Uncle Fred in the Springtime

by P. G. Wodehouse

  ‘You jolly well get in there,’ he said, indicating it with a wave of the gun. ‘Into that cupboard with you, quick, and no back chat.’

  If Lord Ickenham had had any intention of essaying repartee, he abandoned it. He entered the cupboard, and the key turned in the lock behind him.

  Lord Bosham pressed the bell. A stately form appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Oh, Beach.’

  ‘M’lord?’

  ‘Get a flock of footmen and have Mr Pott taken up to his room, will you?’

  ‘Very good, m’lord.’

  The butler had betrayed no emotion on beholding what appeared to be a corpse on the floor of the Garden Suite. Nor did the two footmen, Charles and Henry, who subsequently carried out the removal. It was Blandings Castle’s pride that its staff was well trained. Mr Pott disappeared feet foremost, like a used gladiator being cleared away from the arena, and Lord Bosham was left to his thoughts.

  These might have been expected to be exultant, for he had undoubtedly acted with’ dash and decision in a testing situation. But they were only partly so. Mingled with a victor’s triumph was the chagrin of the conscientious man who sees a task but half done. That he had properly put a stopper on Impostor A was undeniable, but he had hoped also to deal faithfully with Impostor B. He was wondering if the chap was hiding somewhere and if so, where, when there came to his sensitive ear the sound of a grunt, and he realized that it had proceeded from the bathroom.

  ‘Yoicks!’ cried Lord Bosham, and if he had not been a man of action rather than words would have added ‘Tally-ho!’ He did not pause to ask himself why impostors should grunt. He merely dashed at the bathroom door, flung it open and leaped back, his gun at the ready. There was a moment’s pause, and then the Empress sauntered out, a look of mild enquiry on her fine face.

  The Empress of Blandings was a pig who took things as they came. Her motto, like Horace’s, was nil admirari. But, cool and even aloof though she was as a general rule, she had been a little puzzled by the events of the day. In particular, she had found the bathroom odd. It was the only place she had ever been in where there appeared to be a shortage of food. The best it had to offer was a cake of shaving-soap, and she had been eating this with a thoughtful frown when Mr Pott joined her. As she emerged now, she was still foaming at the mouth a little and it was perhaps this that set the seal on Lord Bosham’s astonishment and caused him not only to recoil a yard or two with his eyes popping but also to pull the trigger of his gun.

  In the confined space the report sounded like the explosion of an arsenal, and it convinced the Empress, if she had needed to be convinced, that this was no place for a pig of settled habits. Not since she had been a slip of a child had she moved at anything swifter than a dignified walk, but now Jesse Owens could scarcely have got off the mark more briskly. It took her a few moments to get her bearings, but after colliding with the bed, the table and the armchair, in the order named, she succeeded in setting a course for the window and was in the act of disappearing through it when Lord Emsworth burst into the room, followed by Lady Constance.

  The firing of guns in bedrooms is always a thing that tends to excite the interest of the owner of a country house, and it was in a spirit of lively curiosity that Lord Emsworth had arrived upon the scene. An ‘Eh, what?’ was trembling on his lips as he entered. But the sight of those vanishing hind-quarters with their flash of curly tail took his mind instantly off such comparative trivialities as indoor artillery practice. With a cry that came straight from the heart, he adjusted his pince-nez and made for the great outdoors. Broken words of endearment could be heard coming from the darkness.

  Lady Constance had propped herself against the wall, a shapely hand on her heart. She was panting a little, and her eyes showed a disposition to swivel in their sockets. Long ago she had learned the stern lesson that Blandings Castle was no place for weaklings, but this latest manifestation of what life under its roof could be had proved daunting to even her toughened spirit.

  ‘George!’ she whispered feebly.

  Lord Bosham was his old buoyant self again.

  ‘Quite all right, Aunt Connie. Just an accident. Sorry you were troubled.’

  ‘What — what has been happening?’

  ‘I thought you would want to know that. Well, it was like this. I came in here, to discover that Impostor A had scuppered our detective with one of those knockout drops of his. I quelled him with my good old gun, and locked him in the cupboard. I thought I heard Impostor B grunting in the bathroom and flung wide the gates, only to discover that it was the guv’nor’s pig. Starting back in natural astonishment, I inadvertently pulled the trigger. All quite simple and in order.’

