Ottermole waggled his gold-plated pen impatiently. Claude sighed and managed to dredge up the more-or-less straight facts.
“I arrived at approximately seven forty, and left a little before nine.”
“Stuck it out for a whole hour, did they? Not bad, Claude. Then what did you do?”
“I went on to another meeting.”
“Where?”
“It was an informal gathering at a club called, I believe, the Bursting Bubble.”
“Beer joint over behind the soap factory,” Ottermole explained to Shandy. “Figured he might catch a few of the night shift when they snuck out for a brew. Any luck, Claude?”
You had to hand it to Ol’ Dimplepuss, Shandy thought. Bertram Claude must have the hide of a walrus. He actually managed to answer Ottermole’s rude interrogation with another of those rippling laughs and another deft evasion.
“I thought you were the one who knew all the answers, Chief Ottermole. As for myself, I’m afraid I’ll just have to wait till election day and find out.”
“What is there to be afraid of? It’s not as if you were going to be faced with having to pull up stakes and leave this nice, comfortable house for some high-priced dump in Washington.” Ottermole was really quite a card when you got to know him. “What time did you get to the Bubble, and when did you leave? Bearing in mind that I also know the bartender.”
“I’m sure you do.” Chalk one up for Claude. “I went there directly from the Lutt house, so I suppose it must have been about five minutes past nine when I arrived. I stayed until closing time. According to local regulations which you must also know, that would have been midnight. Naturally your friend the bartender wouldn’t flout the law by staying open a moment longer.”
Ottermole could take needling, too. “Then what?” was his only response.
“Having received considerable encouragement from the factory workers I’d met at the Bubble, as you call it, I decided it mightn’t be a bad idea to drop by the factory and shake a few hands there. Mr. Lutt’s name gave me an entree. The night watchman can no doubt tell you the exact times of my arrival and departure, but I do know it was exactly two o’clock when I got home because we have a grandfather clock that strikes the hours. For corroboration on that point, you’ll have to rely on my wife and any neighbors who might have been looking out their windows.”
“Yeah, there’s always somebody, isn’t there? Even in a ritzy neighborhood like this. How’d you come?”
“In my car, Chief Ottermole.”
“I mean, what road did you take?”
“I came through Lumpkinton Center and picked up the highway as far as the Hoddersville exit.”
“At that hour of the night you’d have made better time cutting across through Balaclava Junction.”
“Perhaps, but as it happens, I didn’t. Come to think of it, I do have an alibi of sorts, for what it may be worth to you. My car started making strange noises, so I stopped at that turnout just before you go on to the highway, and put up the hood. A Lumpkinton police cruiser came along and the men in it very kindly stopped and asked if I needed help. Not being all that clever about engines, I said yes. So they got out and found the cause of the trouble, which happened to be a twig that had somehow worked its way through the grille and was hitting against the fanbelt. I never thought to ask their names, but I did shake hands and give them each one of my pamphlets. They’ll remember me, no doubt.”
“No doubt,” said Ottermole. “If you spent all that time at the Bubble, I’m surprised they didn’t make you take a breathalyzer test.”
“Perhaps because I didn’t drink anything but ginger ale,” Claude replied urbanely. “I never do when I’m campaigning. Unlike my worthy opponent, they tell me.”
It was well-known around his district that Sam Peters never left for Washington without a jug of home-squeezed and home-hardened cider. His loyal constituents considered this yet one more proof of Sam’s Yankee thrift and sound common sense. Shandy’s hackles rose.
“Did they tell you your worthy opponent doesn’t hang around beer joints buying drinks for barflies, as you must have been doing or you’d have been laughed out of the Bubble before your second ginger ale? Right, Chief?”
“Right,” said Ottermole. “Okay, Claude, go on back upstairs and finish your beauty sleep. And don’t get any notions about taking a quick trip out of state.”
“Should I take that as a threat, Chief Ottermole? It can’t be an official warning, since you have no authority in Hoddersville.”
“No, I don’t, but your chief of police is a lodge buddy of mine. How about if we call it a friendly hint?”
