From the back of the room came two bagpipers in yellow and black kilts and the same sort of jacket Mike was wearing, followed by a gentleman in a bright red kilt and the same sort of jacket. And the man in the red kilt held aloft a large silver tray, and on the silver tray was a—a—what?
And someone cried out "To the haggis!" and everyone in the room picked up their little glasses of whiskey and shouted, "To the haggis!" And to the cadence of the music, they all downed the contents of their glasses in one gulp. (I sipped mine.) Stepping smartly, the bagpipers reached the front of the room and wheeled around in perfect synchrony to face the crowd. Behind them, the man holding the tray carrying the Whatever-It-Was stepped in time to the bagpipes, then moved between them to face the crowd. The man standing on Mike's other side, Mr. Alexander Greystoke McFarland IV, who wasn't a merry-looking gentleman at all, but rather a burly-looking man with a scowling face, dropped his glass on the table, gasped, clutched his throat, and fell like a boulder to the floor.
What with the group's attention focused on the THING on the silver tray, and the screeching of the bagpipes, it took everyone a moment to realize what had happened. Then a lady at the next table, directly behind the fallen man, began to scream. At that moment, I was actually glad for the bagpipes!
I quickly turned and knelt beside Mr. McFarland Etc.—a considerable feat considering how tight my skirt was. He didn't look good: his skin was gray, he was perspiring profusely, his breathing was shallow and rapid. Naturally, my first thought would have been a heart attack, except that there was a very odd odor emanating from his lips. . . .
"Mike!" I barked, forgetting for a moment who and where I was, and who I was talking to. "Get an ambulance and the police immediately! Tell them we'll need gastric lavage!"
"Right," he said, and half-ran out of the ballroom. (I hope I can be forgiven for observing that the rippling hem of his kilt as he hurried revealed he has very nice legs.) Several other people gathered their wits and pushed back the crowd that suddenly seemed to be pressing in and leaning over the stricken man and me. And—thank heaven!—the bagpipes stopped!
I hope some day we'll have a system where medically-trained emergency people arrive and assist an acutely ill person before he dies. But that night it took far too long for the hotel staff (evidently dimwits all) to figure out the correct emergency number to call, and far too long for the ambulance to negotiate Ann Arbor's congested streets. By the time they finally arrived, the ambulance personnel were ready to transport the sick man, but had no clue how to do a gastric lavage (that's stomach pump in ordinary parlance) and no equipment to do it with, either, and by the time I'd yelled at some of the hotel staff and ordered a length of rubber tubing, a funnel, and some others things (for a homemade effort), I'd done everything any of us could, and Mr. McFarland was dead.
A very young policeman, who identified himself as Officer Wayne Hertler, appeared in the crowd, asked a few questions, and took some notes. The body was placed on a stretcher and sent to the county morgue, and the Master of Ceremonies declared into the microphone that Robert Burns night was over, and that he hoped we would return the next year, for a happier turn of events. The crowd, most of whom looked badly shaken, drifted out of the room, but I stayed by our table to consider the situation.
Officer Hertler flipped over a page in his notebook and said to me, "So, a heart attack, would you say?"
"No," I said, "I wouldn't. Take the glass," I told him, "and see what was in it."
"What?" he said. I can forgive his being so dense: he was very young. It was easy to imagine this might be his first real assignment. (I note parenthetically that he was cute, too.)
"Take the glass," I said. "No, no!" I snapped, as he reached for it with his bare hand. "Wrap it carefully in one of these napkins and take it to your laboratory. Or leave it where it's fallen and have a detective come here. It needs to be checked for fingerprints and for whatever was inside."
The young man nodded, bent down to look at it and sniffed at it, but did not touch it.
I mentioned at the start of this tale that the "good parts" of a book are the first murder or the first kiss. I felt pretty sure I'd witnessed a murder. I also felt pretty sure I'd lost a most interesting new friend. By now, Mike was undoubtedly completely fed up with his bossy, order-giving date.
I was wrong. He appeared at my side and surprised me by saying, very earnestly, "I'm sorry they couldn't get here faster. I'm very impressed by the way you handled everything." And to my astonishment, he bent over and gave me a kiss—smack. Just like that!
