Something in the Water

by Charlotte MacLeod

  “Evening, Professor, haul up and set,” was Tilkey’s greeting. “I guess you’ve seen my cousins. I’m Sky, in case I forgot to mention it before. This here’s Fred and that’s Evander.”

  “Evening,” said Peter. “My name’s Peter Shandy.”

  “Teaches farming at Balaclava Aggie,” Tilkey supplemented.

  “That so?” Fred Wye seemed willing enough to hear more, but Thurzella popped over with her order blank at the ready and gave a dramatic rendering of tonight’s specialties, which consisted chiefly of fresh-caught haddock broiled, baked with cheese and tomato, deep-fat fried, or cut up in chowder. Peter opted for broiled, Fred for baked, Schuyler for fried because his wife wasn’t around to tell him he was too fat already. All three decided they might as well try the chowder for starters.

  Evander didn’t say anything, but Thurzella brought him a thick white cup of chowder with a blue stripe around the top, the same as the other men were having. She then went scooting back for a basket of hot corn bread and a huge bowl of tossed salad from which they could help themselves ad lib, and assured them that their real food would be along soon. The still-silent Evander ate what was put in front of him, pausing now and then to give Peter a sideways glower, but neither shying away from him nor showing any sign of getting set to attack. After a while, Peter decided it would be safe to venture an opening conversational gambit.

  “I understand that you two operate a tourmaline mine.”

  Evander scowled again but Fred was quite ready to talk about the family’s unusual business. His information was so clear and succinct that Peter wondered whether he sometimes gave guided tours to schoolchildren. Fred admitted that he sometimes did, and went so far as to suggest that the professor might care to go over and mosey around a little sometime when he had nothing better to do, not that there was much to see.

  Peter replied with a careful balancing of enthusiasm and regret that it was nice of Fred to offer but he didn’t know how much time there’d be for visiting the mine because he’d already promised to take his wife to meet Miss Rondel and to Michele Cluny’s hand-weaving shop, and they were only going to be here through tomorrow night.

  “Too bad.” Fred Wye bore the disappointment bravely, he turned to his cousin. “Run into Ed Whitbread from the county coroner’s office a while back at the gas pump. He says it was cyanide, all right.”

  “That so? Did Ed say where it come from?”

  “Hell, no. Ed Whitbread wouldn’t know, an’ wouldn’t tell you if he did. Jeezum, look at that!”

  A bolt of lightning had flashed through the dining room. At least this was the first impression Peter got, he sensed that every other person in the restaurant was feeling the same as he. Lucivee Flodge hurled herself into their midst with a spring in her step, a gleam in her eye, and a bottle of champagne under each arm. She was dressed all in black, but there are blacks and blacks; hers was the other kind. Black lace stretch tights, a black satin top ablaze with sequins, slashed down the front far beyond the bounds of probability, and a huge black bow studded with fake diamonds riding atop her titian hair made a clear statement that here was the merriest widow of them all.

  Peter’s second impression was that any woman as broad in the beam as Lucivee must have had to do a good deal of positive thinking or else avoided looking in the mirror when she’d stuffed herself into those tights. That was her affair, definitely not his. He averted his eyes and got to work on the salad.

  “Doesn’t look as if there’d be much sense in wasting a sympathy card on that one,” Sky grunted. “I take it she’s the weeping widow?”

  “So she claims,” said Fred. “Her story is that they were never divorced, though they hadn’t lived together for six years and Jasper had had a few more women after her. Mine included, damn him.” He reddened, cast an apologetic glance at Peter, and stabbed his fork into a chunk of cucumber.

  While Bright’s Inn did not have a liquor license, it was apparently not illegal for patrons to bring along their own wine or beer. Lucivee Flodge had by now come to light at Claridge Withington’s table and was making a great to-do over ordering ice for her champagne and enough glasses for everybody in the restaurant. The green plastic bucket and the squatty little juice glasses provided by a young girl who must be the granddaughter from Portland because she looked just like Thurzella and was wearing pink stirrup pants, seemed not to be what Lucivee had envisioned but were all that Lucivee was going to get.

