Blanding Castle Omnibus

by P. G. Wodehouse

  John weighed the question. His impulse was to answer it in the negative. He was fond of Joe Bender and in normal circumstances always enjoyed his company, but a man reeling from a blow of the kind he had so recently received shrinks from the society of even the closest of friends. Harrowing though his thoughts were, tonight he wanted to be alone with them.

  Then his natural goodness of heart prevailed. Joe, he reflected, would not have been telephoning so urgently unless he were in some sort of trouble, and this being so he would have to do the decent thing and let him come and cry on his shoulder.

  ‘Yes, do, Ma,’ he said. ‘I’m going to have a shower. If he comes before I’m dressed, tell him to wait.’

  When John reappeared, a good deal restored by his bath, Joe Bender had arrived and was in conversation with Ma Balsam, though conversation is not perhaps the right word for what had been a monologue on her part, a series of grunts on his. Like a good hostess, she drew John into their little circle.

  ‘I’ve been telling Mister Who-is-it he doesn’t look well,’ she said. ‘Noticed it the minute he came in.’

  Her eye had not deceived her. Joe Bender was looking terrible. A man, to use an old-fashioned phrase, of some twenty-eight summers, he gave the impression at the moment of having experienced at least that number of very hard winters. He was even more haggard than John, so much so that the latter, forgetting his own troubles, uttered a cry of concern.

  ‘Good heavens, Joe! What’s the matter?’

  ‘Just what I was wondering,’ said Ma Balsam. ‘If you ask me, he’s coming down with something. He’s got the same pasty look Balsam had before he was stricken with whatever it was and passed beyond the veil. Lost the use of his legs to begin with,’ she said as Joe Bender collapsed into a chair, ‘and it wasn’t long after that that he came out in spots. We ought to send for a doctor, Mister Who-is-it.’

  ‘I don’t want a doctor.’

  ‘Then I’ll go and heat you up a nice glass of hot milk,’ said Ma Balsam. She belonged to the school of thought which holds that a nice glass of hot milk, while not baffling the death angel altogether, can at least postpone the inevitable.

  As the kitchen door closed behind her, Joe Bender heaved a sigh of relief.

  ‘I thought that woman would never go. Tell her I don’t want any damned milk.’

  ‘Have a whisky and soda.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll do that. In fact, I shall need several.’

  John went to the kitchen and came back successful, though not without argument, in having countermanded the Ma Balsam specific. ‘He’s liable to expire all over the floor,’ she warned, ‘but have it your own way.’

  ‘Now then,’ he said. ‘What’s all this about?’

  It is possible that had this meeting taken place earlier, Joe Bender would have been in a frame of mind to break gently the news he had come to impart, for he was a man of sensibility who if compelled to give people shocks liked to do his best to soften them. But a whole long day of ever-growing agitation had sapped his morale. For an eternity, it seemed to him, he had kept pent in what Shakespeare would have called his stuffed bosom a secret calculated to stagger humanity or at least that portion of humanity with the interests of the Bender gallery at heart, and it came out with the abruptness of a cork leaving a champagne bottle.

  ‘That picture, John! It’s a fake!’

  It is also possible that if John had been less preoccupied with his own tragedy, he would have grasped the import of these words more readily. As it was, he merely stared.

  ‘Picture? What picture?’

  Joe Bender, too, stared. The eyes behind their tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles widened to their fullest capacity.

  ‘What picture?’ he echoed. He found it incredible that John of all people should find it necessary to ask such a question. There was only one picture in the world. ‘The Robichaux. The one we sold to the Duke. Don’t you understand, dammit? It’s a fake. It’s a forgery.’

  He had no need to explain the situation further. John had grasped it now, and it was as if Ma Balsam, not that she was capable of such a thing, had crept up behind him and poured a brimming beaker of ice water down his back. He would not have thought such a thing possible, but he actually stopped thinking of Linda Gilpin. It was an appreciable time before he found speech, and when he did it was only to ask a fatuous question.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. The real one had been vetted by Mortimer Bayliss, who’s about the best art critic in the world. He said it was genuine, and when he says a picture’s genuine, that settles it.’