Ottermole had sense enough not to spoil a good exit line by hanging around any longer. Besides, as he explained to Shandy when they were back in the cruiser, he’d run out of things to say.
“Any more bright ideas, Professor? That was one fat waste of time, I guess.”
“On the contrary, Ottermole. You’ve performed a masterful stroke of investigative work.”
“I have?”
“Masterful,” Shandy replied firmly. “You made Claude admit he had a beautiful alibi all lined up for the entire evening.”
“Yeah, well, what could you expect? Everybody else has one.”
“That’s precisely what I mean. I might grant you Bulfinch, since his alibi depends largely on the Lomaxes and we both know there’s no way anybody alive could get one of them to deviate a hair’s-breadth from the truth. I suppose I more or less have to grant you Smuth because his tale of woe was based on a string of calamities he’d have had one hell of a time trying to arrange in advance. But three in a row is stretching things pretty far, don’t you think?”
“Well, yeah. That’s why I kept pounding at him,” Ottermole replied with understandable mendacity. “What do you make of his so-called alibi, Professor? Comparing notes, as you might say.”
“M’yes. Now, I don’t say Bertram Claude sneaked over to Balaclava Junction between meetings and bumped off Mrs. Smuth, who he’s trying to make us believe was not his campaign manager after all. That, I expect we’re going to find, is another sample of his approach to politics. It does occur to me that Claude wasn’t actually all that far from our campus at any time during his peregrinations since the college lies about halfway between Hoddersville and Lumpkinton. What if he’d picked up Mrs. Smuth’ either at her own place or over here somewhere after the demonstration, and they’d started out together to attend that reception she’d bullied her aunt into giving? They could have quarreled on the way.”
“Yeah, specially if they had something going on the side like Smuth and Mrs. Claude claimed. Claude’s wife was threatening to wreck his campaign if he didn’t cut out the funny business. We heard her, remember?”
“True enough. Clandestine relationships do tend to give rise to—er—emotional difficulties”—Shandy had experienced one or two himself during his long bachelorhood—“and Mrs. Smuth was by all accounts an exasperating woman. Claude might very possibly have lost his temper and strangled her with that scarf she was so conveniently wearing. He’s under a lot of pressure with the election coming up, and he’s obviously not the sunshine kid he makes himself out to be in the first place.”
“You can say that again.”
“So then he’d be faced with the problem of what to do with the body. He could hardly dump it beside the road because somebody might have seen them drive off together. My guess is that Claude would have stowed his late lady friend in his car trunk, gone on to his reception, and been innocently surprised when she didn’t show up. He’d have told the aunt he was expecting Mrs. Smuth to meet him there because she’d said she was going on ahead to help with the refreshments or whatever.”
“How come Edna Jean didn’t push the panic button when her niece never showed up, I wonder?”
“Good question. Perhaps she wasn’t all that fond of her niece. I expect Mrs. Smuth had broken earlier engagements with her and made excuses afterward about having to cope w
ith some desperate emergency or other. Claude could have made noises about things being hectic at campaign headquarters, as they no doubt are. Luckily for him the affair was a flop, so he’d have been able to escape before Mrs. Bugleford really got the wind up. He could then have gone to a pay phone and arranged for another of his henchpersons to meet him with a second car in some lonely spot, and deal with the corpse, while he made himself conspicuously present elsewhere. Since Mrs. Smuth had been involved in that much-publicized shemozzle at the college earlier, the campus was the logical place to leave her. They could count on her being found pretty soon because everybody knows we maintain tight security.”
“Jeez, Professor, that would take moxie. And money. I can’t see-any campaign worker taking on a job like that without a hefty payoff.”
“After what they pulled yesterday, I’d say that crowd have gall enough for anything. As to money, there seems to be plenty. Claude’s been spending a fortune in the media, and political advertising always has to be paid for in advance.”
“Okay, but how’d the guy dump the body without being spotted?”
