A Dismal Thing To Do

by Charlotte MacLeod

  “Hard? You’d have thought he’d caught me robbing the Royal Bank of Canada. He just grabbed his coat and stomped out of the store as if it had been Sodom and Gomorrah rolled into one.”

  “You didn’t try to go after ’im?”

  “How could I? There was a customer to wait on. Mrs. Fiske, it was. Her kids had been having a snowball fight with some other kids. Somebody hove one with a rock in the middle and it went straight through the parlor window. She had cardboard stuck over the hole, but she needed the glass so her husband could set it as soon as he got home. You know Joe Fiske, Fred. He took Elmer Bain’s place as foreman down at the lumber mill. Anyway, I figured it was better to let Henry cool down before I tried to reason with him. Damn it, we’d worked together for thirty-seven years.”

  McLumber was close to breaking down. Fred would have let up on him, but Madoc knew they mustn’t. “Mr. McLumber, did you realize Badger had murdered Henry?”

  “No, I didn’t! Not—not right away.”

  The hardware dealer couldn’t look at them. “I suppose what I really mean is that I did know but I couldn’t let myself admit it. You see, I couldn’t picture Henry having that kind of accident. He was a crack shot, he knew guns inside and out, and he was precise in his ways. Suppose for instance the customer had wanted that glass to measure fourteen and a sixteenth by twenty-three and five thirty-seconds of an inch or whatever the hell that comes out to in centimeters. That’s how Henry would have cut it, not a hair under, not a hair over. Whatever he did, he did just so, and if he couldn’t do it right, he wouldn’t touch it.”

  “You’re sure about this, I see.”

  “No question. I ought to know better than anybody else. I worked with him long enough. I can see Henry going out and shooting rabbits to work off steam. Not out of meanness, Henry wouldn’t do that, but his wife makes a mighty good rabbit pot pie, so they’d serve a purpose and save a little on the grocery bill. But as to cleaning the gun afterward, if Henry was still upset, he’d have laid it aside till he could do it properly. And all that whispering about suicide some of ’em were doing, that was plain foolishness. He couldn’t have, not Henry. What he’d have done, he’d either have given me the cold shoulder for the rest of his life, or else he’d have come back next day and preached at me about sin and greed and the evils of putting the cup to my brother’s lips till I broke down and repented and told Mr. Badger I wouldn’t work with him any more. Then I suppose he’d have shot us both, and I wish to God he had. What’s to become of me now?”

  Madoc looked at Fred. “It’s your bailiwick, Marshal.”

  “All right, then. If it’s up to me, I’d say let’s do what we done with Jase Bain. You’re free till they need you down at the county courthouse, Ed, then the judge will have to decide. In the meantime, I’m puttin’ you on your word of honor as an Owl not to leave town. This booze better stay where it is for the time bein’. I s’pose we might get Jase Bain over here to take a look at the boxes an’ confirm they’re what he used to pick up an’ take out there to that place on the way to Oromocto.”

  “Was that what Jase did? I never knew.”

  “I’m not sure Bain himself knew exactly what he was doing,” said Madoc. “He told us Badger kept supplies at his place, but I expect they were only empty bottles.”

  “Looks to me like Badger was the only one who really knew what was goin’ on,” Fred remarked.

  “Yes, that would be his way of keeping control,” Madoc replied. “Badger’s an efficient organizer, though his record doesn’t show he’s ever been mixed up in bootlegging before. Being on the run from prison and probably without capital, I expect he just looked around for a chance to muscle in on some quiet little game where he could turn a dishonest dollar. Your old family business offered the right sort of opening, Mr. McLumber, and he took it.”

  “But he said we couldn’t go on using our still because it wasn’t big enough.”

  “Prob’ly meant he had a better one all lined up,” said Fred Olson. “I wish I knew where it was.”

  “I don’t know where it was, but I have a hunch I could tell you where it went,” said Madoc. “You haven’t happened to notice a sudden stoppage of supplies during the past week, Mr. McLumber?”

