Wrack and Rune (23 page)

“Sorry? Is that all you can say? Sorry! Hell.” He draped himself over the runestone like a stricken Titan. “I
liked
Orm.”

Sieglinde went over and clasped his massive head to her equally massive but far more shapely bosom. “Be comforted, my own. You have still me, not to mention our seven beautiful daughters, our five handsome sons-in-law, our nine adorable grandchildren, our dear parents, our beloved sisters and brothers, our respected friends, and many aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and cousins to the fourth degree, though I see no need to invite them all to the engagement party.”

“What engagement party? Good God, you don’t mean Frideswiede?”

“I do not. I mean your Great-uncle Sven and Miss Horsefall, between whom affairs have progressed to a state where someone must step in and observe the proprieties. I say this in the presence of others because I am overwrought by your grief, my dear husband, and I trust to the discretion of all here not to repeat. To the discretion of Miss Horsefall and Uncle Sven I trust not at all, so we waste no time. At least this way we get to use up all that herring left over from Birgit’s wedding reception.”

As Thorkjeld strove manfully to overcome his pain at the loss of Orm Tokesson, Sieglinde turned to the two archaeologists. “Learned sirs, you have labored in vain. My husband will now take you to our home and our daughters will give you sustenance. I can only wish that the excellence of our herring may be some compensation for your fatigue and disappointment.”

“I’m not a bit tired,” the younger archaeologist lied gallantly. “It’s been a privilege and an honor to work with President Svenson, and I’m crazy about herring.”

“Herring disagrees with me,” said the elder archaeologist, “and I’ve been convinced from the start that this would turn out to be another hoax. Therefore I have not labored in vain. I never do. I am writing a book about archaeological hoaxes. Mrs. Shandy, if you are in fact Mrs. Shandy,” he added with a cold glance at the arms Peter had wrapped about her petite form so tightly that they’d have cost Sieglinde another round of herring, no doubt, had not the Shandys been duly united and therefore within the scope of her tolerance, “I trust you’ll allow me access to the diaries of Belial Buggins.”

“I shall have to consult with our library director, Dr. Porble,” Helen replied demurely, “but I expect he’ll be willing to let you see them. I’m only assistant for the Buggins Collection. And I am indeed Mrs. Shandy.”

“Oh. Pity. Perhaps I might just give you my card in case you contemplate a divorce anytime in the reasonably near future.”

“Thank you. I’ll add it to my applicants file. Peter darling, must you do any more detecting tonight, or can I persuade you to come home to your wife and family for a change?”

“There’s still that trifling matter of who killed Spurge Lumpkin, my love. I’m afraid I’d better go back and have that talk with Miss Horsefall if she can keep her mind off more—er—immediate concerns.”

“Ah yes,” said the president’s wife. “I too must chat with Miss Horsefall.”

“Then do let Peter put in his licks first if you don’t mind, Sieglinde,” Helen entreated. “You know how you get carried away on the subject of smorgasbord. What’s happened to the Ameses, by the way?”

“Roy and Laurie thought they’d better drive Tim over to Dr. Melchett at the hospital for a once-over,” Peter explained. “He did something to his back trying to keep from being buried alive by that explosion, which is another reason why I’m damned anxious to get this business cleared up.”

“Of course, dear. Boost me back up on the nice horsie, then, and let’s go do it.”

A
S THEY WERE RIDING
back up the hill, Helen asked, “Peter, how much was that Gaffson man offering Mr. Horsefall for his farm?”

“I’m not sure. As a generous guess, I’d say somewhere around fifty thousand.”

“For the whole place?”

“That was my impression.”

“Good heavens! Sieglinde, did you hear that? Peter says Mr. Horsefall would have got fifty thousand dollars for his property. Can you imagine?”

Both women went into gales of somewhat hysterical laughter.

“What’s so funny?” Peter demanded.

“What’s so funny is that you don’t think it’s funny, you silly old learned gentleman, you. Sieglinde, is there a man alive who knows anything?”

“Men know everything except what matters. Thorkjeld would also not think it funny for Mr. Horsefall to turn down fifty thousand dollars. He would think it noble and heroic.”

“Well, I suppose it is, really. But it’s still funny.”

They were off again. Shandy, riding behind Helen with his arms around her waist, gave her a warning squeeze.

“Madam, if you don’t stop this unseemly tittering I may be forced to take a bite out of your neck. Precisely why is it so funny?”

“Oh, Peter, honestly! What have we been doing for amusement this past couple of weeks?”

