Read The Convivial Codfish for Free Online

detect a flock of penguins.
    Well, maybe he’d get them sorted out after a while. They didn’t appear to be having any difficulty recognizing one another. Probably penguins didn’t either.
    As for himself, it was not to be imagined that a bunch of Yankees who’d no doubt been nesting in each other’s family trees for generations would settle for any persiflage about Jay Gould. Marcia Whet was now explaining that her escort was in fact poor darling Jeremy Kelling’s nephew Max, who’d been hurled into the breach opened by Jem’s dreadful accident. She described Jem’s downfall with verve and inaccuracy, drawing cries of compassion from some and derision from others. The latter group, Max decided, must be those Comrades who hadn’t yet got over the effects of their Scrooge Day celebration.
    The scoffers at least gave him a starting point. He pegged Comrade Durward easily on account of his thick eyeglasses and Comrade Wripp from his two canes and general air of advanced decrepitude. He was by now fairly sure of Comrade Dork and Comrade Billingsgate. These were both neighbors of the Tolbathys who’d had themselves chauffeured to Boston, mustaches and all, just so they could ride back again on the train.
    Max identified Comrade Ogham from the fact that one of the mustaches was giving him the cold shoulder; and was amused to realize it had to be on account of his alleged relationship to Jem. The Kelling clan was so vast and bewildering that nobody so far had tried to pinpoint just where Max fitted in. It was a novelty to be snubbed as a Kelling instead of as a Bittersohn.
    There weren’t many nonpartying riders on the train, and that was probably a good thing. Those who didn’t belong to the Tolbathy group were clearly nonplussed by this invasion of Edwardians. The really confusing thing was that so many of the Codfish and their Codesses were old enough to look as if they belonged in the clothes they were wearing.
    Despite their accumulated longevity, they were a lively bunch: There was far too much aisle-hopping and seat-switching to help Max compile his personal Who’s Who. He’d hoped Marcia Whet would clue him in, but she was fully occupied being the life of the party. At last Max gave up and just sat looking handsome and inscrutable until the conductor came through chanting, “Lincoln Station.”
    What with all the bustles and boas and dropped gloves and misplaced derbies, it took them quite a while to disembark. At last they were every last one of them out in the biting night and there, sure enough, was a bright red bus lit up like a Christmas tree with the driver passing out glasses of champagne to make sure nobody got carsick on the ride to the Tolbathys’. Max hoped to God the driver himself wasn’t having any. Neither was he, though he’d taken a glass from the tray when the rest did because it would have looked too eccentric for a nephew of Jeremy Kelling’s not to.
    They had a lot more snow out here than in the city. It made Max think of the woods up at Ireson’s Landing and wish he and Sarah were back there in the old carriage house raising each other’s thermal coefficient. As the champagne went down and the party revved up, he wished so with yet more fervor. Why had he thought it would be a good idea to involve himself in this geriatric saturnalia?
    Because, he told himself angrily, it really was a good idea. Jeremy Kelling had damn near got himself murdered, and Max wanted to know why. Jem wasn’t rich enough to get killed for his money. His philandering, such as it was these days, was hardly of the sort to inflame a husband or lover to murderous rage. Jem wasn’t innocent enough to be anybody’s dupe or wise enough to be anybody’s nemesis. The only logical explanation for that waxed staircase and the faked telephone call that lured him down it was that somebody’d been desperately concerned to keep Jeremy Kelling from attending the Tolbathys’ party.
    Or maybe it wasn’t the only