‘As a matter of fact, Beach,’ he said, ‘I could tell you all sorts of things about all sorts of people. Practically everybody in this house I could tell you something about. What’s the name of that chap with the light hair, for instance? The old boy’s secretary?’
‘Mr Carmody, sir.’
‘Carmody! That’s the name. I’ve been trying to remember it. Well, I could tell you something about Carmody.’
‘Indeed, sir?’
Yes. Something about Carmody that would interest you very much. I saw Carmody this afternoon when Carmody didn’t see me.’
‘Indeed, sir?’
‘Yes. Where is Carmody?’
‘I imagine he will be down shortly, sir. Mr Ronald also.’
‘Ronald!’ Pilbeam drew in his breath sharply. ‘There’s a tough baby, Beach. That Ronnie. Do you know what he wanted to do just now? Murder me!’
In Beach’s opinion, for he did not look on Percy Pilbeam as a very necessary member of society, this would have been a commendable act, and he regretted that its consummation had been prevented. He was also feeling that the conscientious butler he had always prided himself on being would long ere this have withdrawn and left this man to talk to himself. But even the best of butlers have human emotions, and the magic of Pilbeam’s small-talk held Beach like a spell. It reminded him of the Gossip page of Society Spice, a paper to which he was a regular subscriber. He was piqued and curious. So far, it was true, his companion had merely hinted, but something seemed to tell him that, if he lingered on, a really sensational news-item would shortly emerge.
He had never been more right in his life. Pilbeam by this time had finished the fourth cocktail, and the urge to confide had become overpowering. He looked at Beach, and it nearly made him cry to think that he was holding anything back from such a splendid fellow.
‘And do you know why he wanted to murder me, Beach?’
It scarcely seemed to the butler that the action required anything in the nature of a reasoned explanation, but he murmured the necessary response.
‘I could not say, sir.’
‘Of course you couldn’t. How could you? You don’t know. That’s why I’m telling you. Well, listen. He’s in love with a girl in the chorus at the Regal, a girl named Sue Brown, and he thought I had been taking her out to dinner. That’s why he wanted to murder me, Beach.’
‘Indeed, sir?’
The butler spoke calmly, but he was deeply stirred. He had always flattered himself that the inmates of Blandings Castle kept few secrets from him, but this was something new.
‘Yes. That was why. I had the dickens of a job holding him off, I can tell you. Do you know what saved me, Beach?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Presence of mind. I put it to him – to Ronnie – I put it to Ronnie as a reasonable man that, if this girl loved me, would she have come to this place, pretending to be Miss Shoemaker, simply so as to see him?’
‘Sir!’
Yes, that’s who Miss Shoemaker is, Beach. She’s a chorus-girl called Sue Brown, and she’s come here to see Ronnie.’
Beach stood transfixed. His eyes swelled bulbously from their sockets. He was incapable of even an ‘Indeed, sir?’
He was still endeavouring to assimilate this extraordinary revelation when Hugo Carmody entered the room.
‘Ah!’ said Hugo, his eye falling on Pilbeam. He stiffened. He stood looking at the detective like Schopenhauer’s butcher at the selected lamb.
‘Leave us, Beach,’ he said, in a grave, deep voice.
The butler came out of his trance.
‘Sir?’
‘Pop off.’
‘Very good, sir.’
The door closed.
‘I’ve been looking for you, viper,’ said Hugo.
‘Have you, Carmody?’ said Percy Pilbeam effervescently. ‘I’ve been looking for you, too. Got something I want to talk to you about. Each looking for each. Or am I thinking of a couple of other fellows? Come right in, Carmody, and sit down. Good old Carmody! Jolly old Carmody! Splendid old Carmody! Well, well, well, well, well!’
If the lamb mentioned above had suddenly accosted the above-mentioned butcher in a similar strain of hearty camaraderie, it could have hardly disconcerted him more than Pilbeam with these cheery words disconcerted Hugo. His stern, set gaze became a gaping stare.
