Miss Paffnagel looked amused again. “Mucking around, eh? You didn’t find any pre-Colombian artifacts, I don’t suppose?”
“Not that I can recall.”
“Or anything else of value, I don’t suppose. Poor Perry. He never gave up hope, though, I’ll say that for him.”
“Hope of what, Miss Paffnagel?”
“Fame and fortune, what else? Perry was always going to strike it big. You know, make some great discovery that would astound the whole museum field. We all are, of course, when we’re young and enthusiastic, but most of us get a bit more realistic as the years go by. Perry kept right on dreaming the impossible dream. He tottered on the brink a few times, or thought he did, but in the long run his golden apples always came up lemons. Even when I talked to him day before yesterday, he was bubbling about an old letter that he said contained a clue to a cipher.
“What was the cipher supposed to be about?”
“Hidden treasure, of course. ‘Right here in Lobelia Falls,’ he told me. ‘Can you believe it?’”
She lapped up the last of the sugar. “Well, needless to say, I couldn’t, but I wasn’t about to break Perry’s heart by saying so. I just smiled and nodded and said wasn’t that nice.”
“He didn’t say what the treasure was?” Osbert asked her.
“Uh-uh.”
“Did he tell you how he’d recognize this cipher when he found it, assuming it does in fact exist?”
“Not a yip. Mind you, I wasn’t exactly pressing him for information. I’d been through all that with Perry before, and so had everybody else he’d ever worked with. We all knew his dream was not so much of winning fame for himself as of boosting Evangeline’s status to the point where she’d decide he wasn’t classy enough for her and find herself another victim.”
“Then you in fact placed no credence whatsoever in this alleged find of Peregrine Fairfield?” asked Sergeant MacVicar.
“I wouldn’t say no credence whatsoever,” Miss Paffnagel demurred. “I’m sure Perry’d got hold of something. He wasn’t incompetent, you know. He wouldn’t have been fooled by a faked-up modern letter or a totally implausible yarn. The thing of it was, he wanted so desperately to fulfill that great ambition of his, and he must have realized if it didn’t happen here, it never would. Poor old coot, in a way I’m glad he didn’t live to see another of his bubbles burst. Mrs. Monk, would you mind steering me in the general direction of my room? I think I’d like to lie down a while.”
CHAPTER 16
DITTANY SET OUT THE company towels with mixed feelings. It must be galling for a hunter of pre-Columbian artifacts to find herself being held in protective custody, or whatever the proper term might be, in connection with an old friend’s sudden death. On the other hand, if Hunding Paffnagel saw Lobelia Falls merely as a quaint little backwater, she must be so lacking in perception that she wouldn’t notice or care what Sergeant MacVicar wanted her there for, provided the food held out.
Dittany herself had a few things to say to the sergeant, however. She made sure there was a fresh cake of pink soap to go with the towels and went downstairs. Before she’d had a chance to unload the words that were hovering upon her lips, though, Sergeant MacVicar began what her stepfather Bert would describe as a snow job.
“Ah, Dittany lass. I was just telling Deputy Monk how greatly Mrs. MacVicar and I appreciate your kindness in offering lodging to Miss Paffnagel.”
Dittany snorted. “In a pig’s eye you were, with all respect. Osbert and I both know the only reason you brought her here was so that you could con us into keeping her under house arrest, so let’s cut the cackle and get to the hosses. Have you caught our burglar yet?”
“Burglar?”
“Certainly burglar. Didn’t Ray tell you?”
“I have not yet checked in at the station.”
For the first time in Dittany’s life, she detected a faint note of uncertainty in Sergeant MacVicar’s voice. She leaped on that note like a terrier on a bug. “A fine thing, when our senior law enforcement officer falls down on his job.”
“Dittany!” cried Osbert, scandalized.
“Well, darling, you must admit it’s a bit much, dumping another probable malefactor on us without so much as offering a word of sympathy about the one we’ve already had. Being a literary man yourself, maybe you can straighten Sergeant MacVicar out on the relationship between quid and quo.”
“Are we the quid or the quo?”
