Rest You Merry

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by Charlotte MacLeod


  “Professor Shandy!”

  Nevertheless, the girl helped him on with his overcoat and gave him a friendly pat on the arm. “You take good care of her, now. See if you can get a neighbor to come in. I’d go with you myself, but we’re so shorthanded on account of the Illumination.”

  “Thank you. I daresay we’ll manage.”

  At the moment, Shandy didn’t see how. Hannah was a dead weight on his arm, not seeming to notice where she put her feet. If he managed to get her down the perilous walk without at least one sprained ankle between them, it would be an agreeable surprise.

  “Peter, what am I going to do?” Hannah wailed.

  He took a firmer grip on her arm. “The best you can, Hannah. You’ll manage.”

  “But I’m alone. I’ve never been alone, not once in my life. First I lived with my folks, then I went away to school and lived in a dorm, then I moved to the sorority house, then I got married right after graduation and had the two children and now they’re gone and Ben’s gone, too. Peter, I don’t think I can stand it.”

  “Of course you can.” Dear God, this was awful. “Your friends will stand by you.”

  “What friends? Jemima was the only one who ever gave a hoot about me, and she’s gone like the rest.”

  For a wonder, she didn’t start to cry again. Realizing her complete bereavement seemed to have a calming effect.

  “I’m on my own. On my own.”

  Hannah didn’t say another word until they were inside the house she had shared with Ben Cadwall for so many years. Shandy got her coat off and led her to the biggest armchair in the neat, characterless, somewhat bleak parlor.

  “This was Ben’s chair. The kids got it for him one Father’s Day. They had them on special down at the Emporium. Now it’s mine, I guess.”

  She rubbed her hands over the slick brown vinyl arms, as though to make sure the furniture was there.

  “Ben left everything to me, you know, for as long as I live. I can keep it or sell it, just as I please. That’s one thing you have to give him credit for. He could be hell on wheels to live with, but he never went back on a promise. He said, he’d take care of me, and he did. I get the insurance and the savings accounts and the securities and the money from the house. I’ll sell as soon as I can. I couldn’t go on living here by myself, even if the college would allow it. Anyway, I’m sick of Balaclava and everybody in it. Turn up the thermostat, Peter. Ben always insisted on keeping it down to sixty-two. I’m going some place where I won’t have to freeze to death all winter long. How much will I get out of the pension fund? There’ll be something, won’t there, even if it’s not as if he’d lived to sixty-five? But who’s going to give it to me? Ben was always the one to sign the pension checks, and he’s gone. Peter, you’ll have to stick up for my rights.”

  “I’m sure there won’t be any problem, Hannah. The treasurer will simply take over until a new comptroller can be found.”

  “Oh, that old fool. Ben always said he was about as much good as an old wet hen, though he’d kill me if he ever knew I repeated it. Ben always thought the post should have gone to him, though he wouldn’t have been happy in it. Ben was a detail man. He liked having a finger in all the pies, and he got a kick out of knowing everything that went on. Not much got by my Bennie, I can tell you.”

  “That was my impression,” said Shandy cautiously. “Tell me, Hannah, was Ben in the habit of discussing these—er—goings-on with you?”

  She shrugged. “Yes and no. Of course we discussed things. What do you think? We couldn’t sit around staring at each other like a couple of dummies. The trouble was, he always cautioned me against repeating anything and of course I wouldn’t dare because it would surely get straight back to him. Then when gossip did get started, as it always does sooner or later, which you well know, he’d blame me when I hadn’t said a word to anybody.”

  “Not even to Jemima?”

  “She’d be the last person. I’m not one to talk against my own dead friend, but if they’d ever run a contest for the biggest mouth in Balaclava Junction, she’d have won hands down. Ben wasn’t like her. He could talk your hind leg off, but he never said anything he didn’t want you to know. Even with me, he’d clam up sometimes and get that mysterious smirk on his face. He’d be sitting right here in this chair, hugging some new secret to himself, and I swear to God, Peter, there were times when I could have taken that poker and wrapped it around his neck. He did that with everybody. In a way, I’m surprised he got to die a natural death.”

