'What!'
'No. I think I'll let things stay the way they are. Oh, by the way, I owe you some money, don't I? I wrote a cheque. I've got it somewhere. Yes, here you are. Taxi!' cried Cosmo, waving.
Oily was still standing stunned among the ruins of his hopes and dreams.
'But—'
'It's no good saying "But,"' said Cosmo briskly, 'if you really want to know, I like being the author of Cocktail Time. I enjoy getting all these letters from admirers of my work—'
'What do you mean, your work?'
'Well, Uncle Raymond's work. It's the same thing. And being the author of Cocktail Time improves my social standing. To give you an instance, I found a note in there from Georgina, Lady Witherspoon, inviting me to one of her Sunday afternoon teas. It isn't everybody by any means whom Georgina, Lady Witherspoon, invites to her Sunday afternoon teas. She runs a sort of salon, and you have to be somebody of importance to get in. I don't feel like throwing away all that just to collect a few hundred pounds or whatever it may be from Uncle Raymond.' Less, probably, he almost said, than the absurd chicken-feed the Superba-Llewellyn people were offering. 'So there you are. Well, goodbye, Carlisle, it's been nice knowing you. I must be off,' said Cosmo, and was, leaving Oily staring blankly after him and asking himself if these things could really be. Even a high-up confidence artist has to expect disappointments and setbacks, of course, from time to time, but he never learns to enjoy them. In the manner of Gordon Carlisle as half an hour later he entered the presence of his wife Gertie there still lingered a suggestion of Napoleon returning from Moscow.
Gertie, having listened frowningly to the tale he had to tell, expressed the opinion that Cosmo was a low-down double-crossing little rat, which was of course quite true.
'There's oompus-boompus going on,' she said.
'Oompus-boompus, sweetie?'
'Yay Social standing, did he say?'
'That's what he said.'
Gertie emitted what in a less attractive woman would have been a snort.
'Social standing, my left eyeball! When he left us, he was going to see his agent, wasn't he? Well, it's as clear what's happened as if he'd drawn a diagram. The agent told him there's been a movie offer.'
'Gosh!'
'Sure. And a big one, must have been.'
'I never thought of that. You're dead right. It would explain everything.'
'And he isn't going to any Bournemouth – who the hell goes to Bournemouth? – he's going to this Dovetail-what-is-it place to try to snitch that letter off the Ickenham character, because if he can get it and destroy it, there's nothing in the world to prove he didn't write the book. So what we do is go to Dovetail-and-what-have-you and snitch it before he does.'
'I get you. If we swing it, we'll be sitting pretty.'
'In the catbird seat. There we'll be, in the middle, with the Wisdom character bidding for it and the Bastable character bidding for it, and the sky the limit. And it oughtn't to be so hard to find out where the Ickenham character is keeping the thing. We'll go through his room with a fine-tooth comb, and if it isn't there, we'll know he's got it on him. Then all there is to it is beaning him with a blackjack and hunting around in his pockets, see what I mean?'
Oily saw what she meant. She could hardly have been more lucid. He drew an emotional breath, and even the most shortsighted could have seen the love light in his eyes.
'What a comfort you are to me, sweetie!' he said.
'I try to be,' said Gertie virtuously. 'I think a wife oughter.'
CHAPTER 14
It was two days after the vultures had decided to muster at Hammer Hall that a little procession emerged from the front door of Hammer Lodge, the country seat of Sir Raymond Bastable, Q.C. It was headed by Mrs Phoebe Wisdom, who was followed by the local veterinary surgeon, who was followed by Albert Peasemarch. The veterinary surgeon got into his car, spoke a few parting words of encouragement and good cheer, and drove off. He had been in attendance on Mrs Wisdom's cocker spaniel Benjy, who, as cocker spaniels will, had 'picked up something'. Both Phoebe and Albert, having passed the night at the sick bed, were looking in need of rest and repose, but their morale was high, and they gazed at each other tenderly, like two boys of the old brigade who have been standing shoulder to shoulder.
'I don't know how to thank you, Peasemarch,' said Phoebe.
'It was nothing, madam.'
'Mr Spurrell said that if it had not been for you making the poor angel swallow that mustard and water, the worst would have happened.'
