The Silver Ghost (20 page)

“I’d suggest you make very sure it’s the Lord who’s talking before you put yourself off the air,” said Max. “Do you have any of Ufford’s program tapes that haven’t yet been played?”

“Yes, one. Our Oxbridge station postponed the Renaissance Revel so they could do live, on-the-spot coverage of their annual quilting bee and forsythia festival yesterday. They’re planning to air the tape at four o’clock this afternoon. Unless, heaven forbid, something goes wrong between now and then. That’s the one station we haven’t yet had any trouble with.”

Until today. Max was getting fidgety. He pushed the button that controlled the overhead door from the ramp, and it slid back into place. It wasn’t a huge door, just wide enough to let one car squeeze through.

“Somebody knows how to drive,” he remarked. “Getting both these cars into a room just about big enough to hold them and parking them so neatly side by side wouldn’t have been a job for an amateur.”

“No, I don’t suppose it was.” Billingsgate didn’t sound much interested. “I’m so used to expert driving in our own circle that the point hadn’t occurred to me.”

The implication of what he’d just said didn’t appear to have occurred to Bill, either, Max thought. “You told me Ufford didn’t keep a car,” he remarked, “but did he know how to drive one?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Billingsgate replied. “If he did, he never told us. He certainly never drove one of ours, though he did ride in them at various times. What Versey enjoyed most, it always seemed to me, was the dressing up. Cap and goggles and the long dust coat, you know. And sitting in the back seat pretending to be J. Pierpont Morgan while somebody else chauffeured, as Melly once unkindly observed.”

He walked around the Silver Ghost, shaking his head. “Max, I’m even more bewildered now than I was before. Why should both Rufus and Versey have had to be killed in such gruesome ways merely so that two cars could be moved from one shed to the other?”

“Good question,” said Max. “Legally, of course, the cars haven’t been stolen since they haven’t been removed from your grounds. If Rufus’s death had been accepted as suicide, which it would have been if you’d gone along with Grimpen, and Ufford’s as an accident with the bees, which it may still be, then no crime would presumably have been committed. Maybe the object was not to steal the cars but to harass you further.”

“Then the object has been achieved, God knows. But it’s so crazy, Max!”

“What still strikes me as slightly insane, if you’ll forgive my saying so, is that none of you thought to look here sooner. It’s so obvious, a nice concrete ramp, plenty of hiding space, and an automatic door for a quick run in. How would you operate the door from the outside, by the way? You’d need one of those hand-held remote control switches, right?”

“Or someone to poke the button from the inside,” Bill replied. “There’s just the one control switch, as far as I know. It’s kept clipped to the honeybug’s panel and one gives it a poke as one approaches the ramp. As to why none of us thought to search the honey shed, I suppose one reason was that we couldn’t imagine anybody would go to such lengths to steal the cars, then hide them so close to the house. Another’s what I expect that Skinner fellow would call conditioning. You must have noticed that
KEEP OUT
sign on the door from the storeroom?”

“Yes, I did.”

“That’s Abigail’s doing. She has to be terribly fussy about keeping this room clean because it’s where we bottle the honey. She makes Melly and Tick spread old sheets on the floor to drive the cart over when they come in with loads of combs. They take off their shoes and put on washable slippers and coveralls. She hasn’t got as far as surgical masks yet, but one does have to wear an absurd stockinet cap so that no hairs fall into the extractors. That’s assuming one has hair to drop.”

Bill himself was so thin on top that his scalp showed through the white peach fuzz almost as pink as his face. “The last thing they do in the fall, after all the honey is spun and taken away, is to scrub the entire room: floor, walls, ceiling, every nook and cranny. They sterilize the extractors and other equipment, then seal the room until it’s needed again in the spring. You’ll notice I said they, not I. I always manage to have urgent appointments elsewhere at scrub-up time. Melly and Tick do the heavy scrubbing. Abigail’s chief bottle washer and goader-on.”

“Rufus and Bob wouldn’t normally help?”

“No, but the grandchildren take a hand if they’re free. Young people always get so booked up, especially when there’s any hard work going. They’re as bad as I am,” Bill added with a quickly suppressed chuckle.

