Something the Cat Dragged In

by Charlotte MacLeod

  All right, so Smuth had the qualifications. Bulfinch, as an ex-MP and a professional security guard, would have the training and perhaps the inclination. If they’d worked out their deal in Detroit, who’d ever think to discover any connection between them in Balaclava County?

  Bulfinch mightn’t have been planning to kill Ruth Smuth so soon after his arrival, but if he’d happened to find her hanging around the college when he’d got that emergency call to finish Purvis Mink’s shift, he’d have had a chance too good to miss. Her own scarf was as handy a weapon as any. Better than most, in fact, because it was silent, effective, wouldn’t take fingerprints, and couldn’t be traced to anybody except the victim herself. They had only Bulfinch’s own word that Mrs. Smuth’s corpse hadn’t been there when he made his first round. Maybe she hadn’t been dead until after he’d gone by.

  What good were all these ifs and maybes? Shandy realized he was floundering, trying to pin the murder on somebody or other. He didn’t much care whom, apparently, so long as it wasn’t the one person who’d had motive, opportunity, provocation, and God knew strength enough to have slaughtered Ruth Smuth. Let it be anybody but Thorkjeld Svenson. He’d confess himself if he had to. But then he’d have to implicate Fred Ottermole. Then who’d play Cops and Robbers with Fred’s kids every evening?

  It was in no amiable mood that Professor Shandy entered his classroom. Nor was he better pleased, when he’d got out his notes, reminded himself of what this session was all about, and buckled down to sharing the knowledge, to be interrupted by a student rushing in late and breathless, dropping her books as she tried to slip unnoticed into a rear seat. He stopped talking, and glared. Students craned their necks. The young woman responsible for the flurry turned red and began to sniffle.

  “I’m sorry, Professor Shandy. The reporters outside recognized me and wouldn’t let me get away. I kept saying I didn’t know anything, but they pestered and pestered. If Uncle Sam—” she broke down into sobs.

  “Damnation!” Shandy exploded, to his students’ delight. “Don’t apologize, Miss Peters. It wasn’t your fault those bas—err—that is to say, I deeply regret the harassment. I’ll try to see that it doesn’t happen again.”

  “You’re not going out there yourself, Professor? You’re the one they’re really laying for.”

  After that, one could hardly expect normal lecture-room-decorum to prevail. It was either talk or quell a mutiny, so Shandy talked, as briefly as they’d let him.

  “President Svenson is relying on every student,” he wound up, “to keep on showing the same intelligence and resourcefulness you demonstrated so ably yesterday afternoon. We’re at war, in case you hadn’t realized it. Congressman Peters is being made the target of a smear campaign. The fact that his opponents are trying to discredit us in order to defeat him shows how much our support means toward keeping him in office. And you damn well ought to realize what Sam Peters means to small farmers everywhere. We don’t know yet who’s running the dirty tricks, but we’ll find out. In the meantime, let’s keep our eyes open, our mouths shut, do what we can to protect Miss Peters, and get on with what you’re paying me to teach you.”

  Thus ended the first lesson. The next was much the same, except that Miss Peters wasn’t present. She’d found sanctuary at the infirmary with a “Measles” sign on the door, her textbooks for diversion, and a basket of goodies packed by Sieglinde Svenson to keep up her spirits.

  By half-past nine, the Lomax boys had called in most of the off-duty security guards and organized the Varsity Horsemen’s Team to patrol the campus on Thor, Freya, Hoenir, Heimdallr, Loki, Tyr, and Balder. President Svenson himself led the mounted troops on Odin, greatest of all the Balaclava Blacks. The haphazard influx of media people and ill-advised trespassers was transformed to a disciplined but rapid efflux.

  Students and faculty tried to carry on as usual amid the hubbub, but this became more of a struggle as reports filtered in via radio and television, and newspapers began to get passed around. This, as Shandy remarked to Joad when they met in the dining room for coffee and pie, was turning into one hell of a day.

  “Cheer up,” said Joad, with one of his insufferable chuckles. “It’ll be worse before it gets better. How does that grab you?”

  Shandy took the handful of fresh newsprint and moaned. “Oh, Christ on a crutch!”

