The Luck Runs Out (5 page)

“In her party dress?” Helen scoffed. “She wouldn’t do that. Miss Flackley was a meticulous woman.”

“The pigpens are scrupulously maintained,” said Stott rather huffily.

“I know they are,” said Helen, “but I still can’t see any woman going there of her own free will late at night in such an unsuitable outfit. Unless she’d left her van up there, which seems absurd. You walked her to it, Professor Stott. Where was it?”

“In the auditorium parking lot.”

That’s just down around the corner,” Helen explained to Iduna. “Visitors seldom bring cars to the Crescent because parking is so awkward here. I wonder if the van’s still there.”

“I should be inclined to think not,” said Stott. “As the hour was somewhat advanced, I waited until she had started her engine and turned on her lights before making my own departure. She was in the process of leaving the lot when I began to retrace my steps up the hill.”

“Where does she live?” asked Shandy.

“I have not the remotest idea.”

“Why haven’t you?” roared Svenson.

“There was never any need,” Stott explained with simple dignity. “We have always had a Flackley the Farrier. According to departmental tradition, Balaclava Buggins himself made an arrangement with the then Flackley the Farrier to come to the college once every two weeks and do whatever was necessary for the proper maintenance of the livestock. Flackley always came. One day the Flackley who had grown old in the service of his profession did not come. In his place was a young man, presumably his son, who did the necessary work and left without explanation. Eventually this young man became an old man and was replaced by another young man. One day this Flackley did not appear. In his stead was a woman of indeterminate years. She performed with the same capability as her predecessors. She, too, has never missed an appointment.

I assume that some other Flackley will appear a week from Tuesday and perform the usual tasks with the usual efficiency. At that point, if you so desire, I will break with tradition and obtain an address.”

“The hell you will,” bellowed the President. “Damn it, man, we’ve got a corpse in our corncrib. Somebody’s got to claim the body. She must have lived somewhere. She must have relatives. According to you, there’s an untapped pool of Flackley the Farriers sitting around somewhere waiting for the call to duty. How do we get in touch with them?”

“I expect the police will know how to handle that,” Shandy soothed him. “Miss Flackley couldn’t have lived too far from the college if she never missed an appointment even in bad weather. Come on, let’s get over to the barns before they take her away. I’d like to make sure she’s still dressed as we last saw her.”

The three men left the Crescent and cut across the athletic field toward the college barns. Shandy, though much the smallest, outdistanced the others and got to the pigpens just as the police were lifting Miss Flackley’s body out of the extremely sophisticated pig feeder which had been designed and built to Professor Stott’s specifications. She made an astonishingly small bundle for a woman who’d earned her living shoeing Shire horses and Balaclava Blacks.

He thought of the farrier as he’d last seen her, smiling, a bit flushed with wine and good food, gently but firmly setting him straight on one of the lesser-known passages from the poetical works of Felicia D. Hemaris. She’d been the only one at table who knew that the
D.
stood for Dorothea. It occurred to Shandy that he didn’t even know what her own first name was, much less her second, and that he was more distressed by his ignorance than he could have believed possible. Damn it, he’d liked Miss Flackley as well as Odin and Loki did; why had he never taken the trouble to know her better?

To be sure, she’d never gone out of her way to encourage familiarity. She’d always kept that little screen of crisp competence around her, like a trained nurse in a private home, not wishing to be either snubbed or patronized. It must have been a lonesome life for Miss Flackley.

Or had it? For all he knew, she had a lover in every haymow. In any event, she’d had a pleasant time on her last night alive. For that, as for so many other things, he was grateful to his wife. He told the police who he was and why he was there, and they let him take a close look at the body.

“Yes, that’s the dress she had on last evening,” he said. “Have you any idea how long ago this—this thing happened?”

“Certainly not less than three or four hours ago, perhaps a little longer,” said a man who must be a police doctor.

“Then it’s quite possible she came directly here, though I can’t think why she would,” Shandy replied. “Our dinner party didn’t break up until close to midnight.”

“She didn’t mention anything about checking the pig?”

