A Blandings novel
Can the Empress of Blandings win the Fat Pigs class at the Shropshire Show for the third year running? Galahad Threepwood, Beach the butler and others have put their shirt on this, and for Lord Emsworth it will be paradise on earth. But a substantial obstacle lurks in the way: Queen of Matchingham, the new sow of Sir Gregory Parsloe Bart. Galahad knows this pretender to the crown must be pignapped. But can the Empress in turn avoid a similar fate?
In this classic Blandings novel, pigs rise above their bulk to vanish and reappear in the most unlikely places, while young lovers are crossed and recrossed in every room in Blandings Castle.
About the Book
About the Author
Also by P.G. Wodehouse
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Copyright
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781409063865
www.randomhouse.co.uk
Published by Arrow Books 2008
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Copyright by The Trustees of the Wodehouse Estate
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This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
First published in the United Kingdom in 1952 by Herbert Jenkins Ltd
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ISBN 9780099513988
The author of almost a hundred books and the creator of Jeeves, Blandings Castle, Psmith, Ukridge, Uncle Fred and Mr Mulliner, P.G. Wodehouse was born in 1881 and educated at Dulwich College. After two years with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank he became a full-time writer, contributing to a variety of periodicals including Punch and the Globe. He married in 1914. As well as his novels and short stories, he wrote lyrics for musical comedies with Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern, and at one time had five musicals running simultaneously on Broadway. His time in Hollywood also provided much source material for fiction.
At the age of 93, in the New Year’s Honours List of 1975, he received a long-overdue knighthood, only to die on St Valentine’s Day some 45 days later.
Also by P. G. Wodehouse
JEEVES
The Inimitable Jeeves
Carry On, Jeeves
Very Good, Jeeves
Thank You, Jeeves
Right Ho, Jeeves
The Code of the Woosters
Joy in the Morning
The Mating Season
Ring for Jeeves
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit
Jeeves in the Offing
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves
Much Obliged, Jeeves
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen
UNCLE FRED
Cocktail Time
Uncle Dynamite
BLANDINGS
Something Fresh
Leave it to Psmith
Summer Lightning
Blandings Castle
Uncle Fred in the Springtime
Full Moon
Pigs Have Wings
Service with a Smile
A Pelican at Blandings
MULLINER
Meet Mr Mulliner
Mulliner Nights
Mr Mulliner Speaking
GOLF
The Clicking of Cuthbert
The Heart of a Goof
OTHERS
Piccadilly Jim
Ukridge
The Luck of the Bodkins
Laughing Gas
A Damsel in Distress
The Small Bachelor
Hot Water
Summer Moonshine
The Adventures of Sally
Money for Nothing
The Girl in Blue
Big Money
BEACH THE BUTLER, wheezing a little after navigating the stairs, for he was not the streamlined young under-footman he had been thirty years ago, entered the library of Blandings Castle, a salver piled with letters in his hand.
‘The afternoon post, m’lord,’ he announced, and Lord Emsworth, looking up from his book – he was reading Whiffle on The Care Of The Pig – said: ‘Ah, the afternoon post? The afternoon post, eh? Quite. Quite.’ His sister, Lady Constance Keeble, might, and frequently did, complain of his vagueness – (‘Oh, for goodness sake, Clarence, don’t gape like that!’) – but he could on occasion be as quick at the uptake as the next man.
‘Yes, yes, to be sure, the afternoon post,’ he said, fully abreast. ‘Capital. Thank you, Beach. Put it on the table.’
‘Very good, m’lord. Pardon me, m’lord, can you see Sir Gregory Parsloe?’
‘No,’ said Lord Emsworth, having glanced about the room and failed to do so. ‘Where is he?’
‘Sir Gregory telephoned a few moments ago to say that he would be glad of a word with your lordship. He informed me that he was about to walk to the castle.’
Lord Emsworth blinked.
‘Walk?’
‘So Sir Gregory gave me to understand, m’lord.’
‘What does he want to walk for?’
‘I could not say, m’lord.’
‘It’s three miles each way, and about the hottest day we’ve had this summer. The man’s an ass.’
To such an observation the well-trained butler, however sympathetic, does not reply ‘Whoopee!’ or ‘You said it, pal!’ Beach merely allowed his upper lip to twitch slightly by way of indication that his heart was in the right place, and Lord Emsworth fell into a reverie. He was thinking about Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe, Bart, of Matchingham Hall.