“If Bulfinch is telling the truth, it must have happened sometime around eleven o’clock, about the time the night shift comes on. Until then, there’d be security guards on duty, but they wouldn’t bother anyone who wasn’t acting suspiciously. People are still around as a rule, coming back from meetings or whatever. Suppose someone drove up that path where Bulfinch found the body. He’s got Mrs. Smuth down on the floor behind, him, covered with a blanket. The door opens, somebody says, ‘This is fine! I’ll cut across the yard. Just let me get my books out of the back seat,’ or some such innocent-sounding remark. He then drags the body out where it can be seen easily but not too easily, slips back into the car, and the car drives off before anybody who might be nearby realizes what’s happened.”
Ottermole nodded. “I get you. Like down in the village, people are always dropping their kids or their friends off. You don’t think anything of it because why should you? Okay, so where do we go from there?”
“Home to bed,” Shandy told him. “I don’t know about you, Chief, but I’m beat to the socks.”
Chapter Eighteen
“I DO WISH YOU didn’t have classes this morning,” Helen sighed. “What time did you come in, for goodness’ sake?”
“Who knows?” Shandy held out his cup for more tea. “Sometime around three or half-past, I think.”
“Which means you may possibly have got as much as four hours’ sleep, counting what little you had before that fiend Thorkjeld woke you. Darling, I hate to remind you, but you’re not an undergraduate any more.”
“Thank you, my love, I’m rather pleased to be reminded. Just think, I shan’t have to sit passive the next hour listening to some yawning old josser drivel on about some damn thing or other. You wouldn’t happen to recall which subject I’m supposed to be teaching?”
“It will come to you. Might I suggest you try to keep your tie out of your coffee? That will save having to change your shirt.”
“Why?”
“Because if your tie gets wet and slops on your shirt, everybody in college will start whispering around that I neglect you, and Dr. Porble’s dubious about me already.”
“What right has Porble to be dubious about you, prithee?”
“He’s my boss, after all. We have a sort of love-hate relationship.”
“The hell you do. Remind me to stop by the library and hurl my gauntlet in his face sometime when I have a spare moment.”
“It’s not that kind of love-hate, silly. It’s because Dr. Porble secretly thinks woman’s place is in the home.”
“Especially women with doctorates in library science. Porble weeps with delight when you give him a smile, and trembles with fear at your frown.”
“He does no such thing.”
“He damn well should. Get off my briefcase, Jane. Daddy’s got to go out in the cold, cruel world and earn you the price of a new catnip mouse. Good gad, I wonder if Jane’s related to Edmund?”
“Fourth cousin six times removed,” Helen answered promptly, lifting the young tiger cat off Peter’s lecture notes. “Mrs. Lomax worked out a complete genealogy the day we got her. I can give you a synopsis, if you like.”
“Some other time, perhaps. Duty calls and I must obey.”
“Better duty than Thorkjeld, I suppose. What time do you think you might be home?”.
“I’m past thinking. I can only hope.”
Shandy started up the familiar path to his classroom. He hadn’t got twenty steps from his own front walk, though, when Mirelle Feldster burst forth from the house next door.
“Peter! Peter, wait. Is it true?”
“I can’t wait. I have a class. It probably isn’t,” he called over his shoulder and kept on going.
That was hardly enough to discourage Mirelle. She slip-slopped after him in slippers and housecoat.
“I heard it on the news just now. That Smuth woman who threw her weight around so much during the silo drive.” Mirelle stopped to pant, but only for a moment. “Who did it, Peter?”
“I didn’t. That’s all I know. Why don’t you go home and get dressed? Jim may take a dim view of your chasing me in your nightgown.”
Jim wouldn’t notice or give a hoot if he did, but that was beside the point. Shandy stepped up the pace. Mirelle cast a slipper and he managed to put a safe distance between them while she was hopping around on one foot trying to get it back on. She’d hardly follow him into the classroom. More likely she’d go over and pester Helen, who’d be trying to straighten up the kitchen and get off to work.