“The bees have been Abigail’s hobby from the start, you see,” he went on, “and she likes to keep it a family affair. Tick’s inclined to feel we ought to face up to the fact that it’s evolved into a fair-sized commercial venture and go along with the expansion. I must say I see the force of his argument, but the bees are still Abigail’s babies, so I don’t take sides. Anyway, what I started to say was that we’re all so conditioned to putting the honey room off limits and knowing what we’ll be letting ourselves in for if we break the seal out of season that I suppose we automatically assumed nobody else would trespass, either. And now the cleaning will all have to be done over. One more drop in our bucket of horrors.”

“Think of it as a test of faith, Bill,” said Max. “Tell me, who’d have had access to that door opener? Is it synchronized to this door alone, or to the shed down below?”

“Actually it’s synchronized to Melly’s garage in Shrewsbury, absurd as that may sound. It’s just that Melly kept mistaking one control gadget for the other and getting herself into pickles because they wouldn’t work where she wanted them to. After she’d locked herself out a few times, Tick fiddled the switches so that she could use either and be right no matter what.”

“Great idea.” Max didn’t really think so at all. “Where are Tick and Melly today?”

“Still dealing with our latest crisis over at the Natick station. Tick’s trying to get the turntables repaired and Melly’s filling in with music and a few inspirational readings. She has quite a knack for playing and singing what she calls the golden oldies. Things like “Hurrah for Baffin’s Bay” and “My Sweetheart’s the Man in the Moon,” you know. We’ve had her on a number of times before, and always get’s calls and letters from listeners asking for more. Melly’d rather like to do a regular program and we’d adore to have her, but with her own house and family to care for and Abigail’s needing her to help with Apian Way, there’s simply not the time.”

“Too bad,” said Max. This time, he meant it. “What will she and Tick do after they’ve finished at the station? Do they have to go home and feed the kids?”

“No, the children are all off at school. I expect Melly and Tick will come here to catch up on how we’re doing. They’ll be glad to know Bodie and the cars are safe, but naturally distressed about poor Versey. Not to mention finding out they’ll have to clean the honey room again. Can we move the cars back to their own shed, do you think, or should we leave them where they are?”

“I think you ought to let the police have a look at them, assuming they ever show up. Bill, I’m sorry but I can’t hang around here any longer. Tell Grimpen I’ll be available for questioning later on if he wants me. Right now, I’m leaving for Oxbridge. Can you give me directions to the station, and some kind of introduction?”

“Surely. Come out to the other room.”

Bill didn’t stop to ask why Max was going to Oxbridge, he simply found a piece of Apian Way stationery and wrote on it,
Please give Mr. Bittersohn all the help you can. N. Billingsgate.
“There, that should suffice. Have them phone me here if there’s any problem. As for directions, you go down 495 and cut across Route G5. Go straight on till you come to the mill, then take a left. We’re the little green shingled building just around the corner. You’ll see the XBIX sign out in front. Er, were you planning to take off that bee suit before you go?”

Max hesitated. “I’ve got to commit a minor felony first. Unless you happen to have a spare key to Ufford’s apartment?”

“Why, yes, as a matter of fact I do. There have been a couple of times in the past that we’ve had to get into the studio while he was away. It’s right here on my key ring, though I haven’t used it in years.”

“Ufford hasn’t had the locks changed, by any chance?”

“I can’t imagine that he would. He’d have had to pay for the job himself, you see.”

Bill handed over the key. With considerable relief, Max took off the bee suit.

“I
’LL BE GUM-SWIZZLED!”

The manager of Station XBIX, Oxbridge, Massachusetts, glanced nervously at Max Bittersohn. “Don’t tell Mr. Billingsgate I said that, will you? He doesn’t go much for vain oaths.”

“Too damn bad,” said Max. “So what are you going to do?”

“Well, obviously we can’t run this tape. Heavens to Elizabeth, we’d have the FCC jumping down our throats in no time flat. I’ve never heard such filth before in all my born days.”

“How much would have got aired if you’d put it on?”

“The whole reel, pretty much. That’s the appalling part. You see, this is one program that needs no attention whatsoever from us, because Professor Ufford records the whole thing from start to finish, even the community service announcements. We have a backup arrangement that if the tape should break, our alternative turntable would switch immediately to
Tales from the Vienna Woods.
But that’s never happened so far, so as soon as we start the theme song and see that the tape’s running smoothly, Ed and I generally nip over to the inn and have ourselves a little restorative.”

