A Dismal Thing To Do (23 page)

“And I suppose when he was off driving, they didn’t have to listen,” said Madoc. “Buddy wasn’t the type to have accidents, then?”

“No, never. Sometimes there’d be a breakdown, but that wasn’t his fault.”

“What would he do then?”

“Panic, mostly. Bud could change a flat and pump his own gas if he had to, but if it was anything more complicated than that, he’d hitch a ride to the nearest phone and yell for my father to come and bail him out.”

“What if he couldn’t hitch a ride?”

“Then he’d walk, I suppose, but no farther than he could help. Bud without a car was like a goldfish without a bowl. Vehicles were his natural habitat, you might say.”

“Then if he couldn’t get one any other way, might he have been tempted to steal a car?”

George was silent a moment, then nodded. “He used to when he was a kid. Before he was old enough to get a license, he’d swipe his uncles’ cars and go joyriding. I know that for a fact because he was hanging around my sister Margie for a while, and he bragged to her about it. They used to get sore, but they wouldn’t do anything except maybe give him a clout on the ear because he always got their cars back without a scratch. Why did you ask that, Inspector? Do you think Bud might have stolen Badger’s car or something?”

“Not Badger’s. You wouldn’t happen to know whether Buddy was working at the store this past Thursday afternoon?”

“I couldn’t say offhand. Bud was in and out of the place a lot because he drove the delivery truck for his uncle. He’d been doing that for quite a while. He only started clerking when Henry, the regular helper, got killed.”

“Oh? What happened to Henry?”

“He shot himself. He was cleaning his rifle and it went—say, that’s pretty strange when you come to think of it.”

“Was he alone when it happened?”

“Far as anybody knew. His wife was off to her sister’s or somewhere. She came home and found him dead in the kitchen. He’d been out shooting rabbits. There were a couple of them lying on the kitchen table, each with one clean shot through the head. Henry was a fantastic sharpshooter. He had a lot of medals for marksmanship.”

“Yet he killed himself cleaning his own gun. Didn’t anybody find that a bit strange?”

“Well, sure. But Henry’d been kind of moody lately, according to his wife. He’d done some queer things, too, like staying out all night and flying off the handle when she asked him where the heck he’d been, and picking a big fight with Mr. McLumber the day before.”

“What about?”

“Nothing in particular. Mr. McLumber said they were down cellar shifting some stock around and he just got sore and started raving. A customer came in and heard Henry yelling, but couldn’t tell what he was saying. So then Henry grabbed his coat and stormed out and went shooting rabbits, and then he came home and shot himself. I guess he figured he was going to get fired.”

“How long had he been with McLumber?”

“All his life, pretty much. He’d gone to work there Saturdays while he was still in school and started full-time as soon as he got out. Mr. McLumber says he wouldn’t have fired him, no matter what. He thought the world of Henry. He even paid for the funeral. So the relatives kind of leaned on Dad to never mind asking embarrassing questions but just let them get it over with. Dad didn’t like that much, but Henry was an Owl and his father’s a Past Grand Supreme Regent, and nobody’s too keen on the idea of a suicide in the family. You can understand that, Inspector.”

Yes, Madoc could understand. He’d run into the same kind of thing himself often enough. The family wouldn’t have gone much for the idea of murder, either. Probably it had never crossed their minds, and why should it have? People didn’t go around shooting hardware clerks in their own kitchens.

“It looks to me,” he said, “as if Mr. McLumber may have some trouble finding himself another hardware clerk.”

George chuckled a bit. “I hadn’t thought of that. I don’t suppose he will, though. There aren’t that many jobs going begging around here, and I guess Mr. McLumber pays fairly well.”

“Does he, now? I shouldn’t think a store like his would do that much business.”

“It’s not just the store. They do some warehousing, too. That’s where Bud would be mostly, making deliveries to other stores.”

“What would he be delivering?”

“I suppose the sort of thing you’d find in a general store. Tools such as hammers and screwdrivers and ax heads. Flashlight batteries, weather stripping, stuff like that. The big distributors aren’t much interested in filling small orders, so that’s where Mr. McLumber came in.”

“But is there any real money in that?” Madoc asked.

“Why should he bother if there wasn’t. I’d say Mr. McLumber does darn well for himself. He drives a big Lincoln, goes on trips, bought his wife a mink coat for Christmas. My mother told her it was beautiful, though she wouldn’t want one for herself because mink makes a woman look so much fatter than she already is.”

