Grab Bag (7 page)

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.

“It’s not there,” he wailed.

“Then it’s under the table, where you generally wind up, you old souse,” shouted Archer the wit.

It was not. It wasn’t anywhere. That cumbrous chain of heavy silver with its dependent silver codfish, so recently ornamenting Jeremy Kelling’s neat little paunch, was now vanished like the chowders of yesteryear.

“You forgot to put it on,” sneered the Highmost Hod-carrier. “Softening of the brain, that’s all. Nothing to worry about. Let’s have our Codly coffee.”

All hailed this sage counsel except the Exalted Chowderhead. A relative infant among the Comrades of the Convivial Codfish, being yet on the sunny side of seventy, Jeremy Kelling had labored long to achieve high office. He’d worked his way up from Journeyman Bouncer to Leastmost Hod-carrier. He’d been Fluke Flounder for one halcyon term, during which he’d pulled a calf muscle leaping to the piano and strained a tonsil putting too much fortissimo into his shouts.

At every meeting and frequently in between, he’d dreamed of the day when he would wear the Great Chain, sit behind the Ceremonial Cauldron, and show these clods how to run a meeting. His installation had taken place only last month. This was the first time he’d got to officiate. How breathtaking had been the moment when the Great Chain was withdrawn from its secret hiding place by the Opener of the Shell and hung around his palpitating neck. At the end of the meeting, the Chain was supposed to be returned to its hiding place with the Secret Valedictory Chant. How the hell could he conduct the concluding ceremonies without the blasted Codfish?

Where, Jeremy asked himself as he sipped with less than usual relish at his whiskey-laden coffee under its cargo of whipped cream, had the damn thing got to? The Great Chain couldn’t have fallen off. Its overlapping links had been clinched together forever and aye by an old-time artisan, there was no clasp to come undone. The only way to get it away from him would have been to lift it over his head.

Quod erat absurdem. An experienced toper like Jeremy Kelling could never have got drunk enough on a paltry few schooners of special dark to be oblivious to any such trick as that. Furthermore, he’d been in full view of all the Comrades ever since he’d donned the Chain, and there was not such unanimity of spirit among them that somebody wouldn’t have ratted on anybody else who made so free with the revered relic.

As the Codly coffee mugs were replenished, speculation about the Chain’s disappearance grew more imaginative. Everybody naturally accused everybody else of codnapping. They took to visiting the men’s room in squads to make sure nobody was trying to sneak the Codfish off in his codpiece.

Mrs. Coddie, of course, was exonerated, firstly because she’d been under escort by the three Hod-carriers all the time, secondly because she’d been in her swoon during the time when the fell deed was most likely to have befallen, and thirdly because she proved to be somebody’s mother.

At last a thorough search of the room was conducted, with all the members crawling around the floor on hands and knees, barking like a pack of foxhounds, but finding nothing. For the first time in the club’s history, they had to close the meeting without the Valedictory Chant, though a few Comrades gave it anyway either because they were too befuddled not to or because they always had before and they damn well would now if they damn well felt like it.

Most appeared to regard the Great Chain’s disappearance as a jolly jape and to be confident it would turn up at the April meeting pinned to the seat of the Ancient and Timeworn Overalls. Jeremy Kelling was not so sanguine. His first act on returning to his Beacon Hill apartment was to fight off the ministrations of his faithful henchman Egbert, who took it for granted Mr. Jem must be sick because he’d come home sober and perturbed instead of sloshed and merry. His second was to put in an emergency call to his nephew-in-law, Max Bittersohn.

“Max, I’ve lost the Codfish!”

“I knew a man once who lost a stuffed muskellunge,” Max replied helpfully.

“Dash it, man, cease your persiflage. The Great Chain of the Convivial Codfish is a sacred relic. Like the grasshopper on top of Faneuil Hall,” he added to emphasize the gravity of the situation. “It disappeared while I was removing the Ancient and Timeworn Overalls from the Ceremonial Cauldron.”

“That was probably as good a time as any,” said Max. “The Chain didn’t fall into the pot, by any chance?”

“How the hell could it? I looked. Anyway, the thing was around my neck. I’d have had to fall in, too. Which,” Jem added, “I did not. I’d have remembered. I’m not drunk. Egbert can testify to that.”

“Put him on,” said Bittersohn.

