Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (23 page)

‘Ha,
ha,’ chirped the sergeant.

‘A
pretty story,’ said the inspector. ‘Tell that to the jury and see what they
think of it. Fotheringay, the handcuffs!’

Such
was the v. that rose before my e. as I gaped at that c.d., and I wilted like a
salted snail. Outside in the garden birds were singing their evensong, and it
seemed to me that each individual bird was saying ‘Well, boys, Wooster is for
it. We shan’t see much of Wooster for the next few years. Too bad, too bad. A
nice chap till he took to crime.

A
hollow groan escaped my lips, but before another could follow it I was racing
for Aunt Dahlia’s room. As I reached it, Ma Trotter came out, gave me an
austere look and passed on her way, and I went on into the presence. I found
the old relative sitting bolt upright in her chair, staring before her with
unseeing eyes, and it was plain that once more something had happened to inject
a black frost into her sunny mood. The Agatha Christie had fallen unheeded to
the floor, displaced from her lap, no doubt, by a shudder of horror.

Normally,
I need scarcely say, my policy on finding this sterling old soul looking licked
to a splinter would have been to slap her between the shoulder-blades and urge
her to keep her tail up, but my personal troubles left me with little leisure
for bracing aunts. Whatever the disaster or cataclysm that had come upon her, I
felt, it could scarcely claim to rank in the same class as the one that had
come upon me.

‘I
say,’ I said. ‘The most frightful thing has happened!’

She
nodded sombrely. A martyr at the stake would have been cheerier.

‘You
bet your heliotrope socks it has,’ she responded. ‘Ma Trotter has thrown off
the mask, curse her. She wants Anatole.’

‘Who
wouldn’t?’

It
seemed for a moment as if she were about to haul off and let a loved nephew
have it on the side of the head, but with a strong effort she calmed herself.
Well, when I say ‘calmed herself’, she didn’t cease to boil briskly, but she
confined her activities to the spoken word.

‘Don’t
you understand, ass? She has come out into the open and stated her terms. She
says she won’t let Trotter buy the
Boudoir
unless I give her Anatole.’

It just
shows how deeply my predicament had stirred me that my reaction to this
frightful speech was practically nil. Informed at any other time that there was
even a remote prospect of that superb disher-up handing in his portfolio and
going off to waste his sweetness on the desert air of the Trotter home, I
should unquestionably have blenched and gasped and tottered but now, as I say,
I heard those words virtually unmoved.

‘No,
really?’ I said. ‘I say, listen, old flesh and blood. Just as I got to the safe
and was about to restore the Trotter pearls, that chump L. G. Trotter most
officiously shut the door, foiling my aims and objects and leaving me in the
dickens of a jam. I’m trembling like a leaf.’

‘So am
I.’

‘I
don’t know what to do.’

‘I
don’t, either.’

‘I
search in vain for some way out of this what the French call
impasse.’

‘Me,
too,’ she said, picking up the Agatha Christie and hurling it at a passing
vase. When deeply stirred, she is always inclined to kick things and throw
things. At Totleigh Towers, during one of our more agitated conferences, she
had cleared the mantelpiece in my bedroom of its entire contents, including a
terra-cotta elephant and a porcelain statuette of the Infant Samuel in Prayer.
‘I don’t suppose any woman ever had such a problem to decide. On the one hand,
life without Anatole is a thing almost impossible —‘

‘Here I
am, stuck with this valuable pearl necklace, the property of Mrs. L.G. Trotter,
and when its loss —‘

‘— to
contemplate. On the other —‘

‘— is
discovered, hues and cries will be raised, inspectors and sergeants sent for —‘

‘— hand,
I must sell the
Boudoir,
or I can’t take that necklace of mine out of
hock. So —‘

‘— and
I shall be found with what is known as hot ice on my person.’

‘Ice!’

‘And
you know as well as I do what happens to people who are caught in possession of
hot ice.’

