She paused for breath, as even she has to do sometimes.
‘I say –’ I said.
The lungs refilled, she carried on again.
‘I wouldn’t have thought my limbs would have been able to support me to the door, much less down a long passage into the hall, but they did. I followed in the wake of the procession, giving at the knees but somehow managing to navigate. What I thought I was doing, joining the party, I don’t know, but I suppose I had some vague idea of being present when Tom got the bad news and pleading brokenly for forgiveness. Anyway, I went. Tom opened the safe, and I stood there as if I had been turned into a pillar of salt, like Lot’s wife.’
I recalled the incident to which she referred, it having happened to come up in the examination paper that time I won that prize for Scripture Knowledge at my private school, but it’s probably new to you, so I will give a brief synopsis. For some reason which has escaped my memory they told this Mrs. Lot, while out walking one day, not to look round or she would be turned into a pillar of salt, so of course she immediately did look round and by what I have always thought an odd coincidence she was turned into a pillar of salt. It just shows you, what? I mean to say, you never know where you are these days.
‘Time marched on. Tom took out the jewel-case and passed it over to Spode, who said “Ah, this is it, is it?” or some damn silly remark like that, and at that moment, with the hand of doom within a toucher of descending, Seppings appeared, probably sent by my guardian angel, and told Tom he was wanted on the phone. “Eh? What? What?” said Tom, his invariable practice when told he is wanted on the phone, and legged it, followed by Seppings. Woof!’ she said, and paused for breath again.
‘I say –’ I said.
‘You can imagine how I felt. That stupendous bit of luck had changed the whole aspect of affairs. For hours I had been wondering how on earth I could get Spode alone, and now I had got him alone. You can bet I didn’t waste a second. “Just think, Lord Sidcup,” I said winningly, “I haven’t had a moment yet to talk to you about all our mutual friends and those happy days at Totleigh Towers. How is dear Sir Watkyn Bassett?” I asked, still winningly. I fairly cooed to the man.’
‘I say –’ I said.
She squelched me with an imperious gesture.
‘Don’t interrupt, curse you! I never saw such a chap for wanting to collar the conversation. Gabble, gabble, gabble. Listen, can’t you, when I’m telling you the biggest story that has broken around these parts for years. Where was I? Oh, yes. “How is dear Sir Watkyn?” I said, and he said dear Sir Watkyn was pretty oojah-cum-spiff. “And dear Madeline?” I said, and he said dear Madeline was ticking over all right. And then I drew a deep breath and let him have it. “And how is that ladies’ underclothing place of yours getting along?” I said. “Eulalie Sœurs, isn’t it called? Still coining money, I trust?” And next moment you could have knocked me down with a feather. For with a jolly laugh he replied, “Eulalie Sœurs? Oh, I haven’t anything to do with that any longer. I sold out ages ago. It’s a company now.” And as I stood gaping at him, my whole plan of campaign in ruins, he said, “Well, I may as well have a look at this necklace. Mr. Travers says he is anxious to have my opinion of it.” And he pressed his thumb to the catch and the jewel-case flew open. And I was just commending my soul to God and saying to myself that this was the end, when I stubbed my foot against something and looked down and there, lying on the floor … you’ll scarcely believe this … was a cosh.’
She paused again, took on a cargo of breath quickly, and resumed.
‘Yessir, a cosh! You wouldn’t know what a cosh is, of course, so I’ll explain. It’s a small rubber instrument, much used by the criminal classes for socking their friends and relations. They wait till their mother-in-law’s back is turned and then let her have it on the tortoiseshell comb. It’s all the rage in underworld circles, and there it was, as I say, lying at my feet.’
‘I say –’ I said.
I got the imperious gesture between the eyes once more.
‘Well, for a moment, it rang no bell. I picked it up automatically, the good housewife who doesn’t like to see things lying around on floors, but it held no message for me. It simply didn’t occur to me that my guardian angel had been directing my footsteps and was showing me the way out of my troubles and perplexities. And then suddenly, in a blinding flash, I got it. I realized what that good old guardian angel was driving at. He had at last succeeded in penetrating the bone and getting it into my fat head. There was Spode, with his back turned, starting to take the necklace out of the case …’
I gasped gurglingly.
