The Grub-and-Stakers Quilt a Bee

by Charlotte MacLeod

  “The only near airport’s Charlie Evans’s pasture, and all he does is fly around in that little old monoplane dusting crops,” Dittany pointed out. “A woman in a nice purple dress with turquoise and chartreuse squiggles would hardly care to squeeze in there with all that bug juice. Not to confuse the issue, darling, but I have a further complication for you. Does Sergeant MacVicar know Frederick Churtle’s van, presumably containing Frederick Churtle, was seen leaving the museum yesterday at suppertime?”

  “Darling, are you sure?”

  “Mrs. Fairfield claimed she saw what she thought was a brown truck pulling out as she and Minerva were walking toward the museum last night on their way to find Mr. Fairfield’s body, though of course they didn’t realize at the time what they were heading for. Caroline Pitz has now confirmed it was Brown’s, which is to say Churtle’s. She got a good look at it when she went out to pick lettuce for supper.”

  “Why didn’t she tell Sergeant MacVicar?”

  “Why didn’t he ask? Remember, darling, most people still think Mr. Fairfield fell out the attic window. Caroline knew the roofer’s equipment was still in the hallway and she naturally assumed he’d come to do something about it. You can’t blame her for that.”

  “I could, but I shan’t if you don’t want me to. Only I do think Sergeant MacVicar should know about this right away.”

  “That’s why I hurried over here instead of staying to help Minerva wash up, darling.”

  “Oh well,” said Osbert, “Aunt Arethusa will have licked the platters clean by now, anyway. Ah, here comes Mrs. MacVicar. I expect that means I’m off the hook. Come on, I’ll walk you home. You took right purty in them glad rags, Miss Dittany ma’am.”

  “Why, thank you kindly, Deputy Monk.”

  They acquainted Mrs. MacVicar with this new development, got her assurances that she’d let her husband know as soon as she could get hold of him, and headed back for Applewood Avenue. As Osbert was opening the back door, a mass of blackish fur hurtled through the air and two paws the size of dry mops planted themselves in the pit of Dittany’s stomach. Her mother’s hat went flying and she’d have followed it if Osbert hadn’t grabbed her.

  “Ethel,” he roared. “Unpaw Mummy, you beast. Look what you’ve done to her dress. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

  Ethel was not. On the contrary, she made it plain she was in no shape to handle criticism. Hurling herself at their collective feet, for Ethel was a large enough animal to manage this with no strain, she burst into mournful lament.

  “Now you’ve hurt her feelings,” said Dittany. “What’s the matter, Ethel? Had a falling-out with your woodchuck?”

  The whimpers became howls. They apologized, petted, wheedled, sympathized. Osbert examined Ethel’s paws for possible thorns, abrasions, or woodchuck bites. Ethel didn’t wince, but neither did she shut up. At last they got her into the kitchen, filled her bowl with what cates and dainties their larder afforded, and urged her to eat. She took a despondent nibble or two much in the manner of Mrs. Fairfield with the macaroon, sighed heavily, cast dimmed eyes up at them from under the mat of fur that hung down over her eyes like a sheepdog’s, albeit Ethel was not in fact a sheepdog and might not actually have been a dog at all, and laid her head against Dittany’s knee to the further detriment of the black crepe dress.

  “She’s pining away,” Dittany moaned. “Osbert, what are we going to do?”

  He knelt on the varnished linoleum beside the doggie dish. “Ethel, old pard, this isn’t the end of the trail. You can’t hang up your saddle and turn your face to the sunset over one lousy woodchuck. Come on, let’s see you tie on the old feedbag. A full belly makes a stiff upper lip, you know. Here, try some roast beef.”

  Ethel condescended to let a morsel pass her lips and appeared to find it good. At least she left her mouth conveniently open in case anybody might be planning to give her another piece.

  “See, darling, all she needed was a little tender, loving care. Attagirl, Eth, eat it up.”

  “Maybe if I hold the dish to her mouth, she’ll lap the gravy,” Dittany offered.

  Ethel considered the matter, then essayed a trial slurp.

  “She’s getting gravy all over your dress, darling,” said Osbert.