‘Ice!’
she repeated and sighed dreamily. ‘I think of those prawns in iced aspic of
his, and I say to myself that I should be mad to face a lifetime without
Anatole’s cooking. That
Selle d’Agneau à la Grecque!
That
Mignonette
de Poulet Rôti Petit Duc!
Those
Nonats de la Mediterrannée au Fenouil!
And
then I feel I must be practical. I’ve got to get that necklace back, and if the
only way of getting it back is to … Sweet suffering soupspoons!’ she
vociferated, if that’s the word, anguish written on her every feature. ‘I
wonder what Tom will say when he hears Anatole is leaving!’

‘And I
wonder what he’ll say when he hears his nephew is doing a stretch in Dartmoor.’

‘Eh?’

‘Stretch
in Dartmoor.’

‘Who’s
going to do a stretch in Dartmoor?’

‘I am.’

‘You?’

‘Me.’

‘Why?’

I gave
her a look which I suppose, strictly speaking, no nephew should have given an
aunt. But I was sorely exasperated.

‘Haven’t
you been listening?’ I demanded.

She
came back at me with equal heat.

‘Of course
I haven’t been listening. Do you think that when I am faced with the prospect
of losing the finest cook in the Midland counties I have time to pay attention
to your vapid conversation? What were you babbling about?’

I drew
myself up. The word ‘babbling’ had wounded me.

‘I was
merely mentioning that, owing to that ass L.G. Trotter having shut the door of
the safe before I could deposit the fatal necklace, I am landed with the thing.
I described it as hot ice.’

‘Oh,
that was what you were saying about ice?’

‘That
was what. I also hazarded the prediction that in about two shakes of a duck’s
tail inspectors and sergeants would come scooping me up and taking me off to
chokey.’

‘What
nonsense. Why should anyone think you had anything to do with it?’

I
laughed. One of those short, bitter ones.

‘You
don’t think it may arouse their suspicions when they find the ruddy thing in my
trouser pocket? At any moment I may be caught with the goods on me, and you
don’t have to read many thrillers to know what happens to unfortunate slobs who
are caught with the goods on them. They get it in the neck.’

I could
see she was profoundly moved. In my hours of ease this aunt is sometimes
uncertain, coy and hard to please and, when I was younger, not infrequently
sloshed me on the earhole if my behaviour seemed to her to call for the
gesture, but let real peril threaten Bertram and she is in there swinging every
time.

‘This
isn’t so good,’ she said, picking up a small footstool and throwing it at a
china shepherdess on the mantelpiece.

I
endorsed this view, expressing the opinion that it was dashed awful.

‘You’ll
have to —‘

‘Hist!’

‘Eh?’

‘Hist!’

‘What
do you mean, Hist?’

What I
had meant by the monosyllable was that I had heard footsteps approaching the
door. Before I could explain this, the handle turned sharply and Uncle Tom came
in.

My ear
told me at once that all was not well with this relative by marriage. When
Uncle Tom has anything on his mind, he rattles his keys. He was jingling now
like a xylophone. His face had the haggard, careworn look which it wears when
he hears that week-end guests are expected.

‘It’s a
judgment!’ he said, bursting into speech with a whoosh.

Aunt
Dahlia masked her agitation with what I imagine she thought to be a genial
smile.

‘Hullo,
Tom, come and join the party. What’s a judgment?’

‘This
is. On me. For weakly allowing you to invite those infernal Trotters here. I
knew something awful would happen. I felt it in my bones. You can’t fill the
house up with people like that without courting disaster. Stands to reason.
He’s got a face like a weasel, she’s twenty pounds overweight, and that son of
hers wears whiskers. It was madness ever to let them cross the threshold. Do
you know what’s happened?’

‘No,
what?’

‘Somebody’s
pinched her necklace!’

‘Good
heavens!’

‘I
thought that would make you sit up,’ said Uncle Tom, with gloomy triumph. ‘She
collared me in the hall just now and said she wanted the thing to wear at
dinner tonight, and I took her to the safe and opened it and it wasn’t there.’