“Both, darn it. What about last night, when we paddled our own canoe out into the middle of nowhere at peril of life and limb just to grill Fred Churtle for him?”
“It was only up Little Pussytoes, darling, and it was partly to heal Ethel’s broken heart.”
“And a fat lot of good that did. She’s down in Cat Alley right now, making goo-goo eyes at another woodchuck.”
“La donna è mobile,” said Sergeant MacVicar. “That minds me, Deputy Monk, I have not yet heard your report on yon Churtle.”
“You haven’t heard about our burglary, either,” Osbert retorted, for he was no wimp and never had been, his aunt to the contrary notwithstanding. “But anyway,” he went on, for neither was Osbert a contumacious young man except when goaded by Arethusa, “we did have a long talk with Fred Churtle, in fact we spent the night at his camp. He seems like a nice guy. He told us all about Peregrine Fairfield.”
Osbert proceeded to tell what Churtle had told. As any of his multitudinous readers would have expected, he told it well. Sergeant MacVicar hung upon his words, nodding sagely from time to time, pursing his lips when pursing seemed called for, finally delivering the deserved accolade.
“Well done, Deputy Monk. My compliments to you, and to your lady wife as well. As you have doubtless noted, Churtle’s explanation of that alleged five thousand dollar loan ties in neatly with what Miss Paffnagel has told us of Peregrine Fairfield’s eternally futile quest. Yon swindle must have been the first in a long series of disappointments.”
“Second,” Dittany contradicted. “He’d already married Evangeline.”
Sergeant MacVicar rubbed his chin to conceal the smile that rose unbidden to his lips. “Lass, lass, did I not ken ye so weel, I might suspect you of harboring thoughts less than kind toward her who is e’en now suffering the effects of her tragic bereavement.”
“Well, I am sorry about the pension’s getting stopped.”
Dittany could have added, “because that makes it stickier for us to get rid of her,” but forbore partly out of decorum and partly because Sergeant MacVicar doubtless knew what she was thinking anyway, the pious old fraud. Right now he was favoring her with one of those indulgent smiles she’d been getting ever since her fourth birthday, when she’d stormed the police station demanding he arrest a robin that had committed an indecent assault on her brand-new party dress.
“Aye, Dittany, we must consider all practical aspects of the case. From a practical point of view, eh, we may eliminate Frederick Churtle as your burglar, since you had him under surveillance all night at a distance of some twenty miles from here.”
“Not exactly,” said Osbert. “Fred insisted Dittany and I use the lean-to because we were company. He took his sleeping bag off to the other side of the campfire, allegedly to give us more privacy. What’s to say he didn’t sneak downstream in his dinghy, or in our canoe, for that matter, while we were asleep?”
“He would have been taking a parlous risk, would he not, to have absented himself for a period long enough to have accomplished his felonious mission?”
“Not if he got somebody else to do the felonizing. He had an outboard motor on his dinghy and a CB radio in his van, which was parked about five miles back at the portage. As soon as he was out of earshot of the camp, he could have started the motor, beetled on down to the van, and radioed to a henchman. Or henchwoman. His wife, most likely. She’d only have had to drive over from Scottsbeck.”
“Or what about Andy McNasty?” said Dittany. “Churtle works for him, and he lives in Scottsb
eck, too.”
“Ah,” said MacVicar. “And what would this alleged confederate be told to look for?”
“As a guess,” Osbert replied, “that cipher Peregrine Fairfield mentioned to Miss Paffnagel. Fred might think we had it because Dittany’d been at the museum shortly before Mr. Fairfield died. We have only Fred’s word, you know, that he hadn’t got together with his old pal Perry after the Fairfields moved to Lobelia Falls.”
“He admitted he’d seen the piece in the paper about them,” Dittany added. “Osbert wrote the publicity release. It was lovely.”
“Thank you, darling. Maybe Fred was lying to us. In any case, if he and Perry did get together, they wouldn’t have dared let Mrs. Fairfield know or she’d start telling everybody what a skunk Fred was. The only way they could have stopped her would have been for her husband to tell her the truth and get his ear chewed off for the rest of his life. Then most likely she’d force him to get off that trail Miss Paffnagel says he thought he was on, for fear he’d wind up suckered out of another five thousand dollars.”
