Page 19 of Cocktail Time

  'We know her well,' said Barbara. 'Do get on, young Saxby. Phoebe Wisdom is Freddie's wife's half-sister.'

  'Is that so? Who is Freddie?'

  'This is Freddie.'

  'Oh, really? Did you say Wisdom?'

  'Yes.'

  'Related in any way to the squirt?'

  'His mother.'

  'Then I understand everything. She was saving him from himself

  'Doing what?'

  'Preventing him throwing away his money on a cabinet no man of discernment would willingly have been found dead in a ditch with. For as the bidding reached a certain point—'

  'What point?' asked Lord Ickenham. – this woman, bathed in tears, approached the squirt, accompanied by the village policeman, and after, so I gathered from her manner, pleading with him and trying in vain to use a mother's influence to stop him making a fool of himself signalled to the policeman to lead him away, which he did. So Carstairs got the cabinet.'

  'How much for?' said Lord Ickenham.

  'Well,' said Mr Saxby, rising, 'I think I will go and take a bath. I got very warm and sticky in that village hall. There was practically no ventilation.'

  'Hi!' cried Lord Ickenham.

  'You were calling me?' said Mr Saxby, turning.

  'How much did Carlisle pay for the cabinet?'

  'Oh, didn't I tell you that?' said Mr Saxby. 'I fully intended to. Five hundred pounds.'

  He pottered away, and Lord Ickenham expended his breath in a deep sigh of satisfaction. Barbara Crowe shot an enquiring look at him.

  'Why are you so interested in this cabinet, Freddie?'

  'It belonged to my godson, who was in urgent need of five hundred pounds. Now he's got it.'

  'Was it really worth nothing?'

  'Practically nothing.'

  'Then why did Cosmo Wisdom and that other man bid like that for it?'

  'It's a long story.'

  'Your stories are never too long.'

  'Bless my soul, I remember my niece Valerie saying that to me once. But she spoke with a nasty tinkle in her voice. It was on the occasion when she found me at Blandings castle, posing – from the best motives – as Sir Roderick Glossop. Did I ever tell you about that?'

  'No. And you can save up these reminiscences of your disreputable past for another time. What I want to hear now is about this cabinet. Don't ramble off on to other subjects like old Mr Saxby'

  'I see. You would like it short and crisp. You would wish me, as I was saying to Johnny the other day, to let my Yea be Yea and my Nay be Nay?'

  'I would.'

  'Then here it comes,' said Lord Ickenham.

  It was, as he had predicted, a long story, but it gripped his audience throughout. There was no wandering of attention on Barbara Crowe's part to damp a raconteur's spirits. At each successive twist and turn of the plot her eyes seemed to grow wider. It was some moments after he had finished before she spoke. When she did, it was with a wealth of feeling.

  'Cor lumme, stone the crows!' she said.

  'I was expecting you to say that,' said Lord Ickenham. 'I must remember, by the way, to ask Albert Peasemarch what the meaning of the expression is. What crows? And why stone them? I have met men who, when moved, have said "Cor chase my Aunt Fanny up a gum tree!", which seems to me equally cryptic. However, this is not the time to go into all that. I anticipated that you would react impressively to my revelation, for it is of course a sensational tale. Are you feeling faint?'

  'Not faint, no, but I think I'm entitled to gasp a bit.'

  'Or gurgle. Quite.'

  'Fancy Toots writing that book! I wouldn't have thought he had it in him.'

  Lord Ickenham clicked his tongue.

  'Haven't you been listening? I said the author of Cocktail Time was Raymond Bastable.'

  'I used to call him Toots.'

  'You did?'

  'I did.'

  'How perfectly foul! And he used to call you Baby?'

  'He did.'

  'How utterly loathsome! It makes one realize that half the world never knows how the other half lives. Well, you'll soon be calling him that revolting name again. If, that is to say, what I have told you has not killed your love.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'Lots of people recoil in horror from Cocktail Time. The bishop did. So did Phoebe. So, according to Beefy, did about fifty-seven publishers before he finally landed it with the Tomkins people. It doesn't diminish your love for him to know that he is capable of writing a book like that?'

