A Pint of Murder

by Alisa Craig

  “Great little kidder, isn’t he? When I think of all the nights I’ve sat freezing to death on that lousy Boston bus, and for what? Five thousand bucks in Canadian money and a half share in a white elephant. I know damn well Auntie had a boodle stashed away someplace, and I’ll find it if I have to take that moldy dump apart board by board.”

  “Marion, I’ve told you over and over you’re wasting your time,” said Janet, not that it would do any good. “You know better than I do how your Uncle Charles managed to get rid of what his father left him. Your aunt had her old-age pension and that little bit left in the bank, and everybody around here was surprised she had that much. Gilly wasn’t expecting any great windfall, was she?”

  “How do I know what she expects? All she’s doing is sitting down there on her backside expecting me to do the work for her. Boy, I wouldn’t have wished a kid like her even on my cousin Elizabeth. Running off with that Bascom creep before she even got through high school, then crawling back with a brat on her hands after he ditched her. And holing up in that shack beside the diner instead of going home to that nice, big house when Elizabeth practically begged her on bended knee. But, no, Gilly had to be independent.”

  Marion bit savagely into another doughnut. “She’s not going to let Elizabeth run her life, she says, but she sure doesn’t mind letting ol’ Mom foot the bills for the groceries. If it hadn’t been for her folks, she and that kid of hers would have starved to death long ago.”

  Though she’d never been any great chum of Gilly Druffitt, Janet didn’t like hearing Marion run the woman down like this. “Now, Marion, you can’t say Gilly doesn’t try. She works whenever she gets a chance.”

  “At what? Waitressing part-time at the Busy Bee when Ella’s off on a drunk. Taking a course in poodle clipping when there isn’t a poodle within fifty miles of this jerkhole. Now she’s breeding dachshunds, for God’s sake. Last year she was going to make a million bucks a week selling eggs. Then one of her hens got out of the pen and some kid ran over it in his jalopy and she bawled for a week and had to get rid of the rest because they weren’t safe down there.”

  “I know. She brought them to us.” Janet didn’t add that she and her sister-in-law had had a quiet sniffle together over, the tragic look on Gilly’s thin little face as she dragged the makeshift crate of squawking poultry from her old Ford. The hens had proved to be incredibly poor layers, but Janet saw Annabelle was still protecting them from the stewpot.

  Having drained the last dreg of tea and realizing that Janet had no intention of brewing any more, Marion set down her empty cup. “Well, I’d better get back to the mausoleum. Dot Pewter’s coming up this morning, though why I asked her I don’t know. Dot supposedly cleaned for Aunt Aggie every week, but I can’t see any sign that she ever did anything. I’ll probably get lung cancer from inhaling so much dust.”

  “Hold your nose,” Janet suggested. “Dot’s not too bad so long as you stand over her with a shotgun. Annabelle tried her for a while back in the winter, though she did say she’d have fared about as well tying a duster to the cat and chasing him through the house. Is that Sam Neddick bringing Dot now? His car just turned into your driveway.”

  “Yeah, I suppose so. Sam’s supposed to fix a few leaks and cut the grass, but no doubt he’ll be gone again before I can grab him. Janet, I don’t know what I’m going to do over there. There’s work that’s absolutely got to be done, and the lawyers won’t let go of a cent till we file a complete inventory. Elizabeth keeps yelling at me to get it finished, but she won’t raise a hand herself. She’s so damned proud of that grudge she’s been holding for fifteen years that she still won’t stick her nose inside the door of the Mansion. I was surprised she even showed up at the funeral, but I guess she wanted to make sure Aunt Aggie was safely planted so that her darling daughter could get her little hooks into her half of the Treadway millions. What a howl!”

  “Won’t Gilly come up and help you, eh?”

  “She said she would, but then one of her dogs came down with the mumps or something so she has to sit and hold its crummy paw. I don’t suppose you’d care to run over for an hour or so?” Marion interjected slyly.

  Janet’s first impulse was to snap the woman’s head off. Then she reflected that it was a long way to dinnertime, that the house was clean and the washing done, that she hadn’t an earthly thing to do here but sit and brood about Roy. She might as well go.

