‘Yes, sir,’ he replied, and his voice was curt and official. One would have said that he was anxious to impress on his overlord that this was no mere social visit.’
‘It’s with ref to your butler, sir.
Crispin’s cheerfulness diminished sharply. The word seemed to have touched an exposed nerve. A moment before, he had been glad, glad, glad, like a male Polyanna: this ebullience no longer prevailed. He looked anxious and wary.’
‘My butler?’ he echoed. ‘What’s he been doing?’
Ernest Simms’s manner took on the portentousness which always came into it when he gave evidence in court.
‘It has been drawn to my attention that he inaugurates games of chance at the Goose and Gander, contrary to the law. When I warned him that if he persisted in these practices I should be compelled to take steps, he called me an opprobrious name.’
Having given his audience time to shudder, he resumed, and it seemed to Crispin that he was changing the subject, for his next words took the form of a statement that yesterday had been his mother’s birthday.
‘She lives at Hunstanton in Norfolk, and I always send her a telegram on her birthday.’
Crispin continued fogged.’ At the sentiment behind this filial act nobody could cavil, for a policeman’s best friend is admittedly his mother, but he could think of nothing to say except possibly that it did him credit.’ He remained silent.’
‘I went into the post office, leaving my bicycle propped up outside, and despatched my telegram, and when I came out.’.’.’ Here Ernest Simms paused and seemed to choke, as if, man of chilled steel though he was, his feelings had become too much for him. ‘And when I came out,’ he repeated, conquering his momentary malaise, ‘there was that butler giving young Marlene Hibbs a bicycle lesson on my bicycle.’
This time Crispin felt obliged to comment, and it is a matter for regret that his critique should have been so inadequate.’
‘He shouldn’t have done that,’ he said.
‘You’re right he shouldn’t,’ Ernest Simms agreed, speaking with the asperity of a man whose finest sensibilities have been outraged, ‘and so I told him. I told him that bicycle was Crown property and when he gave girls rides on it, he was deliberately insulting Her Majesty the Queen. I said if I caught him doing such a thing once again, I’d have him locked up so quick it would jar his back teeth.’
‘That should have impressed him.’
‘It didn’t. He talked about being fed up with police persecution. And he uttered threats.’
‘Threats?’
‘Yes, sir, threats. He said he’d get even with me. He said he’d make me wish I’d never been born.’
‘I don’t like that.’
‘Nobody would like it, sir, particularly with that Marlene Hibbs standing by and laughing fit to split.’
‘Tut.’
‘You may well say ‘Tut”, sir. Not to mention making allusions to the Gestapo and calling me the fuzz, which is an expression she must have picked up at the cinema.’
‘Monstrous,’ said Crispin, ‘monstrous.’ But what can I do?’
‘Dismiss him from your service, sir. He is a disruptive element.’
It was a policy which Crispin would have been most happy to pursue, but there were reasons, impossible to explain, why he was not at liberty to dismiss butlers from his service. All his sympathies were with Ernest Simms, but he was hampered, handicapped and helpless.
‘Well, I’ll speak to him,’ he said, and was conscious even as he spoke how weak it sounded.’
That the constable had formed a similar opinion was made plain by the stiffness of his attitude as he took his departure.
‘Very good, sir,’ was all he said, but if he had added, ‘And I suppose I ought not to have expected anything better from a worm like you’, he would not have made his sentiments clearer.
Having given him plenty of time to leave, Crispin went out on to the drive, where he paced up and down, musing on the recent interview. It was a risky thing to do, for out in the open like this he was in grave danger of being buttonholed by his paying guests, by Colonel Norton-Smith, for instance, with his fund of good stories of life in the Far East or R. B. Chisholm, who held gloomy views on what was to become of us all if things went on the way they were doing; but he needed air and, like Jerry, thought better when in motion.