  From the look of things, her party was turning out to be more fizzle than fizz. It was pretty obvious that most people there were of the opinion that throwing a champagne hootenanny in the same room where the man they were going to bury tomorrow morning had met his death two nights previously was not in the best of taste. When the new girl circled the room with a trayful of filled glasses, she found few takers. The Wye brothers shook their heads, so did Peter. Sky Tilkey might have taken some, if he’d been alone, Peter thought, but he wouldn’t go against his relatives. However much ill will Jasper Flodge had managed to generate, and whatever the grounds for celebration might be, to stomp on his grave before he’d even been put into it was carrying things too far. When the new girl carried the tray of champagne back to the table in the corner, there were almost as many full glasses on it as when she’d started.

  Peter happened to be sitting where he got a good view of the people coming in. He was at first indifferent, then mildly interested to spot a woman of indeterminate age who might once have been pretty, wearing a blue suit that had also seen its best days. She’d stepped diffidently inside the dining room and was looking around for a waitress to seat her.

  “Good Lord,” he exclaimed. “I know that woman. She keeps house for some neighbors of mine at Balaclava.”

  “That so? What else does she do?”

  It was Fred Wye who’d spoken. He was watching the woman too. There was an intensity in his voice and his look that made Peter feel somehow uneasy.

  “I believe she was one of the dormitory maids at the college and did some housecleaning for faculty people in her spare time, the Enderbles among them. They’re a couple well along in years who live across from Helen and me on what’s called the Crescent. When Mary broke her wrist some months ago, and needed somebody to cope full-time, Mrs. Howard moved in with them. Very quiet woman but a good worker, Mary and John think the world of her. She’s good with their animals—John’s field is local fauna—they have a number of pets including a very old rabbit who needs special care. I understand she also has a part-time job at a kennel, washing and clipping dogs, and has even helped our president’s wife to braid the manes and tails of the college’s Balaclava Blacks for the Annual Workhorse Competition, which is Balaclava County’s big event of the year. I suppose I ought to speak to her.”

  “Tell her Fred said hello.”

  The mine owner’s words came out as a snarl. Thurzella was now leading Mrs. Howard over to a small table not far from where the four men were sitting. Peter noted that the woman kept her head bowed, that her face was pale and her mouth set tight as though she might be trying not to cry. He wondered whether he ought to leave her alone, but that seemed a caddish thing to do. He got up and went over to her table.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Howard.”

  “Why, Professor Shandy, what a surprise. Are you staying at the inn?”

  “Yes, I came to see the famous lupines. I’ve been here since Sunday night. My wife’s driving up tomorrow with Catriona McBogle, a friend who’s been visiting her. I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to meet Catriona?”

  “Just to say hello to, she seems very nice. I’ve been very busy at the kennel lately. Flea time, you know.”

  Her voice was light and rather sweet, but her short gust of laughter came out harsh as a raven’s call. Peter began to wonder if he’d overstayed his welcome, then recalled that he had a message to deliver. “Er—Fred Wye told me to say hello. He’s sitting over there.”

  “Yes, I noticed. Would you tell him—” Oh God,
was she going to cry? “Tell him—tell him I’ve forgiven him for what he—he—oh, Lord be merciful! Why did I come here?”

  The woman looked ready either to faint or fall into hysterics, Peter decided he’d better leave her alone. As he went back to his table, Fred Wye gave him a look that could not be ignored. Peter said what he had to.

  “She—er—told me to say she’s forgiven you.”

  “The hell she did!” Fred started up from his chair, eyes blazing. “Well, you can tell her for me—”

  “Er—I seem somehow to have put us all in an awkward position. May I suggest that I just step aside and let you and Mrs. Howard—er—”

  “You stay right here. Whatever lie she’s trying to pass off, that bitch can come over here and say it to my face. Scooch over, Evander, and set another chair. We might as well try to act decent, even if she’s forgotten how. Go get her, Professor.”

  God, what a mess! It dawned on Peter that this shabby little mouse must be Fred Wye’s errant wife, the one who’d taken everything that wasn’t nailed down except his hernia truss and run off with Jasper Flodge. How the flaming perdition had she wound up de-fleaing the spaniels and setters of Balaclava Junction and cleaning up after the Enderbles’ elderly, incontinent pet rabbit? Well, it served him right for trying to be a gentleman. He went back to Mrs. Howard and delivered an expurgated version of her husband’s invitation to join the party.

