Lord Emsworth, as nearly always when listening to a story, was a little fogged.
‘I thought you said she was hotted up.’
‘So she was … a couple of minutes later, and I’ll tell you why. On the table in the hall was lying a telegram. Well, when I say telegram, it was actually a cable, shot off from Long Island City in the United States of America by old man Donaldson, the dog biscuit despot. It was about Mrs Bunbury.’
‘I believe they’re old friends.’
‘Donaldson doesn’t. The gist of his cable was that he had never heard of her in his life.’
‘Well, I’ll be damned!’
‘Exactly what Connie said, and she went off to find Mrs Bunbury and ask her for further particulars. She discovered her eventually in the passage near the stairs which lead to Beach’s pantry. She was folded in Beach’s arms, and he was kissing her fondly on both cheeks.’
Lord Emsworth sneezed.
‘Beach was?’
‘I appreciate your surprise. Strongly anti-traditional, you are feeling. Butlers, you say to yourself, don’t kiss guests. Chauffeurs, perhaps. Gamekeepers, possibly. But butlers, never. In extenuation of his odd behaviour, however, I must mention that he is her uncle.’
‘Her uncle?’
‘Yes. Her Uncle Sebastian. I ought to have told you before, and I don’t know how it happened to slip my mind, but Mrs Bunbury isn’t Mrs Bunbury. She is the widow Stubbs. Her maiden name was, of course, Beach, though when I knew her in the old days as a barmaid at the Criterion, she called herself Maudie Montrose.’
Lord Emsworth looked as if he were about to pick at the coverlet.
‘She is a barmaid?’
‘She was a barmaid. Later, she married the proprietor of a private detective agency, now residing with the morning stars, and it was Beach’s revelation of the fact that she was connected with the gumshoe industry that gave me the idea of getting her down here in order to keep an eye on young Parsloe and foil his machinations regarding the Empress. It seemed to me that she would have the trained mind. She hasn’t as a matter of fact, but she can’t help that, poor soul, and it’s been delightful having her here and swopping stories of the old days. A fascinating companion. But don’t let me wander from the main issue. Resuming the run of the scenario, Connie, already sent rocking back on the heels of her short French vamps by that cable, was naturally stirred even further by the spectacle of butlers bounding about the place embracing people. Is this Blandings Castle, she asked herself, or is it the Folies Bergère? She reeled off to her boudoir, rang for Beach and started a probe or quiz.’
Gally waited courteously for Lord Emsworth to finish groaning, and resumed.
‘It was during this chat that Beach was struck by her resemblance to a gorilla with stomach ulcers, and we can hardly blame him for cracking under the strain. No more loyal fellow than Sebastian Beach ever swigged port, but every man has his breaking-point. Connie, when she comes down like a wolf on the fold with her cohorts all gleaming with purple and gold, is pretty hot stuff, and I’m not surprised that after she had given him the treatment for about a couple of minutes he threw in his hand and spilled the beans. You spoke?’
Lord Emsworth shook his head. He had merely groaned once more.
‘Now while Connie realizes, of course, that I was the spearhead of the movement, for I gather that Beach gave me away fairly completely, it is quite possible that she may be suspecting you of complicity in the affair. You know what Connie’s like. She takes in a wide field. So I thought the friendly thing was to come and warn you to be prepared. Have your story all planned out. Get tough with her. Talk out of the side of your mouth. For heaven’s sake, Clarence, don’t keep groaning like that. She can’t eat you. And I don’t suppose she’ll want to,’ said Gally, ‘for anything more closely resembling a condemned food product I never saw in my life.’ And with a final ‘Tails up!’ he went out, explaining that while he was not actually afraid of Connie there were moments when women are better avoided till they have come off the boil a bit. One did not, said Gally, want a vulgar brawl.
He left Lord Emsworth frozen where he lay, like a male Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt.
But he was no longer sneezing. It is a remarkable fact, and one which will interest medical men, that of all the remedies for the common cold which had been suggested to him that night, the shock he had received from Gally’s revelations was the only one that had done him any real good. Quite suddenly he had become a well man. It was as though after a course of vinegar tea and Cute Crispies he had taken a deep breath and asphyxiated every germ in his system, regardless of age or sex.