  “Why yes, as a matter of fact, I have. Mr. Badger got hold of me only this past Thursday night, which he seldom ever did, to tell me not to let Bud make the usual local deliveries on Friday. He said there’d been some trouble with the still and we’d have to slow down and stretch out our stock to keep the big customers on the hook till he could get things straightened out. That’s how come you see so much stock on hand right now. Normally this would all have been cleared out and a fresh load coming in tonight. Say, you haven’t been bugging my telephone or anything, have you? How did you catch on to Mr. Badger and me?”

  “It’s a long story, some of which I’m not at liberty yet to tell you. You must realize that when Jason Bain’s place was bombed, Badger was the most likely suspect simply because he was the only one who lived nearby. However, that would have been a most unusual thing for a sporting goods salesman to do, so I began wondering whether Badger wasn’t what he appeared to be.”

  “Ain’t sportin’ goods kind o’ thieves’ slang for stolen property?” Fred remarked.

  “That’s true,” said Madoc. “I hadn’t thought of that. What got to me first, I think, was that little house. It was such a strange sort of place for a salesman to buy. Travelers are gregarious souls as a rule, and here was this chap sticking himself out in the middle of nowhere with a well-known curmudgeon for his only neighbor, and not mixing with the townsfolk. The place hadn’t been fixed up at all, but Badger was keeping it tidy, like a man who’d learned neat habits either in the service or in jail.”

  “He did have a lot o’ sportin’ stuff around, though,” said Fred.

  “Yes, but it was oddly arranged: a deep-sea fishing rod with a trout fly tied to the line, for instance, and downhill ski boots next to a pair of cross-country skis. I began to wonder whether in fact Badger knew anything about the goods he was supposed to be peddling. They made me think of Armand Bergeron’s dance band, just a job lot of secondhand instruments he’d picked up cheap at an auction. We managed to pick up some of his fingerprints, sent them for analysis, and got back a great deal of information that scared me half silly just to hear. The gist of it is, Mr. McLumber, that once Badger got his hooks into you, you were in a no-win situation, He’s left a string of victims everywhere he’s been, some of them dead like Henry and Bud, some of them alive and wishing they weren’t, like yourself. He’s been caught before and escaped before. This time there’ll be no question of his escaping. Now if you’ll excuse us, Mr. McLumber, I think we ought to be getting back. The marshal’s expecting company.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to take me in, Fred?” said McLumber. “I wouldn’t hold it against you, you know.”

  “No, but the rest o’ your tribe would. Specially Nella. She’s already had another sad bereavement, in case you hadn’t heard.”

  “Oh, Jelly Grouse. Yes, I’d heard. But Jelly’s been getting pinched for one thing or another ever since he was out of diapers. Me, I’m supposed to be a pillar of the community.”

  “Well, stay propped up till we get Buddy planted. Then we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.”

  Chapter 23

  ED MCLUMBER INSISTED ON following the pool car back to Pitcherville in his ill-gotten Lincoln, on the reasonable grounds that he didn’t want to be a whited sepulcher. The least he could do, he felt, was confront Jelly Grouse and urge him to repent his evil ways even if it wouldn’t keep him out of jail. That was fine with Madoc and Fred. So well did McLumber succeed, in fact, that Jelly broke down in tears and ratted on the man who’d not only helped him distribute the bootleg whiskey but also stolen the tow truck to clean up the debris from the burned-out truck.

  Madoc recognized the name. Wolfman Wombatte, a part-time mechanic and full-time rogue, was an old acquain
tance. Fred Olson, too, had entertained Wombatte in this very cooler on a disorderly conduct charge. Sam also knew Wombatte, though he didn’t explain in what context. The three of them were still holding an agreeable old-home week with Jelly when the wagon appeared to cart the prisoners away.

  During this period, George had listened in admiration, Badger in disdainful silence. Ed McLumber, his conscience temporarily at rest, had gone home to put on his good suit for the funeral and, perhaps, try to recruit a new hardware clerk from among the mourners. Then the formalities were gone through, Sam reluctantly uncocked Badger’s rifle and handed it over for evidence, and the night’s work was over.

  Millie, wakened by the to-do, appeared with a coat thrown over her bathrobe to offer breakfast as soon as she could get her clothes on, but Madoc said he and Sam had better get back or Annabelle’s feelings would be hurt. Knowing Annabelle, Millie had to agree that they’d better. The party broke up with many hand wringings and back-slappings, and Madoc drove Sam back to the farm.

