Aunts Aren't Gentlemen (6 page)

'I know. I was watching from afar.'

'I have not found out yet what happened to him that day.
After he knocked the policeman down he suddenly
disappeared.'

'Always the best thing to do if you knock a policeman down.
He jumped into my car and I drove him to safety.'

'Oh, I see.'

I must say I thought she might have put it a bit stronger.
One does not desire thanks for these little kindnesses one does
here and there, but considering that on his behalf I had
interfered with the police in the execution of their duty, if
that's how the script reads, thereby rendering myself liable to
a sizeable sojourn in chokey, a little enthusiasm would not
have been amiss. Nothing to be done about it except give her
a reproachful look. I did this. It made no impression whatever,
and she proceeded.

'Is he staying at the Goose and Grasshopper?'

'I couldn't say,' I said, and if I spoke with a touch of what-d'you-
call-it in my voice, who can blame me? 'When I met
him, we talked mostly about my interior organs.'

'What's wrong with your interior organs?'

'Nothing so far, but he thought there might be something
later on.'

'He has a wonderfully sympathetic nature.'

'Yes, hasn't he.'

'Did he recommend anything that would be good for you?'

'As a matter of fact he did.'

'How like him!'
She was silent for a while, no doubt pondering on all Orlo's
lovable qualities, many of which I had missed. At length she
spoke.

'He must be at the Goose and Grasshopper. It's the only
decent inn in the place. Go there and tell him to meet me here
at three o'clock tomorrow afternoon.'

'Here?'

'Yes.'

'You mean at this cottage?'

'Why not?'

'I thought you might want to see him alone.'

'Oh, that's all right. You can go for a walk.'

Once more I sent up a silent vote of thanks to my guardian
angel for having fixed it that this proud beauty should not
become Mrs Bertram Wooster. Her cool assumption that she
had only got to state her wishes and all and sundry would jump
to fulfil them gave me the pip. So stung was the Wooster pride
by the thought of being slung out at her bidding from my
personal cottage that it is not too much to say that my blood
boiled, and I would probably have said something biting like
'Oh, yes?', only I felt that a
pieux chevalier,
which I always aim
to be, ought not to crush the gentler sex beneath the iron heel,
no matter what the provocation.

So I changed it to 'Right-ho', and went off to the Goose and
Grasshopper to give Orlo the low-down.

I found him in the private bar having a gin and ginger ale. His
face, never much to write home about, was rendered even
less of a feast for the eye by a dark scowl. His spirits were
plainly at their lowest ebb, as so often happens when Sundered
Heart A is feeling that the odds against his clicking with
Sundered Heart B cannot be quoted at better than a hundred
to eight.

Of course he may have been brooding because he had just
heard that a pal of his in Moscow had been liquidated that
morning, or he had murdered a capitalist and couldn't think of
a way of getting rid of the body, but I preferred to attribute his
malaise to frustrated love, and I couldn't help feeling a pang of
pity for him.

He looked at me as I entered in a manner which made me
realize how little chance there was of our exchanging presents
at Christmas, and I remember thinking what a lot of him there
was and all of it anti-Wooster. I had often felt the same about
Spode. It seemed that there was something about me that
aroused the baser passions in men who were eight feet tall and
six across. I took this up with Jeeves once, and he agreed that
it was singular.

His eye as I approached was what I have heard described as
lacklustre. Whatever it was that was causing this V-shaped
depression, seeing me had not brought the sunshine into his
life. His demeanour was that of any member of a Wednesday
matinée audience or, let us say, a dead fish on a fishmonger's
slab. Nor did he brighten when I had delivered my message.
After I had done so there was a long silence, broken only by
the gurgling of ginger ale as it slid down his throat.

Eventually he spoke, his voice rather like that of a living
corpse in one of those horror films where the fellow takes the
lid off the tomb in the vault beneath the ruined chapel and
blowed if the occupant doesn't start a conversation with him.

'I don't understand this.'

