Galahad at Blandings Read online

  It was not easy to dislodge the monocle from Gally’s eye, but this piece of information did it. He stared incredulously.

  ‘Are you puffing my leg?’

  ‘I am not.’

  ‘But what on earth made him do that?’

  ‘He was grateful to me for assuring him that the Empress had not got swine fever.’

  ‘And he really asked you to stay?’

  ‘He did.’

  Gally retrieved his monocle and replaced it in its niche. His manner was pensive.

  ‘This opens up a new line of thought,’ he said. ‘It might perhaps have been better on the whole if I had not introduced the Whipple motif. It’s a pity you didn’t tell me that before.’

  ‘When did I have a chance to?’

  ‘True. Well, it’s done now and nothing more to be said.’

  ‘I can think of a few things.’

  Gally looked pained.

  ‘You must not allow yourself to become bitter, my boy. No doubt you are feeling disturbed and upset, but I can’t see that you have much to complain of You were in imminent danger of getting the local police force on the back of your neck, and the one thing you needed most sorely was a hide-out. Now you have one. What are those beautiful lines of someone’s about the sailor being home from the sea and the hunter home from the hill? That’s you. You’re in, aren’t you?’

  ‘Under a false name.’

  ‘What of that? There’s nothing low or degrading about an alias. Look at Lord Bacon. Went about calling himself Shakespeare.’

  And I’m supposed to be an authority on pigs.’

  ‘You have some objection to being an authority on pigs?’

  ‘Yes, I have, considering that I don’t know a damn thing about them except that their tails wiggle when they eat. What do I do when Lord Emsworth starts talking pig to me?’

  ‘No need for concern. Clarence will do all the talking. An occasional low murmur is all he’ll expect from you. But hist!’

  ‘What do you mean, hist?’

  ‘Seal your lips. I think I hear him coming.’

  Gally was right. A moment later, Lord Emsworth bustled in, wreathed in smiles.

  ‘Ah, here you are, Mr Whipple,’ he said. ‘Capital, capital. I will ring for tea.’

  ‘Tea?’ said Gally. ‘You don’t want tea. Filthy stuff. Look what it did to poor Buffy Struggles. Did I ever tell you about Buffy? Someone lured him into one of those temperance lectures illustrated with coloured slides and there was one showing the liver of the drinker of alcohol. He called on me next day, his face ashen. “Gally,” he said, “what would you say the procedure was when a fellow wants to buy tea?” “Tea?” I said. “What do you want tea for?” “To drink,” he said. I told him to pull himself together. “You’re talking wildly,” I said. “You can’t drink tea. Have a drop of brandy.” He shook his head. “No more alcohol for me,” he said. “It makes your liver look like a Turner sunset.” Well, I begged him with tears in my eyes not to do anything rash, but I couldn’t move him. He ordered in ten pounds of the muck and was dead two weeks later. Got run over by a hansom cab in Piccadilly. Obviously if his system hadn’t been weakened by tea, he’d have been able to dodge the vehicle. Summon Beach and tell him to bring a bottle of champagne. I can see from Whipple’s face that he needs a bracer.

  ‘Perhaps you are right,’ said Lord Emsworth.

  ‘I know I’m right. The only safe way to get through life is to pickle your system thoroughly in alcohol. Look at Freddie Potts and his brother Eustace the time they ate the hedgehog.’

  Ate what?’

  ‘The hedgehog. Freddie and Eustace were living on the Riviera at the time and they had a French chef, one of whose jobs was to go to market and buy supplies. On the way to Grasse that day, as he trotted off with the money in his pocket, he saw a dead hedgehog lying by the side of the road. Now this chef was a thrifty sort of chap and he saw immediately that if he refrained from buying the chicken he’d been sent to buy and stuck to the money, he’d be that much up, and he knew that with the aid of a few sauces he could pass that hedgehog off as chicken all right, so he picked it up and went home with it and served it up next day en casserole. Both brothers ate heartily, and here’s the point of the story. Eustace, who was a teetotaller, nearly died, but Freddie, who had lived mostly on whisky since early boyhood, showed no ill effects whatsoever. I think there is a lesson in this for all of us, so press that bell, Clarence.’