  “What’s a dress compared to the comfort of a dog in distress?”

  “Nobly spoken, sweetheart. Here, let me help you hold the dish.”

  It was in this touching tableau that Sergeant MacVicar found them.

  “Sergeant,” cried Osbert, “we were just on our way to find you.”

  “The fact leaps to the eye,” the sergeant remarked with gentle irony.

  “But Ethel came home in dire straits,” Dittany amplified, “and we couldn’t leave her to pine alone and desolate.” Her mother had sung a couple of seasons with the Scottsbeck Savoyards and she’d learned a good deal of Gilbert and Sullivan as a result. “We think the woodchuck must have given her the mitten. Did you find the woman in the purple dress?”

  “Would that fate had allotted me some easier task, like searching out yon proverbial needle in the haystack. However, the RCMP have put out an all-points bulletin and Mrs. MacVicar has instituted inquiries among her acquaintance, so I am not without hope. Mrs. MacVicar finds it hard to believe that nobody in Lobelia Falls will be able to come up with a description of this mysterious female and the car she was driving.”

  “Speaking of description,” Dittany said eagerly, “Caroline Pitz saw—”

  “Frederick Churtle, as we now know him to be, parked in the museum driveway yesterday as she was picking lettuce for supper, in her front yard,” Sergeant MacVicar finished for her. “Mrs. MacVicar apprised me of that fact some hours ago. I myself have ascertained that Churtle, or Brown as we may call him for purposes of convenience, resides over in Scottsbeck at 42 Glendale Street, which runs off Burnside Road, which in turns runs off Summit Avenue which, as you know, runs past the shopping mall. There is no summit, no glen or dale, and no burn in the vicinity, but that is beside the point.”

  “Then what precisely is the point?” Dittany asked him, knowing how risky it was to let Sergeant MacVicar get off on a side issue. “Do you want us to ride over to Scottsbeck with you and sit on Churtle’s, or Brown’s, stomach while you give him the third degree?”

  “Noo, lass, we must not make light of serious matters. To be precise, I came hoping to persuade Deputy Monk to interview Churtle, or Brown, single-handed. Myrmidons Bob and Ray are still off getting Cedric Fawcett stowed in the choky, and I must remain available in case word comes through about yon woman in the purple dress.”

  “Of course, sir, I’ll be delighted,” said Osbert.

  “Me, too,” said Dittany.

  Sergeant MacVicar looked first perturbed, then resigned. “I will leave you to work out a modus operandi between you. Good e’en to you both. And to you also, Ethel,” he added kindly. “’Tis better to have loved and lost.”

  “Considerably better, in Ethel’s case,” Dittany agreed. “We’ll see you as soon as we get home from Scottsbeck.”

  CHAPTER 13

  “DARLING,” SAID OSBERT, “I still think you and Ethel should have stayed home and rested quietly.”

  “So you could gallop off flexing your machismo?” Dittany snuggled closer to his shoulder. “You know it’s better for her to get her mind off that woodchuck. As for me, I couldn’t have borne to sit there wondering whether Churtle was whanging you with his shingle snipper or hitting you up for a loan.”

  They were riding in Osbert’s pickup truck, an elderly vehicle of sober habits he’d bought with the advance from his very first novel, Red Tails in the Sunset: A Backward Look at the Last Roundup of the Longhorns.

  Before his marriage, he’d been wont to use the pickup for camping expeditions. Dittany herself hadn’t camped since her Girl Guide days, but she was amenable to the truck, because Osbert loved it and because they had no other means of transportation. Old Faithful, the 1966 Plymouth Dittany had ridden in s
ince she was knee-high to a hubcap, had finally folded its fenders and been carted away to that Great Recycling Center whence no car returneth. They planned to get a new car sometime, but it wasn’t high on their list of priorities. Besides, Ethel liked the truck, too. Having the entire back to herself gave her plenty of room to spread out and let her ears flap in the wind.

  “I do believe the change is doing her good,” Dittany remarked as she and Osbert got out at 42 Glendale Street. “No, Ethel, stay. You mind the truck while Daddy detects.”

  She herself was having some qualms about confronting Frederick Churtle on his own turf, but she needn’t have worried. The roofer wasn’t home.