“Astutely reasoned, Deputy Monk,” said Sergeant MacVicar. “You assume, then, that since Mr. Fairfield confided his new quest to Miss Paffnagel, he would also have told Churtle about it.”
“I don’t see why not.”
“Nor do I. This plot is thickening like a haggis on the hob. And I must say at this juncture I see no practical way of dishing it up. Did you ascertain whether Churtle’s two-way radio was in working order?”
Osbert flushed. “No, I didn’t.”
“Darling, why should you have?” cried Dittany. “How could you have known it might be important?”
“I should have guessed. Maybe it’s not too late.”
“I misdoubt it would do us no good to investigate the radio at this time,” said Sergeant MacVicar. “If it is working, Churtle could say he just fixed it. If it is not, that may be because Churtle saw his peril and put the contraption out of commission after you left him. On the other hand, Churtle may be innocent as a newborn lamb and we have still to search elsewhere for our malefactor. Unless in fact we have already caught her.”
“But if Miss Paffnagel’s guilty, why did she come back for the funeral?” said Dittany.
“She may be studying burial rites,” Osbert suggested.
Sergeant MacVicar gave them both another of his tolerant smiles. “Miss Paffnagel is a learned woman. Let us assume for the purpose of discussion that she told the truth about not knowing Peregrine Fairfield had settled in Lobelia Falls, and that her choice of a caravansary was indeed serendipitous. Evidence to support this assumption might include her appearing at the inn in conspicuous clothing and lingering over her meal. She then went to the museum in broad daylight, a natural enough action for one of her profession to take, and let herself be seen by both Dave Munson and Mrs. Fairfield.”
“But neither of them saw her face,” Dittany pointed out.
“Miss Paffnagel was not to know that. She could not but have known there were workmen around the place, and she herself states she was told Mrs. Fairfield was also on the premises. She claims she left to avoid a meeting with Mrs. Fairfield, but she would have to reckon with the possibility that Mrs. Fairfield was also aware of her presence and endeavoring to stay out of her way.”
“Because Miss Paffnagel locked her in the loo at the retirement party,” said Dittany.
“A cogent reason, to be sure.”
“I see what you’re getting at,” said Osbert. “It does look as if Miss Paffnagel came upon Mr. Fairfield by accident, as she claims. That doesn’t mean she couldn’t have killed him, but it does explain why she came back. She’d learned from the news broadcast that she must have been among the last to see him alive and that the police would be looking for her in any case. Innocent or guilty, the smartest move she could make would be to show up voluntarily and brazen it out.”
“But why would she have killed Mr. Fairfield, darling?” asked his wife. “It could hardly have been on account of any dark secret from their past, I shouldn’t think. If it was, she’d have done better to bump him off at the retirement party and get it over with.”
“Maybe I’m being fanciful, eh, but I wonder if it could have had anything to do with that letter he showed her. Suppose for once in his life he’d actually happened on something big, and she saw her chance to grab it away from him?”
“Then why did she mention the letter to us?”
“More bluff, possibly. You know what Fred Churtle said last night about old Perry always being about to make some big discovery and always being disappointed in the end. Miss Paffnagel said the same thing just now, so it looks as if Mr. Fairfield’s treasure hunts were kind of a standing joke with everybody who knew him. That means he must have gone around shooting his mouth off about them to anybody who’d listen, instead of keeping quiet till he’d got what he was looking for, not that he ever did. She’d be forced to act on the assumption that Perry had already spread the word, and try to make us believe he was only chasing another wild goose.”
“Now, Dittany, you see why I have entrusted Miss Paffnagel to you and Deputy Monk,” said Sergeant MacVicar. “I will leave you, in your guidman’s parlance, to ride herd on her until we learn whether we have any grounds to institute sterner measures.”
CHAPTER 17
THE SERGEANT MADE A soldierly figure as he marched smartly away in the blue uniform Mrs. MacVicar kept spruce and pressed for him, but Dittany viewed his tall, straight rear elevation with no favor.
“This is a fine kettle of fish!”
