A Pint of Murder

by Charlotte MacLeod

  What would any boy do with a rock? He’d throw it. He might not mean to hit, only to divert the woman’s attention long enough for him to get away without being caught. But that rock would be a heavy projectile for a boy his size, and his aim could have gone amiss. Gilly and Elmer could have come home to find a terrified youngster crouched on the lawn beside a blood-stained corpse. Their natural, though certainly not overbright, reaction might very well have been to hustle the boy into the car and take off.

  Rhys went into the house, called RCMP headquarters, and asked for a road watch to be got out for a 1976 green Ford sedan presumed to be carrying its owner, Elmer Bain of Pitcherville, along with a short, slim blonde woman and a boy about ten years old. He had no great confidence they’d be picked up. Elmer might have sense enough to ditch the car. If they got off into the woods and young Bain was any sort of woodsman, they might elude capture for a long time. The weather was warm, there was plenty to eat in the forest if a person knew what to look for, there were fish in the streams and rabbits for the trapping. They could work their way west or north or south, perhaps down over the border. Elmer probably had some money on him. They might even split up, take different buses or trains, and meet in Toronto or somewhere a good way from here.

  Well, wherever they were, he was here and there was work to be done. He took up the phone again and called Fred Olson. “Fred, you and your friend Sam Potts might as well come up to the Mansion. Tell him he’s got another customer.”

  “Lord God A’mighty,” cried the marshal. “Who is it this time? Janet Wadman?”

  “No!” Rhys managed not to add an unprofessional expression of gratitude. “It’s Dot Fewter.”

  “You hauled in Sam Neddick yet?”

  “No, I have not.”

  “How come?”

  “Because I’m a fool,” the Welshman replied sadly. “Make it quick, will you, Olson? I need somebody to take charge here while I go after Neddick. Oh, and stop at the Druffitt house on your way. See if Gilly Bascom and her son are there, with or without Elmer Bain. They’ve all three turned up missing.”

  Olson said, “Right,” and hung up. A good man. Pitcherville was luckier than it knew.

  “They won’t be at Elizabeth’s.” That was Marion, tagging close to Rhys as if afraid to be alone, for which he couldn’t blame her, considering her resemblance to the dead woman out in the yard.

  “No, I don’t expect they are,” he replied, “but we have to check, you know. You have no idea where they might have gone?”

  Marion shook her head. “None whatever. All I know is they tried to kill me and then took off.”

  “Tried to kill you? Marion, do you really believe that?”

  “Why the hell shouldn’t I? If Gilly gets rid of me, she inherits Aunt Aggie’s whole estate, doesn’t she? And why should anybody want to kill Dot Fewter, unless it was a mistake? Look at her. She was my size and build, had features like mine, hair like mine. She was here in my yard where she had no business to be at that hour. Okay, she was wearing Elizabeth’s dress, but why shouldn’t Elizabeth have passed that outfit on to me instead of Dot? I was down there yesterday, too, wasn’t I? I’m Elizabeth’s own legitimate cousin instead of her God-knows-what. I’d have got a lot more wear out of it than that Fewter bitch, wouldn’t I? My God, what am I saying? I ought to be damned glad she didn’t!”

  Rhys scratched his mustache. “Did you talk with Gilly at all before she and Elmer went out last evening?”

  “Sure. We had supper together. That’s when she asked me if I’d mind staying with Bobby because Elmer’d offered to take her to a show. I said yes, because what the hell? I wasn’t doing anything else anyway.”

  “Did you repeat to her what I told you and her mother yesterday?”

  “About Henry and Aunt Aggie being murdered? Yes, I did. Why shouldn’t I? It’s as much her worry as mine.”

  “Of course it is and there is no reason why you should not have told. How did she take the news?”

  “How does she take anything? Sat there staring at me like a scared rabbit.”

  “Did she make any comment?”

  “Just swallowed a couple of times and said, ‘Thanks for telling me, Marion.’ I don’t know what to think.” Marion shook her head as if it ached, which it probably did. “I was beginning to like Gilly.”

  “One must not jump to conclusions,” Rhys reminded her gently. “Perhaps you can go on liking her. Was Elmer present when you gave Gilly this information?”

