The Grub-And-Stakers Move a Mountain

by Charlotte MacLeod

  “Well, I guess you’ll have to include me out of that match,” said Ben Frankland, who was still being the perfect host regardless of Dittany’s rebuff. “I don’t even known which end of a bow is up.”

  “Nor does anybody else,” Sergeant MacVicar informed him with all gravity. “By the very nature of its symmetry a bow does not have its ups and downs like us frail creatures here below but will function well in almost any position, vertical or horizontal. The longbow is a far more versatile weapon than many people think. In essence, you see, it works on the same principle as the catapult, an ancient weapon much favored by the Greeks and Romans for the firing of burning arrows and other projectiles such as large stones over fortifications otherwise impenetrable. In the form of a slingshot the catapult is still employed by naughty little boys and sometimes, I fear, by naughty little girls.”

  He smiled benignly at Minerva Oakes. She was as crackerjack with a rubber band and a prune pit, as many a bluejay trying to swipe bird seed from a flock of feeding juncos and redpolls had learned to the detriment of its tail feathers. Osbert Monk, who had completed his ice-procurement mission on the double so that he could get back to exchanging glowers with Ben Frankland, nodded and made a note on his shirt cuff with an indelible pen. Dittany thought what hell it must be to marry a writer, even one who had sound views on pantries and needed somebody to bake him molasses cookies with crinkles around the edges. She wrenched her mind off the way Osbert’s hair swirled around behind his left ear and attended to Sergeant MacVicar’s learned discourse.

  “That same principle of using the bow like a catapult was called into play,” he was saying, “when our Dittany here and Mr. Benjamin Frankland were ostensibly shot at by John Architrave’s murderer.”

  “Huh?” said Ben.

  “Oh yes. That was another piece of Deputy Monk’s detection. The method was simple enough. The bow, you see, was braced in the limbs of a tree by three hooks that held it in cocked position. Being without leaves at this time of year, the tree would present no obstacle to the passage of an arrow.”

  “Osbert figured that out in his own little pointed head?” cried Arethusa Monk.

  “I used the idea in a book once,” her nephew admitted modestly. “Anyway, I knew the tree had to be in a direct line with the one the arrow hit, and probably not too far away or else the fishline might get tangled up.”

  “What fishline, prithee?”

  “The fishline he tweaked to release the bowstring and loose the arrow. I expect he worked the same trick that night when he was supposed to be down cellar fixing Dittany’s sump pump.”

  “He who?”

  “Your astute nephew is referring to the man who prefers to be known as Benjamin Frankland,” said Sergeant MacVicar.

  “What do you mean, prefers to?” shouted Ben. “What are you getting at, eh?”

  “You, myself, and the RCMP all know why you choose an alias which, by the way, sounds very much like an alias. As I mentioned to Dittany Henbit and Deputy Monk in your hearing last night, John Architrave’s late sister has been traced. I thought you might make a run for it then, but you were too cocksure of your ability to pull the wool over a stupid small-town policeman’s eyes. In point of fact, you would not have escaped. You have been under constant surveillance ever since you tipped your hand by faking that second attack on yourself and Dittany. Too much of a good thing can be very bad, Mr. Ford.”

  “Who’s Mr. Ford?”

  “You, sir. Your grandmother left one child who in turn married a man named Ford. Through diligence and ingenuity that might well have been turned to a worthier purpose, you are now the sole surviving member of that family. Your first name is Burton and you are well aware of growing property values in Lobelia Falls, as Dittany Henbit can testify, though in sober truth I do not believe any man who suggested tearing out her pantry could ever secure her affections and thereby her assets.”

  “Tearing out her pantry?” gasped Hazel Munson. “Is he crazy?”

  “That is a defense he will perhaps try to offer, but it will not stand. Mr. Ford is merely the sort of person who distinguishes between meum and tuum only to the extent of determining how he can most expeditiously make yours become his. He is sometimes rather clever about this, as when he elected to conceal his relationship to John until he had not only got John safely out of the way but had ingratiated himself with the community. I daresay there might under different circumstances have been wide rejoicing when this helpful, friendly chap learned to his well-feigned astonishment that certain documents he would stumble across among his late grandmother’s effects established him as John’s long-lost heir.”

