Wodehouse On Crime

by P. G. Wodehouse

  “Oh yes. Grandpapa. He jumped like billy-o.”

  “Did he, indeed? How this reminds me of Julia’s governess. Your aunt Julia once shot her governess under precisely similar conditions. She was tying her shoelace.”

  “Coo! Did she jump?”

  “She certainly did, my boy.”

  “Ha, ha!”

  “Ha, ha!”

  “Ha, ha!”

  “Ha, h — Ah … Er —- well, just so,” said Lord Emsworth, a belated doubt assailing him as to whether this was quite the tone. “Well, George, I shall of course impound this — er — instrument.”

  “Right ho, Grandpapa,” said George, with the easy amiability of a boy conscious of having two catapults in his drawer upstairs.

  “Can’t have you going about the place shooting people.”

  “Okay, chief.”

  Lord Emsworth fondled the gun. That nostalgic feeling was growing.

  “Do you know, young man, I used to have one of these things when I was a boy.”

  “Coo! Were guns invented then?”

  “Yes, I had one when I was your age.”

  “Ever hit anything, Grandpapa?”

  Lord Emsworth drew himself up a little haughtily.

  “Certainly I did. I hit all sorts of things. Rats and things. I had a very accurate aim. But now I wouldn’t even know how to load the dashed affair.”

  “This is how you load it, Grandpapa. You open it like this, and shove the slug in here, and snap it together again like that and there you are.”

  “Indeed? Really? I see. Yes. Yes, of course, I remember now.”

  “You can’t kill anything much with it,” said George, with a wistfulness which betrayed an aspiration to higher things. “Still, it’s awfully useful for tickling up cows.”

  “And Baxter.”

  “Yes.”

  “Ha, ha!”

  “Ha, ha!”

  Once more. Lord Emsworth forced himself to concentrate on the right tone.

  “We mustn’t laugh about it, my boy. It’s no joking matter. It’s very wrong to shoot Mr. Baxter.”

  “But he’s a __ __.”

  “He is a __ __,” agreed Lord Emsworth, always fair-minded. “Nevertheless … remember, he is your tutor.”

  “Well, I don’t see why I’ve got to have a tutor right in the middle of the summer holidays. I sweat like the dickens all through the term at school,” said George, his voice vibrant with self-pity, “and then plumb spang in the middle of the holidays they slosh a tutor on me. I call it a bit thick.”

  Lord Emsworth might have told the little fellow that thicker things than that were going on in Blandings Castle, but he refrained. He dismissed him with a kindly, sympathetic smile and resumed his fondling of the air gun.

  Like so many men advancing into the sere and yellow of life. Lord Emsworth had an eccentric memory. It was not to be trusted an inch as far as the events of yesterday or the day before were concerned. Even in the small matter of assisting him to find a hat which he had laid down somewhere five minutes ago, it was nearly always useless. But by way of compensation for this it was a perfect encyclopaedia on the remote past. It rendered his boyhood an open book to him.

  Lord Emsworth mused on his boyhood. Happy days, happy days. He could recall the exact uncle who had given him the weapon, so similar to this one, with which Julia had shot her governess. He could recall brave, windswept mornings when he had gone prowling through the stable yard in the hope of getting a rat — and many a fine head had he secured. Odd that the passage of time should remove the desire to go and pop at things with an air gun… .

  Or did it?

  With a curious thrill that set his pince-nez rocking gently on his nose, Lord Emsworth suddenly became aware that it did not. All that the passage of time did was to remove the desire to pop temporarily — say for forty years or so. Dormant for a short while — well, call it fifty years — that desire, he perceived, still lurked unquenched. Little by little it began to stir within him now. Slowly but surely, as he sat there fondling the gun, he was once more becoming a potential popper.

  At this point, the gun suddenly went off and broke the bust of Aristotle.

  It was enough. The old killer instinct had awakened. Reloading with the swift efficiency of some hunter of the woods, Lord Emsworth went to the window. He was a little uncertain as to what he intended to do when he got there, except that he had a very clear determination to loose off at something. There flitted into his mind what his grandson George had said about tickling up cows, and this served to some extent to crystallise his aims. True, cows were not plentiful on the terrace of Blandings Castle. Still, one might have wandered there. You never knew with cows.

