Sir Gregory removed his aching ear from the receiver and hung up.
For some moments after silence had come like a poultice to heal the blows of sound, all that occupied his mind was the thought of what pests the gentler sex were when they got hold of a telephone. The instrument seemed to go to their heads like a drug. Connie Keeble, for instance. Nice sensible woman when you talked to her face to face, never tried to collar the conversation and all that, but the moment she got on the telephone, it was gab, gab, gab, and all about nothing.
Then suddenly he was asking himself whether his late hostess’s spate of words had, after all, been so devoid of significance as in his haste he had supposed. Like most men trapped on the telephone by a woman, he had allowed his attention to wander a good deal during the recent monologue, but his subconscious self had apparently been drinking it in all the time, for now it brought up for his inspection the word Slimmo and then a whole lot of interesting stuff about what Slimmo was and what it did. And it was not long before it had put him completely abreast of the thing.
The idea of achieving his ends by means of an anti-fat specific had not previously occurred to Sir Gregory. But now that this alternative had presented itself, it became more attractive the longer he mused on it. The picture of himself, with a tankard of Slimmo at his elbow, sailing into the starchy foods with impunity intoxicated him.
There was but one obstacle in the way of this felicity. Briefly, in order to start filling the wassail bowl with Slimmo, you have first to get the bally stuff, and Sir Gregory, a sensitive man, shrank from going into a shop and asking for it. He feared the quick look of surprise, the furtive glance at the waist-line and the suppressed – or possibly not suppressed – giggle.
Then what to do?
‘Ha!’ said Sir Gregory, suddenly inspired.
He pressed the bell, and a few moments later Binstead, his butler, entered.
We have heard of Binstead before, it will be remembered. He was the effervescent sportsman who electrified the tap room of the Emsworth Arms by bounding in and offering five to one on his employer’s pig. It is interesting to meet him now in person.
Scrutinizing him, however, we find ourselves unimpressed. This Binstead was one of those young, sprightly butlers, encountering whom one feels that in the deepest and holiest sense they are not butlers at all, but merely glorified footmen. He had none of Beach’s measured majesty, but was slim and perky. He looked – though, to do him justice, he had never yet actually proceeded to that awful extreme – as if at any moment he might start turning cart-wheels or sliding down the banisters. And when we say that he was often to be found of an evening playing ha’penny nap with George Cyril Wellbeloved and similar social outcasts and allowing them to address him as ‘Herb’, we think we have said everything.
‘Sir?’ said this inadequate juvenile.
Sir Gregory coughed. Even now it was not going to be easy.
‘Er, Binstead,’ he said. ‘Have you ever heard of Slimmo?’
‘No, sir.’
‘It’s some sort of stuff you take. Kind of medicine, if you see what I mean, endorsed by leading doctors. A distant connexion of mine … one of the Hampshire Wilberforces … has asked me to get him some of it. I want you to telephone to Bulstrode in the High Street and tell him to send up half a dozen bottles.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘Tell him the large economy size,’ said Sir Gregory.
4
There had been a grave, set look on the face of the Hon. Galahad Threepwood as he stumped away from the tea table on the terrace, and it was still there when, after considerable moody meditation in the grounds, he turned into the corridor that led to Beach’s pantry. In the battle of wills which had recently terminated he had not come off any too well. The trouble about talking to a sister like a Dutch uncle is that she is very apt to come right back at you and start talking to you like a Dutch aunt. This is what had happened to Gally at his interview with Lady Constance, and an immediate exchange of ideas with Shropshire’s shrewdest butler seemed to him essential.
Entering the pantry, he found only Penny there. Her letter finished, she had gone off, as she so often did, to sit at the feet of one whose society, ever since she had come to the castle, had been a constant inspiration to her. Right from the start of her visit to Blandings Castle, the younger daughter of Mr Donaldson of Donaldson’s Dog Joy had recognized in Sebastian Beach a soul-mate and a buddy.
In the butler’s absence she was endeavouring to fraternize with his bullfinch, a bird of deep reserves who lived in a cage on the table in the corner. So far, however, she had been unsuccessful in her efforts to find a formula.
‘Oh, hello, Gally,’ she said. ‘Listen, what do you say to a bullfinch?’
‘How are you, bullfinch?’
‘To make it whistle, I mean.’
‘Ah, there you take me into deep waters. But I didn’t come here to talk about bullfinches, whether whistling or strongly silent. Where’s Beach?’
‘Gone into Market Blandings. The chauffeur took him.’
‘Dash the man. What did he want to go gadding off to Market Blandings for?’
‘Why shouldn’t he go gadding off to Market Blandings? The poor guy’s got a right to see a little life now and then. He’ll be back soon.’
‘He should never have left his post.’
‘Why, what’s the matter?’
‘This pig situation.’
‘What pig situation would that be?’
Gally passed a careworn hand over his brow.
‘I’d forgotten you weren’t there when Clarence broke the big story. You had left to go and write to that young man of yours … Dale, Hale, Gale, whatever his name is.’
‘Vail.’
‘Oh, Vail.’
