Punch With Care

by Phoebe Atwood Taylor

  The roadster came almost to a complete stop.

  “What’s wrong?” Cummings asked. “Why are you slowing down?”

  Asey didn’t answer for a moment.

  “Just an idle passin’ thought that struck me,” he said as the roadster picked up speed again. “Nothin’ important. But I agree with you about Jack Briggs, doc—we’ll look into him some more later. Jennie said he left our house earlier than the rest of the project, so he’s got quite a lot of time there that could stand explainin’.”

  “By George—I didn’t tell you! I discovered what Layne wanted to talk over with him!”

  “So? An’ how’d you go about findin’ that out?”

  “Easy enough,” Cummings told him. “I just asked her. Seems he’s been offered a job he’s not very keen about, but Layne think’s it’s a wonderful opportunity and he ought to grab it. I asked her about Boone, too, but she just said Carolyn was with Miss Shearing. No use talking, apparently Louise and Aunt Mary just made up their minds that Boone is fine, and with Miss Shearing, and not only is that their story to which they’ve adhered, but they’ve even sold it to Layne and Douglass!”

  “Funny Layne wouldn’t have checked up more,” Asey said, “if she was so anxious about Boone that she nearly called me!”

  “She told me she simply yearned to call Carolyn, but Carolyn was furious if her schedule was disturbed, and that obviously she’d been swamped with some unforeseen college work—wonder what Briggs’s job could be?”

  “Wa-el, Gerty told me—” For the doctor’s benefit, Asey recalled her contribution about Mrs. Boone’s opening for a new secretary to replace Eric, and her suggestion that either Jack Briggs or Stinky might be a candidate for the job.

  “Motive!” Cummings said at once. “Motive for Eric, I mean. Kicked upstairs, and doesn’t want to go—oh, stop chuckling, will you?”

  “I can’t help it, doc!” Asey said. “You’ve hopped from the Douglasses, one by one, to Aunt Mary, an’ from her to Briggs, an’ now to Eric! I wish you’d pick out one an’ stick to him! Or her!”

  “I wish,” Cummings retorted, “that you’d just break down to the extent of picking one! Oh, there’s another thing. Layne made that date with Briggs this morning when the project arrived, and gave him the padlock key then. Humpf! That must mean there’s a duplicate key that was used by whoever unlocked the boat house so that they could shut me up in it later—” he stopped abruptly.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Why, damn it, they couldn’t have known they were going to shut me up, could they, if I surprised them when they were removing the body, so—oh, stop laughing! Stop it, you old hyena! I give up! I’ve shot my bolts! From now on,” Cummings said acidly, “you may have complete charge of the Brilliant Solutions and Deductions Department! What particular hostelry is this project crowd staying at,” he added as they approached the traffic lights at the four corners, “d’you know?”

  “Nope, but I’m sure we can guess easy enough by the noise an’ the swarm of—golly, I never made these confounded lights in my life!” he jammed on the brakes.

  “Hoo-hoo! Asey! Hoo-hoo!”

  Jennie came running up to the roadster from the side of the road.

  “I thought you’d turn up here at the lights some time,” she said breathlessly, “and I didn’t want to go rushing out there to the point asking where you were—hello, doc, so he finally found you, thank goodness! I got your car over there, and your wife says to tell you if you don’t come home and take care of your darn ole business, she’s going to Reno! I took down a list of calls you got to make that she gave me over the phone—here.”

  “Ah, yes, business!” Cummings said. “I’d completely forgotten it for the first time in years—what’ve you got in that basket there, Jennie?”

  “Some chowder, and some supper—for Asey!”

  “Do I have to play little tunes on your tender heartstrings?” Cummings demanded. “Do I have to tell you how I’ve been locked up—foodless, waterless, and practically airless—in what amounted to a Black Hole of Calcutta? Do I have to enumerate my grim sufferings to get a wee snack to revive my famished frame and—”

  “All he means, Jennie,” Asey interrupted, “is that he’s had nothin’ since lunch but a quart of soup, an’ half my lunch, an’ a candy bar more sustainin’ than fifteen steaks an’ twelve bottles of milk!”

  “And to gain sufficient strength,” Cummings continued, ignoring him, “to take up once again my selfless role of healer?”