  There were no cows. Only Rupert Baxter. The ex-secretary was in the act of throwing away a cigarette.

  Most men are careless in the matter of throwing away cigarettes. The world is their ash tray. But Rupert Baxter had a tidy soul. He allowed the thing to fall to the ground like any ordinary young man, it is true, but immediately he had done so his better self awakened. He stooped to pick up the object that disfigured the smooth, flagged stones, and the invitation of that beckoning trousers’ seat would have been too powerful for a stronger man than Lord Emsworth to resist.

  He pulled the trigger, and Rupert Baxter sprang into the air with a sharp cry. Lord Emsworth reseated himself and took up Whiffle on The Care of the Pig.

  Everybody is interested nowadays in the psychology of the criminal. The chronicler, therefore, feels that he runs no risk of losing his grip on the reader if he pauses at this point to examine and analyse the workings of Lord Emsworth’s mind after the penetration of the black act which has just been recorded.

  At first, then, all that he felt as he sat turning the pages of his Whiffle was a sort of soft, warm glow, a kind of tremulous joy such as he might have experienced if he had just been receiving the thanks of the nation for some great public service.

  It was not merely the fact that he had caused his late employee to skip like the high hills that induced this glow. What pleased him so particularly was that it had been such a magnificent shot. He was a sensitive man, and though in his conversation with his grandson George he had tried to wear the mask, he had not been completely able to hide his annoyance at the boy’s careless assumption that in his air-gun days he had been an indifferent marksman.

  “Did you ever hit anything. Grandpapa?” Boys say these things with no wish to wound, but nevertheless they pierce the armour. “Did you ever hit anything. Grandpapa?’’ Forsooth! He would have liked to see George stop putting finger to trigger for forty-seven years, and then, first crack out of the box, pick off a medium-sized secretary at a distance like that! In rather a bad light, too.

  But after he had sat for a while, silently glowing, his mood underwent a change. A gunman’s complacency after getting his man can never remain for long an unmixed complacency. Sooner or later there creeps in the thought of Retribution. It did with Lord Emsworth. Quite suddenly, whispering in his car, he heard the voice of Conscience say:

  “What if your sister Constance learns of this?’’

  A moment before this voice spoke. Lord Emsworth had been smirking. He now congealed, and the smile passed from his lips like breath off a razor blade, to be succeeded by a tense look of anxiety and alarm.

  Nor was this alarm unjustified. When he reflected how scathing and terrible his sister Constance could be when he committed even so venial a misdemeanour as coming down to dinner with a brass paper fastener in his shirt front instead of the more conventional stud, his imagination boggled at the thought of what she would do in a case like this. He was appalled. Whiffle on The Care of the Pig fell from his nerveless hand, and he sat looking like a dying duck. And Lady Constance, who now entered, noted the expression and was curious as to its cause.

  “What is the matter, Clarence?”

  “Matter?”

  “Why are you looking like a dying duck?”

  “I am not looki
ng like a dying duck,” retorted Lord Emsworth with what spirit he could muster.

  “Well,” said Lady Constance, waiving the point, “have you spoken to George?”

  “Certainly. Yes, of course I’ve spoken to George. He was in here just now and I — er — spoke to him.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said” — Lord Emsworth wanted to make this very clear — “I said that I wouldn’t even know how to load one of those things.”

  “Didn’t you give him a good talking-to?”

  “Of course I did. A very good talking-to. I said, ‘Er — George, you know how to load those things and I don’t, but that’s no reason why you should go about shooting Baxter.’ ”

  “Was that all you said?”

  “No. That was just how I began. I — ”

  Lord Emsworth paused. He could not have finished the sentence if large rewards had been offered to him to do so. For, as he spoke, Rupert Baxter appeared in the doorway, and he shrank back in his chair like some Big Shot cornered by G-men.

  The secretary came forward limping slightly. His eyes behind their spectacles were wild and his manner emotional. Lady Constance gazed at him wonderingly.

