‘Exactly. It’s driving him potty. Everard’s a real artist. His stuff’s good. Some of it’s in the Tate. Look at this,’ she said, indicating another canvas. ‘That’s one of his things.’
I gave it a quick once-over. It, too, was a classical picture, and seemed to my untutored mind very like the other one, but presuming that some sort of art criticism was expected of me I said:
‘I like the patina.’
That, too, is generally a safe bet, but it appeared that I had said the wrong thing, for the relative snorted audibly.
‘No, you don’t, you miserable blighter. You don’t even know what a patina is.’
She had me there, of course. I didn’t.
‘You and your ruddy patinas! Well, anyway, you see why Everard has got the jitters. If a man can paint as well as he can, it naturally cuts him to the quick to have to glue his eyes on a daub like the Venus every time he sits down to break bread. Suppose you were a great musician. Would you like to have to listen to a cheap, vulgar tune – the same tune – day after day? Or suppose that every time you went to lunch at the Drones you had to sit opposite someone who looked like the Hunchback of Notre Dame? Would you enjoy that? Of course you wouldn’t. You’d be as sick as mud.’
I saw her point. Many a time at the Drones I have had to sit opposite Oofy Prosser, and it had always taken the edge off a usually keen appetite.
‘So now do you grasp the position of affairs, dumbbell?’
‘Oh, I grasp it all right, and the heart bleeds, of course. But I don’t see there’s anything to be done about it.’
‘I do. Ask me what.’
‘What?’
‘You’re going to pinch that Venus.’
I looked at her with a wild surmise, silent upon a peak in Darien. Not my own. One of Jeeves’s things.
‘Pinch it?’
‘This very night.’
‘When you say “pinch it”, do you mean “pinch it”?’
‘That’s right. That’s the little something I was speaking of, the simple little thing you’re going to do to help Auntie. Good heavens,’ she said, her manner betraying impatience, ‘I can’t see why you’re looking like a stuck pig about it. It’s right up your street. You’re always pinching policemen’s helmets, aren’t you?’
I had to correct this.
‘Not always. Only as an occasional treat, as it might be on a Boat Race night. And, anyway, pinching pictures is a very different thing from lifting the headgear of the Force. Much more complex.’
‘There’s nothing complex about it. It’s as easy as falling off a log. You just cut it out of the frame with a good sharp knife.’
‘I haven’t got a good sharp knife.’
‘You will have. You know, Bertie,’ she said, all enthusiasm, ‘it’s extraordinary how things fit in. These last weeks there’s been a gang of picture-thieves operating in this neighbourhood. They got away with a Romney at a house near here and a Gainsborough from another house. It was that that gave me the idea. When his Venus disappears, there won’t be a chance of old Fothergill suspecting anything and having his feelings hurt. These marauders are connoisseurs, he’ll say to himself, only the best is good enough for them. Cornelia agreed with me.’
‘You told her?’
‘Well, naturally. I was naming the Price of the Papers. I said that if she gave me her solemn word that she would let the Boudoir have this slush she’s writing, shaving her price to suit my purse, you would liquidate the Edward Fothergill Venus.’
‘You did, did you? And what did she say?’
‘She thanked me brokenly, saying it was the only way of keeping Everard from going off his rocker, and I told her I would have you here, ready to the last button, this week-end.’
‘God bless your old pea-pickin’ heart!’
‘So go to it, boy, and heaven speed your efforts. All you have to do is open one of the windows, to make it look like an outside job, collect the picture, take it back to your room and burn it. I’ll see that you have a good fire.’
‘Oh, thanks.’
‘And now you had better be dressing. You haven’t much time, and it makes Everard nervous if people are late for dinner.’
It was with bowed head and the feeling that the curse had come upon me that I proceeded to my room. Jeeves was there, studding the shirt, and I lost no time in giving him the low-down. My attitude towards Jeeves on these occasions is always that of a lost sheep getting together with its shepherd.
‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘you remember me telling you in the car that I was weighed down with a nameless foreboding?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, I had every right to be. Let me tell you in a few simple words what Aunt Dahlia has just been springing on me.’