Egbert, to their mutual amazement, was able to vouch for his employer’s unprecedented sobriety.

“It’s very worrisome, Mr. Max. I’ve never seen him like this before. Except sometimes on the morning after,” he qualified, for Egbert was a truthful man when circumstances didn’t require him to be otherwise. “I think he might be described as shaken to the core.”

“To the core, eh? Okay, let me talk to him again.”

Max Bittersohn was a professional tracker-down of valuables that been stolen, pawned by spouses faced with private financial emergencies, or otherwise detached from their rightful owners. Thanks to his expertise, he was able to extract from Jem a complete and perhaps even reasonably accurate account of what had happened. He offered words of cheer and comfort, then went back to his Sarah, who did not want to hear about her uncle’s missing Codfish, she being a recent bride with other things on her mind.

In truth, Bittersohn himself gave little thought to Jeremy Kelling’s dilemma until the following evening when Egbert dropped by to break the tidings that Mr. Jem had fallen downstairs and broken his hip. Sarah was horrified. Max was intrigued.

“Fell downstairs? How the hell did he manage that? Jem hates stairs.”

“The elevator appears to have been stuck on the top floor, Mr. Max.”

That was credible enough. The building where Jem and Egbert lived had an antique elevator about the size of a telephone booth, that wouldn’t work unless it had been tightly latched by the last person who got out of it, which frequently didn’t happen.

Jem’s usual procedure in such cases was to bellow up the elevator shaft until somebody was goaded into going out and shutting the door properly. In desperate circumstances, however, such as when it was Egbert’s day off and he’d run out of gin, Jem had been known to walk down the one flight of stairs from his second-floor apartment. This had been one of those times. Now he was over at Phillips House with a brand-new stainless steel ball where the hip end of his left femur used to be. Egbert thought Mrs. Sarah and Mr. Max would want to know.

“Of course we do,” cried Sarah. “How ghastly! Bad enough for Uncle Jem, of course, but think of those poor nurses. What happened, do you know?”

“All I know is, I got home about five o’clock and found him sprawled on the floor of the vestibule, yowling his head off. He said Fuzzly’s had called to say his whiskers were ready and they’d be closing soon, so he’d rushed out, found the elevator stuck, and gone cavorting down the stairs. There was no darn need of it, you know. I could perfectly well have gone and got them tomorrow morning but you know Mr. Jem. He wanted those whiskers.”

“What for?” asked Max.

“The Tooters’ railroad party,” Sarah told him. “Uncle Jem was going to dress up in Dundreary whiskers and Grandfather Kelling’s old frock coat, and impersonate Jay Gould.”

“Did Jay Gould have Dundrearies?”

“Who knows? Anyway, Uncle Jem was all in a dither about the party. He’s an old railroad buff like Tom Tooter.”

“Do you mean model trains?”

“No, that’s Tom’s brother Wouter. Tom collects real trains. He has his own steam locomotive and a parlor car with velvet-covered settees and fringed lampshades. Also a dining car and a caboose.”

“Any particular reason?”

Sarah shrugged. “I suppose he got them cheap. The Tooters have always been in railroads. Anyway, Tom and his wife are having an anniversary and Tom’s rented the B&M tracks for the evening. They’re going to have a string ensemble playing Strauss waltzes and a fountain spouting champagne.”

“My God,” said Bittersohn. “Jem will have apoplexy at missing a bash like that.”

“He was in a highly aggravated state of profanity when I left him,” Egbert agreed. “They were about to administer a sedative.”

“I don’t wonder.” Sarah poured Egbert a tot of their best brandy, for he was an old and beloved friend. “Here, have one yourself, then Max will walk you home. Go to bed early, you’re going to need your rest.”

“Truer words were never spoken, Mrs. Sarah.”

“At least a broken hip ought to take his mind off that silly Codfish for a while. He’s been phoning every hour on the hour to see whether Max has found it yet.”

“As a matter of fact, his parting bellow was that I—er—call the matter to Mr. Max’s attention.”

Max grinned. “In precisely those words?”

“Not precisely, Mr. Max.”

“Tell him I’m hot on the trail. More brandy?”

“Thanks, but I ought to be getting along.”

“Come on, then.”

The two men set out to walk the short distance from Tulip Street to Pinckney. “Who else is going to the party?” Max asked. “The whole Codfish crowd?”