She greeted him cordially.
‘Playing hooky, Lord Emsworth?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Or has the Empress given you the afternoon off? Aren’t you usually on duty at this time of day?’
Lord Emsworth, who had been looking gloomy, brightened a little. He was fond of Vanessa. He found her sympathetic, and a sympathetic ear into which to pour his troubles was just what he had been wanting. He explained the reason for his despondency.
‘Connie told me to meet this man Trout at the station. He is arriving on a train that gets in soon. I forget when, but Voules will know. And I ought to be with the Empress every minute. She needs me at her side.’
‘Why didn’t you tell Lady Constance that you had a previous engagement?’
The blankness behind Lord Emsworth’s pince-nez showed that this revolutionary idea had not occurred to him. When Connie told you to do things, you did not say that you had a previous engagement. Galahad, of course, would be capable of such an act of reckless courage, but Galahad, in addition to being a man of steel and iron, veteran of a hundred battles with bookmakers, process servers and racecourse touts, wore an eyeglass and had only to twiddle it to daunt the stoutest sister. It was not a feat to be expected of a man in pince-nez. With a shiver at the mere thought of such a thing, he said:
‘Oh, I couldn’t do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘She would be furious.’
Wheels grated on gravel, and the car came round the corner, chauffeur Voules at the helm.
‘Oh dear,’ sighed Lord Emsworth, seeing it.
‘Look,’ said Vanessa. ‘Why don’t I go and meet Trout?’
The start Lord Emsworth gave at this suggestion was so violent that it detached his pince-nez from the parent nose. Hauling them in on their string, he gazed at her reverentially. On his visit to New York to attend the wedding of Connie and James Schoonmaker he had become a great admirer of the American girl, but he had never supposed that even an American girl could be as noble as this.
‘Would you? Would you really?’
‘Sure. A privilege and pleasure.’
‘There would be no need to tell Connie.’
‘None whatever.’
‘Well, it is extremely kind of you. I don’t know how to thank you.’
‘Don’t give it a thought.’
‘You see, it’s the Empress. I mean—’
‘I know what you mean. Your place is at her side.’
‘Exactly. I ought not to leave her for a moment. They keep assuring me that there is no reason for concern, Banks said so in so many words, but the fact remains that she refused to eat a potato which I had offered her.’
‘Bad.’
‘No, that is what is so sinister about it. It was a perfectly good potato, but she merely sniffed at it and—’
‘Turned on her heel?’
‘Precisely. She sniffed at it and walked away. Naturally I am anxious.’
‘Anyone would be.’
‘If only I could consult Wolff-Lehman.’
‘Why can’t you?’
‘He’s dead.’
‘I see what you mean. That does rather rule him out as an adviser. Though you might get him on the ouija board.’
‘So if you will really go to the station—’
‘I’m on my way. Market Blandings, here I come.’
‘I’m afraid it is asking a great deal of you. You will find it boring having to talk to Mr. Trout as you drive back. It is always a strain finding anything to say to a stranger.’
‘That’s all right. Willie Trout’s not a stranger. I knew him on the other side.’
‘Where?’
‘In America.’
‘Oh, ah, yes, of course, yes. The other side of the Atlantic, you mean.’
‘We’ll have all sorts of things to talk about. Not a dull moment.’
‘Capital,’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘Capital, capital, capital.’
The train was just coming in as the car reached the station, and as Wilbur Trout stepped from it Vanessa started picking up the threads with a genial ‘Hi!’, and he responded with the same cordial monosyllable. There was no embarrassment on his side at this unexpected meeting with a woman he had loved and lost. If meeting women he had loved and lost could have embarrassed Wilbur Trout, he would have had to spend most of his time turning pink and twiddling his fingers. Vanessa was an old friend whom he was delighted to see. If he was a little vague as to who she was, he distinctly recalled having met her before. And when she told him, after he had called her Pauline, that her name was Vanessa, he had her placed. It helped, of course, that she was the only one on his long list to whom he had been engaged and not married.