It occurred to Albert Peasemarch as a passing thought that the worst could not have been much worse than what had happened when the invalid reacted to the healing draught. It would, he was convinced, remain for ever photographically lined on the tablets of his memory when a yesterday had faded from its page, just as the eruption of the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone Park lingers always in the memory of the tourist who sees it.
'I am glad to have given satisfaction, madam,' he said, remembering a good line taught him by Lord Ickenham's Coggs at the time when he was being coached for the high office he held. And, thinking of Lord Ickenham, he felt how right the clear-seeing peer had been in urging him to spare no effort that would lead to a rapprochement between this cocker spaniel and himself. Unless he was greatly mistaken there was a new light in Phoebe's eyes as she gazed at him, the sort of light a knight of King Arthur's Round Table might have observed in the eyes of a damsel in distress, as he dusted his hands after dispatching the dragon which had been causing her annoyance. The vigil of the night had brought them very close together. He found his thoughts turning in the direction of what his mentor had called the Ickenham System. Had the moment come for putting this into operation?
He had the drill, he fancied, pretty clear in his mind. How did it go? Ah, yes. Stride up, grab by wrist, waggle about a bit, say 'My mate!' clasp to bosom and shower burning kisses on upturned face. All quite simple, and yet he hesitated. And, as always happens when a man hesitates, the moment passed. Before he could nerve himself to do something constructive, she had begun to speak of warm milk with a little drop of brandy in it. Mr Spurrell, the veterinary surgeon, had recommended this.
'Will you heat some up in a saucepan, Peasemarch?'
Albert Peasemarch sighed. To put the Ickenham System into operation with any hope of success, a man needs something in the nature of a cue, and cannot hope to give of his best if the saucepan motif is introduced into the conversation. Romeo himself would have been discouraged, if early in the balcony scene Juliet had started talking about saucepans.
'Very good, madam,' he said dully.
'And then you ought to lie down and have a good rest.'
'I was about to suggest the same thing to you, madam.'
'Yes, I am feeling tired. But I want to speak to Lord Ickenham first.'
'I see his lordship is fishing on the lake, madam. Could I take a message?'
'No, thank you very much, Peasemarch. It's something I must say to him personally.'
'Very good, madam,' said Albert Peasemarch, and went off to heat saucepans with the heavy heart of a man conscious of having missed the bus. Possibly there were ringing in his ears the words of James Graham, first Marquis of Montrose:
He either fears his fate too much
Or his deserts are small,
That dares not put it to the touch,
To win or lose at all.
Or, of course, possibly not.
What knitting was to old Mr Saxby, fishing was to Lord Ickenham. He had not yet caught anything, nor was he expecting to, but sitting in a punt, watching a bobbing float, with the white clouds drifting across the blue sky above him and a gentle breeze from the west playing about his temples, helped him to think, and happenings at Hammer Hall of late had given him much to think about. The recent muster of the vultures had not escaped his notice, and, even had it done so, the fact that his room had been twice ransacked in the past two days would have drawn it to his attention. Rooms do not
ransack themselves. There has to be a motivating force behind the process, and if there are vultures on the premises, one knows where to look for suspects.
Except for the nuisance of having to tidy up after these vultures, their arrival had pleased rather than perturbed Lord Ickenham. He was a man who always liked to have plenty happening around him, and he found the incursion of Cosmo Wisdom, closely followed by that of Gordon Carlisle and wife, a pleasant break in what was at the moment a dull visit. Enjoying the company of his fellows, he was finding himself distinctly short of it at Hammer Hall. He could scarcely, after what had occurred, hobnob with Beefy Bastable; Albert Peasemarch was hard to get hold of; and Johnny Pearce, racked with anxiety about his Belinda, had been for the last week a total loss as a companion.
So on the whole, he reflected, it was probably no bad thing to have a vulture or two about the home. They livened things up. What puzzled him about this current consignment was the problem of what had brought them to Hammer Hall and why, being there, they had ransacked his room. They were apparently searching eagerly for that letter of young Cosmo's, but he could imagine no reason for them to consider it of any value. Like Oily, he had seen immediately that Cosmo could quite easily write another, which would have precisely the same effect as the first. Eccentric blighters, these vultures, he told himself.
