The Old Dog and the Doorstep

by JP Wright

I slept late the next day – reasonably enough, considering my late night and it being Sunday anyway. Consequently, I have to rely upon The Pest for the following summary of what I slept through. As before, I take responsibility neither for her views nor her style. V.T.

  The big beast, snoring in her bed, missed everything. Luckily I have it recorded in my notes. I am considering publishing them as two separate cases: The Incident of the Unbalanced Butler; and The Dog with the Bad Name. There was a lot at foot at Garton Grange, but of course during this time, Detective Tickham continued with her investigations into the Cake Crisis, from which these other incidents seemed to be merely diversions. I was also to be joined and hindered in my enquiries by two plods from the Yard. V had proved a poor foil for my wit and an unwilling sidekick, and the Actress Belle was stronger on glamour than on insight, so providence saw fit to provide me with two further candidates.

  nb. consider the possibility of all three cases being interlinked. Concatenation or quinkydink? The cat was certainly involved this time.

  To the first divertissment:

  The Great Detective had retired to bed, having performed her usual nightly yogic ritual, essential to the focusing of her mighty mind. I scribbled a few notes before I slept: looking back over them, I see that I was confident that the case would be solved on the morrow. A few questions remained – particularly over the head (and hair, and fashion sense) of my large sister – but I was confident that the moment of crisis, and thence rapidly the resolution of the affair, was not far off. Little did I dream that the mystery was to deepen.

  Call my amanuensis! Heave him out of bed and warn him – we have upgraded the situation from short-story to novella.

  Now where was I? In my pj's, in my bed. The wind was poking about outside, trying to find a way in. No windows in my room, so I left the door open in case of late-summer lightning. From my bed, I can see out through the big window that runs the length of the corridor. Lying down, it's just sky. On that night, a raggedy sky, full of torn-up clouds. No lightning, so despite myself I fell asleep.

  Dreamt of thunder. Dreamt of horses galloping. Was rudely awakened by an ignoble sound – the crack of broken glass, the rumble of a butler descending the back stairs all ends up, followed by cursing in the dead of night. A butler, one would think, would be trained to express distress in a calm manner. “Your letters, Sir,” on a silver tray “and may I respectfully inform you that I appear to have sustained a fracture to my tibia. At your convenience, I might take myself to the nearest hospital. And may I say how sorry I am if this causes you any discommodiation.” Not so our Butler. Such a lack of commitment to his rôle, my dahlings! Such language! Such a pity for a young lady such as wot I am to be exposed to such coarsity.

  “Drat it!” came the roar, as the tumble echoed in the stairwell. And then various incoherent sounds, and then a more sorrowful tone, “I've dratted well broken my dratted leg.” By which time I was half-way out of bed, grabbing my pad and pen from the bedside table. Sweeping sleep aside like a curtain, my keen brain prepared itself for this new piece of theatre. Not having my sturdy batman at my side (she, it seems, could sleep through a rain of pianos and tubas), I wisely peeked out into the corridor. The stairway makes a U-turn, arriving down from the attic and making for the kitchen, and it was there that the Butler lay at a tricky angle: half up the stairs, half out into the corridor, half down the next flight. One of his legs had begun the journey; the other had apparently had other plans. In the moonlight, his pyjama'd right leg looked worryingly wonky. As for the brain which should have been coordinating the whole affair? Well (close your eyes and ears, you sensitive souls) I am afraid it had been paralysed, was held in thrall by the demon drink. The silly fellow had been helping himself to Mother's sherry all evening. Evidently – for my sharp eyes jumped to the sharp edges of the broken brown bottle – he had then taken the remaining supply to his quarters, worried that, the bottle being near empty, the dregs might evaporate before morning. Perhaps he was an insomniac. Medicinal purposes. Or one of those thirsty types who wakes up in the night with a dry mouth. The Great Detective's eyelids drooped as she remembered her own Father, who often regretted not taking on enough fluid during the day, and had to nip downstairs for a refreshing glass of something late at night, to stave off dehydration.

