The Convivial Codfish (8 page)

It sounded easy enough, but was it? Max knew train doors were supposed to be kept latched and barred while the train was in motion for reasons of safety. Getting one of those heavy doors open against the drag of the moving train might not be easy, and jumping out of it certainly wouldn’t be safe. You might land in a cushiony snowbank, but you might also slide down and be crushed under the wheels.

Assuming you made it safely, how would you close the door after you? Would the momentum cause it to slam and catch, or would the door stay open and call attention to the fact that you’d gone?

Any chance of escape from the dining or parlor car could be ruled out because there’d have been too many people around to grab you and stop you from doing something so crazy. The so-called coal tender didn’t have any outside door, just the doors at the ends that led into the engine cab and the parlor car. Your best way out would have to be through the window of the cab, after you’d murdered the engineer. But why do that? You didn’t slaughter a Comrade of the Convivial Codfish just to keep him from knowing you’d dressed up as a wine steward and played a practical joke on his brother’s guests.

You might if you were the kind who went around greasing other Comrades’ stairways. How could that prankster have got hold of the Great Chain if he hadn’t stolen it off Jem’s neck at the meeting, or been given it by someone who had? How had anybody managed to steal the chain, if it came to that?

The method wasn’t Max’s main concern right now. The point was, if you ruled out the one waitress at the Scrooge Day luncheon, as Jem was so sure you had to, then only some member of that insane chowder society could possibly have made off with the ponderous bauble. Being no doubt one of the Tolbathys’ usual crowd, he’d have been invited to the party here and he’d have known about Hester’s ritual with the caviar.

It would have been simple enough for him to trick the caterers into thinking he had a right to take over the serving, simple to do his little act, which consisted mainly of opening two bottles of champagne and one tin of caviar with a few fancy gestures thrown in for effect. And it would have been simplest of all to fake his escape by just taking off the chain, stashing it somewhere out of sight, and blending back in with the other guests.

But how would he have unblended in the first place? These false beards and walrus mustaches the men were sporting hadn’t really fooled anybody, at least not for long. To begin with, they were too obviously fake. In the second place, the self-appointed sommelier hadn’t been wearing any.

He’d sported natty sideburns, though, and a full head of grayish blond hair that might well have been a wig. His light blue eyes—Max noticed such things—had been somewhat prominent. So had his teeth. His height and build had been average, his face more round than long, his age perhaps fifty-five, which would have been remarkably young for a Comrade of the Convivial Codfish.

On the other hand, it wouldn’t have been too difficult in this flattering light for a Comrade to knock ten or fifteen years off his age with a wig to hide his bald spot and plumpers in his cheeks to smooth out the wrinkles. If he had false teeth, he could have put in a different plate. His grandmother’s, for instance. A real old Yankee never threw anything away that might possibly come in handy sometime, and nothing changed a person’s expression more than an ill-fitting set of dentures. If he wore glasses as a rule, he could have left them off, assuming he saw well enough without them to dish up the caviar and pour out a few glasses of champagne. He’d managed that all right, Max remembered. He’s also worn clean white cotton gloves, either to dress up his act or because hands were often recognizable and fingerprints always identifiable.

As to his clothes, one elderly dinner suit looked so much like another that he’d have had no need to change. He wouldn’t have needed to disguise his voice because in fact he hadn’t uttered a word, except to the caterers, who wouldn’t have known him anyway. All he’d need to do after he’d put on his brief performance would have been to step into one of the toilets, taken off his wig, his sideburns, his gloves, and presumably his teeth, and resume whatever guise he’d come in as a guest. He could have stuffed the Great Chain under his shirt, strolled back to collect his champagne and caviar, sauntered on through to the parlor car and thence to the tender, dropped his false hair, the gloves, and maybe even the teeth into the stove, stashed the Great Chain somewhere or other, and gone on to kill Wouter.

It was a lovely plan, really. In the confusion after the jolting stop, he could have rejoined the party and pretended to be as shaken up as the rest. They were all in such a state by then that nobody would have noticed. As to the Great Chain’s turning up later on, that wouldn’t matter so long as he hadn’t left any fingerprints on it. Whoever found it would be intended to think some Comrade had planned a joke on Jem Kelling and abandoned the chain when he realized Jem was not among those present and that circumstances didn’t lend themselves to slapstick humor.