‘You didn’t cosh him?’
‘Certainly I coshed him. What would you have had me do? What would Napoleon have done? I took a nice easy half-swing and let go with lots of follow-through, and he fell to earth he knew not where.’
I could readily believe it. Just so had Constable Dobbs fallen at Deverill Hall.
‘He’s in bed now, convinced that he had a touch of vertigo and hit his head on the floor. Don’t worry about Spode. A good night’s rest and a bland diet, and he’ll be as right as rain tomorrow. And I’ve got the necklace, I’ve got the necklace, I’ve got the bally necklace, and I feel as if I could pick up a couple of tigers and knock their heads together!’
I gaped at her. The bean was swimming. Through the mist that had risen before the eyes she appeared to be swaying like an aunt caught in a high wind.
‘You say you’ve got the necklace?’ I quavered.
‘I certainly have.’
‘Then what,’ I said, in about as hollow a voice as ever proceeded from human lips, ‘is this one I’ve got?’
And I produced my exhibit.
For quite a while it was plain that she had failed to follow the story sequence. She looked at the necklace, then at me, then at the necklace again. It was not until I had explained fully that she got the strength of it.
‘Of course, yes,’ she said, her brow clearing. ‘I see it all now. What with yelling for Tom and telling him Spode had had some sort of seizure and listening to him saying “Oh, my God! Now we’ll have to put the frightful fellow up for the night!” and trying to comfort him and helping Seppings tote the remains to bed and all that, I forgot to suggest shutting the safe door. And Tom, of course, never thought of it. He was much too busy tearing his hair and saying this was certainly the last time he would invite a club acquaintance to his house, by golly, it being notorious for the first thing club acquaintances do on finding themselves in somebody’s home is to have fits and take advantage of them to stay dug into the woodwork for weeks. And then you came along –’
‘– and rummaged in the safe and found a pearl necklace and naturally thought it was yours –’
‘– and swiped it. Very decent of you, Bertie, dear, and I appreciate the kind thought. If you had been here this morning, I would have told you that Tom insisted on everybody putting their valuables in the safe, but you had dashed up to London. What took you there, by the way?’
‘I went to get the cosh, formerly the property of Aunt Agatha’s son, Thos. I have been having trouble of late with Menaces.’
She gazed at me with worshipping eyes, deeply moved.
‘Was it you, my heart of gold,’ she said brokenly, ‘who provided that cosh? I had been putting it down as straight guardian-angel stuff. Oh, Bertie, if ever I called you a brainless poop who ought to be given a scholarship at some good lunatic asylum, I take back the words.’
I thanked her briefly.
‘But what happens now?’
‘I give three rousing cheers and start strewing roses from my hat.’
I frowned with a touch of impatience.
‘I am not talking about you, my dear old ancestor, but about your nephew Bertram, the latter being waist-high in the mulligatawny and liable at any moment to sink without trace. Here I am in possession of somebody’s pearl necklace –’
‘Ma Trotter’s. I recognize it now. She wears it in t
he evenings.’
‘Right. So far, so good. The choker belongs, we find, to Ma Trotter. That point established, what do I do for the best?’
‘You put it back.’
‘In the safe?’
‘That’s it. You put it back in the safe.’
It struck me as a most admirable idea, and I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it myself.
‘You’ve hit it!’ I said. ‘Yes, I’ll put it back in the safe.’
‘I’d run along now, if I were you. No time like the present.’
‘I will. Oh, by the way, Daphne Dolores Morehead has arrived. She’s out in the grounds with Stilton.’
‘What did you think of her?’
‘A sight for sore eyes, if I may use the expression. I had no idea they were making female novelists like that these days.’
I would have gone on to amplify the favourable impression the young visitor’s outer crust had made on me, but at this moment Mrs. Trotter loomed up in the doorway. She looked at me as if feeling that I was on the whole pretty superfluous.
