Complete Short Stories (12 page)

‘Not necessarily.’

‘Besides, who put it on the rack?’

‘Probably yourself. You know, Reggie, you do a lot of pretty absent-minded things. For instance, you pinched all our matches almost as soon as you came aboard. Not that I grudge you them in the least; but I mean…’

‘How do you know? Did you see me pick up so much
as a single box?’

‘No, I can’t honestly say I did. But I was wildly looking for a light and saw your raincoat hanging up and tapped the pockets, and they positively rattled…’

‘I brought a lot of matches with me. Useful contribution, I thought.’

She let that go with a warning grimace. But the corkscrew mystery remained unsolved. I sincerely hoped that I hadn’t suddenly become a major thief,
as Borley had wished I would. It might land me in a policecourt – and eventually in a home for kleptomaniacs. I picked up the corkscrew, which I’d have recognized in a million. It was a stout eighteen-
eightyish affair, with an ivory handle and a brush at one end, I suppose for whisking away the cobwebs from the necks of 1847 port bottles.

‘Who were the people who chartered
Psyche
last week?’
I asked.

‘The Greenyer-Thoms; friends of Dick’s brother-in-law George. He’s an estate-agent; she paints. They live near Banbury.’

‘Aha!’ I said, ‘that explains it. They must have been at the sale of Borley’s effects. The principal legatee is his Air Force cousin, who lives there.’

‘Violent T.T. types, the Greenyer-Thoms, both of them,’ Alice objected.

‘Secret drinkers,’ I countered, replacing
the corkscrew on the rack. ‘That’s why they wanted the yacht. It’s easy to dispose of the empties; just drop them into the water under cover of night.’

After supper Murdoch asked me jocosely whether he might be allowed to smell the cork of one of my famous brandies. I roused myself from a dark-brown study, fetched a bottle and reached for the corkscrew. It was not on the rack. I glanced sharply
from face to face and asked: ‘Who’s hidden it?’

They all looked up in surprise, but nobody spoke.

‘I put it back on the rack and now it’s gone. Hand it over, Bunny! You’re playing a dangerous game. I’m foolishly sensitive about that corkscrew.’

‘I haven’t touched it, Mr Massie – drop dead, I haven’t – I swear!’

‘Tap Massie’s pockets, Mrs Semphill,’ Murdoch invited. ‘They’re positively wriggling
with corkscrews.’

Dick caught a nose-tweaking glint in my eye. ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen!’ he cried warningly. Then he pulled out his pocket knife.‘–This will do, Reggie,’ he said.

Dick’s a decent fellow.

As I silently uncorked the brandy, Bunny went down on his hands and knees and searched among our feet. Then he rummaged among the cushions behind us.

‘Couldn’t
it be in one of your pockets, Mr
Massie?’ he asked at last.

‘Certainly not!’ I snapped. ‘And for God’s sake don’t fidget so, child! Go on deck if you’re bored with adult conversation.’

‘I was only trying to help.’

‘Well, don’t try so hard.’

Alice didn’t like the way I pitched into the boy and came to his rescue. ‘I really think he had a right to ask you that,’ she said. ‘Especially as I can see the end of my best drawing-pencil
peeping out of your breast-pocket.’

‘It’s not yours, woman; it’s mine!’

‘Let me umpire this tug-of-war,’ said Murdoch. ‘I’m the fairest-minded man in all East Anglia.’

‘Keep out of this, Murdoch!’ I warned him.

‘Oh, forget it, chaps, for Christ’s sake!’ said Dick. ‘If we’re going to squabble about matches and pencils on the very first night of our sail…’

Under the influence of the Domecq,
which everyone praised, we soon recovered our self-possession – but half an hour later, when we had finished washing-up and were going on deck, Bunny looked at me curiously.

‘Who hung the corkscrew on that hook?’ he asked. ‘Did you?’

‘Captain Murdoch has a devious sense of humour,’ I told him, ‘and if you find yourself catching it, lay off!’ But a cold shiver went through me and I stayed below
for a supplementary drink. The blasted thing was dangling from a hook above the galley-door. If I had been sure who the practical joker was, I’d have heaved him overboard.

For the sake of peace Dick must have asked the others not to comment on the corkscrew’s reappearance, because the next day there was an eloquent silence, unbroken by myself, when I borrowed Dick’s knife to uncork another bottle
of claret. But for the rest of the holiday I was careful to go through my pockets, morning, afternoon and night, to make sure that I had left enough matches and pencils lying about for general use. I had a superstitious feeling that, if I did, the corkscrew would stay on its hook. And I was right.