  'It does not. If anything was needed to deepen my love for Beefy, as you call him—'

  'Better than calling him Toots.'

  ' – it is the discovery that he has a hundred and fifty thousand dollars coming to him from the movie sale of the first thing he ever wrote. Golly! Think what we'll get for the next one!'

  'You feel there will be a next one?'

  'Of course there will. I'll see to that. I'm going to make him give up the Bar – I've always hated him being a barrister – and concentrate on his writing. We'll live in the country, where he can breathe decent air and not ruin his lungs by sitting all day in stuffy courts. Have you ever been in the Old Bailey?'

  'Once or twice.'

  'I believe you can cut the atmosphere there with a spoon. They carve it up in slices and sell it as rat poison. And living in the country, he'll get his golf every day and bring his weight down. He had put on weight terribly the last time I saw him. I suppose he's worse than ever now.'

  'He is far from streamlined.'

  'I'll adjust that,' said Barbara grimly. 'Do you know when I first saw Raymond? When I was ten. One of my uncles took me to see the Oxford and Cambridge match, and there he was, looking like a Greek god. My uncle introduced me to him after the game, and I got his autograph and fell in love with him there and then. Gosh, he was terrific!'

  'You plan to pare him down to the Beefy of thirty years ago?'

  'Well, not quite that, perhaps, but some of that too, too solid flesh is certainly going to melt. And now,' said Barbara, rising from her deck chair, 'I think I'll follow our Mr Saxby's excellent example and have a bath. What's the procedure about clocking in here? Do I see your godson and haggle about terms?'

  'He's gone to London. You conduct the negotiations with his old nurse. And I'd better come and help you through the ordeal. She's rather formidable.'

  If there was a touch of smugness in Lord Ickenham's demeanour as he returned to his deck chair after piloting Barbara Crowe through her interview with Nannie Bruce, it would have been a stern judge who would not have agreed that that smugness was excusable. He had set out for Dovetail Hammer with the intention of spreading sweetness and light among the residents of that inland Garden of Eden, and in not one but several quarters he had spread it like a sower going forth sowing. Thanks to his efforts, Barbara would get her Toots, and Beefy would get his Baby, plus all that lovely cash from the cornucopias of Hollywood. Johnny had got his five hundred pounds, Albert Peasemarch his Phoebe, and it would not be long presumably before Cyril McMurdo got his Nannie Bruce. It was true that both Mr and Mrs Carlisle were at the moment probably feeling a little short of sweetness and light, but, as has already been pointed out, there is seldom enough of that commodity to go round. No doubt in due season they would be able to console themselves with the thought that money is not everything and that disappointments such as they had suffered are sent to us to make us more spiritual.

  After perhaps half an hour had elapsed, his meditations were interrupted by the arrival of Johnny Pearce, who approached him on foot, having returned his borrowed car to the Beetle and Wedge. His manner, Lord Ickenham was amused to see, was gloomy. He would soon, as Barbara had put it, adjust that.

  'Hullo, Johnny'

  'Hullo, Uncle Fred.'

  'Back again?'

  'Yes, I'm back.'

  'Everything all right?'

  'Well, yes and no.'

  Lord Ickenham frowned. His objection to his godson's habit of talking in riddles h
as already been touched on.

  'What do you mean, Yes and No? Did you square things with Bunny?'

  'Oh, yes. We're getting married next week. At the registrar's.'

  'Business is certainly brisk in the registraring industry these days. And I suppose you're asking yourself what the harvest will be when she settles down here with Nannie?'

  'Yes, that's what's worrying me.'

  'It need worry you no longer, my dear boy. Do you know what happened at that sale this afternoon? You will scarcely credit it, but that cabinet of yours fetched five hundred pounds.'

  Johnny collapsed into the deck chair in which Barbara Crowe had sat.

  'What!' he gasped. 'You're kidding!'

  'Not at all. That was the final bid, five hundred pounds. Going, going, gone, and knocked down to Mr Gordon Carlisle. So all you have to do now is go to Nannie... Why', asked Lord Ickenham, breaking off and regarding his godson with amazement, 'aren't you skipping like the high hills? Well, I suppose you could hardly do that, sitting in a deck chair, but why aren't you raising your eyes thankfully to heaven and giving three rousing cheers?'

