‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Give the lady a cigarette, Pongo. A chair, Miss Bean? and a footstool for your feet? That’s right. And now, Miss Bean, tell us everything that is on your mind. I hope you have come to indicate to us in what way we may make some slight return for all your kindness tonight. Speaking for myself, if a flyer would be any good to you — and when I say a flyer I mean, of course, a tenner —‘
Elsie Bean tossed her head, setting the curling pins leaping like Sir Aylmer Bostock’s moustache.
‘I don’t want money,’ she said, not actually referring to it as dross, but giving the impression that that was what she considered it. ‘Thanking you all the same.’
‘Not at all.’
‘What I want,’ said Elsie Bean, once more imparting life to the curling pins, ‘is Harold bopped on the nose.’
She spoke with a strange intensity, her face hard and her blue eyes gleaming with a relentless light. That interview with her loved one in the garden seemed to have brought her to a decision. Here, you felt, was a housemaid who had been pushed just so far and could be pushed no further. Nor is the fact surprising. Tempers are quick in Bottleton East, and Constable Potter’s way of replying ‘Well, I dunno,’ to her most impassioned pleadings would have irritated a far less emotional girl.
Lord Ickenham inclined his head courteously.
‘Harold?’
‘Harold Potter.’
‘Ah, yes, our friend the constable. What did you say you wished done to his nose?’
‘I want it bopped.’
‘Struck, you mean? Socked? Given a biff?’
‘R.’
‘But why? Not that I want to be inquisitive, of course.’
‘I was telling Mr Twistleton. There’s only one way to make Harold be sensible and give up being a copper, and that’s to dot him a good bop on the nose. Because he’s nervous. He don’t like being bopped on the nose.’
‘Of course, of course. I see just what you mean. Your psychology is unerring. If I were a copper and somebody bopped me on the nose, I would hand in my resignation like a flash. The matter shall be attended to. Pongo —‘
Pongo started convulsively.
‘Now listen, Uncle Fred. All that’s been arranged. This Bean and I have discussed it and are in full agreement that the bird to take the job on is her brother Bert. Bert, I may mention, is a chap who habitually sloshes slops on the napper with blunt instruments, so this will be a picnic to him.’
‘But Bert doesn’t come out till September.’
Lord Ickenham was shocked.
‘Are you suggesting, Pongo, that this poor girl shall wait till September for the fulfilment of her hopes and dreams? It is obvious that time is of the essence and that we must rush to her assistance immediately. I, unfortunately, am a little too old to bop policemen on the nose, much as I should enjoy it, so the task devolves upon you. See to it as soon as possible.’
‘But, dash it —‘
‘And don’t say “But, dash it.” You remind me of our mutual ancestor, Sir Gervase Twistleton, who got a bad name in the days of the Crusades from curling up in bed and murmuring “Some other time,” when they asked him to come and do his bit at the battle of Joppa. I am convinced that this matter could not be placed in better hands than yours, and I would suggest that you and Miss Bean have a talk about ways and means while Sally and I go down to the larder and forage. It might be best if we took the back stairs. Can you direct us to the back stairs, Miss Bean? At the end of the passage? Thank you. I don’t suppose we shall have any trouble in finding the larder. Is there a gas range in the kitchen for egg-boiling purposes? Excellent. Every convenience. Then come along, Sally. I think I can promise you a blow-out on lavish lines. I have already tested Mugsy’s hospitality, and it is princely. I shouldn’t wonder if in addition to eggs there might not be a ham and possibly even sausages.’
With a bow of old-world courtesy to Elsie Bean, Lord Ickenham escorted Sally from the room, speaking of sausages he had toasted at school on the ends of pens, and Pongo, who had folded his arms in a rather noticeable manner, found on turning to Miss Bean that her set face had relaxed.
‘He’s a nice old gentleman,’ she said.
This seemed to Pongo such a monstrously inaccurate description of one who in his opinion was like a sort of human upas tree, casting its deadly blight on every innocent bystander who came within its sphere of influence, that he uttered a brassy ‘Ha!’
‘Pardon?’
