Plum Pie (32 page)

"He's down at Westhampton Beach. I was planning to go there this afternoon. Give you a lift, if you like."

"That would be capital."

"We might start as soon as I've phoned Aggie. How long will it take you to pack?"

"Not long."

"Then I'll meet you in the lobby. We’ll stop off for a moment at my place in Great Neck and pick up my things and on the way I'll tell you something about Arnold Pinkney that will make you sit up a bit. Oh yes, and also the latest about Judson Phipps. How about lunch? Have you had yours?"

"Just my usual glass of hot water," said Mr. Bunting. "They serve an excellent hot water here."

 Judson had had his drink and was taking a slightly more cheerful view of his matrimonial future. He was still not quite sure that he had done the right thing in becoming betrothed to Miss Elaine Jepp of the personnel of the ensemble at the Alvin Theatre, but, as Freddie had said, she was not Arlene Pinkney, and it was in quite a tranquil frame of mind that he paid the waiter, asked him which of the two contestants for the forthcoming lightheavyweight contest he fancied, and sauntered out into the lobby. He had scarcely reached it when the door of one of the elevators opened and Mr. Pinkney shot out—a purple and agitated Mr. Pinkney who attached himself to his coat sleeve with a feverish grasp and asked him where that Thing was.

"Thing?" said Judson, not unnaturally at something of a loss, and Mr. Pinkney explained that he was alluding to the bear or whatever it was that he had brought into his stateroom on the previous night. He understood, he said, from Miss Biddle that she had given it back to him.

"Oh, that?" said Judson. "Yes, she didn't seem to want it."

"Well, I want it. Where is it?"

"I gave it to Freddie Threepwood."

"What!"

"He was going to hand it on to the infant son of some buddy of his."

It was impossible for Mr. Pinkney actually to turn pale, but his face became noticeably less mauve. "You must get it back from him."

"Why?"

"Never mind why. I have urgent need of it."

"I think he took it to his house at Great Neck."

"Where is Great Neck?"

"Just outside New York."

"Do you know where Threepwood lives?"

"Oh, sure. I've been there lots of times."

"Then go now. Hire a car and drive there immediately. I can't go myself. I have an important conference in my suite here this afternoon."

As Judson steered his hired car through the traffic in the direction of Great Neck, he found himself wondering, not for the first time, what was the peculiar quality in Arnold Pinkney that made it impossible for a fellow to meet his most unreasonable demands with a curt 'Go fry an egg'. He was still wondering as he turned off the main road and drew up outside the Threepwood home.

It also perplexed him that Mr. Pinkney should be entertaining this positive yearning for the society of a synthetic cinnamon bear for which at their first meeting he had shown such distaste. If ever the stout proprietor of a department store had given the impression of not being fond of cinnamon bears, this stout proprietor was that stout proprietor.

These were deep waters, and Judson soon gave up the attempt to plumb them, for sustained thinking always made his head ache. Alighting from the car, he rang the front door bell. Nothing happened. He rang again, and once more nothing happened. The house appeared to be uninhabited, and there presented itself the problem of what to do next.

There were windows on each side of the front door, and peering through them he saw suitcases. And on top of one of the suitcases was the cinnamon bear, its customary silly smile on its face, and it suddenly occurred to Judson that in the middle of the day like this the front door would probably not be locked. He tested it, and found that his supposition had been correct.

He did not hesitate. If this had been some stranger's house, it would have been different, but a lifelong friend like Freddie would naturally have no objection to him treating the place as his own. 'Go to it,' Freddie would have said, and he went to it. And he had just picked up the cinnamon bear and was about to return with it to his car, when a voice behind him, speaking with a startling abruptness, said 'Hands up!', and turning he perceived a young woman in a pink dressing gown and slippers. Her mouth was set in a determined line, and her tow-coloured hair was adorned with gleaming curling pins. In her right hand, pointed at his head, she held a revolver.

