Tales from the Crossroad, Volume 1

by Tom Piccirilli

  "Why the change, if you don't mind my curiosity?" I queried.

  "The previous razor, sir, was getting a bit nicked in spots. I thought it best to take the liberty of retiring it before its flaws evinced themselves by producing a minor scratch. The resultant sticking plaster would most certainly spoil the line of your collar, and the color would clash with your hat."

  "Right ho, Jeaves," said I, turning my attention to the morning newspaper, the front of which was cluttered with stories of whatever war we were currently fighting. I flipped several pages back and perused the results of the previous day's cricket matches, while Jeaves dolloped warm shaving cream onto the Worster cheeks, jaw, and throat.

  When he raised the new razor into view, I was struck by both the sheen of the steel and the attractiveness of the handle. "By Jove, Jeaves, that's a peach of a grip – what's it made of?"

  "Ivory, sir."

  "What are those little bits – symbols of some sort?"

  "Those delicate carving are, I believe, of grape leaves and a flower that I believe to be lilies."

  "Quite spiffy indeed. Where'd you come across such a superb instrument of the barber's art?"

  Jeaves began to tickle my whiskers with the blade as he filled me in on the item's hist. "I procured it from the modest estate, sir, of a cousin who departed England for the United States some years ago."

  "Estate? Does that dire word suggest that your cousin no longer dwells in the land of the living?" I closed my eyes to revel in the sensation of the razor against my rosy cheeks. It glided along so smoothly in Jeaves's capable mitts that I was scarcely aware my face was being denuded of bristles.

  "I'm afraid that's the case, sir," said Jeaves, his always sober voice sounding even more melancholy than usual. "A small tragedy befell not only my cousin, but his wife and children as well."

  "Proceed, Jeaves. My curiosity tingles with expectation. Details, if you please, full steam ahead."

  "It was one of those small tragedies, sir, that writers of popular fiction will no doubt one day elaborate upon and totally obfuscate."

  "Ah, you mean the way that writer chappie takes my memoirs and changes them around a bit, rebusing up our names and dropping in all those gags and such?"

  "Precisely, sir."

  "Well, can't complain as long as my share of the royalties keep trickling in. Pray continue, Jeaves, with this cousin yarn."

  "There is actually little of import to relate, sir. My cousin was in service at a resort hotel in the American state of Colorado."

  "Ah, in Hollywood?"

  "That would be in California, sir. This particular Colorado hotel shut down for the winter due to snow, and my cousin and his family, who were overseeing the hotel that winter, were frozen to death when the furnace failed."

  "Brrr," I shivered in sympathy. "Not a very pleasant way to depart our veil of tears, eh?"

  "I wouldn't know, sir, but I have heard that freezing to death is not unpleasant, rather like going to sleep."

  "Says who?" quoth I. "Anyone ever come back to swear to that?"

  "You have me at a disadvantage, sir. I know of no such eyewitness account."

  "So you got a razor out of the whole brouhaha, eh?"

  "Along with a few other items, sir,” Jeaves went on with the tale and the shave, which had proceeded to scraping the neck with smooth upstrokes. It felt like a feather, or at least like a feather would if it were sharp steel. "The razor had been passed down to him by another family member who had gotten it from the estate of the original owner, a barber by the name of Todd. It was, from all reports, his prized possession, and has held up admirably over the ensuing years, as I trust you'll agree, sir."

  "You betcher, Jeaves, just like grease across a pig's…ow!"

  The completion of my deft simile had been interrupted by a sudden stinging at my neck. It wasn't so much the usual razor nick as it was an intense searing, as though a dozen wasps with cigar lighters had decided to play a match of Burning-Bernie's-Wattles.

  Jeaves withdrew the offending instrument immediately, and gave a gasp, perhaps the first time I'd ever heard him make any sort of sound signifying dismayed surprise, except for when I'd grown that long-vanished moustache. "Great heavens, sir," he said, setting down the razor and picking up a towel to press against my aggrieved neck," I'm terribly sorry." Indeed he must have been, for italics were alien to Jeaves.