  Lord Emsworth pressed it, and Beach, resting in his pantry from the labours of the afternoon, was stirred to activity. Heaving himself up from his easy chair in a manner which would certainly have led Huxley Winkworth, had he seen him, to renew those offensive comparisons of his between him and Empress of Blandings rising from her couch, he put on the boots which for greater comfort he had removed and started laboriously up the stairs. His face as he went was careworn, his manner preoccupied.

  In the nineteen years during which he had served Lord Emsworth in the capacity of major-domo it had always been with mixed feelings that Beach found himself regarding the weekly ceremony of Visitors’ Day at Blandings Castle. It had its good points, and it had its drawbacks. On the one hand, it gratified his sense of importance to conduct a flock of human sheep about the premises and watch their awe-struck faces as he pointed out the various objects of interest: on the other all that walking up and down stairs and along corridors and in and out of rooms hurt his feet. It was a fact not generally known, for his stout boots hid their secret well, that he suffered from corns.

  On the whole, however, the bright side may be said to have predominated over the dark side, the spiritual’s pros to have outweighed the physical cons, and as a general rule he performed his task with a high heart and in an equable frame of mind. But not today. A butler who has been robbed of his silver watch can hardly be expected to be the same rollicking cicerone as a butler who has undergone no such deprivation. He had woken with his loss heavy on his mind, and as he led his mob of followers about the castle he was still brooding on it and blaming himself for not having kept a sharper eye on that fellow with whom he had collided in the entrance of the Emsworth Arms bar. He might have known that no good was to be expected from a man with a twisted ear.

  On his departure for America to take up his duties in the offices of Donaldson’s Dog Joy Inc. of Long Island City, the country’s leading purveyors of biscuits to the American dog, Freddie Threepwood, Lord Emsworth’s younger son, had bequeathed to Beach his collection of mystery thrillers, said to be the finest in Shropshire, and in three out of every ten of these the criminal, when unmasked, had proved to be a man with a twisted ear. It should have warned him, Beach felt, but unfortunately it had not, and it was with a feeling of dull depression that he entered the study.

  The next moment, this dull depression had left him and he was tingling from head to foot as if electrified. For there, apparently on the best of terms with his lordship and Mr Galahad, sat the miscreant in person. His head was bent as he scanned some photographs which Lord Emsworth was showing him, but that twisted ear was unmistakable.

  It is probable that if Beach had not been a butler a startled cry would at this point have echoed through the room, but butlers do not utter startled cries. All he said was:

  ‘You rang, m’lord?’

  ‘Eh? Ah. Oh yes. Bring us a bottle of Bollinger, will you Beach.’

  ‘Very good, m’lord.’

  And while it is coming, Mr Whipple,’ said Lord Emsworth, ‘there are some photographs of the Empress in the library I would like you to see.’

  He led Sam from the room, and Gally was surprised to see that Beach, instead of following them, had remained behind and was approaching his chair in a conspiratorial manner. ‘Could I have a word, Mr Galahad?’

  ‘Certainly, Beach. Have several.’

  ‘It is with reference to the gentleman,’ said Beach, choking on the last word, ‘who has just left us. Who is he, Mr Galahad?’

  ‘That was my brother Clarence.
You know him, don’t you? I thought you’d met.’

  Beach was in no mood for frivolity.

  ‘The other gentleman, sir,’ he said austerely.

  ‘Oh the other one? That was Augustus Whipple, the author.’ The name was familiar to Beach. Lord Emsworth occasionally had trouble with his eyes and when so afflicted sometimes asked Beach to read him passages from On The Care Of The Pig, which Beach had always been happy to do, though no part of his duties. At the mention of it now he stared a pop-eyed stare.

  ‘Whipple, Mr Galahad?’

  ‘That’s right. He wrote that pig book my brother’s always reading. He’s coming to stay here.’

  ‘Sir!’ said Beach, reeling.

  Gally looked at him, surprised.

  ‘What do you mean “Sir” and why does your jaw drop? Don’t you like the idea?’

