The Grub-and-Stakers Pinch a Poke

by Charlotte MacLeod

  “Next Saturday night,” the principal called out, good sport that he was.

  “You heard him, folks.” Osbert was hoarse now but still in there punching. “Everybody’s invited. A buck a head for the Senior Class Outing Fund and the lemonade’s on the house. So I guess that’s it for now. Good night and thanks for coming. See you next Saturday night, seven-thirty sharp, and wear your dancing shoes.”

  The audience laughed and clapped, except for one cheeky young sprout in the back row of the bleachers. “Hey, how come Sergeant MacVicar gets to go backstage if the rest of us can’t?’.’

  “They need him to arrest creeps like you if you don’t do like the director says,” yelled back the invaluable Sammy.

  Osbert stayed out front shaking hands, accepting congratulations, and wondering what to do about Archie and Daniel. Jenson Thorbisher-Freep and his daughter Wilhedra went around shaking hands, too, though some people wondered why. Pretty soon Desdemona Portley and some of the other Thespians came out from behind the curtains and helped to cope with the lingerers.

  Not many of the audience were hanging around. The gym clock showed how late the show had run. Sounds of pounding emphasized that the wrecking crew was on the job. More cast members emerged, more patrons left. Somewhere along the line, Leander Hellespont and the ex-Mrs. Bledsoe trickled away unnoticed.

  The exodus was proceeding as Osbert had hoped. Nobody out front could have caught on that the Monks’ new ranch wagon, with Roger Munson at the wheel and Carolus Bledsoe stretched out on Ethel’s blanket in the back, was speeding toward Scottsbeck Hospital. None of them could see Sergeant MacVicar shaking his head over a splinter-edged hole in the stage or overhear the bizarre story he was getting from a badly shaken Andrew McNaster.

  “I was supposed to fire straight at his chest,” Andy blurted. Then he shook.

  “Yet you fired into the floor,” Sergeant MacVicar prompted. “Why, Mr. McNaster?”

  Andy was still wearing his villain suit, although it now had a red bandana at the throat. He untied the bandana and mopped his forehead with it, swallowed hard, and searched for the words he needed.

  “Well, eh, I was the bad guy. You know that, I knew it all along. But all of a sudden here I am with a shooting iron in my hand and it’s like what they call the moment of truth. It hits me all of a sudden what a lowdown ornery rotter I’ve been right straight through from the beginning of act one, scene one. I’ve ruined the feedbag man’s career. I’ve brought his wife and kiddie to the brink of starvation. I’ve lured a chaste and noble woman way the heck and gone up here to the Yukon with false promises I never meant to keep.”

  “Hence the falsity. Go on, Mr. McNaster.”

  “So anyway, here’s his wife having to flaunt her shapely limbs in a black lace corset for rude men to leer at and make remarks. And here’s his kiddie sitting up late and knocking back the sarsaparilla, sullying her pink ears with a bunch of cheap talk from a class of customer no innocent maid of tender years ought to be hanging out with. And it’s me that drug ’em here. You follow me so far?”

  “Aye, Mr. McNaster, I’m with you every step.”

  “Thanks, Sergeant. So now here comes this poor bugger out of the night that was fifty below, so beat and bedraggled they can’t even tell it’s him. He calls me a hound of hell and like I said it hits me right between the eyes, the bugger’s right. He’s going to shoot me and it’s no more than I deserve. But the hitch is, I’m supposed to shoot him back, which means leaving his grieving widow and her little chickabiddy alone and unprotected in this den of iniquity to which I in my wickedness and vainglory enticed them. You get my drift, Sergeant?”

  “Aye.” Sergeant MacVicar was rubbing his jaw, his ice-blue eyes still fixed on the perspiring McNaster. “You found yoursel’ confronted by a moral dilemma.”

