Blanding Castle Omnibus

by P. G. Wodehouse

  He could scarcely have been more fortunately situated for the purpose of gratifying this wish. The ideal towards which the City Fathers of all English county towns strive is to provide a public-house for each individual inhabitant; and those of Market Blandings had not been supine in this matter. From where Beach stood, he could see no fewer than six such establishments. The fact that he chose the Emsworth Arms must not be taken to indicate that he had anything against the Wheatsheaf, the Waggoner’s Rest, the Beetle and Wedge, the Stitch in Time, and the Jolly Cricketers. It was simply that it happened to be closest.

  Nevertheless, it was a sound choice. The advice one would give to every young man starting life is, on arriving in Market Blandings on a warm afternoon, to go to the Emsworth Arms. Good stuff may be bought there, and of all the admirable hostelrics in the town it possesses the largest and shadiest garden. Green and inviting, dotted about with rustic tables and snug summerhouses, it stretches all the way down to the banks of the river; so that the happy drinker, already pleasantly in need of beer, may acquire a new and deeper thirst from watching family parties toil past in row-boats. On a really sultry day a single father, labouring at the oars of a craft loaded down below the Plimsoll mark by a wife, a wife’s sister, a cousin by marriage, four children, a dog, and a picnic basket, has sometimes led to such a rush of business at the Emsworth Arms that seasoned barmaids have staggered beneath the strain.

  It was to one of these summerhouses that Beach now took his tankard. He generally went there when circumstances caused him to visit the Emsworth Arms, for as a man with a certain position to keep up he preferred privacy when refreshing himself. It was not as if he had been some irresponsible young second footman who could just go and squash in with the boys in the back room. This particular summerhouse was at the far end of the garden, hidden from the eye of the profane by a belt of bushes.

  Thither, accordingly, Beach made his way. There was nobody in the summerhouse, but he did not enter it, having a horror of earwigs and suspecting their presence in the thatch of the roof. Instead, he dragged a wicker chair to the table which stood at the back of it, and, sinking into this, puffed and sipped and thought. And the more he thought, the less did he like what he thought about.

  As a rule, when members of the Family showed their confidence in him by canvassing his assistance in any little matter, Beach was both proud and pleased. His motto was ‘Service’. But he could not conceal it from himself that the Family had a tendency at times to go a little too far.

  The historic case of this, of course, had been when Mr Ronald, having stolen the Empress and hidden her in a disused keeper’s cottage in the west wood, had prevailed upon him to assist in feeding her. His present commission was not as fearsome an ordeal as that, but nevertheless he could not but feel that the Hon. Galahad, in appointing him the custodian of so vitally important an object as the manuscript of his book of Reminiscences, had exceeded the limits of what a man should ask a butler to do. The responsibility, he considered, was one which no butler, however desirous of giving satisfaction, should have been called upon to undertake.

  The thought of all that hung upon his vigilance unnerved him. And he had been brooding on it with growing uneasiness for perhaps five minutes, when the sound of feet shuffling on wood told him that he had no longer got his favourite oasis to himself. An individual or individuals had come into the summerhouse.

  ‘We can talk here,’ said a voice, and a seat creaked as if a heavy body had lowered itself upon it.

  And such was, indeed, the case. It was Lord Tilbury who had just sat down, and his was one of the heaviest bodies in Fleet Street.

  When, a few minutes before, meditating in the lounge of the Emsworth Arms, he had beheld Monty Bodkin enter through the front door, Lord Tilbury’s first thought had been for some quiet retreat where they could confer in solitude. He could see that the young man had much to say, and he had no desire to have him say it with half a dozen inquisitive Shropshire lads within easy earshot.

  Great minds think alike. Beach, intent on an unobtrusive glass of beer, and Lord Tilbury, loath to have intimate private matters discussed in an hotel lounge, had both come to the conclusion that true solitude was best to be obtained at the bottom of the garden. Silencing his young friend, accordingly, with an imperious gesture his lordship had led the way to this remote summerhouse.