He was anxious to find a solution for the problem of what precisely his employee had had in mind when predicting that he would make Ernest Simms wish he had never been born. It might be this or it might be that, but whatever the inner meaning of the words they plainly implied some form of activity of which he would be bound to disapprove.’ If there is one thing at which a peaceable householder looks askance, it is the prospect of his butler making the police wish they had never been born, and it is not to be wondered at that Barney, coming out of the house, saw at once that all was not well with her host and being the kindly soul she was proceeded to make enquiries.
‘Something wrong?’ she said.
Crispin started with all the animation of a Mexican jumping bean, but recognizing who it was that had spoken immediately became calmer. To Barney’s company he had no objection; indeed he welcomed it. Since that first meeting in Willoughby’s office he had grown very fond of her. He felt it would be a relief to confide in her his fears and misgivings.’ When, therefore, she repeated her question, he did not brush it off with a ‘No, no, nothing’, as he would have done had his inquisitor been Colonel Norton-Smith or R. B. Chisholm.’ Coming, as the expression is, clean, he said:
‘Yes, I am extremely worried, Mrs Clayborne.’
‘Barney.’
‘Yes, I am extremely worried, Barney. A most unpleasant situation has arisen.’
‘That’s bad. We don’t want unpleasant situations arising, do we? Who’s been doing what?’
‘It’s Chippendale.’
‘Who?’
‘My butler. His name is Chippendale.’
A less considerate woman, given such an opening for the exercise of wit, would have asked: ‘Has he made any good chairs lately?’, but Barney appreciated that this was no time for jesting. Her heart was touched by Crispin’s obvious distress. What, she enquired, had Chippendale been doing?
It was not so much, Crispin said, what he had been doing, though that was calculated to make him a hissing and a byword at the bar of world opinion, as what he might be going to do in the near future. The whole story came pouring out, and Barney listened with the grave attention of a Harley Street specialist receiving the confidences of a patient. When it ended, she had reassurances to offer.
‘I don’t see where you have to worry. This Chippendale guy may talk big, but it’s just a lot of hot air. Come right down to it, what can he do? How many policemen are there around these parts?’
‘Only one.’
Then I’ve seen him. He’s as big as all outdoors, must weigh two hundred pounds, and Chippendale’s a little shrimp who couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag. The thing would be over in the first round.’
‘But suppose Chippendale lurks and does him some secret injury?’
‘Such as?’
Crispin had to admit that he could not specify one offhand, and Barney said he must not let his imagination run away with him.
‘You’re thinking of what happens in these novels of suspense. You see him slipping cobras down the cop’s chimney or adding some little-known Asiatic poison to his evening glass of beer. But if it gives you the jitters, him being here, why don’t you simply ease him out? Nothing so difficult about firing a butler, is there?’
Crispin hesitated. We all have secrets which we prefer to keep to ourselves, and he saw that he was on the verge of revealing his darkest one. Then his need for sympathy overcame reticence.
‘I can’t fire him.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because he’s not a butler.’
‘He acts like one.’
‘I mean not a real butler.’
/> ‘I don’t get you.’
‘He’s employed by the firm that does the repairs about the house. I owe them a lot of money. It’s been owing for two years. So they sent him down here, and I can’t get rid of him till I pay them. He’s what is called a broker’s man. I don’t know if you have them in America.’
Barney was not an easy woman to surprise, but she could not repress a startled ejaculation. It had never occurred to her that this sort of thing went on in the stately homes of England. Mellingham Hall had made a deep impression on her, and it came as a shock to learn that its cupboards were staffed with such unpleasant skeletons.
‘You mean you’re busted?’
‘I don’t know which way to turn.’
‘Well, fry me for an oyster. I’d never have guessed it. No wonder you didn’t want to put any money on Brotherly Love. What are you going to do about it?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘I have. You must marry somebody with lots of money.’
‘Who would have a man like me?’