She explained the circumstances which had led to her being at Blandings Castle, and they spoke for awhile of the old days, of parties he had given at Great Neck and Westhampton Beach, of guys and dolls who had been her fellow guests at those parties, and of the night when he had dived into the Plaza fountain in correct evening dress. But the frivolous memories did not detain him long. His mind was on deeper things.
‘Say, is there anywhere around here where you can get a drink?’ he asked, and she replied that beverages of all kinds were to be obtained at the Emsworth Arms not a stone’s throw distant. There were other hostelries in Market Blandings … one does not forget the Goose and Gander, the Jolly Cricketers, the Wheatsheaf, the Waggoner’s Rest, the Blue Cow and the Stitch In Time … but these catered for the proletariat rather than for millionaire visitors from New York. This she explained to Wilbur, and soon, having brightened Voules’s afternoon by telling him to go and refresh himself at the bar, they were seated at one of the tables in the Emsworth Arms’ charming garden with gin and tonics within easy reach and Vanessa was clothing in speech a thought which had been in her mind from the first moment of their meeting.
‘Willie,’ she said, ‘you look like the Wreck of the Hesperus.’
He took no offence at an old friend’s candour. He had indeed arrived at the same conclusion himself when peering into the mirror that morning. He merely heaved a sombre sigh.
‘I’ve had a lot of trouble.’
‘What’s gone wrong this time?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘Then before you start on it tell me how in the name of everything mysterious you come to be headed for Blandings Castle.’
‘That’s part of the story.’
‘All right, then, carry on. You have the floor.’
Wilbur drank deeply of his gin and tonic to assist the marshalling of his thoughts. After a moment’s brooding he appeared to have got them in order.
‘It started with my divorce.’
‘Which one? Luella?’
‘No, not Luella.’
‘Marlene?’
‘No, not Marlene. Genevieve.’
‘Oh, Genevieve? Yes, I read about that.’
‘It was a terrible shock when she walked out on me.’
The thought crossed Vanessa’s mind that after his ample experience of that sort of thing the exodus of another wife should have seemed pure routine, but she did not say so. She was a tactful girl, and it was plain to her that for some inscrutable reason the loss of the third Mrs. Trout, who had chewed gum and talked baby-talk, had affected him deeply.
‘I loved her, Pauline I mean Vanessa. I worshipped her. And she ditched me for a guy who plays the trumpet in a band. And not a name band, either.’
‘Tough,’ said Vanessa, but purely out of politeness. The character in the drama calling for sympathy was, she considered, the guy who played the trumpet. Unsuccessful in his profession, chained to a band that was not a name band, and now linked to Mrs. Genevieve Trout. One would have had to be hard-hearted indeed not to feel a pang of pity for a man with a record like that.
Wilbur attracted the attention of a waiter and ordered two more gin and tonics. Even if his heart is broken, the prudent man does not neglect the practical side of life.
/> ‘Where was I?’ he said, passing a weary hand over his forehead.
‘You had got as far as the trumpeter, and you were saying how much you loved Genevieve.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Still?’
‘Do you mean Do I love her still? I certainly do. I think of her all the time. I lie awake nights. I seem to hear her voice. She used to say the cutest things.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘She used to call roses woses.’
‘So she did.’
‘And rabbits wabbits.’
‘Yes, I remember.’
‘So you can understand how I felt when I saw that picture.’
‘What picture would that be?’
‘It was in the window of one of those art galleries on Bond Street, and it was the image of Genevieve.’
‘You mean a portrait?’
‘No, not a portrait, a picture of a girl by some French guy. And I said to myself I’d got to have it to remind me of her.’
‘So you bought it, and they threw in an invitation to Blandings Castle? Sort of like trading stamps?’
‘Don’t joke about it.’
‘I’m not joking. Something must have happened, to bring you here, and I’m waiting to be told what.’
