The Convivial Codfish (7 page)

M
AX WENT ON THROUGH
to the parlor car, having to pass Quent Durward, who’d posted himself as watchdog in the vestibule as instructed. “How’s Wouter?” Durward asked, perhaps because he actually recognized Max or perhaps because he just assumed anybody coming from the engine would know.

“As well as can be expected,” Max told him, and kept moving. They’d all know the truth soon enough. Right now, from his impression of the so recently elegant parlor car, he’d say each passenger had troubles enough of his own to contend with.

Those who weren’t still looking dazed and nursing their own or some friend’s injuries were making futile efforts to straighten out the general mess. Though the train’s usual furnishings were bolted to the floor, a number of extra chairs and occasional tables had been brought in for the passengers’ convenience. These of necessity were small, flimsy affairs and most of them had gone flying when the train stopped, carrying with them crystal, napkins, ashtrays, beaded handbags, gloves, fans, smelling bottles, lorgnettes, pince-nez, and monocles guests had been laying aside after they’d made their initial effects.

Among the debris was a shocking amount of broken glass. It was dangerous to have around, but apparently nothing could be done about it right now except to pick up the shards one by one. Such implements as brooms and dustpans, Hester Tolbathy had to keep explaining, were brought down from the house when the train had to be cleaned and taken back there afterward. She was begging everyone not to bother, but that only spurred them to greater efforts, as always happens when a hostess is most desperate for people to quit milling around and give her a chance to cope.

One dowager, though, took a dim view of risking her petticoats among the slivers. “Why aren’t the servants taking care of this?” she demanded.

“The servants? Oh, you mean the caterers,” said the much-tried Hester Tolbathy. “I suppose they feel it’s not their job, which it really isn’t. Besides, they must be having problems of their own. Heaven knows what’s happened to all that food they were getting ready to set out for the buffet. Could somebody please go and see? I don’t dare leave my patient.”

She was sitting on the floor with Mr. Twipp’s head in her lap, doling brandy into him from the end of a teaspoon. He looked worse than Wouter Tolbathy.

“I’ll go,” said Max. He’d have gone anyway. Being so much the youngest and nimblest, he was in the caboose before anybody else could get started. There, he found three women in the trim black and white uniforms he’d seen earlier. As he’d expected, they were trying to reassemble the makings for what must have been planned as a truly sumptuous Edwardian supper. When they saw him open the door, one of the women giggled, somewhat hysterically.

“You’d better not come in here. We’re picking your dinner off the floor. For Pete’s sake, don’t tell anybody I said that. Would you know if we’re supposed to go ahead and serve, or what?”

“I’d say or what,” Max told her. “It’s an awful mess out there. We’re headed back to our starting point, and should arrive any minute now. There are two serious injuries that I know of, I don’t know how many minor ones, and the dining car’s full of broken glass. What I expect Mrs. Tolbathy will want you to do is take whatever of the food is salvageable to the house and set up your buffet there, so the passengers can eat quickly and get along home. Nobody’s in a party mood any more.”

“What a shame,” said the woman who appeared to be in charge of the catering crew. “It started out as such an elegant affair. Pam and Angie and I were looking forward to serving the buffet. Mostly we get run-of-the-mill jobs like corporation luncheons and wedding receptions. What happened to the train, do you know?”

“Mr. Tolbathy thinks it may have been a deer on the track,” said Max. That was as good a prevarication as any. “By the way, where’s your boss? The man with the fancy corkscrew?”

The woman called Angie shrugged. “Marge was asking me that just before the train stopped. We thought he’d be back to see about the wines for dinner. He’s got nothing to do with us, though. He just breezed in here and started giving orders. Then he went off somewhere and we haven’t seen him since.”

“When did you first see him?”

“Not long after we got started. We were getting the tray ready to serve the caviar. We’d known that was supposed to be the opening number, as you might say. Mrs. Tolbathy—she’s a lovely woman, isn’t she—she’d explained to us already what she wanted done. She’d got the chopped onion and sieved egg yolk and all that ready, or I expect her cook had, and brought them down to the train in plastic containers, along with the can of caviar. She even brought a can opener, in case we didn’t have one with us. There was no reason why we couldn’t have gone ahead and served it ourselves.”