  “All right. I’m not going to clean for you, but I’ll help with the inventory. Should I bring a notebook and pencil, eh?”

  “God, no! Uncle Charles left enough of his letterheads to sink a battleship. Would you believe Treadway Enterprises Ltd? What a fruitcake! Okay, let’s go before Dot falls asleep.”

  Janet followed Marion over to the Mansion, wishing it were Gilly instead of this endless complainer and all-around leech who’d moved up to the hill with her skinny little boy and her fat little dogs. At least they now had things in common. The six years’ difference in age that had seemed so wide a barrier in school wouldn’t matter now that they were both grown women who’d been ditched.

  “Now, who the hell is that?” Marion broke in on Janet’s bitter reverie, pointing to a rusty truck that had just pulled in behind Sam Neddick’s rattletrap. A bizarrely attenuated and elongated man was climbing out, craning his neck to look up at the peeling gray paint on the house Pitcherville had once considered the acme of elegance.

  Maybe this trip was going to be worthwhile, after all. “Oh haven’t you ever met him?” said Janet with malicious glee. “That’s Jason Bain.”

  “Bain? Isn’t he the one Auntie was always talking about, who sues somebody for something about once a week? What’s he want from me?”

  “Anything he can get, most likely. He’s not particular, long as it’s free. Come on, let’s find out.”

  They walked around to confront the man, who was now at the front door. Bain took his finger off the bell push and raised his noisome felt hat an inch or two.

  “Miss Emery, I presume? Bain’s my name. I don’t b’lieve we’ve had the pleasure.”

  “The pleasure’s all yours, mister,” said Marion sourly. “What do you want?”

  “I just stopped by to collect some property o’ mine.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’m lookin’ for a patent right that was held jointly by me an’ Charles Treadway. Accorclin’ to the terms of our agreement, it reverts to me on the widder’s death.”

  Marion set her jaw. “Is that so? For your information, Mr. Bain, nothing’s going to leave this house till the inventory’s been filed and we know exactly where we stand.”

  Bain shrugged. “I didn’t come here lookin’ to stir up trouble, but if I have to take legal action to protect my interests, I will. Might be kind of expensive for you to fight me an’ lose, but that’s your lookout, not mine.”

  Marion’s hair had once been raven, and she’d made the mistake of trying to keep it that way. Against the dead black mass, her face showed white as a plaster cast. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What’s it for, anyway? I’ve never seen any patent. I wouldn’t even know what one looked like.”

  “You’ll know this one, ‘cause my name’s on it.”

  “Oh yeah? And what’s that supposed to prove? You got anything to show you’re entitled to the claim?”

  “You bet your bottom dollar I have.”

  “Then fork it over.”

  “That ain’t how I do business. You show me the patent, an’ I’ll show you the proof.”

  “Well, I haven’t got it and I don’t know where it is,” Marion told him sulkily.

  “That don’t surprise me none. Stands to reason Miz Treadway wouldn’t leave a valuable document layin’ around loose. She had it hid away somewheres, an’ if I was you, I’d start right this minute an’ ransack this house from stem to stern. If that patent ain’t in my hands by Thursday mornin’, I’ll be talkin’ to my lawyer Thursday afternoon.”

  Bain di
dn’t bother to tip his hat again. He swiveled his enormous length around, thumped down the worn wooden steps, folded himself inside his shabby pickup, and drove off. Marion stared after the smoke-belching truck.

  “Can you beat that? If that old buzzard thinks he can scare me—” Clearly he could, and had. “Janet, what am I going to do?”

  “Find that patent, I suppose.”

  “Then what? If he thinks I’m just going to hand it over to him like a dummy, he’s got rocks in his head. How do I know he’s entitled to any patent? The thing must be worth a bundle, or he wouldn’t be putting up such a squawk.”

  Janet shook her head. “You don’t know old Jase. He’s perfectly capable of starting a lawsuit just for the fun of it. Anyway, you’d better find the thing. Where do you suppose it could be?”

  “God knows. I’ve been through Uncle Charles’s desk and every other place I can think of already. I don’t remember noticing any patents, but maybe I skipped over them thinking they didn’t count for anything. Looks as if I’ll have to start all over again.”