We'd had the first murder and the first kiss. Yet the excitement wasn't over. Maybe I was exhausted, or maybe my skirt was tighter than I thought. Because for the first time in my WHOLE life, I did something so astonishing, so unexpected, so UTTERLY UNLIKE my usually tough and resolute self. I fainted.
Picture how embarrassed I felt when I awakened and found myself stretched out on the glorious red carpeting of the Chesterfield Hotel's ballroom, my feet very professionally elevated on pillows, Mike bending over me, Officer Hertler bending over me, the Master of Ceremonies bending over me, all with looks of consternation on their good-looking features. The bending over me part wasn't so bad, but the EXTREME humiliation a nurse feels when SHE gets sick is not easily glossed over.
Mike helped me up. "You need something to eat," he said.
"Oh, I don't know. . . ." I mumbled unconvincingly, my stomach doing an imitation of a sailor's hornpipe.
My hesitation didn't fool them, and I was expertly shepherded to a table—a different table from the one to which Mike and I had been assigned, and at which our hapless former tablemate had drunk from his poisoned glass, and which was now being examined by two other policemen, whom I hoped were experienced detectives. Somehow I was coerced into sitting down, and then, in a grand gesture, the Master of Ceremonies (whose name, it turned out, was Prezbilowitz) presented me with the silver tray on which the haggis sat, and I was urged to EAT.
A haggis is not a thing of beauty. In fact, it is repellant: a grimy gray football, roughly textured, sewn at one end. (Really! with STRING!) It did, however, smell delicious. The three gentlemen brought me rolls, a fresh salad, and a lovely-looking bowl of barley soup.
I couldn't eat alone, and so I urged them to join me. (Also, I had no idea how to eat haggis!) Officer Hertler declined, saying his associates needed him. "But I'd like to ask you," he said nicely (he had an adorable dimple in his chin) "what made you think the man had been poisoned?"
"The smell of almonds," I said. "The whiskey smell was strong enough to cover it up in the glass, but I thought I detected almonds on his breath. It's likely to be cyanide." (It was then it struck me that I was certainly glad I'd moved from the place on Mike's left—where the glass with the poison had been—to the place on Mike's right. From now on, I'll always sit where the place card tells me to!)
"Not a very pleasant way to commit suicide," Officer Hertler said, looking unhappy. I reflected sadly that time would undoubtedly harden him to these sorts of events.
"I don't think it was suicide," I said, "but that's something you might learn from the fingerprints."
"I see," he said, sounding like he didn't.
Mike sat down beside me, and looked so interested and attentive I couldn't help expanding on my idea, which was clever, if I do say so myself.
"The fingerprints should be helpful. If it was suicide, then you'll find at least two sets of fingerprints: those of the person who set the table, and the fingerprints of Mr. McFarland, who drank from the glass and died. But if it was murder, then you'll only find one set, because the murderer—assuming he or she is not a complete dope—will have wiped the glass to remove his or her own fingerprints, and will have wiped off the table-setter's prints, too."
The three men nodded their heads, obviously appreciating this point, and we returned our attention to the haggis.
"Why don't you start?" I said to the Master of Ceremonies, feeling it was his ceremonial
due. Besides, he would know how to break into the thing.
"I'd be honored," he said, and from his argyll stocking he pulled a beautifully ornate and very slim silver knife and, with a quick downward movement of his wrist, slashed the haggis open.
It was delicious.
In the next few hours, several interesting things happened. Mike drove me home, and I learned that kissing a nice man with a beard is very, very pleasant. . . .
And Officer Hertler phoned, to tell me that Mr. Alexander Greystoke McFarland the Fourth had indeed been poisoned with cyanide. "If it hadn't been for you, Mrs. Hoxsie, I might still be thinking it was a heart attack," he said. I could picture his handsome young features, looking shamefaced.
"An easy mistake to make," I said, although though it wasn't, if you knew the telltale signs.
