Blanding Castle Omnibus

by P. G. Wodehouse

  ‘Pig-pincher!’ said Pilbeam austerely, and closed his eyes again.

  Hugo, having established his equilibrium by means of the chair, had now moved away. He was making a strong effort to recover his morale. He picked up the photograph of Lord Emsworth in his Yeomanry uniform and looked at it absently; then, as if it had just dawned upon him, put it down with a shudder, like a man who finds that he had been handling a snake.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he said thickly.

  Pilbeam’s eyes opened.

  ‘What do I mean? What do you think I mean? I mean you’re a pig-pincher. That’s what I mean. You go to and fro, sneaking pigs and hiding them in caravans.’

  Hugo took up Lord Emsworth’s photograph again, saw what he was doing, and dropped it quickly. Pilbeam had closed his eyes once more, and, looking at him, Hugo could not repress a reluctant thrill of awe. He had often read about the superhuman intuition of detectives, but he had never before been privileged to observe it in operation. Then an idea occurred to him.

  ‘Did you see me?’

  ‘What say, Carmody?’

  ‘Did you see me?’

  ‘Yes, I see you, Carmody,’ said Pilbeam playfully. ‘Peep-bo!’

  ‘Did you see me put that pig in the caravan?’

  Pilbeam nodded eleven times in rapid succession.

  ‘Certainly I saw you, Carmody. Why shouldn’t I see you, considering I’d been caught in the rain and taken shelter in the caravan and was in there with my trousers off, trying to dry them because I’m subject to lumbago?’

  ‘I didn’t see you.’

  ‘No, Carmody, you did not. And I’ll tell you why, Carmody. Because I heard a girl’s voice outside saying “Be quick, or somebody will come along!” and I hid. You don’t suppose I would let a sweet girl see me in knee-length mesh-knit underwear, do you? Not done, Carmody,’ said Pilbeam, severely. ‘Not cricket.’

  Hugo was experiencing the bitterness which comes to all criminals who discover, too late, that they have undone themselves by trying to be clever. It had seemed at the time such a good idea to remove the Empress from the gamekeeper’s cottage in the West Wood and place her in Baxter’s caravan, where nobody would think of looking. How could he have anticipated that the caravan would be bulging with blighted detectives?

  At this tense moment, the door opened and Beach appeared.

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir, but do you propose to wait any longer for Mr Ronald?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Pilbeam. ‘Who the devil’s Mr Ronald, I should like to know? I didn’t come to this place to do a fast-cure. I want my dinner, and I want it now. And if Mr Ronald doesn’t like it, he can do the other thing.’ He strode in a dominating manner to the door. ‘Come along, Carmody. Din-dins.’

  Hugo had sunk into a chair.

  ‘I don’t want any dinner,’ he said, dully.

  ‘You don’t want any dinner?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No dinner?’

  ‘No.’

  Pilbeam shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

  ‘The man’s an ass,’ he said.

  He headed for the stairs. His manner seemed to indicate that he washed his hands of Hugo.

  Beach lingered.

  ‘Shall I bring you some sandwiches, sir?’

  ‘No thanks. What’s that?’

  A loud crash had sounded. The butler went to the door and looked out.

  ‘It is Mr Pilbeam, sir. He appears to have fallen downstairs.’

  For an instant a look of hope crept into Hugo’s careworn face.

  ‘Has he broken his neck?’

  ‘Apparently not, sir.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Hugo regretfully.

  13 SWIFT THINKING BY THE EFFICIENT BAXTER

  I

  The Efficient Baxter had retired to the smoking-room shortly before half-past seven. He desired silence and solitude, and in this cosy haven he got both. For a few minutes nothing broke the stillness but the slow ticking of a clock on the mantelpiece. Then from the direction of the hall there came a new sound, faint at first but swelling and swelling to a frenzied blare, seeming to throb through the air with a note of passionate appeal like a woman wailing for her demon lover. It was that tocsin of the soul, that muezzin of the country-house, the dressing-for-dinner gong.

