‘It’s quite simple, Connie. He thinks Trout has stolen that picture of his, and he wants to recover it. He feels the thing must be cunningly hidden somewhere by Trout, and his plan, as he outlined it to me, is to stick lighted matches between Trout’s toes with a view to persuading him to come clean about its hiding place. Very sensible, it seemed to me. Just the sort of thing to get results.’
Well meant though this explanation was, it left Lady Constance still bewildered.
‘But, Alaric, what makes you think Mr. Trout has stolen your picture?’
‘Who else could have stolen it?’
‘I mean, why are you under the impression that anyone has stolen it?’
‘Pictures don’t walk away, do they?’
‘I don’t understand you.’
‘If one disappears, somebody must have taken it, and Emsworth was in the portrait gallery just now and says my reclining nude had gone.’
‘Clarence!’ The mention of her brother’s name had had the immediate result of restoring Lady Constance to her normal composure. ‘Have you really built up this case against Mr. Trout on the strength of something Clarence told you? You know what he is. You can’t rely on anything he says. It’s just the same as when he was a child and used to insist that there were Red Indians under his bed.’
The Duke rapped imperiously on the chest of drawers.
‘Produce Trout!’
‘I will not produce Trout. I am quite convinced that Clarence has made some absurd mistake and that the picture is still there. Let us go to the portrait gallery and see for ourselves.’
It was several minutes before she spoke again. When she did, it was with the complacency of a woman who is entitled to say ‘I told you so’.
‘You see,’ she said, and the Duke had no reply to make. ‘Just as I supposed,’ she went on. ‘A typical instance of Clarence’s muddleheadedness. And now perhaps I may be allowed to go back to bed and, if possible, get some sleep for the remainder of the night.’
She withdrew with a hauteur which none of the portraits of her ancestresses could have exceeded, though many of them had rather specialized in hauteur, and Gally clicked his tongue sympathetically.
‘Connie’s upset,’ he said.
‘So am I,’ said the Duke.
‘Extraordinary that Clarence should have made such a mistake.’
The Duke’s pent-up feelings exploded in one of the loudest snorts he had ever achieved.
‘Nothing extraordinary about it. Connie may say all she likes about him being muddleheaded, but what he’s suffering from isn’t muddleheadedness, he’s potty to the core, and I can’t see the point of trying to pretend he isn’t. Goes out in the middle of the night to look at that pig of his because he’s had a dream about it. Sneaks into my room and starts upsetting tables, and when asked what the hell he thinks he’s up to babbles about non-existent cats. And on top of that can’t see a ruddy picture when it’s staring him in the face. He ought to be certified.’
Gally stroked his chin thoughtfully. He removed his eyeglass, and gave it a polish.
‘I don’t think I can go as far as that,’ he said, ‘but he certainly ought to see a psychiatrist.’
‘A what?’
‘One of those fellows who ask you questions about your childhood and gradually dig up the reason why you go about shouting “Fire” in crowded theatres. They find it’s because somebody took away your all day sucker when you were six.’
‘I know the chaps you mean. They dump you on a couch and charge you some unholy fee per half hour. Only I thought they were called head-shrinkers.’
‘That, I believe, is the medical term.’
‘I’ve heard fellows speak of someone called Glossop.’
‘Sir Roderick Glossop? Yes, he is generally recognized as at the top of the profession.’
‘We’ll get hold of him.’
‘Unfortunately I read in the paper the other day that he had gone to America.’
‘That’s too bad.’
‘But,’ Gally continued, ‘by a really extraordinary coincidence I was chatting only this afternoon with his junior partner, a young man named Halliday. I ran into him at the Emsworth Arms. He would be as good for our purpose as Glossop, for they tell me that, though young, he is brilliantly gifted.’
‘Think you can get him?’
‘I’m sure he would be delighted to come. Connie is the difficulty.’
‘Why?’
‘Can we get her to invite him to the castle? We want to keep it from her, if possible, that Clarence is undergoing treatment. You know what women are; they become nervous. Could you pretend he’s a friend of yours and persuade her to invite him?’