‘I said “Ha!” said Pongo, and would have gone on to speak further, had there not at this moment occurred an interruption. Knuckles were rapping gently on the door, and through the woodwork there made itself heard a voice.
‘Pongo.’
The voice of Bill Oakshott.
In the literature and drama which have come down to us through the ages there have been a number of powerful descriptions of men reacting to unpleasant surprises. That of King Claudius watching the unfolding of the play of The Mouse Trap is one of these, and writers of a later date than Shakespeare have treated vividly of the husband who discovers in an inner pocket the letter given to him by his wife to slip in the mail box two weeks previously.
Of all the protagonists in these moving scenes it is perhaps to Macbeth seeing the ghost of Banquo that one may most aptly compare Pongo Twistleton as he heard this voice in the night. He stiffened from the ankles up, his eyes rolling, his hair stirring as if beneath a sudden breeze, his very collar seeming to wilt, and from his ashen lips there came a soft, wordless cry. It was not exactly the Potter-Bean ‘Coo!’ and not precisely the ‘Gar!’ of Sir Aylmer Bostock, but a sort of blend or composite of the two. That intelligent Scottish nobleman, Ross, whom very little escaped, said, as he looked at Macbeth, ‘His highness is not well,’ and he would have said the same if he had been looking at Pongo.
Nor is his emotion hard to understand. When a sensitive young man, animated by a lively consideration for his personal well-being, has been told by a much larger young man of admittedly homicidal tendencies that if he does not abandon his practice of hobnobbing with housemaids in the drawing-room at one-thirty in the morning he, the much larger young man, will scoop out his insides with his bare hands, he shrinks from the prospect of being caught by the other entertaining a housemaid in his bedroom at two forty-five. If Pongo said ‘Gar!’ or it may have been ‘Coo!’ and behaved as if an old friend whom he had recently caused to be murdered had dropped in to dinner with dagger wounds all over him, he cannot fairly be blamed. Those hands of Bill Oakshott’s seemed to rise before his eyes like dreadful things seen in a nightmare.
But it was only for an instant that he stood inactive. In times of crisis blood will tell, and he had the good fortune to belong to a family whose members, having gone through a lot of this sort of thing in their day, had acquired and transmitted to their descendants a certain technique. A good many Twistletons, notably in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, had been constrained by circumstances to think quick on occasions just such as this and, having thought quick, to hide women in cupboards. It was to the cupboard, therefore, acting automatically in accordance with the family tradition, that Pongo now directed Elsie Bean.
‘Slide in there!’ he hissed. ‘And not a sound, not a yip, not a murmur. A human life hangs on your silence.’
He closed the cupboard door, straightened his tie and drawing a deep breath called ‘Come in.’ And it was while he was smoothing his hair and simultaneously commending his soul to God that Bill Oakshott entered.
‘Oh, hullo,’ he said.
‘Hullo,’ said Bill. ‘I’m glad you’re still up, Pongo. I — er — I wanted a word with you.’
The phrase is one that sometimes has an ominous ring, but it was not menacingly that Bill Oakshott employed it. His voice was soft, even winning, and Pongo was encouraged to see that though looking as large as ever, if not larger, he seemed pacific. Ross, or somebody like that who noticed things, would have said that Bill was embarrasse
d, and he would have been right.
It often happens that after talking to a boyhood friend like an elder brother a young man of normally kindly disposition, when he has had time to reflect, finds himself wondering if his tone during the interview was not a little brusque. It was so with Bill Oakshott. Musing in solitude and recalling the scene in the drawing-room, it had seemed to him that some of his remarks had taken too anatomical a trend. It was to apologize that he had come to Pongo’s bedroom, and he proceeded now to do so.
It would have suited Pongo better if he had put these apologies in writing and submitted them to him in the form of a note, but he accepted them in a generous spirit, though absently, for he was listening to a soft, rustling sound which had begun to proceed from the cupboard. It made him feel as if spiders were walking up and down his back. The celebrated Beau Twistleton, in the days of the Regency, had once had a similar experience.
Bill appeared to have heard it, too. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, pausing in his remarks. ‘Eh?’
