The Girl in Blue (10 page)

‘Threats?’

‘Yes,
sir, threats. He said he’d get even with me. He said he’d make me wish I’d
never been born.’

‘I don’t
like that.’

‘Nobody
would like it, sir, particularly with that Marlene Hibbs standing by and
laughing fit to split.’

‘Tut.’

‘You
may well say ‘Tut”, sir. Not to mention making allusions to the Gestapo and
calling me the fuzz, which is an expression she must have picked up at the
cinema.’

‘Monstrous,’
said Crispin, ‘monstrous.’ But what can I do?’

‘Dismiss
him from your service, sir. He is a disruptive element.’

It was
a policy which Crispin would have been most happy to pursue, but there were
reasons, impossible to explain, why he was not at liberty to dismiss butlers
from his service. All his sympathies were with Ernest Simms, but he was
hampered, handicapped and helpless.

‘Well,
I’ll speak to him,’ he said, and was conscious even as he spoke how weak it
sounded.’

That
the constable had formed a similar opinion was made plain by the stiffness of
his attitude as he took his departure.

‘Very
good, sir,’ was all he said, but if he had added, ‘And I suppose I ought not to
have expected anything better from a worm like you’, he would not have made his
sentiments clearer.

Having
given him plenty of time to leave, Crispin went out on to the drive, where he
paced up and down, musing on the recent interview. It was a risky thing to do,
for out in the open like this he was in grave danger of being buttonholed by
his paying guests, by Colonel Norton-Smith, for instance, with his fund of good
stories of life in the Far East or R. B. Chisholm, who held gloomy views on
what was to become of us all if things went on the way they were doing; but he
needed air and, like Jerry, thought better when in motion.

He was
anxious to find a solution for the problem of what precisely his employee had
had in mind when predicting that he would make Ernest Simms wish he had never
been born. It might be this or it might be that, but whatever the inner meaning
of the words they plainly implied some form of activity of which he would be
bound to disapprove.’ If there is one thing at which a peaceable householder
looks askance, it is the prospect of his butler making the police wish they had
never been born, and it is not to be wondered at that Barney, coming out of the
house, saw at once that all was not well with her host and being the kindly
soul she was proceeded to make enquiries.

‘Something
wrong?’ she said.

Crispin
started with all the animation of a Mexican jumping bean, but recognizing who
it was that had spoken immediately became calmer. To Barney’s company he had no
objection; indeed he welcomed it. Since that first meeting in Willoughby’s
office he had grown very fond of her. He felt it would be a relief to confide
in her his fears and misgivings.’ When, therefore, she repeated her question,
he did not brush it off with a ‘No, no, nothing’, as he would have done had his
inquisitor been Colonel Norton-Smith or R. B. Chisholm.’ Coming, as the
expression is, clean, he said:

‘Yes, I
am extremely worried, Mrs Clayborne.’

‘Barney.’

‘Yes, I
am extremely worried, Barney. A most unpleasant situation has arisen.’

‘That’s
bad. We don’t want unpleasant situations arising, do we? Who’s been doing what?’

‘It’s
Chippendale.’

‘Who?’

‘My
butler. His name is Chippendale.’

A less
considerate woman, given such an opening for the exercise of wit, would have
asked: ‘Has he made any good chairs lately?’, but Barney appreciated that this
was no time for jesting. Her heart was touched by Crispin’s obvious distress.
What, she enquired, had Chippendale been doing?

It was
not so much, Crispin said, what he had been doing, though that was calculated
to make him a hissing and a byword at the bar of world opinion, as what he
might be going to do in the near future. The whole story came pouring out, and
Barney listened with the grave attention of a Harley Street specialist receiving
the confidences of a patient. When it ended, she had reassurances to offer.

‘I don’t
see where you have to worry. This Chippendale guy may talk big, but it’s just a
lot of hot air. Come right down to it, what can he do? How many policemen are
there around these parts?’

‘Only
one.’

Then I’ve
seen him. He’s as big as all outdoors, must weigh two hundred pounds, and
Chippendale’s a little shrimp who couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag.
The thing would be over in the first round.’

‘But
suppose Chippendale lurks and does him some secret injury?’

‘Such
as?’

Crispin
had to admit that he could not specify one offhand, and Barney said he must not
let his imagination run away with him.

‘You’re
thinking of what happens in these novels of suspense. You see him slipping
cobras down the cop’s chimney or adding some little-known Asiatic poison to his
evening glass of beer. But if it gives you the jitters, him being here, why don’t
you simply ease him out? Nothing so difficult about firing a butler, is there?’

Crispin
hesitated. We all have secrets which we prefer to keep to ourselves, and he saw
that he was on the verge of revealing his darkest one. Then his need for
sympathy overcame reticence.

‘I can’t
fire him.’

‘Why
not?’

‘Because
he’s not a butler.’

‘He acts
like one.’

‘I mean
not a real butler.’

‘I don’t
get you.’

‘He’s
employed by the firm that does the repairs about the house. I owe them a lot of
money. It’s been owing for two years. So they sent him down here, and I can’t
get rid of him till I pay them. He’s what is called a broker’s man. I don’t
know if you have them in America.’

Barney
was not an easy woman to surprise, but she could not repress a startled
ejaculation. It had never occurred to her that this sort of thing went on in
the stately homes of England. Mellingham Hall had made a deep impression on
her, and it came as a shock to learn that its cupboards were staffed with such
unpleasant skeletons.

‘You
mean you’re busted?’

‘I don’t
know which way to turn.’

‘Well,
fry me for an oyster. I’d never have guessed it. No wonder you didn’t want to
put any money on Brotherly Love. What are you going to do about it?’

