The Convivial Codfish (21 page)

Dork began scooting along the edge of the terrace, tidying away some wilted leaves on the foliage that surrounded it. That gave Max a chance to view the celebrated hangnail. It was rather a disappointment, he thought; merely a hangnail of the second or third magnitude. Not, as Dictionary Johnson might have said, a hangnail to
invite
a man to. Perhaps nobody but Jem would have thought it worth noticing, yet much might hang on that hangnail. Max caught himself staring at Dork’s left forefinger with such intensity that its owner noticed and scowled at the hangnail himself.

“The mark of honest toil,” Dork half-apologized.

“And well earned, I’m sure,” Max replied courteously. “Jem tells me you’re quite a gardener. Things pretty brisk around the potting bench these days?”

“No, not really. It’s too late for some things, too early for others. We generally give ourselves a rest over the holidays.”

Max picked up on the
we.
“How’s Mrs. Dork? I wasn’t able to get any report on her at the hospital.”

“Oh, were you there? Dorothy’s beginning to rally, they tell me, though she was much sicker than I last night.”

“It’s curious that so many of the wives got sicker than their husbands,” Max observed. “Are women more susceptible to colchicine poisoning than men, I wonder? Or are they more susceptible to caviar?”

“The latter, I suspect. Women tend to go in more for fancy foods, don’t you think? I’d as soon have a paper of fish and chips on a bench by the tracks, outside some quiet little country station with the bees buzzing among the scabiosa and the ranunculus, myself.”

Max was not about to let Dork go wandering off among the scabiosa, nor yet the ranunculus. “Then you didn’t eat much of the caviar yourself?” he asked.

“I didn’t get much of it to eat. That ass Obed Ogham kept waving the waitress away.”

“Couldn’t you have waved her back?”

“Not without creating a scene. You don’t know Obed very well, I assume.”

“I didn’t know any of you until last night,” Max reminded Dork. “Besides, I gather I’m a member of the opposition, as far as Ogham’s concerned. But you were with him from the time the caviar was served until the train stopped?”

“Well no, not all the time. That is to say, I clustered around with the rest of the party while that gussied-up waiter went through his routine of fetching in the caviar. Hester expects us to, you know. Or perhaps you hadn’t known, but you must have caught on. It’s always a big thing with her. Anyway, I was with my wife then. I got Dorothy a glass of champagne when he started pouring it out, then went over to the bartender to get myself a Scotch and soda. By then Dorothy was chatting with some of her women friends, so I sauntered over and got into a huddle with Ed Ashbroom and Bill Billingsgate.”

“What about Durward? Wasn’t he with you, too?”

“Quent? He may have been. I can’t recall offhand.”

“He claims he was.”

“Then I suppose he was, or thought he was, which would amount to more or less the same thing with Quent.”

“But surely you’d have noticed if he’d taken some part in the conversation?”

“No doubt, but he wouldn’t have, you see. We were talking about delphiniums, and Quent can’t tell one flower from another. No, that’s hardly a fair statement. He’d know a rose, I’m sure, or a lily of the valley because of their distinctive fragrance. And perhaps a violet—”

“He’d be content just to stand there and listen to the rest of you talk about something he didn’t know anything about?”

“Oh yes, just so he could hear our voices, you know. Quent’s a dear chap. Anyway, Obed barged along with one of his stories, and when Obed’s in full spate nobody else can get a word in anyway.”

“Did Ogham talk about gardening, too?”

“Perish the thought. Obed doesn’t garden, and professes scorn for those who do. Sports are his big thing. He was a substitute tackle on the Dartmouth varsity his senior year. Before your time, I expect.”

“A man’s man, is he?”

“You might call him that. Jem calls him other things.”

“What things, Gwampa?”

Imogene, weary of disporting herself among the hellebore where nobody was paying any attention to her, had come back to swing on the arm of the wheelchair.

“What what?” Dork smiled down at the child a good deal more indulgently than Max would have done. “Quit joggling the chair, Immy. You’ll make your old grandpa seasick. Why don’t you run and ask Mommy if it’s time for my medicine? Shall she get something for you, Max? Tea? Whiskey?”

“No thanks. I ought to be getting along. I don’t want to wear you out.”

Max also wanted to catch the latest news on his car radio and find out what was happening at the hospital. Still he paused. “One thing before I go. Would you happen to grow any meadow saffron here?”

