The Grub-And-Stakers Pinch a Poke (26 page)

Arethusa was panting back, “Unhand me, sirrah!” but Jenson was obviously in no unhanding mood. Dittany had spied a handsome black umbrella with a heavy silver handle in the stand by the front door. She whizzed back and got it.

“Unhand her, sirrah!”

By way of emphasis, she brought the silver handle down as hard as she could on his flowing white mane. The mane came off.

“A wig, by my halidom! So, blackguard, even your hair is false.”

Even in the midst of trying to rearrange her woefully disheveled garments, Arethusa was right there with the mot juste.

“Madam, you wrong me.”

Jenson began sidling toward a different case wherein lay a dagger that Sarah Siddons probably hadn’t seen before her when she played Lady Macbeth. Dittany sprang between him and the dagger.

She was using the umbrella tip like a rapier to fend him away when Osbert bounded into the room, followed by Sergeant MacVicar and about half the Scottsbeck police force.

“Aha!” cried Osbert. “We’ve got him on assault already.”

“Attempted ravishment, ninny,” his aunt corrected. “The caitiff cur was trying to work his scurvy will on me.”

“She lured me on,” Jenson shrieked.

Without that gorgeous white hair, he was no alluring figure. Arethusa on the other hand, flushed and disheveled in the accepted regency romance tradition, her jetty locks astream, her noble bosom aheave, and her lustrous orbs even more unfathomable than usual, was a knockout. The officer in charge, who’d up to now seemed more than a bit disconcerted at the prospect of having to pinch the neighborhood aristocrat, leaped gallantly to her side and faced the now wigless bigwig without so much as a nervous twitch.

“Jenson ThorbisherFreep, I arrest you on a charge of attempted ravishment and I guess a lot of other stuff but we’ll get to that later.

We have a search warrant here and we’re going to search, so why don’t you just put your hair back on and go quietly out to the wagon with Officer Knudsen here as soon as he gets the handcuffs untangled from his belt?”

The old actor recognized a cue when one was fed him. “You’ll never take me alive!” he bellowed.

But they did, of course.

“My stars and garters,” Dittany remarked, “this has been quite a day.”

They’d left Norah fixing a hearty late lunch out of groceries Dittany had bought. Wilhedra didn’t need their company any longer.

Leander Hellespont was with her, spouting Shakespeare by the ream and laying his modest but perfectly genuine fortune at her feet. They were going to get married as soon as Wilhedra’s ankle was well enough so she could walk down the aisle without her crutch. Wilhedra didn’t appear much bothered by the circumstance that her father wouldn’t be free to give her away.

Carolus Bledsoe had been told the whole story. He was naturally relieved to learn he was no longer in danger of being shot, poisoned, or snakebitten; but it was finding out he’d been jilted by Wilhedra that had set off the fireworks. Antibiotics to the contrary notwithstanding, he’d raised such a ruckus about toasting the bride-to-be that Osbert had finally broken down and mixed him a stiff hot whiskey and lemon. After a brief but raucous period of celebration, Carolus had settled down to sleep it off.

Sergeant Mac Vicar was still in Scottsbeck, helping the police there wrap up the evidence. They’d found the insurance policies in Jensen’s heavy old cast-iron safe, which they’d opened with a bent hairpin. With Norah’s all too willing assistance, they’d located the box of wad-cutter bullets, several with their tops painted in various shades of red, behind the beam where she’d watched her employer stash them.

Behind another beam they’d found a couple of stink bombs like the ones that had rendered the old opera house unusable. Wilhedra had been able to cast some light on her father’s motive for that outrage, though naturally she hadn’t realized then what his random remarks had portended. He’d been concerned whether the Scottsbeck police might be clever enough to discover who’d rigged the so-called accident with the Smith & Wesson by which he’d expected to collect Carolus Bledsoe’s life insurance. That comic-opera Scot (Jenson’s very words) in Lobelia Falls, with his puny force of two young sprouts and one old coot, would surely present no threat to the success of his plan.

The comic-opera Scot had been the one to discover the venomous stuff Jenson had smeared on the rat trap, as well as the black wig and the mustache with curly ends he’d worn impersonating Andy McNaster when he stole the cobra. The Scottsbeck police got the credit for tracking down the messenger whom an elderly man wearing an obviously bogus black wig and curly mustache had hired to deliver a box of flowers to the Monk residence late Sunday morning.

