Authors: Charlotte MacLeod
Would that be the Gaffson Development Corporation, Miss Horsefall?”
“I shouldn’t be surprised. Seems to me Gunder’s callin’ hisself by some fancy name these days. Settin’ up to be somethin’ special when everybody knows the Gaffsons ain’t lived around here more’n fifty, sixty years. Dern foreigners. Furthermore, I know for a certain fact Gunder’s father come steerage class with nothin’ to ’is name but the clothes he stood up in. Gaffson Development Corporation, my foot!”
“I don’t really think you can fault a man for trying to rise in the world, Miss Horsefall, provided his methods are honest. I gather the son is doing pretty well for himself.”
“So they say.”
“And Gunder Gaffson is one of the interested customers Mrs. Fescue has brought here recently, right?”
“I’ll be hornswoggled if he ain’t!” Henny was by now regarding Peter Shandy with a sort of frightened reverence.
“Has Gaffson been more persistent than any of the others, would you say?”
“He sure ain’t hung back none. Keeps uppin’ the price he’s willin’ to pay. Even offered to move me an’ Aunt Hilda into one o’ them condyminiums he’s buildin’ over to Little Lumpkin. Three rooms you couldn’t swing a cat in an’ neighbors yammerin’ on both sides o’ the wall. I told ’im where he could put ’is condyminium. Loretta didn’t look none too pleased at that.”
“I don’t suppose she would.”
Shandy made a mental note to check out both Loretta Fescue and Gunder Gaffson. A hard-driving widow after a big commission, with a no-good son perhaps willing to do a spot of dirty work for his boss rather than get sacked for incompetence, wasn’t the world’s unlikeliest suspect. Having the chief of police for a brother might be more of a help than a hindrance. Instead of putting a stop to his sister’s shenanigans as he ought to, the chief might be willing to look the other way either out of fraternal affection, because he didn’t want to get stuck with supporting her and his nephew, or because he intended to cut himself in for a share of the profits.
But what about the rest of those half-dozen or so who’d come looking at the farm with armloads of dollars to swap for the deed? Shandy asked for names. Henny couldn’t remember any offhand, and neither could Miss Hilda. Was that because Gaffson had scared them off by upping the ante? Was he the only genuinely interested prospect? Or was he simply the only one honest enough or unsubtle enough to make a plain showing of his hand?
S
HANDY KNEW BETTER THAN
to jump to any conclusions about Loretta Fescue and her clients. There was an even more obvious and uncomfortable possibility.
“Mr. Horsefall,” he asked, “would you mind telling me who stands to inherit this property in the event of anything’s—er—happening to you and Miss Horsefall?”
“At my age only one thing’s likely to happen,” the aunt took it upon herself to answer. “I’ll be kickin’ the bucket pretty soon an’ I don’t expect Henny’s goin’ to last long without me to look after ’im. Don’t think we ain’t talked about who’s to get the place. The one thing we’re agreed on is that we don’t want to split up the property. There’s Henny’s two great-nephews, Eddie an’ Ralph, would both give their eyeteeth for the farm though they ain’t neither of ’em come straight out an’ said so because they’re both likable cusses an’ don’t want to hurt our feelin’s. Trouble is, we can’t decide between ’em.”
“Then why couldn’t you leave it to them as joint heritors?” Shandy suggested.
“We thought o’ that, too. Eddie an’ Ralph would pull fine in double harness an’ so would their kids, but them two she-devils they’re married to can’t set in the same room with each other for five minutes without gettin’ into a hair tangle. They’d have this old place tore apart before we was cold in our graves.”
“So in short, you haven’t made a will in anybody’s favor.”
“Not yet we haven’t.”
“What would happen if you should both die before you got around to doing so?”
Miss Hilda snorted. “Whatever happened, we wouldn’t neither one of us give a damn by then, would we? I s’pose what would happen would be that every Horsefall from here to hell an’ back would flock around clawin’ at each other’s throats to see who could get the biggest piece. They been at us for years now, hintin’ that they wouldn’t mind havin’ this an’ they wouldn’t mind havin’ that an’ didn’t we think it would be a good idea to sell off now an’ divide the money up among the fam’ly to save payin’ inheritance taxes. I tell ’em I think it’s a dern poor idea an’ they’ll get what we’re o’ mind to leave ’em when Henny an’ me get through with it an’ not before.”
“Then there’s no one relative who has a stronger claim than any of the rest?”
“Not so’s you’d notice it. It’ll be every man for himself an’ the devil take the hindmost. I still think we better make out a will in favor o’ Ralph, Henny.”
