Grab Bag Page 5

  That was true enough, anyway. Carter-Harrison was too subject to sudden fits of cerebration to be allowed behind a wheel, but I didn’t explain that bit. I was enjoying the smug look on Aunt Aggie’s face. Lily Ann was impressed. Abner was interested. Ed and Fred said they had to go and practice.

  “Practice what?” snapped their mother.

  “Pistol shootin’. Volunteer police. You shoot, James?”

  James said no, but he wouldn’t mind trying. Lily Ann said if there was any shooting she was going home and hide under the chesterfield because guns scared her silly.

  “Let’s not even talk about horrid old guns. Let’s go look at the balloon again.”

  So we all trooped out to look at the balloon, Ed and Fred strapping on their holsters in a what-the-heck sort of way as we went. As we stood goggling at James’s latest miracle of science, Abner Glutch expressed the opinion that it struck him as a mighty bothersome sort of way to hang out a few duds. Furthermore, he didn’t see why all that foolishness about letting out the helium was necessary. Why couldn’t they just pull it down?

  “They did,” Aunt Aggie told him. “Ed an’ Fred got on one rope an’ Willie an’ James on the other—”

  “Huh! Seems to me a man with a little beef to his bones could do it single-handed.”

  “I’ll bet Abner could,” cried Lily Ann.

  “He’s welcome to try,” snarled Carter-Harrison.

  “Yep,” said Ed and Fred in unison.

  So Abner took off his jacket, revealing a pair of lavender suspenders with baby-blue forget-me-nots on them, no doubt a gift from Lily Ann, and hauled. By George, he was a powerful cuss at that. In no time flat, he had Uncle Hector’s pantlegs dragging on the ground. Lily Ann applauded vociferously, then halted in mid-clap.

  “Spotty, you bad boy! What are you—”

  She got no farther. A shot rang out. Abner Glutch sprawled on the ground. Uncle Hector’s dress suit, released from his lifeless grasp, soared again skyward.

  As doctors, Carter-Harrison and I dropped at once to our knees beside the fallen man. Diagnosis was no problem. There’s something all too obvious about a bullet through the back of the head.

  “We’ll have to call the police, Aunt Aggie,” said Carter-Harrison.

  “We’re the police,” said Ed, or Fred.

  “Sort of, anyways,” said Fred, or Ed.

  “Yes, well.” Carter-Harrison groped for words to explain tactfully that it wasn’t the done thing for suspects to arrest each other. Before he’d succeeded, Lily Ann screamed and fell into a swoon beside her dead bridegroom.

  Aunt Aggie took over. “Pick ’er up, Fred. Bring ’er in the house. Step lively. Ed, you call the state troopers. Some dern fool hunter takin’ a pot shot at that balloon to be cute, I’ll be bound.”

  If I were a mother who had two sons with revolvers strapped to their waists and a grudge against the man who’d married the object of their combined affections, I might have said the same thing. But why would the hunter have waited till the balloon was on the ground with a group of people clustered around it before he shot?

  I was cursing myself for not having made Ed and Fred drop their guns before they took off when I noticed Spotty. Be cussed and be darned if that goat hadn’t rolled his oil drum up against the house, directly under the cleat from which Abner hadn’t bothered to cast off the guy ropes. He was up on top of it with his fore hooves braced against the clapboards and his neck stretched out like a camel’s, yanking down lengths of that new manila line and gobbling them as if they’d been spaghetti.

  “Hey,” I yelled, but too late. The balloon was free, traveling low and fast over the treetops on an offshore breeze, carrying with it the clothes reel and Uncle Hector’s dress suit. Carter-Harrison leaped to his feet.

  “Williams, got your car keys?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “No buts. Come on.”

  “The police will think we’re running away,” I protested as he hustled me into the Chevy.

  He didn’t bother to answer, just licked his finger and held it out the car window to see how the wind was blowing. “South-southeast by a half east. She can’t be making more than three knots. Full speed ahead to the harbor.”

  “But if it’s blowing out to sea—”

  “Step on it.”