  “Selfless! At five dollars a visit?” Jennie sniffed. “Hm! Isn’t it lucky that by the merest chance I figured on something like this happening, and put in enough for two! That’s Asey’s side, doc, and this’s yours, and don’t poach—you know you don’t like mustard! Asey, I’ve made an awful mistake! I told you something that’s all wrong. It’s not catnip!”

  “How’s that again?”

  “Catnip,” Jennie said, “was last week!”

  “Catnip was what last week?”

  “Why, catnip was the answer to a last week’s Quick Quiz Question! Somebody told me wrong, and I forgot there’d already been catnip once. It’s coypus.”

  “What coy puss?” Cummings asked with his mouth full. “Or coy puss what?”

  “C-o-y-p-u-s! One word. That’s the answer to the Question we missed today!”

  “If that’s the answer, what in the name of God is the Question?” Cummings demanded. “Coypus! I never heard of coypus—is it singular or plural?”

  “The Question,” Jennie said, “is what’s something—I never was able to find out what!—and the answer is, coypus! And nobody they called so far has got the answer yet! And listen to me, Asey, who d’you s’pose has been over at our house, pumping me for all she’s worth about you, and where you are, and what you’re doing, and what you’re up to?”

  “Shearing!” Asey and Cummings said at once, in unison.

  “Who?” Jennie said. “Who’s that?”

  “No matter,” Asey said. “Tell us who’s been visitin’ you.”

  “That ex-Wave. Alicia Grant, her name is.”

  “You mean the project one?” Asey asked. “Tall, thinnish girl, wearin’ glasses with blue frames?”

  “Uh-huh, that’s just who! Claimed she wanted to interview me in my capacity as head of the Red Cross—seems her job’s investigating the town’s Public Health and Welfare. That’s what she said! But ” Jennie added with emphasis, “the only thing she talked about was you! I don’t know as I ever saw anyone more anxious to find out where another person was! And furthermore—” she paused.

  “The radio influence, Asey,” Cummings said in resigned tones. “That’s a mannerism straight out of Mother Gaston. The dramatic hesitation. ‘What do you think—space—Mother Gaston? Is it—space—a boy?—two spaces—or a girl?’ You should hear my wife do it. What do I think we’re having for dinner? Pause and count three. Stew!”

  “I’m not pausing because I’m trying to be dramatic,” Jennie said indignantly, “I’m pausing because I’m afraid you’ll think it’s crazy! But I did hear of one person, one local person, I mean, who promised to kill Mrs. Boone this morning when he heard she was in town!”

  “You mean, ‘I hear tell Miz Boone’s in taown? Why, land’s sakes, I cal’late I got to kill her? I—’ ”

  “Stop it, doc! Who, Jennie?”

  “Well, I don’t know that I think so much of it, myself, except that after all, people are sometimes queer about some things, and this person’s queer about women—women who do things, in public life and all, that is. He says the whole trouble with the world today is women fussing around in politics, and sticking their noses into all sorts of things while their homes and children go to rack and ruin, and their husbands get stomach ulcers from not getting proper food—and of course, Asey, he has disappeared! Nobody knows where he is!”

  “Who?” Asey asked patiently.

  “Well,” Jennie said, “I almost hate to tell you because I�
�m so sure you’ll laugh—but no one’s seen him since the Bull Moose. It’s Sylvester!”

  11

  “AND FURTHERMORE,” Jennie raised her voice to make herself heard above the sound of the doctor’s roars of laughter, “of all the women in public life that Sylvester hates anyway, he hates Mrs. Boone the most! He talked about her terribly today while he was waiting in the sugar line for someone.”

  “Did he really say anything about killin’ her, actually?” Asey asked. “Or did he just say he hated her an’ all her kind—an’ you just threw in the rest?”

  “He told Amy Waters, that was standing in the line behind him, that if he ran across that Boone woman in some lonely, secluded place while she was here in town, he could promise her—Amy, that is—that he’d kill Mrs. Boone with his bare hands! He said he thought it would be a mighty fine thing for the world if someone did, and the best contribution he could make for a lasting peace. Not in just those words, but pretty near ’em!”

