The Scarecrow

by Ronald Hugh Morrieson

  It does not hurt me to remember Len Ramsbottom having moments, but I wince remembering Prudence slipping her priceless new nylons off again with Mr Dabney back in the kitchen. The alcoholic mortician had just been coaxed into getting on the form between the table and the window and he practically had to be held down. He made some fearful insinuations, which Ma, who was up and down all the time, missed, thank heaven; but Prudence could not have been so dumb and suddenly she fixed him with the levellest look imaginable. A dead silence all around went with the look. Then she and Angela went back to semi-flirting with Len Ramsbottom, the heart-throb of the force.

  Charlie Dabney was a person it was difficult to imagine really disliking, but for a moment or two he looked at his most unlovable.

  Uncle Athol was looking around slyly and sharply and if ever I saw a scamp who was not missing a trick, it was right at that moment.

  Pop had three or four tilts at his cup of tea and said, ‘Good luck’ two or three times and then varied it with ‘Regards’. The last toss, Mr Dabney rallied and said ‘Bon Sonte’. Ma ignored them and talked to Len Ramsbottom as if he had brought news from Granny Cudby, God bless her.

  ‘We keep open house, Mr Ramsbottom, open house. We’re not rich people, but we’re honest. As yuh know now, eh? It’s Prudence’s birthday tomorrow and no one would be more welcome than yuhself. She’s going out to service next week, Mr Ramsbottom, with the nicest people, the Quins, not really service, but looking after things in general. She’s been a good girl at school and I would’ve liked office work for her, but it’s so hard to give them a course up at the Tec. Yuh ought to teach her how to type, officer—I mean Mr Ramsbottom.’

  I had privately consigned Len Ramsbottom to the pigeonhole ‘lousiest typist ever’ and I hid my sour smile by stirring my tea again, but Prudence said, ‘Oh beauty! Willyuh, Mr Ramsbottom? Willyuh honest, teach me how to type?’

  The cop leered at her rosily and waved both hands, including the finger he typed with.

  ‘Course, course,’ he gurgled. ‘Course, Miss Poindexter.’

  She goggled at him. ‘Cop that, Ma. Hey! I’m Prudence.’

  I missed a bit of the by-play about now because I went out to the washhouse to try and work out how big a hash of things I had made and just how much ‘grata’ I had gleaned to give Les. The only conclusion I came to was that I was too tired to think.

  Mr Dabney had produced another bottle by the time I got back and Pop and he were having a ‘regards, regards’ session. Uncle Athol was keeping as aloof as he could, consistent with getting his glass filled up as regular as clockwork. Ma was being so ultra-hospitable to Len Ramsbottom that Pop and Co. had taken it as the green light and the bottle was slap in the middle of the table.

  ‘Regards,’ said Mr Dabney. ‘Great Scott, the lights won’t go out all night.’

  ‘Regards,’ said Pop. ‘Anytime, Charlie, old boy. Always welcome. Come any time attall. Only too pleased. Always on deck. Old Southern hospitality and what have you. Demned poor show if the boys can’t compare notes once in a while, what, what. Thank you, thank you, no water, Athol. It’s made with water heh, heh, regards. Yes of course. First to agree, old man. And how’s business? One thing with you, Charlie, customer can’t argue back, eh! eh! Heh, heh. Wazzat, wazzat?’

  ‘Stiffasaboard. All my clients. Stiffasaboard. Stiff-as-a-board. S-t-i-f-f, yes, yes. Regards old boy. Great gal you got there. Dee-aitch. Great gal. Can yuh hear me, m’dear? Stiffasaboard. Regards, Dee-aitch. Great Scott, she wouldn’t do a thing like that in front of me unless realiesh who Charlie Dabney was, eh! eh! Fatal fascination. Always had it. Too fond of the liquor. No regrets. Know a lotta little tricks. Got a pound y’know. Got a pound. Not stuck for a pound, ole boy.’

  ‘All businessmen together, Charlie. Tight little town. Tight little town to get a pound in. Lucky to be where we are. Lotta people give their left, er eye, hrmp, sorry Athol, be where we are. Why? ’Stablished. Thas why. ’Stablished. Regards.’

