Wodehouse On Crime

by P. G. Wodehouse

  “Good heavens, there are a hundred things you can say. 'Oh yeah?’ ‘Is zat so?’ ‘Hey, just a minute,’ ‘Listen, baby,’ ‘Scram’ . . .”

  “ ‘Scram’?”

  “It means ‘Get the hell outa here.’ ”

  “But I can’t tell Connie to get the hell outa here.”

  “Why not? Aren’t you master in your own house?”

  “No,” said Lord Emsworth.

  Jane reflected.

  “Then I’ll tell you what to do. Deny the whole thing.”

  “Could I, do you think?”

  “Of course you could. And then Aunt Constance will ask me, and I’ll deny the whole thing. Categorically. We’ll both deny it categorically. She’ll have to believe us. We’ll be two to one. Don’t you worry, Uncle Clarence. Everything’ll be all right.”

  She spoke with the easy optimism of youth, and when she passed on a few moments later seemed to be feeling that she was leaving an uncle with his mind at rest. Lord Emsworth could hear her singing a gay song.

  He felt no disposition to join in the chorus. He could not bring himself to share her sunny outlook. He looked into the future and still found it dark.

  There was only one way of taking his mind off this dark future, only one means of achieving a momentary forgetfulness of what lay in store. Five minutes later Lord Emsworth was in the library, reading Whiffle on The Care of the Pig.

  But there is a point beyond which the magic of the noblest writer ceases to function. Whiffle was good — no question about that — but he was not good enough to purge from the mind such a load of care as was weighing upon Lord Emsworth’s. To expect him to do so was trying him too high. It was like asking Whiffle to divert and entertain a man stretched upon the rack.

  Lord Emsworth was already beginning to find a difficulty in concentrating on that perfect prose, when any chance he might have had of doing so was removed. Lady Constance appeared in the doorway.

  “Oh, here you are, Clarence,” said Lady Constance.

  “Yes,” said Lord Emsworth in a low, strained voice.

  A close observer would have noted about Lady Constance’s manner, as she came into the room, something a little nervous and apprehensive, something almost diffident, but to Lord Emsworth, who was not a close observer, she seemed pretty much as usual, and he remained gazing at her like a man confronted with a ticking bomb. A dazed sensation had come upon him. It was in an almost detached way that he found himself speculating as to which of his crimes was about to be brought up for discussion. Had she met Jane and learned of the fatal letter? Or had she come straight from an interview with Rupert Baxter in which that injured man had told all?

  He was so certain that it must be one of these two topics that she had come to broach that her manner as she opened the conversation filled him with amazement. Not only did it lack ferocity, it was absolutely chummy. It was as if a lion had come into the library and started bleating like a lamb.

  “All alone, Clarence?”

  Lord Emsworth hitched up his lower jaw and said, yes, he was all alone.

  “What are you doing? Reading?”

  Lord Emsworth said, yes, he was reading.

  “I’m not disturbing you, am I?”

  Lord Emsworth, though astonishment nearly robbed him of speech, contrived to say that she was not disturbing him. Lady Constance walked to the window and looked out.

  “What a lovely evening.”

  “Yes.”

  “I wonder you aren’t out of doors.”

  “I was out of doors. I came in.”

  “Yes. I saw you in the rose garden.” Lady Constance traced a pattern on the window sill with her finger. “You were speaking to Beach.”

  “Yes, I saw Beach come up and speak to you.”

  There was a pause. Lord Emsworth was about to break it by asking his visitor if she felt quite well, when Lady Constance spoke again. That apprehension in her manner, that nervousness, was now well marked. She traced another pattern on the window sill.

  “Was it important?”

  “Was what important?”

  “I mean, did he want anything?”

  “Who?”

  “Beach.”

  “Beach?”

  “Yes. I was wondering what he wanted to see you about.”

