The Corpse in Oozak's Pond (19 page)

“Why don’t you folks go make yourselves comfortable in the back parlor till I can get to you?” Harry Goulson suggested in a gallant effort at cordiality. “I’m pretty sure there’s still some coffee and doughnuts left.”

“Coffee an’ doughnuts?” yowled Hesperus Hudson. “You told me we was goin’ to get free booze.”

“We’ll get it,” Shandy tried to reassure him. “I just want you to take another look at that body while you can still see straight.”

“What the hell for? I already seen it straighter than I wanted to. An’ I didn’t like the looks of it then, an’ I won’t like it any better now.”

“But you’ll get your name in the papers. Think of the glory.”

“Huh. I already had my name in the papers plenty o’ times. Mostly for bein’ drunk an’ disorderly. Used to be for drivin’ under the influence, but I ain’t druv since nineteen fifty-two. Got my license took away so many times I figured the hell with it an’ quit. Damn cars they build nowadays ain’t worth stealin’, anyways. You ain’t foolin’ me none with that fancy tin can o’ yours, mister, an’ you needn’t think you are. Free whiskey, huh!”

Hudson slumped into a chair and took a swig of the coffee Shandy handed him. “At least it’s wet,” he admitted in a somewhat less belligerent tone.

“Have some more,” Shandy urged. “And a doughnut. Lots of doughnuts.” He had no illusion that a few cups of coffee would make any dent in the kind of bun Hesperus Hudson had spent all these years laying on, but at least they wouldn’t make the old soak any drunker.

Silvester Lomax, co-chief of the college security guards, was filling in for Purvis Mink tonight but had taken time to stop down on his coffee break and pay his respects. When Lomax stepped out to the back parlor for a cup of coffee just so nobody could accuse him of taking his break under false pretenses, Shandy asked if he’d mind keeping an eye on a material witness for a few minutes. Lomax said he didn’t, so Shandy left him with Hudson and went out front.

A few stragglers were still around, condoling with the Minks and admiring the Goulsons’ handiwork. Persephone looked about ready to be laid out herself by now. In fact, Shandy thought the elder Bugginses looked better man she did. Better than they’d looked in years, like as not. Goulson had rushed in a double casket from Boston, so in death they were not divided. Arabella had tucked a single white rose into the waxen hands folded across the old lady’s violet polyester bosom. Trevelyan Buggins was holding what had presumably been his favorite pipe, polished and deodorized as he had surely not kept it during his lifetime. Why not a vinegar jug, Shandy thought pettishly.

Both loved ones were wearing their trifocals. The eyeglasses were presumably supposed to make them look more natural, notwithstanding the fact that they were lying down with their eyes shut. Every new undertakers’ wrinkle seemed to take the deceased another step back toward ancient burial customs. Shandy wondered if they each had a Susan B. Anthony silver dollar tucked under their tongues to pay for the ferry ride across the River Jordan, but he thought he wouldn’t ask.

He’d hoped to get a word in with Persephone Mink, but there didn’t appear to be much hope of that just now. Having him loose in the main parlor evidently worried Harry Goulson, though. Goulson made a quick decision to leave the official hovering to his wife Arabella, who often hovered for him when the boy wasn’t around to help out, and get the potentially troublesome Shandy out of there before the backroom dilemma developed into a front-room catastrophe.

“I can spare you a few minutes now, Professor,” he murmured. “This way, please.”

By now, Hesperus Hudson was having a pleasant chat with Silvester Lomax and didn’t much want to break up the party, but Lomax said he had to get back to work, anyway. They parted amicably, and Shandy at last got to show Hesperus Hudson the body in the drawer. Hudson at once protested.

“That ain’t Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Where’s his whiskers?”

“Right here.” Goulson produced the whole armload, nicely dried and fluffed, and fitted it on the clean-shaven face.

“Is that how you saw him?” Shandy asked.

“Yup,” said Hudson, “only he was layin’ on the floor o’ the shack with his coattails spraddled out beside ’im. An’ he didn’t look so neat.”

“I’ve tidied him up some,” Harry Goulson admitted. “I couldn’t help it, Professor. My professional ethics were involved.”

“Quite understandable,” said Shandy. “So it was a false beard. Must have been stuck on pretty tight to have resisted coming off in the water.”

“It was,” said Goulson. “I had a heck of a time with it. I better not tell you how I got it off.”