They’d made Jenson put on the wig and mustache and the messenger had unhesitatingly picked him out from among several other similarly wigged and mustached elderly men in a police lineup.

Wilhedra had even identified the florist’s box. It was one Leander Hellespont had sent her on Valentine’s Day, filled with calla lilies and stephanotis. Her father had snatched it away in a well-feigned rage, leaving fingerprints on the shiny cardboard that had somehow survived the subsequent mishandling. He’d claimed he was going to throw the flowers in the garbage. Instead, he’d wrapped them in red tissue paper left over from some earlier Christmas and carried them to Arethusa as an unsubtle hint of his matrimonial intentions.

More than the peanut butter sandwiches he’d made her eat while he was gorging with Arethusa on filet mignon, more than the fishline he’d tripped her with, more than the tarantula she now suspected him of having hidden in her mink muff until he saw his chance to put it on Carolus’s back, more than all his other rogueries put together, it was this misappropriation of her beloved Leander’s floral tribute that had impelled Jenson’s daughter to testify so damningly against him. He was working up a King Lear act in the hope of copping an insanity plea, but he wasn’t fooling Sergeant Mac Vicar any.

He hadn’t fooled Deputy Monk to any significant degree, either.

“I’d been thinking it must be either Jenson or Hellespont,” Osbert confessed, “because the shootout, the cobra, and the poisoned rat trap, not to mention that tarantula at the airport, reminded me so much of plots from old melodramas.”

“Not very good melodramas, i’ faith,” Arethusa scoffed. “None of them worked.”

“Yes, that’s the factor the would-be murderer overlooked.” Osbert could have added that none of Arethusa’s plots would have worked, either, but he was feeling strangely mellow and protective toward his aunt at the moment.

“Theoretically any of his tricks except the tarantula might have done the job,” he conceded, “but they required an element of luck he hadn’t counted on and didn’t get. What confused me was that Hellespont’s too skinny to have impersonated Andy and I couldn’t figure out what Jenson’s motive might be when he seemed so dadblanged set on Wilhedra’s marrying Carolus.”

“He probably would have waited till they were married,” said Dittany, “if Carolus hadn’t happened to sit next to Arethusa on that airplane. Jenson could see Carolus succumbing to her siren wiles and getting ready to ditch Wilhedra, so he had to act while his story was still plausible. Besides, he was determined to get Arethusa for himself. And to think it all started over a packet of smoked peanuts!

I suppose until Carolus met you, Arethusa, Wilhedra ThorbisherFreep looked to him like a fairly juicy proposition. Jenson must have had Carolus thoroughly convinced that he’d be getting his hands on the old man’s money just when Andy McNaster had practically reformed him out of business and his ex-wife was in the process of taking him to the cleaners.”

“I expect it was Jenson’s taking out that policy on Wilhedra with Carolus as beneficiary that clinched the deal,” Osbert agreed. “Jenson must have planned on murder right from the beginning, knowing he could bully Wilhedra into turning the insurance over to him, the old brute! Still, I must say I’m a bit surprised a downy duck like Carolus would be sucker enough to fall for his scheme.”

“Carolus may have had his own ideas about Wilhedra’s insurance,”

Dittany pointed out. “I wonder how long the bride would have survived the honeymoon.”

“Alas, poor Wilhedra,” sighed Arethusa. “She was only a bird in a gilded cage. However all’s well that ends well, as Mr. Hellespont has no doubt reminded her by now. Od’s fish, whatever do you suppose has happened to Archie and Daniel?”

“They went off some place with Andy,” Osbert told her. “Archie was pretty sore about going, though naturally he couldn’t say so.

He’d planned to corner Daniel in my office and wrestle a contract for Dangerous Dan out of him, then drag you off to lunch at some secluded rendezvous and blow his commission on gourmet pizza and imported beer.”

“And why not, forsooth? He still could,” Arethusa said notwithstanding the fact that she’d just polished off an ample though somewhat eclectic meal here in the Monks’ kitchen and it was already getting on toward teatime because they’d been so late coming back from Scottsbeck.

“I suppose we ought to stir our stumps and clear the table,”

Dittany observed with no great enthusiasm.

“And I should get back to work,” said Osbert.

“Moi aussi,” said Arethusa.

But none of them did anything. They were still sitting around the table rehashing the events of the day when the missing men drove up in Andy McNaster’s baby-blue Lincoln. Daniel was triumphant, Archie bemused. Andy gave the impression of having recently swallowed a bolt of lightning.