To most of us, casual observers given to snap judgements, the lot of an Earl dwelling in marble halls with vassals and serfs at his side probably seems an enviable one. ‘A lucky stiff,’ we say to ourselves as we drive off in our charabanc after paying half a crown to be shown over the marble halls, and in many cases, of course, we would be right.
But not in that of Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth. There was a snake in his Garden of Eden, a crumpled leaf in his bed of roses, a grain of sand in his spiritual spinach. He had good health, a large income and a first-class ancestral home with gravel soil, rolling parkland and all the conveniences, but these blessings were rendered null and void by the fact that the pure air of the district in which he lived was polluted by the presence of a man like Sir Gregory Parsloe – a man who, he was convinced, had evil designs on that pre-eminent pig, Empress of Blandings.
Empress of Blandings was the apple of Lord Emsworth’s eye. Twice in successive years winner in the Fat Pigs class at the Shropshire Agricultural Show, she was confidently expected this year to triumph for the third time, provided – always provided – that this Parsloe, who owned her closest rival, Pride of Matchingham, did not hatch some fearful plot for her undoing.
Two years before, by tempting him with his gold, this sinister Baronet had lured away into his own employment Lord Emsworth’s pig man, the superbly gifted George Cyril Wellbeloved, and it was the opinion of the Hon. Galahad Threepwood, Lord Emsworth’s younger brother, strongly expressed, that this bit of sharp practice was to be considered just a preliminary to blacker crimes, a mere flexing of the muscles, as it were, preparatory to dishing out the real rough stuff. Dash it all, said Galahad, reasoning closely, when you get a fellow like young Parsloe, a chap who for years before he came into the title was knocking about London without a bean in his pocket, living God knows how and always one jump ahead of the gendarmerie, is it extravagant to suppose that he will stick at nothing? If such a man has a pig entered for the Fat Pigs contest and sees a chance of making the thing a certainty for his own candidate by nobbling the favourite, he is dashed well going to jump at it. That was the view of the Hon. Galahad Threepwood.
‘Parsloe!’ he said. ‘I’ve known young Parsloe since we were both in the early twenties, and he was always so crooked he sliced bread with a corkscrew. When they saw Parsloe coming in the old days, strong men used to wince and hide their valuables. That’s the sort of fellow he was, and you can’t tell me he’s any different now. You watch that pig of yours like a hawk, Clarence, or before you know where you are, this fiend in human shape will be slipping pineapple bombs into her bran mash.’
The words had sunk in, as such words would scarcely have failed to do, and they had caused Lord Emsworth to entertain towards Sir Gregory feelings similar to, though less cordial than, those of Sherlock Holmes toward Professor Moriarty. So now he sat brooding on him darkly, and would probably have gone on brooding for some considerable time, had not Beach, who wanted to get back to his pantry and rest his feet, uttered a significant cough.
‘Eh?’ said Lord Emsworth, coming out of his coma.
‘Would there be anything further, m’lord?’
‘Further? Oh, I see what you mean. Further. No, nothing further, Beach.’
‘Thank you, m’lord.’
Beach withdrew in that stately, ponderous way of his that always reminded travellers who knew their Far East of an elephant sauntering through an Indian jungle, and Lord Emsworth resumed his reading. The butler’s entry had interrupted him in the middle of that great chapter of Whiffle’s which relates how a pig, if aiming at the old mid-season form, must consume daily nourishment amounting to not less than fifty-seven thousand eight hundred calories, these calories to consist of barley meal, maize meal, linseed meal, potatoes, and separated buttermilk.
But this was not his lucky afternoon. Scarcely had his eye rested on the page when the door opened again, this time to admit a handsome woman of imperious aspect in whom – after blinking once or twice through his pince-nez – he recognized his sister, Lady Constance Keeble.
He eyed her apprehensively, like some rat of the underworld cornered by G-men. Painful experience had taught him that visits from Connie meant trouble, and he braced himself, as always, to meet with stout denial whatever charge she might be about to hurl at him. He was a great believer in stout denial and was very good at it.
For once, however, her errand appeared to be pacific. Her manner was serene, even amiable.
‘Oh, Clarence,’ she said, ‘have you seen Penelope anywhere?’
‘Eh?’
‘Penelope Donaldson.’