  ‘Well,’ he said, having seated himself. ‘What is it?’ It seemed to Beach, who had settled himself comfortably in his chair and was preparing to listen to the conversation with something of the air of a nonchalant dramatic critic watching the curtain go up, that that voice was vaguely familiar. He had a feeling that he had heard it before, but could not remember where or when. He had no difficulty, however, in recognizing the one which now spoke in answer. Monty Bodkin’s vocal delivery, when his soul was at all deeply disturbed, was individual and peculiar, containing something of the tonal quality of a bleating sheep combined with a suggestion of a barking prairie wolf. ‘What is it? I like that!’

  Monty’s soul at this moment was very deeply disturbed. Since breakfast-time that morning, this young man, like Sir Gregory Parsloe, had run what is known as the gamut of the emotions. A pictorial record of his hopes and despairs would have looked like a fever chart.

  He had begun, over the coffee and kippers, by feeling gay and buoyant. It seemed to him that Fortune—good old Fortune—had amazingly decently put him on to a red-hot thing. All he had to do, in order to ensure the year’s employment which would enable him to win Gertrude Butterwick, was to nip into the small library and lift the manuscript out of the desk in which, Lord Tilbury had assured him, it reposed.

  Feeling absolutely in the pink, accordingly, and nipping as planned, he had fallen, like Lucifer, from heaven to hell. The bally thing was not there. Fortune, in a word, had been pulling his leg.

  And here was this old ass before him saying’ What is it?’

  ‘Yes, I like that!’ he repeated. ‘That’s rich! Oh, very fruity, indeed.’

  Lord Tilbury, as we have said, had never been very fond of Monty. In his present peculiar mood he found himself liking him less than ever.

  ‘What is it you wish to see me about?’ he asked, with testy curtness.

  ‘What do you think I want to see you about?’ replied Monty shrilly. ‘About that dashed manuscript of Gally’s that you told me to pinch, of course,’ he said with a bitter laugh, and Beach, having given a single shuddering start like a harpooned whale, sat rigid in his chair; his gooseberry eyes bulging; the beer frozen, as one might say, on his lips.

  Nor was Lord Tilbury unmoved. No plotter likes to have his accomplices bellowing important secrets as if they were calling coals.

  ‘Sh!’

  ‘Oh, nobody can hear us.’

  ‘Nevertheless, kindly do not shout. Where is the manuscript? Have you got it?’

  ‘Of course I’ve not got it.’

  Lord Tilbury was feeling dismally that he might have expected this. He saw now how foolish he had been to place so delicate a commission in the hands of a popinjay. Of all classes of the community, popinjays, when it comes to carrying out delicate commissions, are the most inept. Search History’s pages from end to end, reflected Lord Tilbury, and you will not find one instance of a popinjay doing anything successfully except eat, sleep, and master the new dance steps.

  ‘It’s a bit thick …’ bellowed Monty.

  ‘Sh!’

  ‘It’s a bit thick,’ repeated Monty, sinking his voice to a conspiratorial growl. ‘Raising hopes only to cast them to the ground is the way I look at it. What did you want to get me all worked up for by telling me the thing was in that desk?’

  ‘It is not?’ said Lord Tilbury, staggered.

  ‘Not a trace of it.’

  ‘You cannot have looked properly.’

  ‘Looked properly!’

  ‘Sh!’

  ‘Of course I looked properly. I left no stone unturned. I explored every avenue.’

  ‘B
ut I saw Threepwood put it there.’

  ‘Says you.’

  ‘Don’t say “says you”. I tell you I saw him with my own eyes place the manuscript in the top right-hand drawer of the desk.’

  ‘Well, he must have moved it. It’s not there now.’

  ‘Then it is somewhere else.’

  ‘I shouldn’t wonder. But where?’

  ‘You could easily have found out.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’

  ‘Don’t say “Oh, yeah”.’

  ‘Well, what can I say, dash it? First you keep yowling “Shush” every time I open my mouth. Then you tell me not to say, “Says you”. And now you beef at my remarking “Oh, yeah”. I suppose what you’d really like,’ said Monty, and it was plain to the listening ear that he was deeply moved, ‘would be for me to buy a flannel dressing-gown and a spade and become a ruddy Trappist monk.’

