A Pint of Murder (7 page)

She flushed at this show of softness, and began to unpack the basket. “I bought a pound of coffee yesterday when I was downtown. I’ll make some if you’ll show me how to work the percolator.”

Could this woman possibly be as helpless as she acted? “How do you ever manage when you’re by yourself?” Janet couldn’t resist asking.

“Use instant. I do know how to boil water, though you mightn’t think so. That’s what I meant to get yesterday, but they were fresh out.”

Janet, feeling silly about doing such a thing with a woman old enough to be her mother, was demonstrating where to put the coffee and where to put the water when the front doorbell rang.

“That’ll be the vet,” said Marion. “Would you mind letting him in, Janet? I can’t go to the door looking like this.”

She had a foolproof argument there. Janet stepped into the front hallway. Silhouetted against the stained-glass panels that framed the door, she saw not one but two forms. From the height and lack of breadth, one of them had to be Jason Bain. The other was nearly as tall, and a good deal broader, especially through the chest and shoulders. Janet scuttled back to the kitchen.

“Marion, that’s old Bain and I think he’s got his son with him. Run upstairs and put your clothes on, quick!”

The bell jangled furiously. “I’d better go let him in before he breaks the door down. Hurry, Marion, I’m not getting stuck with that pair.”

Actually she had nothing in particular against Elmer. About all she could remember of him was that he’d been in Gilly’s class at school and was supposed to be a wonderful goalie, only his father would never let him take the time off to play. She didn’t think she’d ever spoken two words to him in her life. Nor to old Bain, either, if it came to that. She eased the door open a crack. “Good morning.”

The elder Bain wasted no time on pleasantries. “Where’s Miz Emery?”

“Upstairs getting dressed.”

He took no more notice of Janet, but brushed past her and plunked himself down on the green plush chesterfield with the carved rosewood back. Elmer trailed after his father, looking desperately embarrassed and lugging, for some reason, an old-fashioned cowhide suitcase. Not knowing what else to do, Janet sat down in a chair across the room. Elmer remained standing near the door. He shuffled his enormous boots on the once-red Axminster carpet, cleared his throat several times, and finally, to Janet’s amazement, spoke.

“Gilly here?”

His voice was husky as though it never got used much, but not rasping like the old man’s. Coming from anybody else it might have sounded rather agreeable. As he was a Bain, Janet felt called upon to resent the question.

“Yes, she’s here. Why shouldn’t she be?”

The old man snickered. The son ignored him. “Is she all right? She and Bobby didn’t get hurt in the fire, eh?”

He sounded as though he honestly cared. Janet began to feel ashamed of herself for being so hostile. “No, they’re not hurt, but they lost just about everything, and now one of the puppies is sick.”

“Schnitzi’s had her pups, then?”

“Yes, in my brother’s car on the way up here last night. I guess the excitement was too much for her. Gilly’s waiting for the vet now.”

“Maybe I could—”

“Set down, Elmer.”

Flushing and glowering, the younger Bain obeyed. The three of them sat in sullen silence until Marion appeared, dressed and with her hair combed. She wasn’t wasting any time on small talk, either.

“Look, Mr. Bain, I told you I’d get in touch with you when I find that patent, so why don’t you quit bugging me? You know we’ve had a death in the family.”

“I know,” he replied. “I’m a reasonable man, Miz Em’ry. I could go down to Fred Olson this minute an’ swear out a warrant, but things bein’ as they are, I’ve decided to give you till the end of the week. An’ my son Elmer here’s goin’ to stay an’ make sure you don’t try to put nothin’ over on me.”

“What are you talking about?” yelped Marion. “He can’t stay here.”

“That so? Elmer, you just lug that there grip o’ yours upstairs an’ find a place to bed down. Go on, move!”

Marion turned to Janet, her face an interesting shade of pale green. “What shall I do?”

Janet shrugged. The only thing she knew against Elmer was that he was a Bain. “Well, I don’t know, Marion,” she replied cautiously, “if you and Gilly want to take in a boarder, I don’t see why you shouldn’t. What with the inheritance being tied up and Gilly’s getting burned out, people will surely understand that you might need the money.”

“What money?” roared the father.

“Yours or his, we don’t care which,” Janet told him sweetly. “Surely you wouldn’t want to start talk around town that your son was being supported by a couple of women? If Elmer wants to pay his share and behave himself, he’s welcome enough. If not, as you say, a person could always go down to Fred Olson and swear out a warrant.”

