The Convivial Codfish (14 page)

“Writes books about plants. How to get closer to your cacti, that sort of thing. I don’t suppose anybody ever reads them, but it doesn’t much matter. Dork inherited half the family’s fertilizer fortune, then married his third cousin and snaffled the other half. Dotty Dork’s a gardener, too. He pots ’em, she plants ’em.”

“Sounds like an ideal marriage. Any homicidal mania in the family?”

Jeremy Kelling shrugged. “Who knows? There generally is, isn’t there? I’ve never seen any symptoms in Dork so far, if that’s what you’re getting at. I suppose if he ever ran out of things to bury in his compost heap—sounds like a thin motive to me, but one never knows;”

“One sure as hell doesn’t,” Max agreed. “Can you think of anything else I ought to know about Dork? Is he a railroad buff like the Tolbathys?”

“You might say so, in a tangential sort of way. Dork acted as landscaping consultant when Tom and Wouter built their station, I know. Gardens around railroad stations are Dork’s big thing. Whenever things slack off in the potting and planting department, Dork and Dotty hop over to Britain and ride around on all the little local trains. They get off at every station and chat with the stationmaster, admiring his aphids and telling him what he ought to have growing instead of what he’s already got, spreading sweetness and light generally. They used to do the same thing over here but these days there aren’t enough stations left to bother with. Dork goes blethering around about the decline of the art.”

“Dork wouldn’t take umbrage and plot revenge if Tom and Wouter had happened to flout his advice and plant tulips instead of roses or whatever?”

“Confound it, Max, how am I supposed to answer that? I’d say it was damned unlikely. I also find it damned unlikely anybody would sneak around buttering my front steps in an attempt to effect my demise, but here I am, a shattered hulk with a stainless steel Ping-Pong ball in my backside. And there’s poor old Wouter trying to play Fair Harvard on his brand-new harp with his halo on cockeyed and his wings upside down, like as not. And I don’t suppose I’ll even get to attend his funeral wearing the Great Chain as befits my rank and function.”

Jem was about ready to burst into tears. Max diverted him by pointing at the face next to Dork’s. “What about this guy? He was on the train.”

“Ed Ashbroom? Good gad, didn’t the paper say Ed was dead?”

“Not him, his wife.”

“Oh?” Jeremy Kelling put on the most enigmatic expression his misleadingly cherubic facial contours would permit. “How very interesting.”

“Why?”

“Max, you can’t expect me to answer that. To rat on a Comrade is the act of a cad.”

“In other words, Ashbroom’s been playing around.”

“You said it. I didn’t.”

“Is the woman pressing him for marriage?”

“Dash it, how should I know? I don’t slink around listening at keyholes.”

“Jem, for Christ’s sake! This is one hell of a time to trot out your scruples. How serious is this affair of his?”

“I honestly can’t tell you. All I know is that Ed and his wife have lived in a state of armed truce for years and Ed has been rumored to seek consolation elsewhere. A number of elsewheres, I believe, but generally only one at a time. Ed’s not one to stick his neck out beyond reasonable limits.”

“Has there been any talk of a divorce?”

“Never, to my knowledge.”

“Why not?”

“Money, I suppose. That’s what it usually boils down to, isn’t it?”

“Which of them owned the pot?”

“I believe it was a case of jointly held assets. There was no family connection as with the Dorks, but Ed’s and Edith’s grandfathers were in business together. They got their finances so fantastically intertwined that after they died, their respective sons found it easier just to go on with things as they were. That naturally made a bad matter worse. By the time everything trickled down to Ed and Edith, they decided it would be simpler to marry than attempt to sort out the confusion. Both of them resented having to do so, and each naturally held the other responsible for the fact that they couldn’t get along.

“So now Ed gets to scoop the lot.”

“Rather a coarse way of stating the position, but I expect that’s what it will amount to.”

“Does Ashbroom have any other source of income than his inheritance?”

“Don’t be vulgar. Edward Ashbroom toileth not, neither doth he spin. He does, however, consider the lilies of the field. Ed’s another gardener, like Dork.”

“Why do you call Ashbroom Ed and Dork Dork?”

“Because Dork’s first name happens to be Donald.”

“My God!”

