The Silver Ghost (15 page)

Bunny’s wife had been in Lorista’s consort yesterday, playing the serpent. Sarah recalled Elizabeth clearly: one of those thinnish, tallish, intense women who oozed intellect even in a starched ruff and a steeple hat. Radcliffe, no doubt. She’d be sympathetic to Bunny’s ecological urges, but probably not to the extent of mortgaging her children’s future. Jem was right, this was not agreeable mealtime conversation. That didn’t mean Sarah was going to change the subject.

“Does Erp share his father’s interests?”

“In Morris dancing? Certainly, or he wouldn’t do it,” Jem replied with some acerbity. “Sarah, you’re not toying with the notion that Bunny Whet would rope his own son into helping him kill his friend’s servant and steal his friend’s cars on a matter of principle?”

“John Brown got his sons to help him raid Harper’s Ferry on a matter of principle.”

“John Brown was what some people today might call a terrorist and his sons didn’t go to a rather strict boarding school. You might check with Erp’s housemaster about the period during which the New Phantom was taken.”

“Thank you, I expect I will. Now what about Young Dork?”

“Young Dork is a model of filial virtue. He’s kind to his parents and dutiful to his in-laws. He’s taken over his grandfather’s business, which was the manufacture of hoe handles, and managed it so expertly that Dork hoe handles have become a status symbol and are widely purchased even by upwardly mobile New Yorkers who have no hoes to put them on. He’s generally assumed to have married that ghastly sister-in-law of Lionel’s as an act of penance, although nobody knows what he’d have to be penitent about. Furthermore, he’s remained faithful to Lorista and has even been heard to say he likes her.”

“If you say so, Uncle Jem. Are he and Lionel particularly chummy, do you know?”

“Being married to sisters, they’d almost have to be, wouldn’t they? Sarah, you ought to understand that all these chaps have known each other forever. They grew up together, went to school together, married the girls they learned to dance with when they were ten years old. If they’re not actually related to each other, they’re connected by marriage or simply by force of habit. I can’t tell you whether Young Dork sees more of Lionel than he does of Buck Tolbathy or Joe Abbott. I know he does see a good deal of Melly and Tick because they all go to automobile rallies together. Young Dork’s an expert driver and thoroughly familiar with the Billingsgates’ cars. He’d be as well qualified as anybody to steal a couple. I cannot for the life of me imagine him doing so. Unless Tick put him up to it as a practical joke,” Jem added reluctantly.

“Which of course is nonsense,” Sarah retorted. “Young Dork would have to be feebleminded to involve himself in anything like that. Tell me about Buck and Chad Tolbathy,” she added quickly because Jem was starting to make frog faces.

“Chadwick is not a Tolbathy but an Ogham. You may remember that Hester Tolbathy, Buck’s mother, is connected to the Oghams, though I don’t personally hold it against her. Chad used to dance with Tick’s group, but he doesn’t any more because he’s moved to Schenectady. You must mean Salmon Tolbathy, Buck’s brother.”

“Perhaps I mean both of them. According to Tick, Sal had intended to dance yesterday but he sprained his ankle getting out of bed. Sal then called Chad, who flew in from Schenectady by chartered plane and took his place. Does that sound plausible to you?”

“It has to, doesn’t it, if Chad was there and Sal wasn’t? Anybody can sprain an ankle. I sprained mine once reaching for an olive. That’s why I take my martinis plain.”

“You’ve led a hard life, Uncle Jem. Is there any way we can make sure Sal’s sprain was authentic? Does he have a wife and family?”

“Yes, but they’re not with him at the moment. Sal has just the one daughter. She’s one of those whiz kids and has been given a chance to appear on some television series, flaunting her IQ to no good purpose that I can see. The filming’s being done in California and since the girl’s only fifteen and quite pretty, all things considered, they naturally wouldn’t let her go alone. Sal’s wife is with her and he’s batching it for the duration at their house in Dover.”

Jem wiped his lips in a somewhat perturbed manner. “This could be a bit of a sticker, Sarah. Sal and Tabitha have no live-in servant, to the best of my knowledge. Unless the sprain was bad enough to require medical treatment, which they usually aren’t because there’s not much you can do anyway, I don’t know how you’d go about proving Sal was genuinely incapacitated.”

“He works with his brother in the family’s importing business, doesn’t he?”

