‘I’m glad of that.’
‘You ought to be.’
‘But I keep thinking of Constance.’
‘You’re not afraid of her?’
‘Yes, I am. You have no notion how she goes on about a thing. On and on and on. I remember coming down to dinner one night when we had a big dinner party with a brass paper-fastener in my shirt front, because I had unfortunately swallowed my stud, and she kept harping on it for months.’
‘I see. Well, I’m sure you need have no uneasiness. Why should she suspect you?’
‘She knows I have a grievance against these boys. They knocked off my top hat at the school treat and teased the Empress with a potato on a string. She may put two and two together.’
‘Not a chance,’ said Lord Ickenham heartily. ‘I’m sure you’re in the clear. But if she does start anything, imitate the intrepid Percy and stick to stout denial. You can’t beat it as a general policy. Keep telling yourself that suspicion won’t get her anywhere, she must have proof, and she knows perfectly well that there is none that would have a hope of getting past the Director of Public Prosecutions. If she pulls you in and wants you to make a statement, just look her in the eye and keep saying “Is zat so?” and “Sez you”, confident that she can never pin the rap on you. And if she tries any funny business with a rubber hose, see your lawyer. And now I must be leaving you. I am long overdue at my hammock.’
Left alone, Lord Emsworth, though considerably cheered by these heartening words, still did not feel equal to resuming his perusal of Whiffle On the Care Of The Pig. He sat staring before him, and so absorbed was he in his meditations that the knock on the door brought him out of his chair, quivering in every limb.
‘Come in,’ he quavered, though reason told him that this could not be his sister Constance, come to ask him to make a statement, for Connie would not have knocked.
It was Lavender Briggs who entered. In her bearing, though he was too agitated to observe it, there was an unaccustomed jauntiness, a jauntiness occasioned by the fact that after dinner on the previous night the Duke had handed her a cheque for five hundred pounds and she was going to London for the night to celebrate. There are few things that so lend elasticity to a girl’s step as the knowledge that in the bag swinging from her right hand there is a cheque for this sum payable to herself. Lavender Briggs was not actually skipping like the high hills, but she came within measurable distance of doing so. On her way to the library she had been humming a morceau from one of the avant-garde composers and sketching out preliminary plans for that typewriting bureau for which she now had the requisite capital.
Her prospects, she felt, were of the brightest. She could think off-hand of at least a dozen poets and as many whimsical essayists in her own circle of friends who were always writing something and having to have it typed. Shade her prices a little in the first month or so, and all these Aubreys and Lionels and Lucians and Eustaces would come running, and after them — for the news of good work soon gets around — the general public. Every red-blooded man in England, she knew, not to mention the red-blooded women, was writing a novel and would have to have top copy and two carbons.
It was consequently with something approaching cheeriness that she addressed Lord Emsworth.
‘Oh, Lord Emsworth, I am sorry to disturb you, but Lady Constance has given me leave to go to London for the night. I was wondering if there was anything I could do for you while I am there?’
Lord Emsworth thanked her and said No, he could not think of anything, and she went her way, leaving him to his thoughts. He was still feeling boneless and had asked himself for the hundredth time if his friend Ickenham’s advice about stout denial could be relied on to produce the happy ending, when a second knock on the door brought him out of his chair again.
This time it was Bill Bailey.
‘Could I see you for a moment, Lord Emsworth?’ said Bill.
3
Having interviewed Lavender Briggs and given her permission to go to London for the night, Lady Constance had retired to her boudoir to look through the letters which had arrived for her by the morning post. One of them was from her friend James Schoonmaker in New York, and she was reading it with the pleasure which his letters always gave her, when from the other side of the door there came a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and Lord Emsworth burst over the threshold. And she was about to utter a rebuking ‘Oh, Clarence!’, the customary formula for putting him in his place, when she caught sight of his face and the words froze on her lips.