  “No. I waited till he and Bobby went out to feed the dogs. Speaking of which, I guess I’d better go do it now before they start yapping their fool heads off. I cannot for the life of me see Gilly going off and leaving those little puppies like this. I’d have thought that was the last thing she’d ever do.”

  “Do you think it possible Elmer may have taken her against her will?”

  “Listen, buster, where that guy’s concerned, she hasn’t any will.”

  “Listen, buster,” was hardly a respectful form of address to a member of the RCMP, but Rhys had long ago accepted the fact that it was no good trying to stand on his dignity. He merely inquired, “You don’t recall seeing or hearing any sort of commotion during the night?”

  Marion grinned sheepishly. “After I passed out, you mean? You should know better than to ask. That stuff’s dynamite. Didn’t it get you, too?”

  “I slept soundly,” Rhys admitted. “Marion, tell me the truth: Is that why you gave it to me? Did Gilly suggest that you try to get me plastered?”

  She gaped at him in honest surprise. “Hell no, I just figured it would liven up the party a little. I was feeling lower than a floorwalker’s arches, if you want to know, finding out about Aunt Aggie being murdered and figuring I was probably first in line for the hot squat. And then Gilly going off on a date with a good-looking guy while I—oh hell! It’s my birthday next week and I’m going to be forty-seven, if you want to know.”

  “Being forty-seven is perhaps better than not being forty-seven,” Rhys reminded her gently.

  “Yeah, I guess you can say that again.” Marion darted a frightened glance out the window. “What a rotten break for poor old Dot!”

  “She may not have been killed in mistake for you, you know,” said the Mountie. “It’s more likely that she was mistaken for your cousin Elizabeth. It is also quite possible that she was killed by somebody who knew perfectly well whom he was killing. Where would I be apt to find Sam Neddick, do you think?”

  Marion brightened visibly. “My God, I never thought of Sam! I guess I’m not wrapped too tight this morning. There’s no telling where he’d be by now if he did this. If he didn’t, I suppose he’s over milking Bert Wadman’s cows, unless he overslept. You might look up in the hayloft. That’s where he lives, when he lives anywhere. Aunt Aggie let him use it in return for doing her chores. What’s the matter? You look funny.”

  “So I have often been told,” said Rhys. “Would you mind getting something to cover Dot with? I’d as soon not try to move her until Olson gets here.”

  Marion went and got the crocheted afghan she herself had been bundled up in the night before. “Will this do?”

  “Fine,” he replied.

  She tagged after him when he went outside, as if she couldn’t bear to stay alone. Since she was going to hang around anyway, Rhys decided she might as well make herself useful. “Marion, I’m going inside the barn to see if Sam Neddick’s there. You stay out here and watch for Olson, will you? If anybody else comes, or if you find you can’t endure being here, don’t come after me but simply call. I promise I shan’t go beyond shouting distance.”

  “Okay.”

  She gave him a doubtful attempt at a grin, and he went.

  CHAPTER 16

  THE HIRED MAN’S AERIE was surprisingly elegant. It contained an ornate brass bedstead with a mangy blue-velvet cover and a marble-topped commode that held a flowered ironstone pitcher and washbowl, neither of them too badly chipped. There was also a cheap but f
lashy modern dresser on which stood several bottles of men’s toiletries—gifts, no doubt, from the demised girlfriend. Sam wouldn’t be apt to use them himself, unless he got really thirsty.

  Neddick wasn’t around. Marion’s analysis was doubtless correct. He must either be hard at work or over the hills and far away. There were plenty of signs that he’d entertained Dot Fewter often enough in his exotic boudoir: long black hairs on the velvet counterpane, a filthy powder puff thrown down among the colognes and after-shave lotions, a hopelessly laddered pair of pantyhose under the bed. It was a safe enough bet that she’d either been on her way here or going back from the barn to the Wadmans’ when she was attacked in the drive. A romantic tryst would account for her having bothered to put on the hand-me-down finery.

  Rhys didn’t stay in the loft more than a minute or two. Marion was still over by the body and didn’t appear to be in too bad a state, so he called out, “Neddick isn’t at home. Do you mind if I go over to the Wadmans’?”

