The Convivial Codfish (3 page)

“No doubt. Let’s go, then.”

Max put on his coat and set out with Egbert over the Hill from Tulip Street to Pinckney. “Who else is going on this train ride? The rest of the Codfish crowd?”

“Some of them, at any rate. I know Mr. Wripp will be there. He was recently operated on for cataracts, and Mrs. Tolbathy thought the outing would do him good. She’s a very kindhearted lady.”

“That’s nice. What office does Wripp hold?”

“Mr. Wripp is a Formerly Grand Exalted Chowderhead. Being now ninety-six years of age, he appears content to rest on past laurels. Oh, yes, and Mr. Jem was saying Mr. Ogham was also invited. So maybe it’s just as well Mr. Jem won’t be able to go, after all.”

“Why? Don’t Jem and this Ogham get along?”

“None of the Kelling family care much for Mr. Ogham, Mr. Max. He’s the one who sued Mr. Percy Kelling for two dollars and forty-three cents he claimed he’d been overcharged. This was after Mr. Percy’s accounting firm had managed to get back one and a half million dollars Mr. Ogham’s second vice-president had embezzled.”

“Oh, that’s the guy. Dolph was telling me about it. Ogham’s one of the few things I’ve ever heard him and Jem agree on, come to think of it. How come Jem’s still in the same club with him?”

“There have always been Kellings and Oghams among the Comrades of the Convivial Codfish. Neither of them wants to cede his ancestral right to the other. Noblesse oblige, you might say.”

Max supposed you might, though he couldn’t think why. “But don’t the Tolbathys know Jem and Ogham are feuding?”

“It’s only Mr. Ogham who feuds, Mr. Max. Mr. Jem maintains a haughty silence. Or so he says.”

The notion of Jem’s maintaining a haughty silence under any circumstances was a hard one to swallow, but Max didn’t say so. He liked Egbert, and he could see Jem’s accident had been a serious blow to that errant knight’s long-suffering squire.

“Furthermore,” Egbert was going on, “Mr. Ogham’s related to Mrs. Tolbathy. Comrade Whet is, too, but he won’t be there. He’s in Nairobi on business. Mr. Jem was intending to escort Mrs. Whet.”

“Mrs. Whet’s a good-looking woman, well dressed, a bit on the hefty side but not fat, right? Enjoys a good time, holds her liquor like a lady, and knows when to go home to Papa.”

“You know Mrs. Whet, Mr. Max?”

“No, but I know Jem. So the party’s just a bunch of friends and relatives?”

“Pretty much, I believe. It won’t be a large group. I don’t suppose the train would accommodate more than thirty or forty in any kind of comfort. It’s not like a regular train, you know, and there’s just the two cars. They’ll need the caboose for the catering and so forth, I should think.”

“Rather an elaborate bash to lay on for so small a crowd, isn’t it?”

“Well, the biggest expense would be the train,” Egbert pointed out, “and they’ve already got that.”

“True enough. Here’s the old homestead. I’ll come in with you.”

“Thanks, Mr. Max, but you mustn’t feel obliged.”

“I’d like to, if you don’t mind. I want to see the place where Jem fell.”

“Just a moment, then. My key must be—ah, here we are. The staircase is just inside the door, as you see, and Mr. Jem was right here at the foot, lying up against the newel post. He said he bounced against every single stair as he slid down. That must be how he broke his hip.”

Max took a look at the thick oaken stairway and the marble floor, and grunted. “Damn good thing he landed on his backside instead of his head. Who uses this stairway, as a rule?”

“Nobody, unless the elevator gets stuck. I used to, but I must say I don’t relish that kind of exercise at my time of life, unless I’m forced into it.”

“Did Jem tell you how he happened to head for the stairs? Did he try the elevator first?”

“He told me the power went off just before he got the phone call from Fuzzleys’. He noticed because he’d been listening to the radio and thought it had suddenly gone on the blink, but then he realized that electric clock Mrs. Appie gave him so he wouldn’t always be late for appointments had stopped, too. That meant the elevator wouldn’t be working, either, so he didn’t even try pushing the button but just headed for the stairs. It was just tough luck, I suppose, him being in a hurry and not watching where he stepped. And being in such a dither about losing the Codfish.”

In the meager overhead light, Egbert looked like an elderly beagle, grown gray around the muzzle, perplexed by the vicissitudes he no longer had any particular urge to cope with. “You know, Mr. Max, my poor old mother used to say bad luck came in threes. Do you think we can count having to miss the Tolbathys’ party as Mr. Jem’s third?”

