Something the Cat Dragged In

by Charlotte MacLeod

  Smuth burped again. “So I say the hell with it and pour myself a few slugs of Bourbon and turn in, and now you come along and wake me up to tell me she’s gone and got herself killed. Christ, what a day!”

  “You expect us to swallow a yarn like that?” snarled Ottermole, reaching for his longest jacket zipper.

  “I think we might as well,” Shandy interposed. “Mr. Smuth would doubtless be able to have it witnessed by a few dozen airline personnel, not to mention the airport police, the chap who drove him to Leominster, and the cab driver who brought him the rest of the way. Were you surprised not to find your wife at home when you got here, Mr. Smuth?”

  “Hell, no. Ruth hasn’t been home since the day after we got back from our honeymoon. And then she only dropped in to ask me for money. By the way, what happened to her?”

  “She was strangled.”

  “Huh?” At last Smuth was giving Ottermole his full and undivided attention. “What do you mean, strangled?”

  “I mean like somebody snuck up behind her and yanked at the ends of her scarf till she was dead. That kind of strangled.”

  “Oh my God! Mugged and raped. What’ll J.B. say?”

  “As far as we know, she wasn’t molested. She was merely killed.”

  “You say somebody just plain walked up and strangled her? Christ, that’s even worse. Means it was a personal grudge. More damaging to the corporate image.”

  “How do you yourself feel about strangling, Mr. Smuth?” Shandy asked out of curiosity.

  “Listen, whoever you are, what difference does it make how I feel about it? What counts is how the guy three rungs above me on the corporate ladder feels about it. Wise up to the facts of life, buddy. J.B.’s going to blow his stack. I think I’ll have another drink.”

  “I think you better throw on some clothes and come down to make a formal identification,” said Ottermole. “We’ve got coffee and doughnuts at the station,” he added more compassionately.

  Even a tough cop couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for a man whose wife prowled around dark places getting herself killed instead of staying home and doing nice, uxorious things like replacing the worn-out zippers on his jacket or fetching him another beer while he watched reruns of “Barney Miller” for professional instruction.

  “Doughnuts? Okay. Just a second.”

  For coffee and crullers, Mr. Smuth would be only too willing to cooperate. He got dressed, more or less, and accompanied Ottermole and Shandy to the police station, where they baled enough refreshment into him to ease the pangs and sober him up a little. Having then obtained a reasonably coherent statement and a list of people who might be able to corroborate his complicated alibi, they took him along to make a formal identification of his wife.

  Ruth Smuth was still where they’d left her, covered by the same ratty gray blanket that had shrouded Ungley’s corpse the previous morning, Shandy noted with a small frisson. President Svenson and Officer Dorkin had been whiling away the tedium of guardianship playing mumblety-peg by the light of Budge’s battery lantern. As Ottermole and his entourage hove into sight, Svenson whipped the jackknife into his pocket and assumed a demeanor of terrifying dignity. Dorkin stood smartly at attention, thumbs pressed against where the seams of his uniform trousers would have been if he’d thought to put them on instead of the emerald green running pants his mother had bought him on her last expedition to Filene’s Basement.

  Ottermole reached down and pulled away the blanket. Smuth nodded perfunctorily.

  “That’s Ruth. Damn it, why couldn’t she have been killed in a plane crash? Plane crashes are okay PR-wise. Besides, I could have sued the airline for damages. Cover her up again, can’t you? I feel queasy.”

  So Mr. Smuth was capable of human feeling after all, Shandy thought. Of course, it could have been the three honey-dipped chocolate doughnuts on top of all that whiskey. On the other hand, that purple face and protruding tongue weren’t doing much for his own stomach, either. Young Dorkin was looking as green as his running pants, and Ottermole was having to work his pocket zippers for all they were worth. Svenson was retaining his Augustan demeanor by the simple expedient of not looking.

  “Okay, Smuth,” Ottermole told him. “I’ll run you home. Don’t get any ideas about leaving town.”

  “How the hell can I?” Smuth pointed out reasonably enough. “I haven’t got a car to drive me as far as the all-night diner, even. I wish to Christ we had a halfway decent hotel around here. I wish we had an indecent one, even.”

