A Pint of Murder (23 page)

“You shouldn’t have done that, Bobby,” his mother reproved. “But he’s right about the spread Mama put on, Madoc. I suppose she figured she had cause to celebrate.”

“Gillian!” cried her mother. “How can you be a party to this—this dreadful slander?”

“Oh knock it off, Mama. I knew what you’d done the minute I found out the Mounties were in town. And I know why you did it. It was on account of me, wasn’t it? You don’t even know I exist as a human being, but you can’t let go of me because you think I’m something that belongs to you. And because I’m one of your possessions, I’m supposed to be kept dusted and polished and stuck up on the mantelpiece with the rest of the knickknacks. You couldn’t stand to see the way I was living because it didn’t fit in with your notion of what was right and proper. When you finally had to face the fact that I wasn’t going back to that torture chamber you call home, sweet home, you started conniving about getting me into the Mansion. You knew I’d inherit a share of it, but Aunt Aggie wasn’t dying fast enough to suit you so you decided to help her along.”

“Gillian, you’re raving! Can’t you all see she must be mad?”

“Oh no, I’m not. You didn’t care how many you had to kill, did you, Mama, just so you could stick me up here in this frowsy old bats’ nest and be able to twitter to the ladies over the teacups about how your daughter was living in grand style up at the Mansion. When killing Daddy and Aunt Aggie didn’t do the trick, you burned my own house down so I’d have no place else to go.”

“Nonsense, Gillian. I was at home in my own bed when that—that hovel caught fire.”

“Sure you were. But you’d lit one of those sticks of incense Bobby gave me for my birthday while I was getting dressed in the bedroom and you were out in the front room yelling at me to hurry up. You left it someplace where it would be sure to catch onto something when it burned down far enough. Then you hustled me out fast, leaving your own grandson asleep in the house. The only reason Bobby got out alive was that the fire took longer to get going than you thought it would.”

“Why do you say it was incense, Gilly?” Rhys asked quietly.

“Because I can remember smelling it when I got home from Ben Potts’s. I didn’t think too much of it then because I was used to it. Bobby’d given me some for my birthday, you see, and we’d been burning a stick every evening because I—I wanted him to know how much I liked his present. But we had this little incense burner we always put it in, so it would have been safe enough there. Where did you put it, Mama? In that basket down behind the couch where I kept the newspapers and magazines?”

Mrs. Druffitt’s lips tightened. It was clear Gilly had scored a hit. She was crying now, in shuddering gasps. “I suppose you thought it didn’t matter if Bobby burned to death because he was only a B-bascom.”

“If your father had had an ounce of backbone—”

“He’d have put you straight into a mental hospital where he knew damned well you belong,” the daughter interrupted, “and he’d still be alive today. So would Dot Fewter. Why did you have to kill poor Dot?”

“I did no such thing! My car never left the carriage house all night. You can ask the neighbors. They’d have heard me going in and out.”

“Sure they would,” said Marion. “That’s why you walked instead, two miles up and two miles back in the dark. That’s why you were so bushed when you got here that you slept most of the day. You’re not used to walking like us poor relations.”

Mrs. Druffitt sniffed. “You’d say anything to get me in wrong and cover up for yourself, wouldn’t you?”

“Shove it, Elizabeth! They’ve found your fingerprints on the rock you bashed her with.”

“That’s a lie! I—” the mouth snapped shut, just too late.

“I know,” said Marion. “You wore gloves. Black ones, and that black dress and black shoes and black stockings like you’ve got on now, and a black mourning veil down over your face so that Dot wouldn’t be apt to see you in the dark when she came out of the barn as you knew she would, because you’re as big a gossip as she was, in your own nasty-nice way. I should have known it was you the minute I saw how carefully that rock had been put back where you got it from. Who else would be so goddamn picky?”

Marion turned to Rhys. “You go search her house. You’ll find a freshly washed pair of black nylon gloves hung up to dry in the bathroom on cute little glove stretchers and you’ll find an old-fashioned black net mourning veil with a heavy black border folded up in her top left-hand drawer. She’ll have shaken it out, but you’ll still be able to get enough dust and stuff off it to analyze, won’t you, Madoc?”

“I should expect so,” he replied. It was as well Marion herself hadn’t turned out to be the murderess. She must read a lot of detective fiction.

Marion’s voice shrilled on. “That was pretty smart, giving Dot your clothes. You knew her well enough to realize she wouldn’t be able to resist wearing the dress when she came out to the barn for a roll in the hay with Sam. You just hung around in the shadows till she came out, let her have it, and left her lying there so you could start the story of somebody’s trying to murder you and cover up for killing Henry and Aunt Aggie. It would have made more sense to kill me, instead, but I suppose you picked Dot because she was dumb and easy.”

“Women who consort with low characters,” Mrs. Druffitt began, glaring at Elmer.

“Oh shut up!” shrieked Gilly Bain. “Madoc, do you know why I’ve been saying these awful things against my own mother? It’s because I knew when Elmer woke me up and said we were leaving that she’d done something else. I didn’t ask him what it was because I couldn’t bear to know. I just took my kid and went, because Elmer’s the only—” she choked up, twining her tiny birdclaws over her husband’s enormous hand.

“We found a nice old JP somewhere—I don’t even know where—and did it right, with flowers and everything.” She glanced down reverently at her battered corsage. “But when he got to the place about till death you do part, I just turned cold all over. I knew that if I let her, she’d get Elmer the way she got Daddy and Aunt Aggie.”

Gilly wheeled and screamed straight in her mother’s face. “Well, I’m not letting you! All my life you’ve been telling me what’s best for me. Now I’m telling you. What’s best for me is having what I’ve got right this minute: my kid and my dogs and a decent man to take care of us. We’re going to live on what Elmer makes. I’ll never touch one cent of Aunt Aggie’s money. I’m signing over my share to Marion, and you’ve killed three people for nothing!”

