by Simon Brett
‘Anyway, poor old thimble was about to reconcile himself to a bat-less – and possibly century-free – future when another of our muffin-toasters had a real buzzbanger of an idea. “Why don’t we check in the groundsman’s hut,” he said – and I’ll be jugged like a hare if that wasn’t what we did. Sure enough, we found the bat the slimer had filched straight away. Huh. Just goes to show. Like in all those whodunit books some boddoes write, before you talk to the boddoes with proper breeding, first check out the oiks below stairs. Guinea to a groat you’ll find your villain straight away.’
Blotto spoke these last words with a finality which implied that his case was conclusive, but the expressions on the Bashuskys’ faces did not suggest they were convinced – or even if they’d understood a word he’d said.
So he spelled it out for them. ‘All I’m saying is that nothing’s ever lost forever. As my little story has just demonstrated.’
Count Igor Bashusky still looked puzzled. ‘So you are saying that our precious estate of Zoraya-Bolensk has been stolen by the groundsman?’
‘No, no, no.’ Blotto paused for a moment’s consideration. ‘Though, on the other hand, there are distinct parallels between the two thingies. It was a four-faced filcher from the servant class who had whipawayed my muffin-toaster’s cricket bat and, if I understand correctly, it’s stenchers from the servant class who have whipawayed the Russian government from the Romanovs.’
Count Igor Bashusky gave a small nod of acknowledgement, but didn’t seem overly impressed by what Blotto had just told him. Twinks decided it was time to move down the family hierarchy in the hope of getting support for the scheme of returning the Bashuskys to their homeland.
She turned to Sergei. ‘You too have spoken of your wish to return to Russia.’
‘I only wish to return to Russia,’ the boy responded passionately, ‘if it is in your company. So long as I am with you, Twinks, it does not matter which country I am in!’
‘Well, I am planning to go with you to Russia.’
‘This is good news! Then I will go to Russia. We can be married in the chapel at Zoraya-Bolensk. Our old family priest will conduct the ceremony.’
‘Erm, yes.’ Twinks was unwilling to give him too much hope for their relationship. Her natural honesty did not square with the idea of misleading Sergei on that subject (even though such duplicity might be a way of getting him out of Tawcester Towers). ‘But then I don’t want you to grab the wrong end of the pitchfork. I’m afraid, Sergei, my feelings for you haven’t changed.’
‘You mean you cannot love me?’
‘Sorry, me old pineapple.’
‘Then I will shoot myself.’
Twinks saw a potential way out. ‘Couldn’t you possibly wait till we get to Russia and shoot yourself there?’ she suggested.
‘No!’ Sergei replied. ‘It would be much more comfortable for me to shoot myself here than in Zoraya-Bolensk.’
Twinks didn’t feel she was really getting anywhere with their mission of shifting the Bashuskys. Finally she turned to Masha, reassured that she’d be on safer ground with her. At least there was no question about the girl’s keenness to return to Moscow. ‘You want to travel to Russia with us, don’t you, Masha?’
‘I am not so sure,’ the girl replied.
‘But you keep saying you want to go back to Moscow!’ Blotto protested. ‘You keep worrying away about that like a terrier with a rat.’
‘Yes,’ Masha agreed. ‘I do keep on saying that I want to go back to Moscow.’
‘Well,’ Twinks pointed out, ‘now is your opportunity to realise that dream.’
‘Ah yes,’ said Masha, ‘but maybe I am not talking in literal terms here.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I think that perhaps my aspiration is metaphorical.’
‘Eh?’ said Blotto, completely lost.
‘For me perhaps Moscow is merely a symbolic representation of adolescent yearning,’ Masha continued. ‘It is not the real city to which I wish to return, but an idealised version of my lost youth, for which I will be eternally in mourning.’
‘Broken biscuits,’ muttered Blotto. He wouldn’t usually have used such an expression in mixed company, but then rarely had he been so provoked.
‘I think, all in all,’ Count Bashusky summed up, ‘we are very happy here. And when we think back to the time we were there, we realise that Zoraya-Bolensk was in many ways rather primitive. There we did not have the electric lights and constant hot water available at Tawcester Towers. Nor did we have the access to the range of cars you have here in your garages. We travelled most of the time by droshky and sledge.’
