‘I do not.”
‘Don’t you want her to marry Ronald?’
‘I should have thought I had made my views on that matter sufficiently clear. I think the whole thing deplorable. I am not a snob…’
‘But you are,’ said Lord Emsworth, cleverly putting his finger on the flaw in her reasoning. Lady Constance bridled.
‘Well, if it is snobbish to prefer your nephew to marry in his own class…’
‘Galahad would have married her mother thirty years ago if he hadn’t been shipped off to South Africa.’
‘Galahad was—and is—capable of anything.’
‘I can remember her mother,’ said Lord Emsworth meditatively. ‘Galahad took me to the Tivoli once, when she was singing there. Dolly Henderson. A little bit of a thing in pink tights, with the jolliest smile you ever saw. Made you think of spring mornings. The gallery joined in the chorus, I recollect. Bless my soul, how did it go? Turn turn tumpty turn … Or was it Umpty tiddly tiddly pum?’
‘Never mind how it went,’ said Lady Constance. One reminiscencer in the family, she considered, was quite enough. ‘And we are not talking of the girl’s mother. The only thing I have to say about Miss Brown’s mother is that I wish she had never had a daughter.’
‘Well, I like her,’ said Lord Emsworth stoutly. ‘A very sweet, pretty, nice-mannered little thing, and extremely sound on pigs. I was saying so to young Pilbeam only yesterday.’
‘Pilbeam!’ cried Lady Constance.
She spoke with feeling, for the name had reminded her of another grievance. She had been wanting to get to the bottom of this Pilbeam mystery for days. About that young man’s presence at the Castle there seemed to her something almost uncanny. She had no recollection of his arrival. It was as if he had materialized out of thin air. And being a conventional hostess, with a conventional hostess’s dislike of the irregular, she objected to finding that visitors with horrible moustaches, certainly not invited by herself, had suddenly begun to pervade the home like an escape of gas.
‘Who is that nasty little man?’ she demanded.
‘He’s an investigator.’
‘A what?’
‘A private investigator. He investigates privately.’ There was a touch of quiet pride in Lord Emsworth’s voice. He was sixty years old, and this was the first time he had ever found himself in the romantic role of an employer of private investigators. ‘He runs the something detective agency. The Argus. That’s it. The Argus Private Inquiry Agency.’
Lady Constance breathed emotionally.
‘Ballet-girls … Detectives … I wonder you don’t invite a few skittle-sharps here.’
Lord Emsworth said he did not know any skittle-sharps.
‘And is one permitted to ask what a private detective is doing as a guest at Blandings Castle?’
‘I got him down to investigate that mystery of the Empress’s disappearance.’
‘Well, that idiotic pig of yours has been back in her sty for days. What possible reason can there be for this man staying on?’
‘Ah, that was Galahad’s idea. It was Galahad’s suggestion that he should stay on till after the Agricultural Show. He thought it would be a good thing to have somebody like that handy in case Parsloe tried any more of his tricks.’
‘Clarence!’
‘And I consider,’ went on Lord Emsworth firmly, ‘that he was quite right. I know it was Baxter who actually stole my pig, and you will no doubt say that Baxter is notoriously potty. But Galahad feels—and I feel—that it was not primarily his pottiness that led him to steal the Empress. We both think that Parsloe was behind the whole thing. And Galahad maintains—and I agree with him—that it is only a question of time before he makes another attempt. So the more watchers we have on the place the better. Especially if they have trained minds and are used to mixing with criminals, like Pilbeam.’
‘Clarence, you’re insane!’
‘No, l am not insane,’ retorted Lord Emsworth warmly. ‘I know Parsloe. And Galahad knows Parsloe. You should read some of the stories about him in Galahad’s book—thoroughly well documented stories, he assures me, showing the sort of man he was when Galahad used to go about London with him in their young days. Are you aware that in the year 1894 Parsloe filled Galahad’s dog Towser up with steak and onions just before the big Rat contest, so that his own terrier Banjo should win? A fellow who stuck at nothing to attain his ends. And he’s just the same today. Hasn’t changed a bit. Look at the way he stole that man Wellbeloved away from me—the chap who used to be my pig-man before Pirbright. Fellow capable of that is capable of anything.’
