Lady Julia was staring, bewildered. She flung her hands up to her carefully coiffured head, seemed to realize at the last moment that a touch would ruin it, and lowered them again.
'Am I mad?' she cried. 'Or is everybody else? You seriously mean that I am supposed to acquiesce in my son ruining his life simply in order to keep Galahad from publishing his Reminiscences?'
'But, Julia, you don't know what they're like. Think of the life Galahad led as a young man. He seems to have known everybody in England who is looked up to and respected today and to have shared the most disgraceful escapades with them. One case alone, for example - Sir Gregory Parsloe. I have not read the thing, of course, but he tells me that there is a story in Galahad's book about himself when he was a young man in London. .. something about some prawns -1 don't know what. . . which would make him the laughing-stock of the county. The book is full of that kind of story, and every story about somebody who is looked on today as a model of propriety. If it is published, it will ruin the reputations of half the best people in England.' Lady Julia laughed shortly.
'I'm afraid I don't share your reverence for the feelings of the British aristocracy, Connie. I agree that Galahad probably knows the shady secrets of two-thirds of the peerage, but I don't feel your shrinking horror at the thought of the public reading them in print. I haven't the slightest objection in the world to Galahad throwing bombshells. At any rate, whatever the effect of his literary efforts on the peace of mind of the governing classes, I certainly do not intend to buy him off at the price of having Ronnie marrying any Miss Browns.'
' You don't mean that you are going to try to stop this marriage ?' 'I most certainly am.'
'But, Julia! This book of Galahad's. It will alienate every friend we've got. They will say we ought to have stopped him. You don't know ...'
'I know this, that Galahad can publish Reminiscences till he is blue in the face, but I am not going to have my son making a fool of himself and doing something he'll regret for the rest of his life. And now, if you will excuse me, Connie, I propose to take a short stroll on the terrace in the faint hope of cooling off. I feel so incandescent that I'm apt to burst into spontaneous flame at any moment, like dry tinder.'
With which words Lady Julia Fish took her departure through the french windows. And Lady Constance, having remained for some few moments in anguished thought, moved to the fireplace and rang the bell.
Beach appeared.
'Beach,' said Lady Constance, 'please telephone at once to Sir Gregory Parsloe at Matchingham. Tell him I must see him immediately. Say it is of the utmost importance. Ask him to hurry over so as to get here before people begin to arrive. And when he comes show him into the library.' 'Very good, m'lady.'
The butler spoke with his official calm, but inwardly he was profoundly stirred. He was not a nimble-minded man, but he could put two and two together, and it seemed to him that in some mysterious way, beyond the power of his intellect to grasp, all these alarms and excursions must be connected with the love-story of his old friend, Mr Ronald, and his new - but very highly esteemed - friend, Sue Brown.
He had left Mr Ronald with his mother. Then Lady Constance had gone in. A short while later, Mr Ronald had come out and gone rushing upstairs with all the appearance of an overwrought soul. And now here was Lady Constance, after a conversation with Lady Julia, ringing bells and sending urgent telephone messages.
It must mean something. If Beach had been Monty Bodkin, he would have said that there were wheels within wheels. Heaving gently like a seaweed-covered sea, he withdrew to carry out his instructions.
The butler's telephone message found Sir Gregory Parsloe enjoying a restful cigarette in his bedroom. He had completed his toilet some little time before; but, being an experienced diner-out and knowing how sticky that anteprandial vigil in somebody else's drawing-room can be, he had not intended to set out for Blandings Castle for another twenty minutes or so. Like so many elderly, self-indulgent bachelors, he was inclined to shirk life's grimmer side.
But the information that Lady Constance Keeble wished to have urgent speech with him had him galloping down the stairs and lumbering into his car in what for a man of his build was practically tantamount to a trice. It must, he felt, be those infernal Reminiscences that she wanted to see him about: and, feeling nervous and apprehensive, he told the chauffeur to drive like the devil.
In the past two weeks, Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe, of Matchingham Hall, seventh Baronet of his line, had run the gamut of the emotions. He had plumbed the depths of horror on learning that his old companion, the Hon. Galahad Threepwood, was planning to publish the story of his life. He had soared to dizzy heights of relief on learning that he had decided not to do so. But from that relief there had been a reaction. What, he had asked himself, was to prevent the old pest changing his mind again? And this telephone call seemed to suggest that he might have done so.
Of all the grey-haired pillars of Society who had winced and cried aloud at the news that the Hon. Galahad was about to unlock the doors of memory, it was probably Sir Gregory Parsloe who had winced most and cried loudest. His position was so particularly vulnerable. He had political ambitions, and was, indeed, on the eve of being accepted by the local Unionist committee as the party's candidate for the forthcoming by-election in the Bridgeford and Shifley Parliamentary Division of Shropshire. And no one knew better than himself that Unionist committees look askance at men with pasts.
Small wonder, then, that Sir Gregory Parsloe writhed in his car and, clumping up the stairs of Blandings Castle to the library in Beach's wake, sank into a chair and sat gazing at Lady Constance with apprehension on every feature of his massive face. Years of good living had given Sir Gregory something of the look of a buck of the Regency days. He resembled now a Regency buck about to embark on a difficult interview with the family lawyer.
