Grab Bag Page 7

  “Sorry I can’t have dinner with you tonight, sweetie-pumpkin.”

  “And where are you off to, pray tell? What are you getting all dressed up for?”

  “A train ride,” he replied from the depths of a starched shirt. “Seen my studs lately?”

  “You might try your stud box. Uncle Jem wants to know when in blazes you’re going to catch his Codfish.”

  “Anon, I hope. One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I’m off for a prize tonight. With the voluptuous Mrs. White, in case some kind friend thinks you ought to know.”

  “In that disgusting clawhammer coat? Where on earth did you get it?”

  “Same place I got these.” He put on Jem’s Dundreary whiskers. “How do I look?”

  “Don’t ask. I’m going next door and cry on Cousin Theonia’s shoulder. Mrs. White, indeed! I hope she singes your whiskers.”

  Mrs. White was ready and waiting when he went to pick her up. They had some trouble stowing her into the taxi on account of her bustle, feather boa, and a hat freighted with a whole stuffed pheasant; but at last they were able to proceed.

  On Track Four at North Station, business was booming. A conductor in a stiff cap and brass-buttoned uniform was joyfully clipping tickets. Max recognized him from Jem’s album as Tom Tooter, their host. Up ahead in the engine cab, a melancholy individual wearing a high-rise cap of striped ticking, greasy striped overalls, and a tremendous scrubbing-brush mustache leaned out to survey the throng flocking aboard. This could be none other than Wouter Tooter, throwing himself into his role.

  Max himself received some puzzled glances as Mrs. White introduced him right and left as her dear, dear friend Mr. Jay Gould. People must either be putting him down as somebody they’d met before but couldn’t place, or else making mental notes to have a quiet chat with Mr. White when he got back from Nairobi.

  Mrs. Tom Tooter was doing the honours inside the parlor car, wearing silver lace over a straight-front corset, with white gloves up to her armpits and strings of pearls down to her knees. She looked a trifle nonplussed when Max made his bow, but pleased to have such a good-looking man aboard even if his ginger side whiskers did clash rather ferociously with his wavy dark hair. Luckily, Mr. Wripp tottered in just behind him and had to be fussed over, so Max escaped without a grilling.

  The lights were dim enough to make all the ladies look charming and all the men distinguished. There was no fountain splashing champagne, but they did have a swan carved out of ice to chill the caviar, and a bartender wearing red arm garters and a black toupee neatly parted down the middle. Max got Mrs. White a white lady, which seemed appropriate, then turned her over to her friends and went prospecting.

  Tom Tooter was in his glory. He’d changed his conductor’s cap and coat for a Prince Albert. He bagged at the knees and bulged at the shoulders, but what did he care? Kings might be blest, but Tom was glorious, o’er all the ills of life victorious. He couldn’t possibly be the man Max was looking for.

  Mrs. Tooter kept glancing at her husband with fond wifely indulgence and brushing imaginary specks off his lapels as women do in public places where decorum forbids more overt displays of affection. Max indulged himself for a moment in thinking that if Sarah were here, she might be brushing specks off his lapels, then got on with his job.

  Obed Ogham was easy to spot and would no doubt be a pleasure to dislike. He was one of those loud, beefy men who trap people in corners and tell them a lot of stuff they don’t want to hear. Max stayed well clear of him. He’d be the sort to ask personal questions of strangers.

  Wouter Tooter was not in the parlor car. Various guests were asking for him; no doubt cronies from his model railroad club as they wore trainmen’s caps with their false whiskers and old-fashioned clothes. Tom said he was around somewhere and why didn’t they come into the dining car?

  This was an excellent suggestion, Max found. Rows of tables with snowy napery and genuine old railroad cutlery were set out around a long center buffet laden with hams, roasts of beef, whole turkeys, hot dishes under metal covers the size of igloos, cold platters of every description, and epergnes dripping with fruits, sweets, and exotic flowers. Edward VII would have found it adequate.

  Waiters hovered ready to fetch and carry. A wine steward wearing a silver corkscrew on a heavy silver sommelier’s chain circulated among the tables murmuring recommendations through a well-trimmed but all-covering beard. He sounded as if he had a marble in his mouth. Max took one long, earnest look at the wine steward, then slipped out into the vestibule. When the man came through, Max tackled him.