'What don't you understand?' I said, adding 'Comrade', for
there is never anything lost by being civil. 'Any assistance I can
give in the way of solving any little problems you may have will
be freely given. I am only here to help.'

The amount of sunny charm I had put into these words
ought to have melted the reserve of a brass monkey, but they
got absolutely nowhere with him. He continued to eye me in
an Aunt Agathaesque manner.

'It seems odd, if as you say you are the merest acquaintance,
that she should be paying you clandestine visits at your cottage.
Taken in conjunction with your surreptitious appearance at
Eggesford Court, it cannot but invite suspicion.'

When someone talks like that, using words like 'clandestine'
and 'surreptitious' and saying that something cannot but invite
suspicion, the prudent man watches his step. It was a great
relief to me that I had a watertight explanation. I gave it with
a winning frankness which I felt could scarcely fail to bring
home the bacon.

'My appearance at Eggesford Court wasn't surreptitious. I
was there because I had come to the wrong house. And Miss
Cook's visit to my cottage had to be clandestine because her
father watches her as closely as the paper on the wall. And she
visited my cottage because there was no other way of getting in
touch with you. She didn't know you were in Maiden
Eggesford, and she thought if you wrote her a letter that Pop
would intercept it, he being a man who would intercept a
daughter's letter at the drop of a hat.'

It sounded absolutely copper-bottomed to me, but he went
on giving me the eye.

'All the same,' he said, 'I find it curious that she should have
confided in you. It suggests an intimacy.'

'Oh, I wouldn't call it that. Girls I hardly know confide in
me. They look upon me as a father figure.'

'Father figure my foot. Any girl who takes you for a father
figure ought to have her head examined.'

'Well, let us say a brother figure. They know their secrets are
safe with good old Bertie.'

'I'm not so sure you are good old Bertie. More like a snake
who goes about the place robbing men of the women they love,
if you ask me.'

'Certainly not,' I protested, learning for the first time that
this was what snakes did.

'Well, it looks fishy to me,' he said. Then to my relief
he changed the subject. 'Do you know a man named
Spofforth?'

I said No, I didn't think so.

'P. B. Spofforth. Big fellow with a clipped moustache.'

'No, I've never met him.'

'And you won't for some time. He's in hospital.'

'Too bad. What sent him there?'

'I did. He kissed the woman I love at the annual picnic of
the Slade Social and Outing Club. Have you ever kissed the
woman I love, Wooster?'

'Good Lord, no.'

'Be careful not to. Did she make a long stay at your cottage?'

'No, very short. In and out like a flash, Just had time to say
you were like a knight in shining armour riding up on a white
horse and to tell me to tell you to show up at my address
tomorrow at three on the dot, and she was off.'

This seemed to soothe him. He went on brooding but now
not so much like Jack the Ripper getting up steam for his next
murder. He was not, however, quite satisfied.

'I don't call it much of an idea meeting at your cottage,' he
said.

'Why not?'

'We shall have you underfoot all the time.'

'Oh, that's all right, Comrade. I shall be going for a walk.'

'Ah,' he said, brightening visibly. 'Going for a walk, eh? Just
the thing to do. Capital exercise. Bring the roses to your
cheeks. Take your time. Don't hurry back. They tell me there
are beauty spots around here well worth seeing.'

And on this cordial note we parted, he to go to the bar for
another gin and ginger, I to go back and tell Vanessa that the
pourparlers
had been completed and that he would be at the
starting post at three pip-emma on the morrow.

'How did he look?' she asked, all eagerness.

It was a little difficult to answer this, because he had looked
like a small-time gangster with a painful gum-boil, but I threw
together a tactful word or two which, as Jeeves would say, gave
satisfaction, and she buzzed off.

Jeeves came shimmering in shortly after she had left. He
seemed a shade perturbed.

'We were interrupted in our recent conversation, sir.'