‘Also,’ the Countess contributed, ‘the food is better here than it was at Zoraya-Bolensk.’
‘So we are much better off here,’ her husband agreed.
Blotto and Twinks exchanged looks. Their plans for getting rid of the Bashuskys once and for all lay in tatters.
At that moment Grimshaw entered with the drinks trolley. As usual, their guests did not stint themselves. And the Tawcester Towers bill at the wine merchants rose once again.
Twinks realised that something had to be done. And extremely quickly.
The telephone in the ice-cold hall of Tawcester Towers was rarely used, and then mostly by the Dowager Duchess when she wished to patronise distant relatives. Use of the contraption by other family members was discouraged, but Twinks reckoned this was an emergency.
There were only two telephone lines into St Raphael’s College, Oxford. One went, predictably enough, to the Porter’s Lodge, where a primitive exchange system allowed calls to be redirected to the Principal, Dean of Studies or Bursar. The second led to an instrument hidden somewhere amidst the paper mountains of Professor Erasmus Holofernes’s room. His international eminence as a researcher allowed him this special privilege and, though most of his enquiries were conducted by letter, there were some which could be more quickly dealt with on the telephone. Most of these were in foreign parts. As a result the telephone bill that the Professor amassed was astronomical. The fact that St Raphael’s always paid it without demur was another indicator of how much they appreciated the presence of a genius in their midst.
Twinks had chosen her timing carefully. The timetable of life in an Oxford college was unvarying. Professor Erasmus Holofernes, having worked all day on his multifarious researches, would reluctantly change into his dinner suit and appear for drinks in the Senior Common Room at six-thirty. Exactly an hour (and a good few dry sherries) later he and his fellow dons would go through to the Great Hall for dinner. There they would enjoy the skills of the college chef and the carefully-selected contents of the college cellar, conversing at an intellectual level incomprehensible to lesser men and women, except for Twinks of course, had she ever been allowed to attend (which she wouldn’t have been, due to her gender apart from anything else).
At the end of dinner, usually around nine-thirty, many of the dons would return to the Senior Common room to check out the college’s rather fine selection of digestifs. Professor Erasmus Holofernes did not join them. He returned to his room, where he kept a substantial supply of the college’s finest Cognac. Fortified by constant sips of this, he would continue to work late into the small hours. For him going to bed at one o’clock constituted an early night. Frequently, however, so absorbed was he in his researches that he would still be at his desk – or at the pile of papers under which logic dictated his desk must be – when the first light of dawn showed at the leaded panes of his windows.
Twinks knew therefore that ringing him any time between nine-thirty in the evening and one in the morning she stood a good chance of getting a reply. She waited till eleven o’clock. By then the rest of her family had retired to bed, though the Bashuskys were still inflating the Tawcester Towers drinks bill in the Billiard Room.
The operator immediately connected her call to Professor Erasmus Holofernes. He was, needless to say, delighted to hear from her. His acquaintance included all o
f the world’s finest brains, but few of them were so delightfully packaged as Honoria Lyminster.
It did not take many words for her to explain the unfortunate situation in which she and her brother found themselves. ‘So, Razzy,’ she concluded, a note of desperation in her cut-glass voice, ‘you must have some idea how we can get out of this glue pot.’
‘I will investigate the possibilities,’ he replied, ‘and get back to you in the morning.’
Twinks could not have asked for a better response. She had set him an impossible challenge. And there was nothing Professor Erasmus Holofernes liked better than impossible challenges.
8
Holofernes Comes Up with the Goods
When he was faced by an impossible challenge, it was a point of honour with Professor Erasmus Holofernes to come up with a solution in an impossibly quick time, so Twinks was unsurprised to be summoned from her boudoir by Harvey the housemaid at ten o’clock the following morning. Nor was she surprised to hear that there was a phone call for her.
Pausing only to don one of her selection of minks to combat the chilly environment of the hall, Twinks hurried down to pick up the receiver.