“No, nor was there any earthly reason why she should have, at least not by herself. Another of our guests was Professor Stott, head of our animal husbandry department. That’s he coming along the path now. Belinda—that is, the missing sow—was his particular—er—research project. If he had wished Miss Flackley’s professional opinion, he would surely have come with her.”

“What makes you so sure he didn’t? Who saw her last when she left your house?”

“Why—er—he did. He walked her to her van, which she had left parked in the Home Arts Auditorium lot around the corner from the Crescent, where we live.”

“Oh yeah?” said Fred Ottermole, Balaclava’s police chief, who had managed to include himself in the interrogation. “Then what happened?”

“Then she drove off.”

“And where did Stott go?”

“I suggest you ask him that question,” snapped Shandy.

He’d had dealings with Fred Ottermole before. It was his opinion that Fred would be well advised to go back to cruising up and down Main Street, nabbing malefactors who threw candy wrappers about in violation of Balaclava Junction’s stiff anti-littering regulations.

Fred’s nose was no doubt out of joint because President Svenson had been so quick to call in the highly efficient state police, thereby showing excellent sense. The last time Svenson had trusted Ottermole with a corpse, he’d wound up having two murders on his hands instead of one. He would not make the same mistake twice. Indeed, the President seldom made a mistake at all. He surely would not allow Professor Stott to be arrested for the murder of Miss Flackley just because Stott happened to have walked the farrier to her van.

Where, by the way, was that vehicle? This, at least, was something Fred Ottermole might reasonably be expected to know. Shandy asked him.

“Ottermole, where have they taken the van?”

“What van?”

“Her van, drat it! The traveling smithy with ‘Flackley the Farrier’ plastered all over the sides. Great balls of fire, man, you’ve seen it often enough. Where is it?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“Then ask, can’t you? If the state police haven’t driven it off, that means the murderer must have.”

“Hey, yeah!” Ottermole perked up. “Say, maybe you’ve got something there. But why would anybody do a dumb thing like that? Cripes, it’s got her name plastered all over it, like you said.”

“Possibly the person was only interested in a—er—short-term loan. I’m wondering whether the purpose of attacking Miss Flackley might have been simply to get hold of the van.”

“What for?”

“It’s a big van. Belinda’s a big pig.”

Ottermole went over and spoke to the state police lieutenant in charge. A moment later they both came over to Shandy.

“What’s this Ottermole’s been telling me about a van, Professor?”

“Miss Flackley, the lady you just—er—fished out of that corncrib, was, as you doubtless know, a farrier,” Shandy began.

“You mean she ran a boat or something?”

“No, sir. Farriers are persons who shoe horses and sometimes attend to other physical needs of farm animals, as distinguished from blacksmiths, who actually forge horseshoes and do other iron work. A farrier, of course, may be a blacksmith, but I have the impression that Miss Flackley’s practice consisted exclusively of farriery.”

“Are you putting me on?” the lieutenant demanded.

“No, sir, I am not Flackleys have always been farriers.”

“And why shouldn’t they be?” said a nearby sergeant who happened to be of the same sex as the body she had helped to carry. “What’s wrong with a woman being a farrier?”

“Nothing, nothing,” Shandy assured her. “Miss Hackley was an extremely competent one, an ornament to her profession. She shared Professor Stott’s concern for Belinda’s welfare, and was, I believe, able to give him valuable advice on more than one occasion.”

“Belinda?” said the lieutenant. “That’s the pig that got stolen, right? Was it sick?”

“Not at all, so far as I know. At last report, Belinda was in the pink of condition. She is, however, in an—er—advanced state of pregnancy.”

“To kidnap a sow in her state,” added Professor Stott, who had finally lumbered up to the group, “was a reckless, cruel, and utterly despicable thing to do. I cannot imagine any student of Balaclava Agricultural College stooping to such infamy. I cannot imagine
anybody
—”

“Sure, we get the picture,” interrupted the lieutenant. “You’re Professor Stott, right? So you were the last person to see Miss Flackley alive?”

The professor cogitated. At last he shook his majestic head.

“I cannot subscribe to that assumption. The logical inference would then be that I was also the person who killed her. That, I am able to assure you, was not the case.”

