Berry And Co. (18 page)

Advancing his nose to within an inch and a half of Berry’s chin he blared and raved like a maniac, alternately pointing to his shrinking
protegée
and indicating the blue vault of heaven with frightful emphasis.

Berry regarded him unperturbed. As he paused for breath—

“In answer to your observations,” he said, “I can only say that I am not a Mormon and have absolutely no connection with Salt Lake City. I may add that, if you are partial to garlic, it is a taste which I have never acquired. In conclusion, I hope that, before you reach the platform for which you are apparently making, you will stumble over one of the ridiculously large rings with which the quay is so generously provided, and will not only suffer the most hideous agony, but remain permanently lame as a result of your carelessness.”

The calm dignity with which he delivered this speech had an almost magical effect upon the jealous Latin. His bluster sank suddenly and died. Muttering to himself and staring at Berry as at a wizard, he seized the girl by the arm and started to move rapidly away, wide-eyed and ill at ease… With suppressed excitement and the tail of my eye, I watched him bear down upon one of the stumbling-blocks to which Berry had referred. The accuracy with which he approached it was almost uncanny. I found myself standing upon one leg… The screech of anguish with which he hailed the collision, no less than the precipitancy with which he dropped the guitar, sat down and began to rock himself to and fro, was irresistibly gratifying.

The muscles about Berry’s mouth twitched.

“So perish all traitors,” he said. “And now I don’t know how you feel, but I’ve had about enough of this. My nerves aren’t what they were. Something may snap any minute.”

With one accord we proceeded to rejoin Jill, who had been witnessing our humiliations from a safe distance, and was dabbing her grey eyes with a ridiculous handkerchief.

As we came up, she started forward and pointed a trembling finger in the direction of the boat. Berry and I swung on our heels.

Looking very well, Jonah was descending the gangway with a bored air.

My brother-in-law and I stared at him as at one risen from the dead. Almost at once he saw us and waved airily… A moment later he limped to where we were standing and kissed his sister.

“I had an idea some of you’d turn up,” he said coolly.

Berry turned to me.

“You hear?” he said grimly. “He had an idea some of us’d turn up. An idea… I suppose a little bird told him. Oh, take me away, somebody, and let me die. Let me have one last imitation meal, and die. Where do they sell wild oats?”

Jonah disregarded the interruption.

“At the last moment,” he said calmly, “I felt there might be some mix-up, so I came along too.” He turned and nodded at a nervous little man who was standing self-consciously a few paces away and, as I now observed for the first time, carrying my cousin’s dressing-case. “That,” he added, “is Camille.”

His momentous announcement rendered us speechless. At length—

“You – you mean to say,” I gasped, “that – that it’s a man?”

Jonah shrugged his shoulders.

“Look at his trousers,” he said.

“But – but of course we expected a woman,” cried Jill in a choking voice. “We can’t have a
chef
.”

“Nothing,” said Jonah, “was said about sex.”

Berry spoke in a voice shaken with emotion.

“A man,” he said. “A he-cook, called ‘Camille.’ And it actually occurred to you that ‘there might be some mix-up.’ You know, your intuition is positively supernatural. And it is for this,” he added bitterly, “that I have dissipated in ten crowded minutes a reputation which it has taken years to amass. It is for this that I have deliberately insulted several respectable ladies, jeopardized the
Entente Cordiale
, and invited personal violence of a most unpleasant character. To do this I shall have travelled about a hundred and fifty miles, with the shade temperature at ninety, and lost what would have been an undoubtedly pleasant and possibly extremely fruitful day at Sandown Park. Don’t be afraid. I wouldn’t touch you for worlds. You’re being reserved for some very special form of dissolution, you are. She-bears, or something. I should avoid woods, any way. And now I’m going home. Tomorrow I shall start on a walking tour, with a spare sock and some milk chocolate, and try to forget. If that fails, I shall take the snail – I mean the veil.”

He turned on his heel and stalked haughtily in the direction of the boat train.

Gurgling with merriment, Jill laid a hand on my arm.

“Daphne will simply scream,” she said.

“If this little stunt has cost us Pauline,” said I, “she won’t leave it at that.”

We turned to follow my brother-in-law.

Jonah beckoned to Camille.

“Venez. Restez Près de moi
,” he said.