  ‘I thought the Duke had been murdered.’

  ‘No such luck. By the way, I wonder where he’s got to. Ah, here’s Beach. He’ll tell us. Do you know where the Duke is, Beach?’

  ‘No, m’lord. Pardon me, m’lady.’

  ‘Yes, Beach?’

  ‘A Miss Twistleton has called, m’lady.’

  ‘Miss Twistleton?’

  Lord Bosham’s memory was good.

  ‘That’s the girl who gave Horace the raspberry,’ he reminded his aunt.

  ‘I know that,’ said Lady Constance, with some impatience. ‘What I meant was, what can she be doing here at this hour?’

  ‘I gathered, m’lady, that Miss Twistleton had arrived on the five o’clock train from London.’

  ‘But what can she want?’

  ‘That,’ Lord Bosham pointed out, ‘we can ascertain by seeing the wench. Where did you park her, Beach?’

  ‘I showed the lady into the drawing-room, m’lord.’

  ‘Then Ho for the drawing-room is what I would suggest. My personal bet is that she supposes Horace to be here and has come to tell him she now regrets those cruel words. Oh, Beach.’

  ‘M’lord?’

  ‘Can you use a gun?’

  ‘As a young lad I was somewhat expert with an air-gun, m’lord.’

  ‘Well, take this. It isn’t an air-gun, but the principle’s the same. You put it to the shoulder — so — and pull the trigger — thus…. Oh, sorry,’ said Lord Bosham, as the echoes of the deafening report died away and his aunt and her butler, who had skipped like the high hills, came back to terra firma. ‘I forgot that would happen. Silly of me. Now I’ll have to reload. There’s a miscreant in that cupboard, Beach, a devil of a chap who wants watching like a hawk, and I shall require you to stay here and see that he doesn’t get out. At the first sign of any funny business on his part, such as trying to break down the door, whip the weapon to the shoulder and blaze away like billy-o. You follow me, Beach?’

  ‘Yes, m’lord.’

  ‘Then pick up the feet, Aunt Connie,’ said Lord Bosham, ‘and let’s go.’

  20

  The fruitless pursuit of Loreleis or Will-o’-the-Wisps through a dark garden, full of things waiting to leap out and crack him over the shins, can never be an agreeable experience to a man of impatient temperament, accustomed to his comforts. It was a puffing and exasperated Duke of Dunstable who limped back to his room a few minutes after Beach had taken up his vigil. His surprise at finding it occupied by a butler — and not merely an ordinary butler, without trimmings, but one who toted a gun — was very marked. Nor did the sight in any way allay his annoyance. There was a silent instant in which he stood brushing from his moustache the insects of the night that had got entangled there and glaring balefully at the intruder. Then he gave tongue.

  ‘Hey? What? What’s this? What the devil’s all this? What do you mean, you feller, by invading my private apartment with a dashed great cannon? Of all the houses I was ever in, this is certainly the damnedest. I come down here for a nice rest, and before I can so much as relax a muscle, I find my room full of blasted butlers, armed to the teeth. Don’t point that thing at me, sir. Put it down, and explain.’

  In a difficult situation, Beach preserved the courteous calm which had made him for so many years the f
inest butler in Shropshire. He found the Duke’s manner trying, but he exhibited nothing but a respectful desire to give satisfaction.

  ‘I must apologize for my presence, your Grace,’ he said smoothly, ‘but I was instructed by Lord Bosham to remain here and act as his deputy during his temporary absence. I am informed by his lordship that he has deposited a miscreant in the cupboard.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A miscreant, your Grace. Something, I gather, in the nature of a nocturnal marauder. His lordship gave me to understand that he discovered the man in this room and, having overpowered him, locked him in the cupboard.’

  ‘Hey? Which cupboard?’

  The butler indicated the safe deposit in question, and the Duke uttered a stricken cry.

  ‘My God! All in among my spring suits! Let him out at once.’

  ‘His lordship instructed me —’

  ‘Dash his lordship! I’m not going to have smelly miscreants ruining my clothes. What sort of a miscreant?’

  ‘I have no information, your Grace.’

  ‘Probably some foul tramp with the grime of years on him, and the whole outfit will have to go to the cleaner’s. Let him out immediately.’