  Quite suddenly there flashed upon Lord Emsworth the recollection that Beach had done more than merely hand him Baxter’s note. With it — dash it, yes, it all came back to him — with it he had given his month’s notice. And it just showed, Lord Emsworth felt, what a morass of trouble he was engulfed in that the fact of this superb butler handing in his resignation had made almost no impression upon him. If such a thing had happened only as recently as yesterday, it would have constituted a major crisis. He would have felt that the foundations of his world were rocking. And he had scarcely listened. “Yes, yes,” he had said, if he remembered correctly. “Yes, yes, yes. All right.” Or words to that effect.

  Bending his mind now on the disaster. Lord Emsworth sat stunned. He was appalled. Almost since the beginning of time, this superbutler had been at the castle, and now he was about to melt away like snow in the sunshine — or as much like snow in the sunshine as was within the scope of a man who weighed sixteen stone in the buff. It was frightful. The thing was a nightmare. He couldn’t get on without Beach. Life without Beach would be insupportable.

  He gave tongue, his voice sharp and anguished.

  “Connie! Do you know what’s happened? Beach has given notice!”

  “What!”

  “Yes! His month’s notice. He’s given it. Beach has. And not a word of explanation. No reason. No . .

  Lord Emsworth broke off. His face suddenly hardened. What seemed the only possible solution of the mystery had struck him. Connie was at the bottom of this. Connie must have been coming the grande dame on the butler, wounding his sensibilities.

  Yes, that must be it. It was just the sort of thing she would do. If he had caught her being the Old English Aristocrat once, he had caught her a hundred times. That way of hers of pursing the lips and raising the eyebrows and generally doing the daughter-of-a-hundred-earls stuff. Naturally no butler would stand it.

  “Connie,” he cried, adjusting his pince-nez and staring keenly and accusingly, “what have you been doing to Beach?”

  Something that was almost a sob burst from Lady Constance’s lips. Her lovely complexion had paled, and in some odd way she seemed to have shrunk.

  “I shot him,” she whispered.

  Lord Emsworth was a little hard of hearing.

  “You did what?”

  “I shot him.”

  “Shot him?”

  “Yes.”

  “You mean, shot him?”

  “Yes, yes, yes! I shot him with George’s air gun.”

  A whistling sigh escaped Lord Emsworth. He leaned back in his chair, and the library seemed to be dancing old country dances before his eyes. To say that he felt weak with relief would be to understate the effect of this extraordinary communication. His relief was so intense that he felt absolutely boneless. Not once but many times during the past quarter of an hour he had said to himself that only a miracle could save him from the consequences of his sins, and now the miracle had happened. No one was more alive than he to the fact that women are abundantly possessed of crust, but after this surely even Connie could not have the crust to reproach him for what he had done.

  “Shot him?” he said, recovering speech.

  A fleeting touch of the old imperiousness returned to Lady Constance.

  “Do stop saying ‘shot him?’ Clarence! Isn’t it bad enough to have done a perfectly mad thing, without having to listen to you talking like a parrot? Oh dear! Oh dear!”

  “But what did you do it for?”

  “I don’t know. I tell you I don’t know. Something seemed suddenly to come over me. It was as if I had been bewitched. After you went out, I thought I would take the gun to Beach.”

  “Why?”

 
“I … I . . Well, I thought it would be safer with him than lying about in the library. So I took it down to his pantry. And all the way there I kept remembering what a wonderful shot I had been as a child — ”

  “What?” Lord Emsworth could not let this pass. “What do you mean, you were a wonderful shot as a child? You’ve never shot in your life.”

  “I have. Clarence, you were talking about Julia shooting Miss Mapleton. It wasn’t Julia — it was I. She had made me stay in and do my rivers of Europe over again, so I shot her. I was a splendid shot in those days.”

  “I bet you weren’t as good as me,” said Lord Emsworth, piqued. “I used to shoot rats.”

  “So used I to shoot rats.”

  “How many rats did you ever shoot?”

  “Oh, Clarence, Clarence! Never mind about the rats.”

  “No,” said Lord Emsworth, called to order. “No, dash it. Never mind about the rats. Tell me about this Beach business.”

  “Well, when I got to the pantry it was empty, and I saw Beach outside by the laurel bush, reading in a deck chair.”

  “How far away?”

  “I don’t know. What does it matter? About six feet, I suppose.”