I told
myself that I must keep very cool.

‘You
mean,’ I said, ‘that it had gone?’ He gave me rather an unpleasant look.
‘You’ve got a lightning brain!’ he said. Well, I have, of course.

‘But
how could it have gone?’ I asked. ‘Was the safe open?’

‘No,
shut. But I must have left it open. All that fuss of putting that frightful
fellow Sidcup to bed distracted my attention.’

I think
he was about to say that it just showed what happened when you let people like
that into the house, but checked himself on remembering that he was the one who
had invited him.

‘Well,
there it is,’ he said. ‘Somebody seems to have come along while we were
upstairs, seen the safe door open and improved the shining hour. The Trotter
woman is raising Cain, and it was only my urgent entreaties that kept her from
sending for the police there and then. I told her we could get much better
results by making secret inquiries. Didn’t want a scandal, I said. But I doubt
if I could have persuaded her if it hadn’t been that young Gorringe came along
and backed me up. Quite an intelligent young fellow, that, though he does wear
whiskers.’

I
cleared my throat nonchalantly. At least, I tried to do it nonchalantly.

‘Then
what steps are you taking, Uncle Tom?’

‘I’m
going to excuse myself during dinner on the plea of a headache — which I’ve got,
I don’t mind telling you — and go and search the rooms. Just possible I might
dig up something. Meanwhile, I’m off to get a drink. The whole thing has upset
me considerably. Will you join me in a quick one, Bertie, me boy?’

‘I think
I’ll stick on here, if you don’t mind,’ I said. ‘Aunt Dahlia and I are talking
of this and that.’

He
produced a final obligato on the keys.

‘Well,
suit yourself. But it seems odd to me in my present frame of mind that anyone
can refuse a drink. I wouldn’t have thought it possible.’

As the
door closed behind him, Aunt Dahlia expelled her breath like a death-rattle.

‘Golly!’
she said.

It
seemed to me the
mot juste.

‘What
should we do now, do you think?’ I queried.

‘I know
what I’d like to do. I’d like to put the whole thing up to Jeeves, if certain
fatheads hadn’t let him go off on toots in London just when we need him most.’

‘He may
be back by now.’

‘Ring
for Seppings, and ask.’

I
pressed the bell.

‘Oh,
Seppings,’ I said, as he entered and You-rang-madam-ed. ‘Has Jeeves got back
yet?’

‘Yes,
sir.’

‘Then
send him here with all speed,’ I said.

And a
few moments later the man was with us, looking so brainy and intelligent that
my heart leaped up as if I had beheld a rainbow in the sky.

‘Oh,
Jeeves,’ I yipped.

‘Oh,
Jeeves,’ yipped Aunt Dahlia, dead-heating with me.

‘After
you,’ I said.

‘No, go
ahead,’ she replied, courteously yielding the floor. ‘Your predicament is worse
than my predicament. Mine can wait.’

I was
touched.

‘Very
handsome of you, old egg,’ I said. ‘Much appreciated. Jeeves, your close
attention, if you please. Certain problems have arisen.’

‘Yes,
sir?’

‘Two in
all.’

‘Yes,
sir?’

‘Shall
we call them Problem A and Problem B?’

‘Certainly,
sir, if you wish.’

‘Then
here is Problem A, the one affecting me.’

I ran
through the scenario, putting the facts clearly and well. ‘So there you are,
Jeeves. Bend the brain to it. If you wish to pace the corridor, by all means do
so.’

‘It
will not be necessary, sir. One sees what must be done.’

I said
I would be glad if he could arrange it so that two could.

‘You
must restore the necklace to Mrs. Trotter, sir.’

‘Give
it back to her, you mean?’

‘Precisely,
sir.’

‘But,
Jeeves,’ I said, my voice shaking a little, ‘isn’t she going to wonder how I
come to have my hooks on the thing? Will she not probe and question, and having
probed and questioned rush to the telephone and put in her order for inspectors
and sergeants?’