“Huh,” said Ottermole, who knew better but wasn’t about to rat on a pal. “Okay, so the hairpiece fell off when Professor Ungley tripped on the harrow, that’s all.”
“You’d have thought his hat would keep it on,” Mrs. Lomax argued.
“The hat fell off, too, for Pete’s sake. See, here it is.”
And there it was, clutched in Professor Ungley’s right hand as if by some miracle he’d managed to catch it in mid-air a moment before his death. Mrs. Lomax said that looked mighty peculiar to her, but Dr. Melchett riposted with some learned reference to cadaveric spasm and she changed her tack.
“I wonder how he happened to fall backward instead of forward. Any time I stub my toe, it seems to me I always go straight down on my knees and ruin a good pair of stockings.”
“Maybe he caught his leg in a vine and it threw him on his—”
Ottermole’s attempt to think up a genteel synonym for backside was spoiled by Betsy Lomax’s snort.
“Maybe pigs can fly. You still haven’t come up with any reason why Professor Ungley would have been out here in the first place.”
“Oh. Well, heck, that should be pretty obvious, shouldn’t it? I mean,” Fred hesitated again, for Mrs. Lomax had once been his Sunday school teacher, “an old man like him, his kidneys might not be—you know what I mean.”
“If you mean a man who stood as much on his dignity as Professor Ungley did would sneak around behind a building right on the main street to relieve himself like a common drunk out of the gutter; you’d better rack that so-called brain of yours a little harder, Fred Ottermole. There’s a water closet in the museum as I know to my certain knowledge because they had to get my cousin Fred Swope to fix it the time the boiler went off and all the pipes froze and busted. Being a proper gentleman, Professor Ungley would have used it before he left the building.”
“But what if he’d suddenly felt the urge, if you don’t mind me saying so, after the rest had gone on ahead and he didn’t have a key to get back in?”
“He did so have a key. He was curator, wasn’t he, or supposed to be. Why don’t you take a look in his pockets instead of standing around shooting your mouth off?”
Fred Ottermole glowered, but obeyed. To his unconcealed satisfaction, no keys were to be found either on Professor Ungley’s person or anywhere in the vicinity of his body.
“Well, that’s that. Anybody got any more bright ideas, or can I turn him over to Harry Goulson?” Goulson was the local undertaker.
Dr. Melchett shrugged. “He’s all Goulson’s, as far as I’m concerned. I’ll wait here while you fetch him, if you like. Tell him to bring a death certificate form along, if he’s got one.
Mrs. Lomax wasn’t asked to stay, but she did. Her neighbors had begun drifting down Main Street on their morning errands. It was not to be supposed that any show of activity around the generally quiet museum could go unobserved, or that people wouldn’t come to see what was up. By the time the police chief got back with the undertaker, Professor Ungley had gathered quite a crowd.
Chapter Three
“OH, HOW DREADFUL!”
That was Mrs. Pommell, the banker’s wife, got up regardless in kid gloves and a felt hat to go and buy a pound of scrod at Carey’s Fish Market. The hat was year before last’s, but it was too dressy for Carey’s nevertheless. Betsy Lomax didn’t have much time for people who gave themselves airs, though she did have to admit Mrs. Pommell was looking decently upset instead of just standing there gawking like the rest of them.
“And to think he was alive and well only last night,” the banker’s wife observed to the admiring multitudes.
“This was at the Balaclavian Society meeting?” Fred Ottermole asked her, whipping out his notebook and handsome new gold pen.
“Yes.” Mrs. Pommell took out a tissue and sniffled into it in a dainty and ladylike manner. “My husband and I were also among those present.”
“Did you both stay till the end?”
“Certainly.” She appeared surprised at the question. “After our business meeting, Professor Ungley gave us a most interesting talk about penknives. They were originally used, you know, to shape the ends of feathers that were used as pens. Goose quills, turkey quills, crow quills for fine drawing—they still sell pens called crowquills at art supply shops, or did when I was taking my fine arts courses at boarding school.”