‘That was the Duke.’
‘What Duke?’
‘Dunstable he calls himself. He invited me.’
Vanessa flung her arms out in a despairing gesture. Wilbur had always been a story-teller who got his stories muddled up, but with his present conte he was excelling himself.
‘I don’t get it,’ she said. ‘I just don’t get it. Maybe you’ll make it clearer as you proceed, so go on from when you bought the picture. In words of one syllable, if you can manage it.’
Wilbur fortified himself with gin and tonic. From now on every word he uttered was going to be a knife in his bosom.
‘I didn’t buy it. That’s the whole point. It was past one o’clock, and like a sap I thought I might as well have lunch first, so I went to a club where I’ve a guest card and was having a drink at the bar before going into the dining-room, when this duke came along and sat down next to me and started telling me what was wrong with the Government. We hit it off pretty well and I had some more drinks, and before I knew what was happening I was telling him about Genevieve and this picture in the art gallery.’
‘And while you were having your lunch he popped around the corner and bought the picture, and now he’s got you here to sell it to you at a large profit.’
Amazement held Wilbur speechless for a long moment. He stared blankly at the clairvoyant girl.
‘How did you guess?’ he gasped.
‘It wasn’t difficult, knowing the Duke. It must be the picture that’s in the castle portrait gallery now. And I’ll bet he didn’t buy it from any love of art. He’s in this for what he can get.’
With another of his sombre sighs Wilbur endorsed this theory.
‘And he’s invited me here so that I can keep on seeing the thing. He knows I won’t be able to stop myself buying it, no matter what he asks. And that,’ said Wilbur moodily, ‘will be about double what he paid for it. I’m in a spot.’
‘Then say “Out, damned spot.”’
A long train journey and several gin and tonics had left Wilbur’s brain on the sluggish side. There was, he presumed, some significance in her words, but what it was eluded him. Pure baloney, he would have said if asked to criticize them.
‘How do you mean?’
‘You say you’re in a spot. Why are you in a spot? Ask me, you’re sitting pretty. You’re here, the picture’s here, and all you’ve got to do is swipe it.’
Wilbur’s eyes widened. He uttered a low bronchial sound like the croak of a bull frog. It is never easy for a man of slow mind to assimilate a novel idea.
‘Swipe it?’ he said. ‘Do you mean swipe it?’
‘Sure. Why not? He as good as swiped it from you. You can find out from the art gallery what he paid for it and reimburse him, if that’s the word.’
A gleam came into Wilbur’s eyes, but it was only momentary. He was able to recognize the suggestion as a good one, but he knew that he was not the man to carry it out.
‘I couldn’t,’ he said with something of the emphasis which Lord Emsworth had employed while saying the same thing a little earlier in the afternoon, and Vanessa reacted as she had done on that occasion.
‘Then I will,’ she said, and Wilbur, like Lord Emsworth, stared for a moment unbelievingly. In the days of their brief engagement he had come to know Vanessa as a girl of unconventional trend of thought, but she had never given him a surprise of this magnitude.
‘You really think you could do it?’
‘Of course I can do it. It only wants thinking over. As a matter of fact, I’ve got a glimmering of an idea already. I’m only hesitating because it means bringing Chesney into it.’
‘Who’s Chesney?’
‘Man who’s staying at the castle. I’m pretty sure he’s a crook, but I’ll have to be certain before I start anything. You don’t want to take chances with a thing of this kind.’
‘You bet not.’
‘I’ll be able to tell when I’ve studied him a bit longer. I hope he’ll turn out to be what I think he is, for if there’s one thing that sticks out of this situation like a sore thumb, it is that His Grace the Duke must not be allowed to pull quick ones on the young and innocent and get away with it. And now,’ said Vanessa, ‘let’s dig that chauffeur out of the bar and be getting along to the castle.’