‘Who,’ asked Lord Emsworth courteously, ‘is Penelope Donaldson?’
Lady Constance sighed. Had she not been the daughter of a hundred Earls, she would have snorted. Her manner lost its amiability. She struck her forehead with a jewelled hand and rolled her eyes heavenward for a moment.
‘Penelope Donaldson,’ she said, speaking with the strained sweetness of a woman striving to be patient while conversing with one of the less intelligent of the Jukes family, ‘is the younger daughter of the Mr Donaldson of Long Island City in the United States of America whose elder daughter is married to your son Frederick. To refresh your memory, you have two sons – your heir, Bosham, and a younger son, Frederick. Frederick married the elder Miss Donaldson. The younger Miss Donaldson – her name is Penelope – is staying with us now at Blandings Castle – this is Blandings Castle – and what I am asking you is … Have you seen her? And I do wish, Clarence, that you would not let your mouth hang open when I am talking to you. It makes you look like a goldfish.’
It has already been mentioned that there were moments when Lord Emsworth could be as quick as a flash.
‘Ah!’ he cried, enlightened. ‘When you say Penelope Donaldson, you mean Penelope Donaldson. Quite. Quite. And have I seen her, you ask. Yes, I saw her with Galahad just now. I was looking out of the window and they came past. Going for a walk or something. They were walking,’ explained Lord Emsworth, making it clear that his brother and the young visitor from America had not been mounted on pogo-sticks.
Lady Constance uttered a sound which resembled that caused by placing a wet thumb on a hot stove lid.
‘It’s too bad of Galahad. Ever since she came to the castle he has simply monopolized the girl. He ought to have more sense. He must know that the whole point of her being here is that I wanted to bring her and Orlo Vosper together.’
‘Who –?’
‘Oh, Clarence!’
‘What’s the matter now?’
‘If you say “Who is Orlo Vosper?”, I shall hit you with something. I believe this vagueness of yours is just a pose. You put it on simply to madden people. You know perfectly well who Orlo Vosper is.’
Lord Emsworth nodded intelligently.
‘Yes, I’ve got him placed now. Fellow who looks like a screen star. He’s staying here,’ he said, imparting a valuable piece of inside information.
‘I am aware of it. And Penelope seems to be deliberately avoiding him.’
‘Sensible girl. He’s a dull chap.’
‘He is nothing of the kind. Most entertaining.’
‘He doesn’t entertain me.’
‘Possibly not, as he does not talk about pigs all the time.’
‘He’s unsound on pigs. When I showed him the Empress, he yawned.’
‘He is evidently very much attracted by Penelope.’
‘Tried to hide it behind his hand, but I saw it. A yawn.’
‘And it would be a wonderful marriage for her.’
‘What would?’
‘This.’
‘Which?’
‘Oh, Clarence!’
‘Well, how do you expect me to follow you, dash it, when you beat about the bush like – er – like someone beating about the bush? Be plain. Be clear. Be frank and straightforward. Who’s marrying who?’
Lady Constance went into her wet-thumb-on-stove routine again.
‘I am merely telling you,’ she said wearily, ‘that Orlo Vosper is obviously attracted by Penelope and that it would please Mr Donaldson very much if she were to marry him. One of the oldest families in England and plenty of money, too. But what can he do if she spends all her time with Galahad? Still, I am taking her to London tomorrow, and Orlo is driving us in his car. Something may come of that. Do listen, Clarence!’
‘I’m listening. You said Penelope was going to London with Mr Donaldson.’
‘Oh, Clar-ence!’
‘Or rather with Vosper. What’s she going to London for in weather like this? Silly idea.’
‘She has a fitting. Her dress for the County Ball. And Orlo has to see his lawyer about his income tax.’
‘Income tax!’ cried Lord Emsworth, staring like a war horse at the sound of the bugle. Pigs and income tax were the only two subjects that really stirred him. ‘Let me tell you –’
‘I haven’t time to listen,’ said Lady Constance, and swept from the room. These chats with the head of the family nearly always ended in her sweeping from the room. Unless, of course, they took place out of doors, when she merely swept away.
Left alone, Lord Emsworth sat for a while savouring that delicious sense of peace which comes to men of quiet tastes when their womenfolk have said their say and departed. Then, just as he was about to turn to Whiffle again, his eye fell on the pile of correspondence on the table, and he took it up and began glancing through it. And he had read and put aside perhaps half a dozen of the dullest letters ever penned by human hand, when he came upon something of quite a different nature, something that sent his eyebrows shooting up and brought a surprised ‘Bless my soul!’ to his lips.
