“Peter, that’s brilliant! I’m sure you’re right.”
“But how can I prove it? If I don’t show up with the goods at twelve o’clock tomorrow, Svenson will be nailing my flayed pelt to the chapel door by a quarter to one.”
“And Sieglinde will be right beside him, holding the hammer. I do like her so much.”
“De gustibus non est disputandum.”
“Oh, don’t pull that professorial stuff on me. If you were nailing up President Svenson’s hide, wouldn’t you like having me caddy for you?”
“Yes, and it’s a splendid suggestion. Helen, would you really?”
“That’s a big commitment. I’ll have to ponder the aspects.”
“Don’t pussyfoot, woman. Yes or no?”
“Peter, do you realize you could have any woman on this campus?”
“Dash it, I don’t want any woman on this campus. I want you, to keep those she-wolves at bay.”
“Is that all you want me for?”
“No. Helen, what in God’s name am I am going to do?”
Miss Marsh leaned back on the sofa, happening to encounter Shandy’s arm. She did not draw away and he did not encourage her to do so. It was quite a while before they again addressed the problem under discussion. When Helen did speak again she sounded somewhat breathless, as well she might.
“Back in Victorian days, the gentry used to have beaters who’d flush the birds for them to shoot. What you need is a beater.”
“Often as not, the hunter missed the bird and hit the beater.”
“That’s the chance we beaters have to take. Do you or do you not want me to hold the hammer for you?”
“Helen, if anything should happen to you—”
“Peter, nothing is going to happen to me. Let me do this for you and”—she planted one more light kiss on his glowing cheek—“maybe you can do something for me sometime.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Just this.”
She walked over to the telephone, studied the college directory, and dialed a number. She got her bird.
“Hello, this is Helen Marsh from the library. I’m the new assistant for the Buggins Collection, you know, and I’ve just happened on a note Mrs. Ames wrote to herself about a book you borrowed from the collection. She was apparently rather worried about getting it back. Oh, you did? Are you quite sure? You see, I’ve started the cataloguing, and I’ve run into some very disturbing problems. Some of the most valuable books in the collection are missing, and the one you took happens to be on the special list.”
There was a noise on the other end of the line. Helen listened, then laughed merrily. “But of course we have! You don’t think Dr. Porble would let such valuable acquisitions go unlisted, do you? The staff are making a careful check now and if we don’t turn up the missing books, we’re going to get special investigators—yes, of course. I understand perfectly. Perhaps if you took another careful look around—thank you so much. Then I’ll expect to hear from you. Good-by.”
She replaced the receiver. “Over to you, Arsène.”
Chapter 26
“HELEN, YOU’RE STUCK WITH the toughest job. You’ll have to get on that phone and somehow convince Lieutenant Olivetti that we haven’t both gone crazy. Explain who you are and make it sound impressive. Give him the facts and tell him to deploy his people on all roads leading out of Balaclava Junction, but not to interfere till I say so.”
“Peter, you’re not intending to face a two-time murderer alone?”
“No, not alone. Oh, Christ! Call the police. Hurry!”
He grabbed his jacket and rushed out of the house, downhill after an elf who was dragging an empty sled at a fast clip. The student was in complete costume with the elf mask pulled down over the face, but he’d suffered enough from this particular nuisance to recognize the form and gait beyond any doubt. Shandy put on a frantic burst of speed, took a flying leap, and landed on the sled.
“Turn around,” he ordered.
“Huh?”
Taken aback, the sled-puller stopped short. “Hey, I can’t take a passenger just now. I’m—doing an errand.”
“For Grimble?”
Whatever else she might be, Heidi Hayhoe wasn’t stupid. She picked up the sled rope again. “Where to, Professor?”
“President Svenson’s house.”
“All the way up there?”
“Yes, damn it, all the way up there. Get cracking!”
“There,” said Mirelle Feldster from behind her parlor curtain. “He’s gone loopy for sure. Just as well I didn’t—”
“Didn’t what?” asked her husband.
