Free A Dismal Thing To Do by Charlotte MacLeod

might be a murderer loose in the village, and thus bring him together with Bert Wadman’s younger sister.
    “Hello, Fred. I understand you’ve been wanting to call a high-level conference on the subject of a missing wedding vehicle.”
    “Wedding vehicle? Oh, I get it.” A grin found its way with some effort through and around the jowls and wrinkles. “Yep, we got a grade-A crime wave around here. Perce Bergeron’s old bull truck an’ a dozen two-by-fours from Jase Bain’s junkyard.”
    “Well, well! This is more serious than I thought. Has Bain filed suit against you yet for negligence or malfeasance?”
    “No, but he’s workin’ up to it. Care to set a spell?”
    “Thank you.”
    It was warm enough in the garage with a fire of wood scraps burning in the stove Fred had fashioned from an oil drum and a few angle irons. The seating arrangements weren’t fancy. The chair Fred offered had a hunk of plywood roughly nailed on over the hole where the cane had let go, and that was the best of the lot, but it did well enough.
    The constable picked up the teakettle that was simmering on top of the oil drum and gave it an interrogative slosh. Madoc shook his head.
    “No tea for me, thanks. I’ve just got up from one of Annabelle’s little snack lunches. Any ideas about who’s waving the crime?”
    “Nary a one. Sam Neddick don’t know, an’ neither does Maw Fewter. Sam still goes to see ’er now an’ then, for old times’ sake. Annabelle sends things down sometimes when she bakes. Once or twice, Sam’s even paid out his own money for a bag o’ gumdrops. Maw’s talked herself into believin’ he really meant to marry her Dottie.”
    “What does Sam think of that?”
    “Doesn’t bother him none. Let ’er think if it gives ’er any comfort, is the way he looks at it. Don’t cost him nothin’. O’ course he picks up all the village gossip at the same time.”
    “I can imagine. What’s new on the grapevine?”
    “Well, the biggest news seems to be you an’ Janet. Anything fresh to keep the pot boilin’?”
    “Plenty, I’m afraid. Poor Jenny took a bad tumble yesterday and banged herself up in grand style. I expect I’ll be branded as a wife beater before the day’s out.”
    Fred chuckled, as Madoc had hoped he would. “I shouldn’t be surprised. How’d it happen?”
    “I’m blaming Marion Emery, myself. If she hadn’t presented us with one of those old-fashioned pitcher and bowl sets from the Mansion, Janet wouldn’t have been out hunting for an antique washstand to set it on.”
    Madoc repeated the yarn Janet had spun to Annabelle. Fred nodded in complete sympathy.
    “That’s a woman for you. Whatever she can’t have, that’s the thing she wants most. Mine’s been yammerin’ at me to move all the furniture out of our Marilyn’s room an’ turn it into a sewin’ room for herself. Marilyn’s finishin’ up at Acadia this year, an’ be darned if she didn’t announce her engagement to a nice young feller from Digby whose father runs a lobster pound. Does all right, too; sells ’em to the tourists in summer an’ ships ’em down to Boston in the winter. The boy’s studyin’ to be a lawyer, but at least he’s got somethin’ to fall back on if the law don’t pan out. Though I don’t know’s I’d want to fall back on a lobster, myself.”
    Fred chuckled again. “So the gist of it is, they want to be married as soon as Marilyn graduates, which means she won’t be comin’ back to stay and the wife wants to get goin’ on the bridal gown an’ the bridesmaids’ dresses. Any furniture Marilyn don’t want, Millie’s goin’ to get rid of, she claims.”
    “Well, before she sells any of it, ask her if there’s one of those washstands with a hole on the top and a shelf underneath. I’ll pay whatever she asks to keep my wife off any more rotten ladders.”
    “Hell, is that what Janet was lookin’ for? I got one right over there in the corner. Don’t ask me where it came