A Dismal Thing To Do

by Charlotte MacLeod

  “Not only a right but an obligation,” Madoc agreed. “So why didn’t you tell him yourself?”

  Armand shrugged. “I thought it would come easier from Pierre. He’s got this jollying way with him, you know. The kids look up to him. I’ll get your skis and lantern, Inspector.”

  “And I’ll get myself out of here,” Alf grunted. “Christ, I hate the thought of telling Nella.”

  “She’s—er—not your wife?”

  “Hell no. She’s my second cousin and my sister-in-law and a few other things, that’s all.”

  “What about the father?”

  “Oh, him. He was over the hills an’ far away before Bud was ever born. Married six or eight more by now, for all I know. That turned out to be a hobby of his. Nella got a divorce and took back her maiden name, but most likely they were never legally married in the first place.”

  “And the boy became the apple of her eye, I suppose.”

  “Ayup. She made a cussed fool of Bud, not that he couldn’t of done it himself without any help from his mother. Bad blood there. Maybe it’s air for the best, but I guess I won’t say that to Nella. ’Night, Inspector.”

  He left, and Armand came back with the skis and battery lantern.

  “I think these ought to be about your length, Inspector.”

  “Just fine, thank you.”

  “Oh, no problem. We keep them to rent. Anything else you need?”

  Armand was awfully anxious to please all of a sudden. Madoc shook his head. “You might just tell me whether you noticed a pair of skis missing when you went to get these.”

  “Eh? No, I’m sure they were all there. The rack was full. I’d have noticed. Have to be careful the kids don’t use ’em and forget to put them back. Look, Inspector, we’ll be closing here pretty soon, but I can give you a key to one of the cabins if you want a place to come back to sleep. Leave the light on, turn up the heater, put in a thermos of hot coffee, sandwiches, anything you say.”

  “Thank you, but I don’t expect to be back tonight. I’ll return your skis as soon as I’m through with them.”

  Armand waved his hand. “No problem. By the way, is it okay if I let them make arrangements about the body?”

  “I’ll be back in the morning to take some pictures for evidence.”

  “I can do that for you now if you like,” said Armand. “I’ve got a color Polaroid camera. People are always wanting their pictures taken with fish they’ve caught. When they can find one to catch,” he added somewhat bitterly. “Just a second, it’s right behind the bar.”

  The camera was a good one and the photographs were all too clear. Madoc thanked his obliging host and stuck them in an inner pocket for safekeeping. “These will do fine. You can go ahead and let the family claim the body whenever they want to. Good night, Mr. Bergeron.”

  Madoc refastened the parka he’d unzipped when he’d gone back inside the lodge, tilted the skis and poles over his shoulder, and trudged out to the parking lot, the red lantern swinging from his other hand. If he turned it on, of course, he’d be an easy target should the sniper still be around. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be able to see any tracks in the snow.

  Down here it was pretty hopeless. The snow near where Buddy’s vehicle had been parked Was packed into a solid gray mass, nor could he see any sign that the person who’d drained the tank had climbed up over the bank to get to the hillside. Maybe there’d been two: one to drain and one to shoot. Maybe there’d been a whole string of them stationed along the way in case Buddy chose a different route or the gas didn’t give out at the right moment. A real military operation.

  With Eyeball Grouse at the head of it? He must be groggy. He began checking along the edge of the parking lot, found a spot where he could persuade himself there were signs somebody had clambered up over the wall of frozen chunks, took the same path, strapped on his skis, and turned on his lantern.

  After a wearisome and fruitless stint of zigzagging across the open hillside near the lodge, Madoc moved on to the stand of evergreens that followed along above the lane. Here, where the thick spread of the boughs had caught much of the snowfall, he had a bit of luck. His lantern beam easily picked up a branch that had just recently had its load of snow knocked off, and then another.

  After that, it wasn’t too hard. He found the place where the sniper had stood waiting long enough to dislodge a fair number of the crusted lumps and trample among them. Trying to keep his feet warm, Madoc supposed. There were prints to be seen, but it looked as if strips of sacking had been wound around the boot soles, either to provide better traction on the glazed-over slope or else to blur any tracks. So the sniper was familiar enough with the terrain to realize he could manage without snowshoes.