Madoc laughed, as George clearly expected him to. “George, if you’d like to try some detective work, you might find out—discreetly, of course—where Buddy was on Thursday. On Wednesday, too,” he added, recalling Eyeball Grouse and the masked driver of the van at Point C who’d intercepted the army truck on its way from Point A to Point B.

“Sure. I’ll ask some of the guys. Discreetly, of course. Say, Inspector, what sort of courses would a guy on a hockey scholarship have to take to get into the RCMP?”

“Why don’t you come up to Fredericton sometime soon and discuss the matter with our personnel officer? My wife would be glad to offer you a bed.”

George could sleep in the guest room beside his father’s washstand wearing its coat of the Loyalist Blue paint Buddy McLumber had been so voluble about. At least Madoc knew where Buddy had been on Saturday.

It was as well George was doing the driving this time. Madoc dropped off to sleep and managed a refreshing nap before they got to Bigears. He snapped wide awake, though, the moment George stopped the truck.

“Is this the place?”

“Not quite. I thought I’d better make sure what we’re supposed to do. Were you planning to surround the house or anything?”

“What I had in mind was walking up and ringing the doorbell, if there is one.”

“Then what?”

“That depends on which of them answers. If it’s Mrs. McLumber, you might greet her politely and apologize for getting her out of bed. You might then say we’d like to talk with Mr. Grouse. Or Jelly, if that’s how you normally refer to him. Then I say don’t bother calling him, I’ll go on up. You stay down here and engage her in light conversation so she doesn’t interfere. If Grouse himself comes to the door, you step aside and let me handle him. I mean that, George. Don’t do a thing unless he breaks away and tries to make a run for it. Then, if you can do it conveniently and safely, tackle him from behind. If he’s armed, stay clear and let him go. He won’t get far.”

“How do you know?”

“Trust me.”

Madoc couldn’t think offhand why George should place any reliance on such an unsupportable assurance, except that Grouse probably wouldn’t be wearing anything to speak of and charging off half-naked in the predawn chill might dampen his enthusiasm for escape rather quickly. Furthermore, if he’d been enjoying his landlady’s charms as George hypothesized, he might be too tired to run anyway. They walked up to the house and rang the bell.

Nothing happened. Madoc rang it again. Then it occurred to him the bell probably hadn’t worked in years and the door probably wasn’t locked. He eased it open and murmured to George, “Stick your head in and holler for Grouse.”

George was good at hollering. “Jelly? Hey, Jelly Grouse. You here?”

Grouse’s answering bellow was thick and indistinct. “Huh? Wha’ the hell you want?”

“Come down here quick. I need you.”

There was some growling and thrashing, a woman’s voice raised in sleepy complaint, then scuffling footsteps on the stairway. “What’s the matter? That you, Cyril?”

“No, it’s me,” George replied.

“Me who? Why the hell don’t you turn on the light?”

From the sound, Grouse had just fallen down the last few stairs and landed on an umbrella stand filled with pokers and tongs. Madoc turned on the flashlight he’d brought with him. Jelly was a big man, running to fat. He lay sprawled amid a welter of lacrosse sticks and baseball bats, wearing nothing but an unfastened bathrobe. Madoc had a fleeting urge to arrest him for indecent exposure, then decided he’d better stick to the book. He pulled a string to switch on a bulb that shone directly down into the fallen man’s eyes. Dazzled, Grouse squinted up at him.

“Who the hell are you?”

“RCMP,” Madoc told him. “Detective Inspector Rhys. And you’re Jellicoe Grouse, commonly known as Jelly, right? You’re under arrest, Mr. Grouse. It is my duty to remind you that anything you say will be taken down and may be used in evidence against you.”

“For what?”

“At the moment, you’re charged with arson and conspiracy to commit a felony. I expect we’ll be tacking on a number of other things once we get you sorted out. There’s really no sense in making those obscene noises, Mr. Grouse. We have a positive identification of you from the woman whom Buddy McLumber failed to murder before he stole her car Thursday afternoon. This was after Perce Bergeron’s bull box tipped over and burned, as you doubtless surmise, and immediately before you and your confederate dragged the furniture out into the road and set fire to it and the house.”