  Oddly, first on the scene was the Wet: even before I had knotted my dressing gown and dropped my pad into its pocket. By the time I squinted in the dark around the edge of my bedroom door, he was at the stairwell, fumbling about for the light switch. Must have sharp hearing and quick reactions to get here so quickly from the east wing.

  1. quick and quiet

  2. unassuming

  3. been in the house all along

  – a new suspect for the Cake crime?

  Mother sashayed out of her room looking cool and calm, long silk dressing gown, and flicked the switch. Her eyes glid from spatch-cocked butler to broken glass. “Simon, pick up the glass would you?” she murmured, and swayed closer to the stairway. “Can you stand?”

  The Butler groaned and flapped a hand at the leg that had decided to set off on its own. He looked rather pale. “Broken my dratting leg, haven't I,” he said, gnashing his teeth. “'Course I can't stand.”

  From the stairs above came a clatter, and three heads popped out above the stricken man.

  “Broken his leg?” gasped Cook.

  “Broken his leg,” nodded Sandy.

  “Broken 'is leg!” shrilled Lottie.

  Long-legged Sandy stepped over the top half of the Butler to join Mother on the landing; and Simon, who was curiously turning over the pieces of glass, as though they were his sherds of ancient pottery. Cook tried to follow, but staggered forward, almost completing the calamitous journey the Butler had begun, until her long nightie got caught on his head as he tried to sit up. There was a muffled shout from beneath the winceyette as she briefly sat on his head before falling back onto comfortable Lottie, who giggled like an idiot.

  “... trying to break my neck too! Ow argh ouch yow and so on!” Butler roared as his head popped back into view. “Drat me! Stop dratting climbing on me!” he grumbled as Lottie, still giggling, squeezed out from under Cook and past the Butler onto the landing. She was better dressed for this sort of action, in her jogging bottoms and t-shirt.

  “Let's get you up,” Sandy suggested, grabbing the Butler's arm and trying to haul him up.

  “Get him back up to bed,” said the Cook, still lying down herself, but hooking her chubby hands under his armpits and heaving. The Butler roared, both released him, and he roared again as he was dropped.

  “We should bring him out into the passage here, it's straighter.”

  “Back up to bed to sleep it off.”

  “My dratting leg is dratting broken!”

  “We need to get him round the corner.”

  “Turn him round first.”

  “Enough,” said Mother quietly, and they all stopped tugging, pushing and pulling.

  “Which leg is broken?” asked Simon. It was pretty clear, with the light on: his left leg was on the landing in front of the rescue party, the right was bent at an impossible angle to continue down the stairs.

  “Tabitha, dear,” Mother called. I had not thought she had seen me, though I had shuffled forward to sketch the stricken manservant, “can you hop over him? I think there is a hockey stick in the cupboard under the stairs. Perhaps we might fashion a splint.”

  “Right-o,” replied the intrepid detective. I tucked my pen and pad back into my dressing gown pocket and clambered over the Butler. Careful not to step on the leg: careful not to look at it even. Oddly, the stairs were damp. I had to be perspicautious not to take a tumble myself. The cupboard being mostly occupied by Mother's new fridge, I struggled to find a hockey stick, but whilst rummaging I did come across an old school tie (Father's?) and part of a fishing rod, the thick end: that might do just as well. It would have to.

  From above, more cursing, and a good deal of thumpin
g and bumping and clattering, as Butler was hauled out of the stairwell and into the passageway, where by the time I had climbed the stairs again he lay more-or-less stretched out straight, and groaning.

  “Should we cut off his trousers?” asked Lottie excitedly.

  “Brandy,” suggested the injured man weakly, but was ignored.