I am a little vague about where we went, or what weather we had; but I know that when the time came
to say goodbye, Alice couldn’t resist asking: ‘Haven’t you forgotten your trick corkscrew? It’s still hanging up in the saloon.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It isn’t mine and never was. The Greenyer-Thoms left it here. Anyhow,
Psyche
can do with an ivory-handled corkscrew.’

‘Thank you,’ said Alice quizzically. ‘But I don’t think Borley intended it for us.’

That evening, back in my flat, I found that in
the hurry of my departure I had forgotten to frisk myself for matches and pencils. Among the day’s collection I found an outsize box of Swan Vestas boldly marked in ink
John Murdoch, his property; please return to the Guards Club,
and Alice’s double-B Koh-i-Noor pencil with her initials burned on it – with a red-hot knitting needle? – at both ends and in the middle. This made me cross. ‘Bunny
must have planted them on me,’ I reassured myself. ‘It couldn’t have been Murdoch – he went off yesterday morning – and Alice wouldn’t have been so unkind.’

‘Nice gentlemanly corkscrew you’ve brought back, Sir,’ my Mrs Fiddle remarked as she bustled in with the soup.

‘Oh, I have, have I?’ I almost yelled. ‘Then throw it out of the window!’

She looked at me with round, reproachful eyes. ‘Oh,
Sir, I could never do such a thing, Mr Massie, Sir. You can’t buy a corkscrew like that nowadays.’

I jumped up. ‘Then I’ll have to throw it away myself. Where is it?’

‘On the pantry-shelf, next to the egg-cups,’ she answered resignedly, picking up my fallen napkin. ‘But it seems such wicked waste.’

‘
Where
did you say it was?’ I called from the pantry. ‘I don’t see it.’

‘Come back, Mr Massie,
and eat your soup while it’s hot,’ she pleaded. ‘The corkscrew can wait its turn, surely?’

Not wanting to look ridiculous, I came back and restrained myself until dessert, when I asked her curtly to fetch the thing.

She was away some little time and showed annoyance when she returned.

‘You’re making game of me, Sir. You’ve hid that corkscrew; you know you have.’

‘I have done nothing of the
sort, Mrs Fiddle.’

‘There’s only the two of us in the flat, Sir,’ she said, pursing her lips.

‘Correct, Mrs Fiddle. And if you want the corkscrew yourself, you’re welcome to it, so long as you don’t bring it back here. I should, of course, have offered it to Mr Fiddle before I talked of throwing it out of the window.’

‘Are you accusing me of hiding it with intent to deceive you, Mr Massie?’

‘Didn’t you accuse
me
of that, just now?’

The thrust went home. ‘I didn’t mean anything rude, Sir, I’m sure,’ she said, weakening.

‘I should hope not. But, tell me, Mrs Fiddle, are you certain you saw a corkscrew? What was it like?’

‘Ivory-handled, Sir, with a sort of shaving brush at one end, and a little round silver plate set in the other with some initials and a date.’

This was too much.
‘That’s the one,’ I muttered, ‘but, upon my word, I never noticed the initials.’

‘Well, look again, Mr Massie, and see if I’m not right,’ she said. And then, plaintively, as she retired into the kitchen with her apron to her eyes: ‘But you oughtn’t to pull my leg, Sir! I take things so seriously, ever since my little Shirley died.’

I poured her a drink, and we made peace.

Next day the corkscrew
turned up in the pantry at the back of the napkin-drawer. Mrs Fiddle produced it in triumph. ‘Here it is, Sir. Now see if I wasn’t right about the initials.’

I took it gingerly from her, and there was the silver plate all right. I couldn’t understand how I had missed it.
F.C.C.B. 1928,
the silver slightly tarnished.

‘Yes, Sir, it could do with a nice rub-up.’

I saw no way out of this awkward
situation but to earn credit as a practical joker. ‘The fact is,’ I blustered, ‘I bought it at Lowestoft as a present for Mr Fiddle. I didn’t intend you to see it, and that’s why I made a bit of
a mystery of the whole affair. I meant to keep it for his birthday. First of next month, isn’t it?’

‘No, Sir. Fiddle’s birthday was the first of last month. Very kind of you, Sir, all the same, I’m sure.’

But she still seemed dissatisfied. ‘Fiddle isn’t a wine or spirit drinker, Sir,’ she explained after a pause, ‘and bottled beer comes with screw-tops these days.’

‘How very stupid of me! All right, let’s chuck it out of the window, after all.’