  I could see why he wanted me out of the way. I’d seen gunshot wounds enough during my internship in the emergency room. Abner had been shot from only a short distance, obviously by either Ed or Fred. It didn’t matter which. The twins would ditch both their guns before the state troopers arrived, get hold of two others—it wouldn’t be hard in hunting country—and swear those were the ones they’d been carrying. Aunt Aggie would back them up. Lily Ann wouldn’t know the difference. The bullet would never be traced. Aunt Aggie’s yarn of somebody taking a wild pot shot at the balloon would hold. I was abetting a murder.

  I knew it, and I kept going. I gunned that old can for all she was worth, praying the tires wouldn’t pop or the engine fall out. We hurtled over rock and sand, through potholes and ditches, finally made it over the rise, and spied the balloon.

  “Thar she blows!” cried Carter-Harrison. “Faster, Williams.”

  There was nothing ahead of us but a sharp slope and a lot of water. I whizzed downhill with my foot on the gas and my heart in my brakes, skidded out onto a wooden dock, and managed somehow to stop two feet from the end. Dead ahead of us, Uncle Hector’s clawhammer coat was skimming the wavetops. Beside us, a lone lobsterman was standing in his boat with his mouth wide open and his eyes bulging. Again, Carter-Harrison grabbed my arm and hurled me aboard.

  “Follow that clothes reel,” he barked.

  The lobsterman stared at Carter-Harrison, at the balloon, and at the twenty-dollar bill which I, with a flash of psychological insight, was waving under his nose. I added a second twenty. He nodded once, and cast off.

  Out we pounded, into the chop. The clothes reel skipped along in front of us. Sometimes it was almost within our reach, then a ruffle of wind would send it skimming on ahead.

  “Great-uncle Hector always was an exasperating old devil,” muttered Carter-Harrison.

  “I think I’m getting seasick,” I said.

  “Comin’ on to blow,” said the lobsterman.

  With that, Carter-Harrison grabbed a boathook, poised it like a harpoon, and let fly. There came a giant pop, then a tangle of canvas and clothesline lay sprawled on the water.

  “Oh, jolly good shot,” I yelled.

  “She’s goin’ down,” grunted the lobsterman.

  “Pole’s too well ballasted,” groaned Carter-Harrison. Waiting not to repine, he tore off his wind-breaker, kicked off his boots, and dived. Seconds later, his hand popped up among the wreckage, waving Uncle Hector’s clawhammer coat like a soggy banner.

  “Catch, Williams,” he shouted. “I’m going down for the pants.”

  I retrieved the coat, laid it over a lobster trap, and stood by to help him aboard. As he reappeared, dripping and triumphant, I held out my hands.

  “Take these first,” he spluttered.

  I grabbed the pinstriped bundle, tossed it behind me on the floorboards, and hauled him over the gunwale. “Got a blanket or something?” I asked the lobsterman.

  He didn’t speak or move, just stood there gaping down at Uncle Hector’s trousers.

  “Great balls of fire, they’re alive!” Carter-Harrison bent and snatched up the writhing garment. Out of the left leg slithered a six-pound haddock.

  “Don’t s’pose you’d care to set ’em again?” suggested the lobsterman.

  “No,” said Carter-Harrison through chattering teeth. “I think we’ve caught what we’re after.”

  He shook the pants again. Out of the hip pocket dropped a gun, one like Ed’s or Fred’s. But it wasn’t Ed’s or Fred’s. On the butt were carved in fancy letters the initials C.H.

  “C.H.,” I gasped. “Not—not Carter—”

  “No, not Carter. Claude. Claude
Harrison.”

  “You don’t mean Lily Ann—”

  “Oh yes.” Carter-Harrison had got his wind-breaker around him now, and taken a medicinal snort out of a flat bottle the lobsterman produced from behind the bait tub. “It was obvious from the start. Lily Ann, as you must have noticed, is a remarkably attractive woman. I asked myself what somebody like her could see in an oaf like Claude.”

  “You asked Ed and Fred, too,” I reminded him.

  “So I did. They didn’t know, either. Therefore, there could be only one reasonable answer.”

  “Fifty acres of prime seaweed,” I cried.

  “Precisely. Claude then died under circumstances which would have been considered mysterious if Claude hadn’t been such a clumsy lout and Lily Ann such a persuasive weeper. The widow was free to reopen negotiations with Abner Glutch, which she now believes herself, no doubt, to have concluded satisfactorily. She probably didn’t intend quite such a brief honeymoon, but the chance came up and she took it. We needn’t waste any blame on ourselves for providing the opportunity, Williams. If the fortuitous combination of the clothes rack, the balloon, and Great-uncle Hector’s dress suit hadn’t provided her with a way to get rid of the murder weapon, she’d have thought of something else.