  Baxter did not stir. The summons left him unmoved. He had heard it, of course. Butler Beach was a man who swung a pretty gong-stick. He had that quick forearm flick and wristy follow-through which stamp the master. If you were anywhere within a quarter of a mile or so, you could not help hearing him. But the sound had no appeal for Baxter. He did not propose to go in to dinner. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts.They were not the sort of thoughts with which most men would have wished to be left alone, being both dark and bitter. That expedition to the gamekeeper’s cottage in the West Wood had not proved a pleasure-trip for Rupert Baxter. Reviewing it in his mind, he burned with baffled rage.

  And yet everybody had been very nice to him – very nice and tactful. True, at the moment of the discovery that the cottage contained no pig and appeared to have been pigless from its foundation, there had been perhaps just the slightest suspicion of constraint. Lord Emsworth had grasped his ivory-knobbed stick a little more tightly, and had edged behind Beach in a rather noticeable way, his manner saying more plainly than was agreeable, ‘If he springs, be ready!’ And there had come into the butler’s face a look, hard to bear, which was a blend of censure and pity. But after that both of them had been charming.

  Lord Emsworth had talked soothingly about light and shade effects. He had said – and Beach agreed with him – that in the darkness of a thunderstorm anybody might have been deceived into supposing that he had seen a butler feeding a pig in the gamekeeper’s cottage. It was probably, said Lord Emsworth – and Beach thought so, too – a bit of wood sticking out of the wall or something. He went on to tell a longish story of how he himself, when a boy, had fancied he had seen a cat with flaming eyes. He had concluded by advising Baxter – and Beach said the suggestion was a good one – to hurry home and have a nice cup of hot tea and go to bed.

  His attitude, in short, could not have been pleasanter or more considerate. Yet Baxter, as he sat in the smoking-room, burned, as stated, with baffled rage.

  The door-handle turned. Beach stood on the threshold.

  ‘If you have changed your mind, sir, about taking dinner, the meal is quite ready.’

  He spoke as friend to friend. There was nothing in his manner to suggest that the man he addressed had ever accused him of stealing pigs. As far as Beach was concerned, all was forgotten and forgiven.

  But the milk of human kindness, of which the butler was so full, had not yet been delivered on Baxter’s doorstep. The hostility in his eye, as he fixed it on his visitor, was so marked that a lesser man than Beach might have been disconcerted.

  ‘I don’t want any dinner.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  ‘Bring me that whisky-and-soda quick.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The door closed as softly as it had opened, but not before a pang like a red-hot needle had pierced the ex-secretary’s bosom. It was caused by the fact that he had distinctly heard the butler, as he withdrew, utter a pitying sigh.

  It was the sort of sigh which a kind-hearted man would have given on peeping into a padded cell in which some old friend was confined, and Baxter resented it with all the force of an imperious nature. He had not ceased to wonder what, if anything, could be done about it when the refreshments arrived, carried by James the footman. James placed them gently on the table, shot a swift glance of respectful commiseration at the patient, and passed away.

  The sigh had cut Baxter like a knife. The look stabbed him like a dagger. For a moment he thought of calling the man back and asking him what the devil he meant by staring at him like that, but wiser counsels prevailed. He contented himself with draining a glass of whisky-and-soda and swallowing two sandwiches.

>   This done, he felt a little – not much, but a little – better. Before, he would gladly have murdered Beach and James and danced on their graves. Now, he would have been satisfied with straight murder.

  However, he was alone at last. That was some slight consolation. Beach had come and gone. Footman James had come and gone. Everybody else must by now be either at Matchingham Hall or assembled in the dining-room. On the solitude which he so greatly desired there could be no further intrusion. He resumed his meditations.

  For a time these dealt exclusively with the recent past, and were, in consequence, of a morbid character. Then, as the grateful glow of the whisky began to make itself felt, a softer mood came to Rupert Baxter. His mind turned to thoughts of Sue.