On arriving at Charing Cross we left Jonah and the cook to weather the Customs, and drove straight to Cholmondeley Street.

As we entered the hall, my sister came flying out of the library.

“Hello,” she cried, “where’s the cook? Don’t say—”

Berry uncovered.

“
Pardon, madame
,” he said, “
mais vous êtes Camille Franç
– That’s your cue. Now you say ‘Serwine!’ Just like that. ‘Serwine!’ Put all the loathing you can into it – you’ll find it can hold quite a lot – and fix me with a glassy eye. Then I blench and break out into a cold sweat. Oh, it’s a great game.”

“Poor old chap,” said Daphne. “It must have been awful. But haven’t you got her?”

“It’s a he!” cried Jill, squeaking with excitement. “It’s a he. Jonah’s bringing him—”

“A
what
?” said my sister, taking a pace backward.

“A male,” said I. “You know. Like Nobby. Separate legs, and shaves on Thursdays.”

“Do you mean to say that it’s a
chef
?”

I nodded.

My sister collapsed into a convenient chair and closed her eyes. Presently she began to shake with laughter.

“It is droll, isn’t it?” said Berry. “People wouldn’t believe it. Fancy travelling a hundred and fifty miles to molest a lot of strange women, and then finding that for all the good you’ve done you might as well have spent the day advertising for ‘The Lost Chord.’”

My sister pulled herself together.

“Thank goodness, I had the sense to engage Pauline,” she announced. “Something told me I’d better. But I waited before taking up her reference, on the off-chance of this one being a marvel. Where is the wretched man?”

“Jonah fetched up with him. He’s stayed behind because of the Customs. They ought to be here any minute.”

“Well, there’s no place for him to sleep here,” said Daphne. “Fitch will have to look after him for tonight, and tomorrow he’ll have to go back.”

Berry looked at his watch.

“Five past seven,” he said. “As the blighter’s here, why not let him sub-edit the dinner tonight? It’ll shorten his life, but it may save ours. You never know.”

My sister hesitated. Then—

“He’ll never do it,” she said. “I can suggest it, but, if he’s anything of a cook, he’ll go off the deep end at once.”

“And give notice,” said I. “Well, that’s exactly what we want. Then we shan’t have to fire him. He can just push off quietly tomorrow, Pauline will roll up on Monday, and everything will be lovely in the garden.”

“That’s it,” said Berry. “If he consents, well and good. If he declines, so much the better. It’s a blinkin’ certainty. Whichever happens, we can’t lose.”

“All right,” said Daphne. “I shall make Jonah tell him.”

It took Jonah and M. François longer to satisfy the officers of His Majesty’s Customs and Excise than we had anticipated, and I had consumed a much-needed whisky and soda and was on the way to the bathroom when I heard them arrive.

Before I had completed a leisurely toilet, it was all over.

As we waited in the lounge of the
Carlton
Grill for a table, which we had been too late to reserve, my sister related the circumstances which had led to the
débâcle
.

“The wretched little man didn’t seem to take to the idea of starting in right away, but I explained that he needn’t do any more than just run his eye over the
menu
, and that, as they were going to have the same dinner in the servants’ hall, it really only amounted to looking after his own food.

“Then I sent for Falcon, explained things, and told him to look after the man this evening, and that I was making arrangements for him to stay with Fitch over the garage. Then I had Mrs Chapel up.”

“That, I take it,” said Berry, “is the nymph lately responsible for the preparation of our food?”

Daphne nodded.

“I told her about François, and that, as he was here, he would help her with dinner tonight. I said he was very clever, and all that sort of thing, and that I wanted her to show him what she was cooking, and listen to any suggestions he had to make.”

“I suppose you added that he couldn’t speak a word of English,” said her husband.

“Be quiet,” said Daphne. “Besides, he can. Several words. Any way, she didn’t seem over-pleased, but, as Pauline’s coming on Monday, that didn’t worry me. So I sent her away, and rang up Fitch and told him he must fix the Frenchman up for the night.”

“Did he seem over-pleased?”

“I didn’t wait to hear. I just rang off quick. Then I went up to dress. The next thing I knew was that they’d tried to murder each other, and that Camille had bitten William, and Nobby’d bitten Camille. I don’t suppose we shall ever know exactly what happened.”