It was indeed Holofernes at the other end of the line. ‘I have the answer to your problem!’ he announced with characteristic pride.
‘Grandissimo!’ responded Twinks.
‘From what you told me,’ the Professor went on in efficient problem-solving mode, ‘your trouble stems from the fact that the Bashuskys are far too comfortable at Tawcester Towers.’
‘That’s it in a walnut shell,’ Twinks agreed.
‘So I wondered if you had considered the possibility of making them less comfortable there?’
‘In what way?’
‘Ensuring that the water that is brought to their bedrooms is always cold, introducing bedbugs into their beds and worms into their salads, diluting the contents of their vodka bottles with water, infiltrating—’
‘Sorry, Razzy, you must rein in your roans for a moment. Though the solutions you suggest might actually bang the bull’s eye, I’m afraid none of them can actually be put into practice.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘It’s because of the Mater.’
‘Oh?’
‘Though she would welcome the outcome of ridding Tawcester Towers of its infestation of Bashuskys, she would regard doing the things you suggest as beyond the barbed wire.’
‘Why?’
‘The Lyminster family code of honour. We have a duty of hospitality to anyone staying under the roofs of Tawcester Towers. If it were to be found out in society circles – and it inevitably would be – that a member of the Lyminster family has been introducing bedbugs into the beds of our guests, it would be a scandal to match that of the Duchess of Barnstable and the bootboy.’
The Professor did not need to be reminded of this notorious case, which had transcended the bounds of the gutter press and featured in the quality dailies. No detail – even the unusual uses of the riding crop and the whipped cream – had been allowed to escape public scrutiny.
‘So I’m sorry, Razzy me old jam jar, your idea’s a bit of an empty revolver.’
He did not allow his obvious disappointment to show in his voice, but said airily, ‘Of course I had envisaged the potential problem with you, mother, but I thought I’d run that idea by you. It wasn’t my big idea, the one which I’m sure is a copper-bottomed cert to do the business.’
‘So what is your big idea?’ asked Twinks.
‘Overnight,’ said the Professor, ‘I have done some research into White Russian families, particularly those who are related to the Bashuskys. Through the years there has been a lot of intermarriage between members of the Russian aristocracy. As a result there are quite a lot of blood ties to be explored.’
Twinks clapped her hands together gleefully. ‘So you are saying you’ve found some boddoes who’re more closely related to the Bashuskys than we are. People on whose grounds it would be more logical for them to pitch their tents than at Tawcester Towers?’
‘No, Twinks, looking for people more closely related proved to be a blind alley. There are plenty, but none of them are in a better situation than the Bashuskys. They are all dirt poor, they have lost all the lands and possessions they owned in the old country. So they too are battening on wealthier relations. None of them are in any position to take on more hangers-on.’
‘Oh.’ Twinks couldn’t keep her disappointment out of the monosyllable.
‘But this made me think: do the Bashuskys have any relatives who are really rich, who have somehow managed to get their money out of Russia?’
‘And do they?’
Twinks could instantly visualise the complacent smile on the Professor’s face as he said, ‘Yes, they do.’
‘Who?’
‘There is a family called Lewinsky who are now based in Berlin. They are aristocrats through marriage, rather looked down on by the rest of the White Russians. They do not have a long pedigree and also the business in which they are involved is not thought to be respectable.’
‘So what for the love of strawberries do they do?’ asked Twinks, expecting at the very least white slavery.
‘They are bankers.’
‘Ah.’ She understood instantly. There were many professional people whose services aristocratic families had to call on from time to time, but who would never be invited to dine. Solicitors certainly fitted into that category, as did doctors and occasionally hired assassins.
But bankers were probably the least socially acceptable of the lot. Though it was by loans from them that most English country houses were kept going, the relationship was not one to which the average aristocrat would wish to draw attention. Bankers were just a rather unattractive necessity, like dustbin men and rat catchers.
Professor Erasmus Holofernes continued his explanation. ‘The Lewinskys were already an international concern before the Russian Revolution. They had operations in Berlin, Paris and other European capitals. They even had a small office in New York. As a result, when the Reds took over, only the Lewinsky estates in Russia were seized. Most of their money was already out of the country.