‘Oh, no, Sir! You might hurt someone passing in the street. Besides, it’s a nice article. Keep it for yourself, and give Fiddle a couple of bottles of
stout, instead. He’d take that very kindly, though belated. And so would I, if it comes to that, Mr Massie, Sir.’

Late that evening I walked along the Mall with a neat package in my hand until I came to Hammersmith Bridge. When no one was about, I hurled it into mid-stream. What a load off my mind! But that night I dreamed that a nasty-looking corpse floating in the water had grabbed the parcel
just as it sank and shouted to me to come back and collect my property. He rose dripping from the Thames; it was F.C.C. Borley himself. I turned and fled screaming towards the Broadway, but he came after me. ‘It’s yours, you damned thief!’ he bawled. ‘Wait! I’ve brought it!’ And then, as a parting shot, heard indistinctly through the rumble of traffic: ‘And the Worser Part (Bins K to T) for Mr
Reginald Massie.’ That was the operative phrase in his will.

I awoke with chattering teeth, jumped out of bed, switched on all the lights in the flat, poured myself a stiff drink, and went along to see whether the corkscrew were back again on the pantry hook. Thank God, it wasn’t!

I re-packed my suitcase and read myself to sleep again.

In the morning when Mrs Fiddle brought my tea I told her
that I had been rung up by another set of yachting friends in South Devon, and was catching the morning train there. I’d send her a wire to let her know when I was returning, and what to do with my letters. This was nothing unusual; I frequently leave home on a sudden impulse.

I booked for Brixham, where I knew that a regatta was in progress. Also, a bachelor-uncle of mine lived on the hill overlooking
the harbour: an ex-Marine Colonel whom I had not seen for years and whose chief interest was British freshwater molluscs. We exchanged cards at Christmas and his were always superscribed: ‘Come and visit a lonely old man.’ I thought: ‘Here’s my chance to show a little family feeling; besides, all the pubs are sure to be full because of the regatta.’

Uncle Tim was delighted to see me and discuss
his molluscs and his rheumatism. That evening he took me in a taxi to the Yacht Club for an early supper. ‘You look depressed, my boy,’ he said, ‘and not too well in
spite of your holiday. You ought to get married. Man isn’t meant to live by himself. Marriage would tone you up and give you a motive in life.’ He added sadly: ‘I put it off too long. Molluscs and marriage don’t go together. Children
would have played the deuce with my aquarium and cabinets.’

‘Oh, they grow up,’ I said airily. ‘Seven years’ patience, and your collection would have been safe enough.’

‘You may be right; but the poor little blighters couldn’t wait.’

‘Who? The children?’

‘No, no, stupid! The molluscs!’

‘I beg your pardon. But why ever not?’

‘River pollution: those confounded chemical manures washed off the
soil, you know. A regular massacre of the innocents: whole species destroyed every year.’

I shook my head in sympathy.

‘But there’s nothing to prevent
you
from marrying, is there?’ he persisted.

‘I collect matchboxes,’ I answered, rattling my pockets gloomily. ‘Mine is one of the finest collections in Europe. It would hardly be fair to bring up children among so much incendiary material, would
it?’

Presently Uncle Tim, reaching for the menu, said that his rheumatism be damned: with our Dover sole and roast chicken we’d have a bottle of the Club’s famous hock, tacitly reserved for resident members. ‘I know that you appreciate a sound wine, Reginald,’ he said. ‘Not many young men do, with all these confounded mixed drinks about. Gin and vermouth – gin and tonic – gin and bitters: that’s
what it’s come to. Even in the Navy. Pollution, I call it!’ He finished enigmatically: ‘Whole species destroyed every year.’

‘Did you ever come across a youngster called Borley?’ he went on. ‘Chap I met once, here at the Club. He wore a floppy hat and an absurd tie like a Frenchman; said he was writing a book. A mind like a corkscrew – went round and round, and in and in, and then pop! out would
come something wet. But, for all that, he had a remarkable knowledge of wine; and consented to approve of our hock.’

A waiter tip-toed in, cradling the bottle, and ceremoniously dusted its neck with the brush at the end of an ivory-handled corkscrew. ‘I’ve brought it, fellow-drinker,’ he whispered with a confidential leer.

‘Good Heavens, boy!’ cried Uncle Tim. ‘What’s amiss? Are you taken ill?’

I had dashed out of the Club, and was half-running, half-flying, down the slope to the Fish Market. The evening crowds in Fore Street blocked my way but I swerved and zigzagged through them like an international wing-threequarter.

‘Hey, Reggie, stop!’ a woman shouted almost in my ear.

I handed her off and darted across the narrow street, where I found myself firmly tackled around the waist.