  John was still far from understanding. He was clear as to there being in circulation not one reclining nude from the brush of the late Claude Robichaux, but two reclining nudes. Beyond that he found himself in a fog, and he fell insensibly into his professional manner when cross-examining a witness.

  ‘Explain it from the beginning,’ he said, only just refraining from a ‘Then will you kindly tell the jury’. ‘Where did the one you sold the Duke come from?’

  ‘I bought it in Paris, from a couple of Rumanians who have a small place near the Madeleine. I might have known,’ said Joe Bender bitterly. ‘I ought to have asked myself “Bender, if you were a forgery, where would you go?”, and the answer would have been “To a Rumanian art gallery”.’

  ‘And this other one, the genuine one?’

  ‘My father had it before I took over the business. That’s what hurts so. It had been there all the time. I suppose Father had been holding on to it, waiting for a rise in the market.’

  ‘Then why—?’

  ‘Because it had been sent to be cleaned. That’s why I knew nothing about it. It came back this morning. What on earth are we going to do, John?’

  ‘Explain to the Duke and give him the genuine one, I suppose.’

  ‘And have him spread the story everywhere that you can’t rely on anything you buy at the Bender Gallery because every second thing they sell you is bound to be a forgery. We should be ruined in a month, if not sooner. There’s nothing so vulnerable as a picture gallery. It lives on its reputation. That’s the last thing we must do. Fatal, absolutely fatal.’

  ‘But we can’t take his money under false pretences.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘We’ll have to buy it back from him, probably for about double what he paid us.’

  ‘That’s not a pleasant thought.’

  ‘I don’t like it myself.’

  ‘And how do we explain our sudden switch from seller to buyer?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘He’s bound to suspect a trap and put the price up even higher than you said. I’ve been hearing a lot about the Duke of Dunstable from my godfather, who has known him for years, and one of the things I heard was that he always likes to get all the money that’s coming to him. We shan’t have a penny left after he’s done with us. What we ought to do is smuggle the forgery away and put the real picture in its place.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Then everybody would be happy.’

  ‘So they would. Smuggle the forgery away and put the real picture in its place. Mind if I ask you something?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘How?’

  John agreed that this was a good question, and there was a silence of some duration. Joe Bender helped himself to another whisky.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s what we must do, smuggle the forgery away and put the real picture in its place. And we don’t even know where it is.’

  ‘The Duke’s got it.’

  ‘And where’s the Duke?’

  ‘At Blandings Castle.’

  ‘I hope he’s having a wonderful time.’

  ‘He’s bound to have the picture with him.’

  ‘And nothing simpler than to grab it. All we need is an invitation to Blandings Castle.’

  ‘My God!’ cried John, so loudly that his voice penetrated to Ma Balsamin the kitchen, cau
sing her to shake her head sadly. She felt that association with that Mister Who-is-it was corrupting her employer.

  Joe Bender was endeavouring to dry his trousers, on to which the major portion of his whisky had fallen. That clarion cry had startled him.

  ‘Gally!’ John shouted, and Ma Balsam shook her head again. The expletive was new to her, but it sounded worse than G or Aitch. ‘Gally’s at Blandings, too.’

  ‘He is?’ said Joe Bender. He had heard tales of Gally from John, and the first time a faint light of hope flickered behind his tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles. ‘You mean—?’

  ‘We can place the whole conduct of the thing in his hands with the utmost confidence. It’s the sort of job that’s right up his street. I’ll go to Market Blandings first thing tomorrow and give him full particulars.’