‘Persuade her?’ Again a snort like the sound of the Last Trump rang through the portrait gallery. ‘I don’t have to persuade Connie to invite people. I’ll invite him.’
‘Splendid,’ said Gally. ‘It only needs a telephone call. I’ll get in touch with him first thing tomorrow.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
Lady Constance’s boudoir, on the second floor of the castle, looked out on the front drive and the spacious parkland beyond it, and so, two days after the events just recorded, did Lady Constance. She was standing at the window blowing puffs of flame through her shapely nostrils, and every now and then a quiver shook her as if some unseen hand had prodded her with a pin. She was thinking of Alaric, Duke of Dunstable, and a stylist like Gustave Flaubert, with his flair for the mot juste, would have described her as being as mad as a wet hen.
Years ago, in her childhood, a series of governesses had been at pains to implant in her the desirability of self-control. ‘Ladies never betray emotion, Connie dear’, they had warned her, and she had taken the lesson to heart. But though today she always preserved a patrician calm in public, she considered herself entitled to a certain measure of relaxation when alone in the privacy of her own apartment. And quite rightly, any impartial judge would have said. If, looking out of the window, she frowned and quivered, not even the most censorious of governesses would have held her unjustified in frowning and quivering. She was a proud woman, and this habit of Alaric’s of inviting every kind of Tom, Dick and Harry to Blandings Castle without a word to her gashed her haughty spirit like a knife. First Trout, and now this man Halliday, and who knew how many more there would be. She had only one crumb of comfort. Unwelcome though they were, these Trouts and Hallidays might have been worse. They might have been friends of her brother Galahad.
It was as she stood there with her adrenal glands working overtime that the Market Blandings station cab ( Jno Robinson, proprietor) drove up to the front door with its usual pants and gaspings, and a young man alighted. This, she presumed, was the Mr. Halliday whom Alaric had inflicted on her, and she followed him into the house with a stare which would have aroused the respectful envy of a basilisk. Not that he had a repulsive or criminal aspect. As far as looks were concerned, he might have been someone she had invited to the castle herself. But it was not at her bidding that he had come, and she was at her iciest when some minutes later he entered the room accompanied by Gally, whom she supposed he had met in the hall and who was bringing him to be introduced to an unwilling hostess. A nervous young man, she noted. He seemed ill at ease.
In this diagnosis she was correct. John was definitely ill at ease. The exhilaration he had felt when informed by Gally that the substitution of the pictures had gone without a hitch and that owing to his, Gally’s, superlative generalship he was to come as a guest to the castle had given way to emotions such as a cat might feel which finds itself in a strange alley and muses dubiously on what the future may hold. Gally had spoken of his hostess as a woman whose impulse it would be to attach herself to the scruff of his neck and the seat of his trousers, and start heaving, and looking at her he could well believe her capable of this form of self-expression. The dullest eye could not have failed to detect in her all the qualities which go to make a good chucker-out, and it seemed to him that her fingers were alre
ady twitching in anticipation of the task. Recalling what Gally had told him about her being the wife of an American named Schoonmaker, he could not but feel that this Schoonmaker must be a rugged composite of Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson, who talked out of the side of his mouth and fed on raw meat. Not even when rebuked by the Judge during the case of Onapoulos and Onapoulos versus the Lincolnshire and Eastern Counties Glass Bottling Company had his fortitude so dwindled to the level of that of the common earthworm.
Gally, in sharp contradistinction, was at his perkiest. Connie never had the quelling effect on him that she had on others. When a man has seen a sister spanked with a hairbrush by a disciplinarian Nanny, her spell weakens. Today, moreover, he was loving everybody. If there is one thing more than another which makes a man feel like a benevolent character out of Dickens, it is the thought that he has been instrumental in extracting a fellow human being from the soup which was threatening to engulf him. And nobody could say that he had not performed this kindly office for his godson. Owing to his efforts John Preferred, which had been down in the cellar with no takers, was now enjoying the most spectacular rise one could wish.