  “Oh,” Cummings said weakly, “I haven’t laughed so hard since I was a boy! Why, if Sylvester had put it all in writing—even if he’d announced that he intended to snatch that silver bud vase from the Lulu Belle and kill her specifically with that!—I think we could still take it for granted that Sylvester is not the person we want! Jennie, it’s funnier even than coypus!”

  “Where’d he go?” Asey asked.

  “Oh, now, look, Asey!” Cummings said. “You can’t take that nonsense seriously! Sylvester! Silly Nick—oh, it just isn’t sensible!”

  Asey reminded him of the quohaug inspections, and of Aunt Della’s Annual Dahlia Planting over at the Douglass house.

  “They’re not very sensible, either! An’ you summed up the story of my afternoon’s actions as bizarre an’ fantastic an’ preposterous! Why carp, doc, why carp? Where’d Sylvester go, Jennie?”

  “That’s it! Nobody know^s! People were sore when the Bull Moose was late and they missed hearing the Question, and of course right away they tried to find Sylvester to see what the matter was—but he’d just disappeared! And of course everyone claimed he must have run away because he was afraid of what people would do to him!” Jennie said. “See? But then, of course, everybody got the Question from someone who’d listened somewhere else, and they’re not mad at Sylvester any more—only curious to know why he was late! They’ve even got to thinking it’s all sort of funny, now—because of course he never was late at anything before, never in all his born days!”

  “An’ still no sign of Sylvester,” Asey said, “in spite of the general change of mood about him?”

  Jennie shook her head.

  “Everyone’s sure it’s on account of him being late with the Bull Moose. Nobody ever thought that there might be any other reason—”

  “Like his having killed Carolyn Barton Boone, and fled!” Cummings started to shake with laughter again. “Oh, that is so idiotic!”

  “Sylvester,” Jennie said coldly, “is queer. You know it, doc! He’s queer, and he always was queer!”

  “While I freely concede,” Cummings said as he started on another package of sandwiches, “that Sylvester is a ‘character’, as the saying goes, and while I admit that in this town he’s labelled ‘queer’, may I also point out that in some larger or urban center, he and his little eccentricities wouldn’t even cause a ripple? Why in Hollywood, for example, he’d pass for quite normal!”

  “I don’t know about Hollywood,” Jennie said with a sniff, “but I know I was at a town meeting here once when he got mad about having the new flag pole put across from the Town Hall instead of by the square, and he nearly killed Uncle ’Bijah Knowles! They had to pry Sylvester off him! I’ve seen him lose his temper, and I know what happens when he does—Asey, what’re you wearing that fool ‘Special Deputy’ badge for? I just this minute caught sight of it when you turned and the street light struck it—Asey, have you been speeding again and wangling your way out of it?”

  “He’s only been inspecting quohaugs,” Cummings said. “Humpf! Whyn’t you go inspect Sylvester’s quohaugs, and see what you can dig up? Sylvester’s got a dozen beds, and I’m sure he’d love to meet a quohaug inspector at his age!”

  “Ever watch gulls, doc?” Asey asked suddenly.

  “Watch gulls? I can’t say I’ve made the process my life work, but I’ve noticed one or two. Why, Sherlock?”

  “Ever notice a bunch of ’em swoopin’ around and around in circles after a fish, an’ then all of a sudden one fellow comes up from a mile away—an’ bang!—he’s got the fish?”

  “If you mean to insinuate that Sylvester is a remote gull, I must say that’s an entirely new angle on his character! Swoop?” Cummings said derisively. “Alan alive, Sylvester never moved any faster than a slow crawl—and let me assure you he moves a whole lot quicker than he thinks! Where’s my list of calls, Jennie? I must get on with my morning chores—oh, my God, why have you let me sit here and stuff myself like a pig?” he added as he read the list by the flickering light of his cigarette lighter. “I ought to have been at the Harrimans’ hours ago!”

  “Was it me,” Jennie returned with asperity, “that brought up the Black Hole of Calcutt—”

  “Jennie, you’re a wonderful woman, a fine cook, it was a dandy meal, and thank you! Good bye, Inspector Mayo—I shall think of you trying to dig your way out of quohaug beds without my invaluable aid!”

