A Pint of Murder (2 page)

But if she hadn’t canned them herself, then she’d never have eaten them. Forty-odd years ago, Mrs. Treadway’s husband had opened a commercially processed tin of tomatoes with a patent can opener of his own invention, eaten its contents, and died. From that day on, the widow had bought nothing from any grocer except flour, sugar, salt, and tea. She’d gotten milk and eggs from the Wadman farm, churned her own butter, and made her own sourdough bread. She caught fish in the pond now and then, or ate home-cured bacon the Wadmans gave her, but mostly she lived on what she grew in her own garden.

When she got too old to tend her own plot, she’d been glad enough to accept fresh fruits and vegetables for canning from any neighbor who chose to share them with her, but nobody, not even Janet’s late mother, had ever got her to taste a bite of cooked food after Charles Treadway died.

Yet Agatha Treadway had been fond of the Wadmans, fonder than she’d ever been of her own kin. She’d outlived both her brothers. For blood relatives, she had only the two nieces, Marion and Elizabeth, plus Elizabeth’s daughter Gillian and grandson Bobby. Marion she’d openly scorned. Elizabeth Druffitt hadn’t set foot inside the Victorian ark Pitcherville called the Mansion for fifteen years and more.

At least Marion’s faithful treks up from Boston had kept her in the will. “She’ll get her fair share,” old Aggie had scoffed. “God knows she’s worked hard enough for it.” The half that was to have been Elizabeth’s before the big fight would go to Gilly Bascom, the Druffitts’ only offspring.

Not that there could be much left for anybody by now. Charles Treadway had run through most of a sizable lumber fortune financing his crazy inventions. The widow had been dipping into capital for years, to keep the Mansion from tumbling around her ears. Whatever she’d had, though, would stay in the family because Agatha had always believed in sticking by your own whether you could stand them or not.

It was going to be a lonesome old summer out here on the hill with Mrs. Treadway gone and Bert away so much and only Julius the cat for company. Janet gave the wet mop a final rinse and hung it back in the cellarway. She got a clean hand towel out of the drawer by the kitchen sink, wet and soaped one end of it, then went to the dining room and gently sponged the face and hands that were already like waxworks. She went upstairs for a clean sheet, a nice one with a crocheted edge, brought it back down, and spread it over the tall, still form on the dining-room table.

There was nobody here to help her. Marion had gone off in the doctor’s car without a backward look, much less a tear for dear old Auntie. That didn’t matter, Janet was crying enough for both of them. Her brother Bert would feel awful, too, when he found out. No sense in waking him tonight. One thing about bad news, as their own dead mother used to say, it could always wait till morning.

“J
ANET, COULD YOU SPARE
me a slice of bread?”

“Come on in, Marion,” sighed Janet. “I’ll warm up the teapot.”

This was ten days after Agatha Treadway had been laid to rest, and Janet was beginning to wish she’d stayed in Saint John to nurse her sore belly and her broken heart. Watching Roy parade his new love couldn’t be any more irksome than fetching and carrying for Marion Emery.

Bert, who didn’t find neighborly hospitality onerous since he wasn’t the one who had to cope with their new star boarder, was getting a good deal of amusement from Marion’s staying on at the Mansion. “Hi, how’s the heiress this morning? Found the hidden millions, eh?”

“Nope,” mumbled their self-invited guest through a mouthful of Janet’s homemade doughnut. “Still looking.”

“Keep it up. It’s good, healthy exercise. Don’t know’s it’s good for much else.” Bert went out to start the tractor, and she glowered after him.

“Great little kidder, isn’t he? When I think of all the nights I’ve sat freezing to death on that lousy Boston bus, and for what? Five thousand bucks in Canadian money and a half share in a white elephant. I know damn well Auntie had a boodle stashed away someplace, and I’ll find it if I have to take that moldy dump apart board by board.”

“Marion, I’ve told you over and over you’re wasting your time,” said Janet, not that it would do any good. “You know better than I do how your Uncle Charles managed to get rid of what his father left him. Your aunt had her old-age pension and that little bit left in the bank, and everybody around here was surprised she had that much. Gilly wasn’t expecting any great windfall, was she?”

“How do I know what she expects? All she’s doing is sitting down there on her backside expecting me to do the work for her. Boy, I wouldn’t have wished a kid like her even on my cousin Elizabeth. Running off with that Bascom creep before she even got through high school, then crawling back with a brat on her hands after he ditched her. And holing up in that shack beside the diner instead of going home to that nice, big house when Elizabeth practically begged her on bended knee. But, no, Gilly had to be independent.”