I told him in a few simple words, and his left eyebrow rose perhaps an eighth of an inch, showing how deeply he was stirred.
‘Very disturbing, sir.’
‘Most. And the ghastly thing is that I suppose I shall have to do it.’
‘I fear so, sir. Taking into consideration the probability that, should you decline to cooperate, Mrs Travers will place sanctions on you in the matter of Anatole’s cooking, you would appear to have no option but to fall in with her wishes. Are you in pain, sir?’ he asked, observing me writhe.
‘No, just chafing. This has shocked me, Jeeves. I wouldn’t have thought such an idea would ever have occurred to her. One could understand Professor Moriarty, and possibly Doctor Fu Manchu, thinking along these lines, but not a wife and mother highly respected in Market Snodsbury, Worcestershire.’
‘The female of the species is more deadly than the male, sir. May I ask if you have formulated a plan of action?’
‘She sketched one out. I open a window, to make it look like an outside job—’
‘Pardon me for interrupting, sir, but there I think Mrs Travers is in error. A broken window would lend greater verisimilitude.’
‘Wouldn’t it rouse the house?’
‘No, sir, it can be done quite noiselessly by smearing treacle on a sheet of brown paper, attaching the paper to the pane and striking it a sharp blow with the fist. This is the recognized method in vogue in the burgling industry.’
‘But where’s the brown paper? Where the treacle?’
‘I can procure them, sir, and I shall be happy to perform the operation for you, if you wish.’
‘You will? That’s very white of you, Jeeves.’
‘Not at all, sir. It is my aim to give satisfaction. Excuse me, I think I hear someone knocking.’
He went to the door, opened it, said, ‘Certainly, madam, I will give it to Mr Wooster immediately,’ and came back with a sort of young sabre.
‘Your knife, sir.’
‘Thank you, Jeeves, curse it,’ I said, regarding the object with a shudder, and slipped sombrely into the mesh-knit underwear.
After deliberation, we had pencilled in the kick-off for one in the morning, when the household might be expected to be getting its eight hours, and at one on the dot Jeeves shimmered in.
‘Everything is in readiness, sir.’
‘The treacle?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘The brown p.?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then just bust the window, would you mind.’
‘I have already done so, sir.’
‘You have? Well, you were right about it being noiseless. I didn’t hear a sound. Then Ho for the dining-room, I suppose. No sense in dillying or, for the matter of that, dallying.’
‘No, sir. If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly,’ he said, and I remember thinking how neatly he puts these things.
It would be idle to pretend that, as I made my way down the stairs, I was my usual debonair self. The feet were cold, and if there had been any sudden noises, I would have started at them. My meditations on Aunt Dahlia, who had let me in for this horror in the night, were rather markedly lacking in a nephew’s love. Indeed, it is not too much to
say that every step I took deepened my conviction that what the aged relative needed was a swift kick in the pants.
However, in one respect you had to hand it to her. She had said the removal of the picture from the parent frame would be as easy as falling off a log – a thing I have never done myself, but one which, I should imagine, is reasonably simple of accomplishment – and so it proved. She had in no way overestimated the goodness and sharpness of the knife with which she had provided me. Four quick cuts, and the canvas came out like a winkle at the end of a pin. I rolled it up and streaked back to my room with it.
Jeeves in my absence had been stoking the fire, and it was now in a cheerful blaze. I was about to feed Edward Fothergill’s regrettable product to the flames and push it home with the poker, but he stayed my hand.
‘It would be injudicious to burn so large an object in one piece, sir. There is the risk of setting the chimney on fire.’
‘Ah, yes, I see what you mean. Snip it up, you think?’
‘I fear it is unavoidable, sir. Might I suggest that it would relieve the monotony of the task if I were to provide whisky and a syphon?’
‘You know where they keep it?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then lead it to me.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘And meanwhile I’ll be getting on with the job.’
I did so, and was making good progress, when the door opened without my hearing it and Aunt Dahlia beetled in. She spoke before I was aware of her presence in my midst, causing me to shoot up to the ceiling with a stifled cry.
