

  Since Helen had already put his shirt to soak, Peter pulled on a light sweater over his undershirt. “I’m going down.”

  “Then so am I. Do you have the room key with you?”

  “Yes, in my pocket. You’d better bring your handbag, though. Will you be warm enough in case we have to go someplace?”

  “Where, for instance?”

  “God knows.”

  Helen took out the pale-blue cardigan that she’d so recently put in the dresser drawer, picked up her handbag as bidden, and gave Peter a kiss. “Poor Mrs. Bright! I do hope it’s not something awful.”

  That would depend on how one defined awful, Peter supposed. The front door was ajar, they stepped out on the top step. Gilbert motioned for them not to go any farther and kept on nodding into the microphone. As their eyes adjusted to the moonlight, they could see Lucivee well enough. There was no pool of blood around her, no knife protruding from her back, no obvious sign of a bullet hole or even of a struggle. The woman who had so viciously baited Elva Bright not much over an hour ago seemed now to be resting quite comfortably on the stones. Her good black suit wasn’t torn or rumpled, her hair not even mussed. The briefcase she’d been carrying lay close to her left hand, still fastened. She had fallen face down, all they could see was part of her left cheek, with a large, ugly abrasion on the temple.

  “Ugh!” Helen drew her cardigan close around her. “”t took more than Mrs. Bright’s diamond to do that.”

  What about an embattled Mrs. Bright with a rock in her hand? Peter had a hunch the others were thinking what he was thinking; he wished he weren’t. “Where’s Mrs. Bright?” he asked.

  Gilbert, who’d finished his call and come back out on the sidewalk, told him. “She’s in the lobby with Mr. Withington. We’d be grateful if you and Mrs. Shandy would go inside and stay there with them. We’re not supposed to let anybody in or out until the homicide squad gets here.”

  “Homicide squad?”

  Well, yes, they’d have to. Lucivee must surely be dead, and there was that call she’d made claiming grievous bodily assault. Peter and Helen went dutifully back into the lobby. There was no fire in the grate tonight, Elva Bright and her out-of-favor boarder were sitting as far apart as the space would allow, in two of the wicker chairs. Mrs. Bright was still in her white cotton dress. Withington had put on a heavy woolen robe and house slippers but retained his socks and trousers. For once, the oracle wasn’t saying a word; but he perked up a little when the Shandys sat down together on the love seat.

  “This is indeed a shocking development. After we—ah—parted company, I watched television for a little while. Then, much to my surprise, I had a short visit with Frank Webber and two nice young chaps from the state police. I’m afraid they found me a dull witness.”

  That could have gone without saying, Peter thought. He pulled Helen a little closer and prepared to endure what couldn’t be avoided. Withington worked his way syllable by syllable through his dull witnessing, then back to the tube.

  “I was trying to find something worth watching—I have one of those remote-control gadgets, so I’m able to manage easily enough—when, lo and behold, the boys were back in my room wanting to know whether I’d happened to hear anybody prowling around outside while they were in the kitchen with you and our kind hostess.”

  He shot a slightly acrimonious glance at Mrs. Bright. “I explained that I wouldn’t have heard because my television was on. I wear earphones, you know, so that the noise won’t bother anybody else. I do try to be as considerate a resident as my infirmities will allow me to be,” he added with another sidelong glance, which was a waste of effort because Mrs. Bright wasn’t looking. “Please excuse my attire, Mrs. Shandy. The policemen were quite insistent that I stay here with Mrs. Bright where she can keep an eye on me. It’s quite a change for a physical wreck such as I to be treated as a suspicious character.”

  That got a rise out of Mrs. Bright. “Don’t start giving yourself airs, Claridge. You’re here to make sure I don’t try to sneak away, and well you know it. What’s going on out there, Professor?”

  “M’well, we’re not quite sure yet. Sergeant Gilbert was on the car radio last I knew. I assume he was calling for an ambulance and—er—whatever else they do in such cases. Helen and I got shooed in here to await further developments. Is that what happened to you?”