  "Tut tut," said I, my gallantry returning as the pain ebbed, which it did surprisingly quickly. "No harm done, just a scrape." I slowly removed the towel, expecting a jet of fuchsia to come spurting out upon the trailing arbutus of the wallpaper, so painful had the initial sensation been. But instead there was only a tiny, nearly invisible mark, with just a droplet of the Worster bloodline in evidence.

  Jeaves, oozing apologies, bandaged me up with all the skills of Florence Nightingale, and then cleaned and dried the razor, folded it into its handle, and put it atop my dresser. "I trust, sir," he said, "that you were planning to take your safety razor to Binkley Court?"

  "Quite right, Jeaves. I leave the straight razors to your surgeon's hands. Afraid I'd make that little nick you just gave me look like, well…a little nick," I finished, failing to have produced le mot juste I was searching for.

  But after Jeaves had left, bag in hand, to catch the bus for whatever seaside town he was gracing with his august presence, I discovered that my dear old safety razor was nowhere to be found. So I sighed, cursed fate, and stuck the straight razor into my toilet kit, hoping that Uncle Tim had a spare safety job he might lend me during my tenancy. If Jeaves had had trouble taming that reluctant blade, I feared that I might divide my jugular like Gaul should I attempt to wield it.

  I motored down to Binkley Court, arriving just in time for dinner with the other guests, who consisted of all the parties mentioned in the lengthy third paragraph of this account, and within the space of a single evening and night, I had plunged myself irrevocably into the morass of confusion, consternation, and plot complexities also previously described, just the type of machinations you'd expect B. Worster to become involved in, no fault of his own, dash it all.

  To fully describe what went on during those brief dozen hours to land me in the aforementioned predicaments would probably account for several hefty chapters in a novel, and since I have neither the time nor the patience to turn this incident into a longer work available for seven and six at your local stationer's, let me simply reiterate the facts:

  Marjorie and Hortense both expected to become Mrs Bernard Worster, Gustie and Spade both wished to do grievous bodily harm to Mr Bernard Worster, I had the choice of either allowing Uncle Tim's prized cow-creamer to be pilfered by two miscreants or being revealed as a horse-dung hurler where the police are concerned, and I had to keep Aunt Delia's prize chef from being chefnapped were I ever to desire to darken the doorstep of Binkley Court after this visit. The only bright spot was the fact that Uncle Tim did indeed have an extra Gillette safety razor to loan to his put-upon nephew.

  Ergo, that morning I was standing at the mirror of my en suite bathroom, having just finished badgering up the puffier than usual Worster cheeks prior to having a good go at them with the borrowed razor, when something came over me all of a sudden. As soon as I lifted the razor to my face, I had the goofiest sensation that there was another cove looking back at me from out the mirror, someone with extremely dark skin, like a bloody Kaffir or Woolyhead or someone else with more than a touch of tar in the old bloodline.

  The image, if that's what one might call it, was there for only a moment, but it was just time enough to get a few more of the details down, as every observant writer worth his nib and ink should. What was in this chappie's eye sockets weren't so much eyeballs as they were what the right headlight of Bungo Liddell's sedan looked like after I potted it with a brass paperweight in the shape of an elephant, all crackly and spiderwebby. And the teeth didn't look like teeth as much as they did an assortment of my Aunt Amanda's hatpins, sans, natch, the pearly and ivory
bits at the ends, and being too that they were a good deal thicker than the e.g.'d hatpins, though just as sharp.

  And that was all that your faithful historian had time to see before the picture faded like one of those film director's ins and outs where Jean Harlow turns into Clark Gable or vice versa, and there was young Bernard Worster again, eyes a bit bloodshot, but still the same man, for better or worse, though by the time I'm done with this little chronicle, most readers might be suspecting the latter.

  Funny how a little thing like glimpsing a bushman with broken glassy eyeballs looking back at you from your bathroom mirror sends one into somewhat barbaric fancies. I suppose the thought went through me as to what old Umgawa the Cannibal might have done confronted with the usual aggregation of Worster dilemmas, and the thought came to me like a flash. This savage-type would resort to none of the usual clever and behind-the-scenes machinations to which Jeaves resorted to calm the choppy surfaces of the Worster lake o' life. Instead he would try the direct route, with spear or battle-axe or whatever it is these Woolies use to pluck out each other's bowels by the roots, or whatever bowels are held in place with.