‘Everything pretty smooth, Bertie?’
‘I wish you’d toot your horn,’ I said, coming back to earth and speaking with not a little bitterness. ‘You shook me to the core. Yes, matters have gone according to plan. But Jeeves insists on burning the corpus delicti bit by bit.’
‘Well, of course. You don’t want to set the chimney on fire.’
‘That was what he said.’
‘And he was right, as always. I’ve brought my scissors. Where is Jeeves, by the way? Why not at your side, giving selfless service?’
‘Because he’s giving selfless service elsewhere. He went off to get whisky.’
‘What a man! There is none like him, none. Bless my soul,’ said the relative some moments later, as we sat before the fire and snipped, ‘how this brings back memories of the dear old school and our girlish cocoa parties. Happy days, happy days! Ah, Jeeves, come right in and put the supplies well within my reach. We’re getting on, you see. What is that you have hanging on your arm?’
‘The garden shears, madam. I am anxious to lend all the assistance that is within my power.’
‘Then start lending. Edward Fothergill’s masterpiece awaits you.’
With the three of us sparing no effort, we soon completed the work in hand. I had scarcely got through my first whisky and s. and was beginning on another, when all that was left of the Venus, not counting the ashes, was the little bit at the south-east end which Jeeves was holding. He was regarding it with what seemed to me a rather thoughtful eye.
‘Excuse me, madam,’ he said. ‘Did I understand you to say that Mr Fothergill senior’s name was Edward?’
‘That’s right. Think of him as Eddie, if you wish. Why?’
‘It is merely that the picture we have with us appears to be signed “Everard Fothergill”, madam. I thought I should mention it.’
To say that aunt and nephew did not take this big would be paltering with the truth. We skipped like the high hills.
‘Give me that fragment, Jeeves. It looks like Edward to me,’ I pronounced, having scrutinized it.
‘You’re crazy,’ said Aunt Dahlia, feverishly wrenching it from my grasp. ‘It’s Everard. Isn’t it, Jeeves?’
‘That was certainly the impression I formed, madam.’
‘Bertie,’ said Aunt Dahlia, speaking in a voice of the kind which I believe is usually called strangled and directing at me the sort of look which in the days when she used to hunt with the Quorn and occasionally the Pytchley she would have given a hound engaged in chasing a rabbit, ‘Bertie, you curse of the civilized world, if you’ve burned the wrong picture …’
‘Of course I haven’t,’ I replied stoutly. ‘You’re both cockeyed. But if it will ease your mind, I’ll pop down to the dining-room and take a dekko. Amuse yourselves somehow till my return.’
I had spoken, as I say, stoutly, and hearing me you would no doubt have said to yourself ‘All is well with Bertram. He is unperturbed.’ But I wasn’t. I feared the worst, and already I was wincing at the thought of the impassioned speech, touching on my mental and moral defects, which Aunt Dahlia would be delivering when we forgathered once more. Far less provocation in the past had frequently led her to model her attitude towards me on that of a sergeant dissatisfied with the porting and shouldering arms of a recruit who had not quite got the hang of the thing.
I was consequently in no vein for the receipt of another shock, but I got this when I reached journey’s end, for as I entered the dining-room somebody inside it came bounding out and rammed me between wind and water. We staggered into the hall, locked in a close embrace, and as I had switched on the lights there in order to avoid bumping into pieces of furniture I was enabled to see my dance partner steadily and see him whole, as Jeeves says. It was Fothergill senior in bedroom slippers and a dressing-gown. In his right hand he had a knife, and at his feet there was a bundle of some sort which he had dropped at the moment of impact, and when I picked it up in my courteous way and it came unrolled, what I saw brought a startled ‘Golly!’ to my lips. It deadheated with a yip of anguish from his. He had paled beneath his whiskers.
‘Mr Wooster!’ he … quavered is, I think, the word. ‘Thank God you are not Everard!’
Well, I was pretty pleased about that, too, of course. The last thing I would have wanted to be was a small, thin artist with a beard.
