The Jeeves Omnibus (306 page)

I HAVEN’T MENTIONED
it till now, having been all tied up with other matters, but during dinner, as you may well imagine, something had been puzzling me not a little – the mystery, to wit, of what on earth had become of Emerald Stoker.

At that lunch of ours she had told me in no uncertain terms that she was off to Totleigh on the four o’clock train that afternoon, and however leisurely its progress it must have got there by this time, because Gussie had travelled on it and he had fetched up at the joint all right. But I could detect no sign of her on the premises. It seemed to me, sifting the evidence, that only one conclusion could be arrived at, that she had been pulling the Wooster leg.

But why? With what motive? That was what I was asking myself as I sneaked up the stairs to where Erle Stanley Gardner awaited me. If you had cared to describe me as perplexed and bewildered, you would have been perfectly correct.

Jeeves was in my room when I got there, going about his gentleman’s gentlemanly duties, and I put my problem up to him.

‘Did you ever see a film called
The Vanishing Lady
, Jeeves?’

‘No, sir. I rarely attend cinematographic performances.’

‘Well, it was about a lady who vanished, if you follow what I mean, and the reason I bring it up is that a female friend of mine has apparently disappeared into thin air, leaving not a wrack behind, as I once heard you put it.’

‘Highly mysterious, sir.’

‘You said it. I seek in vain for a solution. When I gave her lunch yesterday, she told me she was off on the four o’clock train to go and stay at Totleigh Towers, and the point I want to drive home is that she hasn’t arrived. You remember the day I lunched at the Ritz?’

‘Yes, sir. You were wearing an Alpine hat.’

‘There is no need to dwell on the Alpine hat, Jeeves.’

‘No, sir.’

‘If you really want to know, several fellows at the Drones asked me where I had got it.’

‘No doubt with a view to avoiding your hatter, sir.’

I saw that nothing was to be gained by bandying words. I turned the conversation to a pleasanter and less controversial subject.

‘Well, Jeeves, you’ll be glad to hear that everything’s all right.’

‘Sir?’

‘About that lute we were speaking of. No rift. Sound as a bell. I have it straight from the horse’s mouth that Miss Bassett and Gussie are sweethearts still. The relief is stupendous.’

I hadn’t expected him to clap his hands and leap about, because of course he never does, but I wasn’t prepared for the way he took this bit of hot news. He failed altogether to string along with my jocund mood.

‘I fear, sir, that you are too sanguine. Miss Bassett’s attitude may well be such as you have described, but on Mr. Fink-Nottle’s side, I am sorry to say there exists no little dissatisfaction and resentment.’

The smile which had been splitting my face faded. It’s never easy to translate what Jeeves says into basic English, but I had been able to grab this one off the bat, and what I believe the French call a
frisson
went through me like a dose of salts.

‘You mean she’s a sweetheart still, but he isn’t?’

‘Precisely, sir. I encountered Mr. Fink-Nottle in the stable yard as I was putting away the car, and he confided his troubles to me. His story occasioned me grave uneasiness.’

Another
frisson
passed through my frame. I had the unpleasant feeling you get sometimes that centipedes in large numbers are sauntering up and down your spinal column. I feared the worst.

‘But what’s happened?’ I faltered, if faltered’s the word.

‘I regret to inform you, sir, that Miss Bassett has insisted on Mr. Fink-Nottle adopting a vegetarian diet. His mood is understandably disgruntled and rebellious.’

I tottered. In my darkest hour I had never anticipated anything as bad as this. You wouldn’t think it to look at him, because he’s small and shrimplike and never puts on weight, but Gussie loves food. Watching him tucking into his rations at the Drones, a tapeworm would raise its hat respectfully, knowing that it was in the presence of a master. Cut him off, therefore, from the roasts and boileds and particularly from cold steak and kidney pie, a dish of which he is inordinately fond, and you turned him into something fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils, as the fellow said – the sort of chap who would break an engagement as soon as look at you. At the moment of my entry I had been about to light a cigarette, and now the lighter fell from my nerveless hand.

‘She’s made him become a
vegetarian
?’

‘So Mr. Fink-Nottle informed me, sir.’

‘No chops?’

‘No, sir.’