‘Oh, good evening, Mr. Wooster,’ she said in a distant sort of way. ‘I was hoping to find you alone, Mrs. Travers,’ she added with the easy tact which had made her the toast of Liverpool.
‘I’m just off,’ I assured her. ‘Nice evening.’
‘Very nice.’
‘Well, toodle-oo,’ I said, and set a course for the hall, feeling pretty bobbish, for at least a portion of my troubles would soon be over. If, of course, the safe was still open.
It was. And I had reached it and was on the point of whipping out the jewel-case and depositing it, when a voice spoke behind me, and, turning like a startled fawn, I perceived L.G. Trotter.
Since my arrival at Brinkley Court I had not fraternized to any great extent with this weasel-faced old buster. He gave me the impression, as he had done at that dinner of mine, of not being too frightfully keen on the society of his juniors. I was surprised that he should be wanting to chat with me now, and wished that he could have selected some more suitable moment. With that necklace on my person, solitude was what I desired.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Where’s your aunt?’
‘She’s in her room,’ I replied, ‘talking to Mrs. Trotter.’
‘Oh? Well, when you see her, tell her I’ve gone to bed.’
This surprised me.
‘To bed? Surely the night is yet young?’
‘I’ve got one of my dyspeptic attacks. You haven’t a digestive pill on you?’
‘I’m sorry. I came out without any.’
‘Hell!’ he said, rubbing the abdomen. ‘I’m in agony. I feel as if I’d swallowed a couple of wild cats. Hullo,’ he proceeded, changing the subject, ‘what’s that safe door doing open?’
I threw out the suggestion that somebody must have opened it, and he nodded as if thinking well of the theory.
‘Damned carelessness,’ he said. ‘That’s the way things get stolen.’
And before my bulging eyes he stepped across and gave the door a shove. It closed with a clang.
‘Oof!’ he said, massaging the abdomen once more, and with a curt ‘Good night’, passed up the stairs, leaving me frozen to the spot. Lot’s wife couldn’t have been stiffer.
Any chance I had of putting things back in the safe had gone with the wind.
19
* * *
I DON’T KNOW that I have a particularly vivid imagination – possibly not, perhaps – but in circs like those which I have just outlined you don’t need a very vivid imagination to enable you to spot the shape of things to come. As plainly as if it had been the top line on an oculist’s chart, I could see what the future held for Bertram.
As I stood there gaping at the closed door, a vision rose before my eyes, featuring me and an inspector of police, the latter having in his supporting cast an unusually nasty-looking sergeant.
‘Are you coming quietly, Wooster?’ the inspector was saying.
‘Who, me?’ I said, quaking in every limb. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Ha, ha,’ laughed the inspector. ‘That’s good. Eh, Fotheringay?’
‘Very rich, sir,’ said the sergeant. ‘Makes me chuckle, that does.’
‘Too late to try anything of that sort, my man,’ went on the inspector, becoming grave again. ‘The game is up. We have evidence to prove that you went to this safe and from it abstracted a valuable pearl necklace, the property of Mrs. L.G. Trotter. If that doesn’t mean five years in the jug for you, I miss my bet.’
‘But, honestly, I thought it was Aunt Dahlia’s.’
‘Ha, ha,’ laughed the inspector.
‘Ha, ha,’ chirped the sergeant.
‘A pretty story,’ said the inspector. ‘Tell that to the jury and see what they think of it. Fotheringay, the handcuffs!’
Such was the v. that rose before my e. as I gaped at that c.d., and I wilted like a salted snail. Outside in the garden birds were singing their evensong, and it seemed to me that each individual bird was saying ‘Well, boys, Wooster is for it. We shan’t see much of Wooster for the next few years. Too bad, too bad. A nice chap till he took to crime.’