  ‘Yoo-hoo, my dewy rose. Stiffasaboard. Great Scott. Aflame with desire and so on. With passion undiminished, etcetera, etcetera. Dabney, the vagabond lover.’

  This dewy rose stuff finished me. I felt quite unable to withstand any more of that. I crawled into Herbert’s bed by the window. Herbert was always late and we had an understanding. Herbert only had one ambition and that was to prove correct once and for all that a good billiard player really was the outcome of a mis-spent youth. I heard the cop say, ‘I’ll see Miss Potroz home,’ and I heard Charlie Dabney yoo-hooing away and saying, ‘Great Scott, the lights won’t go out all night.’ But my lights went out. A guy I have a lot of regard for switched them off at the main.

  Chapter Six

  The next day was more to be noted in the minds of my buddy, Les Wilson, and myself for a visit from Constable Ramsbottom than because it was Prudence’s birthday. After school we were sitting down on boxes by the empty hen-coop (something we were very good at) when the shadow of the Law fell across us.

  He joined us cosily, sitting down on the coop itself, and proceeded, forthwith, to ask whether we were or were not going to prefer charges against one described as Athol C. Cudby, for appropriating our joint property, to wit the missing Black Orpingtons.

  When my heart stopped free-wheeling I said, no I wasn’t. We looked at Les and he said, no, he wasn’t, either.

  ‘On the ‘ole,’ said Len Ramsbottom, ‘Oi think you’re woize, very woize. In the hadministration of joostis, occasions aroise when more ’arm than good can be done by prosecuting the mally-factor.’

  While not getting the full drift of this, I had a feeling I was on his side.

  ‘More ‘arm than good,’ he continued, heavily contemplative. ‘In this hinstance, the noime of the family must be considered. I ‘ave no doubt that yeruncle, in fact he has avowed his intention of so doing to me, will reimburse you for the loss of the purloined poultry.’

  Just because our mouths fell open he must have thought we were going to say something for he stayed us with a large palm.

  ‘As an officer of the law it is my duty to apprehend and bring to joostis thuh criminals in our midst. I want it understood that should any further hevidence come to light implicating Cudby, Mr Cudby, in other and more serious crimes a prosecution will himmediately fah-hollow.’

  ‘Officer,’ I said boldly, ‘have there been other fowls stolen beside mine and Les’s?’

  ‘On Saturday, the noight uv the ther-rud, a large-scale robbery was perpetrated at the ’omestead uv Mr Alfred Lynch. A considerable number of pedigree birds, broody resistant, were appropriated and so far there has been no trace uv them.’

  ‘Birds?’ said Les. ‘What sorta birds? Budgies?’

  ‘Poultry,’ came the stern reply. ‘A number of valuable one-year fowls in full lay, broody resistant. No heffort will be spared to trace the miscreants. Suspicion fell on Cudby, Mr Cudby, because for some weekends past it has come to our knowledge he has been raffling killed and dressed poultry in the bars of local hotels. He avows that, with the exception of your own fowls, he poichased all the birds at Klynham Traders and there is hevidence to support this. In haddition, the hevidence of Mr Lynch seems to point to this particular robbery being perpetrated by younger and more active men.’

  ‘How do you mean evidence?’ said Les and I.

  ‘The culprits escaped at great speed. Mr Lynch avers that there were possibly two or even three thieves involved. Mr Lynch is sure in his own mah-hind that they were young men and very active and fast on their feet. One of them scaled a six-foot fence and the other members of the gang thought nothing of jumping row after row of goo-hoosberry bushes.’

  ‘There must be clues, surely?’ I pressed. ‘Footprints, fingerprints. Didn’t anything get dropped or something?’

  ‘Hunfortunately, nearly the entire neighbourhood turned out and conducted a search uv the garden; and all hevidence, such as footprints, was hobliterated.’

  ‘Thank God,’ said Les. ‘I mean, good God
!’

  ‘What fools!’ I contributed hotly. ‘Why not leave police work to the spechlists? Always some blundering asses around to make it more difficult for the spechlists.’

  Les was blowing his nose and had his entire countenance covered by his handkerchief, but his ears stuck out like bolshevist flags.

  ‘Never fear,’ said Len Ramsbottom, rising from the coop. ‘No heffort will be spared to trace the miscreants.’

