Free The Corpse in Oozak's Pond by Charlotte MacLeod Page B

pussyfoot around calling ’em what they ain’t. Chief Olson over at Lumpkinton, he finds a body with six bullets in it, tied up with clothesline, an’ stuffed into an old icebox. There’s six fresh holes shot through the icebox door, an’ he tries to pass it off as suicide while of unsound mind because the stiff’s his wife’s cousin’s brother-in-law.”
    “That was carrying family loyalty to the ultimate limit,” the medical examiner agreed. “Speaking of families and identifications, Professor Shandy, have you noticed how strongly the man we’ve been talking about resembles the late Mr. Buggins? Perhaps it’s not obvious at first glance because of the difference in age and size and all that facial hair, but the bone structure, the shape of the ears, and, of course, the eye color are remarkably similar.”
    “The eye color?” said Shandy. “You mean that washed-out blue? I never knew the Bugginses. What color were the wife’s eyes?”
    “Why, I can’t say I noticed particularly. Harry, can you enlighten us?”
    The undertaker hesitated. “Sort of hazely, aren’t they?”
    “Let’s go take a look,” said Shandy.
    Fred Ottermole gulped. “I got to call the station.”
    “Why don’t you go out in the side hall and use the phone down near the rest rooms?” Harry Goulson suggested kindly. “I’ll just run ahead and get the loved ones ready for viewing, you not being much used to autopsies.”
    Peter Shandy was grateful that Goulson’s preparation had included covering the three corpses with sheets, all but their faces. The eyes were open. He took a look at Beatrice Buggins’s and shook his head. “Is that what you call hazel, Goulson?”
    “If you want the honest truth, Professor, I always say hazel unless they’re plain blue or brown. I’m not much on colors. Arabella picks out the clothes and does the makeup mostly. What would you call them?”
    “I’d say darkish gray. Do you agree, Doctor?”
    “Yes, I do. To me, hazel suggests a tinge of brown, and I don’t see any of that here. Rather an unusual shade, isn’t it? She must have been pretty when she was young. Well, if we’re through here, I’ll get back to the lab and see what else I can find out for you. I may have some information on the stomach contents by the end of the afternoon. You can handle things here, can’t you, Harry?”
    “Sure thing, Doctor. Let me give you a hand with those buckets.”
    Chief Ottermole came out of the men’s room and said he had urgent business over at the station, which nobody doubted for a moment. Shandy was reminded that he had to get to the bank before it closed or there’d be no money in the house to buy Jane Austen her supper. He left, too, deep in thought.
    So Goulson’s corroboration of Sephy Mink’s statement about her brothers’ brown eyes didn’t amount to a hill of beans. The twins’ eyes could have been dark gray like their mother’s easily enough, but there was only one way they could have been brown, even a hazel brown.
    Shandy was of course familiar with Mendel’s experiments in color dominance among plants and with the vast body of work that has since been done. He was a trifle hazy about eye color in humans, but he was pretty damned certain a blue-eyed man and a gray-eyed woman could never have produced brown-eyed twins without a little help from a brown-eyed friend.
    The Bugginses were alleged to have been a devoted couple, but people always said that about any pair who’d managed to stick it out together for over fifty years. In defense of Beatrice Buggins’s fidelity, however, there was that strong family resemblance between the two male corpses. Drat! Persephone must either have forgotten what color her brothers’ eyes were or else had not forgotten and was trying to cover up a suspicious death, like Chief Olson with the in-law in the icebox.
    On the other hand, suppose Persephone had forgotten and was not lying. Did that mean the college was stuck with an