I saw her point, of course. No hostess wants a Hamlet on the premises. But what I couldn’t understand was how a chap like that came to be polluting the pure air of Brinkley. I knew the old relative to be quite choosey in the matter of guests. Cabinet Ministers have sometimes failed to crash the gate. I put this to her, and she said the explanation was perfectly simple.
‘I told you I was in the middle of a spot of business with Trotter. I’ve got the whole family here – Percy’s stepfather, L.G. Trotter, Percy’s mother, Mrs. Trotter, and Percy in person. I only wanted Trotter, but Mrs. T. and Percy rang themselves in.’
‘I see. What they call a package deal.’ I broke off, aghast. Memory had returned to its throne, and I knew now why that stuff about short side-whiskers had seemed to have a familiar ring. ‘Trotter?’ I cried.
She whooped censoriously.
‘Don’t yell like that. You nearly broke my ear-drum.’
‘But did you say Trotter?’
‘Of course I said Trotter.’
‘This Percy’s name isn’t Gorringe?’
‘That’s what it unquestionably is. He admits it.’
‘Then I’m frightfully sorry, old thing, but I can’t possibly come. It was only the other day that the above Gorringe was trying to nick me for a thousand quid to put into this play he’s made of Florence’s book, and I turned him down like a bedspread. You can readily see, then, how fraught with embarrassment a meeting in the flesh would be. I shouldn’t know which way to look.’
‘If that’s all that’s worrying you, forget it. Florence tells me he has raised that thousand elsewhere.’
‘Well, I’m dashed. Where did he get it?’
‘She doesn’t know. He’s secretive about it. He just said it was all right, he had got the stuff and they could go ahead. So you needn’t be shy about meeting him. What if he does think you the world’s premier louse? Don’t we all?’
‘Something in that.’
‘Then you’ll come?’
I chewed the lower lip dubiously. I was thinking of Stilton.
‘Well, speak up, dumb-bell,’ said the relative with asperity. ‘What’s all the silence about?’
‘I was musing.’
‘Then stop musing and give me the good word. If it will help to influence your decision, I may mention that Anatole is at the top of his form just now.’
I started. If this was so, it would clearly be madness not to be one of the company ranged around the festive board.
I have touched so far only lightly on this Anatole, and I take the opportunity now of saying that his was an output which had to be tasted to be believed, mere words being inadequate to convey the full facts with regard to his amazing virtuosity. After one of Anatole’s lunches has melted in the mouth, you unbutton the waistcoat and loll back, breathing heavily and feeling that life has no more to offer, and then, before you know where you are, along comes one of his dinners, with even more on the ball, the whole lay-out constituting something about as near Heaven as any reasonable man could wish.
I felt, accordingly, that no matter how vehemently Stilton might express and fulfil himself on discovering me … well, not perhaps exactly cheek by jowl with the woman he loved but certainly hovering in her vicinity, the risk of rousing the fiend within him was one that must be taken. It cannot ever, of course, be agreeable to find yourself torn into a thousand pieces with a fourteen-stone Othello doing a ‘Shuffle off to Buffalo’ on the scattered fragments, but if you are full at the time of Anatole’s Timbale de ris de veau Toulousiane, the discomfort unquestionably becomes modified.
‘I’ll come,’ I said.
‘Good boy. With you taking Percy off my neck, I shall be free to concentrate on Trotter. And every ounce of concentration will be needed, if I’m to put this deal through.’
‘What is the deal? You never told me. Who is this Trotter, if any?’
‘I met him at Agatha’s. He’s a friend of hers. He owns a lot of papers up in Liverpool and wants to establish a beach-head in London. So I’m trying to get him to buy the Boudoir.’
I was amazed. Absolutely the last thing I would have expected. I had always supposed Milady’s Boudoir to be her ewe lamb. To learn that she contemplated selling it stunned me. It was like hearing that Rodgers had decided to sell Hammerstein.
‘But why on earth? I thought you loved it like a son.’