“You’re crazy. The woman wasn’t there. I mean—”

Jellicoe Grouse realized too late that he’d meant what he said. He tried to get up, caught his foot in a lacrosse stick, and fell again. He must still be half-drunk, Madoc decided, from whatever rite of passage had followed the session at Ben Potts’s.

“George, would you mind helping him up? I’ll just slip these handcuffs on him first, for form’s sake. Perhaps Mrs. McLumber will be kind enough to bring down his boots and trousers.”

By now, Buddy’s mother was at the top of the stairs, clutching a patchwork quilt around her. “What are you doing to him? He never did anything. He’s been right here in the house all the time.”

She sounded a trifle smashed, too, Madoc thought, and who could blame her? “Sorry to disturb you, Mrs. McLumber,” he apologized. “The crime for which Mr. Grouse is being arrested took place this past Thursday in the early evening. That was the same night your son had the breakdown and came home late from Harvey Station, remember?”

“It wasn’t Harvey Station. He’d been out to Bull Moose Portage for one of those meetings Pierre Dubois had been running. I told Pierre what I thought of him for keeping my boy out so late.”

“And what did Pierre say?” asked Madoc, keeping his mitten firmly clamped over Jelly’s mouth so he couldn’t shut her up.

“Oh, he put me off as you might expect. He said he guessed some of the brothers must have got together for a little informal discussion. Cecile claims Pierre took her over to the movies that night, but of course Cecile would say anything Pierre wanted her to.”

And of course Pierre had assumed Buddy’d been somewhere he didn’t want his mother to know about, which was undoubtedly the truth, and been too noble and high-minded to rat on a brother. He’d check with Dubois as a matter of form, but Madoc had washed out the nature writer as an effective conspirator ever since that inspirational session at the lean-to.

Nella McLumber could be dropped off the list, too, he was sure. This woman was a natural-born dupe, the kind who could always be fooled because she always knew she was right.

Madoc decided he’d better take his mitten away and let Jellicoe Grouse come up for air. The prisoner at once began to bluster.

“You can’t do this to me. I’ve got influential friends.”

“If you’re talking about Mr. Badger, you might as well save your breath,” Madoc told him. “He’s down at the lockup under armed guard, waiting for transport to the county jail. Jason Bain has been arrested and confessed his part in that game you’ve been playing, in order to save his own skin. You’ll be well advised to do the same.”

Jellicoe Grouse retorted with a suggestion about what Inspector Rhys could do. As this involved an anatomical impossibility, Madoc took little heed.

“George, why don’t you go get the truck? Drive right up to the door. Mrs. McLumber may be saved some embarrassment if we remove Mr. Grouse before the sun comes up and her neighbors begin to wonder.”

“They’ll wonder anyway,” said Mrs. McLumber bitterly.

“Then tell them you went out for a ride because you couldn’t sleep, and your car broke down so you called my father and we towed you home,” George suggested. “I’ll back you up, Mrs. McLumber. Bud used to give me rides when I was a kid.”

That started the poor woman sobbing. She made no further comment while Madoc and George bundled Jellicoe Grouse into enough clothes to keep him decent and unfrozen, and stuffed him into the tow truck’s seat between them. Here was another tight squeeze for three abreast. Next time he came to Pitcherville, Madoc vowed silently, he was going to bring more adequate transport.

F
RED OLSON HAD SLEPT
, but not long enough. His eyes were puffy and he was still having to yawn every two minutes. But as soon as the tow truck hove into the yard, he was right there to unload Jellicoe Grouse and hustle him into the lockup with Jelly’s influential friend. Sam Neddick was still on guard; Madoc could swear he hadn’t moved a muscle since they’d last seen him.

“Prisoner give you any trouble, Sam?” Madoc asked.

“Nope.” Sam nodded at a fresh star in the concrete wall behind the bars. “Tried to, once. I had to demonstrate what happens when a rifle goes off accidental in a closed room an’ the bullet ricochets. Messed up your wall some, Fred. Lately he’s been offerin’ me money. Got it up to fifty thousand so far.”

“He hasn’t happened to mention how he made the money?”

“Nope. Don’t s’pose he done it sellin’ hockey pucks.”

“Would you care to tell us now, Mr. Badger?” Madoc inquired politely.

Mr. Badger, it appeared, would not.

“How about you, Mr. Grouse?”