  She flapped her hand, in either protest or permission. He took it for permission, and went. Sam was the first person he ran into. It had to be Sam, because the man looked exactly as Rhys had pictured him, of no particular age with a face and neck the color and texture of old boot leather and a perfectly blank expression. His body was neither tall nor short, a bit humped at the shoulders but no doubt strong and quick as a lynx when speed was necessary. The eyes were almost without color, like two miniature crystal balls.

  “Been lookin’ for me?” he grunted.

  “Expecting me to be?” Rhys grunted back.

  “Yep.”

  “Then why didn’t you come and find me yourself?”

  Sam just leaned on the manure fork and looked at the Mountie with those crystal-ball eyes.

  “Was she on her way to visit you when she was killed, or had she already been to the loft?”

  “She’d been.”

  “What time did she leave?”

  “Midnight, more or less.”

  “Did you walk out to the door with her?”

  “Hell no, I stayed in bed. Must o’ been asleep before she was out o’ the barn.” There was a twinge of regret in the bereft lover’s tone. Was Neddick sorry his sweetheart had been murdered, or sorry he’d missed the chance to watch it happen?

  “You realize,” said Rhys with all the sternness he could manage, “that you’re in serious trouble, Neddick?”

  Neddick spat over the manure fork.

  “How do you propose to get yourself out of it?”

  “Figgered I’d leave that to you, Inspector.”

  “Did you, now? Can you give me one good reason why I shouldn’t take you in this minute?”

  “’Cause you’ll look like a jeezledy fool when you have to let me go,” Neddick replied calmly. “Hell’s flames, Inspector, you know damn well if I’d o’ wanted to get rid o’ the poor cow, I could think o’ seventeen better ways than lammin’ her over the head an’ dumpin’ the corpse in my own dooryard.”

  He spat again, not quite so forcefully. “But why would I want to? Answer me that. She was handy an’ willin’, an’ she didn’t cost me nothin’ but a dollar’s worth o’ jellybeans or somethin’ now an’ then. An’ she was sort of a likable bitch when you got to know ’er. To tell you the truth,” Neddick confessed in an embarrassed mumble, “I’m goin’ to miss ’er.”

  Rhys gazed into the crystal balls for a while, and divined that the man was probably telling the truth, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. “Can you think of anybody who might have had it in for her?”

  Neddick jabbed the tines of his pitchfork into the ground a few times, then slowly shook his head. “No, can’t say as I do. Don’t make no sense to me at all. Dot had an awful big mouth, but there wa’n’t no more harm to ’er than a kitten.”

  “Might she have found out something that somebody didn’t care to have told?”

  Amusement flickered for an instant over the leathern face. “She gen’rally did. Only she’d always blat it out to the first person that come along. I’d o’ known, for sure.”

  “But suppose this was something she didn’t know she knew?” Rhys persisted.

  “Come again?”

  “I mean some apparent trifle she wouldn’t think worth repeating.”

  Sam thought this was pretty funny, too. “There wa’n’t one jeezledy thing on the face o’ this green earth Dot wouldn’t think was worth repeatin’. Cripes, if Hank Druffitt lost a button off his union suit at seven o’clock in the mornin’, every last, livin’ soul in Pitcherville would know it by eight.”

  “Why? Was Dot playing around with the doctor?”

  “Hell, no. She done their laundry. Dot never fooled around with nobody. She knew I wouldn’t stand fer it.”

  “Then what would you say to the possibility that your friend was murdered by mistake?”

  “I’d say that was one hell of a big mistake.” Neddick scratched a shoe-leather ear. “Maybe that’s not such a dern fool notion as it sounds, Inspector. That gownd she had on, eh? Any time that bitch give anythin’ away, she might o’ known there was no luck in it. Made ’er look the spittin’ image of ’er, an’ I told ’er so point-blank.”

  “Do you mean it made Dot look like Mrs. Druffitt, or like Marion Emery?”

  Neddick actually looked surprised. “Now you mention it, I guess it could o’ been either. Them three was like as peas in a pod, which ain’t surprising all things considered. I hadn’t thought o’ Marion, but she’d make more sense, wouldn’t she, if you’re talkin’ about a mistake. Hell, she was right there in the house an’ it stood to reason the bitch might o’ give her them clothes instead o’ Dot. I wisht to God she had!”