‘With a place like this? Dozens. You’ve only to advertise in The Times that you’re open to offers, and they’ll come running. Good heavens, man, you’re amiable, intelligent, understanding, sober, honest and kind to animals. I saw you talking yesterday to that cat that hangs around, and I could see you were saying all the right things. You’d be snapped up in no time. Then you’d be able to run this place as it ought to be run, and you could fire Chippendale. How come, by the way,’ said Barney, seeming to feel, like the detective in a mystery story, that there were still some pieces in the jigsaw puzzle that had to be fitted into place, ‘that this Chippendale character is buttling?’
‘That was his suggestion. He said he supposed I didn’t want my paying guests to know why he was here, so he would pose as the butler. I don’t have to pay him anything.’
The gravity with which Barney had been discussing the secret life of the owner of Mellingham Hall gave way to mirth. She uttered a laugh which was probably audible in the next county.
Then you’re sitting pretty, seems to me. A non-profitmaking butler who can’t give notice, it would make the mouths of some of my Long Island buddies water. They have to slip theirs a prince’s ransom every pay day, and they can never be sure when the fellows won’t hear the call of the wild and resign their portfolios. So what are you fussing about? We’ve already decided that Chippendale’s threats about what he’s going to do to the cop can be written off. Just baloney. And he seems to buttle all right. Cheer up, Crips, and keep smiling. That’s the thing to do. If you go through life with a smile on your face, you’ll be amazed how many people will come up to you and say, “What the hell are you grinning about? What’s so funny?” Make you a lot of new friends.’
This excellent advice, so simple and yet so practical, ought, one would have said, to have been acted on without delay by its recipient, but if Crispin proposed to go through life with a smile on his face, it was plain that he did not intend to start immediately. Nor did the emergence from the house at this moment of the resident broker’s man do anything to improve his morale. It is possible that Chippendale had his little circle of admirers who brightened at the sight of him, but Crispin was not of their number.
‘You’re wanted on the telephone, sir,’ said Chippendale. Had he and Crispin been alone, he would have used the less formal ‘chum’ or ‘mate’, but the presence of Barney restrained him.
‘Says he’s your brother.’
Crispin hurried into the house, followed by Chippendale, who made for the butler’s pantry, where there was an extension. It was his practice to listen to all telephonic conversations, for you never knew when you might not pick up something of interest.
‘Bill?’ said Crispin.
‘Is that you, Crips?’
‘Your voice sounds funny, Bill. Is something the matter?’
‘You’re damned right something’s the matter. That blasted Clayborne woman has stolen my Girl in Blue,’ thundered Willoughby, and Chippendale’s lips framed themselves in a silent ‘Coo!’
The lips of a more emotional man would have made it ‘Gorblimey!’
CHAPTER NINE
1
Willoughby had come back from his golfing holiday in the most jovial of spirits. His putting had been good: he had corrected, if only temporarily, the slice which had been troubling him for weeks: he had got a birdie on the long seventh; and the thought that Gainsborough’s Girl in Blue would be awaiting him on the mantelpiece in his study set the seal on his euphoria. If ever a rather stout senior partner in a law firm came within an ace of singing like the Cherubim and Seraphim, he was that rather stout senior partner.
And now this had happened. How true is the old saying, attributed to Pliny the Elder, that a man who lets himself get above himself is simply asking for it, for it is just when things seem to be running as smooth as treacle out of a jug that he finds Fate waiting for him round the corner with the stuffed eelskin.
Turning to the other parties in the conversation which had so dramatically begun, Chippendale was listening with his ears pricked up like a Doberman pinscher’s, while Crispin stood rigid with amazement, the receiver trembling in his grasp. It was impossible for him to suppose that he had not heard correctly, for the speaker’s voice had nearly cracked his eardrum. He could only think that his brother was labouring under some strange delusion. It was unusual for Bill to have strange delusions, but he refused to believe that a woman like Bernadette Clayborne could be guilty of the grave offence with which that stentorian voice had charged her. Nice girls, he reasoned, don’t steal things, and if Barney was not technically a girl, she was unquestionably nice. His recent exchange of ideas with her had left him more convinced of that than ever.
