Robert Lopresti: Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 56, No. 5, May 2011

When I said they certainly seemed to be enjoying themselves, Archibald straightened out as if he’d just shot himself in the foot. Mrs. Becky sized me up as if she’d be aiming for my foot next.

“So what if we are?” she asked, cool and level as could be.

“I was just wondering if you were talking about ghosts,” I said.

“That is none of your concern,” she informed me.

When I mentioned that her husband wanted to gather all the telephone owners at Miss Etheline’s place at midnight, she said, “Well of course he does, Stanley—”

Unlike some I could mention, she never took to calling me Joe or Injun Joe. Characters from a story book didn’t interest her at all. Cold hard facts was more her style, much to her husband’s discomfort.

“—he’s always planning things for after dark. Makes it easier to slip away when he flubs up. But don’t worry, Deputy, I wouldn’t miss this soirée for the world.”

That wasn’t anywhere near the answer I’d been expecting, which gave me something else to worry about. I’d never known Mrs. Becky to be so cooperative before. She even gave me a pleasant smile as she showed me to the door.

Etheline Spavin’s parlor had once been the finest room in town, though by now it had begun to list on its foundation. The furniture inside might be oak, but it was all mighty wobbly oak that looked about one overweight guest from kindling. All the cushions were threadbare, and the carpet worn through in more spots than I could count. The clock on the mantel said it was 5:43 and probably had been saying so for the past thirty years or more. Cobwebs connected it up to little cupid statues on opposite sides of the mantle. And of course there was the smell of cats, which filled every cushion and lap in sight.

Sheriff Huck had already appropriated the most comfortable chair by the time I pulled in. A large tabby had joined him. His wife Becky had settled down as far away from him as she could get. Rutherford Dewitt lined up to the sheriff’s left, looking considerably wrung out, and Alfreda Scrim was complaining to her husband, the Reverend Scrim, about how noisy the cemetery had been of late. I had asked the reverend to join us in case any of the spirits we were dealing with got too frisky. No one was paying Alfreda much mind, particularly her husband, who had a glazed look that anyone who’d spent any time around his wife recognized. I took the perspiration on the reverend’s brow to mean that he was uneasy about crossing paths with any spooks. That left our hostess, Etheline, in her wheelchair, and her nephew Perry, who appeared ready to protect his aunt from any spirits who showed up.

One last guest, a stranger, was ornamenting the chair to the sheriff’s right. Although this gent was wearing a tweed suit coat and thin black bowtie, he had a leathery, sun-creased look about him, particularly across his forehead, where a tan line showed that he usually wore a hat. The hat in question was resting on his knee. It was a weather-beaten, shapeless thing. As soon as I stepped into the parlor, this stranger challenged me with a frosty stare that said we’d met before. I didn’t have time to sort that out, though, not with the sheriff suddenly talking over Alfreda.

“Here’s my deputy,” Sheriff Huck announced, sounding as if he’d been bragging about me, which could only mean one thing — he’d found some way to one-up me. “Late as usual, but for a good reason, I’m guessing. Have you figured out which ghost’s to blame, Deputy?”

“Almost,” I answered.

“Only almost?” the sheriff chided. “We need to wrap this business up while we still got some telephone owners alive. Joe, maybe you better fill us in on what you’re thinking, holes and all. Somebody here might be able to supply the rest.”

Modesty wasn’t the sheriff’s strong suit, and there wasn’t much doubt he expected to be the one who’d pull everything together. The twinkle in his eye said he was ready to step on my back — soon as I fell flat on my face — and reveal what had really been truly going on. Unwilling to let him sail across the finish line without even breaking a sweat, I took the plunge, hoping things would sort themselves out as I went.

“The thing you’ve got to know about ghosts,” I started out, trying to sound as though my Indian heritage made me an expert on the subject, “is that they’re usually trying to tell you something.”

“Humbug!” Rutherford Dewitt declared, stomping his foot down.

“I wouldn’t be so fast on the draw there, Rutherford,” the sheriff cautioned. “Joe’s father was a medicine man, you know, so when it comes to the spirit world, I don’t trust anybody more than my deputy here. Ain’t that so, Joe?”

“Sometimes,” I allowed. Turning to Rutherford, I added, “Take those two little tykes that make you so jumpy, Mr. Dewitt. They mostly just want to say goodbye to you, and then I expect they’ll be on their way.”

The drugstore owner gurgled deep in his throat but didn’t manage to get anything else out. Mostly he just turned red in the face.

“What else you got, Joe?” the sheriff asked.

“A strong suspicion,” I said, stepping behind the sheriff and the stranger perched next him, “that it’s not the night watchman at the lumberyard who’s behind all this.”

“And what catapulted you to that conclusion?” the sheriff wanted to know, pleasant as could be, as if I was his prize pupil.

“Just the fact that whoever did away with Miss Molly left the rear gate to the yard open on her way out.”

“That was careless of them,” the sheriff agreed, “but what’s your point?”

Mrs. Becky answered that one for me. “That a ghost wouldn’t have needed to open the gate in the first place. They could have floated right through it.”

“Now that’s some first-rate detecting, if that’s what Joe was thinking,” the sheriff conceded. “But maybe that back gate being open doesn’t have anything to do with our case at all. You know as well as I do that schoolboys are always cutting through that lumberyard rather than going all the way around it. But my deputy did let something slip that gave me the prickles.”

Everyone but Mrs. Becky straightened up some at that announcement. She just shook her head disgusted like, as if she’d heard her husband pretend to know something too often to count.

“I heard him call this ghost a she, ” the sheriff went on. “Does that mean you think it’s Cedric’s opera singer who’s behind all this mayhem?”

“Not at all,” I came right back. “And I’d like to also say that you could have saved your money, Sheriff.”

“Oh?” The sheriff sounded innocent as a cardsharp. “What money’s that?”

“The dollar or two that you shelled out to Lady Small to try and hit that high C.”

“What ever gave you such an idea as that?”

“Two things. The fact that she used to sing in the circus while standing atop a horse, and the way she can’t hardly speak today, probably because she strained her cords working for you last night.”

“Pish-posh,” the sheriff said, waving me off. “If that’s all you got to complain about—”

“No, I’d also like to mention that I thought your horse-thieving days were all behind you.”

“Now what are you going on about?” the sheriff asked, turning testy. He’d made a mistake or two in his youth that he liked to keep buried.

“Just that you were seen riding down Main Street on Reverend Scrim’s white horse.”

“On whose word?”

“All the ghosts out to the cemetery.”

“Joe,” the sheriff lectured, “if that’s all the testimony you’ve got—”

“And the reverend,” I tacked on before he could build up a full head of steam.