  “But what about the inventory? Wouldn’t the patent have to be shown to the lawyer along with everything else?”

  Marion slumped into a chair. “I wish I’d never left Boston.”

  That went for both of them. “Come on, Marion,” snapped Janet. “Sitting there feeling sorry for yourself isn’t going to get the job done. Take a paper and pencil and start up attic. Look everything over and list as you go.”

  “It’ll take forever.”

  “It sure will, if you don’t get cracking. I’ll begin down cellar. Where did your uncle keep all that stationery of his?”

  Janet had made up her mind that Marion Emery was just about the most useless creature who ever encumbered the earth. Then she went through the kitchen and caught Dot Fewter taking advantage of the diversion caused by Bain’s visit to get herself nicely settled with a box of store cookies and a mug of oversweetened tea.

  “Come on, Dot, you’re not getting paid to sit around stuffing your face. Help me take inventory.”

  “Huh?”

  “We’re going down cellar and list whatever we find there.”

  “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  “You don’t have to know. I’ll call things off, and you write them down. You can do that much, can’t you?”

  “I guess so.” At least Dot was good-natured. She grinned as she lumbered to her feet. “I’d just as soon go down cellar anyway. It’s nice and cool there.”

  “I know.” That was why Janet had elected to start at the bottom and let Marion stew in the stuffy, dusty attic. Besides, she’d always liked Mrs. Treadway’s cellar, except for its peculiarly sticky floor.

  One of Charles Treadway’s many inventions had been a revolutionary kind of cement. As a test, he’d spread his first batch on his own cellar floor, and waited for it to dry. If he hadn’t died forty-six years ago, he’d still have been waiting. The material had stood up well enough, to be sure, but anybody who stepped on it found his shoesoles spotted with a whitish deposit that was totally impossible to get off.

  Virtually everything the old man had ever invented was a disaster. Even his one modest success, the improved can opener, had been the instrument of his own demise. Why, after all this time, was Jason Bain so impatient to get his claws on one of Charles Treadway’s crazy patents?

  Janet couldn’t imagine. She also couldn’t imagine why she’d thought it a good idea to make Dot Fewter join her in this inventorying. Dot, however, was all for it. Pleased at being assigned what she obviously considered a glamorous job for a change, she seated herself on an upturned nail keg and arranged her papers importantly on one end of the inventor’s workbench.

  “What shall I write?”

  “Let’s see.” Janet gazed around at the clutter of seventy years and more, appalled at the task she’d so lightly undertaken. “You might as well put down one workbench for a start.”

  “One—workbench—for—a—”

  “For Pete’s sake, Dot, you needn’t write every word I say. Just put down ‘workbench.’ Three rows of shelves. I suppose we’ve got to itemize all this stuff she put up, though I can’t imagine anybody will ever dare to eat it now. Two pints tomatoes. She was almost out of them, poor soul. She loved tomatoes in the wintertime. Twelve pints peaches. Six pints pears.”

  “Wait a second. How do you spell ‘twelve’ eh?”

  “Make a No. 1 and put a 2 after it. And use a p for pints. She didn’t use her quart jars any more. Too much for one old woman, she’d say. What’s this stuff? Applesauce, I guess. Five pints.” She’d get along faster listing them herself. “Two pints spinach or fiddleheads or something. These greenish old jars are hard to see into. Put down spinach, it’s shorter. Fourteen jars—well, I’ll be darned! Dot, what do you make of this?”

  Dot climbed off her nail keg and pushed her nose close to the jar Janet was pointing at. After some deliberation, she pronounced her verdict. “It’s snap beans.”

  “I can see that. But look at them. Here are thirteen other jars that have been snapped by hand more or less hit-and-miss, the way your mother or mine would have done them. But this jar’s been cut very neatly and evenly with a knife, as the home-arts teacher taught us in school. Why should a woman who’s been doing the same thing in the same way all her life suddenly turn around and do it differently?”

  “I dunno,” said Dot. “Say, can you beat that, eh? Wait’ll I tell Ma! Mrs. Treadway always used to say a bean too old to snap was only fit for the pigs.”