'We were, Jeeves, and I am glad to say that I no longer need
your advice. During your absence the situation has become
clarified. A meeting has been arranged and will shortly take
place, in fact here at this cottage at three o'clock tomorrow
afternoon. I, not wishing to intrude, shall be going for a walk.'

'Extremely gratifying, sir,' he said, and I agreed with him
that he had
tetigisti-
ed the
rem acu.

At five minutes to three on the following afternoon I had
girded my loins and was preparing to iris out, when
Vanessa Cook arrived. The sight of me appeared to displease
her. She frowned as if I were something that didn't smell just
right, and said:

'Haven't you gone yet?'

I considered this a shade brusque, even for a proud beauty,
but, true to my resolve to be
preux,
I responded suavely:

'Just going.'

'Well, go,' she said, and I went.

The street outside was as usual, offering little
entertainment to the sightseer. A few centenarians were
dotted about, exchanging reminiscences of the Boer War, and
the eye detected a dog which had interested itself in
something it had found in the gutter, but otherwise it was
empty. I walked down it and had a look at the Jubilee
watering-trough and was walking back on the other side,
thinking how pleased E. J. Murgatroyd would be if he could
see me, when I caught sight of the shop which acted as a post
office and remembered that Jeeves had told me that in
addition to selling stamps, picture postcards, socks, boots,
overalls, pink sweets, yellow sweets, string, cigarettes and
stationery it ran a small lending library.

I went in. I had come away rather short of reading matter,
and it never does to neglect one's intellectual side.

Like all village lending libraries, this one had not bothered
much about keeping itself up to date, and I was hesitating
between
By Order Of The Czar
and
The Mystery Of A Hansom
Cab,
which seemed the best bets, when the door opened to
Angelica Briscoe, the personable wench I had met at lunch.
The vicar's daughter, if you remember.

Her behaviour on seeing me was peculiar. She suddenly
became all conspiratorial, as if she had been a Nihilist in
By
Order Of The Czar
meeting another Nihilist. I had not yet read
that opus, but I assumed that it was full of Nihilists who were
always meeting other Nihilists and plotting dark plots with
them. She clutched my arm and lowering her voice to a sinister
whisper said:

'Has he brought it yet?'

I missed her drift by a wide margin. I like to think of myself
as a polished man of the world who can kid back and forth
with a pretty girl as well as the next chap, but I must confess
that my only response to this query was a silent goggle. It
struck me as unusual that a vicar's daughter should be a
member of a secret society, but I could think of no other
explanation for her words. They had sounded like a secret
code, the sort of thing you haven't a hope of making sense of
if you aren't a unit of The Uncanny Seven in good standing
with all your dues paid up.

Eventually I found speech. Not much of it, but some.

'Eh?' I said.

She seemed to feel that her question had been answered.
Her manner changed completely. She dropped the
By Order Of
The Czar
stuff and became the nice girl who in all probability
played the organ in her father's church.

'I see he hasn't. But of course one has to give him time for a
job like that.'

'Like what?'

'I can't explain. Here's Father.'

And the Reverend Briscoe ambled in, his purpose, as it
appeared immediately, to purchase half a pound of the pink
sweets and half a pound of the yellow as a present for the
more deserving of his choir boys. His presence choked the
personable wench off from further revelations, and the only
conversation that followed had to do with the weather, the
condition of the church roof and how-well-your-aunt-is
looking-it-was-such-a-pleasure-seeing-her-again. And after a
few desultory exchanges I left them and resumed my walk.

It is always difficult to estimate the time two sundered
hearts, unexpectedly reunited, will require for picking up the
threads. To be on the safe side I gave Orlo and Vanessa about
an hour and a half, and when I returned to the cottage I found
I had called my shots correctly. Both had legged it.

I was still much perplexed by that utterance of Angelica
Briscoe's. The more I brooded on it, the more cryptic, if that's
the word, it became. 'Has he brought it yet?', I mean to say.
Has who? Brought what? I called Jeeves in, to see what he
made of it.