  “So do I,” said Dorkin wistfully.

  Ottermole gave his subordinate a look. “Cover her up, Budge. Mr. Smuth, if you want to give Dorkin here a few bucks, he can pick you up a few groceries after the stores open. Coffee, doughnuts, you know, the basic necessities.”

  “Sure.” Smuth forked over a twenty-dollar bill. “Get me a fifth of Old Factory Whistle while you’re about it, hey, kid?”

  Dorkin magnanimously ignored the “hey, kid,” in view of the grave situation, and said he would.

  “Okay, then,” barked Ottermole. “Let’s get this show back on the road. You coming, Professor?”

  Shandy did not want to go with Ottermole and Smuth. He wanted to go back to the little red-brick house on the Crescent and climb back into bed beside a wife who would not have charged off to head a committee but stayed to share a decent breakfast with him when he woke up. He sighed and climbed back into the cruiser.

  Slumped in the back seat, Shandy wondered why Smuth and Mrs. Smuth had stayed married all these years. On account of the corporate image, probably. Maddening as she must have been to live with, Ruth would have known how to cut the right kind of figure at company dinners. Her charitable activities would have provided ways for the husband to funnel off excess profits into deductible donations real or alleged. Maybe they hadn’t been two hearts that beat as one, but the chances were they’d marched to the same drum. What in Sam Hill were a pair like that doing in Balaclava County?

  “How did you happen to settle around these parts, Mr. Smuth?” he asked.

  “What the hell, we had to live somewhere, didn’t we? Ruth’s got folks around here, so I figured what the hell? Hoddersville’s not quite such a hick town as the rest of ’em around here, and it’s a damn sight cheaper than Weston or Dover. Not bad for the corporate image, either. Nice big house in the country, away from the hurly-burly and all that garbage. Doesn’t matter to me where I hang my hat, I’m on the road most of the time anyway.”

  He yawned and stretched. “Ruth was okay out here. For Hoddersville she had class. For Wellesley or Concord she had class but not the right kind of class. But hell, if she’d had that kind of class, she wouldn’t have married a no-class guy like me. See, I’m not on the class end, I’m on the production end.”

  “Really?” Shandy yawned, too. “What do you produce?”

  “Nothing. I’m not on the producing production end, I’m on the talking production end. Walk into a sales meeting with an armload of blueprints, start waving ’em in everybody’s face, give ’em the facts straight from the shoulder, figures, technical stuff, that kind of garbage. Doesn’t matter if you get it right side up or ass-backwards. They don’t know what you’re talking about anyway, but they’re all too scared to say so, just in case the guy next to ’em happens to know. You get the picture. Hoddersville fits my image. If I tried to get too classy, I’d class myself right out of the production end. Then where’d I be?”

  “On the class end?”

  “Nah, we’re already overloaded on the class end. Princeton, Dartmouth, Valparaiso, you know. The Dry Sack and Chivas Regal crowd. I couldn’t hack it. With those guys you not only have to know where you’re going, you have to know where you’re coming from. Right?”

  “If you say so.”

  Shandy mulled the corporate image over in silence for a while. This night had been so unreal anyway that he decided what Smuth had been telling him might even make sense. However, it was hardly germane to the problem at ha
nd. He thought of another question.

  “How did your wife get tied up with Bertram Claude?”

  “Huh?” Smuth must have been dozing. “Who?”

  “I was asking why Mrs. Smuth became active in the Claude campaign.”

  “Because it was there, I suppose. How the hell do I know?”

  “You—er—made no objections?”

  “Me object to anything Ruth had set her mind on doing? You got to be kidding, mister. Anyway, Claude’s okay, isn’t he? PR-wise, I mean.”

  “I wouldn’t know about PR. As to wise, Claude has never impressed me as showing anything beyond a particularly low form of cunning.”

  “So who needs a pol with brains? All we want is one who’s got what it takes to get elected and vote the way he’s told to, right?”

  “Wrong. I’d rather have one who’s more interested in doing his job right than in keeping it at any cost.”

