A Pint of Murder (19 page)

“Then anybody who knew she was staying with you might have guessed where she’d wind up before the night was over?”

“I should think so if they’d had their wits about them, which I obviously didn’t.”

“However, it’s not likely anybody would expect her to be wearing Mrs. Druffitt’s clothes?”

“I’d doubt that very much. Dot hadn’t had time to show them around the village, and it’s not like Mrs. Druffitt to give anything away as a rule, not even to the church rummage sales. Dot used to complain that Mrs. Druffitt wouldn’t even give her a cup of tea without measuring out the milk and sugar as if it were gold.”

“Would you say that just about anybody from around here would have recognized Mrs. Druffitt by her clothing even if her face was not visible?”

“Oh yes, no question about that. She wears the same things year in and year out, and she takes a pretty dim view if anybody tries to ‘copy her style,’ as she puts it. Though why anybody would want to is beyond me. Madoc, you don’t think somebody killed Dot thinking she was Mrs. Druffitt?”

“Would that idea make sense to you?”

“Yes, I suppose it would,” Janet replied slowly. “Or even if they thought it was Marion. Anybody but poor, silly Dot Fewter. Oh Madoc, I just don’t think I can stand any more!”

She was wearing a sleeveless pink wraparound. Since it was part of the Mounties’ code to handle witnesses with utmost tact, Rhys decided he might tactfully administer a comforting pat to her smooth, warm shoulder and steady her hand while she drank a calming tumbler of water.

“I’m afraid you think I’ve muffed this case pretty badly,” he remarked in mournful tone.

“Oh no!” She looked up at him, her large hazel eyes starred by lashes stuck together with tears. “How could you have prevented this? How were you to know Dot would make a beeline for the barn as soon as the rest of us were asleep? How could you know she’d be wearing Mrs. Druffitt’s clothes? How could you know somebody was waiting out there to hit her over the head with a rock?”

She began sobbing again. Rhys, the very soul of tact, continued to massage her pleasant shoulder blade. At last she reached for a paper serviette from the holder on the table, and blew her nose.

“Madoc, may I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“This has nothing at all to do with—with what happened.”

“Good.”

She blew her nose again. “Suppose—I mean, just for the sake of argument, that you’d asked a girl you—well, you thought you liked to go out and celebrate your birthday with you.”

“An agreeable supposition,” he prompted.

“And—and anyway, she wasn’t feeling any too well but she went because she didn’t want to spoil your party. And then when she got inside the restaurant and smelled the food, she had to go out and—and embarrass you.”

“She would not embarrass me,” said Rhys. “She would distress me.”

“Then—then what would you do?”

He shrugged. “The best I could, I suppose. How sick would she be, for the sake, as you say, of argument?”

“Sick enough to have to go to the hospital. I mean—you wouldn’t flounce off in a snit and leave her to go by herself?”

“My God, no!”

“And you’d maybe send her some flowers or something when you found out she’d had to have her appendix out?”

“I’d probably be camping on the doormat outside her room and driving the nurses crazy till they let me go inside. How would you expect any man to act?”

“Sometimes people don’t get what they expect.” Janet had hold of herself now. “I don’t know why I brought that up. Just trying to get my mind off this other business, I suppose.”

A Mountie is not so easily beguiled. Somewhere, and Rhys would track him down or hand in his badge, existed a cad who required to be dealt with as The Right Honorable Mr. Trudeau had once so tersely and feistily offered to deal with an Honorable Member of the Opposition. Only he did not say so, for such language should not be used in front of a lady.

“And you say Gilly and Elmer and Bobby are all three gone? That little kid!”

“Now, Janet,” said Rhys, “surely you cannot believe that Elmer Bain would harm Gilly or her son?”

“Stranger things have happened. Anyway, what if they’re not all together? What if somebody started to take Gilly and Bobby away somewhere, and Elmer went chasing after them? What if he got killed like Dot, and his body dumped in the woods somewhere? How do we know they’re not all three dead by now?”

Rhys felt a powerful impulse to exercise a greater degree of tact than was consistent with departmental regulations. He’d better get out of here and put his mind back on his job.

“My dear Janet, you must not let yourself get worked up over something that most likely hasn’t happened. Why don’t you go over to the Mansion and give Marion a hand, eh? Let me do the worrying. That’s what I get paid for.”