“His parents couldn’t have known at the time,” Jem apologized for them, “but it’s been a terrible cross to bear. Dork feels his affliction keenly. I understand his own sons won’t even allow their children to have rubber ducks in their baths, for fear Grandpa might cut them out of his will.”

“A hard man, eh?”

“Dork’s been known to wax testy under provocation. As who hasn’t, curse it.”

Jem tried shifting his weight again, twisted his hip the wrong way, and uttered harsh words of wrath.

“Want me to crank up the bed for you?” Max offered.

“Better not. That female Savonarola will only come galloping back here and crank it down again for the pleasure of watching me writhe in agony. I’m surprised she doesn’t have a set of thumbscrews hitched to her stethoscope. Where were we?”

“Establishing the hypothesis that Comrade Ashbroom may not be altogether shattered at finding himself wifeless and in full control of their scrambled assets. You’d started to tell me about his gardening. What sort of gardening?”

“The usual sort, one would suppose. Ed plants things and they come up. Or not, as the case may be.”

“Where does he plant them?” Max could be a patient man when on a case, however tortuous the trail and weary the winding.

“In his garden, naturally. Oh, I see what you’re driving at. He’s a neighbor of the Tolbathys’ out in Bexhill. Owns a paltry fifty acres or so. I expect that gives him room enough to cultivate the blushing rose and the chaste violet.”

“No doubt. Where does he park his passion flower while he’s messing around with the chaste violet?”

“Not bad, my boy. Mind you, I don’t know whether she is in fact a passion flower or just a clinging vine. She may be a Radcliffe graduate, for all I know. I’ve met ladies of culture and refinement in the chorus at several of our more distinguished burly houses back in the dear, dead days beyond recall. Did I ever tell you about Mildred?”

“No, but if you think you’re going to tell me now, forget it. We have urgent business on hand, in case that small fact has slipped your memory. Getting back to the lady of culture and refinement, does she live in Bexhill, too?”

“Gad, man, you paint a yeasty picture of our suburbs. Which no doubt doesn’t half begin to do them justice. It’s my impression that Ed’s current inamorata lives right here around the Hill somewhere, or possibly over in the Back Bay. They’ve been seen together in the Copley Plaza and the Ritz bar. Rumor hath it she’s red-haired, voluptuous, and about forty years younger than Ed, though as we both know, a lady’s age is always open to interpretation. So are the imaginations of some of our Comrades, I must admit. Not to mention their eyesight.”

“Speaking of eyesight,” said Max, “what about this man Durward? Is he as blind as he makes himself out to be?”

“How blind are you talking about?”

“Well, for starters, he mistook me for somebody named Ernest who used to sing madrigals with him.”

“Clumsy artifice. Quent Durward didn’t mistake you for anybody. He no doubt heard you breathing and didn’t smell face powder, so deduced you were present, alive, and probably not female; and took a shot in the dark, so to speak. His object was to make you talk on the chance he’d recognize your voice. Quent’s full of sly tricks. People put them down to his nearsightedness, little recking they’re the guile of a conceited man who refuses to admit he’s been legally blind since 1963. Quent’s no doubt your murderer.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Logic, my lad, pure logic. It’s always the most unlikely chap who did it. By some laughably simple ruse, once the modus operandi has been exposed. No doubt Quent had a seeing-eye dog concealed on the train somewhere and used it to lead him to the caviar. A Russian wolfhound in this case, one would think.”

“Sounds reasonable to me,” Max conceded. “Can Russian wolfhounds be trained as railroad engineers?”

“Damn it, Max, use your head. Guided by the smell of engine grease, Quent could have found the controls easily enough. The dog would then have leaped out the window of the cab and run along the track in front of the train emitting woofs or bays or singing the ‘Internationale,’ or whatever Russian wolfhounds do, so that Quent could follow the sound.”

“Damn, I hadn’t thought of that. But what happened to the dog after the train stopped?”

“Lolloped off to keep a rendezvous with a red setter bitch, or something of the sort. Don’t bother me with trivia.”

“And what would have been Durward’s motive for giving himself and the wolfound all this trouble?”

“Good question. I’ll have to mull it over when this goddamn hip of mine quits giving me hell. He’ll have a sound reason, you may be sure of that. Quent’s a shrewd thinker.”

“What does he do when he’s not thinking?”

“About what any sensible man would do, I expect. Mixes himself a martini. Records tree toads.”