  “That’s the situation in a nutshell, Sergeant. Some forgotten vestige of a nobler nature rises up and stays my hand. I’m standing there with my gun aimed at his gizzard and the stern voice of conscience is chewing me out. ‘Dan McGrew,’ it’s saying, ‘you ruined that poor bugger’s life. You can’t shoot him now.’ But I’ve got to fire or louse up Osbert’s big scene, so what I did, see, I waited till Charlie pulled his trigger, then I quick dropped my hand and fired at the floor. Only I guess I didn’t drop it quite far enough. So that’s my story, Sergeant, and I can’t tell you any different.”

  “Indeed, Mr. McNaster. And now will you kindly show me your license for yon ugly great firearm?”

  “That’s not my gun! It belongs to Jenson Thorbisher-Freep. He just lent it for the play.”

  “And how long have you had it in your possession?”

  “I never had it in my possession. Ask anybody. Jenson brought the gun to rehearsal and took it away again afterward. I suppose he did the same thing tonight. All I know is, Roger put it on the prop table when he was getting the stuff ready, and handed it to me when I went on for the second act. Jenson couldn’t come backstage during the performance, see, because the other companies in the contest might think he was playing favorites.”

  “Nae doot. During rehearsals did you shoot the gun at Mr. Bledsoe’s chest?”

  “Sure, but that was different.”

  “How, Mr. McNaster?”

  “Well, see, at the rehearsal I knew I was rehearsing, if you get what I mean. I was just Andy McNaster making believe I was Dan McGrew. I knew that was a blank cartridge in the gun and Bledsoe wasn’t going to get hurt when I pulled the trigger, so it didn’t matter. But tonight”—Andy mopped his face again then shook his head as if to rattle his thoughts together—“I wasn’t me, I was Dan McGrew. What I’m trying to say is, I knew I was me but I was Dan and Dan was shooting a real bullet even if Andy only had a blank in the gun. I guess that sounds pretty crazy, eh.”

  “Dinna fash yoursel’ about craziness, Mr. McNaster. It’s for you to talk and me to sort out what you say. What happened to the gun after you shot it off?”

  “It dropped from my nerveless hand and I fell on top of it. Dan McGrew got killed, too, you have to remember. I stayed dead till the lady known as Lou finished pinching the stranger’s poke and I heard the curtain close and people start to clap. Then I got up and put the gun back in my holster and went to my place for curtain calls, like we practiced in rehearsal. I was me by then. My mind was functioning like a steel trap. Only I guess you think the trap could of stood some oiling, eh.”

  “You didn’t notice you’d shot yon Bledsoe?”

  “Nope.”

  “None of us noticed,” Arethusa Monk put in. “I didn’t myself, forsooth, not even while I was pinching his poke.”

  “Mr. Bledsoe said nothing to you?”

  “No, but he thrashed around a bit. Meseemed the churl was simulating death throes to pad out his part, egad. I wrestled him into a seemly posture and hissed at him to lie still, little wotting he was actually writhing in pain. Then I felt him go limp. Perchance he swooned, but that didn’t occur to me at the time. I simply went through my business with the poke, then unbosomed myself of Carolus and got set for the curtain call, like Andrew.”

  “Leaving Mr. Bledsoe lying on the stage?”

  “I’ faith, yes.”

  “You have to remember this all happened faster than it takes to tell,” Dittany put in. “You may recall, Sergeant MacVicar, that I was standing right behind the piano, so I could see exactly what happened. Carolus did shoot first, and Andy did deliberately tilt his gun down before he shot. I couldn’t think why. I didn’t realize Carolus was hurt and I don’t think anybody else did at the time. He fell forward on his face, as he was supposed to, and that hid the toe of his boot, you see. He did squirm around a bit and I heard Arethusa tell him to keep still. I do think Arethusa’s right about his fainting. He lay there so long that Osbert finally went over to him and said something like, ‘You’re not dead any longer, Carolus.’ Then Carolus said he was, too, because Andy had shot him.”

  “Were those his words?”

  “That
was the general thrust. His actual phrasing was a bit more pungent,” Dittany replied primly. “Then Andy said he didn’t, and Carolus rolled over and we could see where the toe of his boot had a hole in it. So Roger Munson gave him first aid and we shoved him into a chair and took our curtain calls as fast as we could. Roger’s driving Carolus to the hospital now. We knew you’d understand. Osbert wasn’t sure how fast he could get you back here without starting a stampede in the audience, and we couldn’t very well leave Carolus lying around wondering how many toes he had left.”