  As they drove in, they met Bert crossing the yard. “Where do you two rounders think you’ve been, eh?”

  “To a roundup,” said Madoc. “Bain’s neighbor Mr. Badger and Nella McLumber’s friend Jelly Grouse are off to the county jail. Sam’s earned a damned good breakfast and so, with all immodesty, have I. Do you have time to come in and watch us eat?”

  “Watch, hell. I haven’t had my own yet. What time do you, think it is?”

  “Come to think of it, I have no idea. Nor do I much care. I want food and a hot bath and about seventeen hours’ sleep. Then I want to get back to Fredericton and tie this case in a double bow knot around a certain inscrutable somebody’s neck. Talk about a quiet weekend in the country.”

  Madoc got his breakfast, his bath, and a sleep of adequate duration, though not seventeen hours’ worth and not until he’d phoned Fredericton and asked somebody to nip over to Wolfman Wombatte’s house and run him in. That took care of Badger’s staff. As to the bootleggers themselves, they’d be Eyeball Grouse’s pigeons and were doubtless in the coop already. Then he got up and went snowshoeing with the boys, then he ate supper, then he helped Bert straighten out his goddamn taxes, then he went to bed with Janet and the springs didn’t squeak.

  Early the following morning, he packed his wife and her washstand into the car, notwithstanding Annabelle’s protests that they’d miss the funeral, and drove back to Fredericton. Then he reported to RCMP headquarters and suggested to the deputy commissioner that they perform whatever arcane rites might be necessary to get hold of Mr. X.

  “Got things all sewed up, have you, Inspector?”

  “I believe so.”

  “That ought to make him happy.”

  “I doubt that, sir. I think I’ve jugged his brother.”

  “His brother?”

  “Or his cousin, or possibly his great-uncle. Family relationships are somewhat confusing in this case.”

  “Aren’t most family relationships? How is Mrs. Rhys?”

  “She claims to be quite recovered.”

  “Good. Please give her my regards. Well, I’d better get on the hot line to Mr. X. Er—would you have happened to—”

  “Major Charles Grouse, known to his former schoolmates as Eyeball. He comes from a settlement called Big-ears, out back of Pitcherville, where my wife grew up. She spotted the accent as soon as he opened his mouth.”

  “That odd little way of stressing his word endings? I wondered where he’d picked it up.”

  “They all do it out there; nobody knows why. My wife thought it tactless to mention the fact in front of him, since it reminded her that one of the men she’d heard talking the night of her adventure was from Bigears, too. She was subsequently able to identify this man as Jellicoe Grouse. He’s confessed and is at present lodged in the Adelaide County jail, which appears to have been his home away from home most of his life.”

  “Oh dear. Jellicoe resting comfortably, is he?”

  “I think we can reassure Major Grouse on that point. How soon do you think he can get here?”

  “Need you ask?”

  “Not really. Then I’ll be in my office until I’m wanted.”

  Madoc was plugging his way through accumulated paperwork and finding it a restful change when the intercom buzzed. Nevertheless, it was with no reluctance that he pushed the work aside, combed his hair, straightened his tie, and entered the presence. Mr. X was there, looking apprehensive.

  “Well, Inspector. Mean to say you’ve caught the rogues already?”

  “My wife comes from Pitcherville, Mr. X.”

  “Oh Christ!”

  “That about sums it up, Mr. X. As you’d no doubt suspected, it was Buddy McLumber who drove your stolen object away in Elzire Bergeron’s old bull box. Jellicoe Grouse and an old acquaintance of ours called Wolfman Wombatte were the strong-arm boys. The man running the show is an army deserter who calls himself Badger and was posing as a sporting goods salesman. Badger is an escape artist of no mean ability, having served less than his appointed terms in three different maximum security prisons, only one of which was in Canada, I’m relieved to say. He’s also used the names Beaver, Bearhound, and Bandicoot at various times. Any one of them sound familiar to you?”