Marion bit savagely into another doughnut. “She’s not going to let Elizabeth run her life, she says, but she sure doesn’t mind letting ol’ Mom foot the bills for the groceries. If it hadn’t been for her folks, she and that kid of hers would have starved to death long ago.”

Though she’d never been any great chum of Gilly Druffitt, Janet didn’t like hearing Marion run the woman down like this. “Now, Marion, you can’t say Gilly doesn’t try. She works whenever she gets a chance.”

“At what? Waitressing part-time at the Busy Bee when Ella’s off on a drunk. Taking a course in poodle clipping when there isn’t a poodle within fifty miles of this jerkhole. Now she’s breeding dachshunds, for God’s sake. Last year she was going to make a million bucks a week selling eggs. Then one of her hens got out of the pen and some kid ran over it in his jalopy and she bawled for a week and had to get rid of the rest because they weren’t safe down there.”

“I know. She brought them to us.” Janet didn’t add that she and her sister-in-law had had a quiet sniffle together over the tragic look on Gilly’s thin little face as she dragged the makeshift crate of squawking poultry from her old Ford. The hens had proved to be incredibly poor layers, but Janet saw Annabelle was still protecting them from the stewpot.

Having drained the last dreg of tea and realizing that Janet had no intention of brewing any more, Marion set down her empty cup. “Well, I’d better get back to the mausoleum. Dot Fewter’s coming up this morning, though why I asked her I don’t know. Dot supposedly cleaned for Aunt Aggie every week, but I can’t see any sign that she ever did anything. I’ll probably get lung cancer from inhaling so much dust.”

“Hold your nose,” Janet suggested. “Dot’s not too bad so long as you stand over her with a shotgun. Annabelle tried her for a while back in the winter, though she did say she’d have fared about as well tying a duster to the cat and chasing him through the house. Is that Sam Neddick bringing Dot now? His car just turned into your driveway.”

“Yeah, I suppose so. Sam’s supposed to fix a few leaks and cut the grass, but no doubt he’ll be gone again before I can grab him. Janet, I don’t know what I’m going to do over there. There’s work that’s absolutely got to be done, and the lawyers won’t let go of a cent till we file a complete inventory. Elizabeth keeps yelling at me to get it finished, but she won’t raise a hand herself. She’s so damned proud of that grudge she’s been holding for fifteen years that she still won’t stick her nose inside the door of the Mansion. I was surprised she even showed up at the funeral, but I guess she wanted to make sure Aunt Aggie was safely planted so that her darling daughter could get her little hooks into her half of the Treadway millions. What a howl!”

“Won’t Gilly come up and help you, eh?”

“She said she would, but then one of her dogs came down with the mumps or something so she has to sit and hold its crummy paw. I don’t suppose you’d care to run over for an hour or so?” Marion interjected slyly.

Janet’s first impulse was to snap the woman’s head off. Then she reflected that it was a long way to dinnertime, that the house was clean and the washing done, that she hadn’t an earthly thing to do here but sit and brood about Roy. She might as well go.

“All right. I’m not going to clean for you, but I’ll help with the inventory. Should I bring a notebook and pencil, eh?”

“God, no! Uncle Charles left enough of his letterheads to sink a battleship. Would you believe Treadway Enterprises Ltd? What a fruitcake! Okay, let’s go before Dot falls asleep.”

Janet followed Marion over to the Mansion, wishing it were Gilly instead of this endless complainer and all-around leech who’d moved up to the hill with her skinny little boy and her fat little dogs. At least they now had things in common. The six years’ difference in age that had seemed so wide a barrier in school wouldn’t matter now that they were both grown women who’d been ditched.

“Now, who the hell is that?” Marion broke in on Janet’s bitter reverie, pointing to a rusty truck that had just pulled in behind Sam Neddick’s rattletrap. A bizarrely attenuated and elongated man was climbing out, craning his neck to look up at the peeling gray paint on the house Pitcherville had once considered the acme of elegance.

Maybe this trip was going to be worthwhile, after all. “Oh haven’t you ever met him?” said Janet with malicious glee. “That’s Jason Bain.”

“Bain? Isn’t he the one Auntie was always talking about, who sues somebody for something about once a week? What’s he want from me?”

