Grab Bag (9 page)

“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 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 smashing,” 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!”

“Then we may opine,” said Mr. Whipsnade in a loud, ill-bred voice, “that you’ve pulled off the Beaird-Wynnington Dirigible Airship deal?”

“Since the newsboys are already braying out the tidings,” Lord Ditherby-Stoat replied, “I believe I may not scruple to admit that such is the case.”

“And Britain owes it all to you!” Mrs. Swiveltree’s peacock feathers quivered with ill-suppressed emotion.

“I do not understand,” said Mme. Vigée-Lenoir. “What ees thees airsheep?”

“Suffice it to say, Madame,” A. Lysander Hellespont took it upon himself to explain, “that it is a lighter-than-air machine in which persons will be conveyed from one place to another.”

“Ah oui, comme les frères Montgolfier.”

“That’s it. Precisely like a Montgolfier hot air balloon, but with certain differences.”

“Vive la difference! Ah, je vois, you weel weesh les couleurs britanniques. It weel be you who get to choose zem, Lord Dizzerby-Stoat?”

“That, my dear lady, is a closely guarded state secret, I fear,” he replied whimsically, taking her dimpled arm in a manner that caused Mrs. Swiveltree’s lips to tighten, a fact that did not escape the vigilant Ermentine.

Nor did it elude her notice that the despicable Mr. Whipsnade had edged himself yet closer to her father and his seductive companion, as if to catch any unguarded word that might fall from the statesman’s lips under the influence of Mme. Vigée-Lenoir’s too-visible allurements. Ermentine was about to thrust herself and her Galahad into the breach, assuming one could be found, when another diversion presented itself. Figgleton announced, “Count Bratvuschenko,” and a dancing bear cavorted into the drawing room.

Such, at least, was the Honourable Ermentine’s impression. The Russian diplomat, for diplomat he must be, else her father would hardly have offered him the hospitality of Haverings, appeared ill-fitted and certainly ill-barbered for his role. At least he was already arrayed in evening dress, far from impeccable but lavishly bedizened with a wide red sash across his corpulent shirt front, far too many gems on his fingers, and a galaxy of foreign orders pinned to his coat. He bowed so low over Lady Ditherby-Stoat’s hand that that the decorations clanked together like the clashing of arms on a distant battlefield, saluted the other ladies in like manner, shook hands among the gentleman with a vigor that left them wincing, then stood glaring about him like a wild animal expecting to be fed.