The Grub-And-Stakers Quilt a Bee by Charlotte MacLeod, Alisa Craig

see the day she’d be deliberately trying to placate Andy McNasty, as he was more commonly known around town, but as a dutiful wife she felt bound to follow where Osbert led. Besides, she knew Osbert was trying to find out how Andy McNasty knew Mr. Fairfield had fallen off the roof instead of out the window as was commonly supposed.
    It was sad to see all this diplomacy trickling down the drain.
    McNaster’s reply was as unsatisfactory as Cedric Fawcett’s, though less phlegmatically given. The gist of it was that he’d stopped at the inn for supper as usual, seen the commotion over at the museum, and gone to see what was up. He’d known Fred Brown was doing a job on the museum roof. He’d assumed Mr. Fairfield had gone up to inspect Brown’s progress, or lack of it, because that was what he himself would have done, though he wouldn’t have fallen off the edge because he wasn’t an absentminded intellectual like Mr. Fairfield. Now they mentioned it, he’d heard somebody say something about the attic window but those windows hadn’t looked to him like the sort a person would be apt to fall out of. So he figured it must have been the roof, wasn’t it?
    “At this juncture we are not sure of anything, Mr. McNaster,”
    said Sergeant Mac Vicar. On that equivocal note, they parted.
    “My stars and garters!” was Dittany’s comment once they’d got back into the car and headed for Lobelia Falls. “What do you make of that?”
    “Of all possible encounters,” Sergeant Mac Vicar agreed, “that was the one I should least have expected.”
    “You were marvelous, Mrs. MacVicar,” said Dittany. “How in the world did you ever think what to say?”
    “Mrs. MacVicar is never at a loss for a word,” said the sergeant, keeping his eyes on the road. “Were praise to the face not open disgrace, I should be inclined to agree that she was indeed marvelous.”
     
    Mrs. MacVicar said not to be silly and didn’t Dittany think the restaurant cook had gone a little too heavy on the mustard in the Welsh rabbit?
    Dittany said Osbert liked plenty of mustard and did Mrs. MacVicar think McNaster had been telling the truth or putting it on?
    “He is a man of devious ways,” Mrs. Mac Vicar conceded.
    “I wouldn’t trust that ornery coyote one inch, myself,” said Osbert. “Furthermore, I’d a good mind to get up and paste him one, the way he kept ogling my wife. Not that she isn’t oglesome, if that’s the right word.”
    “Please, darling. Praise to the face is open disgrace. What got me, aside from the ogling,” Dittany inserted parenthetically, though in truth she hadn’t noticed it, having had eyes only for Osbert, who was no mean ogler, either, “was his saying Mr. Fairfield was dumped off the roof. How does he know those attic windows are too small to push anybody out of, unless he’s been up there poking around, eh?”
    “Strictly speaking,” said Sergeant Mac Vicar, “the attic windows are not too small. A form of so slight a build as Mr. Fairfield’s could have been projected from yon orifice if you lined him up straight and gave him a hefty shove. The difficulty would lie in obtaining his cooperation for such a maneuver.”
    “But what about the fuzz on the railing?”
    “We must e’en ask ourselves whether that fuzz could have been put there by conspiratorial hands to make us think the victim was not in fact dumped out the attic window when in fact he was, although I cannot for the life of me think why. As to how McNaster happened to take so keen an observation of the attic windows, we must remember he is by profession a builder. I doubt not it would be second nature for him to notice windows in the same way a milliner, for example, would notice hats.”
    “A milliner would find few hats to notice these days, more’s the pity,” said Mrs. MacVicar. “I would remind you, Donald, that while McNaster chooses to call himself a builder, he is by avocation a schemer and conniver. One would wish to