‘That sort of scratching noise. In the cupboard.’ Pongo wiped a bead of perspiration from his forehead. ‘Mice,’ he said.
‘Oh, mice. Lots of them about.’
‘Yes, quite a good year for mice,’ said Pongo. ‘Well, good night, Bill, old man.’
But Bill was not yet ready to leave. Like so many large young men, he was sentimental, and this disinclined him to rush these scenes of reconciliation. When he healed rifts with boyhood friends, he liked to assure himself that they were going to stay healed. He sat down on the bed, which creaked beneath his weight.
‘Well, I’m glad everything’s all right, Pongo. You’re sure you’re not offended?’ ‘Not at all, not a-tall.’
‘I thought you might have got the impression that I thought you were a foul snake.’ ‘No, no.’
‘I ought never to have suggested such a thing.’
‘Not keeping you up, am I, Bill?’
‘Not a bit. It was just that when I found you and Elsie Bean in the drawing-room, I thought for a moment —‘Quite.’
‘You know how it is.’
‘Oh, rather.’
‘You see … I’d sock those mice, if I were you.’
‘I will — tomorrow — with an iron hand. Regardless of their age and sex.’
‘You see, your heads were a bit close together.’
‘I was merely lighting her cigarette.’
‘Of course, of course. I realize that now. I know that I can trust you.’
‘Oh, rather.’
‘I know that you love Hermione and will make her happy. You will look on it as a sacred duty.’
‘You betcher.’
‘Fine,’ said Bill, clasping his hands and putting a good deal of soul into his expression. ‘That’s a bit of goose. I’m devoted to Hermione, Pongo.’
‘Yes, you told me.’
‘Hermione —
‘How about having a long talk about her in the morning?’ ‘Not now?’
‘Bit late, isn’t it?’
‘Ah yes, I suppose you want to turn in. I was only going to say that Hermione is the … dash it, what are those things?’
‘The berries?’
‘Lode stars. She is the lode star of my life. I’ve been crazy about her for years and years and years, and her happiness means everything to me. How wonderful she is, Pongo.’
‘Terrific.’
‘You don’t find many girls like Hermione.’
‘Very scarce.’
‘So beautiful.’
‘Ah.’
‘So clever.’
‘What ho.’
‘You’ve read her novels, of course?’
Pongo could not repress a guilty start. The question was an awkward one. He was uncomfortably conscious of having devoted to Murder in the Fog hours of study which would have been better employed in familiarizing himself with his loved one’s output.
‘Well, I’ll tell you,’ he said. ‘Up to the moment of going to press, I haven’t for one reason and another been able to smack into them to quite the extent I could wish. But she’s given me her latest to read while I’m here, and I can see from the first page that it’s the bezuzus. Strikes a new note, as you might say.’
‘Which one is that?’
‘I’ve forgotten the name, but I know it was called something.’
‘How long has it been out?’
‘Just published, I understand.’
‘Ah, then I haven’t seen it. Fine. That’s a treat to look forward to. Isn’t she amazing, Pongo? Isn’t it extraordinary that she can write all those wonderful books —‘
‘Oh, rather.’
‘— And still be a simple, healthy, out-of-doors country girl, never happier than when she is getting up at six in the morning and going for a long walk through the —‘
Pongo started.
‘Six in the morning?’ He spoke in a thin, strained voice, and his jaw had fallen a little. ‘She doesn’t get up at six in the morning?’
‘In the summer always.’
‘And in winter?’
‘Seven. I’ve known her to do a round and a half of golf before breakfast, and if she doesn’t play golf it’s a long walk through the woods and fields. I tell you, she’s marvellous. Well, good night, Pongo, you’ll be wanting to get to bed,’ said Bill, and heaving himself up took his departure.
It was a pensive Pongo Twistleton who went to the door and listened and then went to the cupboard and extracted Elsie Bean. To say that Bill’s words had weakened his great love would perhaps be going too far, for he still thought Hermione Bostock a queen among women and had no intention of replying in the negative when the clergyman said ‘Wilt thou, Reginald, take this Hermione to be thy wedded wife?’ But the discovery that he was engaged to a girl who habitually got up at six in the morning, and would presumably insist on him getting up at that hour also, had definitely shaken him. His manner as he de-Beaned the cupboard was distrait, and when his guest complained of being in the final stages of suffocation he merely said ‘Oh, ah?’
