The Grub-and-Stakers Quilt a Bee

by Charlotte MacLeod

But the letter was not to be got. They searched the desk and found several other letters, none of them of any great interest. They found a crocheted chamber pot cover, a bunch of old photographs of men in hunting garb with dead deer strung up on poles between them, of boys swimming unselfconsciously naked at the old swimming hole, of ladies looking proud in new Sunday bonnets, and of tots looking miserable in corkscrew curls and starched dresses. They found a half bushel or so of notes in Mr. Fairfield’s fussy handwriting and the usual odds and ends that accumulate in desk drawers. Nowhere did they find a piece of paper written on in French with faded brownish ink and signed Henriette. Dittany picked up the telephone and called Minerva.

  “Hi, c’est moi. Is Mrs. Fairfield there? No, I don’t want to talk to her. I want you to ask her what she did with a letter written in French and signed Henriette. The paper’s yellowed with age and slightly foxed. Yes, foxed. No, that doesn’t mean drunk. It means those brown spots old paper gets. Mrs. Fairfield will know, if she knows anything whatsoever, which I—all right, Minerva, we won’t go into that now. Look, I don’t care if she’s prostrate. Go unprostrate her. She had no business taking anything from the museum in the first place. No, go ahead. I’ll wait.”

  Minerva must have gone but was back in a minute or so to say Mrs. Fairfield didn’t know anything about any foxed letter signed Henriette and wished to inquire whether this cruel persecution would ever cease.

  “Horsefeathers,” said Dittany, “and tell her I said so. You might also tell her she’d better rack her brain about that letter because Sergeant MacVicar can persecute a lot more effectively than I can.”

  She listened to a few more sputters, then said, “Good night,” and hung up.

  “Sounds as if Minerva’s a bit upset, eh,” Osbert remarked.

  “You might say that. So am I. Darling, if Mrs. Fairfield hasn’t got that letter, who has?”

  “Don’t look at me,” cried Hunding. “If I’d taken it, would I have told you about it in the first place?”

  Maybe, Dittany told herself, if Miss Paffnagel thought old Perry had already been showing the letter around to other people. Osbert, however, seemed to accept Hunding’s protest.

  “Let’s just make sure it’s not still here. The fact that Miss Paffnagel saw him take it out of his desk drawer doesn’t necessarily mean he put it back there.”

  “I know, darling,” Dittany argued, “but he was an orderly sort of man. I can’t see him stuffing it in his pocket or dropping it behind the radiator.”

  “No, but mightn’t he have put it away somewhere for safekeeping?”

  “Where, for instance?”

  “Is there a filing cabinet with a lock on it?”

  “Nope, just these old oak ones that came out of Dr. Busch’s office after he died. Hazel had them in her cellar.”

  Osbert wasn’t interested in Hazel’s cellar. He was combing the files. Since the museum hadn’t been operating long enough to accumulate much in the way of archives, that didn’t take him long. The letter definitely was not in one of the folders. It wasn’t anywhere. After a while, Dittany phoned Minerva again.

  “I know you’re mad at me, but we’ve looked absolutely everywhere, and that letter hasn’t turned up. Give Mrs. Fairfield a slug of corpse reviver and tell her to look through her husband’s things. Sergeant MacVicar’s going to have a fit.”

  It occurred to Dittany they’d better tip the sergeant off about the letter so he’d know what to have his fit about in case Minerva happened to bring up the subject in his presence. She called down to the station. Mrs. MacVicar told her the sergeant was off investigating a daring robbery of six pocket computers and a leather briefcase to carry them off in from Ye Village Stationer. Bob and Ray were down at the ball field directing traffic. Ormerod was still on holiday. Mrs. MacVicar promised to give her husband a message. By then it was getting late, so they skipped the ice cream and went home without calling on Arethusa. It was best, they decided, to let sleeping aunts lie.

  Events, however, proved them wrong. It was at half past eight the next morning that they got the call. Arethusa had been slugged into unconsciousness, bound and gagged, and her house ransacked. Mrs. Poppy, coming to work early for the first time in her life, had got a dazzling reward by becoming the heroine of the hour. She wanted to tell them all about it, knot by knot and bruise by bruise, but Dittany and Osbert were both pounding at Arethusa’s door before Mrs. Poppy realized she was talking to an empty line.