  Mrs. Howard, if that was her real name now, neither swooned nor sobbed. Her face dead white and stiff as stone, she marched like an automaton over to the chair that Evander had set for her. Nobody spoke, nobody moved until Thurzella, bless her, zoomed over to recite the specials yet once more.

  “Just chowder, please.”

  That was all she said, and probably more than she’d be able to eat. Peter wished he’d thought to bring his pint of whiskey to the table, he suggested that perhaps Mrs. Howard would like some tea or coffee right away. She said tea, which he hoped might be a small step in the right direction.

  Fred might have a little spark of love still burning. At least he was humane enough to let her get a few swallows of hot tea into her before he attacked. “Okay, Iolanthe, suppose you tell me what it is you’ve forgiven me for since you cleaned out my bank account and ran off with Jasper Flodge?”

  “How dare you!”

  She was alive now, all right. Her cheeks were ablaze, her eyes boring into his like a pair of laser beams. “You know perfectly well what you did to me, you—you whited sepulchre!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about those nine teenage girls you seduced and abandoned.”

  “Are you out of your mind? What nine girls?”

  “The ones who bore your children out of wedlock and you wouldn’t even send them enough money to put food in the poor little babies’ mouths. Don’t try to lie out of it, Fred Wye. Father showed me the letters he got, and then the woman from the Department of Human Services came looking to put the law on you because you hadn’t paid.”

  “Look, Iolanthe, this isn’t making any sense at all. Let’s go back and start from the beginning. All I know is, Evander and I and Sky here went up to the camp for a few days’ fishing, and when we got back you were nowhere to be found. I might have known that jeezly old lunatic of a father of yours would have had a hand in it somewhere. What were these letters you’re talking about?”

  Iolanthe took another sip of tea and drew a deep breath. “It was the day after you left for camp. I was watering the houseplants. That gardenia I’d been nursing along was finally just about to bloom, and I was glad there’d be a new blossom to show you when you got back. I remember it all very well, you see, because that was the last truly happy moment of my life.”

  She was twisting the teacup around in the saucer, struggling for what little composure she could scrape together. “I was just going back to refill the water pot when Father barged in without knocking, as he always did, absolutely beside himself with rage.”

  “As he generally was. So what?”

  “He—I don’t know if I can—he—he read me this letter. It was from a girl you’d been seeing—a girl seventeen years old, who’d sung in a church choir where Father had preached once. She pleaded for Father to intercede for her with you because she was sick and penniless and her parents had thrown her out of the house and she had nowhere to turn, and her baby—your baby, Fred—would die if it didn’t get food and shelter soon. It was the most heartrending—”

  “Pack of lies anybody ever thought up! And that old bastard believed every word of it because he’d been dead set against me from the day we met, as you very well know. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d written the damned thing himself.”

  “Well, he didn’t, because about ten minutes later a woman from the Department of Human Services drove up to the house looking for you with a warrant. Father read her all those letters, one after the other, as if he were Moses reading the tablets. Then he began praying at the top of his lungs, exhorting me to get down on my knees and repent for having spurned my father’s teaching and married a whoremaster. That’s what he called you, and that’s what you are. He said I must leave you at once and never set eyes on you again because the sins of the husband were visited upon the wife and I’d burn in hell forever if I stayed in that house one more night. And that woman standing right there taking it all in and nodding her head. I wanted to slap her.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you? What names were on those so-called letters?”

  “None that I recognized. The only one I remember is Muriel Flodge. She was the one who wrote to Father.”

  “Flodge, eh?” Fred snorted. “You know, that doesn’t surprise me a bit. So then all of a sudden in gallops Jasper Flodge on his white horse, saying he’s come to rescue you from the foul clutches of your rotten whoremaster of a husband and carry you away to some tropical paradise where you and he can live happily ever after on my money.”