  He cleared his throat and I thought he was going to ask something, but to our relief he moved off. Just as he reached the street, Prudence came galloping around the section of iron fence still standing and banged right into him. He was stooping over putting on a bicycle clip and she staggered him.

  I looked at Les, who seemed ill, and I nodded in the direction of the rhubarb. Les nodded back and we folded our tents like a couple of shaky Arabs.

  That night we sneaked away from Prudence’s party, which was a tame, sissy affair, down to Fitzherbert’s shed to give some scraps to the miscreants. Lest this give rise to confusion, I had better explain that it was by this name, since our conversation with the Law, that Les and I thought of the stolen Lynch fowls. In our ignorance and trepidation we had got hold of the wrong end of the stick again.

  We made a detour on the way to the shed and got a pack of twenty cigarettes out of the slot machine in the doorway of Thompson’s store. Money had suddenly become the least of our worries. Miss Fitzherbert, the tall, mad woman up at the great house, which had pumps, not taps, over the tubs, had told us she would buy all our eggs. It had been Les’s idea to approach her and it was a honey. She asked no questions, but she bolted the door when she went for the money; and, the time it took, our guess was it was buried somewhere.

  There was no power laid on at the mansion and Les and I could always get a cheap dose of the creeps by sneaking up close at night, through the ancient camellias and magnolias, and glimpsing, through a lofty window, the bent, paralysed figure of the legendary Channing Fitzherbert himself, corpse-like in an honest-to-God four-poster. The lamplight beside the shrivelled dome of a head cast an enormous, vulture-like shadow on the wall. Man, it was horrible. We often did it. One night, through divers landing windows, we saw her slowly descending the stairs holding a lamp aloft, and we did not stop running until we made the shed. It was different in the sunlight, standing on the ramp at the back door with the birds twittering in all the old trees and under the eaves, but when night fell the whole lay-out would have tickled Count Dracula pink.

  ‘Miscreants,’ said Les, surveying by candlelight the fowls roosting on the old gig. ‘Trust us to pinch something valyoobel.’

  ‘I thought they were funny looking,’ I remarked. ‘What with those bits of black in the wings and that fluff on their legs.’

  ‘Broody resistant,’ said Les. ‘But can’t the buggers lay!’

  The miscreants had settled down to a steady eleven or twelve eggs a day and we were sure of getting two-and-six a dozen. Miss Fitzherbert was buying them all. She must have been preserving them, or something. The old firm of Wilson and Poindexter were on the pig’s back, but they shared an uneasy presentiment of their mount turning into a killer mustang without warning. It may have been imagination, but both Les and I had sensed members of the Victor Lynch gang watching us closely at school. We were more apprehensive of trouble from that quarter than from the police, mainly, I think, because Constable Ramsbottom, for all his great bulk, seemed an absolute goof. He made us feel like those master criminals who entertain bowler-hatted yahoos from Scotland Yard and offer them Corona cigars in an inlaid box, in the false bottom of which is the stolen ruby of the Sultan of Yamarramah.

  The autumn still of the nights was yielding to a bough-creaking, raindrop-spotted darkness. For all its age, the shed was pretty snug.

  ‘Just who does know about this hideout?’ Les asked.

  ‘As far as I know, no one,’ I said.

  ‘There must be someone.’

  ‘Well, I don’t count “Madame Drac”,’ I said; meaning, by this, Miss Fitzherbert.

  ‘There must be someone, I’m sure.’

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘Of course there is. There’s Prudence, but shucks, she’s OK.’

  ‘Oh yes, Prudence,’ said Les. ‘Dang it. Fancy me forgetting Pru.’

  ‘As long as no one finds out—’ I began.

  ‘You really think Pru’s OK, Ned?’

  ‘Who, Pru? Of course she’s OK. She’s just a sheila of course, but she’s a good type, old Pru. Once Pop really lammed into her, gave her one helluva hiding, but she never said a word. She came home real late one night, but do yuh think she’d split where she’d been? Not ole Pru.’

  ‘Where had she been?’

  ‘How do I know, I never asted her.’

  After a while Les said, ‘Well, Ned, this has got me worried a little.’

  ‘How come worried? You mean those chooks?’