  This wasn’t where the sniper had fired from, it was where he’d spied Buddy beginning to have trouble with his vehicle, and realized the gas was giving out. From here, he’d run hell-for-leather, parallel to the lane, heedless of the trail he was leaving in his wake. He hadn’t had far to go. Madoc could see exactly where the shot had been fired from, a neat crease cutting across the frosting on a fir bough directly in line with the emergency flare he himself had stuck into the bank to mark where the stalled snowmobile had been found with its dead driver still aboard. It hadn’t been more than coincidence, probably, that the sniper had timed his run so perfectly and been able to get a side-on shot just as the vehicle stopped. He wouldn’t have cared. At this range, a shot from ahead or behind would have been just as easy and just as deadly.

  Madoc saw no spent casing lying on the snow, and no sign the killer had gone pawing around to find one. He wouldn’t have been using one of the illegal semiautomatic rifles, then; more likely a single-shot with a telescopic sight. He’d have seen for a certainty that he’d stopped his man with the first shot, left the casing in the gun, and got the hell out of there.

  He’d been cagey about it, though. He must have dropped down on his hands and knees or maybe even wormed his way along on his belly until he was far enough back among the trees so that nobody could possibly spot him from the lane. This was clear enough from the fact that only branches right down against the snow line showed any sign of having been brushed against. Then he’d got to his feet again and made a beeline for—as Madoc had pretty much expected—the big shed where people who didn’t care to risk their springs on Armand’s apology for a road had left their cars and waited for a lift in to the lodge. There, no doubt, he’d had transport waiting and simply driven away. If he’d hung around behind the shed till the coast was clear, it would have been a cinch to get out without being seen.

  Maybe he hadn’t had to. Maybe those brothers of the belt who’d been trickling away during the dance and shortly thereafter had been waiting for him drawn up in solid phalanx to applaud the execution of a silly young fellow who couldn’t keep his mouth shut. About what? Madoc kicked off Armand’s skis, stuck them and the poles inside his borrowed car, and drove himself back to the farm.

  Janet was waiting to let him in. “I couldn’t sleep, so I came down and made myself a pot of tea. Want some?”

  The offer was welcome as her kiss. “Please. Did Annabelle get home all right?”

  “Yes, ages ago. The Phillipses dropped her off. She told me you’d been kept behind because that McLumber boy who works in the hardware store got shot on his snowmobile. What was it, some drunk with a rifle trying to be funny?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Where is she now?”

  “Sleeping the sleep of the just. You wore her out. She said she had a perfectly lovely time, all but the last of it. She was worried about Buddy McLumber.”

  “She might as well save her sympathy for his mother. Thanks, love.” Madoc took the mug of tea Janet handed him, pulled the rocking chair close to the stove, and set her down on his lap. “Come and warm me up.”

  “You could stand warming,” she murmured into his neck. “You’re cold as a frog. Madoc, are you trying to tell me Buddy’s dead and you went out there alone at night aft
er the one who killed him?”

  “That’s my job, dear. Naturally, I waited to make sure the bird was long flown before I started out. Keep this under your chapeau, Jenny, but I doubt very much Buddy’s death was an accident. I have a hunch he’d been recruited by some secret society before they found out Buddy couldn’t keep a secret.”

  “You mean like the Owls? Madoc, what were you drinking at Armand’s place?”

  “I wondered that myself, love.”

  “All right, be that way if you want to. But people don’t go shooting each other over that kind of nonsense.”

  “You’d be surprised the silly stuff people get shot over. Actually, though, I was thinking of something more like the IRA or the Ku Klux Klan. Perhaps I’m all wet, but there was something decidedly cloak-and-daggerish going on at Bull Moose Portage this evening.”

  “Annabelle didn’t say anything about it.”

  “I’m sure she didn’t notice. It was all pretty surreptitious.”

  He told her about the varicolored woven sashes slung around unlikely bellies, about the passing of the handgrip during the so conveniently choreographed country dance, keeping his voice to a thread in case any of the Wadmans should be astir and coming down to see what was going on.

