‘Who was it?’
‘A scarlet woman, sir,’ said Constable Potter, becoming biblical. ‘Well, what I mean to say, she was wearing a red jacket and a kind of red thingummy round her head, like as it might have been a scarf.’
‘Was it a scarf?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then why say “like as it might have been” one? I have had to speak before, from the bench, of the idiotic, asinine way in which you blasted policemen give your evidence. Did you see this woman?’
‘Yes and no, sir.’
Sir Aylmer closed his eyes. He seemed to be praying for strength.
‘What do you mean, yes and no?’
‘I mean to say, sir, that I didn’t actually see her, like as it might have been see. I just caught sight of her for a moment as she legged it away, like as it might have been a glimp.’
‘Do you mean glimpse?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then say glimpse. And if you use that expression “like as it might have been” once more, just once more, I’ll…. Could you identify this woman?’
‘Establish her identity?’ said Constable Potter, gently corrective. ‘Yes, sir, if I could apprehend her. But I don’t know where she is.’
‘Well, I’ve not got her.’
‘No, sir.’
‘Then why come bothering me? What do you expect me to do?’
Broadly speaking, Constable Potter expected Sir Aylmer to have the countryside scoured and the ports watched, but before he could say so the latter had touched on another aspect of the affair.
‘What were you doing by the duck pond?’
‘Spitting and thinking, sir. I generally pause there when on my beat, and I had just paused this afternoon when the outrage occurred. I heard something behind me, like as it might have been a footstep, and the next moment something pushed me in the small of the back, like as if it might have been a hand —‘
‘GET OUT!’ said Sir Aylmer.
Constable Potter withdrew. Crossing the terrace, he made for the bushes on the other side and there, lighting his pipe, stood spitting and thinking. And we make no secret of the fact that his thoughts were bitter thoughts and his expectoration disillusioned. Just as a boy’s best friend is his mother, so is a policeman’s prop and stay the chairman of the local bench of magistrates. When skies are dark, it is the thought of the chairman of the local bench of magistrates that brings the sun smiling through, and it is to the chairman of the local bench of magistrates that he feels he can always take his little troubles and be sure of support and sympathy. Who ran to catch me when I fell and would some pretty story tell and kiss the place to make it well? The chairman of the local bench of magistrates. That is the policeman’s creed.
Anyone, therefore, who when a boy ever went running to his mother with a tale of wrongs and injuries and instead of condolences received a kick in the pants will be able to appreciate this officer’s chagrin as he passed the late scene under mental review. Sir Aylmer’s attitude had hurt and disappointed him. If this was how a constable’s legitimate complaints were received by those whose duty it was to comfort and console, then Elsie, he felt, was right and the quicker he left the Force, the better.
If you had approached Harold Potter as he stood there in his bush, smoking his pipe and spitting bitterly, and had said, ‘Well, Constable Potter, how are you feeling?’ he would have replied that he was feeling fed up. And there is little doubt that this black mood would have grown in intensity, had not something happened which abruptly wrenched his thoughts from their contemplation of the policeman’s unhappy lot.
Through the branches before him he had a good view of the front of the house, and at this moment there appeared on the balcony of one of the windows on the first floor a female figure in a red jacket, wearing upon its head a red thingummy, like as it might have been a scarf. It came to the balcony rail, looked left and right, then went back into the room.
The spectacle left Harold Potter gaping. A thrill ran through him from the base of the helmet to the soles of his regulation boots. He started to say ‘Coo!’ but the word froze on his moustache.
Harold Potter was a man who could reason. A mystery woman in a red jacket had pushed him into the duck pond. A mystery woman in a red jacket was in that room on the first floor. It did not take him long to suspect that these two mystery women might be one and the same.
But how to make sure?
It seemed to him that there lay before him the choice between two courses of action. He could go and report to Sir Aylmer, or he could pop along to the potting shed, where there was a light ladder, secure this light ladder, take it to the side of the house, prop it up and climb to that first floor window and peer in. A steady look at close range would establish the identity of the red-jacketed figure.