  “Is something the matter, Mr. Baxter?”

  “Matter?” Rupert Baxter's voice was taut and he quivered in every limb. He had lost his customary suavity and was plainly in no frame of mind to mince his words. “Matter? Do you know what has happened? That infernal boy has shot me again!”

  “What!”

  “Only a few minutes ago. Out on the terrace.”

  Lord Emsworth shook off his palsy.

  “I expect you imagined it,” he said.

  “Imagined it!” Rupert Baxter shook from spectacles to shoes. “I tell you I was on the terrace, stooping to pick up my cigarette, when something hit me on the … something hit me.”

  “Probably a wasp,” said Lord Emsworth. “They are very plentiful this year. I wonder,” he said chattily, “if either of you are aware that wasps serve a very useful purpose. They keep down the leatherjackets, which, as you know, inflict serious injury upon — ”

  Lady Constance’s concern became mixed with perplexity.

  “But it could not have been George, Mr. Baxter. The moment you told me of what he had done, I confiscated his air gun. Look, there it is on the table now.”

  “Right there on the table,” said Lord Emsworth, pointing helpfully. “If you come over here, you can see it clearly. Must have been a wasp.”

  “You have not left the room, Clarence?”

  “No. Been here all the time.”

  “Then it would have been impossible for George to have shot you, Mr. Baxter.”

  “Quite,” said Lord Emsworth. “A wasp, undoubtedly. Unless, as I say, you imagined the whole thing.”

  The secretary stiffened.

  “I am not subject to hallucinations. Lord Emsworth.”

  “But you are, my dear fellow. I expect it comes from exerting your brain too much. You’re always getting them.”

  “Clarence!”

  “Well, he is. You know that as well as I do. Look at that time he went grubbing about in a lot of flowerpots because he thought you had put your necklace there.”

  “I did not — ”

  “You did, my dear fellow. I daresay you’ve forgotten it, but you did. And then, for some reason best known to yourself, you threw the flowerpots at me through my bedroom window.”

  Baxter turned to Lady Constance, flushing darkly. The episode to which his former employer had alluded was one of which he never cared to be reminded.

  “Lord Emsworth is referring to the occasion when your diamond necklace was stolen. Lady Constance. I was led to believe that the thief had hidden it in a flowerpot.”

  “Of course, Mr. Baxter.”

  “Well, have it your own way,” said Lord Emsworth agreeably. “But bless my soul, I shall never forget waking up and finding all those flowerpots pouring in through the window, and then looking out and seeing Baxter on the lawn in lemon-coloured pajamas with a wild glare in his — ”

  “Clarence!”

  “Oh, all right. I merely mentioned it. Hallucinations — he gets them all the time,” he said stoutly, though in an undertone.

  Lady Constance was cooing to the secretary like a mother to her child.

  “It really is impossible that George should have done this, Mr. Baxter. The gun has never left this — ”

  She broke off. Her handsome face seemed to turn suddenly to stone. When she spoke again the coo had gone out of her voice and it had become metallic.

  “Clarence!”

  “My dear?”

  Lady Constance drew in her breath sharply.

  “Mr. Baxter, I wonder if you would mind leaving us for a moment. I wish to speak to Lord Emsworth.”

  The closing of the door was followed by a silence, followed in its turn by an odd, whining noise like gas escaping from a pipe. It was Lord Emsworth trying to hum carelessly.

  “Clarence!”

  “Yes? Yes, my dear?”

  The stoniness of Lady Constance’s expression had become more marked with each succeeding moment. What had caused it in the first place was the recollection, coming to her like a flash, that when she had entered this room she had found her brother looking like a dying duck. Honest men, she felt, do not look like dying ducks. The only man whom an impartial observer could possibly mistake for one of these birds in extremis is the man with crime upon his soul.

  “Clarence, was it you who shot Mr. Baxter?”

  Fortunately there had been that in her manner which led Lord Emsworth to expect the question. He was ready for it.

  “Me? Who, me? Shoot Baxter? What the deuce would I want to shoot Baxter for?”