“Oh yes, ever since he left Harvard. And during his school holidays before that, I believe. Neither Sal nor Buck ever wanted to do anything else. They run the whole show nowadays. Tom hadn’t been all that active for some time, and since Wouter died he’s pretty much bowed out.”

“Is Salmon having any money problems that you know of?” Sarah asked him. “Maintaining his wife and daughter in Hollywood must be costing him plenty, I should think.”

“No doubt it would, if Sal were paying. The child’s being given some ridiculous sum to toss her curls and flash her intellect. Anyway, Tabitha has something of her own and Sal and Buck inherited Wouter’s share of the Tolbathy money.”

“Is there any chance they’ve run the firm into hot water and don’t dare let their father know?”

“To the best of my knowledge, they’re still contributing quite successfully to the country’s foreign trade imbalance,” Jeremy Kelling replied testily. “I expect you could check on that issue through
Dun and Bradstreet
or somewhere, assuming you’d stoop to anything so sordid.”

“I don’t see where solving a murder is any more sordid than committing one, Uncle Jem. You say Chadwick’s an Ogham, but he’s still the Tolbathys’ relative. He didn’t have anything to do with their business before he moved, did he?”

“No, he’s in electronics, on the managerial side, whatever that may mean. Chad was something fairly important here in Massachusetts, but his wife got something even more important in Schenectady, so they transferred. She’s one of those high-powered career women. A trifle too high-powered for Chad, in my personal opinion. It’s generally assumed she married him for his connections.”

“She evidently didn’t come with him to the revel,” said Sarah. “At least I don’t remember meeting her.”

Jeremy shook his head. “No, Parthenia wouldn’t have gone. She’d be off somewhere at a conference.”

Assuming she wasn’t waiting at the far end of Abigail Billingsgate’s bee fields with a large closed van, Sarah thought. “Did Chad ever lend his electronic expertise to any of Wouter’s free private enterprises?”

“I doubt whether Wouter would have asked. Wouter was fairly well up on that sort of thing himself. He used to hang around the Radio Shack and such places, checking out the latest gadgets. That electric eye door, for instance, can’t you just go out and buy the doings?”

“Oh yes,” said Sarah. “Lionel bought a kit somewhere and installed one for Aunt Appie. He says anybody could do it. Even you,” she added somewhat doubtfully.

“Madam, you jest. Anyway, Wouter could surely have done it with Rufe’s help. As for Chad, it’s my understanding he’s in no way involved with the widgets and thingumabobs in his business. And if you’re thinking he’d be the type to mess around in wet cement for a chuckle, abandon the notion. Chad carries a Mark Cross attaché case with solid gold corners.”

“But he goes Morris dancing in a green leotard,” Sarah protested. “He must let his hair down sometimes.”

“There’s a nuance here, Sarah, as you must realize. I shall be blunt. Chad Ogham is not my favorite person, nor my next favorite. He’s a bore and a stuffed shirt. I should have no qualms about fingering him, if that’s the proper terminology. Aside from the problem of opportunity, however, I can’t believe Chad would have the motive, the brains, or the guts.”

Jem drained the last of his chablis and set down the glass with a small thump. “Is that the lot?”

“Let’s see,” said Sarah. “We’ve already touched on the Abbots. They seem to be out of it because they had to leave early and show up at a wedding.”

“Joe’s niece,” the oracle replied at once. “She’s an orphan, so Joe was going to give her away and Monk was one of the ushers. Lilias planned to duck the ceremony and show up later at the reception in her kirtle.”

“Oh. Bill didn’t mention the details. That does seem to make Joe’s and Monk’s alibis fairly ironclad. We’ll still have to check, I suppose. I should imagine, though, that we’ll find the Abbots a complete waste of time, shouldn’t you?”

“I never imagine, Sarah. I always stick to facts.”

Since Jeremy was held in high regard by some of the relatives and in abhorrence by the rest as the most accomplished liar ever to somersault from Kelling loins, Sarah took this declaration for what it was worth.

“Yes, Uncle Jem. Just for the record, is there anything else I ought to know about the Abbots?”

“They see their dentist twice a year and eat high-fiber cereal for breakfast,” her uncle replied nastily. “Joe teaches Shakespeare at some academy for brainy females, Lilias runs a hand weaving shop, and Monk’s working on a degree in anthropology, God knows why. They appear to be healthy and contented with their lot, as well they might be considering that Joe has a thumping trust fund to fall back on and Lilias didn’t exactly go to him empty-handed. This obviously means they’re all guilty as sin. What does a man have to do to get a cup of coffee around here?”

