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

believe he has learned his painful lesson and abandoned his perfidious ways, but one would have to be either a saint or the possessor of a very short memory to do so. The circumstances under which we acquired the Aralia Polyphema Architrave Museum preclude our being overcredulous about this sudden outpouring of the milk of human kindness. On reflection, Dittany, and with reference to your earlier question, I think Andrew McNaster was more than likely having us on. If I mistake his motives, you can put it down to human frailty or the mustard in the Welsh rabbit.”
    “Mustard,” said Dittany. “That reminds me, I wonder if Mrs.
    Fairfield is still awake.”
    “I don’t get the connection, darling,” said Osbert.
    “That,” said Mrs. MacVicar, “is because you don’t know Mrs.
    Fairfield as we do. Donald, you needn’t bother pulling that Deacon Jeremiah face at me. With all compassion for her sudden bereavement, we’ve found her to be only superficially endowed with those qualities of sweetness and light you profess to find so attractive in womankind, despite or perhaps because of the years you’ve lived with me.”
    “Deputy Monk, as an old married man to a young married man, I advise you never to try answering a remark like that. Dittany, I misdoubt Dr. Somervell’s potion will have assured Mrs. Fairfield a solid night’s sleep. Any attempt to grill that most material witness must be postponed until we can be sure of getting rational answers and not incurring the wrath of Minerva Oakes, who has already been sorely tried this night and is herself perhaps asleep by now.
    The morn, or e’en the morn’s morn, will be time enough.”
    Dittany thought the morn’s morn would be stretching patience beyond the breaking point, but she knew Sergeant MacVicar worked in mysterious ways his wonders to perform and there was no earthly use trying to hurry a Highland Scot who didn’t want to be hurried. And if everybody else was knocking off for the night and trotting off to bed, who were she and Osbert to buck the trend?
    But she did wish to heck they’d been able to find out who that woman in the blue or green or purple dress was, and what she’d been doing in the museum’s kitchen. Because the kitchen was next to the back stairs, and the back stairs led to the attic, and going up attic had been her idea in the first place. She had a nasty feeling that if she hadn’t obeyed that impulse, Mr. Fairfield might still be alive.

CHAPTER 7
    It might have been vestigial guilt that sent Dittany to the museum as soon as she’d given Osbert his breakfast and seen him happily cuddled up to his typewriter. She hadn’t expected to find anybody around the place this morning, not even the odd loiterer on the sidewalk. Lobelia Falls folk had better things to do than lollygag around gawking when there was nothing to see. Therefore, she was utterly flabbergasted to get inside and find Mrs. Fairfield seated at her late husband’s desk, writing busily in one of his notebooks.
    As she hesitated in the doorway, the widow looked up. “Good morning, Mrs. Monk. You’re an early bird today.”
    “You could have knocked me over with a feather,” Dittany told Hazel Munson later. “I just stood there with my mouth open.”
    In fact, she didn’t. She gulped once or twice, then got her vocal cords straightened out. “Mrs. Fairfield, whatever you’re doing, you don’t have to. Wouldn’t you rather go home and bathe your temples in cologne or something?”
    “Mrs. Monk, I have no home.”
    “But Minerva would-“
    “Mrs. Oakes has been kindness itself. But one can hardly expect her to wait on a lorn widow hand and foot, can one?”
    “I don’t see why not. Minerva’s a natural-born mother duck, I expect she’s over at Zilla Trott’s right now, borrowing some camomile tea to soothe your fractured nerves. She’ll be sick as a cat when she finds you’re not around to drink it. Besides, shouldn’t you be doing things about