  “Mr. Wouter Tooter, I believe? Changed your overalls, I see.”

  “Who the hell are you?” mumbled the man.

  “You’d better take that marble out of your mouth, Mr. Tooter. You might swallow it. To respond to your question, my name’s Bittersohn and I’m a private detective sent by the Securities and Exchange Commission to guard Mr. Obed Ogham. They don’t want anything to happen to him before he’s indicted.”

  “Indicted? What for?”

  “You don’t really have to ask, do you? You know damn well Ogham’s trying by highly illegal methods to scuttle your brother’s firm so he can make a killing on the stock market. That’s why you’re playing wine steward tonight with the Great Chain of the Convivial Codfish.”

  Wouter looked down at his chest as if he thought it might possibly belong to someone else, and said nothing.

  “That’s why you deliberately disabled Jeremy Kelling, so that he couldn’t come tonight and catch you wearing the chain. Your brother’s too busy with the guests to notice, and old Mr. Wripp’s too bleary-eyed from his cataract operation. Ogham might catch on, but he’s not supposed to live long enough to rat on you, is he?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Like hell you don’t. You cut off the electricity in Jem’s apartment yesterday afternoon and waxed the stairs. Then you put in a fake phone call from Fuzzly’s, knowing that would send Jem charging out to get his whiskers. He’d find the elevator inoperative, gallop down the stairs, and take a toss, which he did. And you’ve got some kind of muck in your pocket right now that you’re planning to drop into Ogham’s wine as soon as he’s drunk enough not to notice. You needn’t bother. He’s on his way to jail, though he doesn’t know it yet. Your brother’s business is safe and so are you, on two conditions.”

  “What conditions?” said Wouter sulkily.

  “You leave Ogham alone and you show me how the hell you got that chain off Jem’s neck.”

  “Oh.” Light dawned on what little Max could see of Wouter’s lavishly disguised countenance. “I know you now. You’re the bird who married Jem’s niece. The pretty one who’s always getting murdered.”

  “Right. And you’re the wise guy who landed your buddy in the hospital with a broken hip.”

  “Well, hell, what was a man to do? I couldn’t make Tom listen to reason. He simply refused to believe even that reptile Ogham would scuttle a Comrade. Jem won’t mind once he knows I did it for Tom. I knew the old sculpin would land on his feet, he always does. This time he bounced on his backside first. Too bad, but it was in a good cause. Surely you must realize that.”

  “Couldn’t you just have asked Jem to stay away from the party?”

  “Jem Kelling miss a bash like this? You must be out of your mind. I’d have had to explain why, then all Jem would have done was swagger in here, waltz up to Obed, and paste him straight in the mouth. He’d have to stand on a chair to reach that high, I expect, but he’d do it. You know Jem.”

  Max did know Jem, and he could not dispute Wouter’s logic. “Okay, if you can make that sound sane to Jem, more power to you. What were you planning to fix Ogham’s wagon with?”

  “Just a Mickey Finn. I thought I’d make believe he’d passed out from too much booze, drag him to the observation platform supposedly to sober up, and shove him overboard. Then I’d take off my disguise and go back to being me.”

  “While Ogham
was found suffering from minor contusions and rushed to the nearest hospital, where the doctors would start wondering how he got bunged full of chloral hydrate and your nice family train ride would turn into a major scandal. Nice going, Tooter.”

  “Well, damn it, I never committed a murder before. This seemed like a good idea.”

  “Take it from me, it stinks. Hand me the chloral and show me how you worked the Chain.”

  “Oh well, there’s nothing to that.” Wouter gave Max the little bottle, then took off the Chain. “You see, last year I was Opener of the Shell, which meant I had custody of the Great Chain. Just for fun, I split one of the links and inserted a tiny magnetic coupling to hold it together. You’d need a magnifying glass to see it.”

  “No problem.” Max had one, of course. Wouter’s craftsmanship was indeed masterful.

  “It’s worked by a remote-control switch. I meant to open it as a joke sometime, but when this foul business with Ogham came up, I got the idea of wearing the Chain and posing as a wine steward. No sense in going out and buying one when I’d never use it again, was there?”

  “Hardly,” said Max. He was feeling a trifle dizzy by now.