  It was some moments before Johnny was able to speak.

  'I'll tell you why I'm not giving three rousing cheers,' he said, and laughed in a way which Lord Ickenham recognized as hollow and hacking. 'That sale was the vicar's jumble sale. I contributed the cabinet to it, glad to get rid of the beastly thing. So not a penny of the five hundred quid comes to me. It will be applied to the renovation and repair of the church heating system, which, I understand,' said Johnny, with another hollow, hacking laugh, 'needs a new boiler.'

  CHAPTER 25

  Mr Saxby, feeling greatly refreshed after his bath, came out into the cool evening air and started to toddle across the park. He had decided not to resume the knitting of his grandson's sweater, which could very well wait till the quiet period after dinner, but to stroll over to Hammer Lodge and tell his friend Bastable about the auction sale. It would, he thought, interest him. For though Bastable had probably never seen that cabinet, whose peculiar foulness was the point of his story, he was convinced that he could describe it sufficiently vividly to make him appreciate the drama of what had occurred.

  Nothing happened when he reached the Lodge and rang the front door bell. The butler appeared to be away from his post, down at the Beetle and Wedge perhaps or possibly out having a round of golf. But things like that never deterred Mr Saxby. The door being open, he walked in, and having done so, raised his voice and bleated:

  'Bastable! BASTable!'

  And from somewhere in the distance there came an answering shout. It seemed to proceed from the depths of the house, as though the shouter were in the cellar. Very strange, Mr Saxby felt. What would Bastable be doing in a cellar? And then the obvious solution presented itself. He was having a look at his wine. The good man loves his wine, and it is only natural that he should go down from time to time to see that all is well with it.

  'Bastable,' he said, arriving at the cellar door.

  'Who's that?' a muffled voice replied.

  'Saxby.'

  'Thank God! Let me out!'

  'Do what?'

  'Let me out!

  'But why don't you come out?'

  'The door's locked.'

  'Unlock it.'

  'The key's on your side.'

  'You're perfectly correct. So it is.'

  'Well, turn it, man, turn it.'

  Mr Saxby turned it, and there emerged an incandescent figure at the sight of which Albert Peasemarch, had he been present, would have trembled like one stricken with an ague. Lord Ickenham had spoken of men of his acquaintance who would thoroughly have enjoyed being locked up in a wine cellar. Sir Raymond Bastable did not belong to this convivial class. He was, as Gordon Carlisle had put it, when speaking of his wife Gertie, vexed.

  'Where's Peasemarch?' he said, glaring about him with reddened eyes.

  'Who?'

  'Peasemarch.'

  'I don't think I know him. Nice fellow?'

  Sir Raymond continued to glare to left and right, as if expecting something to materialize out of thin air. As the missing member of his staff did not so materialize, he glared at Mr Saxby.

  'How did you get in?'

  'I walked in.'

  'He didn't let you in?'

  'Who didn't?'

  Sir Raymond tried another approach.

  'Did you see a round little bounder with a face like a suet pudding?'

  'Not to my recollection. Who is this round bounder?'

  'My butler. Peasemarch. I want to murder him.'

  'Oh, really? Why is that?'

  'He locked me in that damned cellar.'

  'Locked you in the cellar?' bleated Mr Saxby, toiling in the rear as his companion, snorting with visible emotion, led the way to his study. 'Are you sure?'

  'Of course I'm sure,' said Sir Raymond, sinking into an armchair and reaching for his pipe. 'I've been there for hours, with nothing to smoke. A-a-a-ah!' he said, puffing out a great cloud.

  Tobacco rarely fails to soothe, but you have to give it time. The mixture of Sir Raymond's choice was slow in producing any beneficent effects. As he finished his first pipeful and prepared to light a second, his eyes were still aflame and those emotional snorts continued to proceed from him like minute guns. In a voice which would have been more musical if he had not been shouting all the afternoon, he sketched out the plans he had formed for dealing with Albert Peasemarch, should fate eventually throw them together again.

