Punch With Care

by Phoebe Atwood Taylor

  “You wouldn’t of got much satisfaction from him!” Sylvester said. “I can tell you that!”

  “Just the samey,” Asey said, “I’m dead sure I’m right! I’m sure I heard my grandfather say somethin’ about it, an’ it seems to me the last time I was home, or maybe the time before, I got to talkin’ with Mrs. Framingham, an’ we somehow mentioned secret rooms, an’—”

  “Oh, her!” Sylvester smiled as he rubbed the cat’s ear. “That’s different! But she wouldn’t of let on a thing if you’d asked her or talked about it in front of the rest, you know. Not a hint of it. No, sireebob! Not after the way they kidded her so about tryin’ to find it!”

  Asey ordered himself not to jump out of the Boston rocker and shake the whole story out of Sylvester in one lump. To make sure he wouldn’t move, he wound his feet around the rocker rungs. At this point, he couldn’t afford to spoil things!

  “She was awful wary about it, as I remember,” he said. “Didn’t say there was a secret room, you understand, but she didn’t say there wasn’t. Didn’t tell me where, or anything like that! ’Course, Jennie says if she didn’t say more’n that, why, there just plain couldn’t be any.”

  “That’s just where Jennie’s dead wrong!” Sylvester said. “But I don’t know how you can prove it to her just now, on account of—well, you see, Asey, since I been livin’ over this way, I work around the Douglass’s place some. Gardenin’, an’ helpin’ keep the place tidy. Ordinarily, I don’t like that kind of work, but things’re so neat there, it’s a pleasure. Everythin’ to work with, too, like a motor lawnmower. Well, Aunt Mary an’ me, we worked together around the flower gardens a lot, an’ she kept talkin’ about this secret room to me—sounded awful kind of crazy to me at first. Then I said to myself, why not? The Hoveys did plenty of other crazy things. They were queer!”

  Asey mentally recalled Cummings’s statement about queerness being comparative.

  “You mean like that Chinese wife,” he said, “an’ the woman that wore pants.”

  “Just so. An’ then, by golly, one day me an’ Aunt Mary, we found it!” Sylvester said reminiscently. “Remember it like it was yesterday. Nice fall day, not too cold—”

  Asey sat with a fixed smile on his face while Sylvester went into detail on the chrysanthemums, the picking of the McIntosh reds, and the ten barrow-loads of punkins he’d carted out of the west garden.

  “I always like the fall of the year,” he concluded cheerfully. “You can have the spring, I always say—you get to it from the outside, you know, Asey!”

  “Is that right, now!” Asey felt the fixed smile crack and widen into a genuine beam of pleasure. “Well, well, well!”

  “Yes, sir, that’s where me an’ Aunt Mary went wrong for a long while! We was all the time huntin’ from the inside—while the Douglasses was away, of course.”

  “On the outside!” Asey said. “Huh—now let me think.” He closed his eyes, figured what portion of the house would be nearest the Lulu Belle, and made a guess. “Say, I bet you—uh-huh, I bet you it’s somewhere on the west side of the kitchen door!”

  He opened his eyes to find Sylvester staring at him in open-mouthed bewilderment.

  “I must say, Asey, you beat me!” he said. “ ’Course whenever they talk about what a great feller you are these days, I always tell ’em I understand how you got way up in Porter Motors—never was any young feller around here that could tinker any better’n you could! But on this detectin’ business, I always said, I don’t know! I always admitted your grandfather was a sharp man—they didn’t call him David Razor for nothin’! But I never seen how you—now looky, just how did you detect where that door was, after all the months an’ months me an’ Aunt Mary spent huntin’ for it?”

  “Why, I don’t deserve any credit, Syl!” Asey said truthfully. “It’s kind of like Columbus standin’ that egg up on its end. Easy enough when someone tells you—I mean, shows you! An’ it seemed to me if it was an outside job, it couldn’t hardly be on the front side of the house. Don’t you forget, you can walk right to it, an’ open it. I can’t. I only just know where it is in a general way!”

