The Luck Runs Out (2 page)

“Did it have indoor plumbing?”

“Not exactly, but the chamber pots were tastefully decorated to match the slop bowls. Anyway, in the fullness of time, Iduna fell heir to the place. There wasn’t much else for her to fall heir to, the buggy whip business having fallen on evil days, so Iduna ran it as a lodging house.”

“Iduna?”

“Certainly Iduna. Iduna Bjorklund. Have you never heard of Bjorklund’s Buggy Whips?”

“Oddly enough, never. Could we accelerate this narrative? They’ll be here any minute.”

“So will Iduna, that’s what I am trying to tell you. Her house was blown to splinters by a tornado week before last. She has to earn a living and there’s nothing for her out there, so I wrote and invited her here. She phoned today to tell me she’s arriving Friday at half-past three.”

Before Shandy had time to ejaculate, “My God!” the doorbell rang. He said it anyway and went to let in the guests.

Marriage was agreeing with Peter Shandy. He smiled oftener now. At fifty-six, he carried his five feet eight inches straight and springy, might have spared a few pounds but was by no means pudgy, and could still outwork any of his students in the turnip fields. He still wore his good gray suits, but his shirt and tie, chosen by Helen, were livelier in hue than they’d have been a few months ago.

All four guests arrived together, which wasn’t surprising since Ames and the Enderbles were next-door neighbors. Mary Enderble looked like a lady leprechaun in a deep-green dress with a billowing skirt and snug basque; John Enderble, Professor Emeritus of Local Fauna, had brought along a baby kangaroo mouse in a matchbox lined with cotton. Having lost its mother in tragic circumstances, the infant was being weaned on an eyedropper that had to be held to its squeaking mouth every few minutes.

Helen was delighted with the mouse. Lorene McSpee didn’t think mice in the dining room were very sanitary. She had on a pajama costume that exactly matched her complexion, brick red patterned in savage zigzags of brown and puce.

Professor Ames was wearing what he always wore, a tweed jacket with the elbows out and a pair of pants his son had outgrown sometime or other. Nevertheless, he looked strange. The trousers were pressed. His shirt was of a whiteness that abraded the eyeballs. His necktie didn’t look as if it had been used to tie up tomato plants. Mrs. McSpee must have got the upper hand of him completely.

Shandy hastened to settle his old friend in the most comfortable chair before, the housekeeper could grab it. Unmanned as he’d been by the news about Iduna Bjorklund, he began to feel that the darling of South Dakota couldn’t arrive too soon. Maybe they could marry her off to Tim and get rid of Lorene. It was a shame that tornado hadn’t hit sooner, so that Helen wouldn’t have wasted an invitation on this ghastly woman. Not that Helen didn’t feel the same way, but once she’d committed the error, she couldn’t weasel out.

His new wife was good at everything except hurting other people’s feelings he’d discovered and Lorene McSpee had her share of sensitivity. She was belaboring that point at every opportunity, making it clear that as a domestic worker she didn’t expect first-class entertainment and that she certainly wasn’t getting it here.

“Oh, I don’t care. Whatever you’ve got the most of,” was her reply when Shandy asked her what she’d like to drink. When he offered scotch, she decided she’d rather have bourbon. When she got it, she sipped and made a face. At the table she picked up her fork, examined it with a clinical eye, and observed, “I’m glad you didn’t get out your sterling for me, Mrs. Shandy. I don’t suppose you’d go to the bother except for somebody special.”

“I’d be delighted to bother if we had any,” Helen replied with a rather forced smile. “The only silver we own is a trophy Peter won in a plowing contest when he was twelve.”

Fortunately, the kangaroo mouse began emitting such pitiful squeaks about half an hour after they’d left the table that John Enderble decided he’d better take it home to bed. That broke, up the party, and none too soon. There was no doubt about it, Lorene McSpee had to go. Shandy made the formal declaration as he was taking off his shirt.

“Drat it, Helen, this situation is serious. That harpy has designs on Tim. Did you see her trying to cut his meat for him? What if he should turn off his hearing aid and say yes at the wrong time? That’s how Jemima landed him.”

“Was Jemima as awful as Lorene?”

“Nothing like. She was pushy, insensitive, opinionated, a busybody and a nonstop talker, but she wasn’t vicious for the fun of it like that she-wolverine who’s trying to get her hooks into him now.”