It was a picture postcard, one of those brightly coloured picture postcards at which we of the intelligentsia click our tongues, but which afford pleasure and entertainment to quite a number of the lower-browed. It represented a nude lady, presumably Venus, rising from the waves at a seashore resort with a cheery ‘I’m in the pink, kid’ coming out of her mouth in the form of a balloon, and beneath this figure, in a bold feminine hand, were the words ‘Hey hey, today’s the day, what, what? Many happy returns, old dear. Love and kisses. Maudie.’
It puzzled Lord Emsworth, as it might have puzzled an even deeper thinker. To the best of his knowledge he was not acquainted with any Maudie, let alone one capable of this almost Oriental warmth of feeling. Unlike that beau sabreur and man about town, his brother Galahad, who had spent a lifetime courting the society of the breezier type of female and in his younger days had never been happier than when knee deep in barmaids and ballet girls, he had always taken considerable pains to avoid the Maudies of this world.
Recovering his pince-nez, which, as always in times of emotion, had fallen off and were dangling at the end of their string, he slipped the card absently into his pocket and reached out for his book. But it was too late. The moment had passed. What with butlers babbling about Parsloes and Connies babbling about Vospers and mystery women sending him love and kisses, he had temporarily lost the power to appreciate Whiffle’s smighty line.
There was only one thing to be done, if he hoped to recover calm of spirit. He straightened his pince-nez, and went off to the piggeries to have a look at Empress of Blandings.
The Empress lived in a bijou residence not far from the kitchen garden, and when Lord Emsworth arrived at her boudoir she was engaged, as pretty nearly always when you dropped in on her, in hoisting into her vast interior those fifty-seven thousand and eight hundred calories on which Whiffle insists. Monica Simmons, the pig girl, had done her well in the way of barley meal, maize meal, linseed meal, potatoes, and separated buttermilk, and she was digging in and getting hers in a manner calculated to inspire the brightest confidence in the bosoms of her friends and admirers.
Monica Simmons was standing at the rail as Lord Emsworth pottered up, a stalwart girl in a smock and breeches who looked like what in fact she was, one of the six daughters of a rural vicar, all of whom had played hockey for Roedean. She was not a great favourite with Lord Emsworth, who suspected her of a lack of reverence for the Empress. Of this fundamental flaw in her character she instantly afforded ghastly proof.
‘Hullo, Lord Emsworth,’ she said. ‘Hot, what? Have you come to see the piggy-wiggy? Well, now you’re here, I’ll be buzzing off and getting my tea and shrimps. I’ve a thirst I wouldn’t sell for fifty quid. Cheerio.’
She strode off, her large feet spurning the antic hay, and Lord Emsworth, who had quivered like an aspen and was supporting himself on the rail, gazed after her with a smouldering eye. He was thinking nostalgically of former custodians of his pig supreme – of George Cyril Wellbeloved, now in the enemy’s camp; of Percy Pirbright, George Cyril’s successor, last heard of in Canada; and of Edwin Pott, who, holding portfolio after Percy, had retired into private life on winning a football pool. None of these would have alluded to Empress of Blandings as ‘the piggy-wiggy’. Edwin Pott, as a matter of fact, would not have been able to do so, even had he wished, for he had no roof to his mouth.
Ichabod, felt Lord Emsworth, and was still in a disturbed state of mind, though gradually becoming soothed by listening to that sweetest of all music, the sound of the Empress restoring her tissues, when there appeared at his side, leaning on the rail and surveying the champ through a black-rimmed monocle, a slim, trim, dapper little gentleman in his late fifties, whom he greeted with a cordial ‘Ah, Galahad.’
‘Ah, to you, Clarence old bird, with knobs on,’ responded the newcomer, equally cordial.
The Hon. Galahad Threepwood was the only genuinely distinguished member of the family of which Lord Emsworth was the head. The world, it is said, knows little of its greatest men, but everyone connected with the world of clubs, bars, theatres, restaurants, and race courses knew Gally, if only by reputation. He was one of that determined little band who, feeling that London would look better painted red, had devoted themselves at an early age to the task of giving it that cheerful colour. A pain in the neck to his sister Constance, his sister Julia, his sister Dora, and all his other sisters, he was universally esteemed in less austere quarters, for his heart was of gold and his soul overflowing with the milk of human kindness.