  ‘No. Pru,’ said Les. ‘Being out late like that. Maybe she might have a y’know, a boyfriend. She might have told some boyfriend about the shed.’

  ‘Yuh, yuh, yuh,’ I chortled scornfully. ‘This was years ago. Pru’s got no boyfriend.’

  ‘Are you sure, Ned? I meantersay brothers don’t know everything.’

  ‘Well now that’s something I am sure of, Les,’ I said firmly. ‘Yuh can get that foolish notion rightouta yuh head. Right clean outa yuh head. We got anuff problems on our hands without you starting to imagine things. Wazzat?’

  ‘Put out the candle,’ Les mouthed, pointing. I held up a tense finger. The sound came again, but it was only the door straining slightly in a sudden gust.

  ‘Let’s fix that window a bit better,’ Les whispered. ‘You slip outside and see if yuh can see any light showing and I’ll pull the sack over a bit.’

  ‘Sure, sure, Les. What say I fix the sack and you go outside and have a looksee?’

  ‘Let’s both fix the sack,’ said Les. ‘And let’s both go outside and have a looksee.’

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Yuh oughta have a bit more sense than that. How’m I to know who’s in there if they haven’t even got enough sense to shut the door? It looks to me like yuh haven’t even got enough sense to yell out when yuh hear somebody coming along the verandah. Anybody can hear somebody coming along this verandah, on account of all these rotten boards, we just not gunna have a verandah on this house for that long if it gets any rottener, so it’s silly letting me walk in on yuh like that when all anybody has to do is yell out.’

  I could not see any occasion for Prudence to be getting so high-hat just because she had surprised somebody in the washhouse, but having a birthday certainly makes a big difference to some people.

  ‘Hi, Neddy,’ she said to me and went inside the house looking flushed and dusky. She was wearing a torn old frock she had grown out of, and her gleaming mop of hair was tousled. Before she left the verandah she stepped, with one bare foot, on the loose board really hard, going out of her road to do it, and I had to grin because it did not respond nearly as loudly as it did when it got trodden on accidentally. All the boards were sick, but that one had a fever.

  Uncle Athol came out of the washhouse and he looked as if he had a fever too. There were two big bright spots on his cheeks like geraniums and his Adam’s apple was shooting up and down as if someone were playing tricks with the elevator button. He was not looking like that just because young Prudence was throwing her weight around and growling at him. I had it figured he was crook with the booze as usual. He and I were not on the best of terms, naturally, but I was not going to leave the verandah just because he was there, and it looked as if he intended standing his ground too. He stood staring down the yard at the shed for a while. He kept on fidgeting and he looked very excited about something or other. His shoulders were hunched up and his hands were thrust deep in his trouser pockets. The movement of his fingers as he twiddled them in the lining was plain to see. It began to look as if he were not going to speak at all and the situati
on was getting more awkward all the time; and then he came around close to me, swallowing hard, and said, ‘Guess Prudence is right about this verandah being in pretty poor shape.’

  ‘Sure is,’ I said awkwardly.

  ‘I think I’ll go across to Sorenson’s and borrow a hammer and a few nails. It’s beginning to look as if I don’t fix that really bad board there, no one’s gunna ever do it and someone’s gunna break their fool neck on it one uv these fine days. One uv these days a man’ll be stepping along without a care in the world and next thing he’ll know, he’ll be half on the verandah and half under the house. Beats me how that board has stood up as long as it has to the pounding it gets right there, where yuh more or less gotta step on it. If those Sorensons aren’t over there at their own house this morning I don’t know what I’ll do. Number of times I’ve been over to that place to get a hammer and a few nails and find them out! Beats me where they get to. If they’re not over there this morning I’ll say to Jim next time I see him, “Why the hell don’t yuh just leave the district and get it over and done with?” Surely I’ll catch them there at home this morning. I’ll go across right away and if I can get Jim Sorenson’s hammer and a few nails we’ll fix that dam’ board for good and all. It wouldn’t matter if an ole buffer like me, that’s had his day, broke his neck, but it worries me to think of one of you youngsters with yuh life in front of yuh, coming a gutzer, and that’s what’ll happen as sure as Moses hid in the bulrushes.’