‘One of the Loamshire Vails. You must learn to call him Jerry. So what happened after I left?’
‘Clarence appeared, buffeted by the waves and leaking at every seam like the Wreck of the Hesperus. He had just been talking to that hell-hound.’
‘What hell-hound?’
‘Sir Gregory Parsloe.’
‘Oh yes, the character who keeps taking off his shoes. Who is Sir Gregory Parsloe?’
‘Good God! Don’t you know that?’
‘I’m a stranger in these parts.’
‘I’d better begin at the beginning.’
‘Much better.’
If there was one thing Gally prided himself on – and justly – it was his ability to tell a story. Step by step he unfolded his tale, omitting no detail however slight, and it was not long before Penny had as complete a grasp of the position of affairs as any raconteur could have wished. When, after stressing the blackness of Sir Gregory Parsloe’s soul in a striking passage, he introduced the Queen of Matchingham motif into his narrative and spoke of the guerrilla warfare which must now inevitably ensue, fraught with brooding peril not only to Lord Emsworth’s dreams and ambitions but to the bank balances of himself and Beach, she expressed her concern freely.
‘This Parsloe sounds a hot number.’
‘As hot as mustard. Always was. Remind me to tell you some time how he nobbled my dog Towser on the night of the rat contest. But you have not heard the worst. We now come to the Simmons menace.’
‘What’s that?’
‘In your ramblings about the grounds and messuages do you happen to have seen a large young female in trousers who looks like an all-in wrestler? That is Monica Simmons, Clarence’s pig girl. Her high mission is to look after the Empress. Until recently the latter’s custodian was a gnome-like but competent old buffer of the name of Pott. But he won a football pool and turned in his seal of office, upon which my sister Connie produced the above Simmons out of her hat and insisted on Clarence engaging her. When this Queen of Matchingham thing came up, Clarence and I agreed that it would be insanity to leave the Empress’s fortunes in the hands of a girl like that. Simmons must go, we decided, and as Clarence hadn’t the nerve to tackle Connie about it, I
said I would. I’ve just been tackling her.’
‘With what result?’
‘None. She dug her feet in and put her ears back and generally carried on like a Grade A deaf adder. And what do you think?’
‘What?’
‘Clarence had told me that Connie’s interest in this Simmons was due to the fact that she, the Simmons, was tied up in some way with someone Connie wanted to oblige. Who do you suppose that someone is?’
‘Not Parsloe?’
‘None other. Parsloe himself. In person, not a picture. The girl is his cousin.’
‘Gosh!’
‘You may well say “Gosh!”. The peril would be ghastly enough if we were merely up against a Parsloe weaving his subtle schemes in his lair at Matchingham Hall. But Parsloe with a cousin in our very citadel, a cousin enjoying free access to the Empress, a cousin whose job it is to provide the Empress with her daily bread … Well, dash it, if you see what I mean.’
‘I certainly do see what you mean. Dash it is right.’
‘What simpler than for Parsloe to issue his orders to this minion and for the minion to carry them out?’
‘Easy as falling off a log.’
‘It’s an appalling state of things.’
‘Precipitates a grave crisis. What are you going to do?’
‘That’s what I came to see Beach about. We’ve got to have a staff conference. Ah, here he comes, thank goodness.’
Outside, there had become audible the booming sound of a bulky butler making good time along a stone-flagged corridor. The bullfinch, recognizing the tread of loved feet, burst into liquid song.
5
But Beach, as he entered, was not taking the bass. A glance was enough to tell them that he was in no mood for singing. His moon-like face was twisted with mental agony, his gooseberry eyes bulging from their sockets. Even such a man so faint, so spiritless, so dead, so dull in look, so woebegone, drew Priam’s curtain in the dead of night and would have told him half his Troy was burned – or so it seemed to Penny, and she squeaked in amazement. Hers had been a sheltered life, and she had never before seen a butler with the heeby-jeebies.
‘Beach!’ she cried, deeply stirred. ‘What is it? Tell Mother.’
‘Good Lord, Beach,’ said Gally. ‘Then you’ve heard, too?’
‘Sir?’
‘About the Simmons girl being Parsloe’s cousin.’
Beach’s jaw fell another notch.
‘Sir Gregory’s cousin, Mr Galahad?’
‘Didn’t you know?’
‘I had no inkling, Mr Galahad.’
‘Then what are you sticking straws in your hair for?’
With trembling fingers Beach put a green baize cloth over the bullfinch’s cage. It was as if a Prime Minister in the House of Commons had blown the whistle for a secret session.
‘Mr Galahad,’ he said. ‘I can hardly tell you.’
‘What?’
‘No, sir, I can hardly tell you.’
‘Snap into it, Beach,’ said Penny. ‘Have your fit later.’
Beach tottered to a cupboard.
‘I think, Mr Galahad, if you will excuse me, I must take a drop of port.’
‘Double that order,’ said Gally.
‘Treble it,’ said Penny. ‘A beaker of the old familiar juice for each of the shareholders, Beach. And fill mine to the brim.’