Lady Constance made no humane attempt to break the bad news gently. She was far too agitated for that. Sir Gregory got it like a pail of water in the face, and sat spluttering as if it had actually been water she had poured over him.
'What shall we do?' lamented Lady Constance. 'I know Julia so well. She is entirely self-centred. So long as she can get what she wants, other people don't count. Julia is like that, and always has been. She will stop this marriage. I don't know how, but she will do it. And if the marriage is broken off, Galahad will have no reason for suppressing his abominable book. The manuscript will go to the publishers next day. What did you say?'
Sir Gregory had not spoken. He had merely uttered a wordless sound half-way between a grunt and a groan.
'Have you nothing to suggest?' said Lady Constance.
Before the baronet could reply, if he would have replied, there was an interruption. The door of the library opened and a head inserted itself. It was a small, brilliantined head, the eyes beneath the narrow forehead furtive, the moustache below the perky nose a nasty little moustache. Having smiled weakly, it withdrew.
It was a desire for solitude that had brought P. Frobisher Pilbeam to the library. A few moments before, he had been in the drawing-room and had found its atmosphere oppressive. Solid county gentlemen and their wives had begun to arrive, and the sense of being an alien in a community where everybody seemed extraordinarily intimate with everybody else had weighed upon him, inducing red ears and a general sensation of elephantiasis about the hands and feet.
Taking advantage, therefore, of the fact that the lady with the weather-beaten face who had just asked him what pack he hunted with had had her attention diverted elsewhere, he had stolen down to the library to be alone. And the first thing he saw there was Lady Constance Keeble. So, as we say, Percy Pilbeam smiled weakly and withdrew.
The actual time covered by his appearance and disappearance was not more than two or three seconds, but it had been enough for Lady Constance Keeble to give him one of the celebrated Keeble looks. Turning from this task and lowering the raised eyebrow and uncurling the curled lip, she was astonished to ob
serve that Sir Gregory Parsloe was staring at the closed door with the aspect of one who had just seen a beautiful vision.
4 What - what - what. .
'I beg your pardon?' said Lady Constance, perplexed. ' Good heavens! Was that Pilbeam?' Lady Constance was shocked.
'Do you know Mr Pilbeam?' she asked in a tone which suggested that she would have expected something better than this from the seventh holder of a proud title.
Sir Gregory was not a man of the build that leaps from chairs, but he had levered himself out of the one he sat in with an animation that almost made the thing amount to a leap.
'Know him? Why, he's in the Castle because I know him! I engaged him to steal that infernal manuscript of your brother's.'
'What!'
'Certainly. A week or so ago. Emsworth called one morning with Threepwood to see me, and accused me of having stolen that dashed pig of his, and when I told him I knew nothing about it Threepwood got nasty and said he was going to make a special effort to remember all the discreditable things that had ever happened to me as a young man and put them in his book. So I ran up to London next day and went to see this fellow Pilbeam - he had acted for me before in a certain rather delicate matter - and found that Emsworth had asked him to come here to investigate the theft of his pig, and I offered him five hundred pounds if, when he was at the Castle, he would steal the manuscript.' 'Good gracious!'
'And then you told me the pig had been found and Threepwood was going to suppress the book, so I naturally assumed that the chap would have gone back to London. Why, if he's still here, the whole thing's simple. He must go ahead, as originally planned, and get hold of that manuscript and hand it over to us and we'll destroy it. Then it won't matter if this marriage you speak of takes place or not.' He paused. Animation gave place to concern. 'But suppose there are more copies than one?'
'There aren't.'
' You're sure ? He may have had it typed.' 'No, I know he has not. He had never really finished the horrible thing. He keeps it in his desk and takes it out and adds bits to it.' 'Then we're all right.'
'If Mr Pilbeam can get possession of the manuscript.'
'Oh, he'll do that. You can rely on him. There isn't a smarter young fellow in London at that sort of thing. Why, he got hold of some letters of mine . . . but that is neither here nor there. I can assure you that if you engage Pilbeam to steal compromising papers, you will have them in the course of a day or two. It's what he's best at. You say Threepwood keeps the thing in a desk. Desks are nothing to Pilbeam. Those - er - those letters of mine ... to which I alluded just now . .. those letters ... perfectly innocent, you understand, but a wrong construction might have been placed upon one or two passages in them had they been published as the girl ... as their recipient had threatened . .. Well, to cut a long story short, to secure them Pilbeam had to pretend to be the man come to inspect the gas meter and break into a safe. This will be child's play to him. If you will excuse me, I will go and find him at once. We must put the matter in hand without delay. What a pity he popped off like that. We could have had everything arranged by now.'
Sir Gregory hurried from the room, baying on the scent like one
of his own hounds. And Lady Constance, drawing a deep breath, leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. After all that had passed in the last twenty minutes, she felt the need to relax.
On her face, as she sat, there might have been observed not merely relief, but a sort of awed look, as of one who contemplates the inscrutable workings of Providence.