Another thing that perplexed him was that they seemed to be on such distant terms with one another. There was no mistaking the coolness that existed between Mr and Mrs Carlisle on the one side and Cosmo Wisdom on the other. One expects vultures, when they muster, to be a chummy bunch, always exchanging notes and ideas and working together for the good of the show But every time Gordon Carlisle's eye rested on Cosmo, it rested with distaste, and if Cosmo passed Gordon Carlisle in the hall, he did so without appearing to see him. Very curious.
He was roused from these meditations by hearing his name called, and perceived Phoebe standing on the shore. Reluctantly, for he would have preferred to be alone, he drew in his line and rowed to land. Disembarking and seeing her at close quarters, he was a good deal shocked by her appearance. It reminded him of that of women he had seen at Le Touquet groping their way out into the morning air after an all-night session at the Casino.
'My dear Phoebe,' he exclaimed, 'you appear to be coming apart at the seams somewhat, if you don't mind me being personal. Not your bonny self at all. What's happened?'
'I was up all night with Benjy, Frederick. The poor darling was terribly ill. He picked up something.'
'Good Lord, I'm sorry to hear that. Is he all right now?'
'Yes, thanks to Peasemarch. He was wonderful. But I came to talk about something else, Frederick.'
'Anything you wish, my dear. Had you any particular topic in mind?' said Lord Ickenham, hoping that she had not come to resume yesterday's conversation about her son Cosmo and how thin he looked and how odd it was that, visiting Dovetail Hammer, he should be staying at the Hall and not with his mother at the Lodge. He could hardly explain that Cosmo was at the Hall because he wanted to be on the spot, to ransack people's rooms.
'It's about Raymond, Frederick.'
'Oh, Beefy?' said Lord Ickenham, relieved.
'I'm dreadfully worried about him.'
'Don't tell me he has picked up something?'
'I think he is going off his head.'
'Oh, come!'
'Well, there is insanity in the family, you know. George Winstanley ended his days in an asylum.'
'I'm not so well up on George as I ought to be. Who was he?'
'He was in the Foreign Office. He married my mother's second cousin Alice.'
'And went off his onion?'
'He had to be certified. He thought he was Stalin's nephew.'
'He wasn't, of course?'
'No, but it made it very awkward for everybody. He was always sending secret official papers over to Russia.'
'I see. Well, I doubt if the pottiness of a second cousin by marriage is hereditary,' said Lord Ickenham consolingly. 'I don't think you need have any anxiety about Beefy. What gives you the idea that he has not got all his marbles?'
'His what?'
'Why do you think he is non compos?'
'It's the way he's behaving.'
'Tell me all.'
Phoebe brushed away the tears that came so readily to her eyes.
'Well, you know how... what shall I say... how impatient dear Raymond has always been with me. It was the same when we were children. He has always had such a keen brain, and I don't think very quickly, and this seemed to exasperate him. He would say something, and I would say "What?" and he would start shouting. Morning after morning he used to make me cry at breakfast, and that seemed to exasperate him more. Well, quite suddenly one day about two weeks ago he changed completely. He became so sweet and kind and gentle that it took my breath away. I'm sure Peasemarch noticed it, for he was so often in the room when it happened. I mean, things like asking after my rheumatism and would I like a footstool and how nice I looked in that green dress of mine. He was a different man.'
'All to the good, I should have thought.'
'I thought so, too, at first. But as the days went by I began to get uneasy. I knew how overworked he always is, and I thought he must be going to have a nervous breakdown, if not something worse. Frederick,' her voice sank to a whisper, 'he sends me flowers! Every morning. I find them in my room.'
'Very civil. I see no objection to flowers in moderation.'
'But it's so unnatural. It alarmed me. I wrote to Sir Roderick Glossop about him. You know him?'
'The loony doctor? I should say so. What I could tell you about old Roddy Glossop!'
'He is a friend of the family, and I thought he would be able to advise me. But I didn't send the letter.'
'I'm glad you didn't,' said Lord Ickenham. His handsome face was grave. 'It would have been a floater of the worst description. There is nothing odd about this change in Beefy's attitude, my dear girl. I can give you the explanation in a word. Peasemarch.'