“Meadow saffron? Oh, colchicum. Autumn crocus. No, we don’t grow it. Can’t say I care for colchicum, myself. Rather a nambypamby plant, I’ve always thought. Wouldn’t make much of a show in a station garden. Well, Max, nice of you to have dropped in. Come again when I’m feeling better. Bring that old reprobate Jem. Give him my best and tell him to behave himself. He’ll have to, eh, with a broken hip? That will be a dreadful blow to the old wolfhound. Show Mr. Bittersohn out, Immy.”

Immy was glad to oblige. When they got to the front door, she stuck out her tongue in fond farewell. Max growled, “Watch it, Ducky,” and got into his car with an agreeable feeling of something attempted, something done; even though a night’s repose was still some hours and many miles away.

He’d been afraid he’d be too late for the news broadcast. However, he still had to listen through several commercials for used cars, Oriental rug merchants, and cough syrups doctors recommended most before he found out there had been no more deaths and another batch of patients was being sent home. The announcer sounded somewhat peeved about it.

She did come up with one interesting scrap of information, though. The late Edith Ashbroom, it turned out, had suffered from gout and had, in fact, been taking a medication containing colchicine. Since colchicine is excreted slowly and converts in the body to oxydicolchicine (the announcer had trouble with that one), which can cause cell destruction in large doses, it was theorized that the colchicine in the caviar had mingled with that tongue twister already in her system and accounted for her having died while other victims were recovering.

Max wondered if some die-hard anti-Communist was having an ideological struggle over having to be grateful to that mythical Russian who’d allegedly poisoned the caviar and provided him (or her, unlikely as it might seem) with a beautiful cover for a possibly otherwise rather obvious murder. He also wondered how many people beside himself were wondering who knew Mrs. Ashbroom took colchicine, and who might have decided to give her a little more and see what happened.

He’d had Ashbroom next on his agenda anyway. He might as well go ahead with the visit. All he had to do when he got there was refuse anything to eat or drink, and watch out for karate chops.

M
AX PASSED THROUGH THE
intersection, where the catering shop appeared to be doing a booming business, and on up the hill to the big house with all the windows. Its many blinds were drawn now, and a man was up on a ladder, taking down some holiday decorations. He gave Max a surly glance but didn’t say anything. Max watched him climb down and move his ladder on to the next wreath, then went up to the door.

It had a knocker, an enormous, highly polished brass one in the form of an abundantly fleeced sheep. That would be on account of the wool that had founded the Ashbroom’s joint fortune, no doubt. Max thumped the sheep a few times but nobody came, so he tried the doorbell.

This, after a while, brought results. A middle-aged woman in baggy corduroys and a filthy blue sweatshirt with “Scrumptious” printed across the bosom snatched open the door, leaned out, and yelled, “Quit lollygaggin’ and get them wreaths down,” to the man on the ladder. That done, she deigned to ask Max, “What do you want?”

“I want to see Mr. Ashbroom,” he told her.

“You can’t. He’s asleep.”

“I have a personal message for him.”

“You don’t say. A spiritualist told me the same thing once. It was supposed to be from my dear departed Uncle Elmer. I knew it was a fake because he didn’t ask for a loan.”

The woman buttoned her lips together and stood glowering at Max until he began to wonder if he ought to touch her for a few dollars to prove his bona fides. Then it occurred to him to try giving her some, instead.

“Put it against Uncle Elmer’s outstanding account,” he suggested, handing over a ten. “Going to let me in?”

She gave the note a careful going-over before she folded it and slid it into her pants pocket. “You from the papers?”

“No.”

“Teevee?”

“No.”

“Too bad. I wouldn’t o’ minded gettin’ my pitcher on the news. Who are you, then?”

“Jeremy Kelling’s nephew. By marriage.”

“Why the hell didn’t you say so in the first place? Keepin’ a person standin’ here in the cold freezin’ her butt off. Come in an’ park it someplace. Egbert sent you?”

“Egbert has his hands full right now,” Max hedged. “Did you know his boss is in the hospital?”

“No, but I ain’t surprised. I figured it’d catch up with him sooner or later. What was it, hobnail liver or a mean-tempered woman?”

“A broken hip. He fell downstairs.”