  This spirited outburst led to a certain amount of rather confused debate. Lord Tilbury said that he did not propose to have young popinjays taking that tone with him; while Monty, on his side, wished to be informed who Lord Tilbury was calling a popinjay. Lord Tilbury then said that Monty was a bungler, and Monty said, Well, dash it, Lord Tilbury had told him to be a burglar, and Lord Tilbury said he had not said ‘burglar’, he had said ‘bungler’, and Monty said, What did he mean, bungler, and Lord Tilbury explained that by the expression’ bungler’, he had intended to signify a wretched, feckless, blundering, incompetent, imbecile. He added that an infant of six could have found the manuscript, and Monty, in a striking passage, was making a firm offer to give any bloodhound in England a shilling if it could do better than he had done, when the argument stopped as abruptly as it had started. Childish voices had begun to prattle close at hand and it was evident that one of those picnic parties from the river was approaching.

  ‘Cor!’ said Lord Tilbury, rather in the manner of the moping owl in Gray’s ‘Elegy’ under similar provocation.

  One of the childish voices spoke.

  ‘Pa, there’s someone here.’

  Another followed.

  ‘Ma, there’s someone here.’

  The deeper note of a male adult made itself heard.

  ‘Emily, there’s someone here.’

  And then the voice of a female adult.

  ‘Oh dear. What a shame! There’s someone here.’

  The conspirators appeared to be men who could take a tactful hint when they heard one. There came to Beach’s ears the sound of moving bodies. And presently, from the fact that the summer-house seemed to have become occupied by a troupe of performing elephants, he gathered that the occupation had been carried through according to plan.

  He sat on for some minutes; then, hurrying to the inn, asked leave of the landlord to use his telephone in order to summon Robinson and his station taxi. His mind was made up. He would not know an easy moment until he was back in his pantry, on guard. The station taxi would run into money, for Robinson, like all monopolists, drove a hard bargain; but if it would get him to the Castle before Monty it would be half a crown well spent.

  ‘Robinson’s taxi’s outside now, Mr Beach,’ said the landlord, tickled by the coincidence. ‘A gentleman phoned for it only two minutes ago. Going up to the Castle himself he is. Maybe he’d give you a lift. You can catch him if you run.’

  Beach did not run. Even if his figure had permitted such a feat, his sense of his position would have forbidden it. But he walked quite rapidly, and was enabled to leave the front door just as Monty was bidding farewell to a short, stout man in whom he recognized the Lord Tilbury who had called at the Castle on the previous day to sec Mr Galahad. So it was he who had been egging young Mr Bodkin on to bungle!

  For an instant, this discovery shocked the butler so much that he could hardly speak. That Baronets like Sir Gregory Parsloe should be employing minions to steal important papers had been a severe enough blow. That Peers should stoop to the same low conduct made the foundations of his world rock. Then came a restorative thought. This Lord Tilbury, he reminded himself, was no doubt a recent creation. One cannot expect too high a standard of ethics from the uncouth (hoi polloi) who crash into Birthday Honours lists.

  He found speech.

  ‘Oh, Mr Bodkin. Pardon me, sir.’

  Monty turned.

  ‘Why, hullo, Beach.’

  ‘Would it be a liberty, sir, if I were to request permission to share this vehicle with you?’

  ‘Rather not. Lots of room for all. What are you doing in these parts, Beach? Slaking the old thirst, eh? Drinking-bouts in the tap-room, yes?’

  ‘I walked down from the Castle to purchase cigarettes at the tobacconist’s, sir,’ replied Beach with dignity. ‘And as the afternoon heat proved somewhat trying…’

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Monty sympathetically. ‘Well, leap in, my dear old stag at eve.’

  At any other moment Beach would have been offended at such a mode of address and would have shown it in his manner. But just as he was about to draw himself up with a cold stare he chanced to catch sight of Lord Tilbury, who had retreated to the shadow of the inn wall.

  On his marriage to the daughter of Donaldson’s Dog-biscuits, of Long Island City, N.Y., and his subsequent departure for America, the Hon. Freddie Threepwood, Lord Emsworth’s younger son, who had assembled in the days of his bachelorhood what was pretty generally recognized as the finest collection of mystery thrillers in Shropshire, had bequeathed his library to Beach; and the latter in his hours of leisure had been making something of a study of the literature of Crime of late.

