The Corpse in Oozak's Pond by Charlotte MacLeod

authentic reincarnation of Augustus Caesar Buggins? How the flaming perdition was Peter Shandy going to explain a murdered supernatural phenomenon to Thorkjeld Svenson? Maybe he’d better go home, get Helen to pack her bags and Jane her catnip mouse, and flee with them to some relatively safe, peaceful spot, like the upper slopes of Mount St. Helen’s.
    After thinking the matter over, Shandy did go home, first pausing at the bank to restock his wallet; dispensing some of his cash at the grocery store on replenishments for the larder in case they decided to stay and ride out the storm, and having a few terse words with a student he happened to meet there on the subject of an overdue term paper. He found Helen in the kitchen making tapioca custard.
    “It’s soothing to the nerves,” she explained. “Also to the eyeballs. Between that pale-brown ink and Balaclava’s scratchy penmanship, I’m Bugginsed out. He must have beaten his nibs into plowshares.”
    “You haven’t come across anything in the archives?”
    “Not yet, but there’s still a long way to go. Stir this for me, will you? Don’t stop or it will curdle. I meant to bring up a jar of those cherry preserves we made last fall. Mary Enderble puts a layer in the bottom of the dish with a little rum and pours the hot tapioca over the cherries. It’s lovely.”
    Shandy’s culinary education had come a long way since the soup-heating days of his bachelorhood. However, Helen had never left him alone before with something that might take a pettish notion to curdle if you didn’t treat it right. He was pushing the spoon in a careful rhythm, watching with incipient panic for any sign of a lump, when the telephone rang.
    Luckily, the kitchen extension wasn’t far from the stove. By holding the spoon by the tip and stretching as far as he could, Shandy was able to take down the receiver without having to pause. By the time Helen had got back upstairs with the cherries, though, the pudding had not only curdled but scorched, and Shandy hadn’t even noticed.
    “Oh, Peter!” That was as close to a rebuke as Helen got. “Peter, what’s the matter?”
    “Your friend Sephy’s parents,” he told her. “Ottermole just got the report. Somebody served them a nightcap. Moonshine and carbon tetrachloride.”

Chapter 8
    H ELEN STOOD STARING AT him with the cherries in her hand. “Carbon tetrachloride? Peter, that’s cleaning fluid. Wouldn’t the smell alone have put them off?”
    “Maybe they couldn’t smell it. Ottermole says Trevelyan Buggins kept up a family tradition by running his own still. He claims Buggins made the awfullest rotgut ever distilled in Balaclava County, and that’s saying plenty. I reminded him carbon tet smells like chloroform, and he said old Trev’s booze always smelled like chloroform. Besides, they’d had potatoes and onions fried in salt pork for supper. That must have stunk up the house pretty thoroughly and also made a cozy bed for the poison to work in. According to the medical examiner, fats in the digestive system would have speeded up the toxic effect. So would the alcohol. Whoever slipped them the slug must have known his chemistry.”
    “I’d say she must have planned the menu,” said Helen.
    “Ottermole jumped on that angle, too, but Mrs. Ottermole says the Bugginses always had potatoes and onions fried in salt pork on Thursday nights. It’s an old Seven Forks tradition, God knows why. She claims those Thursday night suppers were what made Persephone leave home.”
    “Has Ottermole talked to Sephy?”
    “Not yet. He was eating his own supper when the call came in. Naturally he told his wife about the report, and she happened to recall Persephone’s joking about the Thursday night fried pork at some women’s shindig. Would it have been your garden club?”
    “No, Edna Mae won’t join till her boys get old enough to leave. It was more likely somebody’s baby shower. Peter, this is horrible. You don’t suppose the