The burglary at the Witherspoons down the road had made a deep impression on Lana Tuttle, causing her to purchase from her own private funds the firearm without which in her opinion no American home was complete. Only this morning she had offered to give the mail man attractive odds that marauders would be around at Chez Threepwood before either of them was much older, and here, just as she had predicted, was one of them, a nasty, furtive, spectacled miscreant probably well known to the police, who are notorious for their fondness for low company.

It is not given to every girl who .makes prophecies to find those prophecies fulfilled within a few short hours of their utterance, and the emotions of Lana Tuttle were akin to those of one who sees the long shot romp in ahead of the field or who unexpectedly solves the crossword puzzle. Mixed, therefore, with her disapproval of Judson was a feeling almost of gratitude to him for being there. Of fear she felt no trace. She presented the pistol with a firm hand.

One calls it a pistol for the sake of technical accuracy. To Judson's startled senses it appeared like a bazooka, and so deeply did he feel regarding it that he made it the subject of his opening remark—which, by all the laws of etiquette, should have been a graceful apology for and explanation of his intrusion.

"You shouldn't point guns at people," he urged.

"Well, you shouldn't come breaking into people's houses," said Lana, and Judson felt a good deal reassured by the level firmness of her tone. This was plainly not one of those neurotic, fluttering females whose index finger cannot safely be permitted within a foot of a pistol trigger.

"I only came to get something."

"I'll bet you did."

"This bear. Freddie wants it, Mrs. Threepwood."

"Who are you calling Mrs. Threepwood?"

"Aren't you Mrs. Threepwood?"

"No."

"You aren't married to Mr. Threepwood?"

"No, I'm not."

Judson was a broadminded young man.

"Ah, well, in the sight of God, no doubt.''

"I'm the cook."

"Oh, that explains it."

"Explains what?"

"It seemed a trifle odd for a moment that you should be popping around here with your hair in curlers and your little white ankles peeping out from under a dressing gown."

"Coo!" said Lana in a modest flutter. She performed a swift
adjustment of the garment's folds. "Keep your hands up."

"But I'm getting cramp."

"Serves you right."

"But listen, my dear little girl---"

"Less of it!" said Lana austerely. "It's a bit thick if a girl can't catch a burglar without having him start to flirt with her. I'm going to call the cops."

"And have them see you in curling pins?"

"What's wrong with my curling pins?"

"Nothing, nothing," said Judson hastily. "I admire them."

"And they won't see me in curling pins, because I shan't call them till I've dressed. I'm going to put you in the cellar and lock you in till they come. Skip lively."

Judson did as directed.

When coping with the New York traffic, Freddie was always a driver of silent habit. It was not till the Triborough Bridge was passed and the road had become somewhat clearer that he embarked on the narrative which he had predicted would make Mr. Bunting sit up a bit, starting Chapter One with the tale of Arnold Pinkney's smuggling activities.

"I wouldn't have thought it could be done," he concluded. "There was Pinkney, his baggage literally bursting with diamond necklaces, and there was this Customs bloke, all eagerness to catch him bending, and not a thing happened. The trunks were opened, the bloke went through them like a dose of salts, and what ensued? Not a trace of any diamond necklace. Where, one asks oneself, could he have concealed the ruddy thing? It's inexplicable. Old Pinkney isn't a man I'm fond of…he's utterly unsound on dog biscuits, and he refuses to loosen up for poor old Joe…but I don't mind telling you all this has given me a grudging respect for him. You have to take your hat off to a man who can do down the New York Customs."

Mr. Bunting agreed that it was a feat to be proud of, and expressed surprise that Mr. Pinkney should have been capable of it. It just showed, he said, that there is unsuspected good in all of us.

"Well, you promised to make me sit up, my dear Freddie," he said. "And I am sitting up. Have you similarly sensational news to tell me of Judson Phipps? You hinted, if you remember, that you could a tale unfold about him whose lightest word would harrow up my soul, freeze my young—or, rather, elderly— blood and make my two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres. What is the latest concerning Judson?"

"Oh, Juddy? Yes, I was coming to that. You know he's a two-time loser?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"I mean he's had two breach of promise cases already. Well, he's engaged again."

"You don't say! "

"I don't know who she is, but he took her to lunch today and proposed over the coffee." Mr. Bunting blessed his soul.