  2

  It was not, however, till the following afternoon that John was at liberty to leave for Market Blandings. He had forgotten that he had been briefed to appear in court in the morning on behalf of Onapoulos and Onapoulos in their suit against the Lincolnshire and Eastern Counties Glass Bottling Company, and the sunlight was blotted still further from his life, when he did so appear, by the fact that he lost his case, was rebuked by the judge and harshly spoken to by both Onapouloses, who held the view that it was only the incompetence of their advocate that had prevented them winning by a wide margin. When he caught the 2.33 train at Paddington, everybody there winced at the sight of his haggard face. They thought he looked even worse than when they had seen him last.

  The parting with Ma Balsam had done nothing to induce equanimity. When a motherly woman of strong inquisitive trend sees a young man, to whom she has attached herself as a guide, philosopher and friend, making preparations for a journey the day after he has returned from one, she is naturally curious. And when the Ma Balsams of this world are curious, they do not hesitate to ask questions. The following dialogue took place as John packed his suitcase.

  ‘You off somewhere?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You went off yesterday.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where you going this time?’

  ‘Shropshire.’

  ‘What, again?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What takes you there?’

  ‘I have to see a man.’

  ‘In Shropshire?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Whereabouts in Shropshire?’

  ‘A place called Market Blandings.’

  ‘Never heard of it.’

  ‘Well, it’s there.’

  ‘Was that where you went yesterday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’d have saved a lot of trouble if you’d stayed the night there. I suppose that didn’t occur to you.’

  ‘I had to be in court this morning.’

  ‘Balsam used to go to court a lot when he was with us. There was a copper with a cast in one eye who kept pinching him for street betting. What’s that thing in brown paper?’

  ‘A picture.’

  ‘You taking it to this man you’re seeing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Cheaper to send it parcel post.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then why don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, aitch!’ said John, and Ma Balsam realized that the bad influence of Mister Who-is-it had made even more progress than she had supposed.

  The meeting with Gally got off to a bad start. When the last of the Pelicans arrived at the tryst on the following morning, he was in no welcoming mood. John’s telephone call had come when he was out taking a stroll in the grounds, and its purport had been relayed to him by Beach. All he knew, accordingly, was that his godson, contrary to the most definite instructions, had returned to the Emsworth Arms, and he was naturally annoyed. No leader of men likes to hear that his orders have been ignored by a subordinate. His greeting of John was brusque.

  ‘I thought I told you to go back to London and leave everything to me,’ he said.

  His manner was stern, but John remained unmoved.

  ‘This isn’t that.’

  ‘What do you mean, this isn’t that?’

  ‘It has nothing to do with Linda.’

  ‘Nothing to do with her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what’s it all about? If,’ said Gally, ‘you’ve dragged me all the way to Market Blandings on a sweltering summer morning for some trifle … What are you giggling about?’

  John corrected his choice of verbs.

  ‘I was not giggling. I was laughing hollowly. Your use of the word “trifle” amused me. It’s anything but a trifle that brings me here. I’m sorry you’ve had a warm walk—’

  ‘Warm? I feel like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the burning fiery furnace.’

  ‘—but I had to see you. The most ghastly thing has happened, and we need your help.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Joe Bender and I.’

  ‘Who’s Joe Bender?’

  ‘I told you that night I came to your place. Don’t you remember? He runs the Bender gallery.’

  ‘Ah yes. You put some money into it, you said.’

  ‘I put practically all the money I had into it. And now I’m going to lose it, unless you come to the rescue.’

  Gally stared, amazed that anyone should think him possessed of cash. Not that he did not appreciate the compliment.

  ‘My good Johnny, what on earth can I do? Heaven knows I’d like to help you out of a tight place, but all I’ve got is a younger son’s pittance, and I’m not allowed to dip into the capital. I could manage twenty quid, if that’s any use. And even that would mean getting an overdraft at my bank.’

  John expressed gratitude for the offer, but said that Gally was under a misapprehension.

  ‘I don’t want money.’

  ‘Then why did you say so?’

  ‘I didn’t say so.’

  ‘It sounded like it to me.’

  ‘I’m sorry. No, what I want you to do is switch a couple of pictures.’