“Whose stairs?”

“His own.”

“Huh, that’s one I never expected. Stay here an’ don’t pinch nothin’. I’ll go see if His Majesty’s awake yet.”

“How long has Mr. Ashbroom been home?”

“Too damn long, in my opinion. Frank went an’ got him when they called up from the hospital early this mornin’, wouldn’t you know? We was figurin’ on a nice quiet day an’ maybe a double funeral to look forward to. He was bitchin’ when he come into the house, an’ he’s been bitchin’ ever since.”

“I thought you said he’s been asleep.”

“He can bitch in ’is sleep, same as when he’s awake. He’s got a natural gift for it.”

“How do you know? Have you been listening to him?”

“Me? I got better things to do. I ain’t supposed to be answerin’ the door, neither. I only done it out o’ the goodness o’ my heart.”

“It was kind of you to take the trouble.”

She agreed that it was and went off somewhere, leaving Max in sole possession of the huge drawing room where she’d parked him. It was a disappointment after the impressive exterior. Perhaps because the marriage of its owners had been merely a business proposition, the place gave no impression of harmony or comfort. Even that woman servant, as Max assumed she must be, was an incongruity although an enjoyable one. Max hoped she’d come back as chatty as she went.

However, she didn’t come back at all. A grand lady in black manifested herself instead.

“Will you follow me, please?” she murmured in a chilly monotone.

Max obeyed, not trying to ask questions to which he knew he’d get no answers. She led him up a depressing staircase hung with tapestries only a moth could love, to a bedroom that would have made a great setting for a game of Dungeons and Dragons.

The lord of this house of misrule lay propped up on a great many pillows against a rosewood headboard eight feet high and covered with knobs. He’d been sipping something from a tall glass. It smelled like the eggnog Sarah had sent Jem. If the man could drink brandy after having had his stomach pumped out, he couldn’t have got that serious a dose of poison, or else he had a remarkably tough gut.

“Come in,” said Ashbroom, handing the empty glass to the woman in black. “That will be all, Sawyer, unless you’d like something, Bittersohn?”

“No thanks, I wasn’t intending to stay long. How are you feeling?”

“How would anyone in my position feel? The shock of losing one’s wife—”

“Yes, I can imagine.”

If Ashbroom was in shock, Max Bittersohn was Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun. He offered a few conventional words of condolence, wondering if congratulations wouldn’t be more in order, then said, “Jem asked me to stop by and extend his sympathy, since he can’t come himself. He hopes you’re feeling as well as can be expected under the circumstances.”

“It was kind of Jem to think of me.”

It would also have been kind of Ashbroom to ask after Jem, but he was too full of his own woes. “This is a dreadful situation, coming out of the hospital after having escaped a horrible death by who knows how narrow a margin; only to be faced with having to bury your wife and file suit against your oldest and dearest friend.”

“You’re suing Tom Tolbathy?”

“Of course. Isn’t everyone? I must say I believe I have the strongest case so far, however. You wouldn’t happen to know whether any of the other victims has lost a spouse within the past couple of hours? I didn’t catch the two o’clock news.”

“You were too prostrated with grief to listen, I assume.”

“Oh yes, totally prostrated.”

“How long does your lawyer advise you to remain prostrated?”

“He thinks I should make a brave effort to attend my wife’s funeral. Wednesday at ten o’clock, Saint Beowulf’s. I trust Jem understands it’s his duty to be there, too. He’ll have to hire an ambulance to bring him out here, I suppose. That should cost him a pretty penny. Perhaps you’d be good enough to remind him his expenses won’t be chargeable to the Comrades’ treasury.”

“Won’t they? Who’s your treasurer?”

“I am. You might also remind him that he’s required to wear the Great Chain.”

“I thought the regalia wasn’t displayed in public.”

“The funeral will not be public. I’m entitled to get my share of use out of the Great Chain, and I must insist on that right. I owe it to the memory of my departed spouse,” Ashbroom added with a brave effort to choke back his emotion.

“But what if the Great Chair hasn’t shown up by then?”

“Then Jeremy Kelling forfeits his office as Exalted Chowderhead and a special election is called. Jem will take it hard, I expect. I feel for him, but we have to abide by the rules. The Great Chain is Jem’s personal responsibility during his entire term of office, as he was well aware when he accepted the honor.”