“She is, isn’t she? Wasn’t she dreadful about the silver? I only hope to goodness Miss Flackley doesn’t get the same notion, though she’d be far too well bred to say so. I’ll have to drop a gentle remark that stainless is all we have.”

“What are you talking about? Who’s Miss Flackley?”

“Peter, you know perfectly well who Miss Flackley is. You’ve known her a great deal longer than I have.”

“Helen, you don’t by any chance mean Flackley the Farrier?”

“Of course I do. I’ve invited her to dinner Friday night.”

“What in Sam Hill for?”

“Because she’s a likable, interesting woman with an original turn of mind and I want to know her better. I asked Professor Stott, too. I think he may have his eye on her. He invited her to look at his pig.”

“That would seem to indicate stirrings of the tender passion.”

“Do you really think so?” asked Helen demurely. “He asked me, too, but I didn’t go. After all, I’m a married woman now.”

“And see that you remember it,” her husband replied. “Cavorting around pigpens with that lardy Lothario ill beseems your connubial status.”

“Is he really a Lothario? Whatever happened to Mrs. Stott, or wasn’t there one?”

“Indeed there was, some two hundred and eighty pounds of her at last recorded estimate. So far as I know, Stott remained faithful to his Elizabeth during her lifetime, which was untimely cut short by a surfeit of herring at one of Sieglinde Svenson’s little tea parties. I was one of the ten pallbearers. I was a solid mass of muscle in those days.”

“Do tell. Did she leave any children?”

“Eight. Stott, as you might expect, sired two litters of quadruplets.”

“What happened to them?”

“Grown and scattered. They’re all successful pig farmers, sausage-stuffers, ham-curers, and whatnot. I suppose it’s a lonely life for Stott without his family around, now that I think of it. Man cannot live by swine alone.”

“Then I’m glad I invited him. He ought to enjoy Iduna, she’s crazy about animals. I’ll bet she offers to take over the night feedings for John’s mouse. Oh, that’s an idea! I’ll ask Mary Enderble to lend me some table silver for Friday’s dinner. She’ll understand about Miss Flackley.”

“That’s more than I do,” said her husband testily. “Why do you have to go bumming forks and spoons from the neighbors? Can’t we buy some of our own?”

“Peter, sterling flatware costs the earth these days.”

“How much earth?”

“Probably somewhere around two hundred dollars a place setting, more or less, depending on what kind you choose.”

“A bagatelle. Drat it, woman, can’t you get it through your parsimonious little noggin that when I thee with all my worldly goods endowed I wasn’t talking chicken feed? If you want to blow two hundred of my hard-won dollars to impress the blacksmith, go ahead and blow.”

“But it wouldn’t be just two hundred dollars, Peter. We’d also need a setting for you and one for me and one for Iduna and one for Professor Stott.”

“Two for Stott. You know how he eats. I tell you what, I have only one early class on Friday. You take that day off from the library. Porble won’t mind. As soon as I’m free, we’ll take a ride out to that place where you and Sieglinde bought the doodad you gave Hannah Cadwall at her going-away party.”

“Oh, Peter, that was the Carlovingian Crafters. They make all their silver by hand. It’s the most expensive there is. Also the loveliest,” Helen added wistfully. “Are you sure you want to?”

“I think it’s a sterling idea,” Shandy replied. “Let’s lie down and talk it over.”

¹
Rest You Merry,
Doubleday Crime Club, 1978.

H
ELEN ROLLED DOWN THE
car window a crack and settled back to gloat over the brochure she’d been secretly cherishing from her previous visit to the Carlovingian Crafters.

“Peter Shandy, you are an angel of Heaven to be doing this for me.”

“Not yet I’m not,” he demurred, “though I may become one any second now if that clown who’s hurtling toward us doesn’t get back on his own side of the road.”

They were off to buy the silver, both in high humor, although Helen’s was perhaps a shade higher than Peter’s, he being concerned for the paintwork on his new car. Used to purchasing tractors and combines, he still hadn’t adjusted to the fact that so puny a vehicle could cost so much.

He hadn’t minded the expense, however, nor was there any reason why he should. As a full professor, he got a generous stipend from the college. As co-propagator with Timothy Ames of the Balaclava Buster rutabaga and more recent horticultural triumphs like Portulaca Purple Passion, he hovered on the brink of being rich.

