A Dismal Thing To Do (9 page)

“What puzzles me,” Madoc said quickly lest Bergeron become totally unmanned, “is how it—er—she was got out without the household’s being alerted. As you say, she’d have needed to sit here with her engine running for—how long? Five minutes?”

“Three or four, anyway.”

“And a vehicle of her size and age would make a fair amount of noise, one might think, regardless of how well she was maintained.”

“She would and no doubt she did. Only you see, the kids were rehearsing.”

“Ah?”

“As I mentioned before, my brother Armand’s got this hunting lodge over on the West Branch.”

“That would be somewhere in the vicinity of Bigears?”

“Not too far, depending on how you define Bigears. Pa always said Bigears was more a state of mind than a precise geographical location. Pa had a great feeling for
le mot juste.”

“One sees that he must have had,” Madoc replied politely.

“What the guests do is, they drive out as far as the pavement goes, then they leave their cars in a big shed Armand had built. Each car has a separate stall with a lock on it, which fosters a sense of security. From there on in it’s a pretty bumpy ride, but Armand’s got three old army jeeps he bought surplus and painted up with pictures of moose on the side. He named his place Bull Moose Portage, you see. Armand has a flair, like Pa.”

“Obviously.”

“So anyway, as I said, Armand’s fishing isn’t what it used to be on account of those goddamn smokestacks spewing sulfur dioxide all over the goddamn North American continent with no thought to the fact that there’s somebody on this planet that has a concern in the ecology even if they don’t own stock in the company. Naturally, that’s cut into Armand’s business, so there’s not much he can do except go after the tourists as well as the sportsmen. Now, to attract tourists, you’ve got to offer them more in the way of entertainment than a few mosquitos to swat.”

“The point is well taken.”

“Realizing this, Armand’s worked out canoe trips, nature walks, ski trails, and so forth that the guides can run instead of loafing around bitching about the acid rain. Then he puts on a nice supper and afterward they have entertainment. None of that punk rock stuff, of course, because people who go on bird walks wouldn’t be the type to care for it, but maybe a barn dance or an evening of Canadian folk songs like Ronald from Bras d’Or or the one about young Charlotte who froze to death because she wouldn’t wear her winter drawers when her boy friend took her for a sleigh ride. Or Old-Timers’ Night when everybody sits around and sings the same song to a different tune.”

“I’m tone-deaf myself,” Madoc admitted.

“Then you’d fit right in at Armand’s sing-alongs, from what the kids tell me. See, what happened was, naturally Armand wasn’t going to lay out good money for talent when he can get the kids to do it for fun. So he bought up an assortment of secondhand musical instruments at an auction and passed them around among the tribe. Well, some of them took to the instruments and some didn’t, but there’s six or eight that you can stand to listen to if you’re not too particular, and the rest do what they call the vocalizing. My daughter Cecile took piano lessons, so she’s the director. Every so often they like to come here for their rehearsals and I don’t mind telling you that’s the night I take my wife out to supper and the movies. So that’s how come nobody heard the truck warming up.”

“The truck was gone when you and your wife came home from your night out, then?”

“Gone as though she’d never been,” Perce confirmed sadly. “And the kids hadn’t heard a thing, which didn’t surprise me any, I must say. We’d heard them plain enough, all the way coming up the road. They were pretty sick about it when I told them, but that didn’t help us any.”

“That truck was something of a local showpiece, wasn’t it?” Madoc asked. “I know my wife happened to mention it just recently in Fredericton.”

“I’m not surprised, her being away from Pitcherville so long. How dear to my heart are the scenes of my childhood, when fond recollection presents them to view. Cecile was trying to get the kids to harmonize that the other night, but they wanted to sing some ghastly thing about taking a space walk with a little green girl from the moo-hoo-hoon.
‘Autres temps, autres moeurs,’
as my grandpère would say.”

“I don’t suppose he’s still around?” Madoc ventured. Among the Bergerons, he felt, it might be possible.

But Perce Bergeron said he wasn’t. He also said in response to Madoc’s further query that neither hide nor hair of the truck had been seen since that fateful night, not that Madoc supposed it had, but asking questions to which he knew he wasn’t going to get satisfactory answers was part of his job. Then Perce’s eves began wandering mistily from the workbench over which his father’s postcards were strewn to the drive outside where his father’s bull truck ought to have been sitting but was not; and Madoc took his leave because he hated to see a grown man cry.