“I’m not sure we ought to count any of this as bad luck,” Bittersohn answered. “What happened to the clothes Jem was wearing when he fell? Are they still at the hospital?”

“No, they’re upstairs, as a matter of fact. I thought I’d better bring them back with me so he wouldn’t get any notions about trying to leave before the doctor says he can. It seemed silly to lug them all the way to Tulip Street and back, so I dropped them off here on my way to your place. I thought I’d look them over before I went to bed. It’ll give me something to do.”

“Let’s have a look at them together.”

The tiny elevator was sitting in the foyer, both its safety doors meticulously fastened. Word of Jem’s fall must have got around among the tenants. Since neither of them was portly, Max and Egbert managed to fit themselves in at the same time and ride up to the second floor. At the flat, Egbert showed Max where Jem’s clothes lay, and Max, to his astonishment, took out a magnifying glass to examine the trousers. It took only a moment to find what he was looking for.

“Aha! See that, Egbert?”

“A grease spot on the seat of his pants?” Egbert was horrified. “Mr. Max, you don’t think I’d have let Mr. Jem go out looking like that? I sponged and pressed those pants only this morning.”

Max nodded. “Hand me the shoes, will you?”

There it was, a wide, dark, greasy smudge clear across the left sole. The sole of the right shoe was clean and dry. Egbert gasped. Max didn’t even look surprised.

“That’s it, Egbert. Got a flashlight?”

“Oh yes, right here. I always leave one in Mr. Jem’s nightstand, just in case.”

“Come on, then. I’m curious to see which stair got buttered.”

I
T WAS THE THIRD
step from the landing, and it was Egbert who spotted the brownish glob under the tread.

“Would this be what you’re looking for, Mr. Max?”

Bittersohn rubbed a little of the slippery paste between his thumb and finger, then sniffed. “It sure as hell would. Bowling alley wax, I’d say offhand. Take a look at this varnish on the step. Wouldn’t you say some kind of solvent has been used here recently? To clean off what was left of the wax, we can presume. Would that have been the janitor?”

Egbert snorted. “Not unless he’s got religion all of a sudden. He sweeps the hallway and stairs once a week, and that’s it. Otherwise, he comes around the back way every morning about half-past eight to pick up the trash we put out, and we don’t see hide nor hair of him till the next day. My guess is that whoever smeared this wax on the stairs came back after we’d got Mr. Jem out, and cleaned it off. Only he didn’t do a thorough job because he was in a hurry. Or she was. Floor wax is the sort of trick a woman would think of, I daresay. But who’d do a thing like that to Mr. Jem?”

“Good question,” said Max. “What do you say we go call on the neighbors?”

The third floor was occupied by an elderly widow, her maid, and her cook. The widow was out playing bridge, with the maid in attendance. The cook was delighted to have company.

“Herself took Mary along because she doesn’t like riding in taxis alone at night, so I’m all on my own,” she explained. “Could I give you a cup of tea in the kitchen, now? It’s dull here by myself.”

Before Egbert could utter a scandalized refusal, Max was seated at the table. “This is really kind of you, ma’am. I see your electric clock’s right on the dot,” he added in a by-the-way tone, checking his own wristwatch against it.

“Has to be,” the cook told him. “Herself expects her meals served prompt to the second.”

“Haven’t had to reset it lately, have you?”

“Why would I do that, now? I never touch that clock, except maybe to give it a wipe with the duster when the spirit moves me.”

Cook knew who the two men were, or assumed she did, and was more than ready to chat about whatever they wanted to hear. It soon became clear, though, that she hadn’t much to tell. The couple on the fourth floor had gone off to Palm Beach with the rest of the bigwigs and weren’t expected back until after Easter. She personally hadn’t known a thing about poor Mr. Kelling’s fall on the stairs until Mary had come running in to tell her there was an ambulance down there taking him away to the hospital and him swearing something awful, not that you could blame the poor man.

“And herself wanting tea on the dot of five as usual, and me in the midst of boning a chicken and I couldn’t even go to see them carrying him off,” Cook lamented.

Herself considered Mr. Kelling to have been struck down by a Mighty Hand, and it a judgment upon him for his riotous and ungodly ways. Cook and Mary, however, thought Mr. Kelling was a lovely man, always so friendly and kind-spoken when he happened to meet one of them, which wasn’t often because herself was a lady of the old school and believed in servants using the back stairs.