He did not hesitate long between these alternative plans. Rejecting almost immediately the idea of going and reporting to Sir Aylmer, he knocked out his pipe and started for the potting shed.
Sally, her tea and buttered toast long since consumed, had begun to feel lonely. It was quite a time now since Pongo had left her, and she yearned for his return. Seated on the chaise-longue, she thought what a baa-lamb he was and longed for him to come back so that she could go on stroking his head and telling him how much she loved him.
An odd thing, this love, and one about which it is futile to argue. If individual A finds in individual B a glamour which escapes the notice of the general public, the general public has simply got to accept the situation without protest, just as it accepted without protest, though perhaps with a silent sigh of regret, the fact of Mr Brotherhood, the curate, getting measles.
Seeing Sally sitting on the chaise-longue with clasped hands and starry eyes, her heart overflowing with love for Pongo, it would have been useless for a discriminating third party to tap her on the shoulder and try to persuade her that there was nothing in the prospect of a lifelong union with Reginald Twistleton to get starry-eyed about. Fruitless to attempt to sketch for her a picture of Reginald Twistleton as seen by the cooler-headed. She was in love, and she liked it.
The only cloud that darkened her sky was the fear lest a shrewd girl like Hermione Bostock, having secured such a prize, might refuse to relinquish it, but she need have had no anxiety. Hermione was relinquishing the prize at that very moment. When, some twenty minutes after he had left it, Pongo re-entered the room, there was a dazed look on his face as if he had recently been mixed up with typhoons, waterspouts and other Acts of God, but in his eyes shone the light which comes into the eyes of men who have found the blue bird.
Sally was not able to detect this immediately, her vision being obscured by the handkerchief with which he was mopping his forehead, and her first words were reproachful.
‘Oh, angel, what a time you’ve been.’
‘Sorry.’
‘I went out on to the balcony just now to see if I could see you, but you weren’t in sight. I know you had to brood, but need you have brooded so long?’
Pongo lowered the handkerchief.
‘I wasn’t brooding,’ he said. ‘I was chatting with Hermione.’ Sally gave a jump.
‘Then you found her?’
‘She found me.’
‘And what happened?’
Pongo moved to the mirror and inspected himself in it. He seemed to be looking for grey hairs.
‘Well, that I can hardly tell you,’ he said. ‘The whole thing’s a bit of a blur. Have you ever been in a really bad motor smash? Or hit by an atom bomb? No? Then it’s hard to explain. Still, the fact that emerges is that the engagement’s off.’
‘Oh, Pongo!’
‘Oh, Sally!’
‘Oh, Pongo darling! Then we can live happy ever after.’
Pongo applied the handkerchief to his forehead once more.
‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘after a brief interval for picking up the pieces and reassembling the faculties. I don’t mind telling you the recent scene has left me a bit weak.’
??
?My poor lamb. I wish I had some smelling salts.’
‘So do I. I could use a bucketful.’
‘Was it so awful?’
‘Quite an ordeal.’
‘What did you say to her?’
‘I didn’t get a chance of saying anything to her, except, “Oh, there you are,” right at the start. She bore the burden of the conversash.’
‘You don’t mean it was she who broke off the engagement?’
‘And how! You know, Uncle Fred ought to be in some sort of home.’
‘Why?’
‘It appears that he met Hermione and spilled the beans with a lavish hand. He told her so many things about me that I wonder she remembered them all. But she did.’
‘Such as —?’
‘Well, getting pinched at the Dog Races and going down to the drawing-room last night to get a spot and being caught this morning in Ma Bostock’s wardrobe. Things like that.’
‘In the wardrobe? What were you doing there?’
‘I had gone to her room to get you a lipstick, and —‘
‘Oh, Pongo! My hero! Did you really do that for me?’
‘Not much I wouldn’t do for you. Look what you did for me. Pushing Porter into that pond.’