  “Oh, sure you could open it!” Sylvester said. “Anyone could, now we got it oiled up an’ eased up. You see how it happened—Aunt Mary said she was givin’ up the hunt. Said she’d always wanted to find a secret room there, but she was through. I asked her why she was so keen about it anyway, an’ she grinned—great sense of humor, she has!—an’ she said, she wanted to find it, an’ fix it up, an’ invite the Douglass family in! But she said she guessed she never would, now, unless a wall fell in—an’ by golly, Asey, what do you think?”

  “A wall fell in,” Asey said promptly.

  “No, but where I was leanin’ against it, there by the back door, I felt it give! What it amounts to, see, is a door cut there,” Sylvester said. “It was hinged on the inside, see, an’ the old hinges was givin’ way under my weight.”

  “Oh, now wait!” Asey said. “You’d see a door cur there! You couldn’t miss it!”

  “Nope, you could! We did. Everybody did. Everybody does, as far’s that goes. There ain’t no latch, or handle, just a little hook you put your finger in, so—”

  “But you could see that!”

  “Well, I s’pose you could!” Sylvester retorted. “If you knew there was a hook, an’ if you was huntin’ for it, an’ if you knew just where to hunt, an’ if you knew how to shove the wistaria to one side! An’ if you knew in the first place it was behind the drain pipe all the time! Why, sure, I s’pose you could see it—only if you want to know what I think, I don’t think you could!”

  “But whyn’t you see the other side of the door? I mean, if it’s cut there—”

  “Why, the side where the hinges are, there’s this beam runnin’ down that laps over the cut, see?” Sylvester explained. “You wouldn’t never notice that side of that door if you stared at it for a hundred years! The door shoves inwards, see—”

  “Hey, it goes to the end of—of somethin’ off the dinin’ room!” Asey couldn’t recall just what from his tour of the house that afternoon. “A pantry, isn’t it, or a closet?”

  “A pantry—that’s right! Aunt Della’s best-dish pantry. Kept the best china there. Still do. This secret room backs smack against that pantry’s long side—room itself runs the length of the pantry, an’ it’s about three feet an’ a half wide. Maybe a little less. Ain’t big, but it’s a room, an’ it sure is a secret!”

  “More’n three feet—why in time didn’t someone ever spot that from the inside?” Asey demanded.

  “I tell you why,” Sylvester said. “You go into that pantry from the dinin’ room, an’ what do you notice? First you got to take a step down. Then what? You got to grope around for the light. No windows in that pantry! Then what do you notice? Dishes, an’ shelves, an’ shelves, an’ dishes! Secret room’s sittin’ there to your left. But do you think of it? No, sir!”

  “But you got more’n three feet extra stickin’ out beyond the shelves to the left!” Asey said. “You’d think it’d be noticed right off, in the dinin’ room!”

  “An’ you know why you don’t? I’ll tell you! Because you got a built-in corner cupboard there, that’s why!” Sylvester said. “You don’t notice no three an’ a half extry feet! Ain’t no extry feet—why, Aunt Mary never noticed, an’ she went all over that house with a tape measure! If the corner cupboard wasn’t there, an’ if she’d measured straight, she’d probably of found that extra footage beyond the width of the pantry. But she said it was one place she hadn’t dreamed of botherin’ with. An’ if she didn’t spot it, nobody would of! Nope, I don’t think even you’d detect that from the inside—or the outside!”

  “Let’s see!” Asey said. “One long side’s the pantry, an’ the other long side’s the outside of the house. One short side’s the dinin’ room an’ corner cupboard—what’s the fourth side? What’s that back up against?”

  “Shelves,” Sylvester told him. “Wall sh
elves in the kitchen—more shelves back of the pantry, too. I tell you, Aunt Mary nearly had a conniption fit when the Douglasses talked about cuttin’ a window in the best-dish pantry this year, on account of it was so dark in there! She had to speak up quick! Told ’em it unquestionably was a lot of nonsense, an’ probably the wall’d fall in if they fussed with it that much, an’ she was sure Aunt Della wouldn’t ever approve. She talked ’em out of it finally!”

  “Why’s she keepin’ this such a secret for so long?” Asey wanted to know.

  “Because she’s furnishin’ it! Kind of slow goin’, because she can’t do nothin’ unless the Douglasses are away, see? We’d never of got the floor painted an’ spattered if they hadn’t gone off for a weekend in New Hampshire—an’ then we had to cover up the smell of paint by touchin’ up the trellis by the back door, an’ all! When she gets it all fixed up an’ furnished complete, she’s goin’ to invite ’em in, an’ have like a party.”

