Sunset at Blandings

CONTENTS

Sunset at Blandings

Appendices by Richard Usborne:

Work in Progress
The Castle and its Surroundings
The Trains Between Paddington and Market Blandings

CHAPTER ONE

SIR JAMES PIPER, England’s
Chancellor of the Exchequer, sat in his London study staring before him with
what are usually called unseeing eyes and snorting every now and then like
somebody bursting a series of small paper bags. Sherlock Holmes, had he seen
him, would have deduced instantly that he was not in a good temper.

‘Elementary,
my dear Watson,’ he would have said. ‘Those snorts tell the story.’

And
Claude Duff, Sir James’s junior secretary, who had been intending to ask him if
he could have the day off to go and see his aunt at Eastbourne, heard these
snorts and changed his mind. He was a nervous young man.

Holmes
would have been right. Sir James had been in the worst of humours ever since
his sister Brenda had told him that he was to go to Blandings Castle, the
Shropshire seat of Clarence, Earl of Emsworth, when he had been planning a
fishing holiday in Scotland. And what was worse, he had got to take a girl with
him and deliver her to the custody of Lord Emsworth’s sister Florence. He
disliked modern girls. They were jumpy. They wriggled and giggled. They had no
conversation. A long motor journey beside one of them, having to stare at
Sergeant Murchison’s back all the way, would test him sorely, and not for the
first time he found himself wishing that he had a stronger will or,
alternatively, that Brenda had a weaker one. Lord Emsworth, that vague and
dreamy peer, would have told him that he knew just how he felt. He, too, was a
great sufferer from the tyranny of sisters, of whom he had sufficient to equip
half a dozen earls.

It was
Brenda who had forced James into politics when a distant relative had left him
all that money in her will. He had been at the time a happy young
lad-about-town wanting nothing but to remain a happy young lad-about-town, but
Brenda was adamant. It is said that there is a woman behind every successful man,
and never had the statement been proved more remarkably than in the case of
young Jimmy Piper.

Today
he thoroughly enjoyed politics and the eminence to which he had risen, and he
knew that he would never have done it without her behind him with a spiked
stick. Often in the early days he had wanted to give the whole thing up — he
could still recall with a shudder what a priceless ass he had felt when making
his first appearance before the electors of Pudbury-in-the-Vale — but Brenda
would have none of it. He supposed he ought to feel grateful to her, and as a
rule he did, but when she suddenly produced girls like rabbits out of a hat,
gratitude turned to sullen wrath and he felt justified in snorting with even
more vehemence.

Brenda
came in as he increased the voltage of his eleventh snort, a formidable figure,
formidably dressed. Had she been weaker, she might have shown sympathy for the
stricken man, but her deportment and words were those of a strong-minded
governess who believed in standing no nonsense from a fractious child.

‘Oh,
really, James, must you make such a crisis of it? You are behaving like an
aristocrat of the French Revolution waiting for the tumbril. I’d like to be
coming with you, but I can’t get away for a day or two. I have that committee
meeting.’

If Sir
James had been a man of greater mettle, a twelfth snort might have escaped him.
As it was, he merely said:

‘Who is
this girl I’m taking to the castle?’

‘Surely
I told you?’

‘You
may have done. I’ve forgotten.’

‘Florence’s
stepdaughter Victoria. Florence most unwisely let her come to London to study
Art, and she has apparently got involved with an impossible young man.
Naturally Florence wants her where she can keep an eye on her.’
[1]

She had
more to say, but at this point a knock on the door interrupted her. There
entered a soberly dressed man who gave the impression of having been carved out
of some durable kind of wood by a sculptor who had received his tuition from an
inefficient tutor. This was Sergeant E. B. Murchison, the detective appointed
by the special branch of Scotland Yard to accompany Sir James wherever he went
and see to it that he came to no harm from the terror by night and the arrow
that flieth by day. He said:

‘The
car is at the door, Sir James.’
[2]

Sir
James made no reply, and Brenda answered for him with a gracious ‘Thank you,
Sergeant’. He withdrew, and Sir James looked after him in a manner most
unsuitable towards an honest helper who was prepared, if necessary, to die in
his defence.

‘God,
how I hate that man,’ he muttered.

It was
the sort of remark which called out all the governess in Brenda. Her face,
always on the stony side, grew stonier. It was as though Sir James had kicked
the furniture or refused to eat his rice pudding.

‘Don’t
be childish, James.’

‘Who’s
being childish?’

‘You’re
being childish. You have no reason whatever to dislike Sergeant Murchison.’