  “He’s gone fishing,” they were told by a woman who must have been Mrs. Churtle but probably thought she was Mrs. Brown.

  “Do you know where?” Osbert asked her.

  “Upstream. Where he always goes. He’s got a lean-to. Don’t ask me where, for I don’t know and I don’t care. Just so he doesn’t bring ’em home for me to clean. Excuse me, my program’s on.”

  She didn’t exactly shut the door in their faces, but she left them no room to doubt the interview was over.

  “Now what do we do?” Osbert fretted. “Where the heck is upstream?”

  “Let’s ask the Munson boys,” said Dittany. “They’ll know.”

  So back they drove to Lobelia Falls, Ethel looking perkier at every turn of the wheels. The Munson boys weren’t home; they’d gone fishing upstream. However, their father was able to tell precisely which stream they’d gone up and where he thought Churtle’s lean-to was most apt to be situated. It was a paltry matter of ten miles on a dirt logging road, then a short portage and another five miles or so by boat to Little Pussytoes. They thanked Roger and went home to collect their camping gear and Osbert’s canoe.

  While Osbert was loading his lightweight craft on the truck, Dittany packed a basket of food, added a box of dog biscuits and one of matches, having no faith in that tale of rubbing two sticks together to start a campfire, threw in a couple of blankets and a bottle of fly dope, and announced she and Ethel were ready to travel.

  Roger Munson’s directions were, of course, faultless. They found the dirt road with no trouble at all, notwithstanding the fact that it looked like the driveway to an abandoned farm and had a few dead limbs laid across it to add to the thrill of the hunt.

  “Churtle must have done that,” Osbert mused. “You’d have thought he wanted the road left clear in case he has to make a fast getaway.”

  “Maybe he’s got a wild stallion tethered up at his camp,” Dittany suggested, “and is planning to gallop back with pistols blazing and jump over. Make the horse jump, I mean.”

  “Good thinking, dear. I suppose we might as well put the branches the way he had them. No, Ethel, they aren’t to play fetch with. Stay in the truck, like a good girl. Heaven forfend she should go roaming and find another w-o-o-d—”

  “Shh!” Dittany warned. “Remember she grew up with the Binkles. You know how literate they are.”

  Ethel had in fact been adopted from a pound by their neighbors Jane and Henry Binkle, who owned a bookshop. However, a rapport had soon developed between Ethel and Dittany. In due course, she’d packed up her dog license and flea soap and moved next door. For a wedding present, the Binkles had made Dittany and Osbert a formal gift of her doghouse, which had stained-glass windows and wall-to-wall carpeting. Ethel never stayed in it, but it did add class to the dooryard.

  As they penetrated farther into the woods, Dittany began to wonder if perhaps she should have packed the doghouse along with the matches and the dog biscuits. Even though they were but two months along from the longest day of the year, it seemed to be getting dark awfully early. Or maybe it was on account of the trees. She hadn’t quite realized how many trees there were in Ontario.

  Anyway, they were still on the right road; if road it could be called. Every so often, Osbert spied a splotch of crankcase oil that told him some vehicle in no better shape than his own had passed this way not long hence. He kept pointing these out to Dittany and she kept uttering appropriate little cries of delight, though in truth she was too busy trying to keep from bouncing off the seat to notice them much.

  After a remarkably long ten miles, they came, as Roger had predicted, to a place where even this abject apology for a road ended in a pindling footpath. Here, Osbert was relieved and Dittany secretly disturbed to see a brown van with Brown the Roofer painted on its side and a CB radio antenna sprouting from its fender.

  “Likes to keep in touch, I see,” Osbert observed. “Come on, Ethel. Let’s just make sure where this path goes.”

  Roger was right again. It meandered roughly half a mile and wound up as promised on the bank of a wide stream.

  “He must keep his boat here. See, Dittany, here’s where he pulled it out of the bushes and dragged it down to the water.”

  “I didn’t know you were so up on all this woodcraft stuff, darling,” she said dutifully. “Now what do we do?”

  “We go back for our gear. You don’t have to help with the canoe, darling. I’ve carried it farther than this lots of times.”