‘I do, but the strain of having to keep going to Tom and trying to get money out of him for its support has got me down. Every time I start pleading with him for another cheque, he says “But isn’t it paying its way yet?” and I say “No, darling, it is not paying its way yet”, and he says “H’m!”, adding that if this sort of thing goes on, we shall all be on the dole by next Christmas. It’s become too much for me. It makes me feel like one of those women who lug babies around in the streets and want you to buy white heather. So when I met Trotter at Agatha’s, I decided that he was the man who was going to take over, if human ingenuity could work it. What did you say?’
‘I said “Oh, ah”. I was about to add that it was a pity.’
‘Yes, quite a pity, but unavoidable. Tom gets more difficult to touch daily. He says he loves me dearly, but enough is sufficient. Well, I’ll expect you tomorrow, then. Don’t forget the necklace.’
‘I’ll send Jeeves over for it in the morning.’
‘Right.’
I think she would have spoken further, but at this moment a female voice off-stage said ‘Three-ee-ee minutes’, and she hung up with the sharp cry of a woman who fears she is going to be soaked for another couple of bob or whatever it is.
Jeeves came trickling in.
‘Oh, Jeeves,’ I said, ‘we shall be heading for Brinkley tomorrow.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘Aunt Dahlia wants me there to infuse a bit of the party spirit into our old pal Percy Gorringe, who is at the moment infesting the joint.’
‘Indeed, sir? I wonder, sir, if it would be possible for you to allow me to return to London next week for the afternoon?’
‘Certainly, Jeeves, certainly. You have some beano in prospect?’
‘It is the monthly luncheon of the Junior Ganymede Club, sir. I have been asked to take the chair.’
‘Take it by all means, Jeeves. A well-deserved honour.’
‘Thank you, sir. I shall of course return the same day.’
‘You’ll make a speech, no doubt?’
‘Yes, sir. A speech from the chair is of the essence.’
‘I’ll bet you have them rolling in the aisles. Oh, Jeeves, I was nearly forgetting. Aunt Dahlia wants me to bring her necklace. It’s at Aspinall’s in Bond Street. Will you toddle over and get it in the morning?’
‘Certainly, sir.’
‘And another thing I almost forgot to mention. Percy has raised that thousand quid.’
‘Indeed, sir?’
‘He must have approached someone with a more biteable ear than mine. One wonders who the mug was.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Some half-wit, one presumes.’
‘No doubt, sir.’
‘Still, there it is. It just bears out what the late Barnum used to say about there being one born every minute.’
‘Precisely, sir. Would that be all, sir?’
‘Yes, that’s all. Good night, Jeeves.’
‘Good night, sir. I will attend to the packing in the morning.’
9
* * *
IT WAS GETTING on for the quiet evenfall on the morrow when after a pleasant drive through the smiling countryside I steered the two-seater in at the gates of Brinkley Court and ankled along to inform my hostess that I had come aboard. I found her in her snuggery or den, taking it easy with a cup of tea and an Agatha Christie. As I presented myself, she gave the moustache a swift glance, but apart from starting like a nymph surprised while bathing and muttering something about ‘Was this the face that stopped a thousand clocks?’ made no comment. One received the impression that she was sav
ing it up.
‘Hullo, reptile,’ she said. ‘You’re here, are you?’
‘Here I am,’ I responded, ‘with my hair in a braid and ready to the last button. A very merry pip-pip to you, aged relative.’
‘The same to you, fathead. I suppose you forgot to bring that necklace?’
‘Far from it. Here it is. It’s the one Uncle Tom gave you at Christmas, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right. He likes to see me wearing it at dinner.’
‘As who wouldn’t?’ I said courteously. I handed it over and helped myself to a slice of buttered toast. ‘Well, nice to be in the old home once more. I’m in my usual room, I take it? And how is everything in and around Brinkley Court? Anatole all right?’
‘Never better.’
‘You look pretty roguish.’
‘Oh, I’m fine.’
‘And Uncle Tom?’
A cloud passed over her shining evening face.
‘Tom’s still a bit low, poor old buster.’
‘Owing to Percy, you mean?’
‘That’s right.’
‘There has been no change then in this Gorringe’s gloom?’