  Calmly I thought about my situation with the two young ladies, both of whom expected me to place a ring on their fingers and make honest women out of them, and I quickly concluded that neither one was a valid option in continuing the Worster line. To call Marjorie Bucket a hard egg was an understatement of massive props. If a five-minute egg was hard, then Marjorie was a several-hour egg. And the idea of being exposed to the poetically wispy phrases and mental meanderings of Hortense Crayne for more than a few minutes, let alone a lifetime, was anathema of anathemas to your humble narrator. The woman lived in the hope, not only that there were faeries in her garden, but in her chamberpot as well. A week of married life with her, and Bernie Worster would be darting doilies and making daisy chains in the hope of catching pixies.

  No, as Jeaves often put it, relations had deteriorated between these two expectant blossoms and myself. One course that presented itself seemed to be to go to each lady in turn and try the little-used gambit of telling the truth, that our afficancement was due primarily to a simple misunderstanding on their parts, and that only the Worster reluctance to contradict a woman, along with, shall I say, a lack of forthrightness on my part when it came to affairs of the heart, and that…but there, I seem to have lost the subject of this labyrinthine sentence completely, and have no idea of how to conclude the bally thing.

  Let me just say that the option of honesty was totally unacceptable. I had no doubt that Marjorie Bucket would have bunged me a good one on the side of the head with whatever Ming vase was within arm's reach, and Hortense Crayne would have produced in me a greater psychic pain by letting her violet eyes fill with tears, and falling prostrate to the old Turkoman, weeping for all she was worth, inconsolable and ne'er to be dammed.

  So, instead I chose the option that, up until a few hours ago, never would have leapt across the Worster synapses. I got fully dressed (wearing that yellow weskit which Jeaves so frowns upon, but which I had surreptitiously salted away), and from my Gladstone I took the straight razor which I had packed in case of emergency, the same one that Jeaves had nicked me with, and slipped it into my jacket pocket.

  Since I'd arisen a bit late, I found that the usual band of freeloaders had already breakfasted and the dining room was empty, a fact which was cheering, as I wouldn’t have to be palsy-walsy with those who wanted to wed, wallop, or betray me. There were still a few sausages and dried pieces of toast with which to replenish my strength, as well as some strong black coffee, several cups of which I soaked up as thankfully as a south seas sponge that had just taken a brisk jaunt through the Sahara at noon on the summer solstice.

  Thus fortified, I searched for either Marjorie or Hortense, and first found the former stretched out resplendent upon a lounge chair on the east terrace, reading one of the works of Mr. Maugham, looking for all the world like Cleopatra barging down the Nile. That is to say, Marjorie Bucket, not Mr. Maugham, looked like Cleopatra. I doubt if Mr. Maugham, even at his most resplendent, has ever resembled the Queen of Egypt.

  I made certain that I was within the Bucket line of sight, so as not to startle the old girl, and greeted her with a cheery, "Good morning, old thing!"

  She looked at me over the top of her sunglasses as though I were a particularly nasty genus of slug that she wasn't exactly looking forward to squashing with her good shoes, but would do so anyway should the need arise. "Hullo, Bernie," she said in that low voice of hers that I had once thought quite sensual, but which now recalled to me the less than dulcet tones of Wallace Beery. "I was reading," she said, quite unnecessarily, thought I, and turned her attention back to her book. Should this be her attitude toward her betrothed, what more chilly demeanor might she display to her disbetrothed, or unbetrothed, whichever word might be correct.

  Fortunately I would not have to find out. I simply walked behind her lounge chair, taking out the razor as I went, and touched her long brown hair. "Stop it, Bernie," she said, but instead of releasing those locks, I wound the fingers of my left hand around them, pulled back on her head, and with my right hand I drew the blade of the razor across her throat in a single and I must say rather elegant motion. For a moment I felt like that Pablo Casals egg playing the final note of some violoncello sonata by Antonio Spumoni or one of those chaps.

  You would have thought someone had put an icicle down Marjorie's back. She got all overly twitchy, like a boogie-woogie dancer on St Vitus's Day, hands jerking so that Mr. Maugham flapped its way to the flagstones, and her footwork could have taught those Harlem babies a thing or too, make no mistake.