  “Me, too,” said Ottermole. “Heck, I haven’t got time to run the government even if I knew how, which I sure don’t,” he added with surprising candor, “but it’s a cop’s job to know an honest guy from a phony. That’s why I’m voting for Sam Peters like I always do. How did we get started on politics, anyway?”

  “We were trying to get at the facts about Mrs. Smuth’s relationship to Bertram Claude,” Shandy told him.

  “Yeah?” Smuth yawned again. “If you mean was she screwing around with him, I’ve got two pieces of information for you. I don’t know, and I don’t give a damn. Wake me up when we get to the house.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “SHEESH!”

  Ottermole gunned the cruiser, spraying gravel from the Smuths’ well-raked drive all over their expensive landscaping. “Am I glad to unload that bird! You know something, though? In a way, I kind of feel sorry for him. At least when I get home, if I ever do, I’ll know who my missus has been keeping the bed warm for. Want me to drop you off at the Crescent?”

  “Yea, but nay,” Shandy told him. “I’m afraid our night’s work isn’t over quite yet. Would you happen to know where Bertram Claude lives? I have a hunch it’s not far from here.”

  “Professor, you’re not planning to go and wake up a congressman?”

  “Why not? I’d like to wake up a few more of them, if it comes to that. We have a responsibility to let Claude know his campaign manager’s been murdered, haven’t we?”

  “No, but I guess we could use that as an excuse. Okay, I think I know the house. It’s just a few streets over, with an eagle on the mailbox. Why didn’t I think to swallow another cup of coffee back at the station?”

  “Perhaps Claude will offer us some. It would be good politics and he’s supposed to be a smart politician. Roll down your window if you’re getting sleepy. The fresh air will pep you up.”

  “The hell it will.”

  Nevertheless, Ottermole let in a frosty blast. They drove on a little farther, turned down another of the well-paved roads in what the snobby folk of Hoddersville considered to be Balaclava County’s most exclusive residential section, and found the house with the eagle on the mailbox. Shandy climbed out of the cruiser, stretched to limber up his muscles, and thumped at the second eagle, this one of brass, that served the Claudes for a door knocker.

  “You know, Ottermole,” he murmured while they were waiting for somebody to respond, “I just happened to think. You don’t really have any jurisdiction over here, do you?”

  “Nope,” the chief admitted, “but we don’t have to tell him that, do we? Anyway, us chiefs in the Association have kind of a—oh, oh. Here comes somebody.”

  The somebody turned out to be a smallish, blondish woman who looked enough like the late Ruth Smuth to give Shandy a jolt. She was clutching an over-elaborate negligee around her thin body as she opened the door on its chain and peered nervously out at them through the narrowest possible crack.

  “Who is it?”

  “We’re police officers,” said Ottermole, projecting a combination of toughness and reassurance, and keeping his hands off his zippers for the moment. “Are you Mrs. Bertram Claude?”

  “Yes. Yes, I am.”

  “Is your husband home?”

  “He’s asleep. What do you want him for?”

  “We’d like to talk to him a minute, that’s all. Would you mind getting him down here?”

  “He doesn’t like being waked up.”

  “Neither do I, Mrs. Claude, but things are tough all over. Could you hurry it up, please?”

  Ottenhole’s left hand began to creep ominously toward his topmost pocket zipper. She went, trying to shut the door behind her but prevented by the chief’s fast footwork. The two outside heard the click-click of her high-heeled slippers, then some dialogue that indicated Claude didn’t waste his charm in places where it wouldn’t enhance his public image.

  “They said they were police officers.” Mrs. Claude’s voice was pitched even higher and whinier now.

  “Anybody can say that, stupid. For all you know, they may be political assassins.”

  “Who’d bother assassinating you?” Mrs. Claude retorted with discernible regret. “They only go after important people.”

  “Thank you, sweetheart. I’ll remember that.”

  “You try any more funny business and I’ll file for divorce. Right before the election. How’d you like that, Bertie dear?”

  “Shut up, they might hear you. Did you have sense enough to shut the door?”

  “I couldn’t. He stuck his boot in the crack.”