“An’ I say the farm should go to Eddie,” her nephew shot back, though he was too dispirited over losing Spurge to put much enthusiasm into his reply.
“As of now, though, both Eddie and Ralph are aware that you have not made a choice between them. Is that correct?” Shandy persisted.
“Well, they don’t know we have,” Henny replied with true Yankee caution.
“And either of them would prefer the land to the money?”
“Damn right they would. They’re both Horsefalls. Real Horsefalls, I mean.”
Shandy knew exactly what he meant. They were farmers like their great-uncle, the kind who’d hang on to their acres until the last gun was fired and the smoke cleared away. Loretta Fescue and her ilk could dangle all the money in the world before their eyes and they wouldn’t budge an inch. But if they didn’t have the land to cling to, that was something else again.
“Are Eddie and Ralph both farming now?” he asked.
“Makin’ a fist at it. Can’t get hold o’ no decent land these days. Dern developers drivin’ prices up so’s an honest farmer can’t afford a piece big enough to do much with. Eddie’s over to Hoddersville. Runs a variety store to make ends meet. Ralph’s got a few acres here in Upper Lumpkin an’ works at the soap factory part time. Cussed shame.”
Indeed it was. Peddling cat food or punching a time clock was no work for a true farmer. Neither Eddie nor Ralph lived all that far from the ancestral acres, it appeared. Suppose one of them got desperate enough to pull a few tricks in the hope of convincing Henny and Hilda they needed somebody younger and stronger on the place? Suppose he even thought of a way to remove the faithful though slack-witted hired man? He’d know Spurge was supposed to clean the spreader, most likely, if Henny had been nagging about it all week. Maybe he hadn’t intended to kill Spurge, just to lay him up with burns long enough to get a foot in the door. Eddie and Ralph would have to go down on the list.
“You know, Henny,” Miss Hilda said in a less belligerent tone than usual, “I’m not sure but what we ought to leave the farm to the pair of ’em regardless an’ let their wives fight it out as they’re o’ mind to. We don’t want to stir up the same kind o’ hornets’ nest Canny got ’is fam’ly stung with.”
“Canny who, Miss Horsefall?” Shandy asked.
“Canute Lumpkin, Spurge’s great-uncle. Don’t ask me the legal ins an’ outs of it, but the gist is, Canny muddled ’is estate somehow so’s none o’ the Lumpkins could claim what they was s’posed to get after he died. Canny was never much of a business head, though I will say he had ’is good points in some ways.”
Cronkite Swope would have understood why Miss Hilda cast a glance out the window toward the distant oak grove.
“So the upshot of it was that they went at it hammer an’ tongs, first one of ’em haulin’ another into court, then that one goin’ after the next, an’ nobody ever makin’ a cent out of it but the lawyers. So finally they quit suin’ each other an’ set around chewin’ their fingernails tryin’ to think o’ somethin’ else. Folks begun jokin’ that the only Lumpkin who’d collect on Canny’s estate would be the last one left alive. An’ then, by the Lord Harry, if they didn’t start droppin’ off one after another. First Hannah that went to school with me, then her brother Floyd an’ his son Malcolm, an’ I can’t rightly recollect how it went after them but it was funerals from one week to the next, seemed like, till the fam’ly plot could hardly hold ’em all.”
“What did these Lumpkins die of?”
“One thing or another. An’ don’t think there wasn’t talk.”
“Never known a time when there wasn’t,” Henny grunted.
His aunt shook a finger like a knobby twig at him. “Scoff an’ jeer all you’re o’ mind to. Just remember them scoffers an’ jeerers that got et by the bears.”
“I got worse things on my mind than gettin’ et by bears. Any more coffee in that there pot?”
“No there ain’t, an’ I wouldn’t give it to you if there was. Stuffin’ your face an’ spoilin’ your supper when you ought to be out stirrin’ your stumps for once in your life. Just ’cause poor Spurge—”
“Getting back to Spurge,” said Shandy in near-desperation, “what happened to the Lumpkin inheritance?”
“Well, like I was tryin’ to explain when this good-for-nothin’ nephew o’ mine that I never asked for an’ wouldn’t o’ took as a gift if I’d o’ had any say in the matter come buttin’ in where he wasn’t wanted, the Lumpkins kept dyin’ off an’ dyin’ off till there was only Spurge an’ his cousin Nute left. So then Nute waltzed hisself up to the courthouse an’ tried to get Spurge declared mentally incompetent an’ hisself made legal guardian so’s he could scoop the pot, see?
“But me an’ Henny, we spiked ’is guns. I will say for Henny he stood up like a man that day in court. Spurge Lumpkin earns ’is bed an’ board as competent as the next man an’ a dern sight more honest than some, ’e says, givin’ Nute a look that would o’ froze the tail off a brass monkey.
