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  PUNCH WITH CARE

  ASEY MAYO, CAPE COD’S GIFT TO THE AMATEUR DETECTIVE WORLD, TACKLES ANOTHER BAFFLING MYSTERY, WHICH CREEPS UP ON HIM BEFORE HE KNOWS IT, SMACK BETWEEN THE ONE O’CLOCK BULL MOOSE SIREN AND THE ONE O’CLOCK QUICK QUIZ QUESTION ON WBBB.

  WHILE MURDER IS NO NOVELTY TO MAYO, THIS CASE INVOLVES HIM WITH SUCH BIZARRE ITEMS AS THE POCHET AND BACK SHORE RAILROAD, A PRIVATE NARROW-GAUGE LINE IN MRS. DOUGLASS’S BACK YARD; LULU BELLE, ITS ANTIQUE PULLMAN WITH THE SILVER-PLATED SPITTOONS; CAROLYN BARTON BOONE AND HER LARRABEE COLLEGE PROJECT ON TOWN GOVERNMENT; AND A FEW BEWILDERED ADOLESCENTS WHO HAD ALWAYS INTENDED TO GO TO COLLEGE ANYWAY.

  AS MIGHT BE EXPECTED, COUSIN JENNIE AIDS AND ABETS THE CASE BETWEEN BATCHES OF SUGAR GINGERBREAD, AND OLD DOC CUMMINGS GLEANS FURTHER MATERIAL FOR HIS PROJECTED MEMOIRS FROM MUSTARD PLASTER TO PENICILLIN. THERE ARE THE CLAM DIGGERS TOO, AND THE SUMMER FOLKS, AND, OF COURSE, THE TOURIST TRADE.

  JUST WHO THE CORPSE IS, AND WHERE ASEY GOT IT—WELL, THESE QUESTIONS ALONG WITH DOZENS OF OTHER STRANGE AND INTRIGUING HAPPENINGS ARE HANDLED SHREWDLY AND EXPERTLY IN THE MURDER-CUM-HUMOR MYSTERY THAT CONTINUES TO DELIGHT PHOEBE ATWOOD TAYLOR FANS.

  PUNCH

  WITH CARE

  An Asey Mayo Mystery

  PHOEBE ATWOOD TAYLOR

  The Countryman Press

  Woodstock, Vermont

  Copyright © 1946 by Phoebe Atwood Taylor

  ISBN 0-88150-229-4

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher.

  For

  Geraldine Gordon of Hathaway House

  PUNCH WITH CARE

  1

  ASEY MAYO dropped his empty wooden-slatted clam drainer down on the flagstones of the little terrace by his back door, set his clam hoe and rubber boots beside it, and informed his housekeeper cousin Jennie Mayo that her luncheon menu was changed.

  “Your clam chowder’s out,” he continued as he took the wicker chair next her. “Those fellows at the boat yard,” he raised his voice to compete with the music coming from the midget radio on her lap, “they hadn’t even bothered to take my new engine out of the crate. They’re on strike—for Pete’s sakes!”

  He suddenly realized that Jennie was sound asleep.

  And had been, he decided, since he’d left her some two and a half hours ago, around ten o’clock. The waffle iron she’d intended to mend was lying on the wicker table before her, along with a clutter of wires, nuts, bolts, fuses—and, of course, the ice pick without which she never attempted any mechanical repairs.

  The radio’s dreamy organ music abruptly gave way to the mournfully dulcet tones of Jennie’s favorite announcer.

  “Will Mother Gaston’s adopted daughter go to jail—by mistake? Should old Doctor Muldoon tell her that Jimmy has cancer? Can Sonia, in her evil zest for brutal revenge, actually plant the stolen bearer bonds on little Beth?”

  The studio organ became a violent, roaring tornado. Three shots rang out, a siren wailed, and a woman screamed in anguish.

  Jennie never stirred a hair.

  “Listen tomorrow at this time! Find out by what clever device wise old Mother Gaston saves this tensely dramatic situation! And always remember that rigidly controlled scientific tests prove in nine—not one, but nine!—ways that—”

  Asey snapped the radio off, and Jennie at once waked up and glared at him.

  “All right!” she said irritably. “All right! I know I promised you waffles for lunch if you’d get clams for a chowder. But I never had one single solitary spare moment since you left. Not one!” She glanced down at the empty clam drainer. “Hm. Where are the clams?”