“You know damn well what we’ve been doing. Do I have to offend Sieglinde’s sense of propriety by saying it out loud?”

“I don’t mean that. I was referring to the conch shell for the whatnot.”

“You mean running around to antique shops? I presume it amuses you. I myself have not been roused to heights of hilarity. Why people choose to pay astronomical prices for other people’s old junk—”

“Ah, but people do. That’s what’s so funny. Instead of standing there snarling like a trapped wolverine whenever I wanted something, like that sweet glass paperweight I bought with the money Aunt Bessie sent us for a wedding present, you might have spent the time to better advantage noticing what sort of old junk people are paying those astronomical prices for. The Horsefalls have probably close to fifty thousand dollars’ worth of old junk in their kitchen alone, and I’d swear their parlor set is genuine Belter.”

“You mean that woodcarver’s nightmare with all the bumps and squiggles on it? Helen, do you know what you’re talking about?”

“Helen knows what she is talking about, Peter,” said Sieglinde. “Thorkjeld would also not recognize genuine Belter.”

“Would Nute Lumpkin?”

“If he wouldn’t, he’s in the wrong business,” said his wife. “That incredibly ornate pierced carving is hard to mistake and also hard to find. Belter never made much of it in the first place because how in the world could he? Furthermore, prices for Victorian antiques are getting higher by the minute now that earlier pieces are almost out of the market. But the Horsefalls have real Colonial and Federal things, too. I’ll bet you anything their kitchen table and that pierced tin pie chest are easily two hundred years old.”

“My God! Then the Horsefalls have been sitting on a fortune all these years they’ve been scratching to make ends meet!”

“But it is only within recent years that great prices are paid for such things,” Sieglinde pointed out reasonably. “Had they not sat, there would now be no fortune. Anyway, for the Horsefalls it would be not antiques but Great-aunt Matilda’s wedding china. They would think not in terms of money but of sentimental attachment.”

“Maybe so,” Shandy replied, “but I think I know what Henny Horsefall’s going to say when you point that out to him.”

He was right. A few minutes later, Odin and Freya were in the barn having a bait of oats and Henny was listening slack-jawed as Helen and Sieglinde gave a cautious estimate as to what his family relics might be worth at current prices.

“Of course,” Helen concluded with some embarrassment, “their sentimental value to you and your family—”

“Hell,” Henny interrupted, “you can’t eat sentiment.”

Shandy nodded. “Damn right, Horsefall. I knew you’d say that. Find somebody with more money than brains and unload a bunch of the stuff. Use the cash to build on a wing. Let Eddie and Ralph draw straws to see who gets which rooms, and Bob’s your uncle. Sell a few more things and get yourselves a pair of good workhorses and some decent livestock, with no offense to Bessie. Clear the squirrel briers out of that lower field and put it to corn for the stock. Plant a big truck garden. By the time your antiques give out, this place will be entirely self-sufficient and the hell with everybody.”

“Time the antiques give out I’ll o’ guv out myself, most likely.” Henny didn’t sound as if he meant it. All of a sudden he was twenty years younger and ready to outlive Aunt Hilda’s mark. “Would you two ladies happen to know how a person might go about peddlin’ antiques without gettin’ skint?”

“Mrs. Shandy and I will be glad to take upon ourselves the task,” Sieglinde promised, her fjord-blue eyes gleaming at the prospect as what right-thinking college president’s wife’s eyes wouldn’t, and Helen agreeing for all she was worth as any right-thinking assistant for the Buggins Collection naturally would.

“I don’t want to put you to a lot o’ bother,” the old man demurred. “It’s just that I got a hunch Nutie the Cutie ain’t—Christ on a crutch, Professor, you don’t s’pose he
is?”

“Out to get his pudgy mitts on your ancestral pie cupboard? Horsefall, I’ve already supposed so many things about that louse I’m quite prepared to suppose a few more. Do you think you could pry your aunt away from Dr. Svenson long enough for me to have a little talk with her?”

“Please do,” said Sieglinde, “and while you talk with her, I shall have a few words with Uncle Sven. In the meantime, Mr. Horsefall, perhaps you would take Mrs. Shandy upstairs and let her get some idea of what is in the bedrooms?”

“What’s in |the bedrooms is prob’ly Aunt Hilda an’ Uncle Sven,” Henny snickered. “They seem to be takin’ to each other real good.”

