What he was saying ran as follows:
‘Mrs McCorkadale, madam.’
10
* * *
LEANING AGAINST THE side of the house, I breathed rather in the manner copyrighted by the hart which pants for cooling streams when heated in the chase. The realization of how narrowly I had missed having to mingle again with this blockbusting female barrister kept me Lot’s-wifed for what seemed an hour or so, though I suppose it can’t have been more than a few seconds. Then gradually I ceased to be a pillar of salt and was able to concentrate on finding out what on earth Ma McCorkadale’s motive was in paying us this visit. The last place, I mean to say, where you would have expected to find her. Considering how she stood in regard to Ginger, it was as if Napoleon had dropped in for a chat with Wellington on the eve of Waterloo.
I have had occasion to mention earlier the advantages as a listening-post afforded by the just-outside-the-French-window spot where I was standing. Invisible to those within, I could take in all they were saying, as I had done with Spode and L. P. Runkle. Both had come through loud and clear, and neither had had a notion that Bertram Wooster was on the outskirts, hearing all.
As I could hardly step in and ask her to repeat any of her remarks which I didn’t quite catch, it was fortunate that the McCorkadale’s voice was so robust, while Aunt Dahlia’s, of course, would be audible if you were at Hyde Park Corner and she in Piccadilly Circus. I have often thought that the deaf adder I read about when I won my Scripture Knowledge prize would have got the message right enough if the aged relative had been one of the charmers. I was able to continue leaning against the side of the house in full confidence that I shouldn’t miss a syllable of either protagonist’s words.
The proceedings started with a couple of Good mornings, Aunt Dahlia’s the equivalent of ‘What the hell?’, and then the McCorkadale, as if aware that it was up to her to offer a word of explanation, said she had called to see Mr Winship on a matter of great importance.
‘Is he in?’
Here was a chance for the ancestor to get one up by retorting that he jolly well would be after the votes had been counted, but she let it go, merely saying No, he had gone out, and the McCorkadale said she was sorry.
‘I would have preferred to see him in person, but you, I take it, are his hostess, so I can tell you and you will tell him.’
This seemed fair enough to me, and I remember thinking that these barristers put things well, but it appeared to annoy the aged relative.
‘I am afraid I do not understand you,’ she said, and I knew she was getting steamed up, for if she had been her calm self, she would have said ‘Sorry, I don’t get you.’
‘If you will allow me to explain. I can do so in a few simple words. I have just had a visit from a slimy slinking slug.’
I drew myself up haughtily. Not much good, of course, in the circs, but the gesture seemed called for. One does not object to fair criticism, but this was mere abuse. I could think of nothing in our relations which justified such a description of me. My views on barristers and their way of putting things changed sharply.
Whether or not Aunt Dahlia bridled, as the expression is, I couldn’t say, but I think she must have done, for her next words were straight from the deep freeze.
‘Are you referring to my nephew Bertram Wooster?’
The McCorkadale did much to remove the bad impression her previous words had made on me. She said her caller had not given his name, but she was sure he could not have been Mrs Travers’s nephew.
‘He was a very common man,’ she said, and with the quickness which is so characteristic of me I suddenly got on to it that she must be alluding to Bingley, who had been ushered into her presence immediately after I had left. I could understand her applying those derogatory adjectives to Bingley. And the noun slug, just right. Once again I found myself thinking how well barristers put things.
The old ancestor, too, appeared – what’s the word beginning with m and meaning less hot under the collar? Mollified, that’s it. The suggestion that she could not have a nephew capable of being described as a common man mollified her. I don’t say that even now she would have asked Ma McCorkadale to come on a long walking tour with her, but her voice was definitely matier.
‘Why do you call him a slug?’ she asked, and the McCorkadale had her answer to that.
‘For the same reason that I call a spade a spade, because it is the best way of conveying a verbal image of him. He made me a disgraceful proposition.’
‘WHAT?’ said Aunt Dahlia rather tactlessly.
I could understand her being surprised. It was difficult to envisage a man so eager to collect girl friends as to make disgraceful propositions to Mrs McCorkadale. It amazed me that Bingley could have done it. I had never liked him, but I must confess to a certain admiration for his temerity. Our humble heroes, I felt.
‘You’re pulling my leg,’ said the aged relative.
The McCorkadale came back at her briskly.
‘I am doing nothing of the kind. I am telling you precisely what occurred. I was in my drawing-room going over the speech I have prepared for the debate tomorrow, when I was interrupted by the incursion of this man. Naturally annoyed, I asked him what his business was, and he said with a most offensive leer that he was Father Christmas bringing me manna in the wilderness and tidings of great joy. I was about to ring the bell to have him shown out, for of course I assumed that he was intoxicated, when he made me this extraordinary proposition. He had contrived to obtain information to the detriment of my opponent, and this he wished to sell to me. He said it would make my victory in the election certain. It would, as he phrased it, ‘be a snip’.