Mirelle’s answer, if there was one, was drowned by yells from outside. Strolling gawkers, intrigued by the sight of Shandy, grim-faced as Scrooge, riding behind a straining, swearing, furiously sprinting elf. “Hi-yo, Santa Claus!” they shouted. A few tried to push or jump on the sled, but Shandy turned on them a face so savage that they fell back, staring and muttering.
The girl must be incredibly strong to keep up such a pace. The professor felt no remorse for what he was doing to her. Heidi couldn’t be in such a desperate hurry unless she’d already got the tip-off, and Helen needed every minute he could gain to reach Olivetti and start the police moving. He stuck with the sled until they reached the end of Svenson’s driveway.
“This far enough?” the student panted.
“It will do.”
Shandy handed her a five-dollar bill. “Here. I know you always expect ample payment for your—er—services.”
“Forget it.”
Furious, she slammed her body down on the sled and began coasting downhill, trying to make up for lost time. Shandy hoped she’d come a cropper, but didn’t wait to find out. He hurried up to the president’s front door and thumped until another of the Svenson daughters let him in.
“Professor Shandy! But the party’s over.”
“That’s what you think, young lady.”
“Mother’s gone to lie down,” she stammered. “Daddy—”
He brushed past her and strode into the library, where Thorkjeld Svenson lay sprawled in a gigantic easy chair before a television set, watching John Wayne get his sombrero pierced by flying bullets. Shandy flicked the “off” switch.
“You want action, President. Get your coat and your car keys.”
“Why?”
“Because I say so. Move!”
Incredibly, Svenson did.
“Daddy, where are you going?” called the daughter.
“Ask Shandy.”
But Shandy had not waited to be asked. He was already behind the wheel of Svenson’s beat-up Chevy.
“Is there any gas in this heap?”
“Who knows? Where are we going?”
“To head ’em off at the pass.”
He crunched into first gear for the sharp pitch down to the road where he and Helen had got stopped the night before, then into high, casting worried glances at the gas gauge. It said “half,” but there was no telling what that meant. Svenson’s car, like its owner, was a law unto itself.
Shandy had counted on Helen’s surprise attack to force their prey into doing something stupid, and it had. They picked up the trail with no difficulty at all. He didn’t even have to work hard at keeping the other car in sight, since it was obvious where they were heading.
Once only, Svenson spoke. “There’s a state trooper chasing us.”
“Good,” said Shandy. He blinked the lights a few times, and trod harder on the gas pedal. The engine coughed ominously. Cursing with great feeling and expression, he turned into a filling station. The police car started to follow him in, but he waved it on.
They lost minutes, but not too many. When they ran inside the airport terminal, two state policemen in uniform were standing near the door, trying to look nonchalant. Shandy rushed up to them and one murmured, “Boarding. Gate number six.”
“Good. Come on.”
Sure enough, there they were, clutching their b
oarding passes and the take-on luggage they must have kept packed and ready ever since they murdered Jemima. The man was tall and burly, clad in a rough dark overcoat and a black lambskin hat much like the garments President Svenson had on. The woman was almost as big as he. She wore a plain blue tweed coat, a blue Angora beret, woolly gray gloves, and enormous black leather boots. Under the beret showed a great knot of flaxen hair.
“Sieglinde!”
“President, no!”
Shandy flung himself upon the howling berserker and held back with all his might until the police could close in. “That’s not your wife.”
It was not Sieglinde. It was Heidi Hayhoe, mistress of disguise and, on the evidence, of Bob Dysart. Snarling, Svenson fought to get at her.
“Trollop!”
“Oh, hey, listen,” cried the girl with a nervous giggle. “Anybody can happen to dress like somebody else. I’ve worn this outfit lots of times.”
“She probably has, President,” said Shandy. “I expect this pair of fun-loving pranksters has impersonated you and your wife on numerous occasions. At—er—motels and so forth.”
“Arrgh!”
