A Pint of Murder (10 page)

Again Janet felt an impulse to comfort the stricken giant. “Now, Elmer, maybe you’re being too hard on your father. Marion hasn’t been able to find any sign of those papers yet, and he does seem quite desperate to get hold of them. Maybe the time limit’s about to expire or something. He never gave you any inkling of what it’s all about?”

“Never told me nothin’. Just sat there smirkin’ like a jeezledy crocodile, pattin’ himself on the back about how you got to be smarter than the next one to get on in this world. Where’s he ever got that’s so almighty wonderful? Answer me that one.”

Since the question was obviously rhetorical, Janet didn’t try. “I tell you what, Elmer: Let’s you and I have a look for that patent right now. Once it’s found, your father won’t have an excuse to come bothering Gilly any more. You start hunting. I’ll just run over and change my dress, then come back and give you a hand.”

Since she had but the one hand to give, she wouldn’t be of much use, except to give moral support while Elmer worked off his mad. And to keep an eye out just in case the son did happen to stumble on the patent and turn out to have a streak of old Bain in him after all.

J
ANET WAS TRYING TO
get her good dress off without hitting her sore hand when Dot Fewter telephoned, wanting to know if Janet could spare her that night. Some of the out-of-town relatives were staying over, and Mrs. Druffitt was begging her to help out.

“Yes, of course,” Janet replied with secret relief. “I can manage.”

“Okay if you say so, but I was sure lookin’ forward to supper at your house.”

Well, life held its disappointments for everyone. Janet hung up, slipped her feet into moccasins, managed to get a wraparound housedress of Annabelle’s over her bandage, and sauntered into the yard, not hurrying to shut herself away in that dismal old Mansion out of the sun and the air.

What was she doing it for, anyway? Two days ago Elmer Bain was just somebody she vaguely knew as she vaguely knew everybody in Pitcherville with whom she’d never had occasion for any personal dealings. Now she was pretending she didn’t have a splitting headache and a terribly sore hand so that she could be with him, not that she had any great fondness for him as a man, but just because he was big and clumsy and hurt, and had a rotten father, and was in love with a girl she’d gone to Sunday school with, a frightened wisp who might be a murderess, or the mother of one.

Judging from the crashes that greeted her entrance, Elmer was in the process of smashing a complete dinner service for twenty-four. Janet reached the pantry just in time to watch a gigantic tureen slide to the floor and splinter.

“Barely leaned against the shelves and the whole dern thing came tumblin’ down on me,” he muttered.

“Nobody’s going to hate you for that,” she reassured him. “That was the ugliest set of dishes ever made. Mrs. Treadway had them wished on her as a wedding present and she hated them till the day she died. She used to tell me she prayed for an earthquake, so maybe you’ve just fulfilled a dying prayer.” Deliberately, Janet picked up a saucer that had somehow escaped the holocaust and flung it into the pile of shards. “Go find a dustpan and a garbage can. If it’ll ease your conscience, you can buy Marion and Gilly another.”

She stirred the debris with the toe of her moccasin, turned up another whole saucer, and smashed that, too. Elmer must think she’d gone crazy with the heat, but she found the crashing of china a great way to relieve tension. Her nerves must be in even worse shape than she’d thought they were. Maybe she’d better simmer down.

“I’ll leave you the joy of cleaning up. I think I’ll go take a look in the library.”

“Marion spent most of yesterday in there,” he pointed out as he sloshed a dustpan full of broken dishes into the can.

“Yes, but she may have missed something. Mrs. Treadway told me that was where her husband worked out his inventions mostly, so it seems reasonable he’d keep his patents there.” Furthermore, the room was one Mrs. Treadway herself had never used. Janet could be in it without having to feel how empty the house seemed without her old friend’s presence.

She was sure it would be a waste of time to search the desk, and it was. Marion’s fingerprints even appeared on the dusty wooden runners that held the drawers in place. Janet wasn’t about to start prying for loose floorboards and secret panels; Marion would have done that, too. Then what was left? The books, of course. All the Treadways had been great readers, the stacks were crammed to the high ceiling, and so far as she could see the dust on them hadn’t been disturbed. Marion must have been too cowed by their numbers to tackle what was surely the most obvious place to search. Janet began to feel the thrill of the hunt.