  “Wa-el,” Asey drawled, “there’s a particularly good ball game up-Cape this afternoon, so the boat-yard boys decided to strike again—at least, that’s my diagnosis of today’s work stoppage. So my new engine’s still in its crate, so I got no motor boat, so I didn’t get to the south shore. In short, your clam project got washed up. Did the nice May sunshine wash up your waffle iron repair project? Or—”

  “If you say that word again,” Jennie interrupted, “I’ll scream!”

  Asey looked at her curiously. “What word?”

  “Project!” Jennie said explosively. “Project! Don’t talk to me about projects! I’m sick and tired of projects—that’s why I fell asleep just now. It wasn’t the sun. It was that darn project. It just plumb wore me out!”

  “What project?” Asey inquired.

  “Of all the silly fool words people’ve thought up in the last ten years, that’s the silly foolest!” Jennie banged her fist on the arm of her chair. “Project! Why, it’s got so folks can’t hardly go to the post office for one little penny postcard without calling it a Mail Project or a Stamp Project, or some such! Project! How could I begin to mend a waffle iron with that fool project crawling all over the place? Jumping on the new grass seed, bouncing up and down in the perennial border, nosey-parkering all over the house—up in the attic, down in the cellar, banging the ice box door, breaking off clusters of the best white lilacs! I never saw people swarm the way that project did. Just a bunch of human ants!”

  “Look, is this somethin’ you dreamed about while you were asleep?” Asey asked gently.

  “I hadn’t been asleep two seconds before you came back,” Jennie told him tartly, “and I can prove it—I can tell you every word of ‘Mother Gaston’ up to the theme music! I just caved in when that project finally left—why, think of that redheaded Air Corps colonel, sneaking a swig of my blackberry cordial!”

  “Oho!” Asey said. “So this was some army project that stopped by?”

  “Army nothing! It was a bunch from Larrabee College,” Jennie said. “Down from Boston to do a project on Town Government.” She sniffed. “This was Section B., the towns under nine hundred population division.”

  “But what in thunder were they doin’ here?”

  “Like every other fool project in the world,” Jennie said impatiently, “they’d got sidetracked—only been in town since eight-thirty this morning, but they’re already sidetracked forever, if you ask me! Except maybe that thin ex-Wave with the glasses. She kept tryin’ to pull’em all together and get ’em going to the Town Hall, but she was just a little squeak in the wilderness. That ex-Wac with the snapping black eyes—she was a one, that ex-Wac!”

  “I don’t think,” Asey said pensively, “that I ever felt much more confused. Now just exactly what hap—”

  “You’re confused?” Jennie interrupted. “What d’you think I was, being pounced on by a swarm of twenty-odd projecters? Honestly, Asey, I sometimes think that life was a lot simpler during the war, when you were away!”

  “I promise you I’ll be goin’ soon again,” Asey assured her drily. “Just as soon as they settle the Porter Motors strikes.”

  “What I mean isn’t about you,” Jennie returned. “I mean about peace. Whenever I thought about peace, during the war, I forgot all the things that went along with it. You know, like tourists, and strikes, and sky-high prices, and the roads so packed you hardly dare drive on ’em, and crazy outlanders speeding around curves, and throwing beer bottles and paper plates all over. And silly nonsense like this project!”

  “I still don’t understand why a college project on Town Government should turn up here!” Asey persisted.

  “Seems,” Jennie said, “they decided that before they set to work projectin’, they’d just take a look around the town. There was some word they kept usin’. Or—ori—something or other.”

  “Orientation, maybe?” Asey suggested.

  “That’s it! They were orientin’ themselves. Somebody—and I b
et it was that ex-Wac—remembered that this town was the home of Cape Cod’s famous old detective.” She glanced at him sideways and continued in tones approximating those of Mother Gaston’s announcer. “Tall, lean, salty Asey Mayo, the Codfish Sherlock, the Hayseed Sleuth, the wonderful genius that figured out Porter’s miracle tank, the Mark XX. So with a whoop and a holler, they rushed here to see you. And drove me crazy asking questions and taking pictures and nosing around—and don’t sit there smiling so smug-like, kidding yourself you’ve ducked ’em, either! You haven’t!”

  “Now see here, Jennie, you didn’t promise I’d do anything about ’em, did you?”