  “Why? Would you like to see Miss Emery out of the way?”

  “Hell no. I got nothin’ in partic’lar against ’er. Not yet, anyways. Only one I can think of might like to get rid o’ Marion would be Gilly Bascom, ’cause then she’d get the Mansion all to ’erself. ’Cept Gilly’s got it in for ’er mother a lot worse’n she has for anybody else. An’ if that was ’Lizabeth Druffitt layin’ out there,” Neddick spat again with force and vigor, “I’d be proud to shake the hand that done it. An’ I ain’t goin’ to say no more than that.”

  “If you choose not to, I shan’t try to force you,” said Rhys mildly. “I wonder if you’d do yourself and me one favor, though, Neddick. I’d just like to have you walk back over there with me and take a close look at Dot Fewter. I’m curious to know if there has been any change either in the way she was dressed when she left the barn or in the way she was lying when you saw her earlier this morning.”

  Sam didn’t say he would but he didn’t say he wouldn’t so Rhys started back and as he expected, the other man fell into step with him. Marion was still on sentry duty beside the afghan-covered object on the grass, but she shrank back into the doorway when they got near her. Either she was afraid of Neddick or else she wanted Rhys to think she was.

  Rhys folded back the afghan, careful not to disturb the folds of the dress any more than he had to, and waited. Neddick gazed down at his deceased lady-love, the crystal eyes blank as hers. At last he made utterance.

  “She put ’er shoes on.”

  “Explain that, please.”

  Neddick pointed contemptuously at the dainty pumps. “She didn’t have ’em on when she left. She’d carried ’em over in ’er hand from the Wadmans’ to show me, as if I give a damn, but she was in ’er bare feet ’cause she didn’t want to get ’em dirty. She’d just cleaned ’em, see?”

  She certainly had. Rhys had never before observed a pair of shoes so lavishly whitened. Dot had managed to slather polish all over the tops, the heels, and under the insteps, getting a good many daubs on the soles in the process. The left shoe was half off, and he could even see dribbles of white on the lining. Evidently the poor soul had been determined to do full justice to her distinguished hand-me-downs.

  “She can’t have walked far in them,” he remarked.

  �
��Prob’ly couldn’t if she was o’ mind to,” Sam grunted. “I don’t see why she bothered to put ’em on at all. They must o’ been awful tight. See the way that right foot’s swole out over the top? She was always bitchin’ about ’er feet hurtin’ from bein’ on ’em so much. Miz Treadway used to say by rights she ought to complain about ’er backside instead ’cause she was on that a damn sight oftener. Ol’ Aggie had a tongue on ’er, I can tell you! Cripes, both of ’em gone an’ me standin’ here like this.”

  He shook his head, as if to clear it of unmanly sentiment. “Nope, that’s all I can see, ’cept that somebody’s pushed the hair back from ’er face. I s’pose that was you? I never touched ’er, myself. Didn’t have to. I knew, just lookin’ at ’er.” Neddick bent and with something like tenderness pulled the afghan back over the body. Then he turned back toward the Wadmans’ barn.

  Rhys got neatly in his way. “Neddick, what do you know about that patent Jason Bain has been creating such a rumpus about?”

  “Not a jeezledy thing.”

  “Come, now, I think you can do a little better than that. Would you say he has a legitimate claim to the thing?”

  “It’s possible,” Sam admitted. “Jase likes to do things legal if he can.”

  “Have you the vaguest idea what he expects to get out of it?”

  “No, I ain’t, an’ that’s a funny thing.” The colorless eyes narrowed. “Jase has been talkin’ awful free about the bundle he’s goin’ to make out o’ that patent. Usually when he’s up to some deal you can’t get a yip out of ’im, ’less he’s suin’ somebody. Then he’s got it all spelled out in dollars an’ cents ’cause it’s a matter o’ record anyways. But this is a new one on me. Here comes Olson.”

  Rhys could hear nothing, but he had every confidence that Sam was right, and Sam was. Seconds later, Pitcherville’s one excuse for a police car hove into view and stopped at the drive.

  The marshal was still working his paunch out from under the steering wheel when the other door swung open and Elizabeth Druffitt erupted. “Where is she?”