Free The Convivial Codfish by Charlotte MacLeod

Should I take an armload of bottles from the bar here?”
    “It wouldn’t hurt, I suppose, if they aren’t all smashed. Never mind about glasses. We have thousands. Oh, and tell the caterers they can get ready to move the food as soon as the cart comes. Thank you, Obed.”
    A competent woman, Max thought. They’d need more than one ambulance, but she didn’t know that yet. He knew he ought to go up and talk to the police himself, but he wanted to stick with the train for a while longer. There were things that ought to be found out before the cars got messed around worse than they were already.
    His most pressing curiosity, of course, was about that man who’d opened the caviar. If he wasn’t a caterer or an employee of the Tolbathys’, then who was he and where had he got to?
    He could have jumped off when the train stopped back there in the woods, Max supposed. If that was the case there’d be plenty of footprints to follow, even though Tom Tolbathy claimed not to have noticed any. The snow was deep and unbroken everywhere, except along the plowed tracks. He could have walked the railroad ties, provided he was fast enough on his feet to outrun the train, but what would have been the point? They didn’t go anywhere except back here.
    He might have got himself lifted off in a helicopter, or lassoed a tree limb and swung off Tarzan-fashion. The thought of that correct, spruce figure wearing the Great Chain of the Convivial Codfish as he hurtled through the treetops was perhaps a trifle outré. Max was inclined to rule out snowmobiles and dogsleds, too.
    The train must have made at least one full circuit of the loop before that speedup and sudden stop. They’d been traveling at an easy pace but hardly a crawl. Max could check that out with Tom Tolbathy later. The point was, he supposed, that the bogus sommelier could have jumped off right here at the station. That way he wouldn’t have made noticeable tracks, but it meant he’d have been gone before Wouter was killed.
    But what could possibly be the point in his coming aboard just to put on that elaborate show with the caviar? Furthermore, how could he have left a moving train without attracting notice?
    Two of the three caterers had been in the dining car by the time the sommelier disappeared; one of them making canapés, the other passing them around. Where was the third? If she’d also left the caboose, the man might have opened the outer door and jumped off from there.
    It sounded easy enough, but was it? Max knew train doors were supposed to be kept latched and barred while the train was in motion for reasons of safety. Getting one of those heavy doors open against the drag of the moving train might not be easy, and jumping out of it certainly wouldn’t be safe. You might land in a cushiony snowbank, but you might also slide down and be crushed under the wheels.
    Assuming you made it safely, how would you close the door after you? Would the momentum cause it to slam and catch, or would the door stay open and call attention to the fact that you’d gone?
    Any chance of escape from the dining or parlor car could be ruled out because there’d have been too many people around to grab you and stop you from doing something so crazy. The so-called coal tender didn’t have any outside door, just the doors at the ends that led into the engine cab and the parlor car. Your best way out would have to be through the window of the cab, after you’d murdered the engineer. But why do that? You didn’t slaughter a Comrade of the Convivial Codfish just to keep him from knowing you’d dressed up as a wine steward and played a practical joke on his brother’s guests.
    You might if you were the kind who went around greasing other Comrades’ stairways. How could that prankster have got hold of the Great Chain if he hadn’t stolen it off Jem’s neck at the meeting, or been given it by someone who had? How had anybody managed to steal the chain, if it came to that?
    The