  'I shall strangle him very slowly with my bare hands,' he said, rolling the words round his tongue as if they were vintage port. 'I shall kick his spine up through that beastly bowler hat he wears. I shall twist his head off at the roots. He got me to that cellar saying he wanted me to look at the last lot of claret, and when I went over to look at it, he nipped out, locking the door behind him.'

  It was a simple tale, simply told, but it gripped Mr Saxby from the start. He uttered a curious high cry which he had probably picked up from some wild duck of his acquaintance.

  'How extremely odd. I have never heard of a butler locking anyone in a wine cellar. I knew one once, many years ago, who kept tropical fish, but that', said Mr Saxby, who could reason clearly when he gave his mind to it, 'is not, of course, quite the same thing. Do you know what I think, Bastable? Do you know the conviction that recent happenings in Dovetail Hammer have forced on me? It is that there is something in the air here that breeds eccentricity. You see it on all sides. Take the auction sale this afternoon.'

  It was agony to Sir Raymond to be reminded of the auction sale, and once again there surged up in him a passionate desire to twist Albert Peasemarch's head off at the roots. But curiosity overcame his reluctance to speak of it.

  'What happened?' he asked huskily.

  Mr Saxby slid into his narrative with the polished ease of one who even at the Demosthenes, where the species abounds, was regarded as something unusual in the way of club bores. Members who could sit without flinching through Sir Roderick Glossop's stories about his patients or old Mr Lucas-Gore's anecdotes of Henry James, paled beneath their tan when Howard Saxby senior started to tell the tale.

  'I must begin by saying,' he began by saying, 'that at Hammer Hall, where, as you know, I am now residing, though my son tells me I must return home, so I shall shortly be leaving, and sorry to go, I assure you, for apart from your delightful society, Bastable, there is a wealth of bird life in these parts which an ornithologist like myself finds richly rewarding—'

  'Get on,' said Sir Raymond.

  Mr Saxby looked surprised. He had supposed that he was getting on.

  'At Hammer Hall, as I was about to say,' he resumed, 'there is – or was – an imitation walnut cabinet, the property of my host Mr Pearce... Do you know Mr Pearce?'

  'Slightly.'

  'Well, this imitation walnut cabinet belonged to him, and it stood in the hall, facing you as you entered through the front door. I stress this, because it was impos
sible, as you went in and out, not to see the beastly thing, and it had given me some bad moments. I want to impress upon you, Bastable, that this loathsome cabinet was entirely worthless, for that is the core and centre of my story. This afternoon I was relieved to hear that it was being included in the auction sale which was held at the village hall, for words cannot tell you the effect which the sight of that revolting object had on a sensitive eye. It was—'

  'I know all about the cabinet,' said Sir Raymond. 'Get on.'

  'You do bustle me so, my dear fellow. Men at the club do the same thing, I never know why. Well, this cabinet came up for auction, and judge of my amazement when I heard Carlisle – not the Carlisle who was bitten by an angora rabbit but the one who is staying at the Hall – bid fifty pounds. But more was to come. The next moment, a squirt of the name of Cosmo Wisdom, whom you have probably not met, had bid a hundred. And so it went on. A cabinet, I must again emphasize, of no value whatsoever. Can you wonder that I say that the air of Dovetail Hammer breeds eccentricity? Are you in pain, Bastable?'

  Sir Raymond was, and he had been unable to check a groan. The way the story appeared to be heading, it looked to him as though the blow-out or punch of it was going to be that his frightful nephew had won the cabinet, which would be the end of all things.

  'Get on,' he said dully.

  'How you do keep saying "Get on"! But I think I see what is in your mind. You want to know how it all ended. Well, I always think it spoils a good story to hurry it, but if you must have it in a nutshell, what happened was that just as Carlisle bid five hundred pounds, the squirt's mother with the assistance of the village policeman removed him from the scene, so the distressing cabinet was knocked down to Carlisle at that figure.'

  Sir Raymond puffed out a relieved cloud of smoke. Everything was... well, not perhaps all right, but much more nearly all right than it might have been. He knew Gordon Carlisle to be a man who had his price. That price would undoubtedly be stiff, but to secure Cosmo's letter he was prepared to pay stiffly. Yes, things, he felt, looked reasonably bright.