  Men as efficient as Rupert Baxter do not fall in love in the generally accepted sense of the term. Their attitude towards the tender passion is more restrained than that of the ordinary feckless young man who loses his heart at first sight with a whoop and a shiver. Baxter approved of Sue. We cannot say more. But this approval, added to the fact that he had been informed by Lady Constance that the girl was the only daughter of a man who possessed sixty million dollars, had been enough to cause him to ear-mark her in his mind as the future Mrs Baxter. In that capacity he had docketed her and filed her away at the first moment of their meeting.

  Naturally, therefore, the remarks which Lord Emsworth had let fall in her hearing had caused him grave concern. It hampers a man in his wooing if the girl he has selected for his bride starts with the idea that he is as mad as a coot. He congratulated himself on the promptitude with which he had handled the situation. That letter which he had written her could not fail to put him right in her eyes.

  Rupert Baxter was a man in whose lexicon there was no such word as failure. An heiress like this Miss Schoonmaker would not, he was aware, lack for suitors: but he did not fear them. If only she were making a reasonably long stay at the castle, he felt that he could rely on his force of character to win the day. In fact, it seemed to him that he could almost hear the wedding bells ringing already. Then, coming out of his dreams, he realized that it was the telephone.

  He reached for the instrument with a frown, annoyed at the interruption, and spoke with an irritated sharpness.

  ‘Hullo?’

  A ghostly voice replied. The storm seemed to have affected the wires.

  ‘Speak up!’ barked Baxter.

  He banged the telephone violently on the table. The treatment, as is so often the case, proved effective.

  ‘Blandings Castle?’ said the voice, no longer ghostly.

  Yes.’

  ‘Post Office, Market Blandings, speaking. Telegram for Lady Constance Keeble.’

  ‘I will take it.’

  The voice became faint again. Baxter went through the movements as before.

  ‘Lady Constance Keeble, Blandings Castle, Market Blandings, Shropshire, England,’ said the voice, recovering strength, as if it had shaken off a wasting sickness. ‘Handed in at Paris.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Paris, France.’

  ‘Oh? Well?’

  The voice gathered volume.

  ‘“Terribly sorry hear news . . .”’

  ‘What?’

  ‘“News.”’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘“Terribly sorry hear news stop Quite understand stop So disappointed shall be unable come to you later as going back America at end of month stop Do hope we shall be able arrange something when I return next year stop Regards stop!”’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Signed “Myra Schoonmaker”.’

  ‘Signed – what?

  ‘Myra Schoonmaker.’

  Baxter’s mouth had fallen open. The forehead above the spectacles was wrinkled, the eyes behind them staring blankly and with a growing horror.

  ‘Shall I repeat?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you wish the message repeated?’

  ‘No,’ said Baxter in a choking voice.

  He hung up the receiver. There seemed to be something crawling down his back. His brain was numbed.

  Myra Schoonmaker! Telegraphing from Paris!

  Then who was this girl who was at the castle calling herself by that preposterous name? An imposter, an adventuress. She must be.

  And if he made a move to expose her she would revenge herself by showing Lord Emsworth that letter of his.

  In his agitation of the moment he had risen to his feet. He now sat down heavily.

  That letter . . .!

  He must recover it. He must recover it at once. As long as it remained in the girl’s possession, it was a pistol pointed at his head. Once let Lord Emsworth become acquainted with those very frank criticisms of himself which it contained, and not even his ally, Lady Constance, would be able to restore him to his lost secretaryship. The ninth Earl was a mild man, accustomed to bowing to his sister’s decrees, but there were limits beyond which he could not be pushed.

  And Baxter yearned to be back at Blandings Castle in the position he had once enjoyed. Blandings was his spiritual home. He had held other secretaryships – he held one now, at a salary far higher than that which Lord Emsworth had paid him – but never had he succeeded in recapturing that fascinating sense of power, of importance, of being the man who directed the destinies of one of the largest houses in England.

  At all costs he must recover that letter. And the present moment, he perceived, was ideal for the venture. The girl must have the thing in her room somewhere, and for the next hour at least she would be in the dining-room. He would have ample opportunity for a search.