  Hannah blinked. “Come to think of it, you still haven’t told me what he died of. Was it a heart attack? Peter, why are you goggling at me like that? What was it?”

  “I can’t tell you, Hannah. There were no—er—external indications.”

  “Didn’t you call the doctor?”

  “Of course. Dr. Melchett was unable to form an opinion.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Wouldn’t he sign the death certificate? Dr. Melchett, of all people? Peter Shandy, you quit beating around the bush and tell me what happened to my husband.”

  “Hannah, I do not know. My personal opinion, for what it’s worth, is that he may somehow have been poisoned.”

  “Oh, my God! They’ll say I did it for the money.” Ashen-faced, Mrs. Cadwall cowered back into the vinyl armchair. “Peter, what am I going to do?”

  Damn it, woman, how should I know? was the retort that sprang to his lips. Mercifully, he managed not to say it.

  “Now, Hannah, there’s no sense in borrowing trouble. Wait and see what they find.”

  “What who find?”

  “They—er—took him to the county coroner’s, I believe. It’s a routine procedure in cases of sudden death. Oh, Lord, that reminds me. I must get in touch with Grimble and let him know you’re here.”

  “Peter, don’t! I’m scared.”

  “Why? You didn’t poison Ben, did you?”

  “Jemima said you had a rotten, vicious streak in you. She said you put up those awful lights and things on purpose to get back at us. I didn’t believe her then, but I do now.”

  “Never mind that. Tell me what you gave Ben for breakfast. I know he stopped at the college dining room, but did he eat anything before he left the house? You’ll have to tell the police, you know.”

  “I’ll tell anybody who asks me. I have nothing to be ashamed of, which is more than you can say.”

  “All right, Hannah. What did Ben eat?”

  “We each had a cup of rose-hip tea for the vitamin C, and a little All-bran for our bowels. And we used the same tea bag and the same bran out of the same box and the same milk out of the same carton. Then we had a piece of coffeecake that Sheila Jackman sent over by one of the kids. I suppose she meant well. Anyway, it was a change from All-bran.”

  “Ben ate some of the cake?”

  “A little. He growled about the empty calories, but he ate it, so he wouldn’t have to lie and tell Sheila it was good when he hadn’t tasted it. Ben was honest, you know. Too damned honest, sometimes.”

  “Is there any of the cake left?”

  “No, I finished it after he’d gone. I made myself some coffee. I always do.”

  “What was the cake like? I was thinking that if the children made it, they might have gone in for some—er—fancy touches.”

  “Like putting rat poison on top? You don’t have to beat around the bush with me, Peter Shandy. In my opinion, the cake came straight out of a Betty Crocker box, and if there’d been anything wrong with it, I’d be dead instead of Ben because I ate about three times as much as he did. I can ask Sheila for the recipe, if you want.”

  “Let the police do that if they want. It will give them something to think about. I do think I ought to put in that call, Hannah. If you don’t come forward, somebody might start wondering why.”

  “Oh, go ahead,” she sighed. “What difference does it make? I’ll have to get word to Benita and Frank, too.”

  “Yes, your children ought to be with you
as soon as possible. Why don’t you call them as soon as I’ve got hold of Grimble?”

  “Not now! We always wait till evening, when the rates go down.”

  Shandy shrugged. “Where’s the phone?”

  “Right out in the front hall. Oh, Peter, do you have to?”

  As it happened, he didn’t. Shandy was looking about him for the instrument when Grimble and Olivetti came up the walk. He opened the door for them.

  “I was just about to call you. I found Mrs. Cadwall in the faculty dining room and brought her home.”

  “We know you did,” snarled Grimble. “Why the hell didn’t you get in touch with me right away?”

  “Because she was upset and wanted to come home. I believe you’ll find her able to talk now.”

  “You been tellin’ her what to say, huh?”

  “Grimble, have you ever thought of getting yourself stuffed and mounted? What can she say, except the truth?”

  “You’d be surprised, Professor,” said Olivetti. “Where is she?”

  “In here.”

