Wrack and Rune (9 page)

“Knock wood when you say that. I’ll bet every one of that crowd who were at the Horsefalls’ is out spreading the word already.”

“Not about the runestone. We entered into a conspiracy of secrecy. At least, I hope we did. Anyway, the chief topic of interest appears to be how and whether Miss Horsefall and her nephew are going to manage staying on their property. Nobody is naïve enough to think they’re going to find another hired man to take Spurge Lumpkin’s place. Farm help is scarcer than hens’ teeth to begin with, and those who are willing to do the work have this fanciful notion about getting paid, which more or less lets the Horsefalls out before they start.”

“Then what’s going to happen to the farm?”

“There are various schools of thought on that point. Would you happen to know anything about a woman named Loretta Fescue?”

“The real estate agent? Yes, Grace Porble was telling me about her a couple of days ago. Grace has been dropping over to help me shelve the Buggins Collection, bless her. We sneak out for a cup of tea at the faculty dining room every so often because the dust in those old books really gets to you after a while.”

“Spare me the preamble and get on with the story, my love. What has Grace Porble to say about Loretta Fescue?”

“Oh, that she’s pushy. An aunt of Grace’s was left a widow not too long ago and Grace said this Mrs. Fescue was on her doorstep pressuring her to sell the house before the funeral notice was even in the paper. And the aunt didn’t want to sell at all. She has seven cats and a trained goldfish.”

“It must be not only trained but damned lucky if it’s managed to keep away from seven cats.”

“Peter, how am I supposed to tell if you keep interrupting? If you want to talk about goldfish, say so. I thought you were interested in Loretta Fescue.”

“I waive the goldfish. Resume your narrative.”

“It was partly on account of the animals that Grace’s aunt didn’t want to sell, was what I was getting at. Anyway, she didn’t need to because her husband had left her reasonably well provided for and she could always rent rooms. But this Mrs. Fescue kept badgering her and badgering her, and telling all sorts of terrible lies about how the town wouldn’t let her take in boarders on account of the zoning regulations and she’d have a terrible time if she did because they’d use up all the hot water and shine their shoes on the bedspreads. And the aunt knew it wasn’t true because her neighbors on both sides are widows, too, and they both have boarders and they’re lovely people and everything works out just fine.”

“Bully for them.”

Helen gave him a look. “Then what did Mrs. Fescue do but barge right ahead and put Grace’s name in for one of those senior citizens’ apartments over in West Lumpkin which she didn’t want at all. That started rumors she was planning to get rid of her house after all, and her neighbors got huffy because she hadn’t had the courtesy to tell them first, and these were people she’d known forever, Peter! And then other people started wanting to know when she was going to hold her yard sale and wouldn’t she like to sell them this or that? And here was this poor old soul who only wanted to be left alone to cry over her husband and comb her cats and feed her goldfish, having to cope with all this ghastly nonsense.”

“Good Lord! What happened?”

“Well, Grace says her aunt got so fed up and disheartened that at one point she was ready to sell just to be out of the mess. Then she found out they wouldn’t let her keep her seven cats in the senior citizens’ apartment. So finally she had to get really nasty with this Mrs. Fescue. And then what did Mrs. Fescue do but turn huffy and begin spreading it around town that the aunt had led her to believe all this garbage, which was a flat-out lie, and Mrs. Fescue had only been trying to do the widow a good turn and maybe the poor old soul wasn’t quite, you know, and perhaps the relatives should step in and do something.”

“Did they?”

“They certainly did. Grace got her husband to have a little talk with Mrs. Fescue, and you know what Dr. Porble can be like when he loses his temper. He laid Mrs. Fescue out in lavender and threatened to sue her for slander and harassment and a few other things, and it was just a terrible mess all around. She backed off, finally, but Grace says her aunt is by no means the first person who’s had a go-round with Mrs. Fescue and some of them haven’t been able to shake her off. Don’t tell me we’ve fallen into her toils?”

“Perish the thought, but she’s been hounding the Horsefalls for the past couple of months. I’d have had the minimal pleasure of seeing her in action this evening at the farm if I hadn’t been down at the runestone with the president at the time. I gathered from the conversation later that she’d dropped in ostensibly to pay a condolence call. In fact, she managed to work off a spot of propaganda among the relatives about selling the property before the old folks kick off in order to avoid taxes and give everyone a fair shake.”