“Anything he can get, most likely. He’s not particular, long as it’s free. Come on, let’s find out.”

They walked around to confront the man, who was now at the front door. Bain took his finger off the bell push and raised his noisome felt hat an inch or two.

“Miss Emery, I presume? Bain’s my name. I don’t b’lieve we’ve had the pleasure.”

“The pleasure’s all yours, mister,” said Marion sourly. “What do you want?”

“I just stopped by to collect some property o’ mine.”

“Like what?”

“I’m lookin’ for a patent right that was held jointly by me an’ Charles Treadway. Accordin’ to the terms of our agreement, it reverts to me on the widder’s death.”

Marion set her jaw. “Is that so? For your information, Mr. Bain, nothing’s going to leave this house till the inventory’s been filed and we know exactly where we stand.”

Bain shrugged. “I didn’t come here lookin’ to stir up trouble, but if I have to take legal action to protect my interests, I will. Might be kind of expensive for you to fight me an’ lose, but that’s your lookout, not mine.”

Marion’s hair had once been raven, and she’d made the mistake of trying to keep it that way. Against the dead black mass, her face showed white as a plaster cast. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What’s it for, anyway? I’ve never seen any patent. I wouldn’t even know what one looked like.”

“You’ll know this one, ’cause my name’s on it.”

“Oh yeah? And what’s that supposed to prove? You got anything to show you’re entitled to the claim?”

“You bet your bottom dollar I have.”

“Then fork it over.”

“That ain’t how I do business. You show me the patent, an’ I’ll show you the proof.”

“Well, I haven’t got it and I don’t know where it is,” Marion told him sulkily.

“That don’t surprise me none. Stands to reason Miz Treadway wouldn’t leave a valuable document layin’ around loose. She had it hid away somewheres, an’ if I was you, I’d start right this minute an’ ransack this house from stem to stern. If that patent ain’t in my hands by Thursday mornin’, I’ll be talkin’ to my lawyer Thursday afternoon.”

Bain didn’t bother to tip his hat again. He swiveled his enormous length around, thumped down the worn wooden steps, folded himself inside his shabby pickup, and drove off. Marion stared after the smoke-belching truck.

“Can you beat that? If that old buzzard thinks he can scare me—” Clearly he could, and had. “Janet, what am I going to do?”

“Find that patent, I suppose.”

“Then what? If he thinks I’m just going to hand it over to him like a dummy, he’s got rocks in his head. How do I know he’s entitled to any patent? The thing must be worth a bundle, or he wouldn’t be putting up such a squawk.”

Janet shook her head. “You don’t know old Jase. He’s perfectly capable of starting a lawsuit just for the fun of it. Anyway, you’d better find the thing. Where do you suppose it could be?”

“God knows. I’ve been through Uncle Charles’s desk and every other place I can think of already. I don’t remember noticing any patents, but maybe I skipped over them thinking they didn’t count for anything. Looks as if I’ll have to start all over again.”

“But what about the inventory? Wouldn’t the patent have to be shown to the lawyer along with everything else?”

Marion slumped into a chair. “I wish I’d never left Boston.”

That went for both of them. “Come on, Marion,” snapped Janet. “Sitting there feeling sorry for yourself isn’t going to get the job done. Take a paper and pencil and start up attic. Look everything over and list as you go.”

“It’ll take forever.”

“It sure will, if you don’t get cracking. I’ll begin down cellar. Where did your uncle keep all that stationery of his?”

Janet had made up her mind that Marion Emery was just about the most useless creature who ever encumbered the earth. Then she went through the kitchen and caught Dot Fewter taking advantage of the diversion caused by Bain’s visit to get herself nicely settled with a box of store cookies and a mug of oversweetened tea.

“Come on, Dot, you’re not getting paid to sit around stuffing your face. Help me take inventory.”

“Huh?”

“We’re going down cellar and list whatever we find there.”

“I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“You don’t have to know. I’ll call things off, and you write them down. You can do that much, can’t you?”

“I guess so.” At least Dot was good-natured. She grinned as she lumbered to her feet. “I’d just as soon go down cellar anyway. It’s nice and cool there.”

“I know.” That was why Janet had elected to start at the bottom and let Marion stew in the stuffy, dusty attic. Besides, she’d always liked Mrs. Treadway’s cellar, except for its peculiarly sticky floor.