Uncle Fred in the Springtime (31 page)

‘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 finest 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?’