  ‘To … what?’

  ‘Yes, I know it sounds odd, but it’s really quite simple.’

  ‘Then perhaps you would explain.’

  ‘I will.’

  Gally, as has been mentioned, was always a better raconteur than a listener, but he gave on this occasion no cause for complaint in the latter role. Nobody could have been more silently attentive. He sat drinking in every word of John’s story, never interrupting and not even saying at its conclusion that it reminded him of something that had happened to a friend of his in the Pelican Club. All he said was that he would be charmed to perform the absurdly simple task required of him. To take the forgery to John and return to the castle with the genuine painting and deposit it in the portrait gallery would, he assured him, be the ideal way of filling in the time. Time, he said, always hung a little heavy on one’s hands in the country, and one was grateful for something to occupy one.

  ‘You’ve brought the genuine goods with you?’ he said, all executive bustle and efficiency. ‘Capital, capital, as Clarence would say. Where is it?’

  ‘Up in my room.’

  ‘I can’t take it now, of course.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘My dear boy, use your intelligence. What would I say if I met Connie and she asked me what I thought I was doing, sneaking about with a whacking great picture under my arm? I should be at a loss. I wouldn’t know which way to look. No, stealth is essential.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right.’

  ‘It’s a thing that must be done at dead of night, the deader the better. We must arrange a rendezvous. Where can we meet? Not in the ruined chapel, because there isn’t a ruined chapel, and other spots I could name wouldn’t convey a thing to you, you being a stranger in these parts. I think I’ll walk round in a circle for a bit and muse, if you have no objection.’

  Permission granted, he walked in a circle for a bit and must have mused to good purpose, for on completing his eleventh lap he announced that he had it.

/>   ‘The sty!’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The bijou residence of my brother Clarence’s prize pig, Empress of Blandings. The ideal locale, for however dark the night the old girl’s distinctive aroma will lead you to it unerringly. It’s near the kitchen garden. Go there and sniff, then follow your nose. There was a song popular before you were born, the refrain of which began with the words “It ain’t all lavender”. It might have been written expressly with the Empress in mind. Her best friends won’t tell her, but she suffers from B.O. How is your sense of smell? Keen? Then you can’t miss. And we must make it tonight, for time is of the essence. Dunstable bought that picture with the intention of selling it to an American chap called Trout. Trout got here yesterday. As soon as they’ve concluded their deal he will presumably leave and bang will go our chance of making the switch. So meet me at the Empress’s sty at midnight, and I will carry on from there.’

  A belated spasm of remorse stirred John. For the first time it occurred to him that however lightly Gally might speak of his assignment as absurdly simple, he was asking a good deal of the most accommodating godfather.

  ‘I hate landing you with a job like this, Gally.’

  ‘My dear boy, I shall enjoy it.’

  ‘Midnight’s not too late for you?’

  ‘The shank of the evening.’

  ‘Suppose you’re caught?’

  ‘I won’t be caught. I’m never caught. They call me The Shadow.’

  ‘Well, I can’t tell you how grateful I am. You’ve taken a load off my mind.’

  ‘Though there must still be plenty on it.’

  ‘There is.’ John choked for a moment as if afflicted by a sudden catarrh. ‘Have you … Have you … Have you by any chance had a word with her?’

  ‘Not yet. I’m biding my time. These things can’t be hurried. In dealing with a disgruntled popsy the wise man waits till she has simmered down a bit.’

  ‘How—er—how is she?’

  ‘Physically in the pink. Spiritually not so bobbish. She will need careful treatment. You must be patient, telling yourself that her current inclination to dip you in boiling oil will eventually pass. Time the great healer, and all that sort of thing. And as regards tonight you have memorized the drill? Good. Then I will be leaving you. We shall meet at twelve pip emma. Lurk concealed till you hear the hoot of the white owl, and then come running. I think I can manage a white owl all right, but if not I’ll do you a brown one.’