‘And during what has been a very volatile period for the banking industry – particularly in Germany – they have managed to increase their wealth exponentially. The head of the family, Pavel Lewinsky, understands the money markets like few others. Whereas many see the Great Depression as a disaster, he sees it as an opportunity. And he is making money hand over fist.
‘As a result of this, he and his family live in very lavish style, with properties all over Europe. His main base is Berlin where he has a huge mansion. He could easily accommodate the Bashuskys.’
‘But would he want to accommodate the Bashuskys?’
‘I think that could be arranged. As I say, the Lewinskys have never quite made the grade in Russian society. A connection to a genuine aristocratic family like the Bashuskys might be just the sort of thing they would welcome.’
‘But more importantly, Razzy me old banana, if the Lewinskys are such social pariahs because they’re bankers, would the Bashuskys want to stay with them?’
‘Listen, Twinks. From what you’ve told me about the Bashuskys, they’re completely materialistic.’
‘That’s certainly the way they come across.’
‘You said they want to stay at Tawcester Towers because it’s a lot more comfortable than their estate of Zoraya-Bolensk ever was.’
‘You’re bong on the nose there, Razzy.’
‘So if it could be proved to them that the Lewinskys’ mansion in Berlin is much more modern and has many more amenities than Tawcester Towers . . . well, they might think they were on a better ticket there than they are with you.’
‘Yes, it could work,’ said Twinks thoughtfully. ‘But how are we going to convince them of the opulence in the Lewinskys’ mansion?’
‘That is in hand,’ the Professor replied. ‘I am arranging for photographs to be taken of t
he place inside and out. These will be posted to me by special delivery and I will organise a college messenger to take them to you at Tawcester Towers the minute they arrive.’
‘And are you going to tell the Lewinskys of the invasion they are about to receive?’
‘I have done that already. I sent a telegram, apparently from the Bashuskys, saying that they would shortly be in Berlin and how much they would like to meet their relatives the Lewinskys. I have had a reply, inviting the Bashuskys to stay for a weekend whenever they wish to do so.’
‘That should ping the partridge,’ said Twinks, recalling the Bashuskys’ arrival at Tawcester Towers. ‘They were only meant to be staying here for a weekend.’
‘I will obviously send you copies of both sets of photographs, Twinks. And the relevant addresses for the Lewinskys. And I think,’ he concluded with considerable satisfaction, ‘we can confidently state that your problem is solved.’
‘There’s just one thing,’ said Twinks.
‘And what is that?’
‘Well, although the Bashuskys are only foreign aristocrats – you know, not the genuine article like we are – they do still take their status very seriously. And I was just pondering . . . if they do really regard the Lewinskys as below the salt, then they might feel they’d be slumming a bit to visit them, and refuse to do so.’
‘I had considered that eventuality,’ said the Professor smugly. ‘And I have worked out the perfect solution.’
‘What is that?’
‘In all the paperwork you will receive the name “Lewinsky” is not mentioned once. I thought it prudent to change the name of the family whom the Bashuskys will be visiting in Berlin.’
‘So what have you changed it to?’
‘Romanov.’
‘Grandissimo!’ said Twinks. ‘Give that pony a rosette!’
The minor deceit worked a treat, though Twinks had an anxious wait until she could witness its effect. She did not want to mention the proposed trip to Berlin to the Bashuskys until she was armed with all of the requisite ammunition – the photographs of the Lewinsky mansion and other documentation that Professor Erasmus Holo-fernes had promised. Despite all of the expense of special deliveries, they took five days to arrive, five days during which Twinks endured considerable frustration and increasingly urgent questions from her mother about when they were going to ‘get rid of the stenchers!’ Having set the precedent of being ‘indisposed’ to avoid dining with the Bashuskys, she was happy to let that situation continue, but she was also very fed up with having dinner served in her bedroom. Despite the assiduous postprandial efforts of Harvey the housemaid with her dustpan and brush, the Dowager Duchess found she was constantly awakened by the irritation of crumbs in the sheets.