‘I think that’s what’s so splendid about us. Each helps each. It’s the foundation of a happy married life. So Uncle Fred told her all that about you? Bless him.’
‘Would you put it like that?’
‘Well, he saved you from a girl you could never have been happy with.’
‘I couldn’t be happy with any girl except you. Yes. I suppose he did. I hadn’t looked at it in that way.’
‘He never minds how much trouble he takes, if he feels that he’s spreading sweetness and light.’
‘No. There have been complaints about it on all sides, and I still maintain that he ought to be in a padded cell with the board of Lunacy Commissioners sitting on his head. However, I agree that he has smoothed our path. I mean to say, here we are, what?’
‘Here we are.’
‘All our problems solved. Nothing to worry about any more. ‘‘Not a thing.’
‘Oh, Sally!’
‘Oh, Pongo!’
The embrace into which they fell was a close one, close enough, had it taken place in Hollywood, to have caused Eric Johnston to shake his head dubiously and recommend cutting a few hundred feet, but not so close as to deprive Pongo of a view of the window. And Sally, nestling in his arms, was concerned to notice that he had suddenly stiffened, as if he had been turned into a pillar of salt.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.
Pongo gave a short gulp. He seemed to find a difficulty in speaking.
‘Don’t look now,’ he said, ‘but that blighter Potter has just stepped off a ladder on to the balcony.’
It was at about the moment when Constable Potter, having found the light ladder, was starting to lift it and Pongo, in the bedroom on the first floor, had begun his emotional description of the recent conference with Hermione that Major Plank turned his car in at the gates of Ashenden Manor and proceeded up the drive at a high rate of speed.
He had been progressing at a high rate of speed ever since leaving the Bull’s Head. He would probably have driven fairly fast in any event, for he was one of those men who do, but what made him so particularly disinclined on the present occasion to loiter and look at the scenery was the fact that the full significance of Lord Ickenham’s words in the saloon bar had just come home to him. He had remembered, that is to say, that the man whom he had known as Barmy Twistleton had told him that he was now Lord Ickenham.
There were circles in London where the eccentricities of Lord Ickenham were a favourite topic of conversation, and it was in these circles that Major Plank, when not among the alligators, was accustomed to mix. His old schoolmate’s character and habits, therefore, were fully known to him, and he was able to form a vivid picture of what would be the effect on the reputation of anyone whom the other had decided to impersonate.
How long this public menace had been established at Ashenden Manor he did not know, but he felt very strongly that even a single day was too much and that anything like forty-eight hours would have caused a stigma to rest upon the grand old name of Brabazon-Plank which it would take a lifetime to remove.
There is probably no one who moves more slippily than a Brazilian explorer on his way to expose an impostor who has been causing stigmas to rest upon his name, and not even Hermione could have made better speed up the drive than did this fermenting Major. His was a large, flat, solid foot, admirably adapted for treading on accelerators, and he pressed it down with a will.
Arriving at the house, he was in far too great a hurry to ring the front door-bell and wait till it was answered. Voices were proceeding from the open french window to his right, presumably that of the drawing-room, and he went thither and walked in. He found himself in the presence of his young subordinate, Bill Oakshott, and a rugged man of an older vintage who was puffing at a white moustache of the soup-strainer class. He had a feeling, looking at them, that they were upset about something.
Nor was he mistaken. Both Bill and his Uncle Aylmer had come to the tea table with their bosoms full of the perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart. The memory of his craven behaviour during that interview with Hermione had not ceased to torture Bill, and Sir Aylmer was still in the grip of the baffled fury which comes to men of imperious nature when their daughters tell them they must not bring actions against publishers, a fury which his conversation with Constable Potter had done nothing to alleviate. To say that William Oakshott and Sir Aylmer Bostock were human powder magazines which it needed but a spark to explode is not only clever, but true.