Then he pulled himself together. What did words matter? He had no time to bother about words. Action was what he was after. Action!
‘I don’t know if you’re aware of it, worm,’ he said, ‘but you came jolly near to blighting my life.’
‘Doing what, Carmody?’
‘Blighting my life.’
‘List to me while I tell you of the Spaniard who blighted my life,’ sang Percy Pilbeam, letting it go like a lark in the springtime. He had never felt happier or in more congenial society. ‘How did I blight your life, Carmody?’
‘You didn’t.’
‘You said I did.’
‘I said you tried to.’
‘Make up your mind, Carmody.’
‘Don’t keep calling me Carmody.’
‘But, Carmody,’ protested Pilbeam, ‘it’s your name, isn’t it? Certainly it is. Then why try to hush it up, Carmody? Be frank and open. I don’t mind people knowing my name. I glory in it. It’s Pilbeam – Pilbeam – Pilbeam – that’s what it is – Pilbeam!’
‘In about thirty seconds,’ said Hugo, ‘it will be Mud.’
It struck Percy Pilbeam for the first time that in his companion’s manner there was a certain peevishness.
‘Something the matter?’ he asked, concerned.
‘I’ll tell you what’s the matter.’
‘Do, Carmody, do,’ said Pilbeam. ‘Do, do, do. Confide in me. I like your face.’
He settled himself in a deep armchair, and putting the tips of his fingers together after a little preliminary difficulty in making them meet, leaned back, all readiness to listen to whatever trouble it was that was disturbing this new friend of his.
‘Some days ago, insect . . .’
Pilbeam opened his eyes.
‘Speak up, Carmody,’ he said. ‘Don’t mumble.’
Hugo’s fingers twitched. He regarded his companion with a burning eye, and wondered why he was wasting time talking instead of at once proceeding to the main business of the day and knocking the fellow’s head off at the roots. What saved Pilbeam was the reclining position he had assumed. If you are a Carmody and a sportsman, you cannot attack even a viper, if it persists in lying back on its spine and keeping its eyes shut.
‘Some days ago,’ he began again, ‘I called at your office. And after we had talked of this and that, I left. I discovered later that immediately upon my departure you had set your foul spies on my trail and had instructed them to take notes of my movements and report on them. The result being that I came jolly close to having my bally life ruined. And, if you want to know what I’m going to do, I’m going to haul you out of that chair and turn you round and kick you hard and go on kicking you till I kick you out of the house. And if you dare to shove your beastly little nose back inside the place, I’ll disembowel you.’
Pilbeam unclosed his eyes.
‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘could be fairer than that. Nevertheless, that’s no reason why you should go about stealing pigs.’
Hugo had often read stories in which people reeled and would have fallen, had they not clutched at whatever it was that they clutched at. He had never expected to undergo that experience himself. But it is undoubtedly the fact that, if he had not at this moment gripped the back of a chair, he would have been hard put to it to remain perpendicular.
‘Pig-pincher!’ said Pilbeam austerely, and closed his eyes again.
Hugo, having established his equilibrium by means of the chair, had now moved away. He was making a strong effort to recover his morale. He picked up the photograph of Lord Emsworth in his Yeomanry uniform and looked at it absently; then, as if it had just dawned upon him, put it
down with a shudder, like a man who finds that he had been handling a snake.
‘What do you mean?’ he said thickly.
Pilbeam’s eyes opened.
‘What do I mean? What do you think I mean? I mean you’re a pig-pincher. That’s what I mean. You go to and fro, sneaking pigs and hiding them in caravans.’
Hugo took up Lord Emsworth’s photograph again, saw what he was doing, and dropped it quickly. Pilbeam had closed his eyes once more, and, looking at him, Hugo could not repress a reluctant thrill of awe. He had often read about the superhuman intuition of detectives, but he had never before been privileged to observe it in operation. Then an idea occurred to him.
‘Did you see me?’
‘What say, Carmody?’
‘Did you see me?’
‘Yes, I see you, Carmody,