  “Six feet? Ha!”

  “And I shot him. I couldn’t resist it. It was like some horrible obsession. There was a sort of hideous picture in my mind of how he would jump. So I shot him.”

  “How do you know you did? I expect you missed him.”

  “No. Because he sprang up. And then he saw me at the window and came in, and I said, ‘Oh, Beach, I want you to take this air gun and keep it,* and he said, ‘Very good, m’lady.’ ”

  “He didn’t say anything about your shooting him?”

  “No. And I have been hoping and hoping that he had not realized what had happened. I have been in an agony of suspense. But now you tell me that he has given his notice, so he must have done. Clarence,” cried Lady Constance, clasping her hands like a persecuted heroine, “you see the awful position, don’t you? If he leaves us, he will spread the story all over the county and people will think I’m mad. I shall never be able to live it down. You must persuade him to withdraw his notice. Offer him double wages. Offer him anything. He must not be allowed to leave. If he does, I shall never … Sh!”

  “What do you mean, sh … Oh, ah,” said Lord Emsworth, at last observing that the door was opening.

  It was his niece Jane who entered.

  “Oh, hullo. Aunt Constance,” she said. “I was wondering if you were in here. Mr. Baxter’s looking for you.”

  Lady Constance was distrait.

  “Mr. Baxter?”

  “Yes. I heard him asking Beach where you were. I think he wants to see you about something,” said Jane.

  She directed Lord Emsworth a swift glance, accompanied by a fleeting wink. “Remember!” said the glance. “Categorically!” said the wink.

  Footsteps sounded outside. Rupert Baxter strode into the room.

  At an earlier point in this chronicle, ‘we have compared the aspect of Rupert Baxter, when burning with resentment, to a thundercloud, and it is possible that the reader may have formed a mental picture of just an ordinary thundercloud, the kind that rumbles a bit but does not really amount to anything very much. It was not this kind of cloud that the secretary resembled now, but one of those which bursts over cities in the tropics, inundating countrysides while thousands flee. He moved darkly towards Lady Constance, his hand outstretched. Lord Emsworth he ignored.

  “I have come to say good-bye. Lady Constance,” he said.

  There were not many statements that could have roused Lady Constance from her preoccupation, but this one did. She ceased to be the sportswoman brooding on memories of shikari, and stared aghast.

  “Good-bye?”

  “Good-bye.”

  “But, Mr. Baxter, you are not leaving us?”

  “Precisely.”

  For the first time, Rupert Baxter deigned to recognise that the ninth Earl was present.

  “I am not prepared,” he said bitterly, “to remain in a house where my chief duty appears to be to act as a target for Lord Emsworth and his air gun.”

  “What!”

  “Exactly.”

  In the silence which followed these words, Jane once more gave her uncle that glance of encouragement and stimulation — that glance which said “Be firm!” To her astonishment, she perceived that it was not needed. Lord Emsworth was firm already. His face was calm, his eye steady, and his pince-nez were not even quivering.

  “The fellow’s potty,” said Lord Emsworth in a clear, resonant voice. “Absolutely potty. Always told you he was. Target for my air gun? Pooh! Pah! What’s he talking about?”

  Rupert Baxter quivered. His spectacles flashed fire.

  “Do you deny that you shot me. Lord Emsworth?”

  “Certainly I do.”

  “Perhaps you will deny admitting to this lady here in the writing room that you shot me?”

  “Certainly I do.”

  “Did you tell me that you had shot Mr. Baxter, Uncle Clarence?” said Jane. “I didn’t hear you.”

  “Of course I didn’t.”

  “I thought you hadn’t. I should have remembered it.”

  Rupert Baxter’s hands shot ceilingwards, as if he were calling upon heaven to see justice done.

  “You admitted it to me personally. You begged me not to tell anyone. You tried to put matters right by engaging me as your secretary, and I accepted the position. At that time I was perfectly willing to forget the entire affair. But when, not half an hour later …”

  Lord Emsworth raised his eyebrows. Jane raised hers.

  “How very extraordinary,” said Jane.

  “Most,” said Lord Emsworth.