  Shandy motioned them into the parlor, where Hannah still hunched in the brown vinyl armchair. She looked up at the men, but made no effort to rise, or even to speak,

  Grimble lost his truculence. “Well, Miz Cadwall,” he began awkwardly, “we kind of hate to bother you at a time like this. Sure was an awful shock, us findin’ the comptroller like we did. Gosh, it was only yesterday afternoon he dropped in at my office, friendly as you please. We had a high old time.”

  At last Hannah broke her silence. “You surprise me, Grimble. Dr. Cadwall told me he was going over to tear your hide off. He said you’d been playing games with your expense account again and he was pretty fed up with trying to keep you honest. I’m glad you took the criticism in such a cordial spirit, though I daresay you have reason to feel you got off more lightly than you deserve. I believe he did put it to you straight that if you ever pulled one more stunt like the last time, he was going to take the evidence to President Svenson and you’d be out on your ear before you knew what struck you. I wasn’t supposed to breathe a word to a soul, but I don’t suppose it matters now. They can’t fire him for breach of confidence, can they?”

  Shandy blinked in admiration. The comptroller’s widow was going to manage all right. Olivetti was gazing at the security chief with an interested glint in his steel-gray eyes. Grimble was squirming.

  “Aw, nothin’ like that ever happened. He must o’ been jokin’.”

  “My husband never joked about money.”

  She made the statement in a flat, uninterested tone that was the ultimate in credibility. “Officer, have they found out what he died of?”

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Cadwall. I’ll cheek with the lab again right now, if you don’t mind my using your phone.”

  “Not at all. Peter, would you show him, please? I seem to be dreadfully tired all of a sudden. Shopping always exhausts me. Ben said I ought to wait for the final mark-downs, but everything gets so picked over.”

  She started to cry again without sound or stirring, letting the tears run down her face and dampen the front of her sensible tan polyester dress. It was unbearable to watch.

  Shandy got up. “Hannah, can I bring you a drink or something?”

  She realized what was happening, and snuffled. “There’s a box of Kleenex on the kitchen counter, and some of the sherry from Jemima’s funeral in the underneath cupboard to the right of the sink. You might bring me a little of that. Maybe it will warm me up. I feel so cold, as if it were myself and not Ben who—”

  “Yes, of course. That’s perfectly natural.”

  He hustled out of the room to get away from the sight of those coursing tears. Olivetti was hanging on the phone when he passed through on his way to the kitchen, still waiting when he got back. He paused to ask, “Any news?”

  “They’re checking now. We can’t expect results this fast. They’ve hardly had time to—yeah? You did? Well, what do you know about that? Sure, I understand. Thanks.”

  The state policeman hung up. “That doctor of yours is one smart man, Professor, in case you didn’t know it. He told the coroner’s office to test for the commoner Vegetable alkaloids first, and they think they may be on to something already.”

  “Most interesting,” said Shandy demurely. He was betting on taxine himself, but he deemed it prudent not to appear too knowledgeable. “May I pass on the information to Mrs. Cadwall?”

  “Thanks, I’ll tell her myself, when there’s anything to tell. Say, Professor, haven’t you got some papers to correct?”

  “Or peddle? Certainly, if you’d rather I left. For what it’s worth, Lieutenant, I really don’t think Mrs. Cadwall poisoned her husband.”

  “Am I supposed to take that as an expert opinion?”

  “Anybody who’s been monitoring exams for a great many years tends to develop a certain sensitivity as to who has the answers taped inside his socks.”

  “So who’s got the answers this time?”

  “I don’t know yet, but there’s a chap named Dysart who has a story you might care to hear. Grimble can track him down for you.”

  “Thanks. And where do I track you down, just in case?”

  “My house is directly across the way, the small red brick one with the—er—reindeer on the roof. Then I’ll just give Mrs. Cadwall her drink and explain that I have to leave.”

  Hannah accepted the sherry, the tissues, and the good-by without comment. Shandy went out feeling guilty for no definable reason. He’d always thought of Ben’s wife, when he thought of her at all, as one of life’s minor nuisances. Now she was a person in trouble. How much of this trouble had been precipitated by his vicious reaction against her and Jemima’s annual pestering?