'Tell me, Jeeves,' I said. 'Suppose you were in a shop taking
By Order Of The Czar
out of the lending library and a clergyman's
daughter came in and without so much as a preliminary
"Hullo, there", said to you, "Has he brought it yet?", what
interpretation would you place on those words?'

He pondered, this way and that dividing the swift mind, as
I have heard him put it.

' "Has he brought it yet", sir?'

'Just that.'

'I should reach the conclusion that the lady was expecting a
male acquaintance to have arrived or to be arriving shortly
bearing some unidentified object.'

'Exactly what I thought. What unidentified object we shall
presumably learn in God's good time.'

'No doubt, sir.'

'We must wait patiently till all is revealed.'

'Yes, sir.'

'In the meantime, pigeon-holing that for the moment, did
Miss Cook and Mr Porter have their conference all right?'

'Yes, sir, they conversed for some time.'

'In low, throbbing voices?'

'No, sir, the voices of both lady and gentleman became
noticeably raised.'

'Odd. I thought lovers generally whispered.'

'Not when an argument is in progress, sir.'

'Good Lord. Did they have an argument?'

'A somewhat acrimonious one, sir, plainly audible in the
kitchen, where I was reading the volume of Spinoza which you
so kindly gave me for Christmas. The door happened to be ajar.'

'So you were an earwitness?'

'Throughout, sir.'

'Tell me all, Jeeves.'

'Very good, sir. I must begin by explaining that Mr Cook is
trustee for a sum of money left to Mr Porter by his late uncle,
who appears to have been a partner of Mr Cook in various
commercial enterprises.'

'Yes, I know about that. Porter told me.'

'Until Mr Cook releases this money Mr Porter is in no
position to marry. I gathered that his present occupation is not
generously paid.'

'He's an insurance salesman. Didn't I tell you that I had
taken out an accident policy with him?'

'Not that I recall, sir.'

'And a life policy as well, both for sums beyond the dreams
of avarice. He talked me into it. But I mustn't interrupt you.
Go on telling me all.'

'Very good, sir. Miss Cook was urging Mr Porter to
demand an interview with her father.'

'In order to make him cough up?'

'Precisely, sir. "Be firm", I heard her say. "Throw your
weight about. Look him in the eye and thump the table."'
'She specified that?'

'Yes, sir.'

'To which he replied?'

'That any time he started thumping tables in the presence of
Mr Cook you could certify him as mentally unbalanced and
ship him off to the nearest home for the insane – or loony-bin,
as he phrased it.'

'Strange.'

'Sir?'

'I wouldn't have thought Porter would have shown such
what-is-it.'

'Would pusillanimity be the word for which you are
groping, sir?'

'Quite possibly. I know it begins with pu. I said it was
strange because I hadn't supposed these knights in shining
armour were afraid of anything.'

'Apparently they make an exception in the case of Mr Cook.
I gathered from your account of your visit to Eggesford Court
that he is a gentleman of somewhat formidable personality.'

'You gathered right. Ever hear of Captain Bligh of the
Bounty?'

'Yes, sir. I read the book.'

'I saw the movie. Ever hear of Jack the Ripper?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Put them together and what have you got? Cook. It's that
hunting crop of his chiefly. You can face a man with fortitude
if he has simply got the disposition of a dyspeptic rattlesnake
and confines himself to coarse abuse, but put a hunting crop in
his hand and that spells trouble. It was a miracle that I escaped
from Eggesford Court with my trouser seat unscathed. But go
on, Jeeves. What happened then?'

'May I marshal my thoughts, sir?'

'Certainly. Marshal them all you want.'

'Thank you, sir. One aims at coherence.'

Marshalling his thoughts took between twenty and thirty
seconds. At the end of that period he resumed his blow-by-
blow report of the dust-up between Vanessa Cook and
O. J. Porter, which was beginning to look like the biggest
thing that had happened since Gene Tunney and Jack
Dempsey had their dispute at Chicago.