  “I remember.” Janet had a heart-wrenching picture of her old friend sitting out on the back doorstep, a heap of fresh green beans in the lap of her long white apron and her ropy hands going like clockwork, popping the crisp pieces into an old metal colander, tossing aside any bean that wouldn’t break at a touch. “Nobody’s ever going to convince me Mrs. Treadway did this.”

  “But if she didn’t, who did?” argued the hired woman. “She’d never let anybody help her. I’ve offered a million times.” That was a lie, for sure. Janet doubted that Dot Fewter had ever volunteered for any task. It was true, however, that Mrs. Treadway would have refused. She wouldn’t even have let Annabelle, or Janet herself, touch her food once it had been picked and fetched over to the Mansion.

  The color that she’d begun to get back in her cheeks suddenly drained out. “Here, Dot, you count all those empty jars and write down the number. I’m going upstairs for a minute.”

  She took the puzzling jar with her, cussing herself at every step for having blurted out her discovery. Now Dot would be right at her heels with an ear glued to the keyhole while she made the phone call she had to make. Mrs. Treadway had in fact died of eating botulinous string beans; the analysis and the autopsy had proved that. But had the beans that killed her been snapped or cut?

  Janet knew better than to ask Marion. Either the niece wouldn’t remember or else she wouldn’t say. Dr. Druffitt had to be the one. Besides, he’d know where to send this second jar to be analyzed, as he had the first.

  Mrs. Druffitt answered her call, impersonally agreeable as always. She didn’t ask after Annabelle, which was understandable, but she did mention that she’d heard Janet had had emergency surgery down in Saint John, and was it her gall bladder? Doctor was out on a call just now, but he’d be in for his office hours and she hoped Janet wasn’t in too much pain.

  Janet said it was her appendix, knowing perfectly well that Mrs. Druffitt and at least one of the extraneous listeners on the party line were sure it had been something else. Since there was no hope of keeping her business a secret anyway once Dot found somebody to tell, she might as well not try.

  “No, thanks, I’m making a good recovery. It’s just that I’m over here at the Mansion helping Marion with the inventory and I’ve run across a—a little matter I’d like to ask Dr. Druffitt about.”

  “I see.” Mrs. Druffitt was too great a lady to ask why Janet couldn’t ask her instead, since it was she and not her
husband who’d been Mrs. Treadway’s blood relative. She did unbend so far as to say, “What does my cousin think about this little matter?”

  “I haven’t mentioned it to her yet,” Janet confessed. “Marion’s working in the attic and I’ve been down cellar. I thought I wouldn’t bother her till I’ve got the doctor’s opinion, since she has so many other things on her mind.”

  “That’s very considerate of you, Janet. Marion does seem to be feeling the strain a great deal, eh? As we all are, of course. And so often things that appear important don’t really amount to a hill of beans, do they? I’m afraid I’ll be off to my club meeting, but if you could be here on the dot of two, I’m sure Doctor could spare you a moment.”

  “Thank you,” said Janet. “I’ll be there.”

  CHAPTER 3

  When Janet told Bert at noontime that she’d like to use the car he’d said, “Sure, go ahead. Do you good to get off the place for a while.”

  Her brother no doubt thought she wanted to hobnob with her old pals in the village. In fact, as she started down the hill road, Janet was rather surprised to realize she didn’t have a soul down there whom she particularly wanted to see. Growing up two miles out from the center, she’d been too far away to run with the pack even if her parents had let her, which they certainly wouldn’t, having been middle-aged folk to whom a daughter fifteen years younger than the son before her had come as a considerable shock.

  She’d got too much attention at home to mind the semi-isolation. Then Bert had brought Annabelle home, and she’d been fun, and then the babies had come and they’d been fun, too. Then, her senior year in high school, her father, who’d developed cataracts and really shouldn’t have been driving at all, much less with his wife in the car, had got in the way of a logging truck. After that, Janet had decided maybe she’d like to go down to Fredericton to business college, and Bert and Annabelle had thought that was a sensible thing for her to do. And then she’d nursed Annabelle through a bad spell and then she’d taken the job in Saint John and by now the few friends she’d known had either married fellows from out of town or moved, like herself, to places where jobs were easier to find.