  “Jesus, now you tell me! Look, go on back to bed. Let me handle this.”

  “With pleasure.”

  The two men on the doorstep heard a door slam. Some moments later, Claude’s mellifluous locution floated through the crack.

  “Would you identify yourselves, please?”

  “Ottermole. Chief of police, Balaclava Junction. And—uh—Detective Shandy.”

  “Could I see your credentials?”

  “Sure.” Ottermole held his badge and his Balaclava, County Police Chiefs’ Association membership card up to the crack. “Okay?”

  Shandy had got out his faculty dining room pass in lieu of anything more official, but Claude didn’t ask him to show it. He was revving up to bluster.

  “And what do you want of me at this hour? I warn you, Ottermole, it had better be important.”

  “Don’t sweat it, Claude, it’s important. We thought maybe you’d want to know your campaign manager’s been murdered.”

  “What?” That stopped Claude cold. At last he choked out, “You—ah—did say murdered?”

  “Strangled,” Ottermole amplified. “With her own scarf.”

  “Her scarf? Who did you say this was?”

  “Your campaign manager. Ruth Smuth.”

  That was when Claude released the chain and swung open the door, revealing himself in the effulgence of a Sulka lounging robe, silk pajamas, and a full set of dimples.

  “Ruth Smuth? Now, who could—oh yes, Mrs. Smuth. I’m afraid there’s been some mistake, Chief Ottermole. Mrs. Smuth was one of our willing workers on a, so to speak, local basis. We have a large and zealous group of volunteers helping with our campaign; you know. It’s sometimes difficult to recall precisely what responsibilities we’ve given each and every individual, but,” he laughed lightly, “I’m quite sure I’d remember having named someone my campaign manager.”

  “Shove it, Claude.”

  That was Shandy butting in, borrowing tone and cadence from Ottermole and wishing he had a more appropriately situated zipper to yank. “Ruth Smuth was nobody’s willing worker. If she hadn’t been running the show, she wouldn’t have been in it. Okay, we understand it’s rotten PR for you, her getting bumped off right after she’d bitched up that phony demonstration at the college yesterday afternoon, but it’s what happened and there’s not much you can do about it now so never mind trying to give us the baloney. Where were you between about seven o’clock last night and two this morning?”

  Bertram
Claude flared his Grecian nostrils and bared his superbly capped teeth. “I don’t have to stand for this. Do you realize to whom you’re talking?”

  “Yeah,” said Ottermole. “That’s why we’re here instead of someplace else. How about answering Shandy’s question?”

  He whipped out his gold-plated ball-point pen to prove Claude wasn’t dealing with a couple of country bumpkins, and poised it over his notebook. Either the pen or the realization that his dimples weren’t going to get him anywhere with this pair prompted Claude to utter.

  “Certainly. I have nothing to hide. For the record, then, I attended a reception given in my honor by some of my loyal constituents. It was held at the home of Mr. Lot Lutt in Lumpkin Upper Mills. Mr. Lutt is chairman of the board at the—”

  “Former chairman,” Ottermole corrected. “At the soap-works. His sister-in-law that keeps house for him is an aunt of Ruth Smuth. Was Lutt himself there?”

  “For a time.”

  “How long a time?”

  Claude essayed another genteel snicker. “I’m afraid I didn’t have my stopwatch with me. You know how it is at these affairs. People come and go.”

  “Yeah. They come because they feel sorry for the neighbor that got sucked into giving the shindig, and go when they can’t stand it any longer. Get much of a crowd?”

  “We had a lively meeting,” the politician sidestepped. “The guests asked a number of stimulating questions.”

  “I’ll bet they did, both of ’em. I’m surprised anybody at all bothered to come. That’s pretty solid Peters country around there. So when did you get to Lutt’s place and when did you leave? And you can skip the stopwatch routine this time. I’ll double-check with Edna Jean later on.”

  “Edna Jean?”

  “Sure. That’s your loyal constituent’s name, in case you didn’t know. Edna Jean Bugleford. She’s my wife’s aunt, too, but only by marriage. My wife’s mother was a Bugleford, but I never held it against her. Okay, the time.”