"Amazing! The effect of the sea air, no doubt. I have often speculated," said Mr. Bunting, "as to why our Judson does these things. Is it because he is unusually susceptible or does he ask them to marry him just because he can't think of anything to say and feels he must keep the conversation going somehow? Well, more work for Bunting and Satterthwaite."

"You think there's another breach of promise case in the offing?"

"Inevitable, I should say."

"He may not want to get out of this one."

"I doubt it, Did you ever see Gilbert and Sullivan's Trial by Jury? I played the Usher in Trial by Jury once in my younger days. At a village in Hampshire in aid of the church organ fund."

"I wish I'd been there."

"Yes, you missed an unforgettable experience. But what I was going to say was that Judson Phipps always reminds me of the Defendant in that operetta. To refresh your memory, he was constantly getting engaged and then changing his mind and sneaking out of it. Judson does the same, and it always ends in him having to come to Bunting and Satterthwaite to arrange a settlement."

Mr. Bunting fell into a reverie, no doubt on the subject of prospective fees, and did not speak again till the car arrived at its destination, when he said that Freddie had a nice place here, to which Freddie responded that it was a home and he liked it.

They entered the living-room, conversing amiably, and up in her bedroom Lana Tuttle, removing the last of the hair curlers, heard their voices and burned with justifiable indignation. That a solitary burglar should have invaded her privacy was more or less what a girl had to expect if she left Bottleton East and came to America, but a group or flock of marauders, chatting with one another as if the place belonged to them, was too much. Seizing her revolver, she descended the stairs three at a time and burst into the living-room.

"Hands up!" she cried. "Oh, it's you, Mr. T. Sorry, ducks, I thought you were a burglar."

"At this time in the afternoon?"

"They keep all hours. I've got one in the cellar now. I'll bring him up, shall I, so you can have a look at him."

"Tell me, Freddie," said Mr. Bunting, "is this sort of thing the normal run of life in America? It is my first visit to that great country, and I should like to know the ropes. Sugar daddies, I learn from the Press, are frequently surprised in love nests, but does the domestic help go about with guns as a general rule and deposit burglars in cellars?"

"If you ask me, I think the girl has flipped her cork."

"The expression is new to me, but I gather that you feel that she is mentally unbalanced. Do you?"

"Looks like it. What on earth would a burglar be doing...Good Lord! Juddy!"

Judson had entered, slightly soiled from his sojourn among the coal, and he was closely followed by Lana Tuttle, who seemed to be prodding him in the small of the back with her weapon. At the sight of Freddie his sombre face lightened, excluding the portions of it which were covered with coal dust.

"Freddie! Thank God! "

"What on earth is all this about, Juddy?"

"It's a long story. Would you mind telling this girl to take her damned pistol out of my ribs."

"It's all right, Lana. This is a friend of mine."

"Well, why didn't he say so? I caught him getting away with your plaything."

"My what?"

"That bear," said Lana Tuttle. "If it is a bear."

"I can explain everything, Freddie. Just get rid of this female. That's all I ask. Oh, hullo, Mr. Bunting," said Judson, seeing him for the first time. "What are you doing in America?"

"A business trip. But I'm not too engrossed in my business to listen to what should be an interesting story." "Nor me," said Freddie. "You can leave us, Lana."

"Pop off?"

"That's right."

"Well, if you think it's safe, love," said Lana Tuttle.

When Judson told a story, as he sometimes did when flushed with wine, it was not often that he riveted the attention of his. hearers, they being inclined to interrupt at an early point in the proceedings and start to tell what they considered better ones, but on this occasion it would not be too much to say that he held his audience spellbound.

All Freddie could find to say, when he had concluded his narrative, was that the evidence seemed to point to Arnold Pinkney having, as he had unjustly suspected Lana Tuttle of doing, flipped his cork, but Mr. Bunting with his special knowledge saw deeper into the matter.

"Tell me, Judson," he said, "have you looked inside that object?"

"No. Why?"

"Has Arnold Pinkney ever had access to it?"

"Of course not. Yes, he has, though. I left it in his stateroom last night."