“Was anybody listening?”

“Some of them, no doubt. Two were rather vehemently opposed.”

Shandy told his wife about Eddie and Ralph. “Moreover, their families seemed to share their feelings about the old homestead.”

“Perhaps they’re each hoping to scoop the pot.”

“I think it’s more than that. Henny claims those two are the only real Horsefalls in the tribe. With some people, family land is a sort of religion, you know.”

“Yes, darling. You’ve never quite gotten over your father’s having to sell the old Shandy place, have you?”

What happened after that is irrelevant to this narrative. Suffice it to say that both Shandys awoke the following morning happy in the knowledge they hadn’t frittered away their whole evening in idle chatter.

After breakfast Helen betook herself to the Buggins Collection. Shandy dangled a spool on a string for Jane Austen to bat at, brooding as he did so about where to begin detecting what, or more probably whom. Even as he dangled, his problem was solved by the arrival of Mrs. Lomax, the dea ex machina who maintained order in faculty households and sometimes among the faculty themselves.

Mrs. Lomax had been Shandy’s housekeeper for thirteen years before he married Helen. While the employer-employee relationship had always been punctiliously maintained, there was the case of long acquaintance between them. Moreover, Mrs. Lomax was a reliable informant. She either worked for, was related to, or belonged to some organization or other with half the population of Balaclava County, one or the other of whom was able to satisfy her lively curiosity about the other half. This morning she was as eager for Shandy’s news as he was for hers, and lost no time getting to the point.

“Understand you were out to the Horsefalls’ yesterday, Professor, when their hired man had that crazy accident.”

“Strictly speaking, no. Professor Ames was, and he phoned me to come over.”

“What for? Did he think Spurge had been done away with?”

Aha! So the rumors were flying already, as might have been expected. Shandy hedged. “Well—er—they’re all elderly people, you know, and I suppose they got a bit flustered.”

“Humph. Take more than a dead man to fluster old Hilda. Though she’s always preferred ’em live and kicking, or so I’ve been told. Not that I’m one for idle talk, as you know.”

Shandy certainly did know. There was nothing idle about Mrs. Lomax. She went to her gossip as energetically as she pursued the spring cobwebs in the ceiling corners. “One for the lads, was she?” he said by way of encouragement, steering Jane Austen away from the broom closet because after all Mrs. Lomax was being paid to work, not to chat, and a fool and his money were soon parted, as she herself would have been the first to remind him.

“Only reason Hilda never got married was that she was cute enough not to put herself in a position where she had to, according to what they say. Why, even my own grandfather—” Mrs. Lomax caught herself just in time. “But that’s neither here nor there. I daresay there was never anything in it anyway and I wouldn’t repeat it if there was. It’s a poor bird that fouls its own nest, as my mother used to say. Did Mrs. Shandy buy that new mop? Scat, Jane. I can’t have you swinging on my apron strings when I’ve got a floor to scrub.”

“I expect she did if you told her to,” said Shandy, plucking the infant feline off Mrs. Lomax’s skirt and tickling its whiskers. “So Miss Horsefall is not quite the—er—sweet little old lady one might be led to expect?”

“About as sweet as a barrel of vinegar pickles.” Mrs. Lomax had found the mop and was plying it with vigor. “Mind standing out of my way, Professor? I suppose when a person lives to a hundred and five you’ve got to make allowances, but I can tell you if Hilda Horsefall wasn’t so old there wouldn’t be many laying themselves out to make a big fuss over her. She’s got a tongue on her, that one. Why, her great-niece-in-law Jolene—I don’t know if you happen to have met my sister’s husband’s cousin Jolene that married one of the Horsefall boys?”

“As a matter of fact I met her last night. She was at the farm—er—helping out.”

“Yes, that’s Jolene, always ready to do a hand’s turn for anybody though she hasn’t had an easy life of it herself, by any manner or means. Not that Eddie isn’t a worker, I’ll say that for him, but it’s been hard scratching with the kids and all, though the oldest is married with a child of his own. Premature,” Mrs. Lomas added belligerently.

Shandy nodded. Premature babies were common in Balaclava County. Sometimes they weighed in at eleven pounds or better.