  She smiled. “Thought I could get a rise out of you! No, I never got you into anything, but there’s a pile of autograph books inside waitin’ for your famous signature—” She broke off as a car rattled up the oystershell driveway and stopped with a great squealing of brakes. “Why doesn’t Doc Cummings use his new car instead of that battered old wreck?”

  “It is his new car,” Asey said. “He can make any vehicle look like that inside of six months. Hi, doc. Aren’t you through work early today?”

  “Hi, Asey, hello, Jennie. I’m not through.” The doctor eased his short, stocky figure into a steamer chair, and sighed. “I’ve been too busy with the toys of peace even to get started on my regular rounds. Asey, was peace always like this?”

  “You mean sittin’ out under a bright sun, watchin’ marshmallow cream clouds in a bright blue sky?” Asey said quizzically. “With the bay sparklin’, an’ lilacs an’ apple blossoms—”

  “That’s not peace you’re describing,” Cummings interrupted. “That’s a butcher’s Christmas calendar. Now during the war years, I had a distinct mental picture of peace. All my young colleagues had come home and taken over my practice. I was lovable ol’ Doc Cummings, who retired so gracefully. I played golf all day and bridge all night, and lived like a king—my, how lax I am in my terminology! I lived like a labor union head, say, or a commissar, on the royalties of my best-selling memoirs—haven’t either of you the common decency to ask me the title of ’em?”

  Asey chuckled. “I thought you’d settled on ‘Night and Day,’ ” he said. “Or ‘From Mustard Plaster to Penicillin.’ Made up another new name?”

  “It’s a dilly!” Cummings said happily. ‘‘Listen! ‘Cummings and Goings, the Record of a General Practitioner.’ Oh, well, I thought it was funny! But then, I’ve been up struggling with the toys of peace since five this morning, and that probably makes a difference.”

  “Whose baby came?” Jennie asked interestedly.

  “Oh, nothing’s been as normal and sensible as a baby! At five, I was at the newly reopened Sandbar Inn, where the newly arrived chef hadn’t bothered to use newly opened lobsters in his Lobster Surprise. Nine fat ladies and six fat men will never be quite so surprised again—and I hope they’ve learned that proximity to the Cape Cod coast is no guarantee of the age of Newfoundland lobsters. At seven, I coped with a kid whose inland mother let him paddle in the nice back shore undertow before breakfast.”

  “Collarbone?” Asey asked.

  “Uh-huh, and four ribs. That mother’ll treat oceans with more respect from now on. Let’s see. Then there was that sedan whose driver ignored the big Tonset reverse curve. She’s going to see quaint Cape Cod the hard way, from a hospital window. Then two poison ivies who were hunting for wild strawberries, and a really nasty sunburn who wanted to show her office she’d been on vacation—I give you my word, Asey, none of those idiot tourists had any part in my golden haze of peace! And just as I finished extricating a cod hook from the calf of a leg, I was waylaid by a group of college kids—”

  “That project!” Jennie said. “Twenty of ’em, weren’t there, mostly wearing pieces of service uniforms? From Larrabee College?”

  “Well, they mentioned Larrabee, and—yes, now that you speak of it, I suppose some of those seersucker dresses probably were old uniforms. But there weren’t twenty. Just four girls.”

  “That ex-Wave with the glasses, I bet,” Jennie said, “and those quiet other ones. The rest are probably orientin’ themselves at the Country Club! Why, that bunch swooped in here to see the great Codfish Sherlock, and honest to goodness, the way they swarmed around! Let me tell you—”

  Cummings laughed when she concluded her lengthy description of the project’s visit.

  “You make ’em sound like a cloud of seven-year locusts,” he remarked. “But my four girls were very circumspect, and deadly serious. Came to call on me in my capacity as Chairman of the Board of Health. Wanted vital statistics on Public Health and Welfare. I wasn’t exactly in the mood for that sort of thing, after my morning with the tourist trade, so I gave ’em a copy of the Annual Town Report, and excused myself. Very urgent case.” He paused and cleared his throat. “Matter of fact, Asey, I do have rather an urgent little project—”

  “There, Asey!” Jennie broke in. “There, see? All he really means is that he’s got some small errand, or chore. But when he calls it a project, see, it seems like something big and important!”