All right, so the missing wine steward was most likely the killer, most likely a Comrade, and most likely still at the party, if such it could still be called. But which one of them was he? Max stood watching the passengers depart, trying to choose one who could have enacted the role of the steward.

The hell of it was, he had too many choices. Nondescript, fairish coloring, average height, and unremarkable noses were the rule rather than the exception, as he’d noticed in Jem’s photographs earlier. There were a few antiquated Prince Alberts, but most of the men were wearing plain, old-fashioned dinner jackets and plain, old-fashioned boiled shirts. Most still had on their false whiskers, determined to get their money’s worth out of them even though the gaiety was to all intents and purposes over. Just about any of them, according to Tom Tolbathy, could have known how to take over the train, speed up and stop short, creating enough confusion to cover his own shenanigans.

Hester Tolbathy was still ministering to old Wripp, looking around with anxious impatience, doubtless wondering where her husband had got to. Tom, poor devil, must be thinking about Wouter. Max went over and glanced into the tender. Tolbathy was there, helping with the wraps, making sure none of the guests tried to get up to the cab.

They’d have to be told fairly soon about Wouter’s death, but it would be far better to put off the news until they’d been herded up to the house and the police had arrived. Max went back and spoke to Hester Tolbathy.

“Your husband’s getting people off the train. Why don’t you go on up to the house with the others? I’ll stay with Mr. Wripp until the ambulance comes. They’ll be along any minute, I expect.”

“Oh, thank you, Max. You’re being terribly helpful.”

“Used to be a Boy Scout. I’ll just run in first and see how they’re making out with the food.”

He gave Hester a smile of reassurance and went back to the caboose. Marge, Pam, and Angie were still there, putting plastic wrap over bowls and platters and handing them out to an old man with a handcart, who must be Rollo.

“You haven’t seen any more of that guy who was supposed to be helping you?” he asked Marge.

“No, and we’ve been trying to figure out where he went. We can’t find him at all.”

“Maybe he climbed up on the roof of the train, like in the old Western movies,” Pam suggested.

“In a soup-and-fish, on a night like this? He’d freeze his corkscrew off,” scoffed Angie.

“He didn’t have a topcoat?” Max asked.

“If he had, he didn’t leave it here. Those are ours, over there.” Angie pointed to a heap of bright-colored down jackets thrown over a bench. There were no other wraps in sight.

“Would there be any place here in the caboose where he could have ducked out of your sight, even for a minute or so?”

“Sure, there’s a washroom right next to the door into the vestibule.”

“Passengers will please refrain,” Pam giggled.

Max went over and took a look. The washroom was tiny, with barely room for a miniature sink and the kind of contained water closet common on planes and trains, but it would have served perfectly for a quick change. The door even opened backward into the caboose, so it would have screened his coming and going, and there was a mirror over the sink to help him get his face on straight. He couldn’t have had a more convenient setup, as he’d no doubt known in advance.

“If you want my opinion,” Max told the three women, “your wine steward was one of the guests, playing a joke on the rest of the party. I’m curious to know who it was. You can help me, if you will.”

“Sure,” said Marge. “What should we do?”

“Just keep your eyes peeled up at the house. See if you can spot anybody who reminds you at all of the man you saw: looks like him, talks like him, uses a similar gesture, has any resemblance, however slight. If you do, point him out to me. If I’m not around, try to find out his name.”

“Finding him should be a cinch,” said Pam. “He’ll be the only one around without a mustache. I’ve never seen so many fuzzy faces since the hippies grew up and learned to shave.”

“It’s all fake, you half-wit,” said Angie. “They stuck them on for the party. That man we saw must have taken off his to serve, then put it back on again, which is why we can’t find him now.”

“He’d have had to do better than that,” Marge pointed out sensibly, “or his friends would have recognized him right away. Come on, we’d better get moving. You take the galantine of chicken, Angie. Pam, can you manage the
coulibac en croûte?
Mr. Whoever-you-are, I don’t suppose we could coax you into carrying this big bowl of salad for us?”