  “Well, well!” Asey said. “An’ nobody knows about it!”

  “Just her an’ me! We kind of aim,” Sylvester said, “to have the grand openin’ on the Fourth of July. With cannon-crackers an’ a lot of noise.”

  “Speakin’ of noise,” Asey said, “don’t that door kind of scrape an’ groan some?”

  “Not if you know how to work it, an’ do it right, an’ take your time. After you got your finger in the hook, see, you give it a little boost—get up, Lana, while I show him!” Sylvester deposited the cat on the floor and got to his feet. “See, it’s like this!” he demonstrated. “You push a mite with your knee, an’ pull up a little with your hand—so!”

  Asey watched the demonstration very, very carefully.

  “If you don’t do it just that way,” Sylvester continued as he sat down again and snapped his fingers at the cat, “why, you’re liable to get mixed up in the wistaria, an’ then that jerks the lattice, an’ the lattice catches the gutter, an’ the drain pipe—my, what an awful sound it makes! Kind of a scrape an’ a grate, an’ a whine—Aunt Mary says it’s the strangest noise you ever heard, if you’re in the house. She was indoors once when the Douglasses come back sooner’n we expected, an’ I had to shut the door in a hurry.”

  As Lana stalked past him on her way back to Sylvester’s knee, Asey reached down and patted her. He felt like patting someone on the head.

  “Seems funny you don’t put a lock on that door,” he said.

  “Don’t need to, the way it fits. After all, nobody’d found it for I don’t know how many years before we did, an’ it wasn’t locked all that time!” Sylvester said. “Besides, Aunt Mary says there’s no sense in puttin’ on a lock an’ advertisin’ it till she’s ready to show it—look, Asey, what I started to say to you was, of course you’re dead right about the secret room, but I don’t know how you can prove it to Jennie without lettin’ out what Aunt Mary wants to keep a secret! So, you won’t tell her, will you? I never mentioned it to no one before—but then, you really knew all about it, anyway!”

  “Tell you what,” Asey said as he rose from the Boston rocker, “I’ll just tell Jennie that the Douglasses had gone to bed, an’ for her to ask Mrs. Framingham herself. Then, if she wants to confide in Jennie, she can. If she don’t—wa-el, when she has her grand openin’, Jennie’ll know that I was right all along! Golly, it’s gettin’ late, an’ I shouldn’t be keepin’ you up, after the day you had! I had a real pleasant visit with you, Sylvester!”

  Sylvester said Asey could drop in any time he wanted to.

  “An’ say, what was the answer to that Question again, now? Smart puss?”

  “Coypus,” Asey said. “So long!”

  The assorted town clocks were striking eleven when Asey swung his roadster into Cummings’s driveway.

  Before he could turn the motor off, the doctor appeared in the doorway of his office.

  “Been expecting you!” he said. “I knew in my deep-most heart that you couldn’t continue inspecting quohaugs by yourself. You haven’t my flair for rapid improvisat—” he broke off as Asey entered the office. “What’s happened, man! What’s the matter? I never saw you look shattered before!”

  “I am,” Asey said. “Some of it’s due to puttin’ myself through a wringer with Sylvester Nickerson. An’ the other ninety-nine per-cent—listen, doc!”

  Cummings stared at him as he concluded his summary of his interview with Sylvester.

  “My God!” he said. “So there is a secret room! And you went there at once, of course!”

  Asey nodded.

  “And you found Mrs. Boone’s body in there, of course!”

  “No,” Asey said. “Not Mrs. Boone’s. Aunt Mary’s.”

  14

  “MRS. BOONE’S,” Asey continued, “is back in the Lulu Belle—not just exactly where we found her, an’ not in exactly the same position. But almost.”

  Cummings turned on his heel and strode out of the room for a moment. When he returned, he was shaking his head.

  “Just looking to see if I had anything in the dispensary I thought could cope with the situation,” he said. “I haven’t.”

  “Do I look that shattered?” Asey demanded.

  “Who said anything about you? I want it for myself!” Cummings returned. “Aunt Mary’s body—her body—is in the secret room! Mrs. Boone’s is back where we originally found it—oh, it’s too awful! It’s too damn fantastic! It’s—frankly, I’m speechless! Mother Gaston never thought up anything like this! What’s it all mean?”