He was a light mauve in colour, and his eyes, generally so mild, glittered behind their pince-nez with a strange light. It needed but a glance to tell her that he was in one of his rare berserk moods. These occurred perhaps twice in each calendar year, and even she, strong woman though she was, always came near to quailing before them, for on these occasions he ceased to be a human doormat whom an ‘Oh, Clarence!’ could quell and became something more on the order of one of those high winds which from time to time blow through the state of Kansas and send its inhabitants scurrying nimbly to their cyclone cellars. When the oppressed rise and start setting about the oppressor, their fury is always formidable. One noticed this in the French Revolution.
‘Where’s that damned Briggs woman?’ he demanded, snapping out the words as if he had been a master of men and not a craven accustomed to curl up in a ball at the secretary’s lightest glance. ‘Have you seen that blasted female anywhere, Constance? I’ve been looking for her all over the place.’
Normally, Lady Constance would have been swift to criticize such laxity of speech, but until his belligerent mood had blown over she knew that the voice of authority must be silent.
‘I let her go to London for the night,’ she replied almost meekly.
‘So you did,’ said Lord Emsworth. He had forgotten this, as he forgot most things. ‘Yes, that’s right, she told me. I’m going to London, she said, yes, I remember now.’
‘Why do you want Miss Briggs?’
Lord Emsworth, who had shown signs of calming down a little, returned to boiling point. His pince-nez flew off his nose and danced at the end of their string, their practice whenever he was deeply stirred.
I’m going to sack her!’
‘What!’
‘She doesn’t stay another day in the place. I’ve just been sacking Wellbeloved.’
It would be putting it too crudely to say that Lady Constance bleated, but the sound that proceeded from her did have a certain resemblance to the utterance of a high-strung sheep startled while lunching in a meadow. She was not one of George Cyril Wellbeloved’s warmest admirers, but she knew how greatly her brother valued his services and she found it incredible that he should voluntarily have dispensed with them. She could as readily imagine herself dismissing Beach, that peerless butler. She shrank a little in her chair. The impression she received was that this wild-eyed man was running amok, and there shot into her mind those ominous words the Duke had spoken on the previous afternoon. ‘Definitely barmy,’ he had said. ‘Reached the gibbering stage and may become dangerous at any moment.’ It was not too fanciful to suppose that that moment had arrived.
‘But, Clarence!’ she cried, and Lord Emsworth, who had recovered his pince-nez, waved them at her in a menacing manner, like a retarius in the Roman arena about to throw his net.
‘It’s no good sitting there saying “But, Clarence! “‘ he said, replacing the pince-nez on his nose and glaring through them. ‘I told him he’d got to be out of the place in ten minutes or I’d be after him with a shot-gun.’
‘But, Clarence!’
‘Don’t keep saying that!’
‘No, no, I’m sorry. I was only wondering why.’
Lord Emsworth considered the question. It seemed to him a fair one.
‘You mean why did I sack him? I’ll tell you why I sacked him. He’s a snake in the grass. He ad the Briggs woman were plotting to steal my pig.’
‘What!’
‘Are you deaf? I
said they were plotting to steal the Empress.’
‘But Clarence!’
‘And if you say “But, Clarence!” once more, just once more,’ said Lord Emsworth sternly, ‘I’ll know what to do about it. I suppose what you’re trying to tell me is that you don’t believe me.’
‘How can I believe you? Miss Briggs came with the highest testimonials. She is a graduate of the London School of Economics.’
‘Well, apparently the course she took there was the one on how to steal pigs.’
‘But, Clarence!’
‘I have warned you, Constance!’
‘I’m sorry. I meant you must be mistaken.’
‘Mistaken be blowed! I had the whole sordid story from the lips of Ickenham’s friend Meriwether. He told it me in pitiless detail. According to him, some hidden hand wants the Empress and has bribed the Briggs woman to steal her for him. I would have suspected Sir Gregory Parsloe as the master-mind behind the plot, only he’s in the South of France. Though he could have made the preliminary arrangements by letter, I suppose.’
Lady Constance clutched her temples.
‘Mr Meriwether?’