  CLAUDE MANAGER SLAIN IN AFTERMATH OF DEMONSTRATION. WE NEVER DONE IT, CLAIM STUDENT PROTESTERS. PRESIDENT SVENSON DENIES COLLEGE INVOLVEMENT, ALLEGES FRAME-UP. MEDIA GETS HORSELAUGH AS BALACLAVA CALLS OUT THE CAVALRY. ANOTHER KENT STATE? WHATEVER THEY TEACH, IT CAN'T BE RESPECT FOR FREEDOM OF PRESS, SAYS REPORTER HARASSED BY GUARDS.

  “Blah!”

  He wadded up the papers and hurled them at a trash basket. “Why in Sam Hill should we respect morons who churn out this kind of hogwash? What about that wretched Peters girl a gang of them were hassling this morning?”

  “They only count it as harassment when somebody else is doing it.” Joad stuffed a large piece of piecrust into his mouth and chewed happily. “We never had this kind of excitement at CCNY. Here’s one that ought to soothe your jangled nerves.”

  “By George, the Fane and Pennon’s put out an extra.” Shandy re-adjusted the reading glasses to which time and presbyopia had at last driven him. “And Cronkite Swope’s come through like a toe in a cheap sock.”

  OUTSIDE AGITATORS BRING TROUBLE, DEATH IN UNSUCCESSFUL ATTEMPT TO SMEAR COLLEGE AND BOOST FALTERING CLAUDE CAMPAIGN. PRESIDENT SVENSON LAUDS LOCAL POLICE. CONGRESSMAN PETERS LAUDS COLLEGE, TRUSTS CONSTITUENTS.

  Asked what he thought of yesterday’s dramatic events, Peters replied, “How many dang fools do they think we’ve got in our district?” Asked his views on the murder of Mrs. Ruth Smuth, he replied, “Dang shame.” Asked if he intended to take any personal action in the affair, he replied, “Not my job. Svenson can handle it.”

  Asked whether he intended to do any last-minute campaigning in response to Claude’s stepped-up effort, he replied, “Nope.” Asked about his immediate plans, he replied, “I got to nail up some loose slats in the corncrib, then get back to Washington and vote against the poll tax on stud bulls that dang artificial insemination lobby’s trying to push through. Too little fun left in farming as it is.”

  Asked about the demonstration at Balaclava Agricultural College yesterday, Congressman Peters pointed out this was one of the fringe benefits of turning agriculture into agribusiness. “Dang so-called labor-saving machines out there ruining good soil, bankrupting farmers, putting farmhands out of work. Any idea how many thousands of jobs have been lost because a few big manufacturers managed to sell this country a bill of goods about how it’s demeaning to get your hands dirty? All I say is, if that crowd yesterday could have hired on for a respectable day’s pay instead of having to pick up a few bucks doing somebody’s dirty work, we and they would all have been a dang sight better off.” He was referring to a group of outside agitators found stranded on the highway last evening and given transport to the county line in a Department of Sanitation dump truck.

  “Now, there, by gad, is responsible journalism. I wonder if the poor buggers ever got paid?”

  “Half in advance and whistle for the rest, I shouldn’t be surprised,” said Joad. “Now there’s a thought. Maybe they snuck back and slew Mrs. Smuth because she wouldn’t cough up the outstanding balance.”

  “It would be great if they had,” said Shandy, “but I doubt whether any of that lot would dare put in a return appearance after the bum’s rush they got. They were a puny bunch compared to our braw lads and lasses, and Security would have been on the lookout for them. I expect sending that Sanitation Department truck to take them away was the Lomax boys’ idea, and a careful head count would have been made to be sure they were all aboard. No flies on Clarence and Silvester.”

  There were indeed no flies on Clarence and Silvester, so how would they have let themselves be hoodwinked by an old army buddy? Shandy stared bleakly into his coffee cup, watchi
ng his chain of suppositions about Alonzo Bulfinch start to come unlinked.

  After all, he argued with himself, Clarence and Silvester were country born and bred. They wouldn’t know big-city ways. Bulfinch had come from a big city. Smuth was a big-city man, too, even if he did park his corporate image out here in the boondocks. Big-city people thought big was always better. Big-city promoters talked farmers into buying big machines to work it and bigger bank loans to buy them with. Big-city people made big money out of those big machines and big loans and also out of forcing small farmers to sell out to big conglomerates after they’d had their last nickel’s worth squeezed out of them.

