The Windsor Knot

Geoffrey sailed into the room, looking like someone on his way to a regatta. Elizabeth stared at the white cotton sweater and white slacks and then up at Geoffrey to make sure that it was indeed her cousin who had just entered the room. “You must have been up all night,” she declared flatly.

“On the contrary,” said Geoffrey, “I find sleep less beguiling when I am busy.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” muttered Elizabeth. “Just what are you up to?”

“Why, trying to be helpful with the wedding, of course. In order to relieve Mildred of the more mundane cleaning chores so that she can give her full attention to the coming nuptials, I have straightened my own room and I am now gathering the dirty clothes to take downstairs to the laundry room. So far I have mine, and Charles’s, which I obtained just now by tiptoeing into his room and collecting it off the floor. He is sleeping like a stoat, so I didn’t wake him, but I doubt if he will notice anything amiss. Is there anything you would care to contribute to the basket?”

Elizabeth regarded him with undisguised suspicion. “You’re not having a yard sale, are you?”

Geoffrey put his hand over his heart. “Moi?”

“I suppose I mustn’t be ungrateful about it,” she muttered. “Although this is so unlike you that I think you probably ought to have a CAT scan.” She gathered up a few items of clothing and placed them on the top of the clothes basket. “Anyway, thank you.”

“Not at all,” said Geoffrey smoothly. “Virtue is its own reward, in clever little ways.” He picked up the basket and turned to go, but, as if struck by an afterthought, he set it down again and said, “Have you heard anything more from the sheriff about the cremation case of his?”

Elizabeth yawned. “No, Geoffrey. I told you, I’m not going to get involved in it.”

“I found the news of the murder of a crematorium director over in Roan County most interesting.

“It could be a coincidence.” She shrugged. “Maybe the business was a cover for a moonshining operation.” This was not so much a serious suggestion as a demonstration of her complete indifference to the lure of detection.

“I found it interesting all the same. Thought I might put out a question or two here and there.”

Elizabeth frowned. “Geoffrey, if you get yourself killed and spoil my wedding, I’ll have you barbecued!”

“I wouldn’t dream of inconveniencing you by my death.”

“Good. And don’t meddle in things, either! Knowing you, you’ll end up getting the minister arrested for murder and the whole wedding will be a shambles!”

“Father Ashland is safe from me,” Geoffrey promised. “Should I witness him torching an orphanage and dancing naked among the fire hoses, my lips will be sealed.”

“Good.”

“To further assure you of my benevolence, I wonder if there are any little errands that I can undertake for you today?”

Elizabeth eyed him suspiciously. “Might this end up in my receiving on the day of the wedding a purple wedding cake, or two hundred unhousebroken doves? You’re not planning to sabotage my wedding, are you, Geoffrey?” Her voice ended on a plaintive note close to tears.

“I’m not,” said Geoffrey, dropping his usual affectations. “Really. I have no pranks in mind at all. I say this to put your mind at rest while I ask you a rather irrelevant question, the answer to which will not, I vow, be used against you.”

Elizabeth glared at her cousin. “This had better not be about sex.”

“No!” said Geoffrey, sounding quite shocked. “I merely wanted to inquire if you knew what an automobile distributor cap looked like?”

Elizabeth smiled. “Oh, do you know that story about the Queen? During the war when Princess Elizabeth was eighteen, she served as a subaltern in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, and she took a course in ATS vehicle maintenance. You know, how to read maps, drive in convoy, and vehicle service and maintenance.”

Geoffrey looked restive. “About the distributor cap-”

“I’m coming to that.” Elizabeth was enjoying her story. “When she had finished the course, her father the King went to Camberly on an inspection tour, and the princess was going to show off what she had learned by starting an engine she’d just serviced. But she couldn’t get the motor to start! After a few awkward moments, King George admitted to having taken off the distributor cap.”

“Hilarious,” said Geoffrey gravely.

“I learned about distributor caps so that I could fix the car if any malicious relative ever did that to me.” She fixed Geoffrey with a meaningful stare.

“My own motives exactly,” said Geoffrey. “You know what pranksters theatre people are. It’s just the thing they might do to my car. Do tell me where it is and what it looks like.”

Elizabeth thought for a moment. “It’s a domelike plastic thing in the middle of the engine with little chimneys on the top or sides and it has wires going out of it to the spark plugs. They’re usually held on with spring clips. Cameron taught me that.” Her eyes misted again. “Now, please, Geoffrey, assuming that you would have the intelligence to find one in a car, much less remove it, please don’t do this to us after the wedding!”

“You have my solemn word,” said Geoffrey. “I will use the information only for purposes of defense.”

“All right,” said Elizabeth, wiping her eyes. “In that case, I guess you can take the final guest list to the caterer. They’re making little place cards in calligraphy for the guests. You might check at the florists-see if Lucy’s flower orders came through yet. And you could take this zipper to Miss Geneva. I bought the wrong kind and had to get another one.”

“It shall be done,” Geoffrey promised, looking particularly pleased.

“Good,” said Elizabeth. “Then I can spend the day getting my hair done and taking care of about a million other things I should have thought of earlier. Cameron and his mother and brother will be here this evening. We’re making it kind of a party dinner. You’ll be around for that, won’t you?”

Geoffrey considered the possibility. “I have an early-evening appointment, but if dinner is later than seven, I’m sure I can manage.”

“Eight-thirty, then,” said Elizabeth.

“Yes,” said Geoffrey. “I should be through by then.”

Deputy Clay Taylor felt a little uneasy about going out to question the people at Earthling. He had always found them to be very sincere and committed individuals and he had partaken of many a beans-and-rice potluck in support of their causes in Central America. He consoled himself with the thought that he was not, in fact, in charge of the interrogation, but merely accompanying a colleague as a guide and observer.

Since the murder of crematorium director Jasper Willis had occurred in Roan County, the task of investigating it fell to Wayne Dupree’s organization, but since many of the suspects were in Wesley Rountree’s jurisdiction, the two departments had decided to team Clay with an officer from Roan County to carry out the questioning. Meanwhile, Dupree’s other deputies were checking the possibility of faked deaths in their own county.

“Though they might not be as likely suspects,” Wesley had explained to his fellow sheriff, “because they didn’t know about Emmet’s reappearance, so they had no reason to become nervous. If you didn’t know about Emmet, you’d think you had still gotten away with the scheme.”

So far Clay and the Roan deputy had been working together for three days. They were nearly finished with the list of suspects. So far they had turned up nothing suspicious and no one had admitted any knowledge of Emmet Mason’s reappearance. Clay would be glad when the partnership was over, because, while Charlie Mundy was an excellent officer as far as Clay could determine, he was also a humorless, narrow-minded pain in the patoot. He was a burly six-footer who looked like the ex-linebacker that he was, and he was a combat veteran from the Marine Corps, all of which may have enabled him to become a first-rate law enforcement officer, but it had done nothing for his somewhat canine personality. It was like going on patrol with a pit bull, Clay had thought- often during the last three days. Charlie Mundy had a perpetual squint of suspicion and a crooked smile that he employed when he was least amused. Clay, who managed to combine a career as a peace officer with what he hoped were noble sentiments about the rights of man and the responsibility of the human species to the ecological well-being of the planet, was profoundly uncomfortable in his massive colleague’s sneering presence.

“Will you look at this?” Mundy was saying, in his most disdainful tone. He had just pulled into the parking lot of the old gristmill and was presently leaning on the steering wheel, staring malevolently at the Earthling sign above