‘You know Meriwether. Large chap with a face like a gorilla?’
‘But how could Mr Meriwether possibly have known?’
‘She told him.’
‘Told him?’
‘That’s right. She wanted him to be one of her corps of assistants, working with Wellbeloved. She approached him yesterday and said that if he didn’t agree to help steal the Empress, she would expose him. Must have been a nasty shock to the poor fellow. Not at all the sort of thing you want to have women coming and saying to you.’
Lady Constance, who had momentarily relaxed her grip on her temples, tightened it again. She had an uneasy feeling that, unless she did so, her head would split.
‘Expose him?’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘What do you mean?’
‘What do I mean? Oh, I see. What do I mean? Yes, quite. I ought to have explained that oughtn’t I? It seems that his name isn’t Meriwether. It’s something else which I’ve forgotten. Not that it matters. The point is that the Briggs woman found out somehow that he was here under an alias, as I believe the expression is, and held it over him.’
‘You mean he’s an imposter?’
Lady Constance spoke with a wealth of emotion. In the past few years Blandings Castle had been peculiarly rich in imposters, notable among them Lord Ickenham and his nephew Pongo, and she had reached saturation point as regarded them, never wanting to see another of them as long as she lived. A hostess gets annoyed and frets when she finds that every second guest whom she entertains is enjoying her hospitality under a false name, and it sometimes seemed to her that Blandings Castle had imposters the way other houses had mice, a circumstance at which her proud spirit rebelled.
‘Who is this man?’ she demanded. ‘Who is he?’
‘Ah, there I’m afraid you rather have me,’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘He told me, but you know what my memory’s like. I do remember he said he was a curate.’
Lady Constance had risen from her chair and was staring at him as if instead of her elder brother he had been the Blandings Castle spectre, a knight in armour carrying his head in his hand, who was generally supposed to be around and about whenever there was going to be a death in the family. Ever since she had discovered that Myra Schoonmaker had formed an attachment to the Reverend Cuthbert Bailey, any mention of curates had affected her profoundly.
‘What! What did you say?’
‘When?’
‘Did you say he was a curate?’
‘Who?’
‘Lord Ickenham’s friend, Mr Meriwether.’
‘Oh, ah, yes, quite, Mr. Meriwether, to be sure.’ Lord Emsworth’s fury had expended itself, and he was now his amiable, chatty — or, as some preferred to call it, gibbering — self once more. ‘Yes, he’s a curate, he tells me. He doesn’t look like one, but he is. That was why he refused to be a party to the purloining of my pig. Being in holy orders, his conscience wouldn’t let him. I must say I thought it very civil of him to come and warn me of the Briggs woman’s foul plot, knowing that it would mean her exposing him to you and you cutting up rough. But he said he had these scruples, and they wouldn’t allow him to remain silent. A splendid young man, I thought, and very sound on pigs. Odd, because I didn’t know they had pigs in Brazil, or curates either, for that matter. By the way, I’ve just remembered his name. It’s Bailey. You want to keep this very clear, or you’ll get muddled. He’s got two names, one wrong, the other right. His wrong name’s Meriwether, and his right name’s Bailey.’
Lady Constance had uttered a wordless cry. She might have known, she was feeling bitterly, that Lord Ickenham would never have brought a friend to Blandings Castle unless with some sinister purpose. That much could be taken as read. But she had never suspected that even he would go to such lengths of depravity as to introduce the infamous Bailey into her home. So that, she told herself, was why Myra Schoonmaker had suddenly become so cheerful recently. Her lips tightened. Well, she was reflecting grimly, it would not be long before Blandings Castle saw the last of Lord Ickenham and his clerical friend.
‘Yes, Bailey,’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘The Reverend Cuthbert Bailey. I was telling Ickenham just now that there was a song years ago called “Won’t you come home, Bill Bailey?” I used to sing it as a boy. But why he should have brought the chap here under the name of Meriwether and told me he was in the Brazil-nut industry, I can’t imagine. Silly kind of thing to do, wouldn’t you say? I mean, if a fellow’s name’s Bailey, why call him Meriwether? And why say he’s come from Brazil when he’s come from Bottleton East? Doesn’t make sense.’