Thinking thus, he bubbled over with cheeriness.
‘Hullo there, Connie,’ he carolled, more like a lark in Springtime than a disgrace to a proud family. ‘This is the Mr. Halliday in anticipation of whose coming you have been counting the minutes. I knew you would want to see him the moment he arrived.’
‘Oh?’ said Lady Constance. There was no ring of pleasure in her voice. ‘How do you do?’
‘Great friend of Dunstable’s.’
‘Oh?’
‘And of mine. We have only just met, but already we are like brothers. He calls me Gally, I call him John. Each would lend the other a fiver without a murmur.’
‘Oh?’
‘It’s a great bit of luck getting him here, as he’s generally engaged three deep at this time of year. So we must do all we can to make his stay pleasant. What I’m hoping is that he will hit it off with the Gilpin wench. Is she back yet?’
‘No.’
‘When do you expect her?’
‘Some time today, I suppose.’
‘Good. Girl called Linda Gilpin who’s staying here,’ Gally explained to John. ‘You’ll like her. She went off yesterday in her car to attend some sort of jamboree at her old school. Sports Day or Founder’s Day or something. I warned her it would bore her stiff, but she would go. Well, I mustn’t stand here talking all the afternoon, I want to show John round the place. So come along, Johnny. You’re in luck. If you’d come on Visitors Day, you’d have been soaked half a crown, but now you’ll be getting it all for nothing.’
As the door closed behind them, Lady Constance expelled the breath which she had been holding back during these exchanges. In a woman of less breeding it would have come out as an oath, for conversing with Gally had had its usual effect on her, making her feel as if her nerve centres had been scrubbed with sandpaper. It increased her exasperation that she could not in fairness hold him responsible for the intrusion of this man Halliday, the blame resting entirely on Alaric. She looked forward to having a word with Alaric, and a moment later she was given the opportunity of doing so, for the door opened and he came in.
To those familiar with her imperious temperament it will no doubt seem surprising that she should have waited till now to have a word with him, but this is readily explained. The news of John’s impending visit had brought on one of those neuralgic attacks to which she was so subject, and she had spent the previous day in bed. The neuralgia having yielded to treatment, she proposed to take up the point at issue and if necessary fight it out, like General Grant, if it took all summer.
It has been stated that Lady Constance had a sisterly affection for the Duke of Dunstable. Of this affection in the gaze she now directed at him there was no trace. She looked more like an aunt than a sister.
‘Yes, Alaric?’
‘Eh?’
‘I said Yes, Alaric.’
‘A pretty potty thing to say,’ the Duke commented critically. Connie’s total lack of sense sometimes made him uneasy, though it was about what you would naturally expect in one of her sex. ‘What do you mean, yes? I didn’t ask you anything or say it was a fine day or anything.’
Lady Constance, who had stiffened at his entry, stiffened still further. As was his custom when he visited her boudoir, the Duke was pottering about, fiddling with the objects on her desk, picking up a letter, putting it down after giving its contents a cursory glance and looking with offensive curiosity at a photograph of James Schoonmaker on one of the tables. And as always this habit of his made her feel that ants in large numbers were parading up and down her spine. But true to the teaching of the governesses who had told her that ladies never betrayed emotion, she forced herself to be reasonably calm.
‘I said “Yes, Alaric?” because I was anxious to know what your motive was in coming here.’
‘Eh?’
Lady Constance’s sisterly affection touched a new low. The ranks of the parading ants seemed to have become augmented by new recruits.
‘Is there anything I can do for you, Alaric?’
‘Yes, I want a stamp. I’m writing to the Times about the disgraceful mess the Government has got the country into. Lot of incompetent poops, if you ask me. Do them good if somebody came along and shot them all. Who’s Jane?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘This letter is signed Jane. I was wondering who she was.’
‘I wish you would not read my letters.’
‘No pleasure to me to read them. They’re always damned dull. Why has Schoonmaker got that silly grin on his face?’