  Sergeant MacVicar took a delicate sip at his mild whiskey and water. “Yes. Mr. Ford is indeed a clever man. He is just never quite clever enough. That is why the RCMP happened to have on file the fingerprints my esteemed wife obtained when she, on whom I may say with pardonable pride there are no flies, offered him a drink of water when he dropped in at the station to make a fuss about our not having tracked down the imaginary hunter who allegedly shot his employer.”

  “Big deal,” sneered Frankland. “They got me on a traffic violation once.”

  “True. You happened to be hijacking a truck at the time. What alerted Mrs. MacVicar, you see, was the map. She was well aware, as were we all, of poor old John’s idiosyncrasy against maps and charts. Yet here was this new employee in possession of a plot plan allegedly given him by John and there was John dead on the mountain where in fact he had no need to be if in fact he had shown said employee the chart showing where to dig his totally irrelevant test holes.”

  “How do I know where the plan came from? All I know is Architrave gave it to me and told me to dig the holes. He must have got it from McNaster.”

  “McNaster would not have made a silly mistake like giving John a map. His research has been more thorough than yours, you see.”

  “What research? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Ah, but I do because my own research was even more thorough than McNaster’s. You spent several days in Scottsbeck nosing around before you showed your face in Lobelia Falls. You found out your great-uncle was looking for a new man, as was so often the case. You also found out that McNaster had a scheme afoot with regard to the Hunneker Land Grant. Immediately you saw how this projected piracy could be turned to your own advantage.”

  “How, for instance?”

  “You went to McNaster and pointed out that you had him, in a sense, over a barrel. However, if he would use his influence to get you the job with the Water Department, you would return the favor by falsifying the perk tests or doing other odd jobs for him. As a newcomer to the area, you would be in a favorable position to infiltrate the townsfolk and nose out any opposition to his plans. What you did not tell him, I dare say, was that, should your own plans go astray, you would make him the—I believe, Miss Monk, I would be correct in saying dupe or cat’s-paw?”

  “Right on the button, Sergeant, though you might also have used gull, scapegoat, whipping boy, or fall guy. I myself wouldn’t say fall guy, of course, but—”

  “Quite. In short, Mr. Ford, if pressed too far, you intended to accuse Andrew McNaster outright of shooting John Architrave.”

  “And what makes you so sure he didn’t?”

  “The fact that you and not he are John’s heir, for one thing. The fact that the clerk who sold you the bow and arrows in that sporting goods store over at Scottsbeck has identified you from one of the photographs we took Saturday night after you’d organized Wallaby and his henchmen into staging that vandalism scene on the mountain. There is the fact that you used Mrs. Oakes’s favorite brush to paint those black stripes on your arrows and neglected either to clean the brush or to wipe your fingerprints from the handle, as we discovered while searching her woodshed yesterday. In the matter of searching, there is the fact that you attempted to deceive Dittany, Mr. Monk, and myself by claiming that John’s house had been searched to no avail and then of
fering to search the cellar by yourself. Had you done so, Samantha Burberry would of course not have been found in time to make her momentous appearance at Candidates’ Night although, to give them their due, I believe that McNaster and Wallaby would have insisted on your releasing her afterward. Unlike yourself, they draw the line at out-and-out murder. Finally, of course, there is the fact that you neglected to order that gasket for Dittany’s sump pump after you had said you would do so. Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.”

  “I don’t have to listen to this garbage,” shouted Burton Ford.

  Bob and Ray, who had been hovering at the ready, moved to his side. “It’s not polite to contradict Sergeant MacVicar,” said Ray.

  “The hell it’s not. What is this, Russia? Now you look here, MacVicar—”

  His protest was cut short by the snapping of handcuffs.

  Chapter 21

  “THE ACCUSED WAS ABOUT to get violent,” Bob explained. “Can I charge him, Sarge? I never get to charge anybody.”

  “You’d louse up the words and let the bugger get off on a technicality,” Ray objected.

  “That will do, lads,” said their chief benignly. “To continue my narrative, I was about to mention that these stalwart young men along with Deputy Monk have done some fine detective work.”

  “In the bars over at Scottsbeck, I’ll bet,” said Roger Munson.