  “I don’t doubt it,” I agreed. “Lily Ann must be a pretty darn smart operator, to have hauled out that gun and shot Abner, then ditch it in the old man’s suit and kick the oil drum over to where the goat could reach the ropes, all without anybody’s noticing.

  “I expect she already had the gun in her hand,” said Carter-Harrison. “I noticed she had her hands tucked up inside the sleeves of that loose, fluffy coat she was wearing when we went outside. It’s a natural thing for a woman to do on a chilly day, so why should anyone have thought anything of it? Then she yelled at the goat, and we all automatically turned our heads to look at him. That gave her a chance to shoot Abner. Of course he became the center of interest while she did her other little chores and pulled a faint so we wouldn’t find her lacking in proper wifely concern. Well, we’d better get back to the house before she marries Ed or Fred.”

  I shook my head. “It won’t be Ed or Fred. If you ask me, Lily Ann’s looking forward to marrying a rich and famous doctor from Boston. Maybe I laid it on a bit too thick.”

  “Good God!” Carter-Harrison picked up the haddock, wrapped it thoughtfully in Uncle Hector’s coat, laid it back with the pants, and took another swig from the lobsterman’s bottle. “Well,” he sighed, “some day perhaps I’ll meet a woman who loves me for myself alone.”

  He was moody all the way home, sitting there with the haddock, the pistol, and Uncle Hector’s suit in his lap. When we got there, Aunt Aggie was still doctoring Lily Ann for hysterics while the state troopers stood around looking helpless. When we showed them the revolver that had come out of Uncle Hector’s hip pocket and explained the modus operandi by which we believed it to have got there, though, Lily Ann recovered fast and demanded to be allowed to call her lawyer. They said she could do it from the station. She began to cry again, but it didn’t seem to be helping her much. State troopers are smarter than men like Claude and Abner Glutch.

  As they departed, Aunt Aggie faced her nephew, tight-lipped. “Well, James, you’ve really done it this time.”

  “But Aunt Aggie,” he protested, “what else could I do? That woman would have wiped out half of Beagleport and never batted an eyelash, if somebody hadn’t stopped her.”

  “I ain’t sayin’ you was wrong. I’m just remindin’ you of how Claude’s father’s will was wrote. When he died, the farm went to Claude. When Claude died, it went to Lily Ann. But a murderer ain’t allowed to profit from ’er crime, which means Lily Ann never inherited at all. An’ that means it comes back to us. An’ that means the whole shebang, includin’ that goldern goat.”

  “Oh gosh, Aunt Aggie,” cried Carter-Harrison, as well he might. “Well, never mind. I’ll think of something.”

  “Do me a favor,” said his aunt. “Quit thinkin’. Now git on upstairs an’ take off them wet clothes.”

  So that was that and there we were: Ed and Fred out in the back yard building a goat house for Spotty, James crouched beside the stove wearing an old flannel nightshirt of his Cousin Raymond’s and soaking his feet in a pail of hot water and mustard, Aunt Aggie boning the haddock for chowder. Nobody was saying anything. I felt uncomfortable.

  Finally I broke the silence. “Say, James, you know those things they have at the laundromat, that you put a quarter in and—”

  He was alive again, his eyes flashing, his flannel-clad arms flailing, his feet spraying mustard water all over the carpet. “That’s it! Aunt Aggie, have you a mail order catalogue in the house?”

  “I expect likely.” She rubbed the fish smell off her hands with a hunk of cut lemon and went to get it. “Goin’ to order yourself a new brain, James?”

  “No, by thunder, I’m going to order you an automatic clothes dryer.”

  “A clothes dryer? Why, I never … well, now, that just might … you know, James, I always did suspicion there might be a speck o’ common sense under all that intellect o’ yours. Willie, go call in the twins an’ tell ’em to get cleaned up for supper. I think it’s about time we cooked you city folks a decent lobster.”

