The Grub-And-Stakers Quilt a Bee (26 page)

“Or me.” Dittany wasn’t going to be left out.

The three women clustered in the doorway like Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos while Osbert and the sergeant made their search.

It didn’t take long. They found the letter tucked in between Amos and Obadiah, and Sergeant Mac Vicar waxed grim over the use of Holy Writ for so base a purpose. They found a drapey dark nylon dress with a thread from Arethusa’s rosecolored bedspread clinging to the skirt. They found sensible black walking shoes with rosecolored fuzz from Arethusa’s deep-piled bedroom carpeting caught on the crepe soles. They found the scent of Romaunt de la Rose emanating from a pair of hastily washed black panty hose hanging over the doorknob.

When Zilla, at Sergeant Mac Vicar’s request, drew back the covers and sniffed, she found the identical scent arising from the sleeper’s left leg as well as from the badly chipped plaster cast on her broken wrist. Sergeant Mac Vicar drew up a chair to the bedside and sat himself down to maintain grim vigilance until Evangeline Fairfield should awaken and be duly and properly taken into custody.

“It wasn’t much of a mystery, really,” Osbert half apologized.

“The only one who’d have had any special reason to haul Mr.

Fairfield up through the skylight and dump him off the roof was his wife. She was handicapped by that bum wrist, and didn’t dare let the body be found before she could get away and establish herself an alibi. So what she did was bop him over the head with her cast while he was sitting at his desk, drag his body out into the hall still in that office chair-it’s got casters on it, remember-and hitch him to Fred Churtle’s hoist. Then all she had to do was haul him up to the skylight, go back upstairs, and climb the ladder.”

“Just as you and Sergeant Mac Vicar did later on,” cried Dittany.

“That’s right, darling. From the ladder, she could boost him through the skylight and swing him outside by means of the hoist.

The body must have caught on that ornamental railing and snagged the sweater. I expect Mrs. Fairfield had some trouble juggling him into position, but she’s a pretty hefty woman and he was a little runt of a guy. Anyway, she must have got him out on the slope of the roof with the rope looped across his body and caught under the skylight so he wouldn’t start to roll until she gave it a yank from below to turn him loose and shut the skylight. Then she went off to show Minerva how dirty she’d got grubbing around the attic.”

“With me cracking the whip over her,” Dittany interjected.

“Yes, darling. So she cleaned herself up in case anybody noticed she had the wrong kind of smudges on her, went through her act of getting worried when Mr. Fairfield didn’t show up, and got Minerva to walk back to the museum with her. Once they were inside, all Mrs. Fairfield had to do was make sure she steered Minerva away from the stairwell and pull on the rope. Fred Churtle had already pulled it, of course, but that didn’t matter. For a spur-of-the-moment murder it was pretty ingenious, you have to admit.”

“But why kill him at all?” Zilla demanded.

“Because Dittany’d just found the bees, and Mrs. Fairfield knew they were the clue to the jeweled fly. It’s right there in the letter she stole. Read it, darling. Your French is better than mine.”

Dittany took the yellowed page from him and read aloud, translating as she went. “You know, Aralia cherie, how my great-grandmother got the fly. She was lady’s maid to the Empress Josephine and delighted to deck her mistress in the wonderful jewels Her Majesty loved so well. You know how extravagant the Empress was, how impulsive, how generous. She could refuse nothing to anyone-except the Emperor, poor man! At the end she proved his loyal friend, so who is to judge? But to the fly. To honor the Emperor, Josephine ordered a ruby and emerald brooch in the form of the imperial bee. The jeweler, a Bourbonniste enraged at this Bonaparte’s pretensions, made a common fly of the jewels instead. Another in her place would have had him guillotined; Josephine only laughed. ‘Here, Mouche,’ she said. That was her pet name for my great-grandmother, who was so tiny and always flitting about like a fly. Take your namesake for a wedding present when you join your new husband in Canada, and keep it always to remember me.’