But though physically so greatly improved, spiritually he was in the poorest shape. It is a sad thing to have to record, but his love for Maudie had died as swiftly as if someone had taken it down a dark alley and hit it over the head with a blackjack. All he could think of now was what his sister Constance, always an outspoken woman, would say when she learned that he had written a letter proposing marriage to an ex-barmaid linked by ties of blood to the family butler.
No, not quite all. He was also thinking that after Connie had stopped talking – if she ever did – two alternatives would lie before him … one, to be sued for breach of promise; the other, to have to go through life calling Beach ‘Uncle Sebastian’.
It was at this moment that Jerry entered, all of a glow. He had just met Penny in the corridor and received renewed assurance of her undying love. True, she was still betrothed to another, but she had flung herself into his arms and kissed him, and that was enough to make his evening. He beamed on Lord Emsworth.
‘I deposited the letter,’ he said, like a Boy Scout reporting his day’s act of kindness.
Lord Emsworth came to life. From a pillar of salt he turned into a semaphore.
‘Get it back!’ he cried, waving his arms emotionally.
Jerry was perplexed. He could not follow his employer’s thought processes.
‘Get it back?’
‘Yes.’
‘You mean unpin it from the pincushion?’
‘Yes, yes, yes. I cannot explain now, for every moment is precious, but hurry and bring it back to me.’
If Jerry had any comment to make on this strange attitude, he was unable to give it utterance, for the door had opened and Lady Constance was coming in to join the party.
He thought she eyed him rather frostily on seeing him there, as though any affection she might have been feeling for him had waned a good deal, but a man who has just been kissing dream girls in corridors pays little attention to frosty looks from prominent Society hostesses. He gave her a friendly smile, and said he would be going off and getting that paper.
‘What paper?’
‘Just a paper Lord Emsworth wanted me to bring him.’
‘Why do you want Mr Vail to bring you papers, Clarence?’
‘Dash it all,’ said Lord Emsworth, panic lending him a weak belligerency. ‘Why shouldn’t he bring me papers? It’s his job, isn’t it? He’s my secretary, isn’t he?’
Lady Constance followed Jerry, as he left the room, with an eye that was bleaker than ever.
‘He will not be your secretary long, if I have my way,’ she said grimly.
Lord Emsworth was enchanted at this opportunity of steering the conversation away from butlers and their nieces.
‘Why won’t he be my secretary long, if you have your way?’
‘Because I strongly suspect him of making love to Penelope Donaldson and trying to lure her away from Orlo Vosper.’
‘Vosper? Vosper? Vosper? Ah, yes, Vosper,’ said Lord Emsworth, just in time. A ‘Who is Vosper?’ might have had the worst results. ‘What makes you think he’s doing that?’
‘I will tell you. When we were in London, a mysterious man rang up on the telephone, asking for Penelope. He gave his name as Gerald Vail and had apparently had a clandestine dinner engagement with her. Next day he arrives here as your secretary, obviously having followed her in accorda
nce with a prearranged plan. And just now, as I was coming along the corridor, I saw them together. Close together,’ said Lady Constance significantly.
‘God bless my soul! What, clinched together?’
‘When I saw them, they were not actually embracing, if that is what you mean by that peculiar expression,’ said Lady Constance coldly. ‘But Penelope’s face was flushed, and I suspected the worst. If I can find the slightest excuse, I shall dismiss that young man. Really, with all these things happening, Blandings Castle has become a mad-house. Secretaries kissing girls entrusted to my care, butlers kissing –’
‘Ah, yes,’ said Lord Emsworth airily. ‘Galahad was speaking to me about that. He was saying something, if I recollect rightly, about Mrs Bunbury not being Mrs Bunbury.’
‘Her name is Stubbs, and she is Beach’s niece.’
‘Yes, I seem to recall him mentioning that. I remember thinking at the time that it was curious that a woman should say she was Mrs Bunbury if she wasn’t Mrs Bunbury. Seemed a silly thing to do. You don’t happen to know what the thought at the back of that was, do you?’