“No, don’t,” said Shandy. “What about the hair?”

“Oh, that’s his own. No question.”

“Brace always did have a fine head o’ hair,” said Hudson. “Never thought he’d be the type to grow a beard, though.”

“But wouldn’t it be consistent with his liking to dress up and fool people?” said Shandy. “And it isn’t a real beard, you know.”

“It isn’t?” Hudson picked the mass of white hair off the dead man’s face and chest and held it up for a closer look. “Seems real enough to me. What you mean is, it’s real but it ain’t his. Jesus, wouldn’t that be just like Brace? Swipe a man’s beard an’ then laugh in his face from under it. Boy, he sure was a cough drop.”

“Then you’re still convinced this is Bracebridge Buggins’s body?” Shandy pressed.

“How the hell do I know? Brace might o’ stole that, too.”

“Er, assuming he didn’t, can you say it resembles Bracebridge Buggins as you knew him?”

“What kind o’ dumb question is that? When I knew Brace, he was a young kid growin’ up. This here’s an old man, or close to it. All I’m sayin’ is, it looks like I figure Brace ought to look if he was as old as he is now.”

“I stand corrected,” Shandy replied meekly. He must be even more tired than he’d thought he was. “Would there be any, er, distinguishing mark by which we could make a positive identification? A birthmark, for instance, or an old scar he acquired as a boy?”

Hudson was trying on the beard and had to untangle his mouth from quite a lot of straggly false hair before he could answer. “Cripes, that’s awful-tastin’ stuff. Sure, Brace had a scar, right under the jawbone. I gave it to ’im myself one day when I was tryin’ out my first pair o’ brass knuckles. They was Bain’s to start with, but he sold ’em to me for a buck an’ a half ’cause he’d took another pair he liked better off’n a guy he got into a fight with at the county fair.”

“I didn’t notice any scar when I took the whiskers off,” said Goulson.

“Perhaps it was a less, er, permanent memorial than Hudson thought,” said Shandy. “Scars do fade with age oftentimes. Have you a strong light we can shine directly on the face, Goulson? And a magnifying glass, by any chance?”

Goulson had both, the magnifier being the kind one slips over one’s head like a pair of welder’s goggles. It came in handy sometimes, he explained with considerate vagueness.

But it availed Shandy not at all. “I can’t see any sign of a scar.”

“Maybe he got it took off,” Hudson suggested. “They do them kind of operations now by plastered surgery. They was talkin’ about it one night over at the Dirty Duck.”

“Even the most expert plastic surgeon may leave scars visible to the trained eye,” said Goulson. “May I, Professor?”

“Feel free.” Shandy turned the goggles back to their owner, but Goulson’s professional expertise failed to turn up any evidence that there had ever been a scar on the spot Hudson indicated.

“Then this must be Bain after all,” said Hesperus Hudson. “Only what the flamin’ heck did he do with all them pink snakes?”

“It’s still arguable that the scar, er, wore off,” Shandy insisted. “You see how deeply lined and creased his skin is. That would be from exposure to wind and sun, wouldn’t you say, Goulson?”

“Yeah, but Brace always used to wear one o’ them long white silk scarves,” Hudson argued. “Like them flyin’ aces in the old movies.”

“I thought you’d decided this must be Bainbridge.” Peter Shandy was exasperated and showing it. “By the way, what color were the twins’ eyes?”

“Why don’t you open ’em an’ find out?”

The coffee and doughnuts must be having a somewhat too stimulating effect on however much might be left of Hesperus Hudson’s brain. Hesp must, have had to have been a real wise guy back when he and the twins were helling around together.

“This is a test question,” Shandy told him severely. “I’m asking you what color the Buggins boys’ eyes were. Can you remember?”

“I can’t even remember what color my own eyes were,” snarled Hudson. “When do I get that drink?”

Shandy decided he might as well throw in the sponge. “Would you happen to have anything alcoholic in the house, Goulson? It doesn’t matter what. Sorry to have put you to all this trouble.”

“That’s quite all right, Professor. I’m more anxious than you are to have that man identified.”

Goulson fished in a cupboard and brought out a fifth of Seagram’s and a clean glass, into which he poured a generous slug. “Here you go, Mr. Hudson. I always keep some on hand out here. In my profession, we never know when somebody’s going to need a corpse reviver in a hurry. Want a little water with it?”