It later emerged that Mr. McFarland's business partner was his murderer, the partner having hoped to gain control of their company, and Mrs. McFarland, too. (I correctly deduced the wicked partner was not Scottish from his having so little sensitivity to the proprieties of a Robert Burns night!)
AND I found a recipe for haggis, the traditional Scottish dish, and now I know what it was I was eating that night. I would advise you not to read the following on an empty stomach!
RECIPE FOR HAGGIS
(I found this in Authentic Scottish Cuisine by Dame Roberta McGinnis Campbell and now, thankfully, out of print)
1. Slaughter a healthy, young sheep.
2. Remove the sheep's stomach, heart, lungs and liver, and rinse in cold water.
3. Turn the stomach inside out and scrape the lining with a sturdy knife.
4. Boil the heart, liver and lungs in salted water until tender. For the most satisfactory results, hang the windpipe over the edge of the pot so it drains into a saucepan or bowl.
[What fun Dame Roberta must have been! Imagine having her to tea, and the conversation that undoubtedly ensued: "And what, pray tell, Dame Roberta, are you fixing for dinner tonight? And how?"]
5. Chop the meats and season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, mace, onions, meat fat and oatmeal. Mix with the liquid in which you cooked the meats.
6. Fill the stomach with the mixture and sew it up with very fine string.
7. Poke the stomach with a needle and boil it for three hours.
8. Remove from the water and serve on a platter, accompanied by turnips, potatoes, and a kilted piper.
[Presumably the "kilted piper" stood near the plate, not on it!]
PS: The next time my quilt gang organized a fabric-hunting expedition to Northern Indiana, Mike called me immediately and said he wanted to join us: he'd already given away his hockey tickets. We had a great time that day, and on the way home he squeezed my hand and said, "That was fun." He looked very happy.
I looked very happy, too.
PPS: When he asked if I wanted to go to a bagpipe concert, I said NO.
10/ Border Dispute
You know how small towns work. It took about a minute and a half for the word to get out that Mike Mackenzie and I were, as Shirley Moray put it, "an item."
Like I've said before, Spotsburgers are generally pretty nice people, and everyone approved of my romance. My former husband, Ron, had not been popular in Spotsburg, something, no doubt, to do with the money he borrowed—and never returned—from a number of accounts at Spotsburg State Bank. In fact, so complete was the shame Ron brought upon himself that he was officially drummed out of the Sons of Sasquatch, only they didn't actually use drums. Jim Brewster simply received Ron's resignation—and Sasquatch furs—without comment, although later Jim did say something to me about how Ron's furs should have been black, with a white stripe painted down the back.
Anyway, that was ancient history. I was in love. And we spent the next few months doing those ridiculous things you do when you're in love. Calling each other on the phone and talking (about what?) for two hours. Cooking for each other—Mike's an excellent cook—although neither of us produced even one tiny haggis. Having "study dates," during which he tried to prepare lectures for his physics classes, and I tried to work on my latest quilting project, and we ended up kissing and hugging and generally realizing we weren't getting much accomplished. Not much work, at any rate.
So life in Spotsburg went on. And one day I got a call from a former quilting student of mine, Judy Brewster, wife of Jim Brewster, the grand-high Sasquatch. Her grandmother Lucinda Pike had (as everybody in town knew) died. The will hadn't been read yet, but Judy and her mother were spending the intervening days engaged in the unhappy task of sorting through Lucinda's clothes and linens, and giving away the useable things to the Methodist Church clothing bank. And they'd come across a partly finished quilt. Could Judy and her mother bring it over and get my advice?
Sure, I said. Mike was taking his Introductory Astronomy class out for night of observing, and I had nothing in particular to do. (Mike has taken me out a couple of times for observing, and I've learned that standing in a cornfield under the velvety black night sky is sensational—and the stars aren't bad either!)
Judy and her mother, Mildred Hawn, are known in Spotsburg as "quite a pair." They look alike and dress alike, and rumor has it that they talk to each other twice a day on the phone, although they live only two blocks apart. Wearing nearly identical pink plaid blouses and brown skirts, they arrived at my house soon enough, and I couldn't help noticing once again that, except for the fact that Mother Mildred's hair was all gray, and Daughter Judy's hair was just beginning to gray, they so strongly resembled each other they might have been sisters.