Beach filled them all to the brim, and further evidence of his agitation, if such were needed, was afforded by the fact that he drained his glass at a gulp, though in happier times a sipper who sipped slowly, rolling the precious fluid round his tongue.
The restorative had its effect. He was able to speak.
‘Sir … and Madam …’
‘Have another,’ said Penny.
‘Thank you, miss. I believe I will. I think you should, too, Mr Galahad, for what I am about to say will come as a great shock.’
‘Get on, Beach. Don’t take all night about it.’
‘I know a man named Jerry Vail, a young author of sensational fiction,’ said Penny chattily, ‘who starts his stories just like this. You never know till Page Twenty-three what it’s all about. Suspense, he calls it.’
‘Cough it up, Beach, this instant, and no more delay. You hear me? I don’t want to be compelled to plug you in the eye.’
‘Very good, Mr Galahad.’
With a powerful effort the butler forced himself to begin his tale.
‘I have just returned from Market Blandings, Mr Galahad. I went there for the purpose of making a certain purchase. I don’t know if you have happened to notice it, sir, but recently I have been putting on a little weight, due no doubt to the sedentary nature of a butler’s –’
‘Beach!’
‘Let him work up to it,’ said Penny. ‘The Vail method. Building for the climax. Go on, Beach. You’re doing fine.’
‘Thank you, miss. Well, as I say, I have recently become somewhat worried about this increase in my weight, and I chanced to see in the paper an advertisement of a new preparation called Slimmo, guaranteed to reduce superfluous flesh, which was stated to contain no noxious or habit-forming drugs and to be endorsed by leading doctors. So I thought I would look in at Bulstrode’s in the High Street and buy a bottle. It was somewhat embarrassing walking into the shop and asking for it, and I thought I noticed Bulstrode’s young assistant give me a sort of sharp look as much as to say “Oho!” but I nerved myself to the ordeal, and Bulstrode’s young assistant wrapped the bottle up in paper and fastened the loose ends with a little pink sealing wax.’
‘Beach, you have been warned!’
‘Do be quiet, Gally. And that was that, eh?’
A spasm shook Beach.
‘If I may employ a vulgarism, miss, you do not know the half of it.’
‘More coming?’
‘Much, much more, miss.’
‘Well, here I am, Beach, with the old ear trumpet right at the ear.’
‘Thank you, miss.’
Beach closed his eyes for a moment, as if praying for strength.
‘I had scarcely paid for my purchase and received my change when the telephone bell rang. Bulstrode’s young assistant went to the instrument.’
‘And a dead body fell out?’
‘Miss?’
‘Sorry. My mind was on Mr Vail’s stories. Carry on. You have the floor. What happened?’
‘He spoke a few words into the instrument. “Okey-doke”, I remember, was one of them, and “Righty-ho”, from which I gathered that he was speaking to a customer of the lower middle class, what is sometimes called the burjoisy. Then he turned to me with a smile and observed “Well, that is what I call a proper coincidence, Mr Beach. Never rains but it pours, does it? That was Herbert Binstead. And know what he wants? Six bottles of Slimmo, the large economy size.”’
Gally started as if he had been bitten in the leg by Baronets.
‘What!’
‘Yes, Mr Galahad.’
‘That fellow Binstead was buying Slimmo?’
‘Yes, Mr Galahad.’
‘Good God!’
Penny looked from one to the other, perplexed.
‘But why shouldn’t he buy Slimmo? Maybe he’s a leading doctor.’
Gally spoke in a voice of doom.
‘Herbert Binstead is Gregory Parsloe’s butler. And if you have the idea that he may have been buying this anti-fat for his own personal use, correct that view. He’s as thin as a herring. His motive is obvious. One reads the man like a book. Acting under Parsloe’s instructions, he plans to pass this Slimmo on to the accomplice Simmons, who will slip it privily into the Empress’s daily ration, thus causing her to lose weight, thus handing the race on a plate to Queen of Matchingham. Am I right, Beach?’
‘I fear so, Mr Galahad. It was the first thought that entered my mind when Bulstrode’s young assistant revealed to me the gist of his telephone conversation.’
‘No explanation other than the one that I have outlined will fit the facts. I told you Parsl
oe was mustard, Penny. He moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform.’
Silence fell, one of those deep, uneasy silences which occur when all good men realize that now is the time for them to come to the aid of the party but are unable to figure out just how to set about doing so.
But it was not in the nature of the Hon. Galahad to be baffled for long. A brain like his, honed to razor-like sharpness by years of association with the members of the Pelican Club, is never at a loss for more than a moment.
‘Well, there you are,’ he said. ‘The first shot of the campaign has been fired, and soon the battle will be joined. We must consider our plan of action.’
‘Which is what?’ said Penny. ‘I don’t see where you go from here. I take it the idea is to keep an eye on this Simmons beazel, but how is it to be done? You can’t watch her all the time.’
‘Exactly. So we must engage the services of someone who can, someone trained to the task, someone whose profession it is to keep an eye on the criminal classes, and most fortunately we are able to lay our hand on just such a person. The guiding spirit of Digby’s Day and Night Detectives.’
Pigs Have Wings: Page 5