  “Exactly, and a happy hunting ground it proved to be. Our lads managed to contact (a) the young woman from the county surveyor’s office who sold Frankland the map, (b) the chap who owned the van with the Manitoba number plates and his accomplices, all of whom had been contacted by Ford in his guise as Frankland working for McNaster through Wallaby, if I am not being too obfuscative. These three have already been charged with various things like trespass, vandalism, and the abduction of a goat. They appeared confident at the time of their arrest that a smart lawyer would soon get them out on bail. At last report, they were still waiting in vain for their deliverance.”

  “Charlie must have finked out,” said Dittany. “He said he didn’t want to be involved.” As everybody present had heard her story of the invasion of McNaster’s office in strictest confidence, they all looked knowing and said nothing.

  “Mr. Monk also contacted a young woman from this area who had become, as it were, socially acquainted with Mr. Frankland and been providing him with information useful to his dire purpose.”

  “I’d have said fell design,” said Arethusa Monk. “Do you mean to tell me my little Osbert waltzed himself into a bar and picked up a broad?”

  Osbert’s ears turned purple as the bloom on the sage. “It’s not so hard, actually, once one gets the knack. Bob and Ray taught me how. In line of duty, needless to say.”

  “Well, stap my garters! So then what happened?”

  “I bought her a Singapore sling and we chatted of this and that.”

  “Why a Singapore sling?”

  “Because that’s what she told me she wanted. I was endeavoring to ingratiate myself, you see. Bob and Ray had emphasized the importance of getting off on the right foot with a—that is, when engaged in detection. Anyway, I’d been looking for somebody connected with Lobelia Falls and she said she was, sort of, and I started mentioning people I’d met here and it turns out she happens to be related to somebody who knows you, Dittany. Though perhaps not very well,” he added tactfully.

  “Must have been that niece of Mrs. Poppy’s she’s always bending my ear about. Petunia, isn’t it? Calls herself Petsy or something equally ridiculous. Forty-inch bust and a Dolly Parton wig?”

  “She did appear to have a great deal of hair and—er—so forth.”

  “Especially the so forth,” Ray put in with more enthusiasm than was warranted from an officer in pursuit of his duty. Sergeant MacVicar gave him a look. Osbert was allowed to continue without further interference from the Force.

  “The gist of it is, I found Petsy had become what you might call friendly with Frankland—I mean Ford—and filled him in on a lot of stuff about Lobelia Falls. That’s how he knew Mrs. Oakes had a room for rent. He must have been tickled stiff about that because he’d know from his grandmother that she was connected with his family by marriage. I’m sure Petsy also told him that Mrs. Oakes is a remarkably good shot with a bow and arrow for a—”

  “If you’re about to say for a woman her age, stuff it, Osbert,” snapped Arethusa. “Half the women in this room are somewhere around Minerva’s age and we’re none of us any slouches. Okay, so what you’re blethering about is that Minerva was slated to become this varlet’s second-string dupe or cat’s-paw in case his scheme to lay the blame on McNaster didn’t work, eh?”

  “That would be a reasonable assumption, Aunt Arethusa.”

  “The hell it would,” Frankland/Ford started to protest, but Bob and Ray closed in and he decided he wasn’t going to talk anymore until he’d seen his lawyer.

  “Anyway,” said Osbert, “as we all know, Mrs. Oakes is a very sociable lady. I’m sure he found her a useful source of information.”

  Such as the fact that Miss Dittany Henbit owned her valuable residential property free and clear. Dittany thought of all the Fig Newtons this impostor had conned her out of and felt like crawling under the melodeon. Then she realized by some telepathic rapport that Osbert was thinking of them too, and looking very much as if he’d like to give the soi-distant Ben Frankland a punch in the mouth. She must remember to ask Arethusa for the Monks’ old family recipe for large molasses cookies with crinkles around the edges and sugar on top.

  As she was making that mental note she happened to catch Osbert’s eye and blushed. Osbert blushed back. Hazel Munson, who had been in obvious distress at the prospect of not getting to frost pink cakes for the bridal shower, became quietly happy again. To be sure, Osbert would be no good whatever at painting the house or fixing the sump pump, but he did make lots of money being Lex Laramie. The older Munson boys needed to earn money for college and were skilled at all sorts of handyman jobs, so this would really be a much better arrangement all around. And of course it wouldn’t have done for Dittany to marry a murderer.