So far as we had been able to gather from the butler, who had immediately repaired to Daphne’s room for instructions, and was labouring under great excitement, my sister’s orders had been but grudgingly obeyed. Mrs Chapel had been ill-tempered and obstructive, and had made no attempt to disguise her suspicion of the
chef
. The latter had consequently determined to be as nasty as the circumstances allowed, had eyed her preparations for dinner with a marked contempt, and had communed visibly and audibly with himself in a manner which it was impossible to mistake. Finally he had desired to taste the soup which she was cooking. Poor as his English was, his meaning was apparent, but the charwoman had affected an utter inability to understand what he said. This had so much incensed the Frenchman that the other servants had intervened and insisted on Mrs Chapel’s compliance with his request. With an ill grace she snatched the lid from the saucepan…

Everything was now in train for a frightful explosion. In bitterness the fuse had been laid, the charge of passion was tamped, the detonator of spleen was in position. Only a match was necessary…

Camille François, however, preferred to employ a torch.

After allowing the fluid to cool, the Frenchman – by this time the cynosure of sixteen vigilant eyes – introduced a teaspoonful into his mouth…

The most sanguine member of his audience was hardly expecting him to commend the beverage. Mrs Chapel herself must have felt instinctively that no man born of woman would in the circumstances renounce such a magnificent opportunity of “getting back.” Nobody, however, was apparently prepared for so vigorous and dramatic an appreciation of the dainty.

For the space of two seconds the
chef
held it cupped in his mouth. Then with an expression of deadly loathing, intensified by a horrible squint, he expelled the liquid on to the kitchen floor. Ignoring the gasp which greeted his action, he was observed to shrug his shoulders.

“I veep my eyes,” he announced, “for ze pore pig.”

Here the steady flood of the butler’s narrative became excusably broken into the incoherence of rapids and the decent reticence of disappearing falls. Beyond the fact that Mrs Chapel had swung twice to the jaw, and that Camille had replied with an ineffectual kick before they were dragged screaming apart, few details of the state of pandemonium that ensued came to our ears. I imagine that a striking
tableau vivant
somewhat on the lines of Meissonier’s famous painting was unconsciously improvised. That three maids hardly restrained Mrs Chapel, that the footman who sought to withhold Camille was bitten for his pains by the now ravening Frenchman, that the latter was only saved from the commission of a still more aggravated assault by the timely arrival of the butler, that Nobby, attracted by the uproar, contributed to the confusion first by barking like a demoniac and then by inflicting a punctured wound upon the calf of the alien’s leg, we learned more by inference and deduction than by direct report. That our impending meal would be more than usually unappetizing was never suggested. That was surmise upon our part, pure and simple. The conviction, however, was so strong that the repast was cancelled out of hand.

Mrs Chapel was dismissed and straitly charged never to return. Camille was placed in the custody of the chauffeur and escorted to the latter’s rooms above the garage, to be returned to France upon the following morning. Nobby was commended for his discrimination. Jonah was reviled.

All this, however, took time. The respective dismissal and disposal of the combatants were not completed until long past eight, and it was almost nine before we sat down to dinner.

“I think,” said Daphne faintly, “I should like some champagne.”

Berry ordered the wine.

It was abnormally hot, and the doors that were usually closed were set wide open.

From the street faint snatches of a vibrant soprano came knocking at our tired ears.

Mechanically we listened.

“
When you come to the end of a perfect day…”

Berry turned to me.

“They must have seen us come in,” he said.

It was with a grateful heart that I telegraphed the first thing on Saturday morning to Mrs Hamilton Smythe of Fair Lawns, Torquay, asking
pro forma
, whether Pauline Roper, now in her service, was sober, honest and generally to be recommended to be engaged as cook.

As she had been for six years with the lady, and was only leaving because the latter was quitting England to join her husband in Ceylon, it was improbable that the reference would be unflattering. Moreover, Daphne had taken to her at once. Well-mannered, quiet, decently attired and respectful, she was obviously a long way superior to the ordinary maid. Indeed, she had admitted that her father, now dead, had been a clergyman, and that she should have endeavoured to obtain a position as governess if, as a child, she had received anything better than the rudest education. She had, she added, been receiving fifty pounds a year. Hesitatingly she had inquired whether, since the employment was only temporary, we should consider an increase of ten pounds a year unreasonable.