“Ed being your head man in charge of tapes?” asked Max.

“Ed being my head man, period,” the manager answered. “The two of us do pretty much what needs to be done around here, at this time of day.”

“So I don’t suppose you get all that many chances to go out together. Does anybody know you’re both in the habit of taking a break while Ufford’s on?”

“Oh sure, we wouldn’t do anything underhanded. Mr. Billingsgate knows, and Mr. Purbody. They understand. They know we work a long day and need an occasional break. In fact, Tick—Mr. Purbody, I should say—usually hoists one with us if he happens to be around. He’s about as big a fan of Renaissance music as Ed and I are. But this tape—maybe it’s authentic mediaeval revelry, but I can’t imagine why Professor Ufford thought we could get away with it. There’s some of that garbage I don’t know myself what they’re talking about. Can you think where he got hold of such stuff, Mr. Bittersohn?”

“As a guess, I’d say Ufford just bought a bunch of so called party records, and picked out the raunchiest parts he could find. It wouldn’t have been hard to put a tape together that way, if he could keep from vomiting into his equipment.”

“Whatever he did, the old coot sure landed us in a fine kettle of fish,” moaned the station manager, throwing verbal decorum to the four winds. “Now what the flaming blue blazes am I going to run in its place? We can’t have empty air, you know, that’s the unpardonable sin in our business. You wouldn’t happen to have brought a shawm or a doodlesack with you, by any chance? Or even a kazoo?”

“Sorry.” But Max was reflecting. If Melisande Purbody could interrupt her meading to sing “Up in a Balloon, Boys” to the listening multitudes, who was he to feign bashfulness in time of crisis? “Would you settle for a talk on how to steal a Renaissance painting?”

“You’re not an art thief, are you?”

“No, I’m a detective who catches them. Sometimes.”

Over the hitherto doleful countenance of the station manager a great light was dawning. “You—you’re not—you couldn’t be
Max
Bittersohn?”

“Ask my mother.”

“Praise God from Whom all blessings flow! My daughter Belinda heard you speak last year at Boston University and she’s been raving about you ever since. I’ve had to keep telling her you’re most likely a married man.”

“I am. With a son six months old,” Max added proudly.

“I’ll remind Belinda that these things are sent to test us. Now we’d better get you set up. Let’s see, I don’t suppose you’ll need a podium. A glass of water? A stopwatch?”

“Why don’t we just have an informal conversation? You ask questions and get me talking. When we run out of time, give me the high sign and I’ll shut up.”

“But how shall I know what to ask?”

“Ask whatever comes into your head. Remember the audience isn’t going to know any more than you do, so yours will be the kinds of questions they’d want to ask, themselves.”

“True enough. The more ignorant I sound, the more complacent they’ll feel. Now, if you don’t mind, we have to wait just a few minutes till Ed finishes reading the homily and plays “Under His Wings I Am Safely Abiding.” Then I do the weather and the Apian Way commercial, and go straight to the introduction. You sit right here, please, and talk straight into the microphone.”

Thus it was that something less than an hour later, driving back from Scituate, Mrs. Max Bittersohn happened to twiddle the knob of her car radio and get the shock of her life. Why on earth hadn’t Max told her he was going to be on a talk show this afternoon?

Because he hadn’t known until it happened, of course. There’d been another crisis in the Billingsgate network and Max had been hurled into the breach. She’d better find a telephone fast. It would be nice to know what was going on.

It would be a relief to get off this beastly highway, too. Sarah winced as yet another enormous tractor-trailer whizzed past her little car, its hubcaps about on a level with her ears. She’d hoped to avoid the rush hour traffic, but she might have known getting Jem delivered to his cronies would take at least twice as long as she’d estimated. At least she wasn’t far from an exit, according to the signs. Route 28 led into Milton. She could cope with Milton, assuming this idiot dithering beside her would make up his mind what to do and get out of her way.

As soon as she turned on her right-hand blinker, the other car darted straight across in front of her and, after a hair-raising moment, left her free to turn. “Stinker,” she hissed aloud. Of all the stupid—good heavens, that looked like Cousin Lionel.