Read Online The Grub-And-Stakers Quilt a Bee by Charlotte MacLeod, Alisa Craig - Free Book Online Page B

Mrs.
    Monk. I expect I’m distraught and simply need to talk. It absolutely knocked the stuffing out of me, having that wretched sponger poke his face around here after all these years, running me down and trying to make out Peregrine’s death was,” she swallowed more tea, “something other than what we know it was.
    That’s what Frederick was getting at, wasn’t it?”
    “Well,” Dittany answered cautiously, “you have to admit he was right about those attic windows. If you’d care to go up and take another look-“
    “I couldn’t! Not now. I suppose I shan’t mind after a while, when duty drives me to it, but not today, please. I simply couldn’t face it.”
    “That’s only natural. I should have known better.”
    “I’m sure you meant well, Mrs. Monk. Do you think those dining room chairs are dry yet? We shouldn’t leave them out too long.”
    There were some people it simply didn’t pay to be nice to.
    Dittany bit her lip, picked up the tea tray, and stalked out of the office.

CHAPTER 8
    She was out on the porch sloshing lemon oil on the chairs to relieve her feelings when Sergeant Mac Vicar appeared.
    “Ah, lass, there you are. Far be it from me, eh, to pass judgment on a woman’s housekeeping methods, but it strikes me you are being a trifle o’er generous with yon lemon oil. Indeed, I am somewhat astonished to find you working here at all on such a day.”
    “I have my orders.” Dittany sloshed on another dollop of lemon oil to show what she thought of them. “If you’re looking for Mrs.
    Fairfield, she’s in the back parlor impersonating Margaret Thatcher. Did you see Frederick Churtle?”
    “Who?”
    “The roofer from Scottsbeck who calls himself Brown. He was a boyhood chum of Mr. Fairfield, whose first name was Peregrine.”
    “I was cognizant of the latter fact. So must you have been at the time your board of trustees hired him.”
    “And woe to the day we did. I guess I knew, but I must have got him mixed up with one of Arethusa’s minor characters. Mrs. Fairfield’s is Evangeline.”
    “Now, that,” said Sergeant MacVicar, “I had not known. It minds me of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s immortal line, ‘She bore to the reapers at noontide flagons of home-brewed ale.’ “
    “In a pig’s eye she did,” snorted Dittany, applying such wrathful friction to her polishing cloth one might have thought her a girl guide trying to start a campfire without matches. “Evangelines don’t bear flagons. They sit on their duffs and yell for somebody else to fetch ‘em.”
    “Do I detect a note of acrimony, lass? We must make allowances for circumstances.”
    “I have. That’s why I’m polishing chairs instead of flouncing off in a huff. Getting back to Churtle, did you see him?”
    “Ah yes, Churtle. I did not. What about him?”
    “He came by a while ago for that mess of hemp spaghetti he left strung up through the stairwell. I told him he couldn’t take it away till you said he could, and he left. I supposed he was going to see you.”
    “If he was, he missed me. Did you tell him why my permission was necessary?”
    “I started to. Then Mrs. Fairfield came out and the two of them got into a hairtangle. It turns out he and Peregrine were kids together.”
    “Indeed? And how did yon Churtle react to the news of Mr.
    Fairfield’s death?”
    “He told Evangeline she was bonkers to think her husband fell out the attic window.”
    “Why did he mention the attic window?”
    “Because that was what Mrs. Fairfield told him. She explained how I’d left them open and Mr. Fairfield had to go up and shut them.”
    Sergeant Mac Vicar rubbed his chin, his fjord-blue eyes resting thoughtfully on the almost-empty lemon oil bottle. “This was before or after the alleged Brown had been identified as Churtle?”
    “Oh, after. Mrs. Fairfield spotted him right away. The first thing she said was, ‘Why, Frederick Churtle.’ Then it all came out about the old pals stuff and his hitting