Service with a Smile (13 page)

‘Where’s
that damned Briggs woman?’ he demanded, snapping out the words as if he had
been a master of men and not a craven accustomed to curl up in a ball at the
secretary’s lightest glance. ‘Have you seen that blasted female anywhere,
Constance? I’ve been looking for her all over the place.’

Normally,
Lady Constance would have been swift to criticize such laxity of speech, but
until his belligerent mood had blown over she knew that the voice of authority
must be silent.

‘I let
her go to London for the night,’ she replied almost meekly.

‘So you
did,’ said Lord Emsworth. He had forgotten this, as he forgot most things. ‘Yes,
that’s right, she told me. I’m going to London, she said, yes, I remember now.’

‘Why do
you want Miss Briggs?’

Lord Emsworth,
who had shown signs of calming down a little, returned to boiling point. His
pince-nez flew off his nose and danced at the end of their string, their
practice whenever he was deeply stirred.

I’m
going to sack her!’

‘What!’

‘She
doesn’t stay another day in the place. I’ve just been sacking Wellbeloved.’

It
would be putting it too crudely to say that Lady Constance bleated, but the
sound that proceeded from her did have a certain resemblance to the utterance
of a high-strung sheep startled while lunching in a meadow. She was not one of
George Cyril Wellbeloved’s warmest admirers, but she knew how greatly her
brother valued his services and she found it incredible that he should
voluntarily have dispensed with them. She could as readily imagine herself
dismissing Beach, that peerless butler. She shrank a little in her chair. The
impression she received was that this wild-eyed man was running amok, and there
shot into her mind those ominous words the Duke had spoken on the previous
afternoon. ‘Definitely barmy,’ he had said. ‘Reached the gibbering stage and
may become dangerous at any moment.’ It was not too fanciful to suppose that
that moment had arrived.

‘But,
Clarence!’ she cried, and Lord Emsworth, who had recovered his pince-nez,
waved them at her in a menacing manner, like a retarius in the Roman arena
about to throw his net.

‘It’s
no good sitting there saying “But, Clarence! “‘ he said, replacing the
pince-nez on his nose and glaring through them. ‘I told him he’d got to be out
of the place in ten minutes or I’d be after him with a shot-gun.’

‘But,
Clarence!’

‘Don’t
keep saying that!’

‘No,
no, I’m sorry. I was only wondering why.’

Lord Emsworth
considered the question. It seemed to him a fair one.

‘You
mean why did I sack him? I’ll tell you why I sacked him. He’s a snake in the
grass. He ad the Briggs woman were plotting to steal my pig.’

‘What!’

‘Are
you deaf? I said they were plotting to steal the Empress.’

‘But
Clarence!’

‘And if
you say “But, Clarence!” once more, just once more,’ said Lord Emsworth
sternly, ‘I’ll know what to do about it. I suppose what you’re trying to tell
me is that you don’t believe me.’

‘How
can I believe you? Miss Briggs came with the highest testimonials. She is a
graduate of the London School of Economics.’

‘Well,
apparently the course she took there was the one on how to steal pigs.’

‘But,
Clarence!’

‘I have
warned you, Constance!’

‘I’m
sorry. I meant you must be mistaken.’

‘Mistaken
be blowed! I had the whole sordid story from the lips of Ickenham’s friend
Meriwether. He told it me in pitiless detail. According to him, some hidden
hand wants the Empress and has bribed the Briggs woman to steal her for him. I
would have suspected Sir Gregory Parsloe as the master-mind behind the plot,
only he’s in the South of France. Though he could have made the preliminary
arrangements by letter, I suppose.’

Lady
Constance clutched her temples.

‘Mr
Meriwether?’

‘You
know Meriwether. Large chap with a face like a gorilla?’

‘But
how could Mr Meriwether possibly have known?’

‘She
told him.’

‘Told
him?’