‘Haven’t
I? How would you like being followed around wherever you go? How would you
enjoy being dogged from morning to night by a man who makes you feel as if you
were someone wanted by the police because they think you may be able to assist
them in their enquiries? I expect daily, when I take a bath, to find Murchison
nestling in the soap dish.’

Miss
Piper had no patience with these tantrums.

‘My
dear James, a man in your position has to have protection.’

‘Why?
What’s he supposed to be protecting me
from?
Is Blandings Castle the den
of the Secret Nine? Is Emsworth a modern Macbeth? Is he going to creep into my
room at night with a dagger? And if he does, how can that blasted Murchison
protect me? How can he stop anyone assassinating me if he’s snoring his
repulsive head off a quarter of a mile away? Or will he be sleeping on the mat
outside my door? I don’t know what you’re laughing at,’ said Sir James with
hauteur,
for Brenda’s face had softened into an amused smile.

‘I was
picturing Lord Emsworth as a modern Macbeth.’ Sir James had thought of
something else to complain about.

‘Shall
I be plunging into the middle of a large party? Public dinners are bad enough,
but big country house parties are worse. I always used to hate them, even as a
young man.’

‘Of
course it won’t be a large party. Just Florence and her sister Diana Phipps.
What on earth’s the matter, James?’ said Brenda petulantly, for Sir James had
leaped like one of the trout he was so fond of catching. His eyes were gleaming
with a strange light and he had to gulp before he could speak.

‘Nothing’s
the matter.’

‘You
jumped.’

‘You
surprised me, saying that Diana Phipps was at Blandings. I thought she lived in
East Africa.’

‘You
know her?’

‘I used
to know her ages ago. Before,’ said Sir James, and he spoke bitterly, ‘she
chucked herself away on that ass Rollo
[3]
Phipps.’

‘I
always heard he was very attractive.’

‘If you
call looking like a film star attractive. Not a brain in his head. Spent all
his time shooting big game. My God!’ said Sir James with sudden alarm, ‘There’s
no danger of him being at Blandings?’

‘Not
unless he is haunting the castle. He was killed by a lion years ago.’

‘And
nobody told me!’

‘Why should
anyone tell you?’

‘Because…
because I would have liked to extend my sympathy to Diana.’

One of
the gifts which go to make up the type of super-women to whom Brenda belonged
is the ability to read faces. Brenda had it in full measure, especially where
her brother was concerned.

‘James!’
Her voice was at its keenest. ‘Were you in love with her?’

It
might have been supposed that a man of Sir James’s long experience as a Cabinet
minister would have replied ‘I must have notice of that question’, but excitement
precluded caution. His mind was in a ferment and had flitted back to the days
before he had come into all that money and gone into politics, the days when he
had been plain Jimmy Piper, longing to make an impression on lovely Diana
Threepwood but always tongue-tied, always elbowed to one side by the fellows
with the gift of the gab. It was only later, gradually rising on
stepping-stones of his dead self to higher things, that he had acquired the
politician’s ability to use a great many words when saying nothing.

‘Of
course I was in love with her,’ he replied with defiance. ‘We were all in love
with her. And she went and threw herself away on Rollo Phipps.’

‘Well,
he’s dead now.’

‘Yes,
that’s something.’

‘And
she’s at Blandings.’

‘Yes.’

‘And
you’re going to Blandings.’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re
probably glad of it now.’

‘Yes.’

‘You
intend to ask her to marry you?’

‘Yes.’

‘It
would be an excellent thing for both of you.’

‘Yes.’

‘But
there is one thing I must warn you about. I have never met Diana, but if she is
anything like the other Threepwood girls, she abominates weakness.’
[4]

‘I’m
not weak.’

‘You’re
shy, which can quite easily give that impression. So when you propose, don’t
stammer and yammer. Be firm. Dominate her. Otherwise she won’t look at you.’

‘I’ll
remember.’

‘Mind
you do. Those girls abominate weakness.’

‘You
said that before.’

‘And I
say it again. Look at Florence and her husband.’

‘I
always thought Underwood was one of those steel and iron American millionaires.’

‘Her
second husband. Underwood died, and she married a man who couldn’t say Bo to a
goose.’

‘Very
rude of him if he did, unless he knew the goose very well.’

‘That’s
why Florence and her husband are separated.’

‘They
are, are they?’

‘He’s
weak. You wouldn’t think it to look at him, because he’s one of those
extraordinary virile men in appearance. If you can imagine a Greek god with a
small clipped moustache … You had better be starting, James. You heard
Sergeant Murchison say the car was waiting.’