‘Naturally not. He’s been worse than ever since Florence got here. Tom winces every time he sees him, especially at meals. He says that having to watch Percy push away untasted food cooked by Anatole gives him a rush of blood to the head, and that gives him indigestion. You know how sensitive his stomach is.’
I patted her hand.
‘Be of good cheer,’ I said. ‘I’ll buck Perce up. Freddie Widgeon was showing me a trick with two corks and a bit of string the other night which cannot fail to bring a smile to the most tortured face. It had the lads at the Drones in stitches. You will doubtless be able to provide a couple of corks?’
‘Twenty, if you wish.’
‘Good.’ I took a cake with pink icing on it. ‘So much for Percy. What of the rest of the personnel? Anybody here besides the Trotter gang and Florence?’
‘Not yet. Tom said something about somebody named Lord Sidcup looking in for dinner tomorrow on his way to the brine baths at Droitwich. Do you know him?’
‘Never heard of him. He’s a sealed book to me.’
‘He’s some man Tom met in London. Apparently he’s a bit of a nib on old silver, and Tom wants to show him his collection.’
I nodded. I knew this uncle to be greatly addicted to the collecting of old silver. His apartments both at Brinkley Court and at his house in Charles Street are full of things I wouldn’t be seen dead in a ditch with.
‘What they call a virtuoso this Lord Sidcup would be, I presume?’
‘Something on those lines.’
‘Ah well, it takes all sorts to make a world, does it not?’
‘We shall also have with us tomorrow the boy friend Cheesewright, and the day after that Daphne Dolores Morehead. She’s the novelist.’
‘I know. Florence was telling me about her. You’ve bought a serial from her, I understand.’
‘Yes. I thought it would be a shrewd move to salt the mine.’
I didn’t get this. She seemed to me an aunt who was talking in riddles.
‘How do you mean, salt the mine? What mine? This is the first I’ve heard of any mines.’
I think that if her mouth had not been full of buttered toast, she would have clicked her tongue, for as soon as she had cleared the gangway with a quick swallow she spoke impatiently, as if my slowness in the uptake had exasperated her.
‘You really are an abysmal ass, young Bertie. Haven’t you ever heard of salting mines? It’s a recognized business precaution. When you’ve got a dud mine you want to sell to a mug, you sprinkle an ounce or two of gold over it and summon the mug to come along and inspect the property. He rolls up, sees the gold, feels that this is what the doctor ordered and reaches for his cheque book. I worked on the same principle.’
I was still at a loss, and said so, and this time she did click her tongue.
‘Can’t you grasp it, chump? I bought the serial to make the paper look good to Trotter. He sees the announcement that a Daphne Morehead opus is coming along and is terrifically impressed. “Gosh!” he says to himself. “Daphne Dolores Morehead and everything! Milady’s Boudoir must be hot stuff”.’
‘But don’t these blokes want to see books and figures and things before they brass up?’
‘Not if they’ve been having Anatole’s cooking for a week or more. That’s why I asked him down here.’
I saw what she meant, and her reasoning struck me as sound. There is something about those lunches and dinners of Anatole’s that mellows you and saps your cool judgment. After tucking into them all this time I presumed that L.G. Trotter was going about in a sort of rosy mist, wanting to do kind acts right and left like a Boy Scout. Continue the treatment a few more days, and he would probably beg her as a personal favour to accept twice what she was asking.
‘Very shrewd,’ I said. ‘Yes, I think you’re on the right lines. Has Anatole been giving you his Rognons aux Montagnes?’
‘And his Selle d’Agneau aux laitues à la Grecque.’
‘Then I would say the thing was in the bag. All over but the cheering. But here’s a point that has been puzzling me,’ I said. ‘Florence tells me that La Morehead is one of the more costly of our female pen-pushers and has to have purses of gold flung to her in great profusion before she will consent to sign on the dotted line. Correct?’
‘Quite correct.’
‘Then how the dickens,’ I said, getting down to it in my keen way, ‘did you contrive to extract the necessary ore from Uncle Tom? Didn’t he pay his income-tax this year?’