‘No doubt,’ he proceeded, still quavering, ‘you are surprised to find me removing my Venus by stealth in this way, but I can explain everything.’
‘Well, that’s fine, isn’t it?’
‘You are not an artist—’
‘No, more a literary man. I once wrote an article on What The Well-Dressed Man Is Wearing for Milady’s Boudoir.’
‘Nevertheless, I think I can make you understand what this picture means to me. It was my child. I watched it grow. I loved it. It was part of my life.’
Here he paused, seeming touched in the wind, and I threw in a ‘Very creditable’ to keep the conversation going.
‘And then Everard married, and in a mad moment I gave it to him as a wedding present. How bitterly I regretted it! But the thing was done. It was irrevocable. I saw how he valued the picture. His eyes at meal times were always riveted on it. I could not bring myself to ask him for it back. And yet I was lost without it.’
‘Bit of a mix-up,’ I agreed. ‘Difficult to find a formula.’
‘For a while it seemed impossible. And then there was this outbreak of picture robberies in the neighbourhood. You heard about those?’
‘Yes, Aunt Dahlia mentioned them.’
‘Several valuable paintings have been stolen from houses near here, and it suddenly occurred to me that if I were to … er … remove my Venus, Everard would assume that it was the work of the same gang and never suspect. I wrestled with the temptation … I beg your pardon?’
‘I only said “At-a-boy!”’
‘Oh? Well, as I say, I did my utmost to resist the temptation, but tonight I yielded. Mr Wooster, you have a kind face.’
For an instant I thought he had said ‘kind of face’ and drew myself up, a little piqued. Then I got him.
‘Nice of you to say so.’
‘Yes, I am sure you are kind and would not betray me. You will not tell Everard?’
‘Of course not, if you don’t want me to. Sealed lips, you suggest?’
‘Precisely.’
‘Right ho.’
; ‘Thank you, thank you. I am infinitely grateful. Well, it is a little late and one might as well be turning in, I suppose, so I will say good-night,’ he said, and having done so, buzzed up the stairs like a homing rabbit. And scarcely had he buzzed, when I found Aunt Dahlia and Jeeves at my side.
‘Oh, there you are,’ I said.
‘Yes, here we are,’ replied the relative with a touch of asperity. ‘What’s kept you all this time?’
‘I would have made it snappier, but I was somewhat impeded in my movements by pards.’
‘By what?’
‘Bearded pards. Shakespeare. Right, Jeeves?’
‘Perfectly correct, sir. Shakespeare speaks of the soldier as bearded like the pard.’
‘And,’ said Aunt Dahlia, ‘full of strange oaths. Some of which you will shortly hear, if you don’t tell us what you’re babbling about.’
‘Oh, didn’t I mention that? I’ve been chatting with Edward Fothergill.’
‘Bertie, you’re blotto.’
‘Not blotto, old flesh and blood, but much shaken. Aunt Dahlia, I have an amazing story to relate.’
I related my amazing story.
‘And so,’ I concluded, ‘we learn once again the lesson never, however dark the outlook, to despair. The storm clouds lowered, the skies were black, but now what do we see? The sun shining and the blue bird back once more at the old stand. La Fothergill wanted the Venus expunged, and it has been expunged. Voilà!’ I said, becoming a bit Parisian.
‘And when she finds that owing to your fatheadedness Everard’s very valuable picture has also been expunged?’
I h’med. I saw what she had in mind.
‘Yes, there’s that,’ I agreed.
‘She’ll be madder than a wet hen. There isn’t a chance now that she’ll let me have that serial.’
‘I’m afraid not. I had overlooked that. I withdraw what I said about the sun and the blue bird.’
She inflated her lungs, and it could have been perceived by the dullest eye that she was about to begin.
‘Bertie—’
Jeeves coughed that soft cough of his, the one that sounds like a sheep clearing its throat on a distant mountain side.
‘I wonder if I might make a suggestion, madam?’
‘Yes, Jeeves? Remind me,’ said the relative, giving me a burning glance, ‘to go on with what I was saying later. You have the floor, Jeeves.’