“So I entreat you, my darling, to keep the fly safe and secret as I have done, in memory of the Empress and of me. That new husband of yours is funny about money, I think. Your loving Grand’mere, Henriette.”

Dittany cleared her throat. “There’s a footnote in a different writing, Aralia’s, I suppose. To my daughter, when I have one: The bees know the hiding place. Grand’mere and I worked them together after we hid the fly. We thought the Empress should have her bees at last. Discover their message for yourself and keep the secret as I mean to do. Your loving mother-to-be.’ She spelled it ‘bee.’ I suppose she couldn’t resist.”

“But Aralia never had a daughter,” said Minerva, “and John didn’t know a word of French. I wonder where she hid the letter all those years.”

“I suppose Evangeline won’t tell us, just for spite,” Zilla sniffed.

“Too bad her husband couldn’t have kept his mouth shut like Aralia. And they say women are the blabbermouths. Huh! Struck lucky for once in his life, and it killed him.”

“Mrs. Fairfield must have known what that bee meant as soon as she opened the box and saw it stuck inside the lid,” said Dittany.

“I’m surprised she let me get away with the pieces.”

“She expected to have no trouble getting them back,” Sergeant MacVicar replied. “She assumed that without the letter you would never guess they had any hidden meaning.”

“She didn’t know Osbert,” Dittany rejoined proudly.

Zilla was still fretting. “I still can’t see why she beaned old Perry.

He wanted the fly as much as she did.”

“Aye,” the sergeant answered, “but he wanted it to display at the museum and enhance his professional reputation. I misdoubt she had other notions.”

“Darn right,” said Dittany. “She’d have sold it and lived the life of Riley on her ill-gotten gains. She must have realized that the brazen theft of an important artifact was the one thing she’d never bully Peregrine into going along with. In spite of the fuss she put up, I expect Mrs. Fairfield was tickled silly when I took the bees away. If her husband had seen them, he’d have shown me Henriette’s letter. Then she’d either have had to kill us both on the spot or miss her chance at the fly. But whatever possessed her to burgle our house the very next night, do you suppose? Couldn’t she wait?

I’m sure she’d bagged the letter as soon as she clobbered old Perry.”

Osbert shrugged. “How’ve you been sleeping lately, Minerva?”

“Like a rock. My stars, you don’t mean she drugged me twice?”

“I make it thrice. No doubt Mrs. Fairfield had some painkiller for that broken wrist and bunged it into your camomile the night after she killed Peregrine. I think her big rush was because she’d recognized Miss Pafihagel at the museum, even though she said she hadn’t. She knew Hunding and Perry must have been having an old home week, which meant Hunding had seen the letter.”

“As in fact she had,” Dittany put in.

“Yes, dear. Mrs. Fairfield didn’t know if Miss Pafihagel was still around town and didn’t get a chance to find out because Aunt Arethusa strong-armed her into going to your tea party. I expect the quilt pieces were mentioned over the crumpets and Mrs. Fairfield found out they hadn’t yet been shown around, so she figured she still had a chance to get to them before Miss Pafihagel did. But she struck out because we didn’t have them. And then that next night, after the funeral, Miss Pafihagel and the Jehosaphats barged in here telling how they’d just seen the pieces at Aunt Arethusa’s.

She must have been frantic at that. So she made sure you all had a slug of camomile tea, counting on the liquor they’d drunk to give the sedative an extra kick, which it certainly did, and burgled Aunt Arethusa.”

“Only of course that didn’t work, either,” said Dittany, “because by then we’d taken them back. And Arethusa woke up and thought she was a higher being, so she had to scram. Then yesterday they had that big row and Mrs. Fairfield must have figured this was her last chance, so she went back and conked Arethusa so hard she-she-I must say she doesn’t handle frustration in a very adult way. And Miss Pafihagel hadn’t even read the letter Perry showed her, so it was all for nothing. There’s irony for you.”