‘No steaks?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Just spinach and similar garbage?’

‘So I gather, sir.’

‘But why?’

‘I understand that Miss Bassett has recently been reading the life of the poet Shelley, sir, and has become converted to his view that the consumption of flesh foods is unspiritual. The poet Shelley held strong opinions on this subject.’

I picked up the lighter in a sort of trance. I was aware that Madeline B. was as potty as they come in the matter of stars and rabbits and what happened when fairies blew their wee noses, but I had never dreamed that her goofiness would carry her to such lengths as this. But as the picture rose before my eyes of Gussie at the dinner table picking with clouded brow at what had unquestionably looked like spinach, I knew that his story must be true. No wonder Gussie in agony of spirit had said that Madeline made him sick. Just so might a python at a Zoo have spoken of its keeper, had the latter suddenly started feeding it cheese straws in lieu of the daily rabbit.

‘But this is frightful, Jeeves!’

‘Certainly somewhat disturbing, sir.’

‘If Gussie is seething with revolt, anything may happen.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Is there nothing we can do?’

‘It might be possible for you to reason with Miss Bassett, sir. You would have a talking point. Medical research has established that the ideal diet is one in which animal and vegetable foods are balanced. A strict vegetarian diet is not recommended by the majority of doctors, as it lacks sufficient protein and in particular does not contain the protein which is built up of the amino-acids required by the body. Competent observers have traced some cases of mental disorder to this shortage.’

‘You’d tell her that?’

‘It might prove helpful, sir.’

‘I doubt it,’ I said, blowing a despondent smoke ring. ‘I don’t think it would sway her.’

‘Nor on consideration do I, sir. The poet Shelley regarded the matter from the humanitarian standpoint rather than that of bodily health.
He
held that we should show reverence for other life forms, and it is his views that Miss Bassett has absorbed.’

A hollow groan escaped me.

‘Curse the poet Shelley! I hope he trips over a loose shoelace and breaks his ruddy neck.’

‘Too late, sir. He is no longer with us.’

‘Blast all vegetables!’

‘Yes, sir. Your concern is understandable. I may mention that the cook expressed herself in a somewhat similar vein when I informed her of Mr. Fink-Nottle’s predicament. Her heart melted in sympathy with his distress.’

I was in no mood to hear about cooks’ hearts, soluble or otherwise, and I was about to say so, when he proceeded.

‘She instructed me to apprise Mr. Fink-Nottle that if he were agreeable to visiting the kitchen at some late hour when the household had retired for the night, she would be happy to supply him with cold steak and kidney pie.’

It was as if the sun had come smiling through the clouds or the long shot on which I had placed my wager had nosed its way past the opposition in the last ten yards and won by a short head. For the peril that had threatened to split the Bassett-Fink-Nottle axis had been averted. I knew Gussie from soup to nuts. Cut him off from the proteins and the amino-acids, and you soured his normally amiable nature, turning him into a sullen hater of his species who asked nothing better than to bite his n. and dearest and bite them good. But give him this steak and kidney pie outlet, thus allowing him to fulfil what they call his legitimate aspirations, and chagrin would vanish and he would become his old lovable self once more. The dark scowl would be replaced by the tender simper, the acid crack by the honeyed word, and all would be hotsy-totsy once more with his love life. My bosom swelled with gratitude to the cook whose quick thinking had solved the problem and brought home the bacon.

‘Who is she, Jeeves?’

‘Sir?’

‘This life-saving cook. I shall want to give her a special mention in my evening prayers.’

‘She is a woman of the name of Stoker, sir.’

‘
Stoker
? Did you say Stoker?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Odd!’

‘Sir?’

‘Nothing. Just a rather strange coincidence. Have you told Gussie?’

‘Yes, sir. I found him most co-operative. He plans to present himself in the kitchen shortly after midnight. Cold steak and kidney pie is, of course, merely a palliative –’

‘On the contrary. It’s Gussie’s favourite dish. I’ve known him to order it even on curry day at the Drones. He loves the stuff.’

‘Indeed, sir? That is very gratifying.’

‘Gratifying is the word. What a lesson this teaches us, Jeeves, never to despair, never to throw in the towel and turn our face to the wall, for there is always hope.’

‘Yes, sir. Would you be requiring anything further?’