  Big money was being spent on Bertram Claude’s political campaign. The only logical reason was that Balaclava County still had a good many small farms. These could be bought up and turned into big business, too, if only subversive elements like Congressman Sam Peters and his allies at Balaclava Agricultural College could be swept from the path of what big-money people were pleased to call progress.

  It was an oversimplification to label the big-money people as being inevitably big-city people, though. The good guys and the bad guys were far more unevenly distributed than that. So were goodness and badness, if it came to that. It was a matter of how you personally felt about things, he supposed. One person’s virtue might be another’s anathema, and both could be sincere according to their lights. And the crime he was supposed to be investigating here and now could be something far different from a simple case of Mr. Smuth wanting to get rid of Mrs. Smuth, but exactly what was it? And why in Sam Hill was Inspiration never around when you needed her most?

  Chapter Nineteen

  IF ONE COULDN’T FIND the missing muse, one might at least obtain brief surcease from worry by dropping in on Helen at the library. Peter thought of a secluded nook among the pork statistics where a man and his wife might snatch a moment of conjugality, provided it hadn’t already been nabbed by a pair of lovesick undergraduates. As he was leaving the dining room, though, he bumped into Fred Ottermole. The chief looked tired and disheveled, but withal self-satisfied.

  “I’ve brought those weeds from the clubhouse yard, Professor. What we did, see, we took strings and divided the yard off into blocks. Then we numbered the blocks, mowed each one separately, and put the clippings in different trash bags, like I said last night. We numbered the bags, too,” Ottermole added with justifiable pride.

  “Nice work, Ottermole.”

  Shandy had in truth forgotten all about the weeds around the clubhouse. He thought the chances of finding anything significant among them were just about nil, but he was not about to say so after what Balaclava Junction’s brave boys in blue must have gone through cutting them down.

  “Joad’s still in the dining room,” he said. “Why don’t you pop in and ask him where he wants the weeds delivered? Have something to eat while you’re there. Tell them to put it on my bill. I’d go back in with you myself, but. I have—er—other business on hand.”

  “Oh, sure. Thanks, I will. You checked on when Claude left Mr. Lutt’s place yet, or should I do it after I’ve dumped the bags?”

  “No, I was planning to go there now,” Shandy lied, grateful for the reminder. “I’ve been tied up with classes. And reading the papers. I suppose you’ve seen what they’re printing.”

  “Yeah. Say, that was a nice piece Cronk had in the Fane and Pennon about me being in charge of the investigation.”

  “You deserve a slap on the back, Ottermole. Keep it up. Try the pumpkin pie.”

  That was the least Shandy could say, and the least was enough to send Chief Ottermole happily pieward. Shandy himself directed one long look of yearning toward the library, and went to get his car.

  It occurred to him when he’d got about halfway to Lumpkin Upper Mills that he should have called to see if anybody would be at home. According to Ottermole, the Edna Jean Bugleford who kept house for Lutt was an aunt of Ruth Smuth. Mrs. Bugleford might be out buying black stockings to wear to the funeral, if people did that sort of thing any more, or at the undertaking parlor weeping over the remains. Unless they were still at the morgue being autopsied. He should also have asked Ottermole if a report had come in from the county coroner.

  Probably not, or the chief would have told him. Anyway, he wasn’t going back now. It was a relief to be away from the confusion on campus. He was tired. Damn tired. Maybe he’d have been smarter to go home and take a nap than be driving out here on what might well turn out to be a fool’s errand.

  But if he’d done that, some reporter would have been leaning on the doorbell to wake him up, no doubt. If the reporter happened to be Cronkite Swope, as it well might, he wouldn’t even have the heart to pour a pot of boiling oil over his head from the upstairs window. Anyway, pots of boiling oil, like inspiration, never seemed ready to hand when most needed. He smothered a yawn and kept driving.

  He found Edna Jean Bugleford at home and in good voice.