She would have to get that in, Mrs. Lomax thought. Ottermole showed no interest in Mrs. Pommell’s school days, but the professor’s choice of topic appeared to ring a professional bell.
“Penknives, eh? How big would they be? Big enough to hurt a person with, I mean?”
Mrs. Pommell shook her hat. “Mercy, no. They were tiny things, many of them, small enough to carry on a watch chain or fit into a lady’s writing desk. After all, the tip end of a wing feather, even a turkey’s, isn’t very—surely you’re not thinking—that is, Professor Ungley wasn’t stabbed, was he?”
“Far as we can tell from the evidence, he fell and hit his head on this old harrow,” Ottermole had to admit. “That’s right, isn’t it, Dr. Melchett?”
“I see nothing inconsistent with your findings, Chief Ottermole,” the doctor replied.
Naturally he wouldn’t. Mrs. Lomax knew Dr. Melchett of old. He was a good enough medical practitioner, but he was a better politician. Catch him giving the wrong answer in front of the banker’s wife!
“What a dreadful pity.” Mrs. Pommell plied her tissue again as an example to the gapers. “I wonder what he was doing back here? Taking a shortcut, do you think?”
Melchett shrugged. “You knew Ungley better than I did. Was he in the habit of taking shortcuts?”
“Professor Ungley was something of a law unto himself, as you’d surely realized. We did have our car,” a vast and opulent Lincoln (the Pommells lived fully a quarter of a mile away), “but we wouldn’t have dreamed of offering him a lift. We’d suggested it several times previously and he used to get quite huffy. One must respect our senior citizens’ wishes to be independent, mustn’t one?”
Senior citizens, for crying out loud! As if that old hen hadn’t been graduated from her fancy boarding school while the then Betsy Swope was still struggling through her first reader. Mrs. Lomax straightened the fingers of her woolen gloves in a way that let everybody know she understood perfectly what was what, but was too much of a lady to say so. Mrs. Pommell made a point of not noticing, and Chief Ottermole again was not interested.
“Did Professor Ungley leave the clubhouse before or after you did?” he asked.
Mrs. Pommell reflected. “It seems to me we all left at pretty much the same time. I have a vague idea it was Mr. Lutt who locked the door behind us, but I couldn’t say for sure.”
“Mr. Lutt’s the guy who has the key, is he?”
“As a matter of fact, we all have keys. That is, I personally don’t have one, but my husband does and somehow it’s managed to wind up on my key ring. Mr. Pommell has so many keys to carry around in the way of business that I always get stuck with the leftovers. You know how it is with bankers.”
And if they didn’t, she’d certainly be the one to tell them. Betsy Lomax buttoned her lips tighter and straightened her gloves again.
“What about Professor Ungley?” Ottermole persisted. “Would he normally have a key on him?”
“Why, I should suppose so. That is—oh dear, I remember now. He took out his key ring to show us a charming little gold penknife he carried on it. Then he laid the ring out with the other knives on the table. I’m wondering now whether he forgot to pick it up before he left. If you’ll wait just one moment—”
Mrs. Pommell fumbled in her impressive handbag and brought out a key chain of her own with fancy plastic bobbles at the ends. “Let’s see, this—no, that’s the garage. Here we are. Do you want to come in with me, Chief Ottermole? It’s against the rules for non-members to enter except on visiting days, but in a situation like this—”
“Aw, that’s okay,” s
aid Ottermole, which was just as well since Mrs. Pommell had already darted inside, closing the door behind her with an air of absentmindedness that didn’t fool Betsy Lomax one iota.
“I’ve found them,” she called out, “right where I thought they’d be.”
The clubhouse wasn’t much bigger than a bread box anyway. She was back outside before she’d finished talking, the keys in her hand and the gold penknife sticking out from the bunch.
“You see, that’s the knife he was showing us. It belonged to a great-uncle of his, so I don’t suppose the heirs will care to donate it to our museum collection, though this is hardly the time to be thinking of such things, is it? Poor, dear Professor Ungley. How we shall miss him!”
As she reached for another tissue, Fred Ottermole held out his hand for the keys. “I’ll take those for the time being, Mrs. Pommell. I expect his lawyer will want them.”