A hollow groan escaped my lips, but before another could follow it I was racing for Aunt Dahlia’s room. As I reached it, Ma Trotter came out, gave me an austere look and passed on her way, and I went on into the presence. I found the old relative sitting bolt upright in her chair, staring before her with unseeing eyes, and it was plain that once more something had happened to inject a black frost into her sunny mood. The Agatha Christie had fallen unheeded to the floor, displaced from her lap, no doubt, by a shudder of horror.
Normally, I need scarcely say, my policy on finding this sterling old soul looking licked to a splinter would have been to slap her between the shoulder-blades and urge her to keep her tail up, but my personal troubles left me with little leisure for bracing aunts. Whatever the disaster or cataclysm that had come upon her, I felt, it could scarcely claim to rank in the same class as the one that had come upon me.
‘I say,’ I said. ‘The most frightful thing has happened!’
She nodded sombrely. A martyr at the stake would have been cheerier.
‘You bet your heliotrope socks it has,’ she responded. ‘Ma Trotter has thrown off the mask, curse her. She wants Anatole.’
‘Who wouldn’t?’
It seemed for a moment as if she were about to haul off and let a loved nephew have it on the side of the head, but with a strong effort she calmed herself. Well, when I say ‘calmed herself’, she didn’t cease to boil briskly, but she confined her activities to the spoken word.
‘Don’t you understand, ass? She has come out into the open and stated her terms. She says she won’t let Trotter buy the Boudoir unless I give her Anatole.’
It just shows how deeply my predicament had stirred me that my reaction to this frightful speech was practically nil. Informed at any other time that there was even a remote prospect of that superb disher-up handing in his portfolio and going off to waste his sweetness on the desert air of the Trotter home, I should unquestionably have blenched and gasped and tottered but now, as I say, I heard those words virtually unmoved.
‘No, really?’ I said. ‘I say, listen, old flesh and blood. Just as I got to the safe and was about to restore the Trotter pearls, that chump L. G. Trotter most officiously shut the door, foiling my aims and objects and leaving me in the dickens of a jam. I’m trembling like a leaf.’
‘So am I.’
‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘I don’t, either.’
‘I search in vain for some way out of this what the French call impasse.’
‘Me, too,’ she said, picking up the Agatha Christie and hurling it at a passing vase. When deeply stirred, she is always inclined to kick things and throw things. At Totleigh Towers, during one of our more agitated conferences, she had cleared the mantelpiece in my bedroom of its entire contents, including a terra-cotta elephant and a porcelain statuette
of the Infant Samuel in Prayer. ‘I don’t suppose any woman ever had such a problem to decide. On the one hand, life without Anatole is a thing almost impossible –’
‘Here I am, stuck with this valuable pearl necklace, the property of Mrs. L.G. Trotter, and when its loss –’
‘– to contemplate. On the other –’
‘– is discovered, hues and cries will be raised, inspectors and sergeants sent for –’
‘– hand, I must sell the Boudoir, or I can’t take that necklace of mine out of hock. So –’
‘– and I shall be found with what is known as hot ice on my person.’
‘Ice!’
‘And you know as well as I do what happens to people who are caught in possession of hot ice.’
‘Ice!’ she repeated and sighed dreamily. ‘I think of those prawns in iced aspic of his, and I say to myself that I should be mad to face a lifetime without Anatole’s cooking. That Selle d’Agneau à la Grecque! That Mignonette de Poulet Rôti Petit Duc! Those Nonats de la Mediterrannée au Fenouil! And then I feel I must be practical. I’ve got to get that necklace back, and if the only way of getting it back is to … Sweet suffering soupspoons!’ she vociferated, if that’s the word, anguish written on her every feature. ‘I wonder what Tom will say when he hears Anatole is leaving!’
‘And I wonder what he’ll say when he hears his nephew is doing a stretch in Dartmoor.’
‘Eh?’
‘Stretch in Dartmoor.’
‘Who’s going to do a stretch in Dartmoor?’
‘I am.’
‘You?’
‘Me.’
‘Why?’
I gave her a look which I suppose, strictly speaking, no nephew should have given an aunt. But I was sorely exasperated.