He caught a frosty dart from Sieglinde’s eye and muttered, “Maybe ‘good’ ain’t the word you had in mind. I’ll go find ’er. Aunt Hilda! Aunt Hilda, Professor Shandy wants to talk to you.”

Sieglinde and Helen followed him down the hall. Shandy waited in the kitchen until Miss Horsefall came rattling her starched apron at him, every hair in place and every button done up. She was too old a bird to be caught twice.

“You lookin’ for me, Professor?”

“Yes. I was wondering if you knew anything about Belial Buggins?”

She snorted. “I dern well ought to. He was my own gran’father, or so I always suspected. Anyways, I can remember settin’ on ’is lap an’ playin’ with ’is gold watch an’ chain when I was ’bout knee-high to a grasshopper. He’d be recitin’ po’try an’ tellin’ stories an’ laughin’ fit to bust a gut when my mother fussed at ’im about me bein’ too young to hear them kind o’ things.”

“What things were these, Miss Horsefall?”

“Hell, how’m I s’posed to remember? That was a hundred years ago. I just remember him settin’ me up on ’is knee an’ givin’ me that watch to play with ’cause he said pretty girls was always partial to gold, which is true enough though dern little of it ever come my way, I can tell you.”

“Er—perhaps your luck’s due for a change.”

“Then it better change damn soon.”

There was no way to answer that. Shandy only said, “What happened to Belial’s gold watch when he died?”

“I s’pose some o’ the Bugginses got it. Not that there was many Bugginses left by then, leastways not around Balaclava County. Ol’ Balaclava Buggins, he’d spent all ’is money startin’ that college you work at, an’ most of ’is kinfolks had took off one place or another ’cause they was so provoked with ’im for layin’ it out on foolishness like education when he might o’ left it to them instead. Belial was a son o’ Balaclava’s brother Bartleby, him an’ his brother Bedivere. That branch o’ the Bugginses always did have a queer streak in ’em about books and po’try an’ suchlike. As I recall, Bedivere even married a schoolteacher. They never had no kids that I know of, leastways none that lived to grow up. S’pose she’d had enough o’ brats by the time she managed to get ’erself hitched. An’ the ones Belial fathered, their mothers wasn’t admittin’ to.”

“Belial never married?”

“Never had to. Oh, he was a fine-lookin’ man! Whiskers down to ’is middle an’ a black broadcloth frock coat. Got killed in a train wreck the year I started grade school. Only time I ever seen my mother cry. I cried, too, ’cause I knew I’d never get to play with that gold watch again.”

“M’well, these things are sent to test us, Miss Horsefall. Then you have no idea what became of Belial’s—er-—effects?”

“Cripes, we back to effects again? Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

Miss Hilda smoothed her apron and searched her memory. “I s’pose Bedivere would o’ got ’is books an’ stuff, an’ the rest would o’ went to that Mrs. Lomax who kept house for ’im. Did a few other things for ’im, too, from what I heard, but that’s neither here nor there. She was some kind o’ connection o’ Jolene’s father by marriage. Don’t ask me what. I never could keep track o’ them Lomaxes. Widow woman. Seems to me ’er first name was Effie.”

“Thank you, Miss Horsefall. I can easily find out all I need to know about the Lomaxes. May I use your telephone? I—er—believe Mrs. Svenson was wishing to have a word with you when it’s—er—convenient.”

“Now’s as convenient a time as any, I s’pose. Phone’s right at your elbow there on that little shelf.”

She rattled her apron again and left him to it. As Shandy was dialing a well-known number he heard a joyous cry of “Tootsie!” With Sieglinde around to chaperone, Uncle Sven would have to curb his ardors. It was unlikely, however, that she’d insist on a long engagement.

His authority on the Lomax history was at home and in good voice. She answered promptly.

“Good evening, Mrs. Lomax. I hope I haven’t—oh, you weren’t. He isn’t? Perhaps he’s just not hungry. This warm weather, you know. Puts them off their feed. Are his pads damp? Ah, then he’s sweating. No, perfectly normal. Cats sweat through the soles of their feet. You didn’t? Yes, that’s the advantage of higher education. Fan him a bit and let him sleep. He’ll be peckish enough by morning, I shouldn’t wonder. Actually what I called about is to ask whether you happen to know what became of certain properties that were left by Belial Buggins to his housekeeper, a Mrs. Effie Lomax, sometime before the turn of the century.”

Shandy waited patiently, knowing it was useless to do anything else, while Mrs. Lomax raced up and down the many branches of the family tree. At last she located the late Mrs. Effie.