T
HE NEXT STEP, AND
he took it gladly, was to get back up to the farm and show Janet those pictures of the old bull truck. He arrived just in time for a cup of tea, as would have been the case no matter when he got there. He didn’t need tea now any more than he had at Fred Olson’s, but he took it. A yes was always easier than a no with Annabelle. Furthermore, the tea was better and the cup no doubt a damn sight cleaner.

Janet was resting comfortably. She’d had a good nap, she told him, and was thinking seriously of getting up for a while.

“I tell her she’d better take it easy while she has the chance,” said Annabelle.

“And how right you are,” Madoc agreed. “Stay put, Jenny. You’re going to have company. Fred Olson’s bringing you a present.”

“Such as what?” Annabelle demanded. “A secondhand spare tire?”

“I’ll grow a firsthand one of my own if I stay here much longer.” The thought didn’t hinder Janet from accepting another of Annabelle’s neatly shaped, lightly browned madeleines, though.

“Don’t worry about that now. You’ve got to keep your strength up,” Annabelle reminded her. “Madoc, you’re not eating a thing. Let me go cut you a piece of fruitcake. You always like my fruitcake.”

“I do, but would you mind wrapping it in a paper napkin or something so I can take it along with me?” he asked in self-defense. “I just popped in to check on my wife. I still have another call to make, and I’d like to get it over with before dark.”

“But you’ll be back in time for supper?”

“If I can.”

“Honestly, Janet, I don’t know how you stand it, never knowing when to light the oven.”

Annabelle bustled off, no doubt to pack a hamper in case Madoc should faint from hunger along the road and disgrace her before all Pitcherville. Madoc took advantage of her brief absence to show Janet the pictures he’d brought from Bergeron’s.

“What do you think, love?”

She rubbed her cheek against his coatsleeve. “Oh yes, no doubt about it. They must have slung on a coat of green paint, but they couldn’t disguise that funny-looking grill. Poor Perce! He’ll be sick as Aunt Prudie’s cat when he finds out.”

“He’s none too happy now,” Madoc told her. “Nice chap. You might try thinking up a way to break the news gently.”

“I don’t suppose there is one. Where are you off to now?”

“To see your old pal Jason Bain. He’s been robbed of some valuable lumber.”

“I’ll believe that one when I see it. Anyway, what’s lumber got to do with Perce’s truck?”

“Quite possibly nothing.”

“Then why are you going?”

“Because I made a deal with Fred Olson.”

“About the present he’s bringing me?”

“No sacrifice is too great, love.”

“You don’t mean to tell me the present’s coming from Bain’s place? I can’t picture myself ever giving houseroom to anything he’d got his grubby old mitts on.”

“Your present is not coming from Bain’s place. Now go back to sleep like a good little wife so you’ll be fresh and rested for later.”

“Don’t get your hopes up. Annabelle’s put us in the room with the squeaky bedsprings.”

“It’s a poor detective who can’t track down an oil can. Farewell, mine own. I’m off on my perilous mission.”

Madoc kissed his wife once more for luck, thanked Annabelle for the sandwich, the hunk of fruitcake, and the thermos of tea; all of which would come in handy should he happen to get storm-stayed out at Bain’s. It was only a five-mile run each way and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky at the moment, but one never knew.

Once off the road, he found the drive in to Bain’s as he’d expected, abominable at the start and worse as he went along. Rather than tax the pool car’s springs to the breaking point, he pulled over to the side at the first reasonable opportunity and hiked the last quarter-mile or so. He deduced Jason Bain would be at home from the fact that he could see no fresh oil spots among the bumps and ruts. Fred hadn’t mentioned anything about Bain’s getting a new truck, as he surely would have if so incredible a happening had in fact occurred, and Madoc knew the old one leaked like a punctured tin. Unless Bain had managed to promote himself a free crankcase somewhere.

No, he hadn’t. When Madoc reached the end of the lane, he found the truck sitting there with a glistening black pool underneath. One might surmise the old coot was spending more on oil than a new vehicle would cost him, provided one didn’t know Jase Bain. The logical explanation was that he’d managed to swindle somebody out of a few cases and didn’t give a hoot how much the old wreck spewed, so long as the oil wasn’t costing him anything.