  “Pretty much. I was still in the kitchen puttering around. There’s always some little last-minute thing to do about breakfast, it seems. I was in the pantry hunting for a spare jug of maple syrup that I’d hidden away and forgot where I put it when Jemmy Gilbert came galloping in as though the devil was after him, wanting to know if I’d seen or heard anybody run down the driveway and out through the parking lot. I said I probably wouldn’t have paid any attention if I did. Joggers often cut through there. Anyway, I wouldn’t have heard them from inside the pantry. So I asked Jemmy what the trouble was and he told me there was a woman lying up near the corner of the driveway and would I come and have a look at her?”

  “That must have been a shock,” said Helen.

  “It was one too many for me, I can tell you that. I suspected right away that it might be Lucivee Flodge. I figured she’d gone home, taken a few quick drinks, and decided to come back and fight another round but had had one too many and passed out before she quite made it to the inn door.”

  “Would that be possible? Does she live that close to here?”

  “Oh yes, just the next street over, practically back-to-back with the inn. All she’d have had to do was cross her own backyard and cut through the parking lot. So anyway, Jemmy Gilbert wanted me to go out with him and have a look, and sure enough, it was Lucivee. She still had on that black suit with the red collar and cuffs that you saw her in. I wanted Jemmy and Armand to turn her over so that I could get a proper look at her face but they said it was against the rules and they’d have to call for instructions. So Jemmy marched me back in and brought Claridge to guard me, and here we are. What’s the matter with Lucivee, Professor? Hasn’t she come to yet?”

  Chapter 17

  BY BRUTE FORCE, PETER kept himself from glancing at Helen. “They wouldn’t let us any farther than the doorstep, Mrs. Bright. It was hard to see. Would you mind if I lit the fire? My wife is shivering.”

  It might not have been on account of the after-dark cooling, but Helen played up. “I should have known enough to bring something warmer than this thin cardigan. Peter’s been telling me about the lovely handwovens your daughter has for sale, he’s promised to take me to her shop tomorrow.”

  Sweet are the uses of small talk in an emergency situation that one can’t do anything about; Mrs. Bright pounced gratefully on Michele’s hand-weaving. They whiled away the time not too unpleasantly with the help of the multicolored driftwood blaze, until the sound of a siren and the flashing of blue lights brought back the fear. It was impossible then to stay away from the windows, although Mrs. Bright did do what Peter’s mother would surely have done, drawing the curtains across the windows for decency’s sake but leaving a narrow slit to peek through.

  Lucivee Flodge was dead. Nobody could doubt that now, not when they’d watched her body being encased in a long plastic bag and slid on a st
retcher through the open back doors of the police ambulance. As the doors were shut and the ambulance eased itself away from the curb, Peter heard the innkeeper murmur “God be merciful.” He took her by the arm, steered her back to the chair she’d been sitting in; and laid another stick of driftwood on the fire.

  Then came more waiting while the men outside poked around among the rocks with no apparent result. It might not have been more than fifteen minutes, but it felt like an eternity before Jemmy Gilbert reentered the lobby.

  “Mrs. Bright, would you mind coming into the kitchen with me for a minute or two?”

  She minded, all right, though she put a brave face on it. “What for, Jemmy? Surely you’re not hungry again already?”

  “Not yet.” He was at least as nervous as the innkeeper was, and not covering it up half so adroitly. “It’s just that the…the officer in charge”—he was trying not to say “homicide”—”thought we ought to double-check that bit about somebody being able to run through the alley without being heard.”

  “I told you I was in the pantry.”

  “Yes, I know you did. You and I are supposed to go into the pantry together and you sort of do what you were doing before while I listen.”

  “Well, that’s pretty dumb. All they’d have to do would be take off their shoes and run in their socks.”

  “That’s what I said, but Detective Blake said what if they didn’t have time to take off their shoes? We’re supposed to think of it as part of the investigative process.”

  “Does it make any difference what I think of the investigative process? Come along, then, let’s do it and get it over with.”

  Claridge Withington was not taking kindly to his assigned role as passive listener, he cleared his throat with a loud “Ahem! What would you like the rest of us to do, officer?”

  “I’d like you all to stay right where you are for the time being. Somebody will be in here shortly to take your statements.”