“But then this man with the big chain around his neck breezed in and said he’d take care of it,” said Pam.

“Did he tell you who he was?” Max asked her.

“Nope. We naturally assumed he must be the Tolbathys’ butler, so we stepped aside and let him do it.”

“What exactly did he do?”

“Nothing much, really. We’d set out the dishes that fit the epergne, as I said, and started filling them, so he told us to go ahead and finish that part. But when I reached for the caviar, to open the can, he stopped me. There’s this special glass dish, see, that had a place scooped out to fit it in the swan’s back. I thought Mrs. Tolbathy was taking an awful chance, myself, using that lovely epergne on a train ride. Did it get damaged?”

“I couldn’t say,” Max replied. “So anyway, what did this man say?”

“He said that wasn’t the way Mrs. Tolbathy wanted it done. He told me just to put the dish and the can and the opener on the tray. He’d carry it out himself and open the can at the serving table to prove the caviar was fresh. We’d never heard of such a thing before. Can you tell me what’s so classy about hauling out a can opener in front of company?”

“Sorry,” said Max. “I’m not much up on caviar, myself. Mrs. Tolbathy didn’t try to stop him when he did it and nobody else fainted or anything, so I suppose it was okay. But is that all this man did, just opened the caviar and vanished?”

“Well, he’d fussed about the champagne a little. We had it chilling in a tubful of snow and he sort of snorted at that. But Marge told him it was Mrs. Tolbathy’s idea—her tub, too, as a matter of fact—so he didn’t say any more.”

“He wasn’t with us more than a few minutes,” Marge amplified. “We assumed that if he was supposed to be the wine steward, he’d be concerned about how we were handling the dinner wines, but he never even looked at them. See, here they are. Luckily we had the white wines chilling in the tub when the train stopped, and Pam managed to grab most of the burgundy, thank God. Everything got shaken up, of course, but we couldn’t help that.”

“Our real tragedy was the turkey mousse,” said Angie. “It’s all over the walls and everything, and would you believe we can’t even find a sponge to wipe it up with? Somebody’ll have to come out here tomorrow with a scrubbing brush and a bucket of suds. And it had come out so beautifully, too. When I think of the hours we spent getting ready for this party, I could cry.”

“I’m sure nobody’s going to blame you ladies for what happened,” said Max.

“That’s not the point,” Marge told him. “We take pride in our work. It hurts to see everything we slaved to get perfect messed around like this. Besides,” she admitted, “we were hoping to make such a great impression that we’d be asked to do more parties for this crowd. Oh, well, that’s life, I guess. Would you please tell Mrs. Tolbathy we’re getting squared away here? We could be ready to start serving as soon as we get back to the house, if she can round up somebody to help us carry the food off the train.”

“I’ll be glad to. Thanks a lot.” It wasn’t Max’s place to thank them, he supposed, but a kind word never hurt. They did seem to be taking that turkey mousse dreadfully to heart.

The train was slowing down now. They must be coming up to the tiny station. Hester Tolbathy was looking a degree less frantic when Max brought her the relatively good news from the caboose.

“You’re quite right in telling them we’ll be serving up at the house. I wouldn’t dare offer food among all this broken glass, and one can’t send one’s guests away hungry. Though I must say, as far as I myself am concerned, I don’t even want to think about eating. I hadn’t realized train wrecks were so disturbing to the stomach.”

“Nor had I,” said a friend who’d been standing nearby, “since you’ve brought it up. Oh dear, I wish I hadn’t said that.”

The woman wadded her handkerchief over her mouth and dashed off toward the cloakroom. Hester Tolbathy began looking frantic again.

“I do hope Edith isn’t coming down with something. Perhaps it’s just the shock. Did he say how soon they could begin serving?”

“He who?” Max asked her. “There are just the three women out there.”

“But what happened to the man who’s in charge? The one who served the caviar so beautifully?”

“Hester, those caterers don’t even know who that man was. They thought he was your butler.”

“Whatever for? Who has a butler these days? We certainly don’t, just Rollo who does the yard, and we wouldn’t have him if he weren’t married to our cook. Rollo’s about eighty years old and smells like a goat. But if that man wearing the chain isn’t one of the caterers, who on earth is he? And what’s happened to him? Did you see him in the dining car, by any chance?”

