Sunset at Blandings (11 page)

‘No,’
said Jeff, speaking for the first time. It was a point on which he was well
informed.

‘Then I
may have a chance. Do you think I have a chance, Jeff? We got along like a
couple of sailors on shore leave, and fortunately money is no problem. A
secretary doesn’t make a fortune, though I hope you’ll stick old Emsworth for a
packet when and if, but I can lay my hands on something better any time I want
to. One of my uncles is Duff of Duff and Trotter, and he’s always after me to
go into the business. I’ve held off so far because of the prestige of being
with Piper, but now that I plan to get married …’

Jeff
could bear no more.

‘Good
night,’ he said.

‘But,
Jeff, don’t go yet, old man.’

‘Good
night,’
said Jeff.

It was with heart bowed
down that he sought the seclusion of his bedroom. He had supposed it already
bowed down about as far as it could go, but he realized now that he had
underestimated its capabilities for sinking. There is a difference, subtle but
well-marked, between the emotions of a lover who has been told by the girl he
loves that all is over between them and those of a lover who, tottering from
this blow, sees a Claude Duff beginning to exercise his fascinations on her. In
the former case he has a hope, if only a weak one; in the latter, merely
despair.

Jeff
was a modest man and could think clearly, and he was miserably conscious that
between himself and a charmer like Claude Duff there could be no contest. Take
looks, for instance. They ought not to count, but they do. And he was what
dramatic critics call adequate. Claude was spectacular.

Claude
could play the piano, always a gift of maximum assistance to a wooer. And in
addition to this he had only to fall in with his uncle’s wishes to have plenty
of money at his disposal. It was ridiculous to hope to compete with a man so
armed at every point.

With
Jeff so sunk in the slough of despond it might have seemed that nothing could
bring him even momentarily to the surface; but that this feat could be
accomplished was proved before he had gone the length of the corridor. All that
was needed was for someone to steal up behind him, tap him on the shoulder and
say ‘Ho’. Sergeant Murchison, appearing from nowhere, did this, and Jeff came
out of his thoughts with a start which could not have been more violent, if,
like Lord Emsworth’s pig man, he had seen the White Lady of Blandings.

CHAPTER
FOURTEEN

THE TROUBLE about being
the chronicler of a place like Blandings Castle, where someone is always up to
something and those who are not up to something are up to something else, is
that you have so many people to write about that you tend to push quite
deserving characters into the background. Sergeant Murchison is a case in
point. Mention, it is true, has been made of him from time to time, but only
casual mention. Not a word has been said of the way he felt about things, not a
syllable concerning his love for Marilyn Poole, Lady Diana’s maid, and the
public is left without a clue as to whether he liked his daily duties or
disliked them.

Now it
can be told. His daily duties gave him the heeby-jeebies. In jaundiced mood he
regarded himself as a bird in a gilded cage. It was as distasteful to him to
have to follow Sir James Piper wherever he went as it was to Sir James to be
followed. Often he thought wistfully of the brave old days when he had been a
simple constable walking a beat in Whitechapel or Bottleton East with platoons
of drunks and disorderlies on every side, inviting him to make a pinch. Where,
he asked himself bitterly, were those pinches now? Gone with the wind, one with
Nineveh and Tyre.

It can
be readily appreciated, therefore, that when, smoking at his window and
thinking of Marilyn and her distressing habit of flirting with Sir James’s
chauffeur, he saw a sinister figure climbing up the castle wall, he had felt as
the poet Wordsworth used to do when he beheld a rainbow in the sky. (Wordsworth’s
heart, it will be remembered, always leaped up when this happened.) To race
downstairs would have been with him the work of an instant if he had not slowed
himself up by tripping over a loose mat.

However,
the marauder was still there when he reached the corridor, so he crept up
behind him, tapped him on the shoulder and said ‘Ho’.

The
effect of this on Jeff was electrical. To have hands tapping him on the
shoulder and voices saying ‘Ho’ where no hands or voices should have been would
have startled the most phlegmatic man. He rose perhaps six inches into the air
and came to earth too short of breath to speak. Sergeant Murchison took it on
himself to keep the conversation going.

‘You’re
pinched,’ he said.

‘Pinched!’
said Jeff, recovering enough breath for the simple monosyllable.

‘Pinched,’
said Sergeant Murchison, and would have spelled the word if so desired.

This
completed Jeff’s illusion of having lost his reason . Oh, what a noble mind is
here o’erthrown, he might have said to himself if he had remembered the
quotation. All he could find to say was a feeble ‘How do you mean pinched?’ and
Sergeant Murchison said he meant pinched.

‘Who
are you?’ Jeff asked. It is always well to know the identity of the officer
pinching us.

‘Sergeant
E. B. Murchison, special representative of Scotland Yard. And I’m taking you to
Lord Emsworth, who will decide what’s to be done with you.’

And so
it came about that Lord Emsworth, deep in Whiffle’s
On the Care of the Pig,
was
wrenched from its magic pages by the entry of two intruders, one young Smith,
whom he had come to love as a son, the other someone he did not remember having
seen before. However, any friend of his friend Smith was a friend of his, and he
liked the affectionate way the man was holding on to Smith’s arm, so he
welcomed the pair warmly.

‘Come
in, my dear Smith, come in Mr. er, er. I’m sorry, I keep forgetting your name.
You know how one does.’

‘Murchison,
m’lord.’

‘Of
course. Murchison. Quite.’

‘Of
Scotland Yard.’

This
puzzled Lord Emsworth.

‘But
that’s in London, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, m’lord.’

‘Then
what are you doing in Shropshire?’ Jeff was able to answer this.

‘He’s
arresting me.’

‘Doing
what?’

‘Arresting
me.’

‘Why?’

‘For
making a burglarious entry,’ said Sergeant Murchison.