  “It is important!” Cummings retorted. “Furthermore, Asey’s going to help me with it. He’s got to. It’s something I always—well, that is—I mean—”

  Asey glanced at him sharply as the rest of the doctor’s sentence floundered off into space. For Cummings to run out of words was roughly the equivalent of the Atlantic running out of water. Jennie noticed it too, and stared at him as she got up from her chair.

  “If I didn’t know you as well as I do,” she observed thoughtfully, “I’d say you were setting out to call on your first girl, and wanted Asey to come along with you for moral support. Hm. Got on your best suit, haven’t you? And a brand new white shirt. And the hand-made silk tie your wife bought in New York and never could get you to put on!”

  To Asey’s amazement, the doctor neither had any swift, bantering rejoinder on the tip of his tongue, nor did he make the slightest effort to contradict Jennie’s comments. He just sat there, silent and red-faced.

  “And your shoes polished like a looking glass! Hm!” Jennie said. “Hm! Well, before Asey sets out projectin’ with you, he’s got to have some lunch. You look as if a cup of soup would do you good, too! I’ll bring it out here.”

  Cummings gazed after her ample figure as she bustled up the walk and into the kitchen, and shook his head.

  “Sometimes,” he said, “I’m dazed to a point of speechlessness by the things women seem to know instinctively! How do they do it?”

  “Meanin’,” Asey said with a grin, “that you are callin’ on a girl? Is that your urgent project? Tut, tut, doc! What’ll your wife say?”

  “I didn’t—look, Asey, I don’t know how to say this, but look—well, didn’t you ever read about anyone in the newspapers, or see ’em in pictures, or in newsreels, and think to yourself that you’d like to meet ’em?”

  “Wa-el,” Asey drawled, “when I was a kid, I used to save cigarette box pictures of Maggie Cline, but I can’t remember as I ever aimed to meet the lady.”

  “All right, insinuate that I’m acting like a ten-year-old if you want to! After all, you’re in the newsreels and the rotogravures so often yourself, you probably look on other people in ’em as just ordinary run of the mill. Anyway, there’s a woman in town I want to meet, and you’re going to help me! And that,” Cummings wound up with finality, “is the situation in a nutshell!”

  “But, doc—”

  “No buts, no buts!” Cummings said. “If you don’t get out of those fishing clothes, and dress yourself up in your city best, and take your new Porter roadster, and help me meet her, I shall consider it an unfriendly and hostile act. I only want to meet her,” he hurriedly added. “Just meet her, that is, and shake hands, and say how-do-you-do or something—oh, stop chuckling!”

  “Who is she, doc?”

  “Carolyn Barton Boone,” Cummings said almost with reverence. “Carolyn Barton Boone.”

  “Boone,” Asey said. “
Boone—oh, sure. Blonde an’ beautiful, an’ married to a governor, isn’t she?”

  “She’s the wife of Senator Willard P. Boone, and she’s the president of Larrabee College, and—”

  “Oho!” Asey interrupted. “Now things begin to shape up! So she came to town with this Larrabee project, huh?”

  “I don’t know. I never thought about that connection,” Cummings said. “I was just told that she’s staying over with the Douglasses—really, Asey, I’ve always been a little fascinated with Carolyn Barton Boone. She sounds like quite a person. She’s a writer, and she was a judge, and she had a front seat on all the atom bomb stuff, and she visited the Maginot Line, and flew to all the war fronts for the Red Cross, and wrote a book about London in the blitz—and so forth and so on. Now, you know the Douglasses, don’t you?”

  Asey shook his head.

  “You don’t?” Cummings sounded bewildered. “Why, damn it, you must! They’ve been patients of mine for the last five years! Sure you know’em! You must! You’ve got to—because you’re going to take me there to meet Carolyn Barton Boone!”

  “If they’re patients of yours, an’ if you’ve known ’em for the last five years,” Asey said gently, “what possible difference does it make whether I know’em or not? You do!”

  “That’s not the point!” Cummings retorted. “I know ’em professionally, that’s all! I can’t just barge in on ’em and say I want to meet their house guest, please!”

  “Why not, if you want to? You’re better known the length and breadth of the Cape than this Boone woman is,” Asey said. “Probably the Douglass family’ll be only too glad an’ happy to have their house guest meet you! You see, doc, your perspective’s all wrong. You want to consider how many people are goin’ to enjoy bein’ able to say they knew you even before ‘Cummings and Goings’ was a best-seller. You—”