An Owl Too Many by Charlotte MacLeod

Professor?”
    Peter could see that Fred was all wound up to brag about his own owl count, but now was not the time. “That’s what I came to talk to you about. I gather you haven’t heard about Emory Emmerick?”
    “Emmerick who? Hey, you don’t mean that new guy over at the field station? What happened to him?”
    “He’s been—er—netted. You’d better get dressed and shaved, Ottermole. I expect Swope will be wanting to take your picture.”

5
    “WHAT DO YOU SUPPOSE he’ll do now?” asked Miss Binks.
    She and Peter had helped Ottermole get the alleged Fanshaw tucked away in the village lockup. Now they were on their way to tear Helen away from her literary pursuits and treat her to lunch at the Plucked Chicken, a fairly soigné new eatery that Bathsheba Monk and her sister-in-law Gert had opened in what had formerly been Bouncing Bet’s Beauty Barn.
    “Fanshaw?” said Peter. “He’ll yell for his lawyer.
    “Oh dear!” Miss Binks’s long face grew longer. “That reminds me, I was supposed to meet Mr. Debenham—my own lawyer, you know—and some of those people from Grandfather’s trust in my office at half past eleven. It completely slipped my mind. Understandably enough, I suppose, but they must be there now, wondering where I am.”
    “Maybe they forgot, too,” Peter consoled her.
    “Not a chance. Lawyers don’t break appointments with clients as rich as I am. If that sounds a trifle cynical, I assure you it’s meant to. May we stop at your house and give them a buzz to say I’ll be along shortly? That is, if you’ll be kind enough to take me. Perhaps Helen would like to ride out with us, then you and she can go along to lunch together. I shan’t ask you to wait, you know what lawyers are like.”
    That Winifred Binks could break the appointment herself would never have crossed her mind, Peter realized. Mr. Debenham and the people from the trust had, after all, given up their Saturday to her when they might have been out playing croquet or at home polishing their writs of attainder. Himself trained to put duty before pleasure, Peter agreed without demur and drove on to the old rosy brick house on the Crescent where his wife, as it turned out, was entertaining another man.
    “President, I’m glad you’re here,” he lied. “We’ve had some interesting developments. You’d better go make your phone call, Miss Binks. Tell them we’ll be along as soon as we can. Helen, would you care to drive out to the field station with us? We’d intended to take you to lunch, but Miss Binks remembered she’s supposed to meet with her lawyers. Maybe you and I could—”
    “Shandy!” roared Svenson. “Developments.”
    “M’er, yes. Putting it in a nutshell, Emmerick was an impostor. Nobody at the Meadowsweet Construction Company ever heard of him. When I took Miss Binks back to the field station this morning, another one showed up calling himself Fanshaw and pretending to be Emmerick’s superior. He clammed up when he heard Emmerick was dead, so we arrested him and delivered him to Ottermole.”
    “But couldn’t you get anything at all out of him?” Helen demanded.
    “Nary a yip. Fanshaw was genuinely surprised to find out about Emmerick, I’d bet my Sunday boots on that. Cronkite Swope’s been taking his picture, we’ll get one over to the state police and maybe they can get an identification. Fred Ottermole’s handling that end of the business. Maybe you ought to stroll down to the station and see how he’s making out, President.”
    Peter had already inquired of Officer Dorkin, who’d been holding the desk while his chief slumbered, whether there’d been any report from the barracks. Dorkin could only tell him that the alleged Emmerick had in fact been stabbed through the back of the neck, which didn’t get them anywhere that he could see. Peter had made the suggestion mainly in the hope of getting Svenson off their backs, he might have known it wouldn’t work.
    “I’ll go