She blew her altogether delectable nose again. “All right, I suppose I ought to see what’s happening. I expect I’ll find her trying to make coffee on the waffle iron. Where will you be in case any of us need to get hold of you?”

He thought it would be a splendid idea if she personally wanted to, but he did not say so. “First I am going to be right here for a while, if you don’t mind, running up a terrible phone bill, which will not be charged to your brother. Then I shall take a run out to Jason Bain’s house if you’ll tell me how to find it. Elmer may possibly have taken Gilly and Bobby there for safety’s sake, you know.”

“I never thought of that.” Nor did Janet think much of the suggestion now, Rhys could see. However, she drew him a neat map, gave him careful directions to go with it, and then began wrapping up the leftover doughnuts to take over to Marion.

He worked off some of his excess tact by scrubbing Janet’s frying pans for her, saw her safely to the door of the Mansion with her burden of provender, then went to the telephone. The information he asked for was buried deep in time and, no doubt, dust. He persevered, and got it at last. The facts were pretty much as he’d expected. He took meticulous notes, thanked the exhausted-sounding voice at the other end of the wire, and hung up. At last he took his neat little map in hand and went to call on Jason Bain.

The road out to Bain’s lair was as brutal as Janet had warned him it would be. He bumped along over ancient ruts and fallen logs, offering up pious utterances to whichever deity was in charge of automobile springs. Perhaps these were heard. In any event, he was agreeably surprised to reach his destination with the car still more or less intact.

That he had in fact got to where he intended was indisputable. “You’ll know the place when you see it,” Janet had explained, “because the town dump’s out the other way.”

The house itself was not a great eyesore, being merely a smallish two-story dwelling of no particular style, in reasonable repair. Its clapboards were fresh-painted on two sides and part of a third in a strange greenish-bronze shade that had no doubt been arrived at by thriftily blending together whatever odds and ends of paint had happened to be lying around. Here was a proof of Elmer’s industry, though hardly a testimonial to his eye for color.

Jason Bain’s notion of landscaping was even more wildly original than his son’s of decorating. The yard was one magnificent scramble of broken-down farm machinery, threadbare airplane tires, old lumber,
objets trouvés
of all descriptions and a good many that were indescribable. In the midst of this welter stood the old man, being monarch of all he surveyed. It had to be Bain, since Rhys couldn’t imagine anybody else would care to reign here. As the car pulled up toward the house, he ambled over.

“Morning, Mr. Bain,” the Mountie called out. “Is your son here?”

“No, he ain’t,” snapped the squire. “What you want him for, eh?”

“I want him for questioning, about a murder and a possible kidnaping. Perhaps I should explain that I’m Detective Inspector Rhys of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.”

The old man backed away, yellow fangs bared in his bony, unshaven jaw. “I ain’t puttin’ up one red cent for lawyer fees.”

“Nobody’s asked you to, so far as I know. I merely want to talk to Elmer. Where is he?”

“How’m I s’posed to know? I ain’t seen ’im since—” Bain did a rapid switch. “Who’s been murdered?”

“A local woman named Dorothy Fewter. Do you know her?”

“Black-haired slut that was Sam Neddick’s fancy piece. What’s she got to do with Elmer?”

“It’s departmental procedure for us to ask the questions and for you to answer,” Rhys reminded him gently. “You were about to tell me when and where you last saw your son, I believe?”

“Day Henry Druffitt was buried,” the father admitted grudgingly. “’Round maybe three o’clock in the afternoon.”

“And where was this?”

“At the Mansion.”

“What were you doing there?”

“Man’s got a right to call on his own son, ain’t he? Maybe I got lonesome.” The ocher teeth bared again in an unlovely smile.

“I should prefer you to be more specific,” said Rhys.

“Don’t know’s I’m obliged to be if I don’t choose, not unless you serve papers on me. I had some private business to talk over with ’im, that’s all.”

“To the best of your knowledge, was anybody else present at this—er—conversation?”

“Just said it was private, didn’t I? They was all down to the funeral, far as I know.”

“Why didn’t you go, too?”

Bain shrugged. “Hank Druffitt was nothin’ to me.”