  “Keep your stethoscope handy!” Asey said. “Never can tell when you might want to drape it over some handy tree branch for me to rescue you by an’—”

  But Cummings’s old sedan was already rattling off down the highway.

  “Never even asked me if he could drop me off anywhere!” Jennie commented as she took the seat that the doctor had vacated. “He—why, he is a big pig! He’s eaten all your sandwiches, mustard and all!”

  “That’s fair enough,” Asey said. “I took all his chowder—where are you bound?”

  “Oh, I thought if I got through with getting his car to him in time, I might go to the Ladies’ Aid meeting—unless,” she said hopefully, “you got something you’d like me to do for you. Asey, you don’t seem to feel that this business of Sylvester is as crazy as the doc did.”

  “I might have,” Asey told her, “if I hadn’t already thought back to somethin’—Jennie, I tell you what. While I go see this Miss Shearing that I been tryin’ to get to since the lord knows when, you drop by the Ladies’ Aid, will you, an’ see if you can’t find out any tidings about Sylvester an’ what’s become of him? An’ one more thing—who’s the oldest person that might be there tonight?” „

  “Well, let’s see,” Jennie considered. “It’s a nice night, not too cold—if her son’s home, I don’t know but what he might bring old Mrs. Phinney. She’s ninety-eight and a half—is that old enough? Mrs. Collins is ninety-nine next month, but she don’t go out much.”

  “Ninety-eight an’ a half ought to do,” Asey said gravely. “Providin’ her memory’s okay.”

  “Okay? Why, when they revised the church history this winter,” Jennie said, “Mrs. Phinney sat down and ran back ninety years without stopping to think! She’s a wonder—and not just on church history, either. I don’t think Emma’ll ever forgive her for what she brought up about Emma’s grandmother’s marriage to Emma’s grandfather! Of course, she’s a bit deaf in one ear!”

  “Wa-el,” Asey said, “s’pose you plant yourself down next to her good ear, an’ pump her about Aunt Della Hovey’s house. Say you heard tell there was a secret room in it, an’ was there really, an’ so on.”

  “So I was right!” Jennie said delightedly. “So that’s where Mrs. Boone’s body is! I knew it! I told you so! Just like Mother Gaston!”

  Asey advised her not to get carried away.

  “I don’t know that there’s any secret room, or that the body’s in it if there is one. I just decided,” he said, “to stop workin’ on the sane, sensible angles, an’ to try a few Mother Gastony approaches instead. So—you find out about secr
et rooms, an’ about Silly Nick, an’ I’ll stop by for you in a little while. If anything happens I shouldn’t get there before it’s time for you to leave, you hitch a ride home, an’ I’ll get back there eventually.”

  “To my way of thinking,” Jennie remarked, “the silliest thing in all this business is that you got this far, and with absolutely nothing to work on! I must say I don’t understan—”

  She broke off as a sedan that had been going through the green traffic lights suddenly stopped, and backed up to the roadster.

  The woman driver, whom Asey recognized as the druggist’s wife, leaned her head out the window and called to him.

  “Asey! Billy said for me to take this and give it to Jennie at the Ladies’ Aid, so she could take it home to you—but you might as well take it now. I think it’s some medicine you rushed away and forgot this afternoon.”

  “Medicine?” Jennie asked curiously. “Asey, what medicine? When did you get any medicine, for goodness sakes! Billy’s made some mistake!”

  “Nope, it’s my faintin’ medicine,” Asey informed her with a laugh. “An’ I did forget it!”

  Getting out of the roadster, he walked over to the sedan and took the neatly wrapped bottle that Mrs. Gill was holding out.

  “Thanks a lot,” he said. “Tell Billy it slipped my mind.”

  “Billy said that he called after you, and he tried a couple of times to yell at you as you drove by—he said he didn’t know that this was so very important to you, but you asked for it and probably wanted it. It’s lucky I saw you—isn’t Jennie going to the meeting?”

  “Maybe you’d give her a lift,” Asey said. “It’d be a great help to me, because I got some errands to do—would you? Thanks. Hop in with Mrs. Gill, Jennie. I’ll pick you up later.”

  Left to himself, Asey pawed around optimistically in the supper basket, ate the single molasses cookie which Cummings had somehow overlooked, and then started off toward the main street of the town.