‘What?’ he said, and never had more consternation, agitation, indignation and incredulity been condensed into the restricted limits of a monosyllable. ‘Is this a joke, Bill?’
There was a brief interval here, probably occupied by Willoughby in foaming at the mouth. At its conclusion he assured Crispin that it was not a joke.
‘It’s gone. I went away for a few days, leaving it on the mantelpiece in my study, and when I got back it wasn’t there.’
‘Have you looked everywhere?’
This query, like the previous one, seemed to give offence.
‘Don’t talk as if I had mislaid my spectacles!’
‘Did you say you had mislaid your spectacles?’
‘No, I did not say I had mislaid my spectacles.’
‘I’m always mislaying my spectacles.’
‘Curse your spectacles!’
‘Yes, Bill.’
This short digression on the subject of aids to vision seemed for some reason to have had a good effect on Willoughby, slightly restoring his calm. When he resumed the conversation, his voice, though still retaining something of the robustness of that of an annoyed mate of a tram.
‘What’s the sense of asking if I’d looked everywhere? If you leave a miniature on a mantelpiece and it vanishes from the mantelpiece, somebody must have taken it.’
‘It might be on the floor.’
‘What do you mean it might be on the floor?’
‘Fallen there. Sudden puff of wind.’
Even to Crispin this did not seem a very bright suggestion, and Willoughby’s opinion of it was also low. There was another silence. Eventually he spoke.
‘Don’t be an ass, Crips.’
‘No, Bill.’
‘Sudden puffs of wind!’
‘I see what you mean, Bill.’ But why —’
‘— do I think this woman has got away with it? Who else could have? I told you she and Pyle had been staying with me. You don’t suppose a reputable corporation lawyer like Pyle would steal things.’
‘Nor would a charming woman like Barney,’ said Crispin with spirit.
‘Charming woman, my foot. She’s a snake of the worst type. I know she’s got my miniature, and I’ll tell you why. The night before the
y left I was showing it to them at dinner, and Homer Pyle, though he tried to be polite, was obviously not interested. Twice I caught him yawning. The blasted female, on the other hand, gushed over it. Kept picking it up and fondling it and saying how cute it was. She must have made up her mind there and then that she was going to have it, and after we had all gone to bed she crept down and pocketed it. It’s the only possible solution. And I want it back, dammit.’
‘I can quite understand that, Bill.’
‘And I’m going to get it. And that’s where you come in.’
‘Me, Bill?’
‘Yes, you. I didn’t ring you up to hear you say how sorry you were and what a disagreeable thing to have happened and all that. I want action, not sympathy. She’s taken that miniature with her to Mellingham. Go to her, tax her with her crime, and tell her that if she doesn’t give it up immediately, you’ll send for the police.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t.’
‘Then search her room.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Oh, I couldn’t.’
‘Listen, Crips, I know you’re always hard up. I’ll give you a hundred pounds if you can choke my Girl in Blue out of her.’
A wave of horror and indignation swept over Crispin. He had the illusion that his hair, what there was of it, was standing erect on his head. Much as he liked gold, this offer of it now revolted him. He drew himself to his full height, a wasted gesture seeing that Willoughby was many miles away, and uttered another of his dramatic monosyllables.
‘No!’
‘Two hundred.’
‘No! I am sorry, Bill, but I absolutely refuse to have any part in this. Mrs Clayborne is a woman I respect and admire, and I positively decline to wound her feelings by bringing baseless accusations against her.’
‘Baseless, did you say?’
‘Yes, baseless. You have no reason whatsoever for your foul suspicions.’
‘Except this, that she’s a notorious shoplifter. You didn’t know that, did you? There isn’t a department store in New York where they don’t have a special squad of detectives on duty when they see her coming along to do a bit of shopping. That’s why she’s over in England. She made America too hot for her.’