“Then your statement is that you went to the Treadway house, commonly referred to as the Mansion, for the specific purpose of discussing a confidential business matter with your son.”

“Put it that way if you want to.”

“This discussion was entirely amicable and—er—businesslike?”

“It was.”

“Then perhaps, Mr. Bain,” said Rhys plaintively, “you might explain to me why an eyewitness has testified that your son caught you alone inside the house when he returned early from the funeral, that there was a violent argument during which he accused you of breaking and entering with felonious intent, and that he threw you out the door.”

“W
HAT WITNESS?” ROARED BAIN.

“Oh, we have to save a few surprises for the trial.”

“Whose trial you talkin’ about?”

A Mountie is forbidden to threaten a suspect. Rhys merely scratched his red mustache and cocked a dark brown eyebrow. “Now, Mr. Bain, perhaps you’d care to go over your statement with me once more. You say you arrived at the Mansion on the afternoon of the funeral. You knew of course that Marion Emery is a cousin of the Druffitts, and that Gilly Bascom is their daughter. It stood to reason they’d be down at the church. Sam Neddick, your friend, must also have told you that Bert Wadman would be marching with the Owls, and that he himself would be serving as the undertaker’s assistant. Would you care to comment on these facts?”

Bain did not care to comment.

“Very well, then we may take them as stated. Now, since your son has a car and the ladies he’s boarding with do not, it would be reasonable to assume that he might be driving them down to the village and staying for the funeral so he could bring them back. In fact, Elmer did take Gilly and her son, as well as Marion Emery, down to the village and then come back for Janet Wadman and Dot Fewter. If you had really intended to have an important private business conference with him, you could easily enough have telephoned in advance to tell him to return to the Mansion while the others were away. That is a telephone wire I see up there, is it not?”

Bain didn’t answer.

“Therefore, we have to deduce that no such conference was intended and that what you really had in mind was a spot of trespass. Your son came home early because one of his passengers wasn’t feeling well, and caught you in the act. The amicable discussion you alluded to was in fact a flaming row. Have we got it straight now?”

Apparently they had. Under its overgrowth of gray stubble, Bain’s face was the color of old brick. “Damned ingrate! Turned on ’is own father like a she-bear with a sore backside.”

“What were you two fighting about, other than the fact that he’d caught you where you had no business to be?”

“Didn’t your star witness tell you that?” sneered the miscreant.

“I’d rather you told me yourself. It will look better on your record if you co-operate, you know.”

Bain swallowed. “All right, if that’s the way you want to put it. I got nothin’ to be ashamed of. I was lookin’ for a patent which is my own rightful property.”

“Why is it your rightful property?”

“Because me an’ Charles Treadway was in business together an’ I can prove it. Accordin’ to our agreement, his wife held the patent right long as she lived. Soon as she died, it passed to me an’ I been tryin’ to get it. Marion Emery’s been holdin’ out on me, claimin’ she couldn’t find it. I got sore an’ decided to take matters into my own hands, that’s all. Can’t blame a man for wantin’ what’s his.”

“But you did not take the patent from the Mansion?”

“I did not.”

“Would you have done so if Elmer hadn’t interrupted your search?”

“You can’t hold me accountable for what I might or might not o’ done. Maybe I’d o’ called you in to make Miz Emery fork it over. You’re s’posed to stick up for law an’ order, ain’t you?”

“Well put, Mr. Bain. You’ve been creating quite a stir about that patent, by and large, have you not?”

“A man’s got a right to his own property.”

“Considering your liberal views regarding the act of trespass, I’m surprised you take such a vehement stand on that issue. When did you learn the patent had been found?”

A crafty smirk flitted across the unlovely features. “I ain’t learned yet, exactly.”

“What do you mean, ‘exactly’?”

“Anybody thinks they can put one over on me—”

“Are you referring to Marion Emery or Elizabeth Druffitt?”

Bain hunched his shoulders and shut his mouth.

“Which of the two was it,” said Rhys gently, “that you thought you’d killed last night?”

This was clearly one question Bain hadn’t bargained for. “Wait a minute,” he stammered. “Hold on there! What you drivin’ at?”

“I told you when I arrived that Dorothy Fewter had been murdered,” the Mountie reminded him. “You didn’t ask me when she died, or where or how. I thought perhaps it might be because you already knew.”