Elizabeth Druffitt turned fish-belly white. Then she spoke, softly and sadly in her best Tuesday Club voice.

“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth is the tongue of a thankless child.”

T
HE BUSH PILOT STEADIED
the bucking single-engine plane with one hand on the controls, and reached into his pocket with the other. “Sorry, Inspector, I forgot to give you your letters.”

Rhys took his eyes off the dun-colored muskeg five hundred feet below and scanned the envelopes. Two were official business, red tape winding itself clear into the middle of nowhere. The third was light blue with a deeper blue trimming on the flap, and was gracefully addressed in blue ink. That one he opened.

“Dear ‘Cousin Madoc,’” Janet wrote. “It was such a pleasant surprise to get your lovely box of chocolates with the Mountie on the lid. No, of course I don’t wish all Mounties looked like that one! Don’t you know beauty’s in the eye of the beholder?”

So it was, and a good thing, too. The muskeg began to appear a shade less drab.

“You wanted me to keep you posted on the news from Pitcherville, so here goes. My sister-in-law Annabelle and the boys are back home, and needless to say happy to be here. The kids are dreadfully upset at missing the chance to meet a real live Mountie.”

It was not right to disappoint children. They might develop a trauma or something. Decidedly he had a duty to remedy that situation.

“I’ve decided to go back to that same job I had in Saint John. They’ve asked me to and at first I thought I wouldn’t because of what I suppose you might call personality conflicts, but that just doesn’t seem important to me any more.”

The muskeg was assuming a definitely rosy hue.

“I borrowed Bert’s car Friday and drove Marion up to visit Gilly and Elmer. They couldn’t be happier and asked particularly to be remembered to you. It did seem a shame for Elmer to give up his place at the lumber mill, but now I realize how smart they were to get clear away from here. Elmer is doing well at his new job and they have a cute little place. Only four rooms and a sort of cubbyhole, plus a nice bathroom, but Gilly keeps it neat as the proverbial (did I spell that right?) pin, even though they have to heat with wood and you know what that means.”

A teakettle at the simmer and your feet getting warm in the oven. Rhys pulled the collar of his parka up around his ears and turned the page.

“You can imagine how the tongues are wagging! Some of the ladies from the Tuesday Club went down to the hospital to visit Mrs. Druffitt and they say she’s gone completely around the bend now. She told them Gilly’s married to Prince Charles and they’re living up at the Mansion and driving a Rolls-Royce car. She talks freely about killing Mrs. Treadway and the others … can’t seem to recall why she did it, but is sure it was the
right thing to do!!!

“Of course her old buddies are telling all sorts of stories now about how they always suspected Elizabeth had a screw loose somewhere because she was so determined to make everybody think the Emerys were so special when they were anything but!! Funny that nobody happened to remember that all those years when they were letting her queen it over them, wouldn’t you say? I suppose the real craziness began when she got to believing it herself.

“I know I should feel charitable and forgiving toward her, but I still get boiling mad every time I think of dear old Mrs. Treadway—I do wish you could have known her!—and poor Dot Fewter getting herself dolled up to go out and get slaughtered. Oddly enough, Mrs. Fewter is taking Mrs. Druffitt’s part. She thinks it’s mean of Gilly not to visit her mother. She says Dot would have gone if
she’d
been the one to get put away. THAT I can believe!

“If you ask me, Gilly won’t go because she’s afraid her mother will have a lucid moment and say something against Elmer. She told me herself she wouldn’t be able to stand that, even though she now realizes that Mrs. Druffitt was probably never 100 per cent sane. She says it still gives her the willies every time Bobby puts a stick on the fire (he’s gained at least ten pounds, by the way, and looks great). She’s more bothered about the murders her mother didn’t commit than the ones she did. I must say I think about that sometimes, myself. Goodness knows what she might have done if you hadn’t come in and stopped her! I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to thank you for coming to the rescue!”

Rhys had a few suggestions all lined up to make about that as soon as a suitable opportunity presented itself.

“Anyway, Pitcherville has a new
grande dame
now. The Lady of the Mansion sends her very warmest greetings. She was pretty shattered when she found out you really are a bachelor and connected with that Rhys-Brown family that used to own all those copper mines (meow!). Not that she lacks company, I must say, with Sam Neddick still camping in her hayloft and
hoping for the best!!!
And Jason Bain came chugging up the other day with a big bunch of slightly wilted flowers out of a greenhouse he’d just foreclosed on. He evidently figures if he can’t get hold of the property one way, he might as well try another.

“After the peaceful summer I’ve had here, I’m rather looking forward to Saint John as a restful change. The girls I was living with before have taken on a new roommate so I’ll be staying with a cousin of Annabelle’s till I can find a place of my own. Here’s her address in case you happen to be down that way and feel the urge to look me up. Having already lost my appendix, I promise I’ll try not to embarrass you in public!”

As Rhys refolded the letter and tucked it carefully into his breast pocket along with other vital documents, the tiny plane hit an air pocket and dropped about two hundred feet. That was how it went in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. You left your heart in one place and your stomach in another. He smiled tenderly down at the rose-covered muskeg and began to hum, “Oh Rose Marie, I love you.”

“That’s kind of a pretty tune,” the pilot observed. “What is it, one of those old Welsh folk songs?”

Rhys quit humming and kept his eyes on the ground. They’d be landing soon. Somewhere down on that apparently barren wasteland, the quarry he’d followed so far from Fredericton was waiting. He didn’t intend to lose much more time on this case. As soon as he’d got his man and reported back to headquarters, he had a really tough assignment to tackle. Somehow, he must wangle a pass down to Saint John and get his woman.

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