It is possible, however, that the soothing influence of tea, muffins and cucumber sandwiches might have succeeded in averting disaster, allowing the exchanges to confine themselves to harmless commonplaces, had not Sir Aylmer, too pleased to keep such splendid news to himself, chanced to mention that Hermione had told him that, her romance having sprung an unforeseen leak, he would not have to pass the evening of his life with Reginald Twistleton as his son-in-law. For this led Bill to exclaim ‘Oh, gosh!’ in an enraptured voice and, pressed to explain his elation, to say that the thought had crossed his mind that if Hermione was back in circulation again, there might be a chance for a chap who had loved her with a growing fervour for years and years and years: and this in its turn led Sir Aylmer to attack him with tooth and claw. There was a smile on his nephew’s face which he considered a silly smile, and he addressed himself without delay to the task of wiping it off.
‘Gar!’ he said, speaking dangerously through a mouthful of muffin, and added that there was no need for Bill to grin all over his beastly face like a damned hyena, because whether free or engaged Hermione would not touch him with a barge pole.
‘Why should she?’ asked Sir Aylmer. ‘You? She looks on you as a —’ ‘I know,’ said Bill, with a return of gloom. ‘A brother.’
‘Not brother,’ corrected Sir Aylmer. ‘Sheep.’
A quiver ran through Bill’s massive frame. His jaw fell and his eyes widened.
‘Sheep?’
‘Sheep.’
‘Sheep?’ said Bill.
‘Sheep,’ said Sir Aylmer firmly. ‘A poor, spineless sheep who can’t say boo to a goose.’
A more practised debater would have turned this charge to his advantage by challenging the speaker to name three sheep who could say boo to a goose, but Bill merely stood rigid, his fists clenched, his nostrils dilated, his face mantled with the blush of shame and indignation, regretting that ties of blood and his companion’s advanced years rendered impossible that slosh in the eye for which the other seemed to him to be asking, nay pleading, with his every word.
‘Sheep,’ said Sir Aylmer, winding up the speech for the prosecution. ‘She told me so herself.’
It was in this delicate situation that Major Plank intruded.
‘Hullo there,’ he sai
d, striding in with the calm assurance of a man accustomed for years to walk uninvited into the huts of native chiefs. ‘Hullo, Bill.’
It would be difficult to advance more conclusive proof of the turmoil into which Bill Oakshott’s soul had been thrown by his uncle’s words than by saying that the unexpected entry of the last man he would have wished to see in the drawing-room of Ashenden Manor did not cause so much as a gleam of horror to come into his eyes. He regarded him dully, his mind still occupied by that sheep sequence. Did Hermione, he was asking himself, really look on him as a sheep? And, arising from that, had she a prejudice against sheep? The evidence went to show that she had none against baa-lambs, but sheep, of course, might be a different matter.
It was left to Sir Aylmer to do the honours.
‘Who the hell are you?’ he asked, not unthankful that here was another object on which he could work off some of the spleen induced by the chit-chat of daughters and policemen.
Major Plank had had far too much experience of this sort of thing, to be abashed by nervous irritability on the part of a host. Many of the householders on whom he had dropped in in his time had said it with spears.
‘Who the hell are you?’ he replied agreeably. ‘I’m looking for Mugsy Bostock.’
Sir Aylmer started.
‘I am Sir Aylmer Bostock,’ he said, and Major Plank stared at him incredulously.
‘You?’ he said. ‘Don’t be an ass. Mugsy Bostock is younger than me, and you look a million. Have you seen your Uncle Mugsy anywhere, Bill?’
It was at this point that Jane, the parlourmaid, entered bearing strawberries in a bowl, for they did themselves well at tea time at Ashenden Manor — cucumber sandwiches, muffins, strawberries and everything. Sir Aylmer addressed her in the carrying voice which was so characteristic of him.
‘JANE!’
A lesser girl would have dropped the bowl. Jane merely shook like an aspen.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Tell this son of a … this gentleman who I am.’
‘Sir Aylmer Bostock, sir.’
‘Right,’ said Sir Aylmer, like the judge of one of those general knowledge quizzes which are so popular nowadays.