  His cousin’s wife, Elizabeth, who was a religious woman, would no doubt say that this horrible turn of events was a judgment upon him for losing his temper. He would not have believed himself capable of entertaining the possibility that Elizabeth could be right.

  Chapter 18

  OF ALL THE BLACK thoughts surging through Shandy’s mind, the blackest was that Helen wouldn’t be free for at least another hour and a half. Next most dire was the fact that, although its presiding genius was dead and its acting chairman perhaps even now being arrested for a murder she almost certainly didn’t commit, business at the Illumination was brisk as usual.

  The master switch for the lights—his own, alas, among them—had already been thrown. The Gingerbread Houses had dropped their plywood fronts. Red-and-green elves cavorted about wearing sandwich boards that announced a Giant Marshmallow Roast with music by the Eskimo Piemen, whoever they might be, to start at half past seven on the lower playing field, admission one dollar. One of them stopped the professor and tried to sell him a ticket. Shuddering, he turned downhill and sought refuge in the Enderbles’ shrubbery.

  It was curious how the dense growth, caked with hardened-on snow, created a sense of isolation. Even the hubbub he’d found intolerable on the Crescent so few steps away penetrated here only as a blending of happy sounds.

  There were plenty of yews here. That didn’t mean anything, of course; Balaclava was overgrown with yew. Still, if one wanted to gather the needles in total privacy, this would he a safer place than most. Shandy pottered along, trying to discern in the fading light whether any of the branches showed signs of being stripped. He went too far along the path, and Adele Dysart spied him.

  “Peter!” she shrieked from a window. “Thank God you’ve come. I’m stuck in the house with a lousy cold and ready to climb the walls. Just a second, I’ll open the door.”

  Shandy wanted neither Adele’s cold nor her company, but she’d got him trapped and herded into what the Dysarts insisted on calling their family room before he could think up a thoughtful way to tell her so.

  “Now you sit there and don’t move. I’m going to fix you a slug of my special cough medicine.”

  “No, please don’t. I’m due at a cocktail party pretty soon,”
he lied.

  He should have known better. She pounced.

  “Who’s giving it, and how come I wasn’t invited?”

  “Er—it isn’t actually a party, just drinks with a—er—friend.”

  “Who, for instance?”

  “Helen Marsh,” he replied unhappily.

  “You mean that washed-out old maid librarian you dragged over to the dining room last night? What is she, some poor relation of the Ameses’? Honestly, Peter, can’t you do a little better than that? What happened to Susie?”

  “Susie who? Oh—er—Susie. She—er—floated out of my life, so to speak.”

  It would be ludicrous as well as futile to try explaining why Helen was so much the more attractive of the two. Adele was looking, to use a trenchant simile often employed by Mrs. Lomax, like something the cat dragged in. Her hair-do had come unstuck and she’d made no attempt to sort out the resultant tangle of wiry elflocks. The make-up she was wearing must have been applied at least one day ago. Her housecoat could have done with a washing, and so could her neck. She dabbed at her scarlet nose with a wad of tissues and took a swig of her own prescription.

  “And what brings you to these parts in the midst of your busy social life?”

  An explanation came into his mind, and he uttered it. “I’ve been trying to figure out how Jemima got through that shrubbery after she left your party without being seen.”

  She wiped her nose again. “For God’s sake, why?”

  “I think it’s curious. Mary Enderble and Roger Jackman must have been walking straight toward the entrance in one direction at the same time she entered the path from here, yet they didn’t meet. Sheila was watching for about fifteen minutes out their front window and says she never saw her come out. Are you positive she didn’t change her mind and go around by the street?”

  Adele stared at him over her Kleenex. “Why would she do a thing like that? Look, she went out that same door you just came in, right? There’s a path shoveled from the door into the short cut, right? And there’s no path from that path to any other path, right? The only way she could get from the back to the front would be to come back through the house, which she didn’t because a whole bunch of people watched her go down the path, right? Unless she went wallowing through the snow up to her eyeballs which nobody in her right mind would do when she had a path to walk in. Christ, if we ever get out of this lousy climate—” she sneezed again and sought solace in her tumbler.

 

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