Lady Constance spurned the grass with a frenzied foot. She would have preferred to kick her brother with it, but one has one’s breeding.
‘You are a perfect imbecile about Sir Gregory,’ she cried. ‘You
ought to be ashamed of yourself. So ought Galahad, if it were possible for him to be ashamed of anything. You are behaving like a couple of half-witted children. I hate this idiotic quarrel. If there’s one thing that’s detestable in the country, it is being on bad terms with one’s neighbours.’
‘I don’t care how bad terms I’m on with Parsloe.’
‘Well, I do. And that is why I was so glad to oblige him when he rang up about his nephew.’
‘Eh?’
‘I was delighted to have the chance of proving to him that there was at least one sane person in Blandings Castle.’
‘Nephew? What nephew?’
‘Young Montague Bodkin. You ought to remember him. He was here often enough when he was a boy.’
‘Bodkin? Bodkin? Bodkin?’
‘Oh, for pity’s sake, Clarence, don’t keep saying “Bodkin” as if you were a parrot. If you have forgotten him, as you forget everything that happened more than ten minutes ago, it does not matter in the least. The point is that Sir Gregory asked me as a personal favour to engage him as your secretary…’
Lord Emsworth was a mild man, but he could be stirred.
‘Well, I’m dashed! Well, I’m hanged! The man steals my pig-man and engineers the theft of my pig, and he has the nerve.’
‘… and I said I should be delighted.’
‘What!’
‘I said I should be delighted.’
‘You don’t mean you’ve done it?’
‘Certainly. It’s all arranged.’
‘You mean you’re letting a nephew of Parsloe’s loose in Blandings Castle, with two weeks to go before the Agricultural Show?’
‘He arrives tomorrow by the two-forty-five,’ said Lady Constance.
And as she had thrown her bomb and seen it explode and had now reached the front door and had no wish to waste her time listening to futile protests, she swept into the house and left Lord Emsworth standing.
He remained standing for perhaps a minute. Then the imperative necessity of sharing this awful news with a cooler, wiser mind than his own stirred him to life and activity. His face drawn, his long legs trembling beneath him, he hurried towards the lawn where his brother Galahad, whisky and soda in hand, reclined in his deckchair.
Chapter Four
Cooled by the shade of the cedar, refreshed by the contents of the amber glass in which ice tinkled so musically when he lifted it to his lips, the Hon. Galahad, at the moment of Lord Emsworth’s arrival, had achieved a Nirvana-like repose. Storms might be raging elsewhere in the grounds of Blandings Castle, but there on the lawn there was peace—the perfect unruffled peace which in this world seems to come only to those who have done nothing whatever to deserve it.
The Hon. Galahad Threepwood, in his fifty-seventh year, was a dapper little gentleman on whose grey but still thickly-covered head the weight of a consistently misspent life rested lightly. His flannel suit sat jauntily upon his wiry frame, a black-rimmed monocle gleamed jauntily in his eye. Everything about this Musketeer of the nineties was jaunty. It was a standing mystery to all who knew him that one who had had such an extraordinarily good time all his life should, in the e
vening of that life, be so superbly robust. Wan contemporaries who had once painted a gas-lit London red in his company and were now doomed to an existence of dry toast, Vichy water, and German cure resorts felt very strongly on this point. A man of his antecedents, they considered, ought by rights to be rounding off his career in a bath-chair instead of flitting about the place, still chaffing head waiters as of old and calling for the wine list without a tremor.
A little cock-sparrow of a man. One of the Old Guard which dies but does not surrender. Sitting there under the cedar, he looked as if he were just making ready to go to some dance-hall of the days when dance-halls were dance-halls, from which in the quiet dawn it would take at least three waiters, two commissionaires and a policeman to eject him.
In a world so full of beautiful things, where he felt we should all be as happy as kings, the spectacle of his agitated brother shocked the Hon. Galahad.
‘Good God, Clarence! You look like a bereaved tapeworm. What’s the matter?’
Lord Emsworth fluttered for a moment, speechless. Then he found words.
‘Galahad, the worst has happened!’
‘Eh?’