Providence, she now perceived, did not put even Pilbeams into the world without a purpose.
Chapter Seven
Sue stood leaning out over the battlements of Blandings Castle, her chin cupped in her hands. Her eyes were clouded, her mouth a thin red line of depression. A little furrow of unhappiness had carved itself in the smooth whiteness of her forehead.
It was an instinct for the high places, like that of a small, nervous cat which fears vague perils on the lower levels, that had sent her climbing to this eminence. Wandering past the great gatehouse where a channel of gravel divided the west wing of the castle from the centre block, she had espied an open door, giving on to mysterious stone steps; and, mounting these, had found herself on the roof, with all Shropshire spread beneath her.
The change of elevation had done nothing to alter her mood. It was four o'clock of a sultry, overcast, oppressive afternoon, and a sullen stillness had fallen on the world. The heat wave which for the past two weeks had been grilling England was in the uncomfortable process of working up to a thunderstorm. Shropshire, under a leaden sky, had taken on a sinister and a brooding air. The flowers in the gardens drooped forlornly. The lake was a grey smudge, and the river in the valley below a thread of sickly tarnished silver. Gone, too, was the friendly charm of the Scotch fir spinneys that dotted the park. They seemed now black and haunted and menacing, as if witches lived in crooked little cottages in the heart of them.
'Ugh!' said Sue, hating Shropshire.
Until this moment, except for a few cows with secret sorrows, there had been no living creature to mitigate the gloom of the grim prospect. It was as if life, discouraged by the weather conditions, had died out upon the earth. But as she spoke, shaking her head with the flicker of a grimace, she perceived on the path below a familiar form. It looked up, sighted her, waved, and disappeared in the direction of the gatehouse. And presently feet boomed hollowly on the stone stairs, and there came into view the slouch-hatted head of Monty Bodkin. 'Hullo, Sue. All alone?'
Monty, who seemed, like everything else, to be affected by the weather, puffed, removed his hat, fanned himself, and laid it down.
'Gosh, what a day!' he observed. 'You been up here long?' 'About an hour.'
'I've been closeted with that fellow Pilbeam in the smoking-room. Went in to fill my cigarette-case and got into conversation with him. He's been telling me all about himself. Interesting chap.'
'I think he's a worm.'
'He is a worm,' agreed Monty. 'But even worms, don't you think, are of more than passing interest when they run private inquiry agencies? Did you know he was a private detective?'
'Yes.'
. 'Now, there's a job I should like.'
'You would hate it, Monty. Sneaking about, spying on people.'
'But with a magnifying-glass, remember,' urged Monty. 'You don't feel that it makes a difference if you do it with a magnifying-glass? No? Well, perhaps you're right. In any case, I suppose it requires special gifts. I wouldn't know a clue if you brought me one on a skewer. I say, did you ever see such a day? I feel as if I were in a frying-pan. Still, I suppose one's as well off up here as anywhere.'
'I suppose so.'
Monty surveyed his surroundings with a sentimental eye.
' Must have been fifteen years since I was on this roof. As a kid you couldn't keep me off it. I smoked my first cigar behind that buttress. Slightly to the left is the spot where I was sick. You see that chimney-stack?'
Sue saw the chimney-stack.
'I once watched old Gally chase Ronnie twenty-seven times round that with a whangee. He had been putting tin-tacks on his chair. Ronnie had on Gally's chair, I mean, of course, not Gally on Ronnie's. Where is Ronnie by the way ?'
'Lady Julia asked him to take her to Shrewsbury in his two-seater, to do some shopping.'
Sue's voice was flat, and Monty looked at her inquiringly. 'Well, why not?'
'Oh, I don't know,' said Sue. 'Only, considering that she was at Biarritz for three months and then in Paris and after that in London, it seems odd that she should wait to do her shopping till she got to Shrewsbury.'
Monty nodded sagely.
'I see what you mean. A ruse, you think? A cunning stratagem to keep him out of the way? I shouldn't wonder if you weren't right.'
Sue looked out over the grey world.
'She needn't have bothered,' she said, in a small voice. 'Ronnie seems quite capable of keeping out of my way without assistance.' '
What do you mean by that ?' 'Haven't you noticed?'
'Well, I'll tell you,' said Monty apologetically. 'What with being a good deal exercised about my lord Emsworth's questionable attitude and musing in my spare time on good old Gertrude, I haven't been much in the vein for noticing things. Has he been keeping out of your way ?'
'Ever since we got back.'
'Oh, rot.'
'It isn't rot.'
'A girlish fancy, child.'
'It's nothing of the kind. He's been avoiding me all the time. He'll do anything to keep from being alone with me. And if ever we do happen to be alone together he's quite different.'
'How do you mean, different?'
'Polite. Horribly, disgustingly polite. All sort of stiff and formal, as if I were a stranger. You know that way he gets when he's with someone he doesn't like.'
Monty was concerned.
'I say, this wants thinking over. I confess that my primary scheme, on spotting you leaning over the ramparts, was to buzz up and pour out my troubles on your neck. But if this is really so, you had better do the pouring. As what's-his-name said to the stretcher-case, "Your need is greater than mine".'