‘Not a thing, thanks. My cup runneth over.’

‘Then I will be saying good night, sir.’

‘Good night, Jeeves.’

After he had gone, I put in about half an hour on my Erle Stanley Gardner, but I found rather a difficulty in following the thread and keeping my attention on the clues. My thoughts kept straying to this epoch-making cook. Strange, I felt, that her name should be Stoker. Some relation, perhaps.

I could picture the woman so exactly. Stout, red-faced, spectacled, a little irritable, perhaps, if interrupted when baking a cake or thinking out a sauce, but soft as butter at heart. No doubt something in Gussie’s wan aspect had touched her. ‘That boy needs feeding up, poor little fellow’, or possibly she was fond of goldfish and had been drawn to him because he reminded her of them. Or she may have been a Girl Guide. At any rate, whatever the driving motive behind her day’s good deed, she had deserved well of Bertram, and I told myself that a thumping tip should reward her on my departure. Purses of gold should be scattered, and with a lavish hand.

I was musing thus and feeling more benevolent every minute, when who should blow in but Gussie in person, and I had been right in picturing his aspect as wan. He wore the unmistakable look of a man who has been downing spinach for weeks.

I took it that he had come to ask me what I was doing at Totleigh Towers, a point on which he might naturally be supposed to be curious, but that didn’t seem to interest him. He plunged without delay into as forceful a denunciation of the vegetable world as I’ve ever heard, oddly enough being more bitter about Brussels sprouts and broccoli than about spinach, which I would have expected him to feature. It was some considerable time before I could get a word in, but when I did my voice dripped with sympathy.

‘Yes, Jeeves was telling me about that,’ I said, ‘and my heart bled for you.’

‘And so it jolly well ought to have done – in buckets – if you’ve a spark of humanity in you,’ he retorted warmly. ‘Words cannot describe the agonies I’ve suffered, particularly when staying at Brinkley Court.’

I nodded. I knew just what an ordeal it must have been. With Aunt Dahlia’s peerless chef wielding the skillet, the last place where you want to be on a vegetarian diet is Brinkley. Many a time when enjoying the old relative’s hospitality I’ve regretted that I had only one stomach to give to the evening’s bill of fare.

‘Night after night I had to refuse Anatole’s unbeatable eatables, and when I tell you that two nights in succession he gave us those
Mignonettes de Poulet Petit Duc
of his and on another occasion his
Timbales de Ris de Veau Toulousiane
, you will appreciate what I went through.’

It being my constant policy to strew a little happiness as I go by, I hastened to point out the silver lining in the c’s.

‘Your sufferings must have been terrible,’ I agreed. ‘But courage, Gussie. Think of the cold steak and kidney pie.’

I had struck the right note. His drawn face softened.

‘Jeeves told you about that?’

‘He said the cook had it all ready and waiting for you, and I remember thinking at the time that she must be a pearl among women.’

‘That is not putting it at all too strongly. She’s an angel in human shape. I spotted her solid merits the moment I saw her.’

‘You’ve seen her?’

‘Of course I’ve seen her. You can’t have forgotten that talk we had when I was in the cab, about to start off for Paddington. Though why you should have got the idea that she looks like a Pekinese is more than I can imagine.’

‘Eh? Who?’

‘Emerald Stoker. She doesn’t look in the least like a Pekinese.’

‘What’s Emerald Stoker got to do with it?’

He seemed surprised.

‘Didn’t she tell you?’

‘Tell me what?’

‘That she was on her way here to take office as the Totleigh Towers cook.’

I goggled. I thought for a moment that the privations through which he was passing must have unhinged this newt-fancier’s brain.

‘Did you say
cook
?’

‘I’m surprised she didn’t tell you. I suppose she felt that you weren’t to be trusted to keep her secret. She would, of course, have spotted you as a babbler from the outset. Yes, she’s the cook all right.’

‘But
why
is she the cook?’ I said, getting down to the
res
in that direct way of mine.

‘She explained that fully to me on the train. It appears that she’s dependent on a monthly allowance from her father in New York, and normally she gets by reasonably comfortably on this. But early this month she was unfortunate in her investments on the turf. Sunny Jim in the three o’clock at Kempton Park.’