  “And not long after the dance was over, Bergeron shut off young McLumber’s drinks and got Dubois to give him the push, or so he claims, because McLumber was beginning to make a pest of himself. I hadn’t noticed it myself, and I’ve had a fair amount of professional experience with drunk and disorderlies, as you know. He hadn’t got half a mile from the place when his snowmobile stalled because someone had drained his gas tank in the parking lot, or so the evidence indicates. At that point, somebody who’d been stalking him along the lane potted him like a sitting duck. If that doesn’t point to an organized conspiracy, maybe you’d like to tell me what does.”

  Janet rubbed her forehead against his by now somewhat stubbly chin, thinking it over. “So you think this new boy friend of Cecile Bergeron’s is the head of it. Where was he when Buddy got shot?”

  “Still in the lodge to the best of my knowledge. At least he was there when Annabelle and I left, and in pretty much the same place when I got back with the body. That doesn’t mean much, you know. If he’s any sort of leader at all, he’d know better than to let any breath of suspicion blow his way. Several of the brethren had already left while the dance was still on. Any one of them would have had time to drain the tank and get himself posted for the ambush before McLumber got his walking papers. I assume they all hunt, like most of the men around here. That was as clean a shot as you’d ever want to see.”

  Janet shuddered. “I’d never want to see any. Poor Annabelle! She didn’t see it happen, did she?”

  “No, love, not a peep. We were well back in the pack and the snow was sticking to the car windows on that side anyway. We heard the shot, that’s all, and then the commotion when the lead car stopped short behind the snowmobile and a couple of others piled up into it. I was dim enough not to hop out right away and go to see what happened. I just sat there hoping the blasted line would get moving again.”

  “It’s as well you did. That sniper might have taken a potshot at you.”

  “I hardly think he hung around long enough for that. Anyway, there were targets enough if he’d wanted another. The chaps who’d banged into one another got out, of course, and discovered Buddy was dead. Naturally they assumed it was an accident, either a crazy drunk or somebody jacking a deer. I’m sure they were meant to think so.”

  “If the gas hadn’t been let out of Buddy’s tank, you might have come to the same conclusion, mightn’t you?” said Janet. “Don’t you think that was sort of extra frosting on the cake? And what about the rifle? It seems to me if a person wanted to hit a moving target at fairly close range, a blast from a shotgun would be just as effective and harder to trace because there’d be no bullet. Of course it wouldn’t have been so spit-and-polish. What you’re telling me sounds more like an army maneuver.”

  “You know, love, that’s a damned good point. Well thought out, faultlessly executed, and a lot of extra fuss for no good reason from a civilian point of view, unless the killer wanted it made known that McLumber had in fact been deliberately murdered.”

  “Wouldn’t that be pretty crazy?”

  “Not if you meant the killing to serve as a warning to somebody else. I’ll have to get back out there first thing in the morning.”

  “Then you’d better hike yourself up to bed right now,” said Janet. “You’d also better watch yourself around that lodge. Maybe the warning was meant for you.”

  “I can’t buy that, Jenny. You don’t try to scare off a law officer by murdering somebody right under his nose. I’m more inclined to think they didn’t fully realize I was one. I was just Bert Wadman’s brother-in-law, out for a mildly clandestine good time with Bert’s wife. Annabelle’s a marvelous dancer, by the way.”

  “I’m not so bad myself, in case you’re ever interested enough to try me.”

  “Yes, Jenny.”

  Madoc got into his pajamas, did what he had to do in the bathroom, and climbed into bed with his wife. He fell asleep at once, and stayed asleep. He didn’t even hear the telephone when it rang at a quarter to four.

  Janet did. So did Bert. She let him take it, and lay there listening to him swear as he stumbled over various things, trying to get to the goddamn thing before it woke everybody in the goddamn house. A minute or so later he was back upstairs, shaking Madoc by the shoulders.

  “Bert, quit that,” Janet hissed. “He’s only been asleep a couple of hours. They had a murder out at Bull Moose Portage.”

  “Well, now they’ve had a bombing at Jase Bain’s. Fred Olson’s on the phone having conniption fits. He wants Madoc to get over there as quick as the Lord will let him.”