  ‘No, Mr Galahad, I do not. The man is a criminal.’

  ‘What on earth makes you think that?’

  ‘He stole my watch yesterday at the Emsworth Arms, Mr Galahad.’

  ‘Beach, I believe you’ve been having a couple.’

  ‘No, sir. If I might tell you what transpired.’

  Gally listened attentively to the twice-told tale. He thought Beach got even more drama out of it than Sam had done. When it was finished, he shook his head.

  ‘Your story sounds very thin to me, Beach. On your own showing you only had a fleeting glance at the fellow.’

  ‘Long enough to see his ear, Mr Galahad.’

  ‘His what?’

  ‘He had a twisted ear.’

  Gally laughed indulgently.

  ‘And you’re making this extraordinary accusation purely because Whipple also had one? Good heavens, you can’t go by that. Shropshire is stiff with men with twisted ears. I believe they form clubs and societies. Anything further?’

  ‘Yes, sir, his age.’

  ‘I don’t get you.’

  ‘He is not old enough to have written the book his lordship admires so much.’

  ‘You find his appearance juvenile?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘He tells me everybody does. He says it always surprises his fans to see how young he looks, but the explanation is very simple. For years he has been doing bending and stretching exercises every morning before breakfast. He also avoids all fried foods and never misses his Vitamins A, B and C twice a day. This keeps him fighting fit. He does seem young, I grant you that. But, dash it, Beach, you can’t go about accusing respectable authors of nameless crimes just because their ears are a bit out of the straight and they aren’t as elderly as you would like them to be. These cases of mistaken identity are very common. There was a man at the Pelican who was the living image of one of the Cabinet Ministers, which made it very awkward for the latter, as the Pelican chap was always getting thrown out of restaurants, frequently wearing a girl’s hat. Didn’t my nephew Freddie bequeath you all those mystery stories of his when he went to America?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You read them a good deal?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well, there you are. They’ve inflamed your imagination and you see sinister characters everywhere. I believe Agatha Christie suffers in the same way. You mustn’t let yourself get worried. Just accept the fact calmly that the bloke who was in here just now is Augustus Whipple all right and buzz off and get that Bollinger.’

  Beach was so constructed that he could never be said actually to buzz off, his customary mode of progression being modelled on that of an elephant sauntering through an Indian jungle, but as he made his way to the cellar his pace was even slower than usual. A whirling mind often has this effect on the pedestrian, and his was whirling as it had seldom whirled before. He was convinced that the man to slake whose thirst he was fetching Bollinger was the man who had robbed him of his watch, but, if this was so, how had he come to be on such intimate terms with his lordship and Mr Galahad?

  It was not an easy jigsaw puzzle to unravel, and he delivered the refreshments to the study in a sort of trance. He was still in the same condition when he returned to the pantry and took his boots off again. Shakespeare would have described him as perplexed in the extreme. Erle Stanley Gardner would have drawn inspiration from him for The Case Of The Bewildered Butler. He himself, if questioned, would have said that his head was swimming.

  At times when the head swims, all butlers have the means of restoring its equilibrium ready to hand. Port is what works the magic. Beach kept a bottle in the pantry cupboard, and he now reached for it. And he was about to remove the cork, when the telephone rang.

  He picked up the receiver and spoke in his usual measured tones.

  ‘Lord Emsworth’s residence. His lordship’s butler speaking.’

  The voice that replied was high and reedlike. Gally would have called it the typical voice of a member of the Athenaeum Club.

  ‘Oh, good afternoon,’ it said. ‘This is Mr Augustus Whipple.’

  CHAPTER 9

  I

  Visitors’ Day had come and gone. The ‘Kindly Keep in Line’ and ‘No Smoking’ signs had been taken down, as had the one that urged the public not to finger objects of art. The chars— a-banc had left. George Cyril Wellbeloved had returned to Wolverhampton. Beach’s feet had ceased to pain him. Except that the Empress had a severe hangover and was feeling cross and edgy and inclined to take offence at trifles, Blandings Castle might have been said to be back to normal.