CHAPTER SIX
Night had fallen when John got back to London. He found Paddington still its refined and unruffled self, and his forlorn aspect struck as discordant a note there as it had done at the Emsworth Arms. Paddington porters like to see smiling faces about them. They may feel pity for young men with drawn brows and haggard eyes, but they prefer not to have to associate with them, and this applies equally to guards, engine drivers and the staff of the refreshment room. The whole personnel of the station felt a sense of relief when he had removed himself in a taxi and was on his way to Halsey Court in the W.I. postal division, his London address.
His interview with Gally had deepened the despondency with which he had set out on his journey to Shropshire. He had been so certain that he would have received an invitation to Blandings Castle, that essential preliminary to a reconciliation with the girl whose gentle heart he had bruised with all those ‘Would it be fair to say’s‘ and ‘I suggest’s‘ when battling under the banner of G. G. Clutterbuck. Once at the castle he would have been in a position to start pleading, and by pleading he meant really pleading—omitting no word or act that would lead to a peaceful settlement. Let him once get Linda to the negotiating table, he had told himself, let her once hear the tremolo in his voice and see the melting look in his eyes, and all would have been well.
Gally’s refusal to co-operate had come as a stunning blow, dislocating his whole plan of campaign. Nor had Gally’s parting words done anything to raise his spirits. He had spoken of playing on Linda as on a stringed instrument with the confidence of a man who had been playing on girls as on stringed instruments since early boyhood, but there was little solace to be drawn from that. A third party can never accomplish anything solid on these occasions. Delicate negotiations between two sundered hearts cannot be conducted through an agent; one needs the personal touch.
Halsey Court, when he reached it, set the seal on his depression. It was a gloomy cul-de-sac full of prowling cats and fluttering newspapers, almost its only merit being that living there was cheap. Halsey Chambers, where he had had a flat for the last two years, was a ramshackle building occupied for the most part by young men trying to get along— journalists like Jerry Shoesmith, at one time editor of that seedy weekly paper Society Spice, and writers of novels of suspense like Jeff Miller, the Rugger international. John had inherited the latter’s apartment when Jeff had married and gone to live in New York, and with it Ma Balsam,
the stout motherly soul who had looked after him. She emerged from the kitchen as he opened the front door, and he greeted her with a ‘Hullo, Ma’ which he hoped did not sound too much like a death rattle.
‘Good evening, sir,’ she said. ‘So you’re back. Did you have a nice time in the country?’
John tightened his lips and held his breath and was thus enabled to prevent the escape of the hollow laugh which had tried to get out in response to this query. He had no wish to reveal to this good woman that she was conversing with a tortured soul, for let her find that this was the case and he would be overwhelmed by a tidal wave of sympathy with which at the moment he was incapable of coping. Ma Balsam when in sympathetic vein could be stupefying.
‘Very nice,’ he said, having counted ten.
‘Where was it you went?’
‘Shropshire.’
‘That’s a long way.’
‘Yes.’
‘A good thing the weather kept up.’
‘Yes.’
‘So nasty if it comes on to rain when you’re having a pleasure trip in the country.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well,’ said Ma Balsam, seeming to feel that what might be called the pourparlers could now be considered completed, ‘it’s a pity you weren’t here, because that friend of yours, that Mr. Ferguson, was trying to get you on the telephone all day.’
‘I don’t know any Ferguson.’
‘Might have been Bostock. He’s been to dinner here often. Artistic-looking. High voice. Tortoiseshell-rimmed specs.’
‘You don’t mean Joe Bender?’
‘That’s the name. He’s an artist or something.’
‘He runs a picture gallery in Bond Street.’
‘Well, he can’t have been running it much today, because he was on the buzzer all the time, asking for you. Very impatient he was. Kept saying “For G’s sake isn’t he back yet?”, and I had to speak to him for using the expression “Oh, aitch!” when I told him you wasn’t. Last time he phoned, which wasn’t more than twenty minutes ago, he told me to get him the minute you showed up. Like me to do it now?’
Blanding Castle Omnibus Page 313