'It was almost immediately after Mr Porter's refusal to go to
Mr Cook and thump tables that Miss Cook introduced the cat
into the conversation.'

'Cat? What cat?'

'The one you met at Eggesford Court, with which the horse
Potato Chip formed such a durable friendship. Miss Cook was
urging Mr Porter to purloin it.'

'Golly!'

'Yes, sir. The female of the species is more deadly than the
male.'

Neatly put, I thought.

'Your own?' I said.

'No, sir. A quotation.'

'Well, carry on,' I said, thinking what a lot of good things
Shakespeare had said in his time. Female of species deadlier
than male. You had only to think of my Aunt Agatha and
spouse to realize the truth of this. 'I get the idea, Jeeves. Porter,
in possession of the cat, would have a bargaining point with
Cook when it came to discussing trust funds.'

'Precisely, sir.
Rem acu tetigisti
.'

'So I take it that he is now at Eggesford Court putting the
bite on old Captain Bligh.'

'No, sir. His refusal to do as Miss Cook asked was unequivocal.
"Not in a million years" was the expression he used.'

'Not a very co-operative bloke, this O. J. Porter.'

'No, sir.'

'A bit like Balaam's ass,' I said, referring to one of the
dramatis personae who had figured in the examination paper
the time I won the Scripture Knowledge prize at my private
school. 'If you recall, it too dug in its feet and refused to play
ball.'

'Yes, sir.'

'That must have made Miss Cook as sore as a sunburned
neck.'

'I did gather from her remarks that she was displeased. She
accused Mr Porter of being a lily-livered poltroon, and said
that she never wished to speak to him again or hear from him
by letter, telegram or carrier pigeon.'

'Pretty final.'

'Yes, sir.'

I didn't actually heave a sigh, but I sort of half-heaved one.

To a man of sensibility there is always something sort of sad
about young love coming a stinker on the rocks. Myself, I
couldn't imagine anyone wanting to marry Orlo Porter and it
would have jarred me to the soles of my socks if I had had to
marry Vanessa Cook, but they had unquestionably been all for
teaming up, and it seemed a shame that harsh words had come
between them and the altar rails.

However, there was this to be said in favour of the rift, that
it would do Vanessa all the good in the world to find that she
had come up against someone she couldn't say 'Go' to and he
goeth, as the fellow said. I mentioned this to Jeeves, and he
agreed that there was that aspect to the matter.

'Show her that she isn't Cleopatra or somebody.'

'Very true, sir.'

I would gladly have continued our conversation, but I knew
he must be wanting to get back to his Spinoza. No doubt I had
interrupted him just as Spinoza was on the point of solving the
mystery of the headless body on the library floor.

'Right-ho, Jeeves,' I said. 'That'll be all for the moment.'

'Thank you, sir.'

'If any solution of that "Has he brought it yet?" thing occurs
to you, send me an inter-office memo.'

I spoke lightly, but I wasn't feeling so dashed light. Those
cryptic words of Angelica Briscoe had shaken me. They
seemed to suggest that things were going on behind my back
which weren't likely to dome any good. I had suffered so much
in the past from girls of Angelica's age starting something –
Stiffy Byng is a name that springs to the mind – that I have
become wary and suspicious, like a fox that had had the
Pytchley after it for years.

By speaking in riddles, as the expression is, A. Briscoe had
given me a mystery to chew on; and while mysteries are fine in
books – I am never happier than when curled up with the latest
Agatha Christie – you don't want them in your private life, for
that's how you get headaches.

I was beginning to get one now, when my mind was taken
off the throbbing which had started. The front door was open,
and through it came Vanessa Cook.

She bore traces of the recent set-to. The cheeks were
flushed, the eyes glittering, and looking at the teeth one was
left in no doubt that they had been well gnashed in the not too
distant past. Her whole demeanour was that of a girl whose
emotional nature had been stirred up as if a cyclone had hit it.

'Bertie,' she said.

'Hullo?' I said.

'Bertie,' she said, 'I will be your wife.'