  A crowd had already gathered around the house, and there were scoffers among them wondering loudly whether Arethusa hadn’t staged the whole thing herself to take people’s minds off the rotten way she’d treated poor Mrs. Fairfield. Perhaps they would be somewhat chastened a bit later when they’d see Doc Somervell come out of the house looking grave and shaking his head. Dittany and Osbert didn’t go down to find out.

  Sergeant MacVicar was already there at the bedside, shaking his own head and telling them sternly that this was a verra bad business. Arethusa was stretched out looking like the Lily Maid of Astolat on her barge. Mrs. Poppy was dithering in the doorway, bursting to talk and being instructed to “Whist, wumman” by the sergeant every time she opened her mouth except to gape. Dittany, who in spite of everything was extremely fond of Arethusa, went over to the bed, kissed Arethusa’s pale cheek, and began to cry. Osbert was whispering to the doctor in a strangely hoarse whisper, “Is she going to be all right?”

  “I hope so” was the answer. “She got an awful whack.”

  “Aye, a sair dunt,” Sergeant MacVicar confirmed.

  “But nothing seems to be broken,” Dr. Somervell went on, “and she’s breathing normally enough. I think that heavy hair must have saved her from the worst of it. I don’t want to lug her off to the hospital till I see what happens. If it’s just a concussion, she’s better off in her own bed. Don’t go pestering her to talk. She’ll come around. She’s semiconscious now.”

  “Conscious,” muttered a feeble voice from the depths of grogginess. “Hit me.”

  “Who?” Osbert couldn’t keep himself from asking.

  “The visitation.”

  Sergeant MacVicar nodded. “Aye, she’s havering, puir leddy.”

  “No she’s not,” said Osbert.

  “Go out of the room if you’re going to talk,” snapped Dr. Somervell with his fingers on Arethusa’s pulse. “And leave the door open. There’s a god-awful stink of perfume in here.”

  “It’s Romaunt de la Rose,” Mrs. Poppy put in eagerly. “The visitation must of knocked it off the dresser. I picked up the bottle, but it was empty. She’ll be sick about that.”

  “So am I,” Osbert groaned, thinking of fingerprints that might have been.

  “Git,” said Dr. Somervell, and they got.

  Mrs. Poppy tagged along, avid to tell again what she’d already told because she’d thought up a few more embellishments, but Sergeant MacVicar said, “Whist, wumman,” again so she didn’t. It was Osbert who got to hold the floor.

  “She told us yesterday she’d seen somebody in her room the night before. She assumed it was a visitor from a higher plane. Aunt Arethusa would, you know.”

  “Aye, and what did this visitation look like?”

  “Like a person, only she didn’t get to see the face. She described it as majestic, which probably means tall and stout. Not little and skinny, anyway. She said it was wearing a dark drapery.”

  “Not exactly a drapery, darling,” said Dittany. “She said a garment. That could mean a dress or a bathrobe or just that it was so dark she couldn’t see anything at all but a blob. Anyway, she ducked under the bedclothes and when she peeked out again, it was gone.”

  “She said there wasn’t any sound, except that the board in the hall creaked when the apparition stepped on it,” Osbert added.

  Sergeant MacVicar nodded. “Ah, a supernatural creak. And nothing was disturbed?”

  “Not that she noticed,” said Dittany. “And I think she would. Arethusa’s awfully choice of he
r possessions, you know.”

  “Anyway,” said Osbert, “we had the quilt pieces at our house.”

  “Er—Mrs. Poppy, hadn’t you better go down to the kitchen and put the kettle on? Dr. Somervell will be asking for hot water any minute now,” Dittany interjected. She couldn’t think why offhand, since Arethusa wasn’t having a baby, but knowing Mrs. Poppy’s penchant for telling a story and getting it wrong, she thought they’d better get the woman out of earshot. “Make a pot of tea while you’re about it,” she added. After all, one could always use a cup of tea, as Osbert’s cousin Rosemary was wont to remark.

  “Um ah,” said Sergeant MacVicar in appreciation of this stratagem. “Now, Deputy Monk, what is this about quilt pieces?”

  Osbert explained. “You see, when we were burgled we were assumed to have had them, but we didn’t. When Arethusa was burgled, she was assumed to have them, but we did.”

  “I see. That is perfectly clear. And the pieces, you believe, are the clue that was referred to in this letter Miss Paffnagel claims Mr. Fairfield showed her shortly before he was foully done to death.”