“How are you able to assure me? You walked her to her van, right?”

“That is correct.”

“The van was parked where?”

“Beside the Home Arts Auditorium, facing Prospect Street.”

“What happened then?”

“I assisted her into the cab. She started the motor, switched on the lights, and drove off.”

“In what direction?”

“I cannot say. I was fatigued. The hour was advanced. Having performed what I conceived to be my duty as an escort, I did not stay to watch her out of sight, but turned and began walking back up the hill toward my own house.”

“Where do you live?”

“On Valhalla.”

“Come again?”

“Valhalla is a name facetiously given to the hill up behind the campus where President Svenson, myself, and a number of other faculty members have our homes.”

“You didn’t happen to come past these barns on the way?”

“No, I proceeded in a direct line from my starting point. That is, I passed the Shandys’ house and continued on the path that stretches up across the campus to connect with the street upon which I reside. There seemed no reason to do otherwise. Had I but known what perfidy was brewing—”

“Yeah, well, that’s how it is with perfidy,” said the lieutenant “Did you meet anybody on the way?”

“Possibly. I do not recall. I was lost in thought.”

“What were you thinking about?”

“My thoughts were of a private nature,” the professor replied with immense dignity. “I cannot imagine they would be germane to your inquiry. However, I think I can fairly state that, among other things, I was ruminating on the desirability of drinking a glass of hot milk before going to bed. I subsequently did so, should you care for that information.”

“Who fixed it for you?”

Stott surveyed the officer calmly with his small, bright blue eyes.

“I heated the milk myself. Since the death of my wife, I have become accustomed to performing small domestic tasks.”

“Then you live alone? You don’t have a housekeeper or anybody?”

“An extremely capable woman named Mrs. Lomax comes twice a week to clean the house. I take most of my meals at the faculty dining room. I do not require a live-in servant. Am I to infer that you are giving me an opportunity to provide what I believe is known as an alibi and that I am failing to do so?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,” said the lieutenant “Mind taking a look at the body? Can you tell me if this is exactly the way Miss Flackley was dressed when you last saw her?”

“No,” said Professor Stott after a thoughtful scrutiny, “it is not. Having four daughters and four daughters-in-law, I have been compelled to develop an awareness of sartorial detail. Aside from the bloodstains now so lamentably present, the gown itself is the same. The ornamental objects adorning her person, an old-fashioned gold locket and bracelet, are the same. However, you doubtless observe that the material of her gown is thin and last evening was chilly. When I last saw her, she had enveloped herself in a length of heavy brown material known, I believe, as a stole. The stole was of mohair yarn. Mohair is obtained from the fleece of the angora goat. I could give you some interesting statistics about the angora goat if you wish.”

“Some other time,” said the lieutenant. “Sergeant Mullins, start searching the grounds for a brown mohair stole.”

“While you’re at it,” Sandy put in, “you might keep an eye out for a large brown van that says ‘Flackley the Farrier’ on the sides. I expect you’ll find the stole in the van.”

The state policeman seemed a bit weary of hearing about the van. He looked Shandy up and down once or twice, then asked, “You a friend of this gentleman?”

“Of Professor Stott?”

Shandy was a trifle embarrassed by the question. The men of Balaclava were not accustomed to parading their feelings for one another, except in cases of open enmity. He searched for words.

“I believe I am entitled to claim that relationship. We have been colleagues for over eighteen years. I was a pallbearer at his wife’s funeral. He has been a frequent guest at my house.”

“He was there all last evening, right?”

“I thought we’d established that.”

“And so was this Miss Flackley, right? How come you invited them together?”

“I didn’t invite them at all,” Shandy replied. “My wife did. Not that I wasn’t pleased to have them, of course.”

“Sure. So why did your wife invite them together?”

“Because she thought it would be a good idea, I suppose. If you’re trying to intimate that she or I or anybody else thought of Professor Stott and Miss Flackley as a—er—couple, you’re barking up the wrong tree. My wife has not lived at Balaclava long. She was previously unacquainted with Miss Flackley. Happening to fall into conversation with her and finding her an interesting person, she issued a spur-of-the-moment invitation to dinner.