“Let’s see,” she mused, “a person would be most apt to take a book from somewhere around eye level. But I’m only five-foot-three and I think Mr. Treadway was quite tall, so—oh gosh.” Trying to unravel the thought processes of a man who’d invented an automobile that ran by clockwork and had to be rewound every hundred feet wasn’t going to get her far. She dragged a chair over and sat down to check whatever book she could reach simply because that was easiest.

“Hey, look what I found!” Elmer’s jubilant yell startled her so that she almost fell off the chair.

“Is it the patent?”

“Gorry, no.” He loomed in the doorway, holding up a dusty bottle filled with a dark red fluid. “It’s a secret cache of old Mr. Treadway’s homemade cherry brandy. Boys oh girls, if Paw knew there was a swig of this stuff left in the house, I’d never of got ’im out. Only time I ever seen tears in his eyes was when he told me old man Treadway carried the secret of makin’ it to his grave. Must be ten or a dozen’ bottles hid behind a loose board in the bottom cupboard right out there in that pantry.”

“Mrs. Treadway was death on liquor. He wouldn’t have wanted her to find it, and I guess she never did.” Janet felt a bit teary-eyed, too. “Imagine, after all those years!”

“Must be pretty potent by now.” The young giant fiddled with the cork, his blue eyes filled with wistful longing.

“Go ahead, open it if you want to,” said Janet. “You’re the one who found it.”

He hesitated, then plunked the bottle down on Charles Treadway’s desk. “No. I won’t take nothin’ that’s not mine.”

“Suit yourself.”

Janet went back to pulling out books. She was hot and sticky and choking with dust. Her hand was throbbing worse by the minute. She was sick and tired of the Mansion and all its problems, Elmer Bain’s included.

“This is positively the last.”

She wrenched one final volume off the shelf. A yellowed envelope spiraled to the floor. She picked it up and saw the words, “Patent Office” in the corner. She glanced at the title of the book in her hand. It was Mary Webb’s
Precious Bane.
How dumb could a person get?

Janet didn’t realize she’d asked that question out loud till she heard Elmer call, “You talkin’ to me?”

“No, just cussing myself out for a blind fool. You can quit hunting, Elmer. I think I’ve found it.”

Elmer came in and compared the envelope and the book title, scratching his blond curls with a remarkably dirty paw.

“Well, I’ll be derned! How do you suppose Marion missed seein’ that?”

“No doubt she was too busy looking for secret panels in the woodwork. If I’d had my wits about me, I might have noticed it myself before getting covered from head to foot with dust and cobwebs. Anyway, I’ve done my bit and good luck to ’em. Now I’m going home and lie down. This hand is killing me.”

“Gosh, Janet, I forgot you wasn’t feelin’ good. Want me to walk you over?”

“Thanks, but I’m not that far gone.” Janet laid the envelope on the desk beside the brandy. “Give this to Gilly or Marion, whichever gets here first.”

Elmer backed away. “I don’t want no part of that thing. What if some of the papers are missin’? Gilly’s mother’ll say I took ’em.”

“Oh for the love of Pete!” Janet grabbed the patent and stuffed it in the pocket of her wrapper. “That makes me the goat, as usual. Tell them if they want it, they can come and get it.”

“Janet, I’m sorry.” Bain did look wretched.

“All right, Elmer. I understand how you feel. I’ll just be glad when this foolishness is settled.” If it ever was. Somehow, Janet hadn’t much faith in Precious Bane.

She went over home, peeled off her filthy wrapper and underwear, and took a long shower, soaking her bandage in the process. Bert or somebody would have to help her put on a fresh dressing. No matter; it was worth a little blood poisoning to feel clean again. She put on a change of underclothes and her rosebud wrapper, and stretched out on the bed.

Lying down made her head pound all the worse. “Seems to me I’ve had a splitting headache ever since I found that cussed jar,” she sighed to the cat, who had made himself comfortable on the edge of her robe, always ready to share anybody’s catnap. “I’d better ask Bert to pick up another jar of aspirin when he’s downtown. Julius, where’s it going to end?”

The cat lolled over on his back and stretched out a plush-covered paw. He didn’t give a hoot one way or the other. She’d been lying there a fair while, scratching his stomach and wishing she could share his mood, when Marion Emery blew in.

“Where is it, quick?”

“Right over there on the dresser.”

“What does it say?”

“How should I know? I’m not in the habit of prying into other people’s private business any more than I have to.”