As he stood gazing at the Empress, something between a gulp and a groan at his side caused him to transfer his scrutiny to his elder brother, and he was concerned to note that there was a twisted look on those loved features, as if the head of the family had just swallowed something acid.
‘Hullo, Clarence!’ he said. ‘The old heart seems a bit bowed down. What’s the matter? Not brooding on that incident at the Emsworth Arms, are you?’
‘Eh? Incident? What incident was that?’
‘Has no word of it reached your ears? I had it from Beach, who had it from the scullery maid, who had it from the chauffeur. It appears that that butler of Parsloe’s – Binstead is his name, I believe – was swanking about in the tap room of the Emsworth Arms last night, offering five to one on Parsloe’s pig.’
Lord Emsworth stared.
‘On Pride of Matchingham? The fellow’s insane. How can Pride of Matchingham possibly have a chance against the Empress?’
‘That’s what I felt. It puzzled me, too. The simple explanation is, I suppose, that Binstead had got a snootful and was talking through his hat. Well, if that’s not what’s worrying you, what is? Why are you looking like a bereaved tapeworm?’
Lord Emsworth was only too glad to explain to a sympathetic ear what had caused the resemblance.
‘That girl Simmons upset me, Galahad. You will scarcely credit it, but she called the Empress a piggy-wiggy.’
‘She did?’
‘I assure you. “Hullo, Lord Emsworth,” she said. “Have you come to see the piggy-wiggy?”’
Gally frowned.
‘Bad,’ he agreed. ‘The wrong tone. If this is true, it seems to show that the child is much too frivolous in her outlook to hold the responsible position she does. I may mention that this is the view which Beach takes. He has put a considerable slice of his savings on the Empress’s nose to cop at the forthcoming Agricultural Show, and he is uneasy. He asks himself apprehensively is La Simmons fitted for her sacred task? And I don’t blame him. For mark this, Clarence, and mark it well. The girl who carelessly dismisses Empress of Blandings as a piggy-wiggy today is a girl who may quite easily forget to give her lunch tomorrow. Whatever induced you, my dear fellow, to entrust a job that calls for the executive qualities of a Pierpont Morgan to the pop-eyed daughter of a rural vicar?’
Lord Emsworth did not actually wring his hands, but he came very near to it.
‘It was not my doing,’ he protested. ‘Connie insisted on my engaging her. She is some sort of protégé of Connie’s. Related to someone she wanted to oblige, or something like that. Blame Connie for the whole terrible situation.’
‘Connie!’ said Gally. ‘The more I see of this joint, the more clearly do I realize that what Blandings Castle needs, to make it an earthly Paradise, is fewer and better Connies. Sisters are a mistake, Clarence. You should have set your face against them at the outset.’
‘True,’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘True.’
Silence fell, as nearly as silence could ever fall in the neighbourhood of a trough at which Empress of Blandings was feeding. It was broken by Lord Emsworth, who was peering about him with the air of a man who senses something missing in his surroundings.
‘Where,’ he asked, ‘is Alice?’
‘Eh?’
‘Or, rather, Penelope. Penelope Donaldson. I thought you were out for a walk together.’
‘Oh, Penny? Yes, we have been strolling hither and thither, chewing the fat. There’s a nice girl, Clarence.’
‘Charming.’
‘Not only easy on the eye and a conversationalist who holds you spellbound on a wide variety of subjects, but kind-hearted. I happened to express a wish for a whisky -and- soda, and she immediately trotted off to tell Beach to bring me one, to save me trudging to the house.’
‘You are going to have a whisky and soda?’
‘You follow me like a bloodhound. It will bring the roses back to my cheeks, which is always so desirable, and it will enable me to drink Beach’s health with a hey-nonny-nonny and a hot-cha-cha. It’s his birthday.’
‘Beach’s birthday?’
‘That’s right.’
‘God bless my soul.’
Lord Emsworth was fumbling in his pocket.
‘By the afternoon post, Galahad, I received an extraordinary communication. Most extraordinary. It was one of those picture postcards. It said “Many happy returns, old dear. Love and kisses”, and it was signed Maudie. Now that you tell me it is Beach’s birthday, I am wondering … Yes, as I thought. It was intended for Beach and must have got mixed up with my letters. Look.’