Lady Constance eyed him narrowly.
‘Do you?’
‘Me?’
‘Were you in this plot, Clarence?’
Lord Emsworth stiffened his sinews and summoned up the blood.
‘What do you mean, was I in this plot? Which plot? What plot? I haven’t been in any plots. Do you suppose a busy man like me has time to waste being in plots? Tchah! Bah! Preposterous!’
A lesser woman might have wilted beneath his stern wrath. Lady Constance bore it with fortitude.
‘No, I don’t think you were. I am sure it was Galahad who was responsible for the whole thing, aided and abetted by Penelope Donaldson, who told me this Mrs Bunbury was an old friend of her father’s. I must say I am shocked at the way Penelope has behaved. I thought her such a nice girl, and she has turned out to be thoroughly sly and untrustworthy. If I had not had a cable from Mr Donaldson saying that he had never met a Mrs Bunbury in his life, I might never have discovered what was going on. Of course, my first impulse was to turn the woman out of the house.’
‘She’s leaving, is she?’ said Lord Emsworth, feeling that all things were working together for good.
‘No, she is not leaving. Impossible as the situation is, after what Beach told me I have no option but to allow her to remain. I can’t offend Sir Gregory.’
‘You mean Parsloe?’
‘He is the only Sir Gregory we know, I believe.’
‘But what’s Parsloe got to do with it?’
Lady Constance’s expression seemed to suggest that she was swallowing a bitter pill and not liking it.
‘According to Beach, this woman and Sir Gregory became engaged to be married this evening.’
‘What!’
‘I don’t wonder you’re surprised.’
‘I’m amazed. I’m astonished. Dash it, I’m stunned.’
‘So was I when Beach told me. I could hardly believe my ears.’
‘You mean Parsloe met her for the first time this evening and asked her to marry him?’ said Lord Emsworth, with a mild man’s respect for a quick worker.
‘Of course he did not meet her for the first time this evening. They appear to have known each other in the days before Sir Gregory came into the title. I found Beach kissing her, and he explained that she had just told him the news and he was congratulating her and wishing her happiness. Obviously, if this Mrs Bunbury or Mrs Stubbs or whoever she is is going to marry Sir Gregory, I cannot insult him by turning her out of the house. Life in the country is impossible if you are not on good terms with your neighbours.’
A horrid thought struck Lord Emsworth.
‘Are you going to sack Beach?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I do. I’m dashed if you’re going to sack Beach, because … because I’m dashed if you are,’ said Lord Emsworth stoutly. Life without Beach was a thing he did not care to contemplate.
‘No,’ said Lady Constance, after a moment’s thought. ‘No, I shall not dismiss Beach. I take the view that he was led astray by Galahad. Galahad! I remember, when we were children,’ said Lady Constance wistfully, ‘seeing Galahad fall into that deep pond in the kitchen garden. And just as he was sinking for the last time, one of the gardeners came along and pulled him out,’ she added, speaking with a sort of wild regret. It was plain that she was in agreement with the poet that of all sad words of tongue or pen the saddest are these ‘It might have been’. She paused a moment, brooding on the thoughtless folly of that chuckle-headed gardener. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I am going to my room to bathe my temples with eau-de-Cologne. I don’t know whether I am standing on my head or my heels.’
She went out, and Lord Emsworth, sinking back on his pillows, gave himself up to the first agreeable thoughts he had had for what seemed to him a lifetime.
Engaged to Parsloe, was she? Then at the eleventh hour he was saved and need no longer dread that breach of promise action or its even ghastlier alternative. What happier ending could there be to a good man’s vicissitudes? Lord Emsworth had often speculated as to whether there were really such things as guardian angels, and this evening’s happenings convinced him of their existence. Only a thoroughly efficient guardian angel who knew his job backwards could have snatched him from the soup with this amazing dexterity just when he had supposed himself to be getting down in it for the third time, like Galahad in his pond.