  “We can go into your motives later. What I am asking you now is — did you?”

  “Of course I didn’t.”

  “The gun has not left the room.”

  “Shoot Baxter, indeed! Never heard anything so dashed absurd in my life.”

  “And you have been here all the time.”

  “Well, what of it? Suppose I have? Suppose I had wanted to shoot Baxter? Suppose every fibre in my being had egged me on, dash it, to shoot the feller? How could I have done it, not even knowing how to load the contrivance?”

  “You used to know how to load an air gun.”

  “I used to know a lot of things.”

  “It’s quite easy to load an air gun. I could do it myself.”

  “Well, I didn’t.”

  “Then how do you account for the fact that Mr. Baxter was shot by an air gun which had never left the room you were in?”

  Lord Emsworth raised pleading hands to heaven.

  “How do you know he was shot with this air gun? God bless my soul, the way women jump to conclusions is enough to … How do you know there wasn’t another air gun? How do you know the place isn’t bristling with air guns? How do you know Beach hasn’t an air gun? Or anybody?”

  “I scarcely imagine that Beach would shoot Mr. Baxter.”

  “How do you know he wouldn’t? He used to have an air gun when he was a small lad. He said so. I’d watch the man closely.”

  “Please don’t be ridiculous, Clarence.”

  “I’m not being half as ridiculous as you are. Saying I shoot people with air guns. Why should I shoot people with air guns? And how do you suppose I could have potted Baxter at that distance?”

  “What distance?”

  “He was standing on the terrace, wasn’t he? He specifically stated that he was standing on the terrace. And I was up here. It would take a most expert marksman to pot the fellow at a distance like that. Who do you think I am? One of those chaps who shoot apples off their sons’ heads?”

  The reasoning was undeniably specious. It shook Lady Constance. She frowned undecidedly.

  “Well, it’s very strange that Mr. Baxter should be so convinced that he was shot.”

  “Nothing strange about it at all. There wouldn’t be
anything strange if Baxter was convinced that he was a turnip and had been bitten by a white rabbit with pink eyes. You know perfectly well, though you won’t admit it, that the fellow’s a raving lunatic.”

  “Clarence!”

  “It’s no good saying ‘Clarence.’ The fellow’s potty to the core, and always has been. Haven’t I seen him on the lawn at five o’clock in the morning in lemon-coloured pajamas, throwing flowerpots in at my window? Pooh! Obviously, the whole thing is the outcome of the man’s diseased imagination. Shot, indeed! Never heard such nonsense. And now,” said Lord Emsworth, rising firmly, “I’m going out to have a look at my roses. I came to this room to enjoy a little quiet reading and meditation, and ever since I got here there’s been a constant stream of people in and out, telling me they’re going to marry men named Abercrombie and saying they’ve been shot and saying I shot them and so on and so forth… . Bless my soul, one might as well try to read and meditate in the middle of Piccadilly Circus. Tchah!” said Lord Emsworth, who had now got near enough to the door to feel safe in uttering this unpleasant exclamation. “Tchah!” he said, and adding “Pah!” for good measure made a quick exit.

  But even now his troubled spirit was not to know peace. To reach the great outdoors at Blandings Castle, if you start from the library and come down the main staircase, you have to pass through the hall. To the left of this hall there is a small writing room. And outside this writing room Lord Emsworth’s niece Jane was standing.

  “Yoo-hoo,” she cried. “Uncle Clarence.”

  Lord Emsworth was in no mood for yoo-hooing nieces. George Abercrombie might enjoy chatting with this girl. So might Herbert, Lord Roegate. But he wanted solitude. In the course of the afternoon he had had so much female society thrust upon him, that if Helen of Troy had appeared in the doorway of the writing room and yoo-hooed at him, he would merely have accelerated his pace.

  He accelerated it now.

  “Can’t stop, my dear, can’t stop.”

  “Oh yes you can, old Sure-Shot,” said Jane, and Lord Emsworth found that he could. He stopped so abruptly that he nearly dislocated his spine. His jaw had fallen and his pince-nez were dancing on their string like leaves in the wind.