“I haven’t seen him anywhere, not since his performance with the caviar. And you haven’t either. Right?”

Hester Tolbathy stared at Max for a moment, then shook her head. “No, I’m sure I haven’t. He got the caviar and champagne started, I remember, then went off. I suppose I assumed he’d gone back to the caboose to start organizing the buffet. It didn’t seem to matter. The caterers came well recommended and obviously knew their business, so I simply left them to it and concentrated on my guests. But how odd about that man with the chain. Whoever do you suppose he was?”

“I’ve been hoping you could tell me.”

“But I can’t. I’m quite positive I’d never seen him before, and I flatter myself I have a fairly good memory for faces. What a pity your Uncle Jem couldn’t have been here. He knows absolutely everybody, and he never mixes up the names and faces. Oh, we’re stopping. Thank heaven for that!”

T
HEY’D BEEN ON THE
train less than two hours altogether, but it felt like infinity. Nobody was standing on ceremony about getting off. Men were fetching wraps by the armload and parceling them out like handbills. A couple appointed themselves emergency conductors, got the doors open and the steps down. Max remembered he was supposed to be escorting Marcia Whet and looked around for her. She was, he saw, already bundled into her pelisse and boa, carrying her muff and the now absurd cartwheel hat in her hand. Obed Ogham was with her, astonishingly sober and silent for one who’d acted so drunk and boisterous a little while ago.

The pair of them stopped beside Hester Tolbathy. “Hester, isn’t there something we can do?” Marcia asked.

“Yes, go straight to the house and phone for the police ambulance. Obed, get hold of that bartender and take him along with you. Show him where to set up and start him serving drinks. Tell Jessie to make hot coffee and send Rollo down with the handcart we use for the cleaning supplies. The caterers can load it with some of their stuff and let him push it back. Tell Rollo to hurry. And for goodness’ sake, Marcia, tell that ambulance to hurry, too. I don’t like Mr. Wripp’s color one bit.”

“I never did,” said Ogham with a flash of his customary charm. “Don’t fret, Hester. Wripp will live to bury us all. Go ahead, Marcia. I’ll catch up with you. How’s the booze level up at the house, Hester? Should I take an armload of bottles from the bar here?”

“It wouldn’t hurt, I suppose, if they aren’t all smashed. Never mind about glasses. We have thousands. Oh, and tell the caterers they can get ready to move the food as soon as the cart comes. Thank you, Obed.”

A competent woman, Max thought. They’d need more than one ambulance, but she didn’t know that yet. He knew he ought to go up and talk to the police himself, but he wanted to stick with the train for a while longer. There were things that ought to be found out before the cars got messed around worse than they were already.

His most pressing curiosity, of course, was about that man who’d opened the caviar. If he wasn’t a caterer or an employee of the Tolbathys’, then who was he and where had he got to?

He could have jumped off when the train stopped back there in the woods, Max supposed. If that was the case there’d be plenty of footprints to follow, even though Tom Tolbathy claimed not to have noticed any. The snow was deep and unbroken everywhere, except along the plowed tracks. He could have walked the railroad ties, provided he was fast enough on his feet to outrun the train, but what would have been the point? They didn’t go anywhere except back here.

He might have got himself lifted off in a helicopter, or lassoed a tree limb and swung off Tarzan-fashion. The thought of that correct, spruce figure wearing the Great Chain of the Convivial Codfish as he hurtled through the treetops was perhaps a trifle outré. Max was inclined to rule out snowmobiles and dogsleds, too.

The train must have made at least one full circuit of the loop before that speedup and sudden stop. They’d been traveling at an easy pace but hardly a crawl. Max could check that out with Tom Tolbathy later. The point was, he supposed, that the bogus sommelier could have jumped off right here at the station. That way he wouldn’t have made noticeable tracks, but it meant he’d have been gone before Wouter was killed.

But what could possibly be the point in his coming aboard just to put on that elaborate show with the caviar? Furthermore, how could he have left a moving train without attracting notice?

Two of the three caterers had been in the dining car by the time the sommelier disappeared; one of them making canapés, the other passing them around. Where was the third? If she’d also left the caboose, the man might have opened the outer door and jumped off from there.