Gally took the card and scrutinized it through his monocle. On the reverse side were the words:
Mr Sebastian Beach,
Blandings Castle,
Shropshire
A grave look came into his face.
‘We must inquire into this,’ he said. ‘How long has Beach been at the castle? Eighteen years? Nineteen? Well, the exact time is immaterial. The point is that he has been here long enough for me to have grown to regard him as a son, and any son of mine who gets picture postcards of nude Venuses from girls named Maudie has got to do some brisk explaining. We can’t have Sex rearing its ugly head in the butler’s pantry. Hoy, Beach!’
Sebastian Beach was approaching, his customary measured step rather more measured than usual owing to the fact that he was bearing a tall glass filled to the brim with amber liquid. Beside him tripped a small, slender girl with fair hair who looked as if she might have been a wood nymph the butler had picked up on his way through the grounds. Actually, she was the younger daughter of an American manufacturer of dog biscuits.
‘Here come the United States Marines, Gally,’ she said, and Gally, having replied with a good deal of satisfaction that he could see them with the naked eye, took the glass and drank deeply.
‘Happy birthday, Beach.’
‘Thank you, Mr Galahad.’
‘A sip for you, Penny?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Clarence?’
‘Eh? No, no thank you.’
‘Right,’ said Gally, finishing the contents of the glass. ‘And now to approach a painful task. Beach!’
‘Sir?’
‘Peruse this card.’
Beach took the postcard. As his gooseberry eyes scanned it, his lips moved the fraction of an inch. He looked like a butler who for two pins, had he not been restrained by the rigid rules of the Butlers’ Guild, might have smiled.
‘Well, Beach? We are waiting. Who is this Maudie?’
‘My niece, Mr Galahad.’
‘That is your story, is it?’
‘My brother’s daughter, Mr Galahad. She is what might be termed the Bohemian member of the family. As a young girl she ran away from home and became a barmaid in London.’
Gally pricked up his ears, like a specialist whose particular subject has come up in the course of conversation. It was as if razor blades had been mentioned in the presence of Mr Gillette.
‘A barmaid, eh? Where?’
‘At the Criterion, Mr Galahad.’
‘I must have known her, then. I knew them all at the Criterion. Though I don’t remember any Maudie Beach.’
‘For business purposes she adopted the nom de guerre of Montrose, sir.’
Gally uttered a glad cry.
‘Maudie Montrose? Is that who she was? Good heavens, of course I knew her. Charming girl with blue eyes and hair like a golden bird’s nest. Many is the buttered rum I have accepted at her hands. What’s become of her? Is she still working the old beer engine?’
‘Oh no, Mr Galahad. She married and retired.’
‘I hope her husband appreciates her many sterling qualities.’
‘He is no longer with us, sir. He contracted double pneumonia, standing outside a restaurant in the rain.’
‘What on earth did he do that for?’
‘It was in pursuance of his professional duties, sir. He was the proprietor of a private investigation bureau, Digby’s Day and Night Detectives. Now that he has passed on, my niece conducts the business herself, and I believe gives general satisfaction.’
Penny gave an interested squeak.
‘You mean she’s a sleuth? One of the bloodstain and magnifying glass brigade?’
‘Substantially that, miss. I gather that she leaves the rougher work to her subordinates.’
‘Still she’s a genuine private eye. Golly, it takes all sorts to make a world, doesn’t it?’
‘So I have been given to understand, miss,’ said Beach indulgently. He turned to Lord Emsworth, who, finding the Maudie topic one that did not grip, had started to scratch the Empress’s back with a piece of stick. ‘I should have mentioned, m’lord, that Sir Gregory has arrived.’
‘Oh, dash it. Where is he?’
‘I left him in the morning-room, m’lord, taking off his shoes. I received the impression that his feet were paining him. He expressed a desire to see your lordship at your lordship’s earliest convenience.’
Lord Emsworth became peevish.
‘What on earth does the man want, coming here? He knows that I regard him with the deepest suspicion. But I suppose I shall have to see him. If I don’t, it will only mean an unpleasant scene with Connie. She is always telling me I must be neighbourly.’