Marion stuck out her jaw. “Yeah, that’s right. And don’t think I wouldn’t.”

“Now, look here, Paw,” stammered Elmer, “I’m not about to stick my nose in where I’m not wanted.”

“Who’s not wanted?” Gilly had appeared in the doorway, cradling a dachshund in her arms. “Oh hi, Elmer. I thought you were Dr. Bottleby.”

“Hi, Gilly. How’s the pup?”

“Perking up a little, I think. Come and have a look, eh?”

The pair of them drifted off together. The rest hardly noticed their leaving; they were too busy wrangling over who was going to pay how much to whom. At last the old man wrenched a ten and a twenty off the wad he took from his hip pocket and stamped out, fuming.

“I hope I did right,” said Marion, looking nervously down at the serene profile of Her Gracious Majesty on the uppermost bill.

“I don’t know what else you could have done, short of calling out the Mounties,” Janet replied. “Anyway, at least Elmer’s got a car.” The Bains must have arrived in separate vehicles, for a tidy-looking Ford was still sitting in front of the Mansion.

“I just hope to God that patent turns up soon,” Marion sighed. “What with Bain pestering me and Elizabeth chewing my ear about the estate, I’m ready to fold up. Ah the hell with it. At least we’ve got grocery money now. Maybe I can get Buffalo Bill there to drive me down to market and back.”

“Tell him he’ll have to if he expects to be fed. Speaking of food, I’ve got to get home. That’s our last loaf of bread I gave you, and Bert will be in for his dinner before I’ve even made the beds, at the rate I’m going.”

As Janet crossed the yard, a scrap of schoolyard gossip she hadn’t thought of for years floated back into her mind. Hadn’t Elmer been sweet on Gilly once, and didn’t Mrs. Druffitt raise the roof about it? That wasn’t so hard to understand. What respectable family would want to get tied up with old Jase? Elmer must take after his mother. Mrs. Bain had died some time ago, probably in order to shuck her husband. She’d been a schoolteacher, as Janet recalled, and some said she’d taken him in desperation, after having given up any other hope of getting “Mrs.” on her tombstone.

The Bains must have been awfully old to start a family when Elmer was born. If the father had been in any kind of partnership with Charles Treadway, he must have been a grown young man then; in his twenties, anyway; and that would put him up around seventy now. Why hadn’t he laid any sort of claim to this patent before? Even if Mrs. Treadway did hold a lifetime interest in the thing, couldn’t he at least have tried to force her to put it into production? What good was a patent unless something was done about it?

Maybe something had been done, and Mrs. Treadway never knew. What if by some miracle Charles Treadway had managed to think up an invention that actually worked, and Bain had been collecting royalties or whatever they called them for years without ever giving the widow her rightful share? What if she’d finally found out, and demanded that he pay what he owed her? Over a span of maybe forty years, even a small annual sum could mount up to a lot of money. Enough to commit murder for, if a person was as attached to his dollars as Jason Bain appeared to be.

Sam Neddick might know, assuming this wasn’t all moonshine in the first place. Sam was closer than anybody else in the area to being a crony of Bain’s. Sam was clever and Sam was quite possibly buyable. Janet had already faced up to the fact that Sam was as likely a suspect as any when it came to doing the two murders. If he hadn’t a reason of his own, would he turn down a good offer from Bain? Who could say?

Marion’s decision to stay on at the Mansion after her aunt’s funeral must have surprised Sam. He’d no doubt taken it for granted, as the Wadmans had, that she’d either return to her job or at least settle up whatever affairs she might have in Boston before coming back to the Mansion. That would have left him alone here as caretaker, free to rummage for the patent and get it back to Bain. Instead, she’d let everything else drop and stuck to the house like glue. If Sam Neddick was in fact Bain’s agent, Marion Emery might very well count herself lucky that he hadn’t found a way to get rid of her, too.

T
HE WADMANS WERE SITTING
down to a noontime dinner for which Janet had little appetite when Gilly and Elmer came to the back door wanting to borrow Bert’s posthole digger. Bobby was tagging behind them.

“How long do you need it for?” Bert asked. “Don’t tell me you’re planning to dig for the buried treasure?”

Young Bain flushed crimson. Gilly laughed. “Marion’s handling that end of the show, thanks. We left her on the phone trying to persuade Mama to come up here after the funeral and help hunt for that idiotic patent of Great-uncle Charles’s. I wish Marion would take her up on the roof and shove her off.”