“What’s up?” was Archie’s greeting.

“Jenson Thorbisher-Preep,” Osbert told him. “He’s up on a charge of attempted murder.”

He, Dittany, and Arethusa all began explaining together the startling events of the morning. The others listened politely enough, but not even Andy appeared to be taking in much of their narrative.

Especially not even Andy. Dittany noticed first.

“What’s the matter with you three? Did you all eat something bad for lunch?”

“It’s me,” Andy blurted.

“What about you?”

“He signed me.”

“That’s right,” crowed Daniel. “I signed him.”

“It’s true,” Archie confirmed. “We signed him.”

“To what, forsooth?” demanded Arethusa.

“Are you kidding?” Daniel’s little black eyes were gleaming like fireflies on a July night. “Doesn’t it hit you like a ton of bricks?

Doesn’t it stick out like a sore thumb? I’m telling you, that man’s a born villain.”

“Huh,” sniffed Dittany. “Everybody in Lobelia Falls has been saying that for years. Before he reformed, I mean. No offense, Andy.”

“That’s okay,” he assured her. “I don’t mind any more having my crummy past thrown up to me. It was a necessary phase in my development as an actor, Daniel says.”

“And the result is worth every bit of skulduggery he ever pulled,”

cried the famous producer. “He’s going to be the classiest rotter since George Sanders.”

Andy turned pleading eyes toward Arethusa. “It’s for you I’m doing it, eh. You do understand?”

“In a word,” she replied, “no. Unless perchance by George Sanders you mean the late star of stage and screen signalized by his sneering and cynical portrayals of sophisticated scoundrels?”

“That’s the guy. And I’m going to be another him, Daniel says.

How’s this for a sophisticated and cynical sneer?”

“Disgusting! Repellent! Unspeakably revolting! Andrew, you’ll be magnificent. With a sneer like that, you’ll have the world at your feet.”

“And you, Arethusa? What to me the footlights, the spotlights, the plaudits of the crowd, the smear of the greasepaint, the adoration of the millions? When I sneer, my sneer shall be only for you.”

“Why, thank you, Andrew. And I shall think of you sneering your way to stardom midst the plaudits of the crowd and the smearing of the greasepaint whilst I sit alone in my cozy office with my cat Rudolph snoring peacefully by my side. I’m already six weeks behind on The Duchess and the Dastard and can’t wait to get back to it.”

“You won’t be over at the inn playing footsies with Carolus Bledsoe?”

“La, sir, perish the thought. Carolus Bledsoe will be elsewhere.”

“Where elsewhere?”

“Somewhere east of Suez where the best is like the worst appears to be what he has on the agenda. He was making a good deal of noise about it shortly before he finished his toddy and dropped off to sleep. That was after he found out it was Jensen who’d been assassinating him off and on for the past month or so and that Wilhedra had bestowed her heart and hand upon another. Carolus mentioned Mandalay as his ultimate port of call, if memory serves me.”

“That’s just about how far I’d have picked to send him myself,”

Andy grunted. Then a noble thought struck him and he soared above such petty jealousy, as a rising rotter should.

“Say, Dittany, how’s about I drive Charlie over to the inn and let them take care of him till he’s back on his feet, eh? He can have the room I use, being as how it looks as if I won’t be wanting it for a while. I’ll let him borrow Thusie for company and that waitress they call Petsy can bring him his meals and stuff. You know, the one with all the so forth.”

The lascivious leer that accompanied these last words sent Daniel into convulsions of ecstasy. “Look at that! Isn’t he incredible? All my years in showbiz, I’ve never run across anybody with more different kinds of nasty looks in his repertoire. I’ve been watching him ever since I got here and so far I haven’t seen him leer the same way twice.”

“So that’s why you’ve been tagging after Andy like Ethel stalking a woodchuck?” said Dittany.

“Why else? He makes me feel like a prospector who went out to buy a hamburger and stumbled into a gold mine. By the way,” he murmured into Dittany’s ear alone, “I hope your aunt isn’t too-er -what I mean is, Andy’s going to see a lot of new faces, if you catch my drift.”

“Not to worry. Arethusa will adjust.”

She turned to the natural-born villain. “Andy, you’re an absolute angel, if you’ll forgive the expression, for taking Carolus off our hands. But do you really think you can trust him with Thusie? I personally wouldn’t want to see any cobra of mine at the mercy of a sidewinder like him.”