“ ‘WHOM THE LORD LOVETH,
He chastiseth.’ I keep reminding myself of that, Max, but I have to confess that lately I’ve been feeling somewhat excessively beloved.”

Nehemiah Billingsgate managed a wry smile. “Sorry about that. I must be making you feel like Bildad the Shuhite.”

Max Bittersohn protested that he didn’t feel a bit like Bildad the Shuhite. “And you’re saying every one of these crazy foul-ups has happened within the past month.”

“Yes, it’s been positively uncanny. We’ve jogged along so comfortably year after year, and now all of a sudden it’s just one calamity after another. Equipment breaking down, tapes mysteriously erased, irreplaceable old phonograph records turning up scratched or broken, and nobody ever knows why. We’ve had our little troubles from time to time, naturally, but never a string of them like this.”

Bill’s hands were trembling, Max noticed. What a hell of a position for a man his age to be in!

“But what’s truly appalling,” Billingsgate went on, “is the attrition in our staff. People who’ve been with us for years and years, who’ve demonstrated their dedication to our stations over and over, who’ve struggled through floods and blizzards sometimes to keep us on the air, people I’ve considered my close friends, just putting on their coats and walking off the job without so much as a backward look. I can’t understand it, Max. I truly cannot understand it.”

“Any chance some union’s trying to organize you the hard way?”

“I thought of that, of course, but there’s no evidence it’s happening and no reason why it should. Radio personnel don’t get paid at the level of television anchormen, I freely admit, but we do pay better than most other stations in our category. We have a yearly profit-sharing program in which everybody benefits proportionately. We have an excellent pension plan, maximum health insurance at no cost to the employee, and we’re the only chain in the communications industry that keeps every member of its staff supplied with home-gathered honey.”

“Then I don’t understand it either, Bill. Have you spoken to any of your remaining employees about what’s happening?”

“They’ve spoken to me, that’s the most incomprehensible part of all. We’ve had to do a good deal in the way of borrowing equipment and shifting personnel around from one station to another, you know, to fill in the gaps. Naturally I’ve had to explain what’s happened. Always there’s the same outcry: What on earth is the matter with so-and-so? How could he do such a thing? What’s happened to company loyalty? The indignation and astonishment have been genuine, Max, I swear they have. And yet the last person to inveigh against the one who just left is as often as not the next to leave without warning.”

“There’s been no sign of threats or harassment?”

“Max, our people know and trust me. At least I’ve assumed they did. I’ve always been ready to discuss any problem relating either to their work or to their private lives; they know that, or ought to by now. Over the years, we’ve had plenty of frank interchanges and straightened out many a difficulty, with the Lord’s help. Surely if some outsider were going around terrorizing the various staffs, at least one of them would have had the nerve to come and tell me. But they don’t act frightened, any of them. They’re quite matter-of-fact about what they’re doing, according to the people who’ve seen them go. Like lemmings deciding, well, we’ve hung around here long enough. Let’s march down to the sea and hurl ourselves in,” Billingsgate concluded bitterly.

“How many have you lost so far?”

“Eleven, mostly announcers. That may not seem like many to you, but bear in mind that we have only ten stations in our little chain, and most of them run with a handful of personnel. Losing even one key member out of the whole chain would have been enough to throw us into a tizzy ordinarily. Having to cover eleven in a single month is almost more than we’ve been able to cope with. If one more person walks out on us, I honestly don’t see how we’re going to manage.”

Max shrugged. “Then I guess what it boils down to is, who’s trying to buy you out?”

“Nobody.” Billingsgate was positive. “Why should anybody want us? We don’t make any money, you know. The fees we get from our advertisers pay our operating expenses and leave some over for the profit-sharing bonuses I mentioned. Once those are paid, we’re cleaned out and we start over. My personal involvement is purely a labor of love. I don’t take a cent of the receipts and I pay my chief assistant out of my own pocket.”

“Is that Tick or Ufford?”

Bill was surprised at the question. “Oh, Tick. Yes, Tick’s been a great blessing. He’s fully in sympathy with our efforts and quite content with his modest stipend. Of course he and Melly also get the rather substantial profits from our Apian Way mead and honey enterprise, which they richly deserve since they do most of the work. And they each have dividends coming in periodically from inherited trust funds, so they manage comfortably enough.”