  He removed his pince-nez and began to polish them, speaking soothingly the while. But his manner, though soothing, was very resolute.

  ‘Baxter, my dear fellow,” he said, “there’s only one explanation for all this. It’s just what I was telling you. You’ve been having these hallucinations of yours again. I never said a word to you about shooting you. I never said a word to my niece about shooting you. Why should I, when I hadn’t? And, as for what you say about engaging you as my secretary, the absurdity of the thing is manifest on the very face of it. There is nothing on earth that would induce me to have you as my secretary. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I’d rather be dead in a ditch. Now, listen, my dear Baxter, I’ll tell you what to do. You just jump on that motor bicycle of yours and go on touring England where you left off. And soon you will find that the fresh air will do wonders for that pottiness of yours. In a day or two you won’t know …”

  Rupert Baxter turned and stalked from the room.

  “Mr. Baxter!” cried Lady Constance.

  Her intention of going after the fellow and pleading with him to continue inflicting his beastly presence on the quiet home life of Blandings Castle was so plain that Lord Emsworth did not hesitate.

  “Connie!”

  “But, Clarence!”

  “Constance, you will remain where you are. You will not stir a step.”

  “But, Clarence!”

  “Not a dashed step. You hear me? Let him scram!”

  Lady Constance halted, irresolute. Then suddenly she met the full force of the pince-nez and it was as if she — like Rupert Baxter — had been struck by a bullet. She collapsed into a chair and sat there twisting her rings forlornly.

  “Oh, and by the way, Connie,” said Lord Emsworth, “I’ve been meaning to tell you. I’ve given that fellow Abercrombie that job he was asking for. I thought it all over carefully, and decided to drop him a line saying that pursuant on our recent conversation I was offering him Simmons’ place. I’ve been making inquiries, and I find he’s a capital fellow.”

  “He’s a baa-lamb,” said Jane.

  “You hear? Jane says he’s a baa-lamb. Just the sort of chap we want about the place.”

  “So now we’re going to get married.”
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  “So now they’re going to get married. An excellent match, don’t you think, Connie?”

  Lady Constance did not speak. Lord Emsworth raised his voice a little.

  “Don ‘t you, Connie?”

  Lady Constance leaped in her seat as if she had heard the last trump.

  “Very,” she said. “Oh, very.”

  “Right,” said Lord Emsworth. “And now I’ll go and talk to Beach.”

  In the pantry, gazing sadly out on the stableyard. Beach, the butler, sat sipping a glass of port. In moments of mental stress, port was to Beach what Whiffle was to his employer, or, as we must now ruefully put it, his late employer. He flew to it when Life had got him down, and never before had Life got him down as it had now.

  Sitting there in his pantry, that pantry which so soon would know him no more. Beach was in the depths. He mourned like some fallen monarch about to say good-bye to all his greatness and pass into exile. The die was cast. The end had come. Eighteen years, eighteen happy years, he had been in service at Blandings Castle, and now he must go forth, never to return. Little wonder that he sipped port. A weaker man would have swigged brandy.

  Something tempestuous burst open the door, and he perceived that his privacy had been invaded by Lord Emsworth. He rose, and stood staring. In all the eighteen years during which he had held office, his employer had never before paid a visit to the pantry.

  But it was not simply the other’s presence that caused his gooseberry eyes to dilate to their full width, remarkable though that was. The mystery went deeper than that. For this was a strange, unfamiliar Lord Emsworth, a Lord Emsworth who glared where once he had blinked, who spurned the floor like a mettlesome charger, who banged tables and spilled port.

  “Beach,” thundered this changeling, “what the deuce is all this dashed nonsense?”

  “M’lord?”

  “You know what I mean. About leaving me. Have you gone off your head?”

  A sigh shook the butler’s massive frame.

  “I fear that in the circumstances it is inevitable, m’lord.”

  “Why? What are you talking about? Don’t be an ass, Beach. Inevitable, indeed! Never heard such nonsense in my life. Why is it inevitable? Look me in the face and answer me that.’’

  “I feel it is better to tender my resignation than to be dismissed, m’lord.”