  ‘Very good, your Grace.’

  ‘I’ll turn the key and throw the door open, and you stand ready with your gun. Now, then, when I say “Three.” One…. Two…. Three…. Good Lord, it’s the brain chap!’

  Lord Ickenham had not enjoyed his sojourn in the cupboard, which he had found close and uncomfortable, but it had left him his old debonair self.

  ‘Ah, my dear Duke,’ he said genially, as he emerged, ‘good evening once more. I wonder if I might use your hairbrush? The thatch has become a little disordered.’

  The Duke was staring with prawnlike eyes.

  ‘Was that you in there?’ he asked. A foolish question, perhaps, but a man’s brain is never at its nimblest on these occasions.

  Lord Ickenham said it was.

  ‘What on earth were you doing, going into cupboards?’

  Lord Ickenham passed the brush lovingly through his grey locks.

  ‘I went in because I was requested to by the man behind the gun. I happened to be strolling on the lawn and saw your windows open, and I thought I might enjoy another chat with you. I had scarcely entered, when Bosham appeared, weapon in hand. I don’t know how you feel about these things, my dear fellow, but my view is that when an impetuous young gentleman, fingering the trigger of a gun, tells you to go into a cupboard, it is best to humour him.’

  ‘But why did he tell you to go into the cupboard?’

  ‘Ah, there you take me into deep waters. He gave me no opportunity of enquiring.’

  ‘I mean, you’re not a nocturnal marauder.’

  ‘No. The whole thing is very odd.’

  ‘I’m going to get to the bottom of this. Hey, you, go and fetch Lord Bosham.’

  ‘Very good, your Grace.’

  ‘The fact of the matter is,’ said the Duke, as the butler left the room like a stately galleon under sail, ‘the whole family’s potty, as I told you before. I just met Emsworth in the garden. His manner was most peculiar. He called me a pig-stealing pest and a number of other things. I made allowances, of course, for the fact that he’s as mad as a hatter, but I shall leave tomorrow and I shan’t come here again. They’ll miss me, but I can’t help that. Did Bosham shoot at you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He shot at someone.’

  ‘Yes, I heard a fusillade going on.’

  ‘The feller oughtn’t to be at large. Human life isn’t safe. Ah, here he is. Here, you!’

  Through the door a little procession was entering. It was headed by Lady Constance. Behind her came a tall, handsome girl, in whom Lord Ickenham had no difficulty in recognizing his niece Valerie. The rear was brought up by Lord Bosham. Lady Constance was looking cold and stern, Valerie Twistleton colder and sterner. Lord Bosham looked merely bewildered. He resembled his father and his brother Freddie in not being very strong in the head, and the tale to which he had been listening in the drawing-room had been of a nature not at all suited to the consumption of the weak-minded. A girl claiming to be Miss Twistleton, niece of the Earl of Ickenham, had suddenly blown in from nowhere with the extraordinary story that Impostor A was her uncle, and she had left Lord Bosham with such brain as he possessed in a whirl. He was anxious for further light on a puzzling situation.

  ‘What the devil do you mean….’ The Duke broke off. He was staring at Lady Constance’s companion, whom, owing to the fact that his gaze had been riveted on Lord Bosham, he had not immediately observed. ‘Hey, what?’ he said. ‘Where did you spring from?’

  ‘This is Miss Twistleton, Alaric.’

  ‘Of course she’s Miss Twistleton. I know that.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Lord Bosham. ‘She is Miss Twistleton, is she? You identify her?’

  ‘Of course I identify her.’

  ‘My mistake,’ said Lord Bosham. ‘I thought she might be Impostor D.’

  ‘George, you’re an idiot!’

  ‘Right ho, Aunt Connie.’

  ‘Bosham, you’re a damned fool!’

  ‘Right ho, Duke.’

  ‘Chump!’

  ‘Right ho, Miss Twistleton. It was just that it occurred to me as a passing thought that Miss Twistleton, though she said she was Miss Twistleton, might not be Miss Twistleton but simply pretending to be Miss Twistleton in order to extricate Impostor A from a nasty spot. But, of course, if you’re all solid on the fact of Miss Twistleton really being Miss Twistleton, my theory falls to the ground. Sorry, Miss Twistleton.’