Several authorities have stated that the thing to do when your self-control seems about to leave you is to draw a deep breath. Lady Constance drew the deepest she could manage.
‘I am sorry,’ she said, ‘that my husband’s smile does not meet with your approval, but it is, I believe, customary to smile when you are having your photograph taken. If you wish, I will get James on the transatlantic telephone and acquaint him with your criticism, and no doubt he will arrange his features next time more in accordance with your exacting tastes.’
‘Eh?’ said the Duke. He spoke absently. He had picked up a letter signed Amy and was finding it better reading than the others. ‘What’s Fred been doing?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘This woman says she’s thinking of divorcing him. Must have been some trouble in the home.’
Lady Constance drew another deep breath.
‘Put down that letter, Alaric, and listen to me!’
There was nothing of the sensitive plant about the Duke of Dunstable, but even he could recognize hostility if it was thrust upon him with a heavy enough hand.
‘You seem very ratty, Connie. What’s biting you?’
‘I am extremely annoyed, Alaric. I will not have you inviting people here like this. It seems to be your object to turn Blandings Castle into a residential hotel.’
‘Trout, you mean?’
‘And this Mr. Halliday.’
Conscious of the excellence of his motives, the Duke was quite willing to explain.
‘I had to invite Trout because I want to sell him that picture, and I couldn’t do it if he wasn’t on the spot.’ Even a woman, he told himself, ought to be able to understand anything as simple as that. ‘And as for this chap Halliday, I hadn’t meant to tell you about him, but as the subject has come up, I may as well.’
‘Please do. As a hostess I am naturally interested. Is he, too, one of your customers? Quite a novel idea, turning Blandings Castle into a trading centre. What are you planning to sell him?’
The rule by which Gally lived his life—’Whenever Connie starts to throw her weight about, sit on her head immediately’ —was also the foundation stone of the Duke’s domestic policy. There was an authoritative note in his voice as he said:
‘No need to get sarcastic, Connie.’
‘I’ll tell you about Halliday. If I don’t, you’ll be coming the grande dame over him, and he’ll leave us flat. It isn’t everybody who can stand that manner of yours. I’ve often wondered how it goes down with the Yanks. You have a way of curling your upper lip and looking down your nose at people which gives a lot of offence. I’ve had to speak of it before. Well, here’s what happened. After you left us that night—’
‘What night?’
‘The night Emsworth went off his head and told me my picture had been stolen. By the way, did anybody ever take away his all day sucker when he was six?’
‘I haven’t the remotest notion what you’re talking about.’
‘Never mind. We can leave all that to Halliday. Probably the first question he’ll ask him. I was saying that after you’d gone off to bed Threepwood and I got talking, and we decided that what Emsworth needs is psychiatric treatment, if you know what that is.’
‘Of course I know what it is.’
‘Well, that’s what we decided he’s got to have. It’s essential to engage an expert head-shrinker to put a stopper on his pottiness. I recommended this once before, you may remember, when he said he was going to enter his pig for the Derby.’
‘Clarence did not say he was going to enter his pig for the Derby.’
‘It may have been the Grand National.’
The ants on Lady Constance’s spine had now been joined by a good many of their sisters, cousins and uncles and were marching to the tune of The Stars And Stripes Forever. Her voice rose formidably.
‘He did not say anything of the sort. I asked him, and he told me so.’
The Duke remained unmoved.
‘Naturally he would deny it. He makes a damaging statement like that in an unguarded moment, realizes how it will sound and tries to hush it up. But the fact remains. I was there when he said it, and I remember telling him that it was very doubtful if the Stewards would accept a pig. However, that is a side issue into which we need not go at the moment. The point is that Threepwood and I were solid on the necessity for bringing in a head-shrinker, and our first choice was Sir Roderick Glossop. He, however, was not available, and we were baffled till Threepwood remembered that he knew Glossop’s junior partner, this chap Halliday, so we got in touch with him. He was fortunately at liberty, and we engaged his services. That’s how Halliday comes to be at the castle.’
Blanding Castle Omnibus Page 317