  “You see, I’m Leastmost Hod-carrier this year. That means I get to stand behind Jem when he pulls the Ancient and Timeworn Overalls out of the Cauldron. This is all highly confidential, top-secret stuff, of course, so don’t breathe a word to a soul. So anyway, then Mrs. Coddie swoons. I knew they’d all be watching her, so I released the Chain, grabbed it as it fell, and slid it down inside my own overalls. As soon as I could, I slipped into the men’s room, put the Chain around my own neck under my clothes, and wore it home.”

  “Not bad,” said Max. “How were you planning to get it back?”

  “Frankly, I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Maybe I could write old Jem a ransom note and deliver it myself. I could slink in wearing all this face fungus.”

  Wouter started peeling off false eyebrows and chin whiskers. “Might as well get my money’s worth out of it. Fuzzly’s aren’t expecting it back till tomorrow afternoon. In the meantime, I can put the Codfish back on the Chain. Had to switch it for a corkscrew, you know. I mean, without the Codfish, the Chain’s just a chain.”

  “That did occur to me,” said Max. “Also, since you fiddle around with model railroads, I thought you might be pretty good at midget switches and convenient power failures. If I may make a suggestion, you’d do better to send Jem the corkscrew and a bottle of something by way of penance.”

  “Damn good idea. I’ll make it a case of burgundy. Speaking of which, now that I’ve resigned as wine steward, let’s you and I go put on the feedbag. Then we can go up to the engine. Maybe the fireman will let us shovel some coal.”

  The Mysterious Affair of the Beaird-Wynnington Dirigible Airship

  THE CHARACTER AUGUSTUS FOX was created by the fertile minds at Murder by the Book in Denver, Colorado, and played superbly at their Mystery Weekends by Wayne Gill until his deeply regretted early death in 1985.

  This story was written originally as an idea for a Mystery Weekend plot and a sort of left-handed tribute to Shirley Beaird and Nancy Wynne, who established the shop. Once in the hands of the above-mentioned fertile minds, it metamorphosed into The Alcohol Chemist Affair, a melodrama of the Deep South in which Haverings became Poison Oaks and Miss Twiddle wound up as the wife of a prominent moonshiner. I forgive them.

  The Alcohol Chemist Affair was enacted on the first weekend in October 1985. The story as here presented appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, February 1986.

  “Well, Papa, so you have saved the Empire yet again.” The Honourable Ermentine Ditherby-Stoat, irrepressible daughter of Britain’s foremost cabinet minister, held up her face for the expected kiss of greeting. “How many rescues does this one make?”

  “Jolly decent of you to take the trouble, sir, if I may be permitted to say so,” stammered young Gerald Potherton, who was never far from Ermentine’s side when propriety admitted his presence.

  Lord Ditherby-Stoat allowed a hint of a smile to play about his patrician features as he handed his hat, stick, and dispatch case to Figgleton, his butler and trusted confidant. Then he stopped, for he was a tall man, and bestowed the awaited caress on his daughter’s damask cheek.

  “Have our guests arrived?”

  “Her Ladyship is in the drawing room with Mrs. Swiveltree, Mme. Vigée-Lenoir, Mr. Hellespont, and Mr. Whipsnade, my lord,” replied Figgleton. “Count Bratvuschenko has telegraphed that he will arrive on the seven o’clock train.”

  “But that will hardly give him time to dress for dinner,” protested Ermentine. “Really, Papa, does England expect us to turn Haverings into a wild animal refuge every weekend?”

  “England expects every man to do his duty,” said Lord Ditherby-Stoat with quiet firmness, “and your parents expect no less of you, my dear.”

  With that, he passed through the massive oaken doors which Figgleton, having adroitly disposed of the hat, the cane, and the dispatch case, now held open for him. Ermentine and her adoring Gerald followed, she only somewhat subdued by her father’s admonition and far more aware of her mother’s stately presence.

  Lady Ditherby-Stoat had been, and indeed still was, the fourth of the seven beautiful daughters of the Earl of Cantilever. Yet it was not the simply cut but sumptuous gown of deep green brocaded velvet or the modest parure of emeralds and diamonds that sparkled at ears, arms, fingers, and bosom, nor yet the matching tiara resting lightly upon her impeccably coiffed pale golden hair that betrayed her aristocratic origin. Rather it was the calm, unruffled patience with which she endured the conversation of Mr. Silas Whipsnade that provided the ultimate test of true breeding.