‘Thank goodness I don’t have to be,’ said Gally. ‘I can look young Parsloe in the eye and make him wilt. That’s the advantage of not having a position to keep up. That was interesting, what Beach was telling us, Clarence.’
‘Eh?’
‘About Maudie.’
‘Who is Maudie?’
‘All right, master-mind, let it go. Trot along and see what that thug wants.’
Lord Emsworth ambled off, followed at just the right respectful distance by his faithful butler, and Gally looked after them musingly.
‘Amazing,’ he said. ‘Do you know how long I have known Beach? Eighteen years, or it may have been nineteen, ever since I was a slip of a boy of forty. And only today have I discovered that his name is Sebastian. The same thing happened with Fruity Biffen. I don’t think you met my old friend Fruity Biffen, did you? He was living down here at a house along the Shrewsbury road till a short time ago, but he left before you arrived. In the old days he used to sign his I.O.U’s George J. Biffen, and it was only after the lapse of several years, one night when we were having supper together at Romano’s and he had lost some of his reserve owing to having mixed stout, crème de menthe, and old brandy, to see what it tasted like, that he revealed that the J. stood for –’
‘Gally,’ said Penny, who for some moments had been tracing arabesques on the turf with her shoe and giving other indications of nerving herself to an embarrassing task, ‘can you lend me two thousand pounds?’
It was never an easy matter to disconcert the Hon. Galahad. For half a century nursemaids, governesses, tutors, schoolmasters, Oxford dons, bookmakers, three-card-trick men, jellied eel sellers, skittle sharps, racecourse touts and members of the metropolitan police force had tried to do it, and all had failed. It was an axiom of the old Pelican Club that, no matter what slings and arrows outrageous fortune might launch in his direction, Gally Threepwood could be counted upon to preserve the calm insouciance of a pig on ice. But at these words a spasm definitely shook him, causing his black-rimmed monocle to leap as nimbly from his eye as the pince-nez had ever leaped from the nose of his brother Clarence. His look, as he stared at the girl, was the look of a man unable to believe his ears.
‘Two thousand pounds?’
‘It’s sorely needed.’
Gally gave a little sigh. He took her hand and patted it.
‘My child, I’m a pauper. I’m a younger son. In English families the heir scoops in the jackpot and all the runners-up get are the few crumbs that fall from his table. I could no more raise two thousand pounds than balance that pig there on the tip of my nose.’
‘I see. I was afraid you mightn’t be able to. All right, let’s forget about it.’
Gally looked at her, astounded. Did she really think that Galahad Threepwood, one of the most inquisitive men who ever knocked back a Scotch and soda, a man who wished he had a quid, or even ten shillings, for every time he had been called a damned old Nosey Parker, was as easily put off as this?
‘But, good heavens, aren’t you going to explain?’
‘Shall I? It depends whether you can keep a secret.’
‘Of course I can keep a secret. Why, if I were to reveal one tithe of the things I know about my circle of acquaintance, it would rock civilization. You can confide in me without a tremor.’
‘It would be a relief, I must say. Don’t you hate bottling things up?’
‘I prefer unbottling them. Go on. What’s all this about two thousand pounds? What on earth do you want it for?’
‘Well, it isn’t exactly for me. It’s for a man I know. It’s the old, old story, Gally. I’m in love.’
‘Aha!’
‘Aha to you. Why shouldn’t I be in love? People do fall in love, don’t they?’
‘I’ve known of cases.’
‘Well, I’m in love with Jerry.’
‘Jerry what?’
‘Jerry Vail.’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘Well, I don’t suppose he’s ever heard of you.’
Gally was indignant.
‘What do you mean, he’s never heard of me? Of course he’s heard of me. England’s been ringing with my name for the last thirty years. If you weren’t a benighted Yank on your first visit to the British Isles, you would have my life history at your fingertips and treat me with the respect I deserve. But to return to the dream man. From the fact that you are going about trying to bite people’s ears on his behalf, I deduce that he is short of cash. A bit strapped for the ready, eh? What is sometimes called an impecunious suitor?’
‘Well, he gets by. He’s self-supporting.’
‘What does he do?’
‘He’s an author.’
‘Good heavens! Oh, well, I suppose authors are also God’s creatures.’
‘He writes thrillers. But you know the old gag. “Crime doesn’t pay … enough.” We couldn’t possibly get married on what he makes, even in a good year.’
‘But your father, the well-to-do-millionaire. Won’t he provide?’