'Peasemarch?'
'He is behaving like this to conciliate Albert Peasemarch. An observant man, he noticed Albert Peasemarch's silent disapproval of the way he used to carry on, and realized that unless he speedily mended his ways, he would be a butler short, and nobody wants to lose a butler in these hard post-war days. As the fellow said – Ecclesiastes, was it? – I should have to check with Nannie Bruce – whoso findeth a butler findeth a good thing. I know that I would go to even greater lengths to retain the services of my Coggs.'
Phoebe's eyes were round. She looked like a white rabbit that is not abreast of things.
'You mean Peasemarch would have given notice?'
'Exactly. You wouldn't have seen him for dust.'
'But why?'
'Unable to stand the strain of watching you being put through the wringer each morning. No man likes to see a fourteen-stone Q.C. hammering the stuffing out of the woman he loves.'
'Loves?'
'Surely you must be aware by now that Albert Peasemarch worships the very ground you tread on?'
'But... but this is extraordinary!'
'I see nothing remarkable in it. When you don't sit up all night with sick cocker spaniels, you're a very attractive woman, my dear Phoebe.'
'But Peasemarch is a butler.'
'Ah, I see what you mean. You are thinking that you have never had a butler in love with you before. One gets new experiences. But Albert Peasemarch is only a synthetic butler. He is a man of property who took to buttling simply in order to be near you, to be able to exchange notes on your mutual rheumatism, to have you rub his chest with embrocation when he had influenza. Do you remember,' said Lord Ickenham, giving rein to his always rather vivid imagination, 'a day about two years ago when Beefy was standing you and me lunch at the Savoy Grill, and I nodded to a man at the next table?'
'No.'
Lord Ickenham was not surprised.
'That man,' he said, 'was Albert Peasemarch. He came to me later ?
?? he is an old friend of mine – and asked who you were. His manner was feverish, and it wasn't long before he was pouring out his soul to me. It was love, my dear Phoebe, love at first sight. How, he asked, could he get to know you? I offered to introduce him to Beefy, but he seemed to think that that wouldn't work. He said what he had seen of Beefy had not given him the impression of a man who would invite him to the home for long week-ends and generally give him the run of the place. I agreed with him. Beefy, when you introduce someone to him, is far too prone to say "Haryer, haryer," and then drop the party of the second part like a hot coal. We needed some mechanism whereby Albert Peasemarch could be constantly in your society, giving you the tender look and occasionally heaving the soft sigh, and to a man of my intelligence the solution was obvious. Who, I asked myself, is the Johnny who is always on the spot, the man who sticketh closer than a brother? The butler, I answered myself. Albert Peasemarch, I said, still addressing myself, must become Beefy's butler. No sooner – or not much sooner – said than done. A few simple lessons from Coggs and there he was, all ready to move in.'
Phoebe was still fluttering. The way the tip of her nose wiggled showed how greatly the story had affected her. She said she had never heard of such a thing, and Lord Ickenham agreed that the set-up was unusual.
'But romantic, don't you think?' he added. 'The sort of policy great lovers through the ages would have pursued, if they had happened to think of it. Hullo,' he said, breaking off. 'I'm afraid I must be leaving you, Phoebe.'
He had seen the station cab drive up to the front door and discharge Johnny Pearce from its interior.
'My godson has returned,' he explained. 'He went up to London to give his fiancée lunch, and I am anxious to learn how everything came out. The course of true love has not been running very smooth of late, I understand. Something of a rift within the lute, I gather, and you know what happens when rifts get into lutes. By and by they make the music mute and ever widening slowly silence all. I shall be glad to receive a reassuring bulletin.'
CHAPTER 15
Beside Johnny Pearce, as he stood on the gravel drive, there was lying a battered suitcase. It signified, Lord Ickenham presumed, the advent of another paying guest, and he was delighted that business was booming so briskly What with himself, this new arrival and the three vultures already in residence, Johnny in his capacity of jovial innkeeper was doing well. Though, now that he was in a position to study him closely, he had doubts as to whether jovial' was the right adjective. The young man's face, while not actually haggard, was definitely careworn. He looked like an innkeeper with a good deal on his mind, and when he spoke, his voice was toneless.