  “That’s what Dittany and I think,” said Osbert. “We haven’t figured out the code yet, but maybe I got some of the letters wrong. It’s the bees, you know, waving their feelers. I’m not much up on semaphore code. I was going to take another crack at it today.”

  “I suggest you do so. First, however, I wish you two would look around this house and try to ascertain whether anything of value has been abstracted. Oh, and one other question. This apparition, or visitation, did Mr. or Mrs. Jehosaphat Fairfield see it also?”

  “No, Arethusa said they were both sawing wood like a house afire,” said Dittany in a fine concatenation of metaphor and simile. “In fact they both overslept and were late getting off. They’d been whooping it up on Zilla Trott’s dandelion wine when they went to visit Mrs. Fairfield at Minerva’s. That was after we’d had supper here together. They drank a fair amount then, too. You know, Osbert, I can’t imagine Minerva getting them drunk, now that I think of it. She must have seen they were already half loaded, and you know she’s always inclined toward temperance.”

  “Well, Miss Paffnagel had the father of all hangovers yesterday or I’m a coyote’s uncle,” Osbert insisted. “You know something? I’m going to call up Minerva right now and ask her what shape they were in when they left there.”

  “I think you may have a point, Deputy Monk,” said Sergeant MacVicar.

  But the point was not taken, because nobody answered at Minerva’s. Dittany phoned the museum, thinking Mrs. Fairfield might have been taken there under escort to pick up her personal effects, but got no answer. Then she called Zilla, because if Minerva wasn’t at home Zilla was sure to know where she’d be. But Zilla didn’t.

  “She wasn’t going anywhere that I know of. Mrs. Fairfield was pretty cut up, thanks to your dear Aunt Arethusa, and Minerva was just going to try to get her to spend the day quietly around the house.”

  “Then why doesn’t somebody answer the phone?” Dittany demanded.

  “Don’t ask me. Maybe they’re out in the back yard. Did you let it ring?”

  “Of course I did. Look, maybe you’d better take a run over there, if you don’t mind. I’m at Arethusa’s. She got knocked out and burgled last night, in case you hadn’t heard.”

  “She what? Dittany, are you sure?”

  “Doc Somervell is, and so’s Sergeant MacVicar. Arethusa still isn’t fully conscious, and we don’t know if she ever will be. The doctor says it’s probably only on account of her thick hair she wasn’t killed outright. Now will you go check on Minerva?”

  “Yup.”

  That was what was so great about Zilla. Dittany hung up and went to make sure the dining room still had its full quota of crocodiles. A few minutes later, Zilla called back.

  “Dittany, is the doctor still there?”

  “No, why? Don’t tell me they’ve—”

  “They’re still asleep and I can’t wake them up. They’re snoring like pigs. Minerva doesn’t snore. At least I’ve never heard her. And don’t start in on my dandelion wine, because she didn’t have any. It looks to me as if they’ve both been drugged.”

  “Drugged? Then that’s what was wrong with Hunding Paffnagel and the Jehosaphat Fairfields the night before. Try not to worry Zilla. They’ll wake up sooner or later with awful hangovers. Stay with them. I’ll send somebody.”

  Dittany gave Zilla’s news to Sergeant MacVicar, heard him utter a word she’d never thought would pass his lips, and saw him leave the house at what could best be described as a stately gallop. Then she went back to searching. It took a long time, because the house was large and Arethusa was acquisitive. As far as they could tell, nothing was missing. At intervals, she or Osbert checked in on Arethusa. At last Osbert was rewarded by finding his aunt awake and aware.

  “What are you doing here?” was her fond greeting.

  “It’s all right, Aunt Arethusa,” he told her in a gentler tone than he had perhaps ever used before. “Don’t try to thrash around. You’ve been hurt, but you’re going to be all right.”

  “Who hurt me?”

  “You said it was the visitation. Don’t you remember?”

  “No. Ridiculous. Visitations don’t go around bashing people on the head. I want some tea.”

  “I’ll get it. You lie still.” Dittany ran down to the kitchen, wondering what had happened to the tea Mrs. Poppy was supposed to have made and, for that matter, to Mrs. Poppy.