‘Parsloe has struck!’
‘Struck? You mean he’s been biffing you?’
‘No, no, no. I mean it has happened just as you warned me. He has been too clever for us. He has got round Connie and persuaded her to engage his nephew as my new secretary.’
The Hon. Galahad removed his monocle, and began to polish it thoughtfully. He could understand his companion’s concern now.
‘She told me so only a moment ago. You see what this means? He is determined to work a mischief on the Empress, and now he has contrived to insinuate an accomplice into the very heart of the home. I see it all,’ said Lord Emsworth, his voice soaring to the upper register. ‘He failed with Baxter, and now he is trying again with this young Bodkin.’
‘Bodkin? Young Monty Bodkin?’
‘Yes. What are we to do, Galahad?’ said Lord Emsworth.
He trembled. It would have pained the immaculate Monty, could he have known that his prospective employer was picturing him at this moment as a furtive, shifty-eyed, rat-like person of the gangster type, liable at the first opportunity to sneak into the sties of innocent pigs and plant pineapple bombs in their bran-mash.
The Hon. Galahad replaced his monocle.
‘Monty Bodkin?’ he said, refreshing himself with a sip from his glass.’ I remember him well. Nice boy. Not at all the sort of fellow who would nobble pigs. Wait a minute, Clarence. This wants thinking over.’
He mused awhile.
‘No,’ he said, ‘you can dismiss young Bodkin as a hostile force altogether.’
‘What!’
‘Put him right out of your mind,’ insisted the Hon. Galahad. ‘Parsloe isn’t planning to strike through him at all.’
‘But, Galahad …’
‘No. Take it from me. Can’t you see for yourself that the thing’s much too obvious, much too straightforward, not young Parsloe’s proper form at all? Reason it out. He must know that we would suspect a nephew of his. Then why is it worth his while to get him into the place? Shall I tell you, Clarence?’
‘Do,’ said Lord Emsworth feebly, gaping like a fish.
As the head of the family was standing up and he was sitting down, it was impossible for the Hon. Galahad to tap him meaningly on the shoulder. He prodded him meaningly in the leg.
‘Because,’ he said, ‘he wants us to suspect him.’
‘Wants us to suspect him?’
‘Wants us to,’ said the Hon. Galahad.’ He hopes by introducing Monty Bodkin into the place to get us watching him, following his every movement, keeping our eyes glued on to him, so that when the real accomplice acts we shall be looking in the wrong direction.’
‘God bless my soul!’ said Lord Emsworth, appalled.
‘Oh, it’s all right,’ said the Hon. Galahad soothingly. ‘A cunning scheme, but we’re too smart to fall for it. We see through it and are prepared.’ He gave Lord Emsworth’s leg another significant prod. ‘Shall I tell you what is going to happen, Clarence?’
‘Do,’ said Lord Emsworth.
‘I can read Parsloe’s mind like a book. A day or two after young Monty’s arrival, there will be a mysterious stranger sneaking about the grounds in the vicinity of the Empress’s sty. He will be there because Parsloe, taking it for granted that our attention will be riveted on young Monty, will imagine that the coast is clear.’
‘God bless my soul!’
‘And apparently the coast will be clear. We must arrange that. From now on, Clarence, you must not loaf about the Empress openly. You must conceal yourself in the background. And you must instruct Pirbright to conceal himself in the background. This fellow must be led to suppose that vigilance has been relaxed. By these means, we shall catch him red-handed.’
In Lord Emsworth’s eye, as he gazed at his brother, there was the reverential look of a disciple at the feet of his master. He had always known, he told himself, that as a practical adviser in matters having to do with the seamier side of life the other was unsurpassed. It was the result, he supposed of the environment in which he had spent his formative years. Membership of the old Pelican Club might not elevate a man socially, but there was no doubt about its educative properties. If it dulled the moral sense, it undoubtedly sharpened the intellect.
‘You have taken a great weight off my mind, Galahad,’ he said. ‘I feel sure you are perfectly right. The only mistake I think you make is in supposing that this young Bodkin is harmless. I am convinced that he will require watching.’
‘Well, watch him, then, if it will make you any happier.’