‘Not for an impecunious suitor. If I were to write and tell Father I wanted to marry someone with an annual income of about thirty cents, he would whisk me back to America by the next boat, and I should be extremely lucky if I didn’t get interned at my old grandmother’s in Ohio.’
‘Stern parent stuff, eh? I thought all that sort of thing went out in the eighties.’
‘Yes, but they forgot to tell Father. And anyway, Jerry’s much too full of high principles and what have you to let himself be supported by his wife.’
‘You could talk him out of that.’
‘I wouldn’t want to. I admire him for it. If you’d seen some of the fortune-hunting dead-beats I’ve had to keep off with a stick since I ripened into womanhood, you could understand my thinking it’s a pleasant change to meet someone like Jerry. He’s swell, Gally. He has to be seen to be believed. And if only he can get this two thousand pounds …’
‘You might give me the inside stuff on that. Does he want it for some particular reason, or is it just that he likes two thousand pounds?’
‘He has a friend, a doctor, who wants to start one of those health places. Did you ever hear of Muldoon’s in America?’
‘Of course. I was always popping in and out of America in the old days.’
‘This would be something on the same sort of lines, only, being in England, more … what’s the word?’
‘Posh?’
‘I was going to say plushy. It would cater for tired Dukes and weary millionaires, all paying terrific fees. There’s a place like it up in Wales, Jerry tells me, which simply coins money. This would be the same sort of thing, only easier to get at because the house Jerry’s doctor friend has his eye on is in Surrey or Sussex or somewhere, much nearer London. The idea is that if Jerry could raise this two thousand pounds and buy in, he would become a junior partner. The boy friend would feel the patients’ pulses and prescribe diets and so on, and Jerry would take them out riding and play tennis and golf with them and generally be the life and soul of the party. It’s the sort of thing that would suit him down to the ground, and he would be awfully good at it. And he would have time to write his great novel.’
‘Is he writing a great novel?’
‘Well, naturally he hasn’t been able to start it yet, being so busy winning bread, but he says it’s all there, tucked away behind the frontal bone, and give him a little leisure, he says, a few quiet hours each day with nothing to distract him, and he’ll have it jumping through hoops and snapping sugar off its nose. Why are you looking like a stuffed frog?’
‘If you mean why am I looking like Rodin’s Le Penseur, I was wondering how the dickens you ever managed to get acquainted with this chap. Connie met you when you landed at Southampton, and after a single night in London brought you down here, where you have been ever since. I don’t see where you fitted in your billing and cooing.’
‘Think, Gally. Use the bean.’
‘No, it beats me.’
‘He was on the boat, chump. Jerry’s got vision. He realized that the only way for a writer to make a packet nowadays is to muscle in on the American market, so he took time off and dashed over to study it.’
‘How do you study an American market?’
‘I suppose you … well, study it, as it were.’
‘I see. Study it.’
‘That’s right. And when he had finished studying it, he hopped on the boat and came home.’
‘And who should be on the boat but you?’
‘Exactly. We met the second day out, and never looked back. Ah, those moonlight nights!’
‘Was there a moon?’
‘You bet there was a moon.’
Gally scratched his chin. He removed his monocle and polished it thoughtfully.
‘Well, I don’t know quite what to say. You have rather stunned your grey-haired old friend. You really love this chap?’
‘Haven’t you been listening?’
‘But you can’t have known him for more than about four days?’
‘So what?’
‘Well, I was just thinking … Heaven knows I’m not the man to counsel prudence and all that sort of thing. The only woman I ever wanted to marry was a music-hall serio who sang songs in pink tights. But –’
‘Well?’
‘I think I’d watch my step, if I were you, young Penny. There are some queer birds knocking around in this world. You can’t always go by what fellows say on ocean liners. Many a man who swears eternal devotion on the boat deck undergoes a striking change in his outlook when he hits dry land and gets among the blondes.’
‘Gally, you make me sick.’
‘I’m sorry. Just thought I’d mention it. Facts of life and all that sort of thing.’
‘If I found Jerry was like that, I’d give him the air in a second, though it would break my heart into a million quivering pieces. We Donaldsons have our pride.’
‘You betcher.’
‘But he isn’t. He’s a baa-lamb. And you can’t say a baa-lamb isn’t a nice thing to have around the house.’
‘Nothing could be nicer.’