“Marge, that’s unprofessional,” Pam chided.

“So what? We can’t spend half the night trekking back and forth. Those people must be starving by now.”

“Right,” said Max. “I’ve got to stick around and wait for the ambulance, myself, but I’ll try to find you some extra hands.”

There were still a few stragglers getting off the train. Max asked the less battered ones if they’d mind helping the caterers, left them to it, checked on the ancient Wripp, who appeared to be sleeping off all those spoonfuls of brandy now, and went into the coal tender.

Tom Tolbathy was still there, slumped on a bench beside the all-but-empty coat rack. He looked utterly worn out but managed to raise his head when Max came in.

“What’s happening, Max?”

“The situation’s under control, more or less. They’ve moved the bartender up to the house and the caterers are getting ready to serve supper there. Your wife’s gone along to start things rolling, and she’s asked Marcia Whet to call a police ambulance for Mr. Wripp.”

“What about Wouter? Doesn’t she know?”

“I didn’t tell her. I figured she had enough to contend with already.”

“God, yes! Poor Hester, she was so keen on this party. So was I. We must have been out of our minds. Is anyone badly hurt other than John Wripp?”

“None that I could see. A few sprains and bruises and a number of superficial cuts from broken glass. There’s plenty of that around.”

“I can well imagine. How’s Hester bearing up?”

“She’s a terrific woman, Tom. How are you doing?”

Tolbathy grimaced. “As well as can be expected, I suppose. Max, about—what happened to Wouter. There’s no chance you might be wrong?”

“How am I supposed to answer that? Nobody’s infallible. All I can say is, if I’d thought there was a chance I could be wrong, I’d have kept my mouth shut in the first place. Believe me, Tom, I don’t go around yelling murder for the fun of it. You may be interested to know I’ve questioned the caterers about that guy who served the caviar wearing your Great Chain. They haven’t the faintest idea who he was and they haven’t seen him since he did his act. They assumed he must be your butler. Your wife tells me you don’t have one.”

“Of course we don’t. We live very simply, really. My mother had a butler, naturally, but we’ve just old Rollo, who prefers to think of himself as the caretaker. Rollo’s not a bad old curmudgeon, in his way. Wouter and he were always great pals. He’s going to be—where in blazes is that ambulance?”

“I don’t suppose it’s been ten minutes since they got the call,” Max reminded the importer.

So little time for so much to have happened. Max had experienced this queer stretching-out of time far too often before. Was Sarah back from the boarding house yet? What was she doing around the apartment? Missing him, he hoped.

“Tom? Hey, Tom! What the hell’s going on here? Where’s Wouter?”

That was Obed Ogham, barging into the coal tender. From the state of his trouser legs, he must have slogged back to the train through the snow instead of sticking to the shoveled path. There was an expression on his florid face that Max couldn’t interpret.

“Wouter’s forward in the cab,” Tom Tolbathy told Ogham quite truthfully. “Do you have any news about that ambulance, Obed?”

“They said they’d be right along. I put in the call myself.”

“Go give them another ring to ginger them up, will you, like a good fellow? How are things going at the house?”

“Not well at all.” Ogham sounded rather pleased to be the bringer of bad news. “People are reacting strangely to that fake train wreck Wouter pulled. You know, Tom, it wasn’t really funny. Abby Dork’s lost her bridgework down the loo, and Ed Ashbroom’s sick as a dog. His wife’s even sicker, but she’s making less fuss about it. You know Ed. Anyway, everyone’s complaining of bellyaches and burning sensations in their throats and fighting to get at the bathrooms. If you want the truth, I don’t feel any too—”

Ogham proved his case by dashing out of the tender and off the train. When Max and Tom got to him, he was doubled over, clutching at his stomach, retching into a snowbank.

Tom Tolbathy stared down at the unlovely spectacle, his own face the color of the snow. “Good God, what’s happening?”

“A combination of shock and too much to drink,” Max suggested. “You know how these things happen. One person gets hysterical and sets the rest off.”

Max was lying and he knew it. A less hysterical crew than this, he’d seldom run into. There’d been no panic after the train stopped, only a sprinkling of high-toned expletives and a few indignant, “Well, really’s.”