Until he met Helen Marsh, Shandy had regarded his money somewhat as he did his back teeth, nicer to have than to be without, useful when needed, requiring a certain amount of routine care but no particular thought. Now he was finding it a positive joy, because with it he could buy things to please Helen. Swapping a few thousand dollars for the pleasure of being called an angel of Heaven was, he felt, an excellent bargain.

“Let’s run through the drill again,” he said. “We proceed due west to the Carlovingian Crafters, select a table service of sufficient splendor to convince Miss Flackley that she’s not being treated like a peasant, blow whatever may be left of our substance on lunch at that place where you and Sieglinde had those lovely pecan muffins, then make our way south by a half east to the airport. At three-thirty on the dot, God and the airlines willing, we collect Iduna Bjorklund. Thence we race like hell back to Balaclava Junction so you can get your tiara pinned to your pompadour in time to greet our distinguished assemblage.”

“Peter, I will not have you making fun of our guests.”

“Who’s making fun? Stott is a distinguished assemblage in and of himself.”

“He may have wasted away to a shadow by now. I hope he’s recovered from his shock. I meant to tell you, I went over to the animal husbandry buildings again yesterday.”

“Aha! So you snuck off to the pigpens after all. Frailty, thy name is woman. Belinda having a touch of colic again?”

“No, she’s fine. That wasn’t what Professor Stott was upset about. It seems some bright spirit had taken all the horseshoes off the horse stalls and switched them around so they pointed down instead of up.”

“Good Gad!” cried Shandy. “Now the luck will run out and Balaclava will lose the Competition.”

“Professor Stott’s words exactly. He sees the incident as an evil machination of the Lolloping Lumberjacks of Lumpkin Corners.”

“He could be right. Or the Headless Horsemen of Hoddersville. Blood runs hot at Competition time.”

“It couldn’t have been some of our own students acting silly, I don’t suppose?” Helen suggested mildly.

“Never! They’re loyal to the core, every man Jack and woman Jill of them. You don’t realize what the Annual Competition of the Balaclava County Draft Horse Association means around these parts, Helen. It’s no run-of-the-mill log-pulling contest, it’s more like an equine Olympics. We get teams in from all over New England, and it goes on for days. Wait till you see that Grand Opening procession with our Balaclava Blacks right up in front of the whole shebang, pulling the big wagon with the Boosters’ Band playing! And all the other wagons coming along behind decked out in bunting, with those gorgeous Clydesdales and Percherons and Belgians and Suffolks groomed till you could see your face in their hides, with their brasses polished like gold and their drivers sucked up in brand-new flannel shirts. There’ll be two-, four-, six-, and eight-horse competitions where you’re graded on handling and condition and whatnot, and plowing contests for all levels, and bareback racing and stunt riding and horseshoe pitching and—”

“Beer guzzling,” said Helen. “Yes, dear. Dr. Porble was showing me the scrapbooks over at the library. He takes better care of those old clippings and photographs than he ever did of the Buggins Collection, I must say.”

Since she herself was special assistant for the Buggins Collection, Mrs. Shandy was not without prejudice on this point. However, she was too happy to stay critical.

“Speaking of plowing, I watched Thorkjeld Svenson practicing with Odin and Thor the other day. It was fantastic, that behemoth of a man and those two immense beasts, all moving as one magnificent unit.”

“He’ll take the Seniors’ cup,” said Shandy complacently. “He always does.”

“Cross your fingers when you say that,” Helen reminded him. “Remember those upside-down horseshoes.”

“Um. I wish that hadn’t happened. Not that I’m superstitious or anything, but—was that the place?”

The hand-carved sign was so discreet that Shandy had gone past it. He backed the car up, swung into a parking lot concealed behind a screen of close-planted hemlocks, and followed Helen into the long, low, brown-shingled building.

The showroom they entered was worth coming to see. The Carlovingians were artisans in the tradition of Paul Revere and Edward Winslow, working in both silver and gold. Shandy, who had resigned himself to being bored for his wife’s sake, wandered from one exhibit to another, intrigued by the superb workmanship and counting the pieces as was his wont.

He was a trifle unnerved by the prices, though he realized they were justified when he found out what the costs of precious metals had risen to. Helen and Peter admired, compared, debated, and finally settled on the handsome old fiddleback pattern ornamented by a delicate leaf design that Shandy thought rather suggested the foliage of
Brassica rapa,
or common turnip.