“Would you run through that last bit again, please?”

“I said records tree toads. What’s so remarkable about that? Spring peepers, you know. Those little creatures that hang around swamps at night making that infernal racket. Quent goes out at night with a tape recorder and gets them to peep into his microphone. Then he plays you the tapes, unless you take stern measures to prevent him. He claims he can tell what they’re saying. I can’t think why he’d want to know, myself. What in blazes would a tree toad have to talk about, anyway?”

Max could think of no reply except, “Have we exhausted the tree toads?”

“It takes one hell of a lot to exhaust a tree toad, in my experience. The ghastly things keep yammering away till all hours. When one leaves off, another chimes in. All right, quit glaring at me like that. Which of my bosom buddies do you want me to rip up the back next?”

“H
OW ABOUT YOUR FRIEND OGHAM
?” Max suggested.

“How, indeed? Now you’re beginning to talk sense. Since you’re looking for double-dyed perfidy, there’s one bastard who has it leaking out of him at every pore.”

“What about guile?”

“Ogham?” Jeremy Kelling snorted. “Guile takes at least a smattering of intelligence.”

“Would you say that observation was based on fact or prejudice?”

“I suppose it’s mostly prejudice,” Jem admitted. “If it was a question of thinking up some more rotten form of iniquity, I expect Ogham could be guileful enough.”

“Why should he direct his iniquity against the Tolbathys? I thought he was a relative of theirs.”

“Not Tom’s, Hester’s. Hester has a good bit of money in her own name, and Obed would like nothing better than an opportunity to exert undue influence. He’ll never manage it so long as Tom’s alive, because Tom’s far too intelligent a man to trust that lout any farther than he could throw him. Which,
entre nous,
Tom would not be averse to doing.”

“Why doesn’t he?”

“Because Hester entertains a warmhearted though chuckleheaded fondness for Obed. He’s the only son of her favorite aunt, or something of that sort. Tom is disgustingly uxorious, so he puts up with Obed for Hester’s sake.”

“Assuming both the Tolbathy brothers were out of the picture, would Ogham have any realistic hope of getting a chance at Hester’s money?”

“Oh yes, I should expect so. Hester had one of those old-school papas who thought it was unfeminine for a woman to show any head for business, and she still tends to think Papa knew best. Rather charming, I suppose, in these days of rampant feminism.”

“Rather dangerous, you mean,” Max grunted. “Would she stand any chance whatever of not getting skinned by Ogham?”

“Not unless her children intervened, and she probably wouldn’t let them know what was happening till it was too late. She’d feel she had to be loyal to Obed, even though he doesn’t give a damn about her. In my highly biased opinion, Obed Ogham hasn’t one scintilla of feeling for anybody except himself. His mother spoiled him rotten when he was a brat, and he grew up thinking he was the pearl and the rest of the world his oyster. I straightened him out on that score back when we were at Rivers together.”

“Before they expelled you?”

“Oddly enough, I never did get kicked out of Rivers. I can’t think why not. It wasn’t a lax administration, by and large. In any event, Obed’s never had a decent word for me since that time, and the feeling couldn’t be more mutual. You didn’t make the mistake of adopting a conciliatory manner last night, I trust?”

“I thought I’d made it plain that I never got a chance, assuming I’d had the inclination,” Max reassured him. “We never even got introduced.”

“Marcia Whet’s doing, I expect. Out of respect for me, she made sure you needn’t be subjected to the ignominy of having to exchange civilities with that blight on the landscape. Wonderful woman, Marcia. Good God, I hope she’s going to be all right.”

“So do I,” said Max, uneasily recalling the enthusiasm with which Mrs. Whet had been wading into the caviar. “At least the paper didn’t mention her among the casualties.”

“That doesn’t mean much,” Jem growled. “These morning editions go to press before midnight. You wouldn’t remember what it used to be like up on Newspaper Row, back when the
Globe
and the
Post
were still being published there. The presses would be clanking inside those big old wooden buildings and some young cub would be out on the sidewalk chalking up the latest bulletins on big blackboards. We’d stand around and read ’em off, then go down into Pi Alley and hoist a few with the newspapermen. Tom and Wouter and I. And now Wouter’s gone and Tom’s in the chowder up to his eyeballs, and I’m lying here helpless. God damn it, Max, you’ve got to do something!”