  He did not delay. Thirty seconds later he was mounting the stairs, his face set, his spectacles gleaming grimly. A minute later, he reached his destination. No good angel, aware of what the future held, stood on the threshold to bar his entry. The door was ajar. He pushed it open and went in.

  II

  Blandings Castle, like most places of its size and importance, contained bedrooms so magnificent that they were never used. With their four-poster beds and their superb but rather oppressive tapestries, they had remained untenanted since the time when Queen Elizabeth I, dodging from country-house to country-house in that restless, snipe-like way of hers, had last slept in them. Of the guest-rooms still in commission, the most luxurious was that which had been given to Sue.

  At the moment when Baxter stole cautiously in, it was looking its best in the gentle evening light. But Baxter was not in sight-seeing mood. He ignored the carved bedstead, the cosy armchairs, the pictures, the decorations, and the soft carpet into which his feet sank. The beauty of the sky through the french windows that gave on to the balcony drew but a single brief glance from him. Without delay, he made for the writing-desk which stood against the wall near the bed. It seemed to him a good point of departure for his search.There were several pigeon-holes in the desk. They contained single sheets of notepaper, double sheets of notepaper, postcards, envelopes, telegraph-forms, and even a little pad on which the room’s occupant was presumably expected to jot down any stray thoughts and reflections on Life which might occur to him or her before turning in for the night. But not one of them contained the fatal letter.

  He straightened himself and looked about the room. The drawer of the dressing-table now suggested itself as a possibility. He left the desk and made his way towards it.

  The primary requisite of dressing-tables being a good supply of light, they are usually placed in a position to get as much of it as possible. This one was no exception. It stood so near to the open windows that the breeze was ruffling the tassels on its lamp-shades: and Baxter, arriving in front of it, was enabled for the first time to see the balcony in its entirety.

  And, as he saw it, his heart seemed to side-slip. Leaning upon the parapet and looking out over the sea of gravel that swept up to the front door from the rhododendron-fringed drive, stood a girl. And not even the fact that her back was turned could prevent Baxter identifying her.

  For an instant he
remained frozen. Even the greatest men congeal beneath the chill breath of the totally unexpected. He had assumed as a matter of course that Sue was down in the dining-room, and it took him several seconds to adjust his mind to the unpleasing fact that she was up on her balcony. When he recovered his presence of mind sufficiently to draw noiselessly away from the line of vision, his first emotion was one of irritation. This chopping and changing, this eleventh hour alteration of plans, these sudden decisions to remain upstairs when they ought to be downstairs, were what made women as a sex so unsatisfactory.

  To irritation succeeded a sense of defeat. There was nothing for it, he realized, but to give up his quest and go. He started to tip-toe silently to the door, agreeably conscious now of the softness and thickness of the Axminster pile that made it possible to move unheard, and had just reached it, when from the other side there came to his ears a sound of chinking and clattering – the sound, in fact, which is made by plates and dishes when they are carried on a tray to a guest who, after a long railway journey, has asked her hostess if she may take dinner in her room.

  Practice makes perfect. This was the second time in the last three hours that Baxter had found himself trapped in a room in which it was vitally urgent that he should not be discovered: and he was getting the technique of the thing. On the previous occasion, in the small library, he had taken to himself wings like a bird and sailed out of the window. In the present crisis, such a course, he perceived immediately, was not feasible. The way of an eagle would profit him nothing. Soaring over the balcony, he would be observed by Sue and would, in addition, unquestionably break his neck. What was needed here was the way of a diving-duck.

  And so, as the door-handle turned, Rupert Baxter, even in this black hour efficient, dropped on all-fours and slid under the bed as smoothly as if he had been practising for weeks.

  Ill

  Owing to the restricted nature of his position and the limited range of vision which he enjoys, virtually the only way in which a man who is hiding under a bed can entertain himself is by listening to what is going on outside. He may hear something of interest, or he may hear only the draught sighing along the floor: but, for better or for worse, that is all he is able to do.