Something
stirred in Lord Emsworth. His memory might be poor where recent events were
concerned, but it was excellent about things that had happened thirty years
ago, especially if these were of no importance whatsoever.

‘Bless
my soul,’ he said, ‘that reminds me of a song in a musical comedy Galahad took
me to when we were young men. About the Grenadier Guards guarding the Bank of
England at night. How did it go? “If you’ve money or plate in the bank,” sang
Lord Emsworth in a reedy tenor like an escape of gas, “we’re the principal
parties to thank. Our regiment sends you a squad that defends you from
anarchists greedy and lank.”‘

‘M’lord,’
said Sergeant Murchison.

‘“In
the cellars and over the roof,”‘ continued Lord Emsworth, who was not an easy
man to stop, ‘“we keep all intruders aloof, and no-one can go in to rob Mr.
Bowen of what he describes as the oof.” Bowen must have been the manager of the
Bank of England at that time, don’t you think?’

‘M’lord,’
said Sergeant Murchison.

‘“That’s
our right. And if any wicked gentry try by night to make a burglarious entry,
they take fright at the sight of the busbied sentry.”‘
[43]

‘M’lord,’
said Sergeant Murchison, ‘this man was climbing up the castle wall and getting
in at one of the windows.’

‘I was
locked out,’ said Jeff.

‘Very
sensible of you to climb up the wall, then.’

‘I didn’t
like to rouse the house.’

‘Very
considerate of you. Different from Baxter, a former secretary of mine. He was
locked out one night and he threw flower pots in at my window. A most
unpleasant experience to be asleep in bed and have the air suddenly become
thick with flower pots.
[44]
A flower pot can give you a nasty bruise. But how, my dear Mr. Murchison,’ said
Lord Emsworth, reasoning closely, ‘can Smith have been making a burglarious
entry when he’s staying here?’

‘He’s
staying here?’ Scotland Yard trains its sons well. They remain unmoved under
the worst of shocks. Sergeant Murchison had seldom received a more disintegrating
blow, but he did not so much as totter. ‘You know him?’

‘He is
the artist who is painting the portrait of my pig.’

Sergeant
Murchison was a man who could face facts. He did not need further evidence to
tell him that the pinch of which he had thought so highly had been but a
mirage. He turned and left the room.

‘I don’t
much like your friend Murchison,’ said Lord Emsworth, as the door closed. ‘He
reminds me of my sister Constance. The same look on his face, as if he
suspected everybody he met. Constance is now in America. You are not American,
are you?’

‘No.’

‘I
thought you might be. So many people are nowadays. Constance married an
American. I went out there for the wedding. Do you know that in America they
give you boiled eggs mashed up in a glass?’

‘Really?’

‘I
assure you. It takes away all the fun of eating a boiled egg. A most
interesting country, though. Galahad used to go there a great deal at one time.
Galahad was always the adventurous type. Peanut butter.’

‘I beg
your pardon?’

‘It is
much eaten in America. I was told that you put jam on it. If you like jam, of
course. And after they have finished eating peanut butter they go out and
contact people and have conferences. Which reminds me. That step-daughter of my
sister Florence’s, I forget her name but you have probably met her, nice girl,
she often gives the Empress a potato, she is trying to contact you. I met her
roaming about the place and she asked me if I had seen you, because it was most
important that you and she should have a conference. You’re not leaving me, are
you, my dear fellow?’

Jeff
was leaving him. He was already at the door. Hope, so recently consigned to the
obituary column, had cast off its winding cloths and risen from the grave. Lord
Emsworth might see nothing sensational in the fact that Vicky was roaming
about the place trying to confer with him, but to Jeff it was so significant
that the world suddenly became a thing of joy and laughter and even Lord
Emsworth in his old shooting coat and baggy trousers seemed almost beautiful.

Girls,
he knew, changed their minds. They thought things over and reversed decisions.
The girl who on Monday hissed that she never wanted to see you again was quite
likely to be all smiles and affection on Tuesday — or at the latest at some
early hour on Wednesday.

It
came, accordingly, as no surprise to him when he met Vicky not far from Lord
Emsworth’s door and she flung herself into his arms with the words ‘Oh, Jeff,
darling!’ They stood locked together, the past forgotten, and Lord Emsworth,
coming out of his room, eyed them with paternal benevolence.

Lord
Emsworth had come out of his room because he hoped that Jeff was still within
reach. He wanted to discuss with him the question, which they had omitted to
touch on, of whether Jeff should depict the Empress full face or in profile. He
refrained from bringing this up at a moment when the young fellow’s mind was so
obviously on other things, so he went back into his room and sat there for some
time plunged in thought.

The
result of his thoughts was to send him to the room of his sister Florence.

‘Oh,
Florence,’ he said, ‘could I have a word with you?’

‘I hope
it is important, Clarence. I was asleep.’

‘It is.
Very important. Do you remember coming to me some time ago and kicking up no
end of a row because your step-daughter was in love with a fellow named
Bennison?’

‘I
remember mentioning it,’ said Florence with dignity. She disliked his choice of
phrases.

‘Well,
you can make your mind easy. She isn’t in love with Bennison at all. The chap
she loves is my friend Smith. I saw them just now hugging and kissing like the
dickens.’

CHAPTER
FIFTEEN

FLORENCE may have been
asleep at the moment when Lord Emsworth knocked on her door, but she was wide
awake now. It was her practice to put mud on her face before retiring to rest,
and such was her emotion as he delivered what a gossip column writer would have
called his exclusive that this mud cracked from side to side like the mirror of
Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott.

‘Is
this a joke, Clarence?’ she demanded, directing at him a look lower in temperature
even than those which Jeff had had to face on his arrival. ‘Are you trying to
be funny?’