  ‘George, will you please stop drivelling.’

  ‘Right ho, Aunt Connie. Merely mentioning what occurred to me as a passing thought.’

  Now that the point of Miss Twistleton’s identity — the fact that she was a genuine Miss Twistleton and not a pseudo Miss Twistleton — had been settled, the Duke returned to the grievance which he had started to ventilate a few moments earlier.

  ‘And now perhaps you’ll explain, young cloth-headed Bosham, what you mean by shutting your father’s guests in cupboards. Do you realize that the man might have messed up my spring suits and died of suffocation?’

  Lady Constance intervened.

  ‘We came to let Lord Ickenham out.’

  ‘Let who out?’

  ‘Lord Ickenham.’

  ‘How do you mean, Lord Ickenham?’

  ‘This is Lord Ickenham.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lord Ickenham, ‘I am Lord Ickenham. And this,’ he went on, bestowing a kindly glance on the glacial Valerie, ‘is my favourite niece.

  ‘I’m your only niece.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s the reason,’ said Lord Ickenham.

  The Duke had now reached an almost Bosham-like condition of mental fog.

  ‘I don’t understand all this. If you’re Ickenham, why didn’t you say you were Ickenham? Why did you tell us you were Glossop?’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Lady Constance. ‘I am waiting for Lord Ickenham to explain —’Me too,’ said Lord Bosham.

  ‘— his extraordinary behaviour.’

  ‘Extraordinary is the word,’ assented Lord Bosham. ‘As a matter of fact, his behaviour has been extraordinary all along. Most extraordinary. By way of a start, he played the confidence trick on me in London.’

  ‘Just to see whether it could be done, my dear fellow,’ explained Lord Ickenham.

  ‘Merely an experiment in the interests of science. I sent your wallet to your home, by the way. You will find it waiting there for you.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ said Lord Bosham, somewhat mollified. ‘I’m glad to hear that. I value that wallet.’

  ‘A very nice wallet.’

  ‘It is rather, isn’t it? My wife gave it me for a birthday present.’

  ‘Indeed? How is your wife?’

  ‘Oh, fine, thanks.’

  ‘Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing.’

  ‘I’ll tell her that. Rather neat.
Your own?’

  ‘Proverbs of Solomon.’

  ‘Oh? Well, I’ll pass it along, anyway. It should go well.’

  Lady Constance was finding a difficulty in maintaining her patrician calm. This difficulty her nephew’s conversation did nothing to diminish.

  ‘Never mind about your wife, George. We are all very fond of Cicely, but we do not want to talk about her now.’

  ‘No, no, of course not. Don’t quite know how we got on to the subject. Still. before leaving same, I should just like to mention that she’s the best little woman in the world. Right ho, Aunt Connie, carry on. You have the floor.’

  There was a frigidity in Lady Constance’s manner.

  ‘You have really finished?’

  ‘Oh, rather.’

  ‘You are quite sure?’

  ‘Oh, quite.

  ‘Then I will ask Lord Ickenham to explain why he came to Blandings Castle pretending to be Sir Roderick Glossop.’

  ‘Yes, let’s have a diagram of that.’

  ‘Be quiet, George.’

  ‘Right ho, Aunt Connie.’

  Lord Ickenham looked thoughtful.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s a long story.’

  Valerie Twistleton’s eye, as it met her uncle’s, was hard and unfriendly.

  ‘Your stories can never be too long,’ she said, speaking with a metallic note in her voice. ‘And we have the night before us.’

  ‘And why,’ asked Lord Bosham, ‘did he lay out Baxter and our detective with knock-out drops?’

  ‘Please, George!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lord Ickenham rebukingly, ‘we shall never get anywhere, if you go wandering off into side issues. It is, as I say, a long story, but if you are sure it won’t bore you —’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Valerie. ‘We shall all be most interested. So will Aunt Jane, when I tell her.’

  Lord Ickenham looked concerned.

  ‘My dear child, you mustn’t breath a word to your aunt about meeting me here.’

  ‘Oh, no?’

  ‘Emphatically not. Lady Constance will agree with me, I know, when she has heard what I have to say.’

  ‘Then please say it.’

  ‘Very well. The explanation of the whole thing is absurdly simple. I came here on Emsworth’s behalf.’