‘Clarence!’
‘About that song,’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘very catchy tune it had. The verse escapes me — in fact, I don’t believe I ever sang it — but the chorus began “Won’t you come home, Bill Bailey, won’t you come home?” Now, how did the next line go? Something about “the whole day long”, and you had to make the “long” two syllables. “Lo-ong”, if you follow me.’
‘Clarence!’
‘Eh?’
‘Go and find Lord Ickenham.’
‘Lord who?’
‘Ickenham.’
‘Oh, you mean Ickenham. Yes, certainly, of course, de-lighted. I think he usually goes and lies in that hammock on the lawn after breakfast.’
‘Well, ask him if he will be good enough to leave his hammock, if it is not inconveniencing him, and come and see me immediately,’ said Lady Constance.
She sank into her chair, and sat there breathing softly through the nostrils. A frozen calm had fallen on her. Her lips had tightened, her eyes were hard, and even Lord Ickenham, intrepid though he was, might have felt, had he entered at this moment, a pang of apprehension at the sight of her, so clearly was her manner that of a woman about to say to her domestic staff, ‘Throw these men out, and see to it that they land on something sharp.’
Chapter Seven
1
Breakfast concluded, the Duke of Dunstable had gone to the terrace, where there was a comfortable deck-chair in the shade of a spreading tree, to smoke the first cigar of the day and read his Times. But scarcely had he blown the opening puff of smoke and set eye to print when his peace was destroyed by the same treble voice which had disturbed him on the previous day. Once more it squeaked in his ear, and he saw that he had been joined by Lord Emsworth’s grandson George, who, as on the former occasion, had omitted to announce his presence by blowing his horn.
He did not strike the lad, for that would have involved rising from his seat, but he gave him an unpleasant look. Intrusion on his sacred after-breakfast hour always awoke the fiend that slept in him.
‘Go away, boy!’ he boomed.
‘You mean “Scram! “, don’t you, chum?’ said George, who liked to get these things right. ‘But I want to confer with you about this tent business.’
‘What tent business?’
‘T
hat thing that happened last night.’
‘Oh, that?’
‘Only it wasn’t last night, it was this morning. A mysterious affair. Have you formed any conclusions?’
The Duke stirred irritably. He was regretting the mistaken kindness that had led him to brighten Blandings Castle with his presence. It was the old story. You said to yourself in a weak and sentimental moment that Emsworth and Connie and the rest of them led dull lives and needed cheering up by association with a polished man of the world, so you sacrificed yourself and came here, and the next thing you knew everyone was jumping into lakes and charging you five hundred pounds for stealing pigs and coming squeaking in your ear and so on and so forth — in short, making the place a ruddy inferno. He gave an animal snarl, and even when filtered through his moustache the sound was impressive, though it left George unmoved. To George it merely seemed that his old friend had got an insect of some kind in his thoracic cavity.
‘What do you mean, have I formed any conclusions? Do you think a busy man like myself has time to bother himself with these trifles? Scram, boy, and let me read my paper.’
Like most small boys, George had the quiet persistence of a gadfly. It was never easy to convince him that his society was not desired by one and all. He settled himself on the stone flooring beside the Duke’s chair in the manner of one who has come to stay. Limpets on rocks could have picked up useful hints from him in the way of technique.
‘This is a lot hotter news than anything you’ll read in the paper,’ he squeaked. ‘I have a strange story to relate.’
In spite of himself, the Duke found that he was becoming mildly interested.
‘I suppose you know who did it, hey?’ he said satirically.
George shrugged a shoulder.
‘Beyond the obvious facts that the miscreant was a Freemason, left-handed, chewed tobacco and had travelled in the east,’ he said, ‘I have so far formed no conclusion.’
Service With a Smile Page 9