‘I have
no idea.’

‘I
have. You must marry somebody with lots of money.’

‘Who
would have a man like me?’

‘With a
place like this? Dozens. You’ve only to advertise in
The Times
that you’re
open to offers, and they’ll come running. Good heavens, man, you’re amiable,
intelligent, understanding, sober, honest and kind to animals. I saw you
talking yesterday to that cat that hangs around, and I could see you were
saying all the right things. You’d be snapped up in no time. Then you’d be able
to run this place as it ought to be run, and you could fire Chippendale. How
come, by the way,’ said Barney, seeming to feel, like the detective in a
mystery story, that there were still some pieces in the jigsaw puzzle that had
to be fitted into place, ‘that this Chippendale character is buttling?’

‘That
was his suggestion. He said he supposed I didn’t want my paying guests to know
why he was here, so he would pose as the butler. I don’t have to pay him
anything.’

The
gravity with which Barney had been discussing the secret life of the owner of
Mellingham Hall gave way to mirth. She uttered a laugh which was probably
audible in the next county.

Then
you’re sitting pretty, seems to me. A non-profitmaking butler who can’t give
notice, it would make the mouths of some of my Long Island buddies water. They
have to slip theirs a prince’s ransom every pay day, and they can never be sure
when the fellows won’t hear the call of the wild and resign their portfolios.
So what are you fussing about? We’ve already decided that Chippendale’s threats
about what he’s going to do to the cop can be written off. Just baloney. And he
seems to buttle all right. Cheer up, Crips, and keep smiling. That’s the thing
to do. If you go through life with a smile on your face, you’ll be amazed how
many people will come up to you and say, “What the hell are you grinning about?
What’s so funny?” Make you a lot of new friends.’

This
excellent advice, so simple and yet so practical, ought, one would have said,
to have been acted on without delay by its recipient, but if Crispin proposed
to go through life with a smile on his face, it was plain that he did not
intend to start immediately. Nor did the emergence from the house at this
moment of the resident broker’s man do anything to improve his morale. It is
possible that Chippendale had his little circle of admirers who brightened at
the sight of him, but Crispin was not of their number.

‘You’re
wanted on the telephone, sir,’ said Chippendale. Had he and Crispin been alone,
he would have used the less formal ‘chum’ or ‘mate’, but the presence of Barney
restrained him.

‘Says
he’s your brother.’

Crispin
hurried into the house, followed by Chippendale, who made for the butler’s
pantry, where there was an extension. It was his practice to listen to all
telephonic conversations, for you never knew when you might not pick up
something of interest.

‘Bill?’
said Crispin.

‘Is
that you, Crips?’

‘Your
voice sounds funny, Bill. Is something the matter?’

‘You’re
damned right something’s the matter. That blasted Clayborne woman has stolen my
Girl in Blue,’
thundered Willoughby, and Chippendale’s lips framed
themselves in a silent ‘Coo!’

The
lips of a more emotional man would have made it ‘Gorblimey!’

CHAPTER NINE

1

Willoughby had come back
from his golfing holiday in the most jovial of spirits. His putting had been
good: he had corrected, if only temporarily, the slice which had been troubling
him for weeks: he had got a birdie on the long seventh; and the thought that
Gainsborough’s
Girl in Blue
would be awaiting him on the mantelpiece in
his study set the seal on his euphoria. If ever a rather stout senior partner
in a law firm came within an ace of singing like the Cherubim and Seraphim, he
was that rather stout senior partner.

And now
this had happened. How true is the old saying, attributed to Pliny the Elder,
that a man who lets himself get above himself is simply asking for it, for it
is just when things seem to be running as smooth as treacle out of a jug that
he finds Fate waiting for him round the corner with the stuffed eelskin.

Turning
to the other parties in the conversation which had so dramatically begun,
Chippendale was listening with his ears pricked up like a Doberman pinscher’s,
while Crispin stood rigid with amazement, the receiver trembling in his grasp.
It was impossible for him to suppose that he had not heard
correctly, for the speaker’s voice had nearly cracked his eardrum.
He could only think that his brother was labouring under some strange delusion.
It was unusual for Bill to have strange delusions, but he refused to believe
that a woman like Bernadette Clayborne could be guilty of the grave offence
with which that stentorian voice had charged her. Nice girls, he reasoned, don’t
steal things, and if Barney was not technically a girl, she was unquestionably
nice. His recent exchange of ideas with her had left him more convinced of that
than ever.

‘What?’
he said, and never had more consternation, agitation, indignation and
incredulity been condensed into the restricted limits of a monosyllable. ‘Is
this a joke, Bill?’

There
was a brief interval here, probably occupied by Willoughby in foaming at the mouth.
At its conclusion he assured Crispin that it was not a joke.

‘It’s
gone. I went away for a few days, leaving it on the mantelpiece in my study,
and when I got back it wasn’t there.’

‘Have
you looked everywhere?’

This
query, like the previous one, seemed to give offence.

‘Don’t
talk as if I had mislaid my spectacles!’

‘Did
you say you had mislaid your spectacles?’

‘No, I
did not say I had mislaid my spectacles.’

‘I’m always
mislaying my spectacles.’

‘Curse
your spectacles!’

‘Yes,
Bill.’

This
short digression on the subject of aids to vision seemed for some reason to
have had a good effect on Willoughby, slightly restoring his calm. When he
resumed the conversation, his voice, though still retaining something of the
robustness of that of an annoyed mate of a tram.

‘What’s
the sense of asking if I’d looked everywhere? If you leave a miniature on a
mantelpiece and it vanishes from the mantelpiece, somebody must have taken it.’