  He looked even more surprised when Asey started to tell him what he thought it meant.

  “Mrs. Boone, I’d say, was supposed to be found tomorrow. Or tonight, if anything happened that someone went into the Lulu Belle. Or any time.”

  “Oh?” Cummings said with rising inflection. “Indeed! And when d’you think Aunt Mary was supposed to be disinterred? August tenth, at four, possibly?”

  “Nope, I don’t think that Aunt Mary was s’posed to be found at all,” Asey said.

  “I’m sure there’s nothing in the dispensary that can cure that type of thinking!” Cummings said. “Wasn’t supposed to be found at all! What d’you mean?”

  “Mrs. Boone gets found. Who killed Mrs. Boone? Aunt Mary’s missin’. No one’ll ever forgive themselves for thinkin’ Aunt Mary might’ve done it—but Aunt Mary’s missin’. Think it over. Consider it. S’pose in a few days, Aunt Mary’s body gets washed up by the tide. Did Aunt Mary kill Mrs. Boone an’ then kill herself?” Cummings slammed himself down in his swivel chair. “Oh, you’re right, of course!” he said. “It’s too diabolically simple not to be right! What happened to her?”

  “Same thing,” Asey said. “Blow on the head. Nastier than Mrs. Boone’s. She was a big husky woman, an’ no one was takin’ any chances at all.”

  “Not another bud vase!”

  “Milk bottle,” Asey said.

  “In there, in the room?”

  Asey nodded. “Way I see it, doc, sometime after she came back from the movies, she went inside that room—maybe the door was open, maybe she opened it, I wouldn’t know.”

  “And Boone’s body was there, and the murderer was there—or,” Cummings said, “as she discovered Boone’s body, the murderer arrived on the scene. Exit Aunt Mary, and I’m frank to say I’m sorry. Asey, I begin to see what you meant by saying whether we had the body or not didn’t matter so much. My God, now we’ve got two—and it’s worse than not having any! If it wasn’t Aunt Mary I followed down to the boat house, who the hell was it?”

  “Someone else,” Asey said. “An’ was that flat tire a fake, or did someone stymie Aunt Mary by givin’ her a flat tire? Seems to me like someone must have. An’ who planted the bud vase in behind Shearing’s tub?”

  “If you say that last sentence to yourself several times,” Cummings said, “you can experience the earlier sensations of madness. May I remind you I haven’t seen you since way back there at the traffic lights? Catch me up.”

  “Jennie,” Asey said, “Billy’s
wife, Stinky, Shearing, data on Eric, data on Aunt Mary, juke joint, Sylvester—I’ll do it if you promise not to open your mouth till I’m through.”

  When he finished, Cummings said he couldn’t open his mouth.

  “And if I could, all that could come out of it is—you’re licked, Asey! I’ll call Halbert—he can bring in his fancy truck with the pretty equipment. This is the sort of thing where you need gamma rays and snippets of uranium.”

  “We’ll call him,” Asey said, “but it ain’t that hard, doc. Most important thing is that station clock bein’ three an’ a half minutes slow, you know. You don’t need atomic energy to solve that one.”

  “What?”

  “Sure. I been broodin’ about them three an’ a half minutes,” Asey said, “since—oh, since long before I slewed you around the road there, comin’ back from Douglass’s. Only it seemed too crazy to talk about.”

  “It still does,” Cummings said with infinite gentleness.

  “Look,” Asey said, “what’s the first thing someone thinks of for an alibi? Time. Little bits of time! Split-second—”

  “Yes, yes, I know! But you said no one in this whole crew knew when they did anything, or when anything happened! You definitely gave it as your opinion that they couldn’t tell time!” Cummings said. “So what’s three and a half minutes got to do with it? Nobody’s three and a half minutes short, or over, or anything—well, are they?”

  “Nope,” Asey said with a grin. “Nobody. It’s not a bit important except Sylvester set his watch wrong, an’ told the town his watch was wrong, an’ everybody missed the Quick Quiz Question!”

  “Coypus!” Cummings snorted. “That’s a good word to sum up what I think! Coypus. Sheer, unadulterated coypus!”