  “You didna remove the damaged boot?”

  “Oh no, we didn’t dare. It was a great, clunky thing. Roger said we’d better leave it for the doctors to cut off with a laser beam or something. We didn’t want to lose any bits and pieces that might have to be sewn back on, you know.”

  Sergeant MacVicar nodded in understanding. “Now, can you tell me who loaded yon gun? Was it Jenson Thorbisher-Freep?”

  “No, it was Carolus himself. Jenson had brought the gun already loaded, but Roger’d got nervous about leaving it that way, so he’d taken out the cartridge and hidden it in the poke.”

  “Assuming the cartridge was a blank, eh?”

  “Yes, of course. You see, it was the only one we had left. Jenson had brought four to start with, but we’d used up three of them rehearsing. We couldn’t get any more because the .38 ones have to be ordered specially and Roger didn’t see any sense in spending the money for a whole box when we only needed one bang. So anyway, Roger’d got the cartridge out all right but he didn’t seem quite sure how to get it back in. Carolus was standing there watching Roger fuss around and getting edgier by the second. Finally he took the gun and said he’d as soon load it himself since he was the one getting shot at, so Roger let him.”

  “Carolus Bledsoe also being under the impression he was loading a blank cartridge?”

  “Well, naturally. That is, he must have, mustn’t he? Unless he was planning to commit suicide and pin the rap on Andy.”

  Chapter 10

  SERGEANT MACVICAR RUBBED his chin again. “And why should he want to do that, Dittany?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “It was just a passing thought. I might alternatively have suggested that Carolus had meant to switch guns in order to kill Andy without being too obvious and it slipped his mind at the last minute, but that’s only because I’ve typed so many of Arethusa’s manuscripts. What I really think is that Carolus mistook a real bullet for a blank cartridge, just as Roger and I and Jenson Thorbisher-Freep did.”

  “Dittany lass, not even you could mistake a real bullet for a blank cartridge.”

  “I could try.”

  “The effort would avail you naething. A blank cartridge is flat on top and has but a wee disc of cardboard inserted to compress a light charge of gunpowder. Yon disc is referred to as a wad, nae doot frae the time when a wad of tow was inserted to tamp down the powder in a muzzle-loader. A bullet projects noticeably from the cartridge case and comes to what might be described as a rounded point. It is most often of a silver color in contrast to the brass cartridge.”

  “Then how could Carolus have made such an awful mistake?” she demanded. “He knows about guns. At least he knows more than the rest of us.”

  “More than Deputy-Monk?” Sergeant MacVicar had a special regard for Osbert, who often served as his unpaid deputy.

  “Certainly more than Osbert. Osbert doesn’t shoot guns, he just writes about them. Anyway, Osbert didn’t know about the unloading and reloading because he was out front checking the set. But I saw the cartridge myself, Sergeant. I helped Roger find it.”

  “Oh aye? Find it where?”

  “It was in the poke, and the poke was inside the feedbag. Roger was so sure he’d left the poke on the table by itself that he never thought to look. That’s the trouble with being organized. But anyway, the cartridge I saw was flat on both ends and had a little red dot on top just like the three we used at rehearsal. So how could it hurt anybody? Unless someone took it out and put in a bullet,” Dittany added in a rather scared tone.

  “Or unless what you took for a blank cartridge was in fact what is known as a wad-cutting bullet,” Sergeant MacVicar amplified. “These are normally used for target shooting, but one of .38 caliber could certainly be lethal at close range. The bullet is pushed down inside the cartridge and covered by the wad, which it cuts as it emerges.”

  “Hence the name, no doubt. But then it’s perfectly easy to mistake a live bullet for a blank cartridge so why did you say it wasn’t?”

  “Because I wasna thinking straight,” Sergeant MacVicar admitted handsomely. “A wad-cutter weighs more than a blank, I needna say, and is distinguished by a wad of a different color, as red for a blank and green for a wad-cutter.”