It occurred to Shandy that he’d told his wife nothing about Mrs. Smuth’s all too timely demise, having been too preoccupied trying to keep the lids propped up above his eyeballs. Helen might be a trifle put out at hearing the no doubt erroneous details from Mirelle instead of the horse’s mouth. What had they been saying on the broadcast, and how had they found out? Had any of those reporters who’d appeared with such mysterious promptitude yesterday afternoon been hanging around last night to see what else was going to happen? Had they again been tipped off in advance? If so, for the cat’s sake, by whom?
Yesterday, Shandy would have been willing to swear Ruth Smuth herself and her corpulent cohort Sill were responsible for getting the media people out here. It was hardly to be credited, though, that she’d have invited them to her own murder. Shandy couldn’t believe Sill would have been so totally fatheaded as to mix himself up in something this crazy. Did that mean somebody else had been using both Sill and Smuth as expendable tools? And was or was not Bertram Claude that somebody?
Shandy could see why Bertram Claude had denied Ruth Smuth was his campaign manager if in fact she was. Whether or not he’d had anything to do with her death, his well-developed political reflexes would recoil automatically from involvement in anything that sticky so close to an election in which he must surely know he was the underdog. But if by some chance Claude was right and she wasn’t, then why would she have told Svenson she was? Had she been trying to pull off a coup that would elevate her in Claude’s esteem? Had she been entertaining some unrealistic hope of a pork-barrel appointment? Had she not in fact been on beddable terms with Ol’ Dimplepuss but wanted to be?
Maybe she hadn’t been working with Bertram Claude but against him. That was a crazy notion. Sam Peters didn’t need any dirty tricks squad. He’d throw a fit if he found out somebody was trying anything underhanded on his alleged behalf. He might conceivably even withdraw his name from the ballot.
Was that the idea? Could Ruth Smuth have been trying some kind of fancy triple play to finesse Sam out of the race? If so, she’d been taking one hell of a chance with Bertram Claude’s future. Though Sam Peters would never try anything funny himself, he’d been around politics long enough to realize other people might. What if he didn’t quit? He’d be apt as not to call a press conference, rat on himself, stand on his record and take his chances, and win in a la
ndslide as usual.
There was, Shandy reminded himself, also the chance Ruth Smuth had been killed by somebody else for some reason that had nothing whatever to do with politics. At least nothing political per se. For instance, that husband of hers had acted awfully offhand about how his wife was spending the money he must be making via his anxiety-ridden climb up the corporate ladder. Smuth had been more convincing when he was fretting about how Ruth’s private pastimes might affect his public relations.
Shandy didn’t see how Smuth could have hexed that plane into developing engine trouble, but he did wonder why Smuth had been so conveniently out of town the night his wife got killed. If the plane hadn’t been late, would he have contrived to miss it? If some crook hadn’t been obliging enough to swipe the wheels off his car, might he have found some other excuse to delay his return to Hoddersville? Smuth might not be so great on the producing production end, but it wouldn’t take a mechanical genius to yank a fistful of wires loose, then go bitching to the airport police about vandalism in the garage.
And was it yet another coincidence that Smuth had been coming back from Detroit, the erstwhile home of Alonzo Persifer Bulfinch? Granted, Bulfinch was hardly your prototype hit man, but wouldn’t that make him more rather than less eligible for the job?
Shandy couldn’t envision any circumstance that would provoke him personally to hire someone to kill his wife, but then he hadn’t been married to Ruth Smuth. Assuming he had, and assuming J.B. would approve death over divorce, wouldn’t it be smarter to employ a jolly type like Bulfinch than a beady-eyed waxwork with a sawed-off shotgun stuck down his pant leg?
Suppose, for the sake of argument, Smuth had known Bulfinch back in Detroit, and that Bulfinch had done a few of those hard-headed, no-class jobs for him in the past? Shandy was no authority about corporate infighting; but he’d heard a few tales of industrial accidents that happened conveniently to inconvenient people, of sabotage and car bombs, and prominent executives gunned down by midnight intruders. Maybe this sort of thing was inspired by individual initiative rather than company policy, but the individuals involved would be the running-scared ones like Smuth. Fear, ambition, and money enough to hire somebody else to do your dirty work could be a deadly combination.
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