“Darling, you’re not sorry I let him deputize me again, are you?” Osbert inquired somewhat ruefully.
“Of course not, darling.” Dittany gave him a kiss to prove it. “You know perfectly well he’d have brought her here anyway. Remember how it was before we got married: Hazel Munson keeping those forty heads of lettuce in the bathtub, Ellie Despard filling the dining room with gold paper butterflies, and one who shall be nameless trying to rip out the pantry.”
“Not to mention those trash cans full of broken beer bottles in the cellar,” Osbert agreed.
“Exactly. This house was officially designated the town dump long before you ever showed up. Besides, if we’ve got to have murders around, it’s better to be in on the action than diddling around the sidelines waiting for somebody else to tell us what’s happening. Are you going to detect something this afternoon, dear, or do you have to get back to the yaks? Because I’d better take the truck and go grocery shopping or we shan’t have anything to feed Miss Paffnagel.”
Osbert said he thought he’d finish rounding up the yaks, so Dittany drove over to Scottsbeck by herself and stocked up on food, adding a ten-kilo sack of sugar in case they got stuck with Miss Paffnagel for the rest of the week. As she was trundling her laden shopping cart back to the truck, a large man with shiny black hair stepped in her way.
“Afternoon, Mrs. Monk. Doing your shopping?”
Now was the time for a devastatingly cutting reply. Dittany gulped and wished she could think of one. She would, no doubt, in a few hours. At the moment, she could only stand goggling at Andrew McNaster and utter an inane, “Yes.”
“Got to keep ’em eating, eh?”
McNaster wasn’t so hot on repartee, either. Dittany responded wittily, “That’s right.”
“Come over here often?”
What the heck did he think he was driving at? Of course she came over here often. Where else was she supposed to buy the family grub, now that Pop Gubbins had rented the general store to Charlene’s Chic Coiffures, picked up his jug and his musical saw, and gone on tour with a country music band? She said so. McNaster responded with what must surely be a hypocritical nod.
“That’s right, you don’t have a convenience store in Lobelia Falls these days, do you? We’ll have to see what we can do about that. Can’t have you drive all the way to Scottsbeck every time you need a package of frozen meatballs, eh.”
“I don’t buy frozen meatb
alls,” Dittany told him with what dignity she could muster.
“I wish I didn’t have to.”
Dittany was so startled by the agony in Andrew McNaster’s voice that she forgot to be uncivil. “I thought you ate at the inn.”
“Well, sure I do, only sometimes I just don’t feel like it. I mean, don’t get me wrong, we serve great food over there. Real haute cuisine. Little paper petticoats on the lamb chops and everything. Say, how come I never see you in there?”
“Perhaps because I never go.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing. Say, how about me standing you a meal on the house some night? You and your aunt.”
“She’s not my aunt. She’s my husband’s aunt.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right. Funny, she doesn’t look like anybody’s aunt. I mean, not like what you’d think somebody’s aunt would look like, if you get what I mean.”
Dittany had to concede that she got what he meant. It was true, Arethusa Monk did not look like an aunt. Arethusa looked like a Gainsborough portrait of Mrs. Sarah Siddons in her celebrated role as Lady Macbeth. However, it was not seemly to be standing around a supermarket parking lot discussing her aunt-in-law’s looks with a man who until recently had been their joint sworn enemy and probably still was, if the truth were known. What the heck was he up to?
Well, if he wanted conversation, she might as well give him some. “I understand your plumber’s been hauled off to the steel chateau.”
“Oh, Cedric Fawcett? Yeah, Ceddie gets a bit hot under the collar now and then. Funny, isn’t it, when he’s so quiet most of time. That’s how it is with people, I guess. Who’s to say what wild passions may be seething and fermenting beneath the mildest exterior? How about me buying you a cup of tea at the Cozy Corner?”
Had Dittany Henbit Monk been Eliza Doolittle, she would probably have retorted, “Not bloody likely!” Especially after all that seething and fermenting. Was it possible—no, it couldn’t be possible. But it might be possible, and Dittany wasn’t going to run any risk of finding out. She said she had to get home with the groceries because they had a house guest and her husband would be worried.
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