One might also think Bain would invite a person in to warm himself, but Madoc had expected no such amenity at the end of his trek. Nobody else would get to soak up any heat Jase Bain was paying out good money for, even though in practice he undoubtedly wasn’t. He’d be burning scraps he’d scrounged from somewhere, if he was burning anything at all.

In any event, the interview took place on the doorstep, with the lord of the manor bundled into a bearskin coat that had lost most of its hair. His turtlish head was protected by a rakish red and green wool tam o’shanter. Some member of a ladies’ curling team must be wondering what became of her cap, Madoc thought. Bain wouldn’t actually have stolen the tam, but found it lying about somewhere and carefully refrained from making any inquiries as to who might have mislaid one. Old Jase seldom committed an outright crime. Therefore, he was in a position to take a righteously militant stand against the miscreants who’d had the wicked audacity to boost his two-by-fours.

“One hundred an’ twenty feet o’ prime studdin’ an’ what are you goin’ to do about it, eh?” he demanded.

“That’s a very good question, Mr. Bain,” Madoc replied with due solemnity. “Suppose you give me some particulars about how the two-by-fours were taken. Were you here when it happened?”

“What kind of a dumb fool question is that? O’ course I wasn’t. If I’d o’ been here, I’d o’ loaded their pants with buckshot.”

“Thereby perhaps laying yourself open to a charge of grievous bodily harm. You may be thankful, then, that you were away. At what time did this alleged robbery occur?”

“On the fourteenth o’ March, like I told that jeezledy fool Fred Olson. Sometime between ha’past eight in the mornin’ an’ six o’clock at night.”

“In broad daylight, then. Bold fellows, weren’t they? And you say nothing was taken except those two-by-fours.”

“That’s all I know about right now. I can’t be sure, can I? Come the spring thaw, I might find a lot more stuff missin’, mightn’t I?”

“I shouldn’t advise it, Mr. Bain.”

Madoc was looking over the junkyard. This was no doubt the cleanest he’d ever see it, with nothing but oddly shaped bumps showing instead of the piles of stowage, salvage, and wreckage he knew were strewn all over the lot. Bain was a packrat on the grand scale. The stuff was supposed to be for sale and there were plenty of signs of digging around the piles, but Madoc doubted that Bain ever sold much of his scavenging. Most people knew better than to try striking a bargain with old Jase.

Madoc didn’t suppose for one second the two-by-fours had been prime new wood, or that they’d run to anything like the footage Bain claimed he’d lost. The odds were they’d been bean poles instead of studding, for that matter. Any story Bain told tended to contain a grain of truth, but perhaps not a great deal more than a grain.

“Precisely where were these two-by-fours taken from, Mr. Bain?” he asked. “I assume that long, rectangular bump over there is your lumber pile?”

A few brown stumps were bared in a grin of contempt. “You ain’t assumin’ very good, Inspector. That ain’t my lumber pile. It’s seventeen o’ them travelin’ privies from a construction company, laid on their sides so’s no smart-aleck kids’ll come whoopin’ in here an’ try to shove ’em over. The lumber’s behind them bushes.”

Bain pointed to a lump that didn’t look like anything in particular, half-concealed by a clump of bowed-over saplings. “Anybody that happened to have eyes in their head might o’ noticed where the snow’s been dug out fresh at the end an’ them two-by-fours hauled out from under the tarpaulin I had coverin’ the pile. I spotted it soon as I druv into the yard.”

“Sharp of you, Mr. Bain.”

Madoc strapped on the snowshoes he’d been carrying slung over his shoulder and made his way to the lumber pile. Bain didn’t follow, but stayed on the doorstep watching him like a hawk as he hitched up the frozen tarpaulin and took a peek underneath.

At least the old devil hadn’t amused himself by sending the Mountie on a wild goose chase. It was in fact a lumber pile and there was a gap among the boards where something that might as well be assumed a group of two-by-fours had been snaked out rather cleverly without toppling the rest. Judging from what he could see, Madoc doubted more than before that the studding had been either new or prime.

Could that explain why the top-heavy truck had fallen over? Suppose Bain’s vanished studding had been stolen to make a cradle for Mr. X’s unknown quantity, and suppose the wood had been too rotten to sustain so much weight when a real strain was put on it? That would mean the thieves had more confidence than skill in their carpentry.