  Lord Tilbury, brooding there with folded arms, reminded him of The Man With The Twisted Eyebrows in The Casterbridge Horror.

  Shuddering strongly, Beach climbed into the cab.

  When two careworn men, one of whom has just discovered that the other has criminal tendencies, take a drive together on a baking afternoon, conversation does not run trippingly. Monty was thinking out plans and schemes; and Beach, in the intervals of recoiling with horror from this desperado, was wondering why the latter had called him a stag at eve. Silence, accordingly, soon fell upon the station taxi and lasted till it drew up at the front door of the castle. Here Monty alighted, and the taxi took Beach round to the back door. As he got down and handed Robinson his fare, the butler was conscious of an unwilling respect for the fiendish cunning of the criminal mind—which, having offered you a lift in a cab, gets out first and leaves you to pay for it.

  He hastened to his pantry. Reason told him that the manuscript must still be in the drawer where he had placed it, but he did not breathe easily until he had seen it with his own eyes. He took it out and, having done so, paused irresolutely. It was stuffy in the pantry and he longed to be in the open air, in that favourite seat of his near the laurel bush outside the back door. And yet he could not relax with any satisfaction there, separated from his precious charge.

  There is always a way. A few moments later he perceived that all anxiety might be obviated if he took the manuscript with him. He did so. Then, reclining in his deck-chair, he lit one of the cigarettes which it had cost him such labour to procure, and gave himself up to thought.

  His moonlike face was drawn and grave. The situation, he realized, was becoming too complex for comfort.

  The views of butlers who have been given important papers to guard and find that there are persons on the premises who wish to steal them are always clear-cut and definite. Broadly speaking, a butler in such a position can bear up with a reasonable amount of fortitude against the menace of one gang of would-be thieves. He may not like it, but he can set his teeth and endure. Add a second gang, however, and the thing seems to pass beyond his control.

  Beach’s researches in the library bequeathed to him by the Hon. Freddie Threepwood had left him extremely sensitive on the subject of Gangs. In most of the volumes in that library Gangs played an important part, and he had come to fear and dislike them. And here in Blandings Castle, groping about and liable at any moment to focus their malig
n attention on himself, were two Gangs—the Parsloe and the Tilbury. It made a butler think a bit.

  To divert his mind, he began to read the manuscript. Being of an inquisitive nature, he had always wanted to do so, and this seemed an admirable opportunity. Opening the pages at random, therefore, and finding himself in the middle of Chapter Six (‘Nightclubs of the Nineties‘), he plunged into a droll anecdote about the Bishop of Bangor when an undergraduate at Oxford, and despite his cares was soon chuckling softly, like some vast kettle coming to the boil.

  It was at this moment that Percy Pilbeam, who had been smoking cigarettes in the stable yard, came sauntering round the corner.

  The stable yard had been a favourite haunt of Percy Pilbeam’s ever since his arrival at the Castle. A keen motor-cyclist, he liked talking to Voules, the chauffeur, about valves and plugs and things. And, in addition to this, he found the place soothing because it was out of the orbit of the sisters and nephews of his host. You did not meet Lady Constance Keeble there, you did not meet Lady Julia Fish there, and you did not meet Lady Julia Fish’s son Ronald there; and for Percy Pilbeam that was sufficient to make any spot Paradise enow.

  He was also attracted to the stable-yard because he found it a good place to think in.

  He had been thinking a great deal these last two days. A self-respecting private investigator is always loath to admit that he is baffled, but baffled was just what Pilbeam had been ever since a second visit to the small library had informed him that the manuscript which he had been commissioned to remove was no longer in its desk. Like Monty, he felt at a loss.

  It was all very well, he felt sourly, for that Keeble woman to say in her impatient, duchess-talking-to-a-worm way that it must be somewhere and that she was simply amazed that he had not found it. The point was that it might be anywhere. No doubt if he had a Scotland Yard search-warrant, a troupe of African witch-doctors and unlimited time at his disposal he could find it. But he hadn’t.