I stirred on my base. If I hadn’t been afraid I might be overheard, I would have said ‘Aha!’ Had circs been other than they were, I would have stepped into the room, tapped the ancestor on the shoulder and said ‘Didn’t I tell you Bingley had information? Perhaps another time you’ll believe me’. But as this would have involved renewing my acquaintance with a woman of whom I had already seen sufficient to last a lifetime, it was not within the sphere of practical politics. I remained, accordingly, where I was, merely hitching my ears up another couple of notches in order not to miss the rest of the dialogue.
After the ancestor had said ‘For heaven’s sake!’ or ‘Gorblimey’ or whatever it was, indicating that her visitor’s story interested her strongly, the McCorkadale resumed. And what she resumed about unquestionably put the frosting on the cake. Words of doom is the only way I can think of to describe the words she spoke as.
‘The man, it appeared, was a retired valet, and he belonged to a club for butlers and valets in London, one of the rules of which was that all members were obliged to record in the club book information about their employers. My visitor explained that he had been at one time in the employment of Mr Winship and had duly recorded a number of the latter’s escapades which if made public, would be certain to make the worst impression on the voters of Market Snodsbury.’
This surprised me. I hadn’t had a notion that Bingley had ever worked for Ginger. It just shows the truth of the old saying that half the world doesn’t know how the other three-quarters live.
‘He then told me without a blush of shame that on his latest visit to London he had purloined this book and now had it in his possession.’
I gasped with horror. I don’t know why, but the thought that Bingley must have been pinching the thing at the very moment when Jeeves and I were sipping our snootfuls in the next room seemed to make it so particularly poignant. Not that it wouldn’t have been pretty poignant anyway. For years I had been haunted by the fear that the Junior Ganymede club book, with all the dynamite it contained, would get into the wrong hands, and the hands it had got into couldn’t have been more the sort of hands you would have wished it hadn’t. I don’t know if I make myself clear, but what I’m driving at is that if I had been picking a degraded character to get away with that book, Bingley was the last character I wou
ld have picked. I remember Jeeves speaking of someone who was fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils, and that was Bingley all over. The man was wholly without finer feelings, and when you come up against someone without finer feelings, you’ve had it.
The aged relative was not blind to the drama of the situation. She uttered an awed ‘Lord love a duck!’, and the McCorkadale said she might well say ‘Lord love a duck’, though it was not an expression she would have used herself.
‘What did you do?’ the ancestor asked, all agog, and the McCorkadale gave that sniffing snort of hers. It was partly like an escape of steam and partly like two or three cats unexpectedly encountering two or three dogs, with just a suggestion of a cobra waking up cross in the morning. I wondered how it had affected the late Mr McCorkadale. Probably made him feel that there are worse things than being run over by a municipal tram.
‘I sent him away with a flea in his ear. I pride myself on being a fair fighter, and his proposition revolted me. If you want to have him arrested, though I am afraid I cannot see how it can be done, he lives at 5 Ormond Crescent. He appears to have asked my maid to look in and see his etchings on her afternoon off, and he gave her his address. But, as I say, there would seem not to be sufficient evidence for an arrest. Our conversation was without witnesses, and he would simply have to deny possession of the book. A pity. I would have enjoyed seeing a man like that hanged, drawn and quartered.’
She snorted again, and the ancestor, who always knows what the book of etiquette would advise, came across with the soothing syrup. She said Ma McCorkadale deserved a medal.
‘Not at all.’
‘It was splendid of you to turn the man down.’
‘As I said, I am a fair fighter.’
‘Apart from your revulsion at his proposition, it must have been very annoying for you to be interrupted when you were working on your speech.’
‘Especially as a few moments before this person appeared I had been interrupted by an extraordinary young man who gave me the impression of being half-witted.’
‘That would have been my nephew, Bertram Wooster.’
‘Oh, I beg your pardon.’
‘Quite all right.’
‘I may have formed a wrong estimate of his mentality. Our interview was very brief. I just thought it odd that he should be trying to persuade me to vote for my opponent.’
‘It’s the sort of thing that would seem a bright idea to Bertie. He’s like that. Whimsical. Moving in a mysterious way his wonders to perform. But he ought not to have butted in when you were busy with your speech. Is it coming out well?’
‘I am satisfied with it.’
‘Good for you. I suppose you’re looking forward to the debate?’
‘Very keenly. I am greatly in favour of it. It simplifies things so much if the two opponents face one another on the same platform and give the voters a chance to compare their views. Provided, of course that both observe the decencies of debate. But I really must be getting back to my work.’
‘Just a moment.’ No doubt it was the word ‘observe’ that had rung a bell with the ancestor. ‘Do you do the Observer crossword puzzle by any chance?’
‘I solve it at breakfast on Sunday mornings.’
‘Not the whole lot?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Every clue?’
‘I have never failed yet. I find it ridiculously simple.’
‘Then what’s all that song and dance about the measured tread of saints round St Paul’s?’
‘Oh, I guessed that immediately. The answer, of course, is pedometer. You measure tread with a pedometer. Dome, meaning St Paul’s, comes in the middle and Peter, for St Peter, round it. Very simple.’