Minerva shook her head, wincing at the pain. “Not for me it isn’t. I’ll tell you one thing, this is positively the last time I let a stranger set foot in my spare bedroom.”

“Huh! I’ve heard that one before.”

Zilla’s snort must have roused the woman in the bed. Mrs. Fairfield stirred, groaned, and opened her eyes. “What are you all doing here?”

“We came to tell you we’ve found the fly,” Dittany chirped.

“The fly! No, you couldn’t!” She recollected herself. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Nonsense, wumman,” said Sergeant MacVicar. “We have the letter you stole from the museum and concealed in this verra room after you killed your husband and disposed of his body by means of Frederick Churtle’s rigging in a vain attempt to pull the wool over our eyes. We have further evidence of your heinous crime, and I have the offeecial duty to place you under arrest for murder in the first degree as well as breaking and entering in the nighttime with aggravated assault on the person of Miss Arethusa Monk. I will now proceed to read the formal charge in accordance with the laws of Lobelia Falls and the Government of Canada and in the presence of these witnesses. You will then dress yourself under the surveillance of Mesdames Oakes, Trott, and Monk while I guard the door and Deputy Monk nips over to get the official police vehicle in which we shall convey you to the lockup.”

“You can’t do that. I’m a sick woman.”

“You are not. You are merely feeling the aftereffects of the drugged camomile tea you drank in order to give yourself an alibi after you got back from pounding Miss Arethusa Monk over the po?

head with your plaster cast. She is now conscious and will no doubt take pleasure in identifying you as her assailant.”

“She couldn’t have seen-I mean, I wasn’t there.”

“Do not trifle with the kw, Mrs. Fairfield. You reek of her spilled perfume and there is pink fuzz from her carpet all over your shoes.”

“And to think I used to wish Mrs. Poppy would vacuum under the beds,” Dittany marveled. “My gosh, Minerva, I just remembered.

You’re the last of the Architraves. What are you going to do about the fly?”

“I’ll think about the fly when my head clears. The main thing now is to start piecing that quilt before the excitement dies down.

You’d better-oh, there’s the phone now.”

“I’ll get it.”

Dittany ran downstairs but was back in a jiffy. “That was Therese, yelling for reinforcements. She says Andy McNaster’s baying at the door with a mushy get-well card and an armload of red, red roses. Sorry to break up the pinching party, folks, but I’ve got to go.”

“Oh well,” said Osbert philosophically, “at least he’s not a woodchuck.

Give Andy a nephew’s blessing for me, darling. Only for Pete’s sake don’t invite him to supper.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alisa Craig was born in Canada and lives now in Massachusetts.

She is the author of four previous novels for the Crime Club, including A PINT OF MURDER, THE

GRUB-AND-STAKERS MOVE A MOUNTAIN, MURDER

GOES MUMMING, and THE TERRIBLE TIDE.

(continued from front flap)

suddenly trying to be their best pal?

Was there a sinister purpose lurking in

the pink-and-white socks of the melancholy plumber? Why had Dittany’s dog

Ethel fallen in love with a woodchuck?

And why did all those bees have mismatched whiskers?

As Lobelia Falls was again plunged

into turmoil, Sergeant MacVicar skipped

archery practice and deputized

Dittany’s husband, Osbert, to help him

solve these and even deeper enigmas

and save the Aralia Polyphema Architrave Museum from a fate worse than

destruction.

Alisa Craig is a Canadian-born mystery

writer who has been interrupted a lot

by the duties incumbent on a garden

club officer and by readers demanding

to know when she was going to write a

sequel to The Grub-and-Stakers Move

a Mountain, hitherto considered by

many to have been her chef d’oeuvre.

She is currently working on another

novel and trying to round up a plant

sale committee.

JACKET BY CATHY CANZAN1

Printed in U.S.A

0485