  Chapter 15

  MADOC WAS AWAKE AND out of bed before Bert finished his message. “All right. I’ll talk to Fred.”

  “At least put on your bathrobe and slippers.”

  Janet might as well have saved her breath. She got out of bed herself, wincing a bit from her bruises, followed him downstairs with the warm robe, and wrapped it around him while she tried to listen in. What Fred had to say was pretty horrendous and mostly profane. It boiled down to the fact that he’d never seen such a jeezledy mess in all his born days and hoped to Christ he never would again. Every goddamn piece of junk in that jeezledy yard was scattered from here to hell and gone.

  “What about Bain?” Madoc asked him.

  “Cripes, for all I know that poor old bugger’s scattered, too. There ain’t nothing left of the house but a cellar hole and a pile o’ kindling.”

  “I’ll get on to the bomb squad, and then come out. Where are you calling from, Fred?”

  “Jim Badger’s place. It’s the nearest to Bain’s. He got woke up by the explosion. Shook the house an’ busted a window, he says. He went to find out what it was and then called me. Then we went back together an’ when I seen what happened, I figured I better get hold of you.”

  “Did you try searching the wreckage for Bain?”

  “Best as we could with just a couple o’ hand lanterns. Jim couldn’t stay long. He’s a traveler, he tells me, an’ he’s got to get on the road pretty soon. I don’t know what to do, Madoc.”

  “Stay where you are and have a cup of tea to warm you up, if there’s one going. I’ll be along as soon as I can. Jenny, do you know where Jim Badger lives?”

  “She wouldn’t know Jim,” Olson interrupted. “Tell her it’s the old Henry Fewter place. You know where it forks off to get out to Bain’s? There’s a little brown house with an old boat in the yard just beyond.”

  “Yes, I know where you mean,” said Madoc. “See you in a while, Fred.”

  By the time Madoc had put his call to the bomb squad and got his clothes on, Janet had ham and eggs and warmed-up biscuits waiting for him. He saw no reason not to stay and eat them. There wasn’t really much po
int in his going at all until after sunup. Janet was all for calling Fred Olson back and reminding him of that fact.

  “What’s the sense of poking around out there in the dark?”

  “It won’t be dark much longer, and poor old Fred’s in a swivet, as well he might be.”

  “All right, Madoc, if you feel you have to. I’ll wrap Fred up a few doughnuts. They’ll calm him down fast enough, I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  Janet was already filling the thermos Annabelle had lent him yesterday, and looking a good deal perkier than when she’d arrived, thank God. Madoc kissed her at some length, took the bag she’d packed, and went out into what was left of the night.

  He found the place easily enough. Fred Olson’s car was in its well-plowed driveway and a light was on over the front door, illuminating a painted sign that read BADGER’S HOLE. No Badger came to his knock, but the door was unlocked, so Madoc went on in and found Fred asleep in a maple platform rocker that had been cheap to begin with and hadn’t aged gracefully. He opened the doughnut bag and held it under Olson’s nose.

  “Eh? Mpf? Oh hi, Madoc. What time is it?”

  “Getting on toward five. No Badgers in the hole?”

  “Eh? No, only Jim, and he left a while back. Told me he batches it when he can’t get a woman to move in with him. He claims he’s been tryin’ for the past year, but they all want to get married first. Don’t sound likely to me, the way they are these days.”

  “This wouldn’t be a terribly exciting place to live, I shouldn’t think.”

  Madoc looked around the small shabby room. It could have stood a woman’s touch, all right, though Badger had made one or two clumsy attempts to smarten up the place. He’d lined up a collection of beer cans, each a different brand, across the mantelpiece. Over them he’d tacked a cardboard advertising poster showing a racing skater, and nailed a pair of crossed hockey sticks above it. A deep-sea fisherman’s rod stood in the corner with a dapper little Red Coachman dangling from its line. More dry flies were stuck into the band of a felt hat that lay on a badly ringed table, beside a lamp made from a duck decoy. There was a sofa that matched the chair and a dinky maple coffee table that must have been thrown in with the set, and that was it for the decor.