  Major Grouse, as he might as well now be called, said they didn’t, but anybody who called himself Bandicoot must be a weirdo and he’d be damned if he’d have had a Bandicoot in any division of his. “But what about the bull box? Great Caesar, you don’t mean—”

  “I’m afraid so, Mr. X. My wife made a positive identification from some photographs supplied by Perce Bergeron. Since she’d met the truck head-on and tried to climb up over the radiator grill to get at the driver, whom she supposed to require rescuing from the cab, she’d had ample opportunity to fix the pattern in her memory. Then there was the fact that she spent considerable time standing there watching it burn after Buddy McLumber had gone off with her car.”

  “What makes you so sure it was Bud who stole the car?” Eyeball Grouse had abandoned all effort at concealment, but was evidently still determined to defend the family honor insofar as possible.

  “Jelly Grouse says Buddy was driving the truck, and there was nobody else around at the time. Buddy’s mother admitted he’d been out late that night. I’m afraid the real clincher, however, is that Buddy was known for his inability to keep from blabbing everything he knew, and Buddy was shot through the head, allegedly by Badger, as he was leaving Bull Moose Portage after the dance Saturday night on his snowmobile. The funeral is being held today, as a matter of fact. I’m surprised you weren’t notified.”

  “Can’t expect me to drop everything and run down there, can they? How was I supposed to know Bud’s death was connected with—damn it, Rhys, you might have let me know.”

  “You forget, Mr. X, that I don’t officially know who you are.”

  “Oh, well, hell. What was I supposed to do? Damn it, I told you Friday morning I never wanted the blasted thing dumped on me in the first place.”

  “Stop me if I’m wrong, sir, but would this thing you had dumped on you have been by any chance a still that had been found being illicitly operated by members of the armed forces?”

  “On which side of the border?”

  “Whichever side you prefer, sir. It would obviously have been a base other than the one at which you yourself are in command.”

  “Umph. Go on.”

  “Would the operators have been apprehended and the still shut down only this past week? And was the still removed from its former site for the perfectly sound reason that there hadn’t yet been time to conduct a thorough investigation into how many of the personnel at that base not yet under arrest might also have been involved, and it was feared that the evidence might be destroyed either by the conspirators or by their sympathizers?”

  “C.O. was right, wasn’t he?”

  “Undoubtedly. The willingness of the officers’ mess personnel to permit the drivers’ thermos to be spiked with ipe
cac bears out that assumption.”

  “I never said it was ipecac.”

  “No sir.”

  “All right, blast your eyes, it was ipecac. Any tea going?”

  “At the door,” said Madoc, whose keen ear had picked up the small noises attendant upon balancing a trayful of mugs and fiddling with a knob at the same time. As the door opened and the orderly appeared, Eyeball Grouse stared at Madoc with mingled awe and suspicion. Still keeping a wary eye out, he reached for milk and sugar. After a few steadying sips, he spoke again.

  “I suppose you know about the still?”

  “Only that it must have been a remarkably efficient one, easily traceable to the place whence it was stolen and sure to get Badger and his crew into the hottest of water if they’d got caught with it in their possession. Or else there was no still at all, merely a load of rocket fuel the bootleggers had been bottling and selling as whiskey,” Madoc added, recalling the stuff they’d turned up in McLumber’s basement.

  “Tasted it, did you?”

  “Marshal Olson did. He’s a braver man than I am.”

  “Fred’s all right. We went to school together. I suppose he told you they used to call me Eyeball.”

  Major Grouse selected a pastry from the plate on the tea tray, ate it, and wiped his mustache. “Funny thing, everybody had a nickname, but we never called Fred anything but Fred. So Jelly’s in another jam.”

  From the look on his face he didn’t mean that to be funny, as in fact it wasn’t. “He’s only a kind of second or third cousin of mine, you know.”

  “There’s one in every family,” Madoc apologized. “About this still, Major Grouse. Was it something you’d be willing to explain?”

  “Oh hell, why not? Can’t expect me to go into technical details, naturally. You wouldn’t know what I was talking about. Neither would I.”

  Major Grouse took another pastry. “Gist of it is,” he went on with his mouth full, “some of the higher-ups—I’m not saying of what country, mind you—got hold of a bright idea about a new kind of ground-to-air missile. Dull afternoon at the officers’ mess, I suppose. So they spent a few million dollars getting it designed and having an experimental model made up. Then of course they had to test it out.”