  “You’re not just trying to prove you aren’t a whey-faced mollycoddle?”

  “My love, can you doubt me?” cried Osbert, much aggrieved.

  “All right, then, you take the canoe and I’ll carry the rest of the stuff.”

  “All of it?”

  Well might he ask. When they got back to the truck, even Dittany cast a dubious eye over the basket, the blankets, the outsized box of dog biscuit, and the rest of their impedimenta. Osbert picked up the bottle of fly dope. “Here, darling, you take this.”

  “But what about the rest?”

  “We’ll let Ethel manage it.”

  Whipping out the hunting knife he’d hung from his belt, Osbert cut a couple of saplings, lashed them together at one end with a piece of baling twine out of the truck, wrapped their assorted luggage in the blankets to make a neat package, then tied the pack to the saplings with another length of baling twine.

  “Come on, Ethel, we’re going to make an Indian dog out of you.”

  “A travois!” cried his wife. “Oh, darling, you are brilliant.”

  “Not really, darling. I tried it out with a yak this morning. Back her into the shafts, will you, while I fasten the—hold still, old girl. No, darling, not you. Her. Come on, Ethel, raise your paw so I can get this rope under you. Good dog. Now you walk behind her, Dittany, and keep an eye on the travois in case it gets caught on a bush or anything. Here, I’ll tie this last hunk of rope to the tip so you’ll have something to steer by.”

  Osbert hoisted the canoe to his shoulders and walked on ahead. Ethel followed, tremendously pleased with herself and managing the travois as if she’d been a working dog all her life. Dittany brought up the rear with her bottle of fly dope and her steering line.

  She was not at all scared, she kept telling herself, even when a great horned owl let go with a tune-up whoop in preparation, no doubt, for a busy night among the murmuring pines and the hemlocks standing like druids of eld with beards at rest on their bosoms. She kept her eyes on the travois so that she would be less apt to notice any large green eyes shining out at her. She’d have preferred to keep watching that adorable cowlick behind Osbert’s left ear, but this was impractical, his head being inside the canoe. In fact, Dittany could see nothing of him at all except his Levis, his hiking boots, and his flannel-clad elbows balancing the canoe. She was no end relieved when they came to the stream.

  Osbert disembarrassed himself of the canoe in an adroit feat of gymnastics and began unwinding Ethel from the travois. “Atta pup. You did fine. Come on, let papa have the blanket.”

  “Do you honestly think we’ll all be able to fit into that thing?” Dittany thought the canoe looked awfully inadequate.

  Osbert only grinned. He folded the blankets into a soft pad for Dittany to sit on, stowed their impedimenta at various strategic points, and boosted Ethel
aboard with stern orders to lie down and keep still. He then assisted his wife to her cozy seat in the bow, shoved off, and settled himself in the stern to paddle.

  “You should have kept that big hat on, darling,” he remarked. “You’d look like one of those girls on your grandmother’s old sheet music.”

  “I’ll know better next time.” Dittany was beginning to enjoy herself. A canoe was a peaceful way to travel. You slipped through the water with hardly a sound, except for the lap-lap of the water and the plop-plop of the drops falling off Osbert’s paddle when he raised it for another stroke. One of the old songs had been about paddling your own canoe. She’d have to get him to teach her.

  Gramp had liked that song. She wondered if he’d ever paddled a canoe up Little Pussytoes himself, back when he was a young fellow with a Model T and a girl who’d turned out to be Gram, or later on when he and Gram had an Essex Super Six and a son who’d turned out to be Daddy. Her father himself had been a bit old for canoeing, Dittany supposed, by the time he’d married the leading lady of the Traveling Thespians and begat his own little Henbit.

  She was thinking in an Among My Souvenirs way about her parents and grandparents when Osbert murmured, “Light up ahead, darling. Maybe I’d better put you and Ethel ashore here and push on by myself.”

  “Abandon two helpless females to the forest primeval? Not on your life! Churtle’s not going to riddle us with bullets, I shouldn’t think. I suppose he might pelt us with sinkers and bobbers, or sic his night crawlers on us. Who cares? I’m not afraid of a few lousy angleworms.”