‘It will,’ said Lord Emsworth decidedly. ‘And meanwhile I will be giving Pirbright his instructions.’
‘Tell him to lurk.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Some rude disguise such as a tree or a pail of potato-peel would help.’
Lord Emsworth reflected.
‘I don’t think Pirbright could disguise himself as a tree.’
‘Nonsense. What do you pay him for?’
Lord Emsworth continued dubious. Only God, he seemed to be feeling, can make a tree. ‘Well, at any rate, tell him to lurk.’
‘Oh, he shall certainly lurk.’
‘From now on …’ began the Hon. Galahad, and broke off to wave at some object in his companion’s rear. The latter turned.
‘Ah, that nice little Smith girl,’ he said.
Sue had appeared on the edge of the lawn. Lord Emsworth beamed vaguely in her direction.
‘By the way, Galahad,’ he said, ‘is a chorus-girl the same as a ballet-girl?’
‘Certainly not. Different thing altogether.’
‘I thought so,’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘Connie’s an ass.’
He pottered away, and Sue crossed the turf to where the Hon. Galahad sat.
The author of the Reminiscences scanned her affectionately through his monocle. Amazing, he was thinking, how like her mother she was. He noticed it more every day. Dolly’s walk, and just that way of tilting her chin and smiling at you that Dolly had had. For an instant the years fell away from the Hon. Galahad Threepwood, and something that was not of this world went whispering through the garden.
Sue stood looking down at him. She placed a maternal finger on top of his head, and began to twist the grey hair round it.
“Well, young Gally.’
‘Well, young Sue.’
‘You look very comfortable.’
‘I am comfortable.’
‘You won’t be long. The luncheon gong will be going in a minute.’
The Hon. Galahad sighed. There was always something, he reflected.
‘What a curse meals are! Don’t let’s go in.’
‘I’m going in, all right. My good child, I’m starving.’
‘Pure imagination.’
‘Do you mean to say you’re not hungry, Gally?’
‘Of course I’m not. No heal
thy person really needs food. If people would only stick to drinking, doctors would go out of business. I can state you a case that proves it. Old Freddie Potts in the year ‘98.’
‘Old Freddie Potts in the year ‘98, did you say, Mister Bones?’
‘Old Freddie Potts in the year ‘98,’ repeated the Hon. Galahad firmly. ‘He lived almost entirely on Scotch whisky, and in the year ‘98 this prudent habit saved him from an exceedingly unpleasant attack of hedgehog poisoning.’
‘What poisoning?’
‘Hedgehog poisoning. It was down in the south of France that it happened. Freddie had gone to stay with his brother Eustace at his villa at Grasse. Practically a teetotaller, this brother, and in consequence passionately addicted to food.’
‘Still, I can’t see why he wanted to eat hedgehogs.’
‘He did not want to eat hedgehogs. Nothing was farther from his intentions. But on the second day of old Freddie’s visit he gave his chef twenty francs to go to market and buy a chicken for dinner, and the chef, wandering along, happened to see a dead hedgehog lying in the road. It had been there some days, as a matter of fact, but this was the first time he had noticed it. So, feeling that here was where he pouched twenty francs …’
‘I wish you wouldn’t tell me stories like this just before lunch.’
‘If it puts you off your food, so much the better. Bring the roses to your cheeks. Well, as I was saying, the chef, who was a thrifty sort of chap and knew that he could make a dainty dinner dish out of his old grandmother, if allowed to mess about with a few sauces, added the twenty francs to his savings and gave Freddie and Eustace the hedgehog next day en casserole. Mark the sequel. At two-thirty prompt, Eustace, the teetotaller, turned nile-green, started groaning like a lost soul, and continued to do so for the remainder of the week, when he was pronounced out of danger. Freddie, on the other hand, his system having been healthfully pickled in alcohol, throve on the dish and finished it up cold next day.’
‘I call that the most disgusting story I ever heard.’
‘The most moral story you ever heard. If I had my way, it would be carved up in letters of gold over the door of every school and college in the kingdom, as a warning to the young. Well, what have you been doing with yourself all the morning, my dear? I expected you earlier.’
Blanding Castle Omnibus Page 110