  The Honourable Ermentine, infected with the reckless gaiety of the siècle now at its fin, was less circumspect. “Whatever do you suppose prompted Papa to invite that impossible Mr. Whipsnade?” she murmured to her doting escort once her father had moved away from them to greet his wife and the oddly assorted group he had caused to be assembled at one of England’s stateliest mansions. “In my opinion, he’s a bounder and quite possibly a cad.”

  “Ermy dear,” drawled Mr. A. Lysander Hellespont with the familiarity of one who had known her since her pram-and-nanny days, “Whipsnade is merely an American. Let us not be intolerant.”

  “I at least shall not tolerate his insulting Ermentine by any unwelcome attention,” stated young Potherton fiercely.

  “Ah, our dauntless fireater. You are fortunate, Ermy, to have so stalwart a protector. Now I must go and make intelligent conversation with Mme. Vigée-Lenoir, though I fear that as a confirmed bachelor, I am singularly ill-adapted to discussing the subject which has brought her to England.”

  “And what is that?” demanded Ermentine, favoring Hellespont with one of her gamine smiles.

  “She is making a study of baby-care facilities for the working poor.”

  Unless Mme. Vigée-Lenoir was herself a nursing mother, the costume she had chosen seemed ill-adapted to reflect so serious a purpose. It was a diaphanous black tulle, cut remarkably low in the bosom and flashing with spangles along the edge of its many coquettish flounces. However, she and the dandified man-about-town appeared to be finding some common ground for conversation, judging from the merry twinkle in her dark eyes and the assiduity with which Hellespont twirled the ends of his dashing mustache as they chatted, he in flawlessly accented French and she in quaint broken English.

  “I say, Mrs. Swiveltree looks smashing tonight,” exclaimed Gerald Potherton, as well he might. The titian-haired beauty had chosen to array herself in a creation—for no such prosaic word as gown could suffice—of amethyst satin, cut extremely décolleté and slightly en train, its flowing breadths embroidered á la japonaise in a design of peacocks. Real peacock feathers nodded from her high-piled coiffure, their shimmering hues reflected in the heavy necklace of beryls and carbuncles that adorned her superb bust.

  “Mrs. Swiveltree always looks smas
hing,” said Ermentine drily. “How else could she advertise the ever-growing wealth derived from her husband’s vast shipping interests?”

  “And where is the nabob himself? Off in one of his ships?”

  “No, at home nursing his gout. Cadwallader Swiveltree is old enough to be her father, you know.”

  Older men did seem to take a fatherly interest in Mrs. Swiveltree, Gerald Potherton thought, though he had sufficient savoir faire not to say so. Lord Ditherby-Stoat was at the moment giving the shipping magnate’s young wife his full and undivided attention. Could the rumors circulating about the club smoking rooms have some basis in fact? Despite his tender years, Potherton was not without some measure of sophistication. He knew men took mistresses, even cabinet ministers married to daughters of earls. But he thrust the notion from his mind. It would be the act of a cad to speculate on such a matter here at Haverings, with Ermentine at his side.

  Little did he know that Ermentine was thinking along the same line! It was for this very reason that she was about to divert her father’s attention when Figgleton forestalled her, entering the room with a large silver salver on which reposed a smallish oblong, wrapped in paper that bore the royal crest. Impassive as ever, the butler yet conveyed a feeling of pride as he approached Lord Ditherby-Stoat.

  “From the Queen’s Messenger, my lord.”

  “Thank you, Figgleton.” Lord Ditherby-Stoat took the package into his hands and held it a long moment before, with a murmured apology to his guests, he divested the object of its gala wrappings.

  “Why, it’s a copy of Leaves from a Journal of Our Life in the Highlands,” cried Ermentine, who had been shamelessly peeping over her father’s shoulder. “Inscribed in Her own hand! Oh, Papa!”

  Casting decorum to the winds, the company swarmed to view with their own eyes the magical signature, “Victoria R.,” and the inscription, “With Our heartfelt thanks.” Even Lady Ditherby-Stoat so far forgot herself as to exclaim, “Jolly well done, Edmund!”