  It Was an Awful Shame

  IN FACT, FROM THE author’s point of view it was not an awful shame that this story has never until now been published in its original form. I got so intrigued by the Comrades of the Convivial Codfish by the time I’d finished it that I decided instead to develop the idea into a full-length book called, tritely enough, The Convivial Codfish. Those who may have read the book will note that the short story version takes place at a different time of year and thus offers yet another horrifying glimpse into the Comrades mystic rites. The dénouement, to give it a classier word than it perhaps deserves, is also quite different from the outcome that develops in the longer work, so don’t think you can solve one merely by having read the other.

  “The Coddies gave a party just about a week ago.

  Everything was plentiful, the Coddies they’re not slow.”

  With an ever-so-knowing wink, Exalted Chowderhead Jeremy Kelling of the Beacon Hill Kellings raised his foaming flagon and quaffed. In accordance with time-honoured ritual, the other Comrades of the Convivial Codfish gulped in unison, then slapped their own tankards down on the emerald green tablecloth with one great, unanimous thwack.

  “They treated us like gentlemen, we tried to act the same,

  And only for what happened, sure it was an awful shame.”

  Again the tankards were raised, this time in gallant toast to the plump and pleasing person in Kelly green who sailed into the room bearing the Ceremonial Cauldron. Behind her in single file marched the Highmost, Midmost, and Leastmost Hod-carriers.

  As Mrs. Coddie, for such was her title, set the Cauldron in front of Jeremy Kelling, the three Hod-carriers clicked the poles of their hods smartly together, then stepped back in order of precedence to form a guard of honour behind their Exalted Chowderhead. Jem tied an oversize green linen napkin under his bottom chin, then went on with the incantation:

  “When Mistress Coddie dished the chowder out, she fainted on the spot.

  She found a pair of overalls in the bottom of the pot.”

  The Comrades had engaged many Mistress Coddies in their long and sometimes glorious history, but never one who swooned with more élan or finesse. As they rose in admiration of their recumbent hostess of the day, Comrade Bardwell voiced the consensus.

  “By gad, this Mistress Coddie is a ring-tailed doozy with a snood on.”

  “Any objections or abstentions?” said the Exalted Chowderhead.

  There being none, he raised the Ancient and Timeworn Overalls which had occasioned Mrs. Coddie’s well-feigned swoon slowly from the cauldron.

  “Fluke Flounder he got fighting mad, his eyes were bulging out.

  He jumped upon the pi-an-o and loudly he did shout.
”

  This year, Comrade Archer of the real estate Archers was Fluke Flounder. Despite his fourscore years and then some, despite the fact that he had to be boosted to the top of the Steinway by a dozen comradely hands, right loudly did Comrade Archer in good sooth manage to shout.

  “Who threw the overalls in Mistress Coddie’s chowder?

  Nobody spoke, so he hollered all the louder.”

  And, by George, he did. So did they all. In reasonably close harmony, making up in volume for what they lacked in tone, the Comrades bellowed their way through the ballad composed in 1899 by George Geifer and bastardized in 1923 by Jeremy’s late uncle Serapis Kelling.

  At the end of the first chorus, Mistress Coddie (actually Mistress Cholmondely of the Perkins Square Cholmondelys) recovered her senses with fine dramatic effect and rose to take away the Ceremonial Cauldron, into which the Exalted Chowderhead had again lowered the Ancient and Timeworn Overalls with due ceremony and pomp. Escorted again by the Highmost, Midmost, and Leastmost Hod-carriers, she bore away the sacred relics and returned with a tureen full of genuine codfish chowder.

  Excellent chowder it was, and full justice did the Comrades do it. Not until the tureen was bone dry did they quit baling. And not until Jeremy Kelling had untied his green napkin from beneath his nethermost jowl did he realize he was no longer wearing his insignia of office.

  “The Codfish,” he gasped. “It’s gone!”

  “It fell into the Cauldron, you jackass,” said Comrade Archer, who’d got his wind back after a bellyful of chowder and several more restorative flagons.

  “I didn’t hear it clink.”

  “Of course you didn’t. You’re deaf as a haddock and drunk as a skunk.”

  This was the kind of after-dinner speaking in which the Comrades delighted. They kept it up with variations and embellishments while their leader commanded the Keeper of the Cauldron to go get the goddamn thing and bring it back. This done, the Exalted Chowderhead personally shook out the overalls, fished in the pockets and down the mortar-crusted legs to the accompaniment of ribaldries most uncouth, and finally stuck his head into the empty pot.