Mildred was carrying a bundle in her arms, and together they quickly unrolled it on my kitchen table. The three of us studied the situation.
What Mildred and Judy had found in the late Lucinda's linen cupboard was a mostly-finished Trip Around the World quilt top. I suppose Trip Around the World gets its name from the arrangement of the pieces: one square in the center, then different colored squares north, south, east and west; then subsequent rows of one contrasting color after another, so that the final effect is nested diamonds. [See the front cover of this book!] It's a design frequently seen among the Amish who, perhaps to compensate for the drab colors they wear, often execute it in bold primary colors and black. Done that way, it can be very striking.
Mildred and Judy's quilt top (it was only the top; it hadn't been put together with a batt and backing) wasn't so dramatic. The blocks weren't solid colors, but calicos in various insipid shades of brown and green. Of course, as I tell my students, "De gustibus non est disputandem" —it's the only Latin I know, but it never fails to impress them— which means "There's no disputing taste," which I also interpret to mean that there's no accounting for taste, either. In other words, it's just plain foolish to fight about whether something is beautiful or not.
Anyway, I felt lukewarm about the quilt top they'd brought me, but it wasn't my job to like it. The question (I thought) was: what to do with it?
"Well," I said, "what do you want to do with it?"
"I—" they both began at once.
"Okay," I said, feeling like a schoolteacher, "let's do this one at a time. Mildred, what would you like to do with your mother's quilt top?"
"Isn't it wonderful?" the elder woman said breathlessly. I nodded. "I just love it. Finish it and use it on my bed, of course, but it's only large enough for a twin bed. My bed's a double. And I think it ought to be MINE because she was my mother."
She was right about one thing. The quilt top in its present form was too narrow and too short for a double bed.
"And you, Judy, what do you want to do with this top?"
"Isn't it gorgeous?" the younger woman said, panting lightly. I nodded dutifully. "I simply adore it. I want to finish it and use it on my bed, of course," she said, "but Jim and I have an extra-long double mattress, since he's so tall. And I think it ought to be MINE because she was my GRANDmother. Whom I LOVED," she added, with a pointed look at her mother.
I sighed. "Well, ladie
s," I said, beginning to fold the quilt top, "why don't you come back when you decide what you want to do. We can talk more then."
I finished the folding and stuck the quilt top in Mildred's arms. Steering them toward the door, I thanked them for giving me the opportunity to see it, and pushed them outside. I hoped they would go home and come to some satisfactory solution—without involving me!
They couldn't. They were back the following week and told me their solution—once I got them to talk one at a time.
"We're going to share the quilt—" said Mildred.
"Share the quilt—" said Judy.
"This was my clever idea," said Mildred. "I'll use if for a month, and then I'll take it to Judy's house—"
"—And I'll have it for a month," said Judy, "and then I'll take it back to Mom's! If," she said, sniffing slightly, "she really HAS to have it back."
"That's great." I said, without enthusiasm. "So the problem is solved."
"No," said Mildred, "because it's still too small for both our beds. So what do we do now?"
"Unless we do something," Judy chimed in, "it will be too small!"
"You're right!" I cried. "It will be too small!"
I'd spent the whole day with Chester Smith, who's been ill with pneumonia, and I was tired. Chester, alas, turns out to be one of those men who WHINE when they're sick. (It's usually the men, I've noticed.)
I didn't want to be King Solomon. At least King Solomon had one advantage: he had only one baby, in one size. Our baby had to fit two different beds!
"Well," I said, not realizing I was opening the door to a whole new dispute. "As it stands, the top is too small for either bed." (Now I was beginning to repeat myself!) "I suggest you add some borders to your quilt top, for more width and length. And if you make it long enough for your bed, Judy, it will fit both beds. Although there will be more overhang, Mildred, when it's on your bed—since your bed's shorter. Perhaps you could take up the extra length by tucking it under the pillow when you make the bed."
The Name of the Quilt: Tales of Patchwork, Mayhem, and Murder Page 8