Marion was too busy tearing at the tough, yellowed envelope to listen. With a hand that trembled, she tugged out a sheaf of legal-looking paper. “This is it, all right. Treadway Enterprises Ltd, Charles Percival Treadway and Jason Asaph Bain, principals. Patent for—” she flipped through the pages. “What the hell? Janet, does this make sense to you?”

“Quit flapping those papers around and maybe I’ll be able to see.” In spite of her headache, Janet sat up and steadied Marion’s flying hands so that she could get a look at the patent. “Hold it up so I can—oh Marion, this is ridiculous! A self-emptying washtub. Hadn’t the old fool ever heard of washing machines?”

“Wait a second! How could they have washing machines up here before they ever had electricity?”

“You turned it with a crank, of course. I could show you a better one than that in any old mail-order catalog. If you want my frank opinion, that patent isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.”

“But it has to be,” Marion sounded both pugnacious and worried. “Why would Bain be in such a swivet to get his claws on it if it wasn’t? And if he thinks he can swindle me out of my fair share, he’s got rocks in his head.”

“I wouldn’t get my hopes up too high if I were you, eh?”

“Thanks, pal.” Marion kept on fluttering pages, her thin face avid. “Okay, so maybe it’s not the washtub itself, maybe it’s something to do with the principle it works on. I’ll bet Bain’s seen some new product that infringes on this mechanism, and he figures on holding up the manufacturer for a healthy cut of the profits. He’d need this for evidence, wouldn’t he?”

“You mean this particular set of plans? I don’t see why. They must keep copies of patents in Ottawa or somewhere. Couldn’t he have written away for one? Anyway, I can’t see where there’s any great mechanism involved. It looks to me like a plain old wooden washtub hooked on to a ratchet thing, like an automobile jack.”

“Since when have you been an expert?” snarled Marion. “Let me handle this, will you?”

“Gladly.”

Even Marion couldn’t miss the ice in Janet’s voice. “Look, I didn’t mean to get you sore. It’s just that you haven’t had as much business experience as I have. You don’t know how those big corporations operate.”

“No, and I can’t say I much care.” Janet only wished Marion would take herself and her precious documents elsewhere.

However, the heiress showed no sign of leaving. She spread the pages out on the bed, annoying the cat Julius, who flounced off in a huff, and stood frowning over them importantly. “I suppose I’ll have to show Gilly. She’ll probably start yapping that we’ve got to turn this right over to Elmer.”

“He wouldn’t take it,” said Janet wearily.

“Don’t kid yourself, sister. This is what he came for, isn’t it?” Marion shuffled the pages back together and folded them into the torn envelope. “Well, I don’t suppose there’s much more I can do today. Gilly’ll be down at Elizabeth’s till God knows when. They’ve got a pack of Henry’s relations hanging around to see if there’ll be any pickings for them. That’s a laugh. I’ll bet you anything you like that Henry even cashed in his life insurance and gambled that away. Even if there is anything, I’d like to see anybody pry a cent away from Elizabeth. I think I’ll show this to her first instead of Gilly. At least she’s got a head on her shoulders. In the meantime, I’d better go put this away someplace where it’ll be safe.”

“Yes, why don’t you?” said Janet with the first enthusiasm she’d been able to muster. “Pin it inside your roll-on.”
*

She finally managed to get rid of Marion. Julius immediately hopped back up on the bed and she resumed their conversation.

“Big corporation, my left foot! Julius, what am I supposed to think now? Whatever Mrs. Tread way and Dr. Druffitt were killed for, it certainly couldn’t have been over any patent washtub. Or could it? Is it possible there’s something more to those papers than we could see? Did I make a mistake letting Marion take them back to the Mansion without warning her there’s a murderer on the loose?”

But did Marion need to be warned? Marion was a far likelier suspect than she was a victim, and Janet Wadman had already stuck her neck out far enough to be dangerous to somebody. Everybody in town knew she’d been the one to find Dr. Druffitt’s body, after all that buzzing down at the funeral. Thanks to Dot Fewter and her mother, they must also know how she’d happened to be on the spot.

Could she even trust Fred Olson not to betray what she’d observed about that dent in the dead man’s skull? He was probably down at the Owls’ right now with a few wallops of rye under his belt, dropping a hint in strictest confidence to six or eight of his cronies. And the brother Owls would pass the word to their wives, and the wives to their best friends, and before long somebody would put two and two together and come up with yet another minus one.