“What about the cane?” said Dr. Melchett, who still appeared to be intrigued by that silver fox.
“Why don’t I take it along and leave it in his flat?” Mrs. Lomax suggested. “That way, all his things will be together and the heirs, whoever they may be, won’t have anything to squawk about when it comes time to settle up.”
“Good idea.” Fred Ottermole handed it over to her and that, as far as he was concerned, was that.
Maybe the old geezer had got caught short as originally theorized and found he didn’t have his keys to get back in and use the facilities. Maybe he simply happened to remember a few seconds too late that he’d left his door keys, plus that nice gold penknife, inside and started around the building hoping to find a window open or something so that he could climb in and get them. It was six of one and half a dozen of the other. He gave it as his official verdict that Dr. Melchett might as well issue a certificate of death by misadventure and Harry Goulson might as well get on with the laying out.
Mrs. Pommell thought it was all too sad for words but there was nothing else to be done, was there? Dr. Melchett, conscious of the fact that his own wife was about to give a hospital volunteers’ luncheon at which Mrs. Pommell was slated to be guest of honor, agreed there wasn’t.
Mrs. Lomax officially turned the hairpiece over to Harry Goulson, knowing Professor Ungley would have hated to be caught dead without it whatever the circumstances. Then she went home to wash up her breakfast dishes and brood.
She didn’t brood long. There was the cane to be returned to the downstairs flat, and that glass of milk still on the drainboard going sour, like as not. The now tenantless landlady took her own keys and went to redd the place up. The professor had never once had a relative to call while he was alive, to the best of her knowledge, but Betsy Lomax knew human nature. Once news of his death got around, they’d come scampering out of the woodwork to see whether there might be anything in it for them. She was not about to have any long-lost Ungleys claiming Elizabeth Swope Lomax hadn’t known enough to take proper care of her tenant.
As she puttered around wiping off a speck of dust here and twitching a slipcover there, she gradually realized things were not precisely as they ought to have been. Professor Ungley, indolent as he was, had been persnickety about his flat. For instance, he’d always wanted the sofa pillows, three rock-hard squares of a particularly bilious green, arranged just so: two at the ends and one in the exact middle, all balanced diagonally on their points instead of sitting flat on their bottoms.
Mrs. Lomax had never been able to see that it mattered how she left them, since he hardly ever set foot in the parlor except to find fault on cleaning day, but she’d always heard about her dereliction in that tiresome, yappy old voice of his if she hadn’t put them back just right after she’d vacuumed the furniture, so she’d learned to humor the man and avoid the lecture. Today, the pillows were sitting flat. The middle one was off-center and the seat cushion pushed forward a trifle, as if somebody had been rummaging behind it.
People did rummage behind sofa cushions, of course. She did herself, often enough. Edmund was wont to amuse himself by batting her thimble, her reading glasses, or whatever other small object she happened to be most urgently in need of at any given moment into some such hidey-hole. But why should Professor Ungley go dropping things there? She doubted if he’d ever sat on that sofa since he’d moved into the flat. He never entertained, so there’d been no occasion for a guest to come mussing the place up. Not an invited one, anyway.
Where the professor had spent most of his time was in the room he’d called his study, lolling in one of those patent reclining chairs with a back that went down and a footrest that came up. That was the real place to look. Mrs. Lomax got no farther than the door before her trained eye caught the signs. “Sticks out like a sore thumb,” she told Edmund, who’d come along to be sociable. “Somebody’s been.”
Books that had been lined up on the shelves as if with a ruler and probably never taken down since Professor Ungley stopped professing were now noticeably out of alignment. One desk drawer wasn’t quite shut. When she slid it all the way open, reaching from underneath and shielding her hand with the apron she was still wearing, for Mrs. Lomax had taken to reading detective stories lately, she found its contents in what both she and its late owner would have considered a complete welter.
“He never did this,” she informed Edmund.