“Anyway, as I started to say, you can’t imagine what Jolene’s had to put up with from that old Aunt Hilda of her husband’s. Eddie’s fond of the old besom, which is no more than he ought to be, I suppose, since she’s his own flesh and blood. I always did say families ought to stick together no matter what. By the way, is it true the Feldsters’ daughter wants a divorce?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,” said Shandy, who’d often wondered why the young woman’s father didn’t. “So Jolene has a rough time of it with her in-laws, does she?”

“Oh, not her in-laws. Eddie’s mother thinks the sun rises and sets in Jolene. She has her own little place in the senior citizens’ housing project over at West Lumpkin now, and works in the school cafeteria two days a week. It’s awful for old folks when there’s so much going out and nothing coming in. Let ’em keep busy as long as they can, I always say. Anyway, Jolene takes her grocery shopping in the car and has her over to supper faithful every Friday night and they go to Eastern Star together, which is more than a lot of women’s own daughters would do. Jane, if you jump into that scrub pail you’re going to be one mighty sorry little kitten. The father’s dead these fifteen years and more. Worked himself into the grave, and never a nickel’s worth of help did he get from Henny and Hilda, I can tell you.”

“I doubt if they’d have had a nickel to give,” said Shandy.

“That’s as may be, but they’ve got that big place all to themselves and you’d think they might have done something. But anyway, as I was saying about Jolene, she’s as decent a woman as they make ’em, but do you think that old Hilda would give her the time of day? Jolene says she can’t so much as pick up a dishrag to help in the kitchen out there but what Aunt Hilda’s right at her elbow telling her she’s holding it the wrong way around. It’s got so she downright hates to go there, though of course she wouldn’t admit it on account of Eddie and the kids.”

“I understand she and Eddie’s cousin Ralph’s wife don’t hit it off any too well.”

Mrs. Lomax looked surprised. “First I’ve heard of it. They were thick enough last week at the First Parish Church Strawberry Festival. Marie’s cousin Bertha that married Charlie Swope was running it—just stand away from the sink a minute if you don’t mind, Professor—so Marie and Jolene thought they’d show up and surprise Bertha and let their families get their own suppers for once. I went myself, of course, because Bertha was Mr. Lomax’s cousin as well and I wouldn’t want it said around that I was slighting the Lomaxes even though some mightn’t blame me, all things considered.”

Shandy did not want to hear the considerations. “Would Charlie and Bertha be the parents of Cronkite Swope, the reporter for the
Fane and Pennon?”

“If that don’t beat all!” cried Mrs. Lomax. “For thirteen years I’ve never once heard you take any interest in the community and now it turns out you know the whole place like the back of your hand. Yes, that’s who they are, though it was a terrible disappointment to them when Cronk wouldn’t go into the soap factory with his brothers. Huntley’s going to be foreman of the rendering department, they say, and Brinkley’s in charge of the sesses.”

“Is he, by George? I thought they only had sesses in crossword puzzles. Well, there’s a black sheep in every family, though I must say I found Cronkite a personable young chap. He happened to be the one who found Lumpkin’s body, you know.”

“No! My own late husband’s cousin’s son, and Bertha didn’t so much as bother to ring me up and tell me.” Mrs. Lomax’s mouth settled into a thin line and her eyes began to glitter as she disentangled Jane Austen from the wet mop.

“It’s—er—quite possible Mrs. Swope didn’t know,” Shandy replied, appalled by having been the inadvertent cause of a family feud. “Young Swope stayed at the Horsefalls’ for some time, then I brought him back here for dinner, then he had to go to the paper to write up his story. He probably never got to talk to his parents at all, and naturally he’d be depending on the—er—power of the press to keep his relatives informed. Business before pleasure, as you yourself have often remarked. Getting back to Mrs. Eddie and Mrs. Ralph, I’m relieved to hear they are in fact on amicable terms, even though I’d been led to believe the contrary.”

“By that old Hilda Horsefall, I expect,” sniffed Mrs. Lomax, reluctant to let go of a good mad now that she’d worked herself up to it. “The way she keeps at ’em, like as not they do bicker a little when they’re over to the farm. They can’t very well take it out on her when she’s the one who invited them, can they? Jolene was brought up to have manners, which is more than you can say for some, and so was Bertha even though she did marry a Swope.”

“What’s wrong with the Swopes?”