  “But if you didn’t know what a .38 blank was supposed to weigh, you mightn’t notice the cartridge was too heavy,” said Dittany, “and you could always paint a green dot red.”

  “Or if you loaded your ain cartridges, you could substitute the wrong wad for the right one, either by accident or on purpose. Is Mr. Thorbisher-Freep still here, lass?”

  “I’ll go and see.”

  Dittany ran out into the auditorium. Yes, Jenson was still there, and so was Wilhedra, looking as if she might be coming up to the boil. The lid hadn’t popped yet, but it was jittering a little. She was talking to Daniel, but not listening when he talked back. It was the long, green curtain that she kept glancing toward, and anybody with half an eye could have seen she was pretty steamed because Carolus Bledsoe hadn’t yet come through it to meet her. Before Dittany could get to the elder Thorbisher-Freep, Wilhedra tackled her.

  “Why, you’re still in costume. I thought everyone backstage was madly changing. How’s Carolus doing?”

  “As well as can be expected in the circumstances, I suppose,” Dittany answered vaguely. “The last I knew, he was having trouble with one of his boots.”

  “One of his boots? How ridiculous!”

  “Well, that’s showbiz. Excuse me, I have to speak to your father on a general question of theatrical expertise.”

  “Such as how to get a boot off?”

  Wilhedra’s smile was painful to see. Dittany only smiled back and kept moving. Fortunately for her, Jenson was with Osbert at the moment. Archie was there, too, looking about the way Osbert’s father had looked at the wedding reception before Bert got him out back at the picnic table and began telling him eyewear salesman stories. Dittany slipped her arm through Osbert’s and gave him a squeeze out of sheer necessity. He squeezed back, perhaps for the same reason.

  “Howdy, pardner. How’s it going back there?”

  “Wilhedra was just asking me pretty much the same thing, funnily enough. Jenson, we need you backstage on a question of theatrical expertise.” Dittany couldn’t suppress a yawn as she spoke, and Osbert squeezed her arm again.

  “Going to sleep without rocking tonight, eh, kid? Come on, what’s happening?”

  “Roger’s coping as you told him to, Andy’s better nature has prevailed again, and Sergeant MacVicar wants to ask Jenson something, so would you please go backstage right now, Jenson?”

  “Why, certainly, if I’m needed. It’s not going to take long, is it?”

  “I fervently hope not,” Dittany answered. “We’re all about ready to drop. Archie, Andy McNaster’s changing now. He’ll drive you and Daniel back to the inn and we’ll see you for breakfast about half past nine. Will that suit you?”

  Archie shook his head. “I’m afraid that’s not going to work, Dittany. The only plane we could get seats on leaves at half past ten. That means we ought to be on the road by eight or a little after, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I would, unfortunately. Then breakfast will have to be at seven, unless you’d rather we just came a little before eight and picked you up. I could drive while you and Osbert talk. What a pity you have to leave so soon.”

  “Isn’t it,” Archie replied politely. “However, we’ve done
what we came for. I have to tell you Daniel’s quite excited about the play, though it’s never safe to count chickens that haven’t hatched yet. Why don’t we leave it that I’ll give you a ring first thing in the morning when I find out what Daniel wants to do? Would half past six be too early?”

  “Not if you expect Osbert and me to be ready on time. Ethel usually wants her breakfast about then anyway.”

  Ethel had been able to sleep through the entire second act. Dittany had seen her a minute ago, fresh and rested, taking an intelligent interest in the work of the scene shifters. She’d spend another five or six hours in restful slumber tonight, God willing, get Dittany up two minutes before dawn cracked to serve her breakfast, take her morning stroll up Cat Alley, check out a few fence posts, and exchange compliments with any neighbor who happened along. Then she’d come home and flake out beside the stove for a few hours while her alleged master and mistress dragged themselves off to deliver Archie and Daniel to the airport assuming Sergeant MacVicar would let them leave town. A dog’s life, forsooth! Dittany leaned on Osbert’s arm and let him steer her backstage to see how Jenson Thorbisher-Freep was making out.