“So then I got up an’ spoke my piece. Men’s incompetent by nature, I says, an’ there ain’t none of ’em fit to tie their own bootlaces, let alone be guardian for anybody else far’s I ever seen, an’ the Lord knows I seen enough of ’em in my time. The judge’s wife was in court an’ she begun snickerin’ into ’er handkerchief tryin’ to make out she was havin’ a sneezin’ fit but she didn’t fool me none.
“So the judge give ’er a look an’ says was me an’ Henny willin’ to keep Spurge on as our hired hand. An’ Henny told ’im Spurge would have a roof over ’is head as long as we had one ourselves. So the judge says, ‘Petition denied,’ an’ we went an’ had a sody at the ice cream parlor.”
“Did Nute Lumpkin go with you?” Shandy asked.
“That pantywaist?” Henny sneered. “What in tarnation would we want him for? Anyways, he stomped off madder’n a wet hornet. He knew there was nothin’ he could do. I’d o’ mopped up the road with ’im.”
Shandy surveyed the loam-caked octogenarian and thought Henny was probably right. “How long ago did this hearing take place?”
“Right after Spurge’s brother Charlie an’ his wife an’ two sons was all killed in an automobile accident on their way back from New Hampshire. ’Long about November, seems to me.”
“Of this past year?”
“’Twas Thanksgivin’ time,” said Miss Hilda. “We was havin’ Eddie an’ his family for dinner an’ I’d bought the brandy for my mincemeat before we went into court an’ afterwards you an’ Spurge snuck it out o’ the bag an’ drunk it up on me to celebrate. We used to have the Eddies an’ the Ralphs together, but I got so sick o’ them two wives o’ theirs wranglin’ that now we have the Ralphs on the even years an’ the Eddies on the odd. So ’twas just you an’ me an’ Spurge an’ Eddie an’ Jolene an’ their seven an’ young Eddie’s wife an’ the baby. Didn’t hardly seem worth layin’ the table for them few, but I done it an’ nobody couldn’t claim they went away hungry, neither.”
“So to make a long story short,” Shandy replied, hoping it would, “these—er—persecutions started as soon as the snow was off the ground after Nute Lumpkin lost the hearing.”
“What’s this about snow?” asked Timothy Ames, who as usual had missed a good part of the conversation.
“Snow makes it easy to track a trespasser,” Shandy explained. “We had snow last Thanksgiving Eve, as I recall, and the ground was never bare again until late March of this year. If you’d been able to see footprints, you’d have had no doubt about how your apple trees got broken down or who put the dog in your hen yard, would you, Mr. Horsefall?”
“Dern right I wouldn’t,” said Henny. “So you’re sayin’ that cussed Nute Lumpkin bided ’is time an’ done me dirty soon as he could do it without gettin’ caught ’cause he had it in for me an’ Aunt Hilda over losin’ the case about Spurge.”
“M’yes, that could have been his motive, but I’m afraid I can think of a better one. You see, Mr. Horsefall, if we accept the possibility of Mr. Nute Lumpkin’s being your phantom trickster, we pretty much rule out the possibility that Spurge’s death was an accident. Nute must have known his cousin well enough to know how Spurge would react to anything out of the ordinary. There’s also the fact that your neighbor Fergy was away during the winter but must have returned sometime during the period when the tricks started.”
“I think ’twas about the time we found the ground glass in the pig swill.”
“Yes, that would make sense. The broken apple trees and the business with the dog and the hens would require no particular advance information, you see. The really nasty stuff would require more precise timing. Now, we know from Fergy himself that Spurge was in the habit of dropping over there and talking to him most evenings. What would you suppose Spurge talked about?”
“Why, the farm, I s’pose. What we done in the daytime, what we had for supper, any little thing like that. Spurge didn’t know much about anythin’ else.”
“So he’d no doubt have mentioned to Fergy that you’d been spreading lime and he was supposed to wash out the spreader.”
“I guess likely.”
“And Fergy has dealings with Nute over the antiques he picks up, and Fergy also appears to be the chatty type. It wouldn’t be hard for Nute to keep himself informed about what happens over here and take advantage of any opportunity that presented itself to kill or maim the one man who stood between him and the Lumpkin inheritance. If he’d happened to kill Mr. Horsefall instead it wouldn’t matter from his point of view, because he could then get custody of Spurge as he’d tried to do earlier and carry on with his original plans. I’m not saying Nute was your phantom trickster, but I think I’d better run over there and find out how much he knows about quicklime.”