  “No, Fred. It wasn’t like that at all. Jasper did come, after that awful woman had left and after Father had finally quit praying over me and told me I could come home and keep house for him, but not until I’d atoned for my terrible sin by meekly bowing my head under the yoke and ridding my heart of any wifely feeling I’d ever had for you and signing over my inheritance to him. So I said that would be never, because I loved you and always would, no matter what you’d done and even if I never saw you again this side of the grave.”

  She broke down then, hiding her face in her napkin, shaking like a poplar in a windstorm. Peter had been thinking of Mrs. Howard, as he’d known her, as being vaguely middle-aged; it suddenly dawned on him that this woman must be still in her twenties, and Fred Wye not many years older. Without that bushy beard, he’d probably be quite a good-looker. Evander, then, must be the elder brother, and Schuyler Tilkey an old relic of forty-five or so. They must think Professor Shandy was Methuselah in disguise.

  Nobody was making a sound, just sitting there trying not to watch her cry. It was a relief when she mopped her face, sniffed a final sniffle, and went on with her story. “So then Father said I was no daughter of his and I needn’t think I’d ever see one red cent of the money Aunt Prunella left me, and stormed off hurling anathemas right and left. I felt as if I’d been torn to ribbons. I didn’t know what to do or where to go. My legs buckled under me, I fell down on the floor still holding that silly watering pot, and started to cry. The way I’m doing now.”

  “Can’t blame her for that.”

  Of all people, it was Evander who spoke. He must have surprised himself, he buttoned his lips tight together and concentrated on searching for bones in his haddock. Perhaps those few kind words had helped a little, Iolanthe’s voice was a trifle steadier as she went on.

  “I don’t know how long I stayed there like that. All I remember is Jasper Flodge sticking his head in at the door and saying ‘Anybody home?’ I couldn’t let him see me like that, I got up and pulled myself together as best I could and told him to
come in. All I could think of was that poor little Muriel Flodge; I believe the first thing I said was “Is she your sister?”

  “Jasper knew right away what I meant. He told me Muriel was only a distant cousin whom he didn’t know very well, which was why he hadn’t thought to warn her about Fred Wye in time. You can imagine how I felt about that! He showed me the letter she’d sent him, he told me he’d cried when he read it.”

  “I’ll bet he did.”

  Fred wasn’t giving up without a struggle. Iolanthe must be wishing she were back at the Enderbles’, changing the old rabbit’s diaper. Peter would as soon have been there himself about now, he hadn’t reckoned on another soap opera with his dinner. If he’d thought a little bit faster, he could have found some excuse to leave the table when the fur began to fly. It was too late now to do anything but pretend he wasn’t among those present and finish his meal, though it did cost him a pang not to drop a word about that letter Flodge had allegedly got from his alleged cousin.

  Fred was close to exploding by now. “What the hell was he up to?”

  Iolanthe still had spunk enough in her to snap back. “Well, he didn’t yell at me, and you needn’t either. Jasper said pretty much the same as Father had, only more nicely and without any praying. He said the sooner I left, the better, and he’d help me. I forget what all he said, I just knew I had to go because it wasn’t my house any longer. He told me to go upstairs and pack a suitcase and he’d run me down to Portland. He knew of a respectable boardinghouse where I could stay. All I had to do was give him my bankbook and sign a paper, he’d get a power of attorney and take care of everything. So I gave him the bankbook that had both our names in it—”

  “My God! Didn’t you know any better than that?”

  “How could I? I’d never handled a cent of money in my life except what you gave me to buy the groceries. Father always said females’ brains were inferior to men’s and we must submit to their higher knowledge. And you handled everything after we were married, Fred, you know that. Jasper said that since my name was on the bankbook, it was perfectly legal for me to draw on the account. I didn’t want to, but Jasper made me realize that I must have something to live on. I didn’t even know how to get the money out, he had to do it for me. We stopped on the way to Portland, he went into the bank and came out with some blank checks. He asked if I wanted to stop someplace and eat, but I didn’t want to so we went on to this big old house and a woman came to the door and Jasper carried my suitcase upstairs and showed me how to fill out the check for my rent and said when I needed more money all I had to do was write another check and take it to the bank. Then he went away. He said he’d be back in a week or so to see how things were going with me, but he never came.”