‘That’s
right. She wanted him to be one of her corps of assistants, working with Wellbeloved.
She approached him yesterday and said that if he didn’t agree to help steal the
Empress, she would expose him. Must have been a nasty shock to the poor fellow.
Not at all the sort of thing you want to have women coming and saying to you.’

Lady
Constance, who had momentarily relaxed her grip on her temples, tightened it
again. She had an uneasy feeling that, unless she did so, her head would split.

‘Expose
him?’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘What do you mean?’

‘What
do I mean? Oh, I see. What do I mean? Yes, quite. I ought to have explained that
oughtn’t I? It seems that his name isn’t Meriwether. It’s something else which
I’ve forgotten. Not that it matters. The point is that the Briggs woman found
out somehow that he was here under an alias, as I believe the expression is,
and held it over him.’

‘You
mean he’s an imposter?’

Lady
Constance spoke with a wealth of emotion. In the past few years Blandings
Castle had been peculiarly rich in imposters, notable among them Lord Ickenham
and his nephew Pongo, and she had reached saturation point as regarded them,
never wanting to see another of them as long as she lived. A hostess gets
annoyed and frets when she finds that every second guest whom she entertains is
enjoying her hospitality under a false name, and it sometimes seemed to her
that Blandings Castle had imposters the way other houses had mice, a circumstance
at which her proud spirit rebelled.

‘Who is
this man?’ she demanded. ‘Who is he?’

‘Ah,
there I’m afraid you rather have me,’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘He told me, but you
know what my memory’s like. I do remember he said he was a curate.’

Lady
Constance had risen from her chair and was staring at him as if instead of her
elder brother he had been the Blandings Castle spectre, a knight in armour
carrying his head in his hand, who was generally supposed to be around and
about whenever there was going to be a death in the family. Ever since she had
discovered that Myra Schoonmaker had formed an attachment to the Reverend
Cuthbert Bailey, any mention of curates had affected her profoundly.

‘What!
What did you say?’

‘When?’

‘Did
you say he was a curate?’

‘Who?’

‘Lord
Ickenham’s friend, Mr Meriwether.’

‘Oh,
ah, yes, quite, Mr. Meriwether, to be sure.’ Lord Emsworth’s fury had expended
itself, and he was now his amiable, chatty — or, as some preferred to call it,
gibbering — self once more. ‘Yes, he’s a curate, he tells me. He doesn’t look
like one, but he is. That was why he refused to be a party to the purloining of
my pig. Being in holy orders, his conscience wouldn’t let him. I must say I
thought it very civil of him to come and warn me of the Briggs woman’s foul
plot, knowing that it would mean her exposing him to you and you cutting up
rough. But he said he had these scruples, and they wouldn’t allow him to remain
silent. A splendid young man, I thought, and very sound on pigs. Odd, because I
didn’t know they had pigs in Brazil, or curates either, for that matter. By the
way, I’ve just remembered his name. It’s Bailey. You want to keep this very
clear, or you’ll get muddled. He’s got two names, one wrong, the other right.
His wrong name’s Meriwether, and his right name’s Bailey.’

Lady
Constance had uttered a wordless cry. She might have known, she was feeling
bitterly, that Lord Ickenham would never have brought a friend to Blandings
Castle unless with some sinister purpose. That much could be taken as read. But
she had never suspected that even he would go to such lengths of depravity as
to introduce the infamous Bailey into her home. So that, she told herself, was
why Myra Schoonmaker had suddenly become so cheerful recently. Her lips
tightened. Well, she was reflecting grimly, it would not be long before Blandings
Castle saw the last of Lord Ickenham and his clerical friend.

‘Yes,
Bailey,’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘The Reverend Cuthbert Bailey. I was telling
Ickenham just now that there was a song years ago called “Won’t you come home,
Bill Bailey?” I used to sing it as a boy. But why he should have brought the
chap here under the name of Meriwether and told me he was in the Brazil-nut
industry, I can’t imagine. Silly kind of thing to do, wouldn’t you say? I mean,
if a fellow’s name’s Bailey, why call him Meriwether? And why say he’s come
from Brazil when he’s come from Bottleton East? Doesn’t make sense.’