“Now, Gilly,” said Elmer to everyone’s surprise, “that’s no way to talk in front of the kid.”

“I’m sorry,” she replied meekly. “I should know better than to make rotten jokes about people. Shouldn’t I, Bobby?”

Gilly was wearing a pair of worn canvas shoes and a stiffly starched cotton housedress that had been her great-aunt’s instead of her usual tarty getup. Her face was scrubbed clean of makeup, and her hair was slicked back under a ribbon. Janet hadn’t realized she could look so pretty.

“Grandma wouldn’t come anyway,” the boy piped up. “She says she won’t set foot in the Mansion as long as Elmer’s here. You’re not going, are you, Elmer?”

“Poor Elmer’s getting it right and left,” Gilly laughed. “Between Mama throwing tantrums over the phone and Marion counting every bite he eats, I’ll bet he’s sorry he came. Aren’t you, Elmer?”

She slid one of her thin hands over the young giant’s sleeve and smiled up at him. Elmer looked anything but sorry.

“Elmer thought if you’d lend us the posthole digger for a few hours, we could build a run for the dogs,” she explained. “He found a roll of chicken wire out in the barn.”

Bain struggled with his Adam’s apple for a while, then muttered, “Let ’em run loose and some darn fool Yankee’s apt to shoot ’em for deer.”

Bert chuckled and went to get the tool. Janet was bringing out the cookie jar for Bobby when yet a fourth visitor arrived. This one was Fred Olson.

“Howdy, folks. What you doin’ over here, Elmer? I heard you’d moved into the Mansion.”

Elmer stammered something about “Paw’s idea.”

“How come you ain’t workin’?”

“Got a week’s holiday.”

“Still foreman over at the lumber mill?”

“Yep.”

“Goin’ to make your million, eh, even if it’s only a million toothpicks?”

“Elmer does all right,” said Gilly belligerently.

“Never said he didn’t. Might as well scratch for yourself, boy. Ol’ Jase is bound to figure out some way to take his wad with him when he goes. He give you any idea what that patent’s worth?”

“Nope.”

“Did he say what it’s for?”

“Said I’d know it when I seen it.”

“How?”

Elmer shrugged. “Dunno. Ain’t seen it yet.”

The marshal grunted. “Gilly, how about you tellin’ me real careful what happened last night?”

“About what?”

“The fire, o’ course. What else?”

“Well, there was that little business of my father, in case you hadn’t remembered.”

She swallowed hard. “All right, Fred. I didn’t mean to be nasty. I was down at Ben Potts’s place with Mama. Visiting hours weren’t supposed to be till tonight, but people started dropping in. What with one thing and another, we didn’t get out of there till after ten o’clock. I was beat right down to the ground by then, and I guess my mother was, too. Anyway, she went straight along home, and so did I. I just looked in on Bobby to make sure he was all right, then I shucked my clothes and fell into bed.

“I’d already dropped off to sleep when the dogs started kicking up a racket. I thought it might be Schnitzi having her pups, so I jumped up. Then I heard a roaring noise and smelled smoke, and realized the front room was on fire. I ran and woke Bobby and got him and the dogs out of the house, then I think I went in once more to grab a few clothes. I think Bobby started to follow me, but I yelled at him to stay back and get the dogs away from there. He’s a good kid,” she added defiantly.

“Then what happened?” Olson prompted.

“To tell you the truth, Fred, I can’t remember much. I know people were yelling at us to get away from the walls, and there was one great big bang that was probably my car blowing up. The dogs kept yapping and I couldn’t seem to think about anything but Schnitzi and her puppies. Then I got soaked with the fire hose and the cold water sort of brought me to my senses. I saw Bert with the firemen, and went over and asked if he’d drive us up to Aunt Aggie’s. I—I think I forgot she wouldn’t be here any more. Anyway, Marion’s been as nice as anybody could want, and Schnitzi had her pups and they’re doing fine. Gosh, Bert, I hope she didn’t mess up your car’s upholstery too much.”

“Don’t worry, it’s plastic,” Wadman assured her.

“You got any idea how the fire might have started, Gilly?” the marshal persisted.

“All I can think of is what I said last night: Somebody must have thrown a cigarette or something into the smoke bush out by the front door.”

Olson shook his head. “I don’t think so, Gilly. Seems to me I recollect seein’ that bush go up in one big puff as we was runnin’ toward the house. Can you remember, Bert?”