He regretted that there was presumably no way of getting in touch with his benefactor. It would have been a real pleasure to have sought him out and shaken him by the hand.
2
In houses of the size of Blandings Castle there are always plenty of nooks which might have been specially designed for the convenience of men desirous of avoiding angry women. The billiard-room was Gally’s selection on leaving Lord Emsworth. Connie, he felt, whatever her faults, and they were numerous, was not likely to come poking her head into billiard-rooms.
The first thing he saw on entering was Lord Vosper practising cannons in a distrait sort of way, as if his mind were elsewhere. There was a preoccupied look on his handsome face, and the fact that he was bringing off some nice shots appeared to give him little pleasure. On seeing Gally, he brightened, like a shipwrecked mariner sighting a sail.
Lord Vosper, as has been said, considered Gally frivolous and found much to disapprove of in his attitude to life, but he had a solid respect for him as a man of the world who knew what was what, and it was a man of the world who knew what was what that he was in need of now. Problems had arisen in Orlo Vosper’s life, and he felt unequal to coping with them alone.
‘Oh, hullo,’ he said. ‘I say, Mr Threepwood, could I speak to you about something?’
‘Touch on any topic that comes into your head, my boy, and you will find in me a ready listener,’ said Gally cordially. ‘What is on your mind? Are you worrying about the situation in the Far East?’
‘Not so much the situation in the Far East,’ said Lord Vosper, ‘as the one right here in Blandings Castle. Some rather disturbing things have been happening and I should very much like your advice. If you have a moment?’
‘My time is at your disposal.’
‘It’s a longish story.’
‘Your stories can never be too long, my dear fellow,’ said Gally courteously. ‘Suppose we park ourselves on this settee and you get it off your chest.’
Seated on the settee with Gally at his side, his face registering sympathetic interest, Lord Vosper seemed to find a difficulty in beginning his story.
‘Do you play tennis?’ he said at length.
‘I was wondering if you were going to ask me that,’ said Gally. ‘I suppose you’re going to ask me next if I’ve read any good books lately?’
Lord Vosper blushed apologetically. He saw that he had selected the wrong opening for his narrative.
‘I don’t mean so much “Do you play tennis” as would you believe that a great rom
ance could be wrecked on the tennis court?’
‘Ah, now you’re talking. Good heavens, yes. My old friend Buffy Struggles was at one time engaged to a girl who was a keen tennis player, and she returned the ring and letters because, when they were partnered in the mixed doubles one day, he insisted on charging into her half of the court and poaching her shots. And before he could effect a reconciliation, he was run over by a hansom cab in Piccadilly and killed instantaneously.’
‘Great Scott!’ Lord Vosper was staring, amazed. ‘Why, that’s exactly what happened to me.’
‘Were you killed by a hansom cab?’
‘No, but I was engaged to a girl, and she broke it off because I poached her shots.’
‘Ah, I see. I misunderstood you. When did this happen?’
‘About two months ago.’
‘But you’ve only been engaged to Penny Donaldson two or three days.’
‘I’m not talking about Penny Donaldson, I’m talking about Gloria Salt.’
‘You mean you were engaged to Gloria Salt?’
‘I still am.’
‘But you’re engaged to Penny Donaldson.’
‘I know. That’s the trouble. I’m engaged to both of them.’
Gally removed his monocle and polished it. He found his companion’s story, though full of human interest, a little difficult to follow.
‘Intricate,’ he said.
‘It is a bit,’ agreed Lord Vosper. ‘I’d better take you through it step by step. I was engaged to Gloria, and she gave me the push. You’ve got that?’
‘I’ve got it.’
‘I then became engaged to Penny. All straight so far?’
‘Quite straight. By way of a defiant sort of gesture, I suppose?’
‘Well, more or less by way of a defiant sort of gesture, no doubt, though of course I’m very fond of her. Nice girl.’
‘Very.’
‘I asked her to marry me in London, when I was giving her a bite of dinner at Mario’s, and she seemed to like the idea, so that was the position when we got back here. And all might have been well, had not Gloria suddenly blown in.’
Blanding Castle Omnibus Page 238