  As for the blood, well, although I've been to America, I've never actually seen Old Faithful, but have watched it erupt in newsreels, and Marjorie could have given that paragon of geysers a run for its money. I haven't seen anything spew as redly as that since Oofty Thwistleton-Fulbright woofed up seventeen helpings of raspberry tart that he'd gobbled down on a bet after half a dozen whiskey and sodas. Had it not been for the whiskey and sodas, I doubt he'd have taken the bet.

  I had most wisely stepped back after making my stroke, and a good thing for the Worster weskit that I had done so, as the area directly in front of Marjorie was looking like the proverbial Canadian sunset, while I, standing behind, was unblemished. True, the razor was dripping a bit, but the drops fell harmlessly on the flagstones next to but not touching my pristine spats.

  Now this is where things start to seem a bit odd, strange even, one might say. That just mentioned "one," including myself, might have thought that B. Worster, gentle and harmless as he has always been, would never even have imagined, in his wildest, most gin-soaked dreams, of taking a human life, and that if subject B.W. would have done such a thing, for whatever obscure reason, he would have been wracked with guilt and horror, not to mention a twinge of nausea in the face of so much blood and internal tissue, as well as the disquieting gurgling sound that Marjorie was making as she slumped ever further downward in her lounge chair.

  That chair was now, I feared, blemished beyond even the remarkable resourcefulness of Seepings, Uncle Tim's butler, who was considered a master at stain removal, and had once saved my hash by causing to vanish from one of Aunt Delia's favorite velvet pillows a rather embarrassing exudation of mine which one of her maids had been instrumental in producing. I paid him generously for his skill, both then and since, alas.

  But back to the subject at hand, I felt none of the above opts., much to my surprise. Instead I was elated, as though the year was at the spring, the lark was at the snail, and all was right with the world, as the poet puts it. I was as full of joy, I suppose, as that lucky lark that just gobbled up the snail. My Bucket worries were over once and for all, and now it was time to end my Hortense Crayne concerns with equivalent finality.

  But before I attended to my sole surviving fiancée, there was something else I had to do. With the same uncontrollable impulse with which I
had chucked that horse-patty at that policeman's helmet, I rolled Marjorie onto the flagstones, being careful not to get any blood on my vestments, and proceeded to saw off her head with my makeshift snickersnee. I thought it would take much longer than it did, but, amazingly enough, the razor went through the Bucket bone and flesh as though through sun-softened oleomargarine, and in another few seconds I was holding Marjorie's detached noggin by the hair and examining it closely. Her expression was one of dazed bemusement, and I nearly expected her to say, "Bernie, what awful thing are you up to now?" but she stayed mum.

  There I stood, looking about the terrace for some bag or sack or something into which I could place the Bucket cranium, when up the steps from the lawn came (the as yet unnamed to my readers) Slick Spattery and his wife cum moll, Gold-Tooth Gertrude, the two rascals whose beady eyes were on Uncle Tim's rara avis of a cow-creamer, with the intent of pilfering it and selling it on the West End's cutthroat ceramic creamer market. I suppose one could call them the Moriarty & Mate of the ceramic creamer game.

  "What ho, lovely morning," I said, before I realized that the expansion of their individual eyeballs to the size of soup saucers might conceivably be due to the fact that I was standing there with Marjorie's dripping head in one hand and the razor in the other. Realizing further what conclusions they might logically be drawing from said portrait of young Worster, I decided to put them at their ease. "I say, look what I found lying about…"

  My attempted assurance of innocence was in vain, for the hairs upon their heads stood out like quills upon the fretful porpentine, which, as Jeaves has informed me, is the same thing as a porcupine, which makes a great deal of sense, since the occurrence of two quilled mammals having such similar names is rather unlikely. With such deviant criminal types, to think was to act, and the Spattery couple beat a fast retreat down the stairs up which they had come.

  Naturally I followed, toting Marjorie's head as though I were about to bowl at ninepins. You see, it had occurred to me that here was a perfect opportunity to cadge two birds in one bush, as it were. Though this fleeing couple were but a minor annoyance next to my two supposed inamorata and their jealous suitors, the Spatterys would eventually have to be dealt with, and when given a winning hand, one must play it to the hilt or the limit, whichever comes first.