A Pint of Murder by Charlotte MacLeod

staying the night. I’ll need help getting my clothes off and on with this bunged-up hand. And be sure to phone Fred Olson and explain why I can’t come this afternoon.”
    “Hell, what difference does that make?”
    “Bert, I want Fred told!”
    “Well, all right, don’t get het up over it. For Christ’s sake take it easy till that hand heals over. One sick woman in the family’s enough for me.”
    After he’d gone and it was safe to close her eyes without getting resuscitated, Janet lay still on the couch, trying to rest and think. In a way, she, too, was a victim. If she hadn’t been so upset over the murders, she wouldn’t have had the accident. That was the way these things went, like weeds getting a foothold in a garden. If they weren’t rooted out, they’d spread until they choked out all the good plants and you had nothing left but weeds.
    Dot came. Janet got her to help her up to her room and get her clothes off. In a loose nightgown between clean sheets and dosed with aspirin, she felt easier. Having lost so much sleep the night before, she managed to drop off and sleep away the better part of the afternoon. At suppertime she struggled into a housecoat and came down, over Bert’s protests.
    “For Pete’s sake, stop mother-henning me, Bert!” she retorted. “I never got to eat my dinner, and I’m starved.”
    “Dot could bring you something on a tray.”
    “No, thanks.” She’d already had one of Dot’s trays at teatime, and a sloppier mess she never wanted to face.
    “Well, then, if you feel up to it.” He even went so far as to pull out her chair for her. “Maybe a hot meal would do you good.”
    Luckily she’d put together a casserole before she hurt herself. Dot had only to warm it up and fix some vegetables for salad. Bert had to rush through supper again since the Owls were to perform some esoteric ritual at the funeral parlor. Thanks to Janet’s clumsiness, he’d have to make do with his feathered helmet and his good gray suit instead of his full regalia.
    “I hope I can get Elmer Bain to drive over to the cleaner’s tomorrow morning and pick up Bert’s Owl tunic so he’ll have it for the funeral,” Janet remarked to Dot after her brother had left. “Elmer’s a pretty decent sort, isn’t he? I never really got a chance to know him till now.”
    “Elmer ain’t a bad scout, far’s I know,” Dot agreed with her mouth full. “Kind o’ quiet. Them Bains don’t waste nothin’, not even words. Say, that’s a hot one! I got to tell Sam.”
    “Yes, why don’t you?” said Janet. “Elmer doesn’t seem to take after his father much, does he?”
    “Favors his ma. Miz Bain was a nice enough woman for all she was a McDermott. Gee, no, thanks. If I take one more bite, I’ll bust wide open.” Dot laid down her fork with obvious regret. “Sam always says you folks set the best table in town. If I was at Miz Druffitt’s now, I’d be lucky to get a fried-egg samwitch, an’ she’d be countin’ how many grains o’ sugar I put in my tea.”
    It would take her a while to count them, Janet thought, the way Dot was ladling it in. How that woman managed to stay so thin on what she ate was another unsolved mystery. Dot was built a good deal like both Elizabeth Druffitt and Marion Emery, now that Janet happened to notice. If the woman would go a little easier on the makeup and do something about her clothes and hair, she might almost pass for another cousin.
    Dot rambled on. “Miz Treadway, now, she’d give you all you was o’ mind to eat, such as it was. But Miz Druffitt, boy, I can tell you an ant would starve to death in that woman’s garbage can. She’s got stuff in that house from the year 1, boxes piled up in the attic right to the eaves, and closets full o’ clothes she must o’ bought thirty years ago, just hangin’ there.”
    It did seem a pity, Janet had to agree, that good stuff should be let go to waste like that when some poor soul—Dot, for instance, no