Even if the old man had been hunting for those foolish penknives, and a more boring subject for an evening’s entertainment she personally couldn’t imagine; even if he’d put off the looking till the last minute, which was entirely possible because procrastinating was what he’d always done best, not to speak evil of the dead, but facts were facts; he still wouldn’t have mussed up the drawer like this because then he’d have had the nuisance of putting it right again.
Besides, Professor Ungley would have known exactly where his penknives were and spent weeks before the meeting fiddling around with them and planning out the talk hardly anybody was going to hear. And trotting them out to bore his landlady with, no doubt, if he’d got the chance, which he hadn’t because they’d had the church rummage sale this week and Mrs. Lomax hadn’t been around much. She ought to be over at the vestry now, making sure the cleanup committee was doing a halfway decent job, which it probably wasn’t. Instead, she went back upstairs and picked up the telephone.
Chapter Four
“HELLO, MRS. SHANDY? I expect the professor’s busy teaching or grading papers or suchlike, but I was wondering if he’d have time to drop down to my place for a minute.”
“You mean right away?” gasped Helen Shandy, a petite blonde who could have been the sort of Helen whom E. A. Poe had in mind when he alluded to Psyche and possibly even to those Nicean barks of yore, though the latter point is debatable.
“Sooner the better.” Mrs. Lomax wasn’t on a party line any more, but she remained laconic on the phone from force of habit. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
“Of course you wouldn’t.”
Helen was startled at the mere fact of Mrs. Lomax’s calling, let alone her request. The woman had been showing up faithfully every week to clean the little red-brick house on the Crescent since Peter Shandy’s marriage just as she’d done when he was a bachelor. She was chatty enough when she came to work and ready to stop and pass the time of day if Helen and Peter happened to bump into her at the drugstore or the supermarket, but she had old-fashioned ideas about town and gown. If she said it was important, it was.
“Peter’s up at school right now,” Helen replied, “but I’ll get hold of him as fast as I can. Will you be at home for a while?”
“I’ll be here.”
Mrs. Lomax hung up feeling a trifle easier. Helen, on the other hand, was in a state by the time she caught Peter at his office.
“Oh, I’m so glad you’re there! Do you have a student with you, or a class in two minutes or anything?”
“Neither and nothing, mine own. I’m just pondering on how do I love thee. Let me count the ways. It may help to get my mind off the
most moronic set of test papers I’ve ever had the misfortune to grade. Would you believe at least three quarters of my freshman agronomy class don’t know how to spell fungicide?”
“Certainly I would. Furthermore, they can’t look it up in the dictionary because nobody ever made them learn the alphabet. Darling, could we shelve the fungicide for the moment? Mrs. Lomax wants to talk with you.”
“If it’s about a new mop, I flatly refuse. That woman has a mania for mops. She’ll mop us out of house and home.”
“It’s not mops. She wants you to go down right away.”
“Down where?”
“To her place. It’s all uphill from there, isn’t it?”
“I’m sure she finds it so. What in Sam Hill for?”
“I don’t know, but you’d better go. She said it was important.”
“Good God! Then I’m off in a puff of smoke. These young ignorami will have to sweat for their test results. Do ’em good.”
Peter grabbed the mackinaw he’d slung over the back of his office chair, shoved his arms into the sleeves, and took the stairs of the century-old building at a pretty nippy pace for a man of fifty-six and a bit. Peter wasn’t particularly tall, nor was he short. He wasn’t thin and he wasn’t fat. Helen honestly believed him to be the handsomest man alive. Most people would have said Professor Shandy wasn’t bad-looking, all things considered, and wasn’t it a shame his hair was getting so thin on top.
If there is truth in the agricultural homily that grass can’t grow on a busy street, then Shandy’s hiatal hirsuteness was only natural. During the past year, he’d revealed a new talent and acquired an unexpected reputation. To be sure, he’d already been world-famous, or at least well-known among turnip growers in those parts of the world where turnip growing is taken seriously. It was one thing to be known as co-developer of that super rutabaga, Brassica napobrassica balaclaviensis, or Balaclava Buster. It was something else to have become Balaclava’s replacement for Philo Vance. In short, the locals had found out he was good at solving mysteries.
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