Hesperus Hudson glared at the undertaker as if he’d been a large pink snake. “If you mentioned that word at the Dirty Duck, they’d throw you out for unbecomin’ conduct.”

He drained the glass and held it out for more. Harry Goulson glanced at Professor Shandy, shrugged, and poured a refill. Then he capped the bottle and set it back in the cupboard.

“Cheapskate,” grunted Hudson. “Looks like I better make this one last.” He pulled up a chair to the embalming table, spilled a few drops of his drink, just enough to make the place look homey, and slumped over the puddle in what must have been his customary attitude.

Shandy and Goulson left him there and went back to the main parlor. By now, the visitors were all departed. Arabella was helping the Minks, their daughters, and an assortment of in-laws into their coats. This probably wasn’t the right time to bother Persephone, but Shandy did it anyway.

“Mrs. Mink, we’ve got a chap out back who seems pretty well convinced that dead man we haven’t been able to identify yet is one of your brothers. He claims to have known them both well when they were youngsters together. His name is Hesperus Hudson. Are you acquainted with him yourself?”

“Why, yes, of course. The Hudsons lived over at Fourth Fork. None of them ever amounted to much, as far as I know,” she added with a sniff. “Last I heard of Hesp, he’d turned into a real down-and-outer. They say all he does now is hang around the Dirty Duck trying to find some sucker fool enough to buy him a drink.”

“But he did pal around with your brothers?”

“Which was no compliment to them. Or to him, either, I have to admit.”

“So what it boils down to is that Hesperus Hudson might have known Bracebridge and Bainbridge even better than you yourself did, considering the difference in your ages.”

Persephone gave Shandy a grim nod. “A good deal better, I shouldn’t be surprised. Not that goodness had anything to do with it, as Mae West used to say. Nice way for me to be talking here.” She glanced around at the two elder Bugginses in their flower-banked casket. “I always had a hunch it was the three of them who broke into the soap works that time and set off the sprinklers.”

“That would have had to be just before Bainbridge went into the army, wouldn’t it?”

“I shouldn’t be surprised if that was why he went. An awful lot of damage was done. The factory owners were all set to prosecute right up to the hilt if they’d ever been able to catch the ones who did it. Bain most likely got scared and ran away before Brace could turn him in for the reward. He was an awful coward, as most bullies are.”

She sniffed again. “I remember how glad I was to see him go. I was only a little girl at the time, but I could tell Mama and Daddy were just as pleased as I was, though they put a better face on it. Mama was singing ‘God Bless America’ the day she hung that flag with the gold star on it in the window to show the neighbors her son had given his life in the service of his country. She’d bought it the day he was shipped out, just in case. That was about the only thing Bain ever did that gave her any real satisfaction, that and the insurance money. Hesp isn’t trying to make you believe that’s Bain back there, is he?”

“He seemed fairly well convinced it’s Bracebridge, except that he claims Bracebridge had a scar on his jawbone that we can’t see any trace of. Do you recall such a scar?”

“No, I don’t. All I can say is, if Brace ever did have such a scar, he’d have gone to considerable pains to hide it unless he changed a lot over the years. He used to be awfully vain of his looks, as I remember him. He claimed he was the handsome one of the twins, though I myself never noticed much to choose between them. It was mostly that Brace was always fussing over his hair and his clothes, while it was all Mama could do to make Bain take a bath and change his underwear once in a blue moon. I expect the army straightened Bain out on that nonsense, though.”

“Not for long,” her husband grunted.

Purvis Mink was typical of the Balaclava security guards, Shandy thought. He was medium-sized, spruce without being dapper, and somewhat weather-beaten, like the man in the back room, since he spent so many of his working hours out of doors. Mink would have scorned to be called handsome, but he wasn’t a bad-looking man for his age, which must be in the upper fifties by now.

“I take it you never knew the twins, Mink?” Shandy asked him.

“Nope, never laid eyes on either one of ’em to the best of my knowledge,” the guard replied, “and can’t say I ever missed ’em. I only met Sephy when she and Grace moved into the cottage up above the campus. Sorry I can’t help you out, Professor, but it’s nice of you to take an interest. Now if you don’t mind, I think we ought to be moving along. Sephy’s pretty well tuckered out. Seems to me I had a hat when I came in, Arabella.”

“A gray one,” said Persephone.

Mrs. Goulson fished around in the coat closet. “Oh, dear, Purvis, I’m afraid the only hat left here is brown.”

“That’s it,” said Mink.