‘You bet he did. I should have thought you would have heard his screams in London. Poor old boy, how he does suffer on these occasions.’
She spoke sooth. Uncle Tom, though abundantly provided with the chips, having been until his retirement one of those merchant princes who scoop it up in sackfuls out East, has a rooted objection to letting the hellhounds of the Inland Revenue dip in and get theirs. For weeks after they have separated him from his hard-earned he is inclined to go off into corners and sit with his head between his hands, muttering about ruin and the sinister trend of socialistic legislation and what is to become of us all if this continues.
‘He certainly does,’ I assented. ‘Quite the soul in torment, what? And yet, despite this, you succeeded in nicking him for what must have been a small fortune. How did you do it? From what you were saying on the phone last night I got the impression that he was in more than usually non-parting mood these days. You conjured up in my mind’s eye the picture of a man who was sticking his ears back and refusing to play ball, like Balaam’s ass.’
‘What do you know about Balaam’s ass?’
‘Me? I know Balaam’s ass from soup to nuts. Have you forgotten that when a pupil at the Rev. Aubrey Upjohn’s educational establishment at Bramley-on-Sea I once won a prize for Scripture Knowledge?’
‘I’ll bet you cribbed.’
‘Not at all. My triumph was due to sheer merit. But, getting back to it, how did you induce Uncle Tom to scare the moths from his pocket-book? It must have required quite a scuttleful of wifely wiles on your part?’
I wouldn’t like to say of a loved aunt that she giggled, but unquestionably the sound that proceeded from her lips closely resembled a giggle.
‘Oh, I managed.’
‘But how?’
‘Never mind how, you pestilential young Nosy Parker. I managed.’
‘I see,’ I said, letting it go. Something told me she did not wish to spill the data. ‘And how is the Trotter deal coming along?’
I seemed to have touched an exposed nerve. The giggle died on her lips, and her face – always, as I have said, on the reddish side – deepened in colour to a rich mauve.
‘Blister his blighted insides!’ she said, speaking with the explosive heat which had once made fellow-members of the Quorn and Pytchley leap convulsively in their saddles. ‘I don’t know what’
s the matter with the son of Belial. Here he is, with nine of Anatole’s lunches and eight of Anatole’s dinners tucked away among the gastric juices, and he refuses to get down to brass tacks. He hums –’
‘What on earth does he do that for?’
‘– and haws. He evades the issue. I strain every nerve to make him talk turkey, but I can’t pin him down. He doesn’t say Yes and he doesn’t say No.’
‘There’s a song called that … or, rather, “She didn’t say Yes and she didn’t say No”. I sing it a good deal in my bath. It goes like this.’
I started to render the refrain in a pleasant light baritone, but desisted on receiving Agatha Christie abaft the frontal bone. The old relative seemed to have fired from the hip like somebody in a Western B. picture.
‘Don’t try me too high, Bertie dear,’ she said gently, and fell into what looked like a reverie. ‘Do you know what I think is the trouble?’ she went on, coming out of it. ‘I believe Ma Trotter is responsible for this non-co-operation of his. For some reason she doesn’t want him to put the deal through, and has told him he mustn’t. It’s the only explanation I can think of. When I met him at Agatha’s, he spoke as if it were just a matter of arranging terms, but these last few days he has come over all coy, as if acting under orders from up top. When you stood them dinner that night, did he strike you as being crushed beneath her heel?’
‘Very much so. He wept with delight when she gave him a smile and trembled with fear at her frown. But why would she object to him buying the Boudoir?’
‘Don’t ask me. It’s a complete mystery.’
‘You haven’t put her back up somehow since she got here?’
‘Certainly not. I’ve been fascinating.’
‘And yet there it is, what?’
‘Exactly. There it blasted well is, curse it!’
I heaved a sympathetic sigh. Mine is a tender heart, easily wrung, and the spectacle of this good old egg mourning over what might have been had wrung it like a ton of bricks.
‘Too bad,’ I said. ‘One had hoped for better things.’
‘One had,’ she assented. ‘I was so sure that Morehead serial would have brought home the bacon.’
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