  “I told Ruth no good would come of it. Putting me to all that work, and nobody even bothered to show up except a few of the girls from the whist club that I practically had to beg on my hands and knees. And old Mrs. Mawe, naturally. She’d go anywhere if she thought there’d be a cup of tea and a piece of cake in it for her. And that young Cronkite Swope from the paper, who didn’t do a thing but pester poor Mr. Claude with embarrassing questions till I thought I’d sink straight through the floor into the cellar. And Ruth not here to help, after she’d promised me faithfully. I’d have given her an earful, I can tell you, if she hadn’t gone off and got herself murdered.”

  “M’yes, I daresay you would.” Shandy was not prepared to consider the possibility Ruth Smuth had opted for strangling in preference to a scolding from her aunt. “Would you happen to remember what time Mr. Claude got here?”

  “Of course I remember. I had to put the water on for the tea then, didn’t I? My brother-in-law won’t have a hired girl to live in, though goodness knows he could well afford one. Mr. Claude—Congressman Claude, I suppose I should say—anyway, he rang the bell at a quarter to eight on the dot. He was right on time, I will say that, though it’s no more than he should have been, after putting me to all that trouble.”

  “I should say not,” Shandy agreed diplomatically. “And what time did he leave?”

  “Five minutes to nine. I looked at the clock while he was putting on his coat, and it was almost a shock to realize such a short time had taken so long to go by. Mrs. Mawe was the only one left by then, and she hadn’t even had the courtesy to make believe she was paying attention to anything Mr. Claude said. She just kept stuffing her face with whatever she could lay her hands on. I packed up a basket of leftovers, finally, and asked if she wouldn’t like to take them home with her. If I hadn’t, she’d be sitting there yet, lapping up every last crumb on the table.”

  “There’s always one like that, isn’t there? Mrs. Bugleford, you haven’t mentioned your brother-in-law. I was given to understand Mr. Lutt was also at the—er—gathering.”

  “Just long enough to shake hands and drink a cup of tea. Lot never takes coffee at night.”

  “Wise man. He didn’t wait to hear what Claude had to say?”

  “Oh, no, Lot wouldn’t be bothered. He always says it’s not what a politician says but how he votes that matters.”

  “Then Mr. Lutt is supporting Sam Peters?”

  “Well, hardly. After that dreadful mess Peters got Lot into over a few measly little soap bubbles in the drinking water? Pollution, Peters called it, simply because a bunch of silly young mothers who had nothing better to do and wanted an excuse to get out of the house began picketing the factory, claiming the soap in the water was making their children sick to their stomachs. Why couldn’t they drink bottled water? That’s what we did. Furthermore, the language you hear around the schoolyard these days, it wouldn’t hurt those brats to get their mouths washed out with soap. That’s what I said, and I’d have said it to their faces, only Lot told me to stay out of it. H
e said he’d handle the whole business himself. Lot isn’t one to back down from anybody, you know. So then some of the fathers that worked at the factory started siding in with their wives. They came complaining to Lot, and he fired every single one of them right on the spot.”

  “Good Lord!” said Shandy.

  Mrs. Bugleford appeared to find his response satisfactory. “That’s just what he did. Told them to put on their coats and go, and they went. That was before they got the union in, of course. They’d all march out on strike if you tried such a thing nowadays. Pack of communists, if you ask me. And then didn’t the board of directors get down on Lot and blame him for giving the union an excuse to come in and organize. They wanted him to resign, if you can believe it, after all those years. So Lot threw up his hands. He said if a man couldn’t run a business to suit himself, he wasn’t going to have any part of it. Lot’s very strong on principle, you know.”

  “He must be,” Shandy managed to reply. “Er—where did Bertram Claude go after he left here last night, do you know?”

  “She does not know. Why should she?”

  A man who looked enough like Henry Hodger to be his cousin, and quite possibly was, stalked into the room. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Shandy.”

  “Well, well!” This must be the deposed soap king in person. “The great Professor Shandy, as I live and breathe, deigning to grace my humble abode. Edna Jean, you damn fool, why didn’t you have brains enough to slam the door in his face?”

  “Shandy?” Mrs. Bugleford couldn’t see what her brother-in-law was so upset about. “You mean that man who was so nice to the Horsefalls last summer?”