His detachment displeased Elsie Bean. She displayed a captious spirit.
‘What did I have to go killing myself in cupboards for? It was only Mr William.’
‘Only!’ said Pongo, unable to share this easy outlook. ‘Do you realize that if he had found you here, he would have pulled my head off at the roots?’
‘You don’t say?’
‘Not to mention scooping out my insides with his bare hands.’
‘Coo! What a nut!’
‘The word nut understates it. When roused — and finding you on the premises would have roused him like nobody’s business — he’s a menace to pedestrians and traffic. Gosh!’ said Pongo, struck with an idea. ‘Why wouldn’t he be the man to bop your Harold on the nose?’
‘But you’re going to do it.’
‘In case I can’t manage to get around to it, I mean. You know how full one’s time is. I believe Bill would be just the chap you want.’
Elsie Bean shook her head.
‘No, I asked him.’
‘Asked him?’
‘R. I met him walking in the garden after I’d helped that nice old gentleman up the water pipe. He said he wouldn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘He doesn’t believe in bopping coppers on the nose.’
It was a prejudice which Pongo shared, but nevertheless he found himself exasperated. One never likes to see a man stifling his natural gifts. The parable of the talents crossed his mind.
‘But how on earth do you expect me to do it?’ he demanded peevishly. ‘The way everybody talks, you’d think it was the simplest thing in the world to walk up to a fifteen-stone policeman and sock him on the beezer. I can’t see the procedure. How does one start? One can’t just go and do it. It wants leading up to. And even then —‘
Elsie Bean seemed to appreciate his difficulty.
‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ she said. ‘How would it be if you pushed him into the duck pond?
’
‘What duck pond?’
‘The one outside the front gate.’
‘But he may not go near the bally duck pond.’
‘Yes, he will. He always does, when he’s on his beat. He goes and stands there and spits into it.’
Pongo brightened a little. It would be idle to pretend that he found the picture which his companion had conjured up attractive, but it was less repellent than the other.
‘Creep up behind him, you mean?’
‘R.’
‘And give him a hearty shove?’
‘R.’
‘Yes. Yes, I see what you mean. Well, there is much in what you say, and I will give the matter my attention It may be that you have found the solution. Meanwhile, go and peer cautiously up and down the passage and see if there’s anybody about. If there isn’t, pick up your feet and streak for your dug-out like a flash.’
But before she could reach the door, it had opened to admit Lord Ickenham and Sally. Both looked greatly refreshed, the former in particular wearing the contented expression of a man who has been steeping himself in boiled eggs.
‘As good a little meal as I have ever tasted,’ he said. ‘Really, Mugsy does one extraordinarily well. And now bed, don’t you think? The evening is wearing along. You had better be putting a few things together, Pongo.’
Pongo did not reply. He was staring at Sally. Lord Ickenham approached him and drove a kindly finger into his ribs.
‘Ouch!’
‘Start packing, my boy.’
‘Eh? Oh, right ho!’
‘Just a few necessaries. I can lend you a razor and my great sponge, Joyeuse.’ Lord Ickenham turned to Elsie Bean. ‘You two have settled things, I hope?’
‘Yes, sir. Mr Twistleton is going to push Harold into the duck pond.’
‘Capital, capital,’ said Lord Ickenham heartily. ‘An excellent idea. You’ll enjoy that, Pongo. Don’t forget that in pushing policemen into duck ponds the follow through is everything.’
Pongo, mechanically filling a suitcase, again made no reply. Though he had ceased to stare at Sally, she still occupied his thoughts. The sight of her coming through the door had acted upon him like a powerful electric shock, for her eyes, the eyes of a girl refreshed with tea and eggs, had seemed, if possible, brighter than ever, and once more she had flashed upon him that smile of hers. And this time, though he had immediately thought of Hermione Bostock, it was only to be reminded of her habit of rising at six in the summer and at seven during the winter months.