‘Oh, very. Well, thank you. You have taken a great weight off my mind,’ said Aunt Dahlia, and they parted in complete amity, a thing I wouldn’t have thought possible when Ma McCorkadale was one of the parters.
For perhaps a quarter of a minute after I had rejoined the human herd, as represented by my late father’s sister Dahlia, I wasn’t able to get a word in, the old ancestor being fully occupied with saying what she thought of the compiler of the Observer crossword puzzle, with particular reference to domes and pedometers. And when she had said her say on that subject she embarked on a rueful tribute to the McCorkadale, giving it as her opinion that against a woman with a brain like that Ginger hadn’t the meagre chance of a toupee in a high wind. Though, she added in more hopeful vein, now that the menace of the Ganymede Club book had been squashed there was just a possibility that the eloquence of Spode might get his nose in front.
All this while I had been trying to cut in with my opening remark, which was to the effect that the current situation was a bit above the odds, but it was only when I had repeated this for the third time that I succeeded in obtaining her attention.
‘This is a bit thick, what,’ I said, varying my approach slightly.
She seemed surprised as if the idea had not occurred to her.
‘Thick?’
‘Well, isn’t it?’
‘Why? If you were listening, you heard her say that, being a fair fighter, she had scorned the tempter and sent him away with a flea in his ear, which must be a most uncomfortable thing to have. Bingley was baffled.’
‘Only for the nonce.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘Not nonsense, nonce, which isn’t at all the same thing. I feel that Bingley, though crushed to earth, will rise again. How about if he sells that book with all its ghastly contents to the Market Snodsbury Argus-Reminder?’
I was alluding to the powerful bi-weekly sheet which falls over itself in its efforts to do down the Conservative cause, omitting no word or act to make anyone with Conservative leanings feel like a piece of cheese. Coming out every Wednesday and Saturday with proofs of Ginger’s past, I did not see how it could fail to give his candidature the sleeve across the windpipe.
I put this to the old blood relation in no uncertain terms. I might have added that that would wipe the silly smile off her face, but there was no necessity. She saw at once that I spoke sooth, and a crisp hunting-field expletive escaped her. She goggled at me with all the open dismay of an aunt who has inadvertently bitten into a bad oyster.
‘I never thought of that!’
‘Give it your attention now.’
‘Those Argus-Reminder hounds stick at nothing.’
‘The sky is notoriously their limit.’
‘Did you tell me Ginger had done time?’
‘I said he was always in the hands of the police on Boat Race night. And, of course, on Rugger night.’
‘What’s Rugger night?’
‘The night of the annual Rugby football encounter between the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Many blithe spirits get even more effervescent then than when celebrating the Boat Race. Ginger was one of them.’
‘He really got jugged?’
‘Invariably. His practice of pinching policemen’s helmets ensured this. Released next morning on payment of a fine, but definitely after spending the night in a dungeon cell.’
There was no doubt that I had impressed on her the gravity of the situation. She gave a sharp cry like that of a stepped-on dachshund, and her face took on the purple tinge it always assumes in moments of strong emotion.
‘This does it!’
‘Fairly serious, I agree.’
‘Fairly serious! The merest whisper of such goings-on will be enough to alienate every voter in the town. Ginger’s done for.’
‘You don’t think they might excuse him because his blood was young at the time?’
‘Not a hope. They won’t be worrying about his ruddy blood. You don’t know what these blighters here are like. Most of them are chapel folk with a moral code that would have struck Torquemada as too rigid.’
‘Torquemada?’
‘The Spanish Inquisition man.’
‘Oh, that Torquemada.’
‘How many Torquemadas did you think there were?’
/> I admitted that it was not a common name, and she carried on.
‘We must act!’
‘But how?’
‘Or, rather, you must act. You must go to this man and reason with him.’
I h’med a bit at this. I doubted whether a fellow with Bingley’s lust for gold would listen to reason.
‘What shall I say?’
‘You’ll know what to say.’
‘Oh, shall I?’
‘Appeal to his better instincts.’
‘He hasn’t got any.’
‘Now don’t make difficulties, Bertie. That’s your besetting sin, always arguing. You want to help Ginger, don’t you?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Very well, then.’
When an aunt has set her mind on a thing, it’s no use trying to put in a nolle prosequi. I turned to the door.
Half-way there a thought occurred to me. I said:
‘How about Jeeves?’
‘What about him?’
‘We ought to spare his feelings as far as possible. I repeatedly warned him that that club book was high-level explosive and ought not to be in existence. What if it fell into the wrong hands, I said, and he said it couldn’t possibly fall into the wrong hands. And now it has fallen into about the wrongest hands it could have fallen into. I haven’t the heart to say “I told you so” and watch him writhe with shame and confusion. You see, up till now Jeeves has always been right. His agony on finding that he has at last made a floater will be frightful. I shouldn’t wonder if he might not swoon. I can’t face him. You’ll have to tell him.’
‘Yes, I’ll do it.’
‘Try to break it gently.’
‘I will. When you were listening outside, did you get this man Bingley’s address?’
‘I got it.’