  That little mystery, at least, was solved when she found the kettle boiling dry on the stove and the woman out by the back fence in excited confabulation with Grandsire Coskoff’s new wife. Dittany left her there, refilled the kettle, and made up a tray for Arethusa. Surely a piece of toast and a little orange juice wouldn’t hurt. When she got back upstairs she was met by Osbert assisting his aunt back from the bathroom.

  “Up and about already? Wonderful! Just don’t get too frisky. Here, let me fix your pillows. How’s that?”

  “Ugh,” Arethusa groaned. “Would you mind holding the cup for me? My hands don’t seem to have any strength in them.”

  “It’s just the shock. You’ll be all right.” Dittany hoped she was telling the truth. “Here, take a sip.”

  Arethusa’s alimentary system appeared to be working at any rate. She drank the tea, sipped the juice, and even managed a corner of the toast. Then she said, “Too tired,” and closed her eyes again.

  “Do you think she’s all right?” Osbert whispered to Dittany.

  The lids flew up. The great eyes flashed. “Idiot,” snarled Arethusa.

  Dittany’s own eyes filled with happy tears. “Yes, darling,” she whispered back, “she’s going to be just fine.”

  CHAPTER 24

  THERESE BOULANGER SHOWED UP a little later with a bowl of blancmange, a bunch of snapdragons from her garden, and a plea to be useful. Dittany and Osbert left Therese babysitting the convalescent and went to see what was up at Minerva’s. There, they found Sergeant MacVicar and Zilla Trott in earnest conference with Dr. Somervell.

  “Aye, they’ve been drugged, nae doot about it,” the sergeant told them. “The sair question is, how?”

  “Camomile tea,” Dittany told him promptly. “Hunding Paffnagel and the Jehosaphat Fairfields had some here the night before, and the same thing happened to them. Miss Paffnagel thought she was hung over. So did we, considering. But then we got to thinking. Zilla’s dandelion wine is potent stuff all right, but people don’t get drunk on those little thimblefuls Minerva serves them. You know her folks were all blue-ribbon. Go look in that canister, Zilla. I’ll bet you find something besides camomile.”

  Mrs. Trott ran to get the painted tin box she herself kept filled with the soothing herb for Minerva and spilled its contents out on a clean cup towel. “You’re right, Dittany. Look at those little specks.” She picked up a few on her fingertip, sniffed, and tasted. “Valium or some such muck, I’ll bet. Who could pull a rotten
trick like that?”

  “Anybody who took a notion,” said Dittany. “You know Minerva never thinks to lock her doors, and I suppose half the town’s been through here, what with the funeral and all. Well, I expect they’ll sleep it off sooner or later. The others did.”

  “I don’t know as I’m going to take a chance on that,” said the doctor. “We’ll try rousing them first. If that doesn’t work, I’ll use the stomach pump. Zilla, you can help me. The rest of you clear out of here. You’d only be in the way.”

  “Then let’s go home,” said Osbert. “I want another whack at that code. Sergeant, maybe you could check those bees over and see if we made any mistakes.”

  Sergeant MacVicar could and did, but had to concede he agreed with them and the Girl Guides’ manual. “Maybe yon colors mean something,” he offered, “though I’m sair fuddled as to what.”

  “I know,” cried Dittany. “Don’t you see? It’s the rainbow. Red, orange, green, blue, purple. Try them in that order.”

  Osbert began to scribble. “LUBFYPE … that’s not getting us anywhere. CLYBLU … Nope. FLY …”

  “Fly,” shouted Dittany. “At least it’s a word. Then FP. And look, here comes FLUB.”

  “Flub’s rather modern slang, I think,” Osbert objected.

  “FLU, then. The fly flew. That makes sense, sort of.”

  “But what’s so—hey, wait a second. FP, that could be fireplace. Fly fireplace flue, which leaves BBLEC left over.”

  “BBL is the abbreviation for barrel,” Sergeant MacVicar pointed out. “Could it be a barrel of something beginning with EC?”

  “Eclairs?” Dittany wondered. “Embroidered corset?”

  Osbert shook his head. “I must be wrong about fireplace. Wasn’t the house built after airtight stoves came in?”

  “That’s right,” said Dittany. “The mantelpieces are all fakes. But how about FP standing for front parlor? There’s that monstrous great round stove with the cast-iron roses on top. I suppose you could call it barrel shaped.”

  “Fly front parlor flue,” Osbert nodded. “That sounds more like a direction. Kind of a risky place to hide something, though. Tin stovepipes get awfully hot.”