  “Hold his leg still,” commanded Cook, taking the fishing rod and tie from me. Sandy grabbed an ankle and the Butler roared again while Lottie and Cook hindered one-another in tying the tie. Mother, anticipating their need, slid away and returned with a silk scarf, which was clumsily knotted about the patient's knee. As he moaned and groaned she looked down at his face with a distinctly cool expression; almost a wry smile.

  “Tie them tight,” she said, “It'll be a bumpy ride.” The Butler paled and maybe fainted a little, but soon came round again when they lifted him, Simon and Sandy hauling up a shoulder each, Lottie and Cook a leg each. Mother led the way down the stairs; the stretcher crew got stuck at the first bend – not enough room for Cook on the inside turn. Too broad across the hips.

  “Back up a little bit,” she called.

  “Let me take that side; I'll squeeze by.”

  “Drat! My dratting leg!” yelled the Butler.

  “Try tilting him.”

  “Tilting or turning?”

  “Too heavy.”

  “That's twisting.”

  “Legs down, not up.”

  “Yaroo!”

  “Hang on, hang on. Just put him down a second. Right,” panted Simon finally. “Perhaps the two of us can support him around the corner. Can you hop?”

  “Gnnn.”

  “Okay then.” And the wounded soldier rounded the corner dangling from Sandy and Simon, before the Maid and the Cook lifted a leg each onto their shoulders and the whole group paraded down the next flight towards Mother, who waited with an expression of patient amusement. At the bottom, a similar problem.

  “Gaah!” yelled the Butler, as his foot jarred against the wall.

  “Put the feet down again.”

  “I'm stuck in the corner here!”

  “Prop him up.”

  “That's me you're propping against,” complained Cook.

  “Right. Arms over our shoulders, chum. Hup! And turn.”

  And they were into the kitchen, where each took a corner again. Sandy stumbled, somehow slipping on a damp patch on the floor, and Butler's foot knocked against the door-frame, but at the second pass they were through it.

  “Mummy,” I said, “the big stairs would have been easier.”

  “Yes dear,” she smiled, “I dare say they would have been, but haven't they managed well?” as the Butler was borne, gently sobbing now, out of the kitchen and safely through the hallway and atrium. By the time I had chosen a sandwich from the fridge, the party was out of the front door. I arrived in the doorway to see Simon backing up his cranky old 2CV, towards where the Butler had been leant, against a surly old lion that guards the house.

  “Once more then!” and the practised team went at it with a will, propelling the Butler into the back seat of the car at such speed that half of him came out the other side. They pulled him back by his shoulders and shut the opposite door, jarring his right foot and drawing more yells. But then the near door could not be shut – head and shoulders protruded, and the lazy fellow seemed unwilling or unable to cooperate to the extent of sitting up. Lottie trotted round to the other side, opened that door again and crawled in, tried to haul his shoulders up, unfortunately settled some of her weight on his leg. That sat him up all right. Moving fast, Sandy slammed the door, just as Lottie let the Butler's shoulders drop, thudding his head against the window.

  The injured leg was now protruding from the far side again. “Out the window!” someone cried. Lottie wriggled out bottom first and slid the window open, with some effort; Sandy reached in from the front passenger seat, with his long arms, and heaved up the broken leg; Lottie slammed the door.

  “He's in!” she declared as the Butler screamed and fainted again, “Off you go!”

  Simon clambered in. Mother murmured a few words to him – directions I suppose – and then the little car chugged off down the drive, while Lottie clapped and Sandy gave a cheer that subsided quickly in the face of Mother's imperious eyebrow. Butler must have recovered from his faint, because as they crossed the cattle grid I heard him yelp like a dog who has left his tail lying in the doorway to be stepped on.

  The three remaining actors giggled their way back across the drive – no doubt an hysterical reaction to the trauma – and back upstairs to their attic rooms, where muffled laughter and excited voices continued for some time. I myself finished my sandwich, jotted a few notes, and then fell asleep, wondering as I did how V had managed to sleep through all that. She really does have an exceptional talent for Sloth.

  Chapter 13