This very night, mind you, Mary had been made to go out through the alley and walk clear around the block to meet the taxi at the curb, while herself went down in the elevator. Mary would most likely get to use the front stairs when they got back, though, it being late by then and good maids hard to come by.

“Does your employer ever climb the stairs?” Max asked.

“Herself? Not so’s you’d notice it. If the elevator gets stuck, it’s me or Mary that has to go find it and send it up to her. Could I cut you another sliver of cake, maybe?”

“Thanks, but I’m afraid we ought to be going. Egbert has to get some things ready for my wife to take to Mr. Kelling tomorrow morning.”

“Would he fancy a piece of my cake, do you think?”

“Only if you baked a bottle of Old Granddad in the middle of it,” said Egbert, and they parted on a merry note.

As they went downstairs, Egbert asked, “What is it you want me to pack for Mrs. Sarah?”

“Nothing, actually,” Max told him. “I just thought we’d better get out of there before herself showed up and we had to sneak down the back stairs. What I really want from you is a picture of that Codfish thing. Jem said he’d show me one. Would you know where to get hold of it?”

“Easiest thing in the world, Mr. Max. Mr. Jem has a whole scrapbook, right from the time he first joined the Comrades of the Convivial Codfish. It’s one of his dearest possessions, next to the feather from Ann Corio’s dove and the tassel off Sally Keith’s—er—costume.”

“Trust Jem to keep his priorities straight. Where’s the scrapbook?”

New Englanders are notorious for their addiction to photograph albums. Egbert was only too pleased to display Jem’s treasure, and Max showed a gratifying interest. After studying the photographs, he detached two of them: a recent picture of the entire group and a close-up of Jem with the Great Chain adorning his well-padded front.

“I’ll take these along with me.”

Egbert was alarmed. “Mr. Max, if anything should happen to those photos, Mr. Jem would have a stroke.”

“I’ll guard them with my life. Where’s his invitation to the Tolbathys’ party?”

“It’s a ticket. Mr. Tolbathy had them printed up special. Can’t ride the train without a ticket, you know. Just a second.”

Egbert went and got the strip of cardboard off Jem’s dresser. “Is it a clue, do you think?”

“Who knows? At any rate, Jem won’t be using it. Why let it go to waste? Sleep tight, Egbert. And stay off those stairs. One broken hip in the family is plenty.”

In fact it was more than plenty, as Sarah and Max found out the next morning when they went to call on their fallen relative. Max really didn’t have the time to spare for hospital visits, but he entertained a reasonable skepticism about accidents caused by wax on stairways, power outages that occurred in second-floor flats and not on the floor above, and urgent telephone calls prompting the consequent victim to rush out and do what he would not otherwise have done.

They found Jem propped up in bed, howling for brandy and being told by an exasperated nurse to suck the alcohol off the thermometer. Sarah noticed the nurse was keeping well out of pinching range. She herself approached the bed boldly. Nipping nieces, however temptingly they might be constructed, was not Jeremy Kelling’s idea of fun.

“Shut up, you old satyr,” she told him affectionately. “I’ve brought you an eggnog, which is more than you deserve. Did you eat your breakfast?”

“Faugh! Barging in here and poking porridge at me in the middle of the night. Of course I didn’t eat it. Think I’m going to truckle to petticoat despotism at my time of life? What are you two doing here at this ungodly hour?”

“It’s half-past ten and Max wants to detect you.”

“Oh, about time. Where the hell’s my Codfish?”

Jem snarled venomously at a small plastic gnome some would-be bringer of light had stuck on his bed table, and swigged his eggnog. Somewhat pacified, he allowed Max to grill him about the alleged accident on the stairs.

About the events leading up to it, his account was identical to Egbert’s. He seemed not to realize he’d skidded on wax, though. All he knew was that his feet had flown out from under him and he’d landed at the bottom with a busted backside. There was no way he could blame Max Bittersohn for what happened, but it was obvious he’d have liked to.

Max refused to be intimidated. “Now about those false whiskers. Did you mention to anybody other than Egbert that you were getting them from Fuzzleys’?”

“Where the hell else would I get them? Answer me that.”

“Jack’s Joke Shop?”

“Blah! I wanted whiskers with class and dignity, not a goddamn Groucho Marx mustache with a false nose hitched on to it. You don’t get class and dignity at Jack’s. You get plastic vomit and whoopee cushions. Not that I haven’t thrown a fair amount of business their way over the years, mind you, and not that I haven’t found their products entirely satisfactory for the purposes to which they were put.”