“Sure, what the hell?” Dysart, as always, was quick to see a chance. “You fellows know how it is. I’m a yang, she’s a yin. Look, President, I know the rules about faculty-student relationships as well as you do, so let’s just say I resign for reasons of moral turpitude as of here and now. I’ll drop you a line and make it official, but right now my friend and I have a plane to catch, which we’re going to miss if we don’t run like crazy.”
He was so plausible as a philanderer caught in the act that he might even have got himself and Heidi out of the boarding gate, if Shandy hadn’t reached over and wrenched open the tote bag he was carrying. In it were Cotton Mather’s Wonders of the Invisible World and the original two-volume edition of Hamilton’s Federalist, uncut. Dysart hadn’t had time to steam out the Buggins Collection bookplates.
The pair were brought back to Balaclava Junction under heavy guard. Grimble was taken into custody and brought down to confront them. He lost his nerve and ratted. Then Heidi Hayhoe ratted, leaving Bob Dysart with nobody to rat on. In due time, the judge, showing a fine sense of what was appropriate, threw the book at him.
For Shandy the adventure ended where it began, in the brick house on the Crescent. He’d called Helen from the airport, and again from Ottermole’s office to say he was bringing company back. She had a fire going, sandwiches cut, coffee brewed, and sherry at the ready. Sieglinde Svenson, whom they’d collected when they dropped the president’s car off, nodded her beautiful head.
“Now you have a home, Peter. Sherry, please. Also for Thorkjeld.”
“And you, Porble?”
“Might as well.”
The librarian was looking stunned and apprehensive. He still didn’t know why they’d dragged him from his own fireside at this hour of the night, but it could be for no good reason.
“Take some yourself, Peter,” Helen urged, “then for goodness’ sake tell these people everything, from the beginning.”
“Well,” said Shandy, “I suppose you could say it started with the marbles.”
He described once more how he’d found Jemima while hunting for his missing marble, how the errant sphere had turned up in Cadwall’s bedroom and thus led him to discover the comptroller’s body.
“I expect we’ll find out somewhere along the line that either Dysart or Heidi tipped over the dish while they were staging the accident. They’d think it a clever touch, no doubt. Cleverness as opposed to intelligence was, you might say, the keynote of the whole operation. That ought to have made me think of Dysart right off the bat, though I’m ashamed to say it didn’t.”
“He took an awful risk,” said Helen, “killing Mrs. Ames in his own house. At least, I suppose he must have.”
“Oh yes. But he had a very pretty scheme worked out. He got her alone in the bedroom, whacked her on the head with a piece of two-by-four or some such thing, held edge-on so that it would leave the right kind of dent, and shoved her body under the bed. He then tossed that extremely noticeable and unmistakable purple cape out the window to Heidi, who was waiting below in her elf costume, having brought her sled to the house and stashed it out of sight. She covered her head and body with the cape and walked down the path in plain sight of the window, with Dysart making sure everybody noticed her going.”
Porble winced. “I was one of them. My wife said, ‘I’m afraid Jemima isn’t quite herself tonight,’ and Dysart laughed as though it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.”
“No doubt he was delighted to see his plan working so well,” Shandy remarked. “Once she was well inside the shrubbery, the girl got rid of Jemima’s cape. I expect she folded it as small as she could, then stuck it overhead among the branches, knowing the people going home from the party wouldn’t be apt to look up. They’d tuck their chins into their collars and watch where they stepped on that slippery path. Then all Heidi had to do was step out and mingle with the crowd. Mary Enderble and Roger Jackman probably did see her, but paid no attention because the Crescent’s always swarming with students in elf costume and Heidi’s been taking particular pains to make herself noticed by barging about with her sled where she’s not supposed to be.”
“And getting away with it because she’s a natural-born performer,” said Helen. “People don’t mind having the star take the stage.”
“Especially not when they’re related to wealthy alumni,” Porble added nastily.