  At four o’clock or thereabouts on the following afternoon Lady Hermione Wedge alighted from the London train and stepped into the car which Voules the chauffeur had brought to Market Blandings station to meet her. Sandy Callender, who had travelled by the same train but in a humbler compartment at the other end of it, boarded the station taxi cab (Jno. Robinson, prop’r). And simultaneously Constable Evans of the local police force, mounting the bicycle which had now been restored to him, started to pedal castlewards to give Beach his watch.

  The day seemed to be working up for a thunderstorm and her journey had left Lady Hermione a little tired, but relief made her forget fatigue. It was worth undergoing a certain amount of physical discomfort to feel that her child had been extricated from a most undesirable entanglement. Her thoughts, as Voules stepped on the gas, dwelt tenderly on Veronica, than whom no daughter could have been more co-operative, more alive to the fact that Mother knew best. Her attitude when taking down dictation from a parent’s lips had been irreproachable. She could not have raised fewer objections if she had been a dictaphone. Once only had she spoken, and that was to ask how many S’s there were in ‘distressed’. ‘Two, darling,’ Lady Hermione had said, though actually there are three.

  When you have a Voules at the wheel, it does not take long to get from Market Blandings station to Blandings Castle, and Lady Hermione found herself in her boudoir in good time for a cup of tea. She rang the bell, and Beach put on his boots, presented himself, booked the order and withdrew, to reappear after a brief interval accompanied by a footman bearing a laden tray. The footman — Stokes was his name, not that it matters —completed his share of the operations and melted away, and Lady Hermione, having poured herself a steaming cup and begun to sip, became aware that she still had Beach with her. He was standing in the middle of the room with something of the air of a public monument waiting to be unveiled, and his presence surprised her. It was not like him, when he had delivered the goods, to continue to hover around, and she bit into her cucumber sandwich with some annoyance, for she wished to be alone.

  ‘Yes, Beach?’ she said.

  ‘Might I have a word, m’lady?’

  Lady Hermione did not reply ‘Have several’ as Gally had done, contenting herself with inclining her head. She did this stiffly, her manner seeming to suggest that she was prepared to listen but that what he had to say had better be good.

  The butler did not fail to sense this distaste for chit-chat.

  ‘If you prefer it, m’lady, I could return later.’

  ‘No, no, B
each. Is it something important?’

  ‘Yes, m’lady. It is with reference to the gentleman who arrived yesterday as a guest at the castle,’ said Beach, choking on the operative word as he had done in his interview with Gally.

  Lady Hermione stiffened dangerously. An autocratic chatelaine, she resented guests arriving at the castle without her knowledge. She could scarcely believe that her brother Clarence would have had the temerity to invite a friend to stay unless he had first asked her permission, so she came — one might say leaped — to the conclusion that the mystery guest must be a crony of her brother Galahad, and her frown grew darker. One knew what Galahad’s cronies were like. The dregs of civilisation. A silver ring bookmaker was the least disreputable chum he would be likely to have added to the Blandings circle.

  ‘Who is this man, Beach?’ she demanded tensely.

  ‘He gives his name as Augustus Whipple, m’lady.’

  Lady Hermione’s indignation subsided a good deal. Nobody could associate for long with Lord Emsworth without becoming familiar with the name Whipple, and she knew the author of On The Care Of The Pig to be a man of some standing in the best circles, a member of the Athenaeum Club, which she understood to be a most respectable institution, and an occasional adviser to the Minister of Agriculture. Clarence, she presumed, had invited him, and though she still felt that in doing so without consulting her he had been guilty of a solecism, she cooled off quite noticeably.

  ‘Oh, Mr Whipple?’ she said, relieved. The vision she had had of one of Gally’s friends wearing a loud checked suit and addressing her as ‘ducky’ in a voice hoarsened by calling the odds at Sandown Park or Catterick Bridge faded. ‘I shall be interested to meet him. Mr Whipple is a very well-known author.’

  ‘If this is Mr Whipple, m’lady.’

  ‘I don’t understand you.

  ‘I suspect him of being an impostor,’ hissed Beach. It is difficult, even if one wants to, to avoid hissing a sentence so well provided with sibilants, and he did not want to.