  “I wonder why he made all that fuss with the fishline, though,” Hazel said aloud. “What if nobody had come along to see it happen when he shot off the arrow?”

  “Oh, Frankland would have been pretty sure somebody would be there sooner or later,” said Osbert. “Mrs. Oakes must have mentioned that she and Mrs. Trott and”—he almost said “Dittany” but blushed again and apparently decided the name was too precious to be uttered lightly—“and—and other people often walked on the mountain. I expect he told Mrs. Oakes enough to whet her curiosity about his doing perk tests up there and assumed that she herself would be the one to show up. That would have fitted beautifully into his plan about maybe getting her accused of shooting Mr. Architrave.”

  “Ben did tell me at breakfast and I was curious and I did mean to go,” Minerva admitted. “Naturally I wondered what blooper poor old John was about to commit this time, but to tell you the truth I didn’t take it very seriously. I thought Ben would probably get down to the office and John would forget to show up and tell him where to dig. I didn’t know about the plot plan, you see. If Ben had told me about that, I’d have smelled a rat right then and there because I may be a fool but I’m not a damn fool, as my father used to say. Anyway Zilla and I had planned to work on our hooked rugs in the morning, then we had our club meeting in the afternoon. What with one thing and another, it slipped my mind and I never got around to going.”

  “It was a piece of luck for Frankland or Ford or whatever his name is that Dittany happened along,” Zilla observed.

  “Yes, Dittany couldn’t have been more perfect. I mean not so perfect that a chap would ever find her monotonous to be with, but—I mean, I know you’re not supposed to say more perfect because perfect either is or it isn’t, but—”

  “But Dittany made an ideal witness to Ford’s trick,” Sergeant MacVicar kindly interposed, “th
us providing him with what appeared to be an excellent alibi. Quite unintentionally, to be sure.”

  “Well, naturally,” said Osbert. “I mean it would appear natural that any man would wish to shield such a rare flower of youth and beauty from any and all perils, particularly arrows whizzing past her adorable little noggin. Ford was doing no more than a woman might reasonably expect—I mean a woman like Dittany—I mean, oh, heck, you know what I mean. Like that it wouldn’t look odd or unexpected for him to shove her in behind the backhoe out of harm’s way and tell her to stay there while he went and did his fake chest-thumping act, making believe he was facing deadly peril and all that garbage when in fact he was hiding the bow and rolling up the fishline.

  “After he’d got the evidence hidden, he pretended to discover Mr. Architrave’s body, which of course he knew perfectly well had been there all the time. He himself had shot Mr. Architrave while they were wandering around looking for spots to dig perk test holes. He’d have been better off to wait till Mr. Architrave picked a spot because, from what I can gather, the old man, however dumb he might have been, would never have been stupid enough to dig up the only patch of Spotted Pipsissewa in Lobelia County.”

  “That is a telling point, Mr. Monk,” said Sergeant MacVicar. “John was perhaps not a particularly quick man, nor indeed a particularly wise man, but he was a fundamentally decent man. Moreover, he was a man who had intimate personal acquaintance with every inch of land in Lobelia Falls. John would have known where the Spotted Pipsissewa grew. He would not have countenanced its being disturbed, molested, or uprooted despite the fact that he had allowed himself to be duped, gulled, or perhaps I should say catspawed by Andrew McNaster into doing percolation tests at the wrong time of year on land where no tests should have been done at all.”

  “I wonder how McNaster managed that,” mused Roger Munson.

  “We believe John was persuaded by means of a spurious legal document prepared by a member of the legal profession from Scottsbeck who is, I fear, no credit to his time-honored profession and will, I trust, prove but a broken reed when Mr. Ford retains him as counsel in the hope of escaping the just penalty for his heinous and perfidious crime. Mr. Ford, I am now going to charge you formally with the murder of John Architrave. I shall ask Miss Dittany Henbit to take down the exact verbiage of my charge in her excellent shorthand while each member of this assemblage pays careful attention. As my capable assistant pointed out a moment ago, we wish to leave no legalistic loophole through which you may be able to effect an escape.”