Shandy ignored the interruption. “I expect Dysart devoted the rest of the evening to getting his wife as drunk as possible while himself pretending to drink a great deal more than he did. He might even have given her a sedative, although,” remembering Adele and her cough medicine, “that may not have been necessary. Anyway, once Adele was safely out of the picture and the Illumination over for the night, Heidi Hayhoe came back. Jemima was a big woman, but Heidi is an amazingly strong girl, as I found out earlier this evening. She and Dysart between them would have no trouble carrying the body downstairs and getting it on the sled, disguised in the Santa Claus mask off the dummy Heidi and no doubt some of her cohorts had pinched from my porch and—er—made sport with.
“Probably he then lay low for a few minutes while she dragged the sled over here. The Jackman child happened to catch her doing it, but of course all he actually saw was one of the elves riding Santa Claus around on a sled, as they’d been doing all evening. Interestingly enough, though, he seems to have got some kind of subliminal impression about the situation because he suddenly became frightened and scooted back to bed. If he’d stayed up, I daresay he’d have seen Professor Dysart taking a late-night stroll around the Crescent to sober up from his own party. When Dysart disappeared among my spruce trees, the child would think he’d sought shelter for—er—personal reasons.”
“Not bad,” said the president.
“No, actually, it was pretty good. If they hadn’t overdone the cleverness by bringing in that unnecessary step stool and overturning the marbles that should have been safely out of the way, I might never have noticed anything fishy about the so-called accident. Except, of course, for the missing door key.”
“That’s where Grimble comes in, I suppose,” said Porble.
“Exactly. Heidi got it from him using the same—er—methods Delilah used on Samson. I would not have believed an attractive young woman could be so—er—”
“I would,” said Helen. “I told you what she was the minute I laid eyes on her, but you didn’t listen.”
“Good men never believe there are any bad women,” said Sieglinde. “That is why good women have a duty to keep them from running loose and getting into trouble. These are excellent sandwiches, Miss Marsh.”
“Thank you,” said Helen, somewhat flustered. “Peter, what about the keys? She had one to the library, too, didn’t she?”
“Dysart did. I expect she took them from the security office either with or with
out Grimble’s knowledge, had them duplicated, then replaced the originals—er—next time around.”
“My God,” said Porble faintly.
“Why the Buggins Collection?” demanded the president. “Nobody else,” he shot a javelin glance at the librarian, “thought it worth bothering about.”
“And Peter,” said Helen.
“And I,” said Sieglinde. “Though I did not mean for Thorkjeld to appoint Mrs. Ames.”
“I did it because you nagged me. It’s all your fault.”
“In any event, it was the Buggins Collection that killed her,” said Shandy. “I suspect Dysart, having got hold of the keys, used to make his raids whenever he saw the chance. He could duck out into the corridor on the pretext of using the men’s room and even if someone did happen to find him exploring the Buggins Room, there’s nothing so very remarkable about an academic’s showing a desultory interest in old books. However, Jemima, once she became assistant, also developed the habit of making whirlwind visits to the library. She happened to catch him in the act of taking one of the books. I suppose he told her Porble had said it was all right and, knowing what a slapdash sort of person she was, simply hoped she’d forget the incident. But Jemima didn’t forget and kept nagging at him to return the book, which of course he couldn’t do because he’d sold it. Furthermore, the fact that she knew he’d been in the room at all made him Suspect Number One if the thefts ever were discovered, and a stumbling block to a highly lucrative enterprise even if they weren’t. He’d probably decided to get rid of her even before her—er—taking umbrage at my Illumination decorations suggested a method. I hope so, anyway.”
“But what about Dr. Cadwall?” Sieglinde wanted to know. “Did he, too, know that Professor Dysart had taken the book?”
“Dysart probably thought he did because Ben was so inquisitive and his wife a close friend of Jemima, who was a great talker. However, he had another reason to be afraid of the comptroller. He knew that Ben had grown up in a small Ohio town with Adele, who’s a good bit older than she would have us believe, and that in fact the two were once engaged.”
Rest You Merry Page 22