‘Clarence!’

‘About
that song,’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘very catchy tune it had. The verse escapes me
— in fact, I don’t believe I ever sang it — but the chorus began “Won’t you
come home, Bill Bailey, won’t you come home?” Now, how did the next line go?
Something about “the whole day long”, and you had to make the “long” two
syllables. “Lo-ong”, if you follow me.’

‘Clarence!’

‘Eh?’

‘Go and
find Lord Ickenham.’

‘Lord
who?’

‘Ickenham.’

‘Oh,
you mean Ickenham. Yes, certainly, of course, de-lighted. I think he usually
goes and lies in that hammock on the lawn after breakfast.’

‘Well,
ask him if he will be good enough to leave his hammock, if it is not
inconveniencing him, and come and see me immediately,’ said Lady Constance.

She
sank into her chair, and sat there breathing softly through the nostrils. A
frozen calm had fallen on her. Her lips had tightened, her eyes were hard, and
even Lord Ickenham, intrepid though he was, might have felt, had he entered at
this moment, a pang of apprehension at the sight of her, so clearly was her
manner that of a woman about to say to her domestic staff, ‘Throw these men
out, and see to it that they land on something sharp.’

Chapter
Seven

1

Breakfast concluded, the
Duke of Dunstable had gone to the terrace, where there was a comfortable
deck-chair in the shade of a spreading tree, to smoke the first cigar of the
day and read his
Times.
But scarcely had he blown the opening puff of
smoke and set eye to print when his peace was destroyed by the same treble
voice which had disturbed him on the previous day. Once more it squeaked in his
ear, and he saw that he had been joined by Lord Emsworth’s grandson George,
who, as on the former occasion, had omitted to announce his presence by blowing
his horn.

He did
not strike the lad, for that would have involved rising from his seat, but he
gave him an unpleasant look. Intrusion on his sacred after-breakfast hour
always awoke the fiend that slept in him.

‘Go
away, boy!’ he boomed.

‘You
mean “Scram! “, don’t you, chum?’ said George, who liked to get these things
right. ‘But I want to confer with you about this tent business.’

‘What
tent business?’

‘That
thing that happened last night.’

‘Oh,
that?’

‘Only
it wasn’t last night, it was this morning. A mysterious affair. Have you formed
any conclusions?’

The
Duke stirred irritably. He was regretting the mistaken kindness that had led
him to brighten Blandings Castle with his presence. It was the old story. You
said to yourself in a weak and sentimental moment that Emsworth and Connie and
the rest of them led dull lives and needed cheering up by association with a
polished man of the world, so you sacrificed yourself and came here, and the
next thing you knew everyone was jumping into lakes and charging you five
hundred pounds for stealing pigs and coming squeaking in your ear and so on and
so forth — in short, making the place a ruddy inferno. He gave an animal snarl,
and even when filtered through his moustache the sound was impressive, though
it left George unmoved. To George it merely seemed that his old friend had got
an insect of some kind in his thoracic cavity.

‘What
do you mean, have I formed any conclusions? Do you think a busy man like myself
has time to bother himself with these trifles? Scram, boy, and let me read my
paper.’

Like
most small boys, George had the quiet persistence of a gadfly. It was never
easy to convince him that his society was not desired by one and all. He
settled himself on the stone flooring beside the Duke’s chair in the manner of
one who has come to stay. Limpets on rocks could have picked up useful hints
from him in the way of technique.

‘This
is a lot hotter news than anything you’ll read in the paper,’ he squeaked. ‘I
have a strange story to relate.’

In
spite of himself, the Duke found that he was becoming mildly interested.

‘I
suppose you know who did it, hey?’ he said satirically.

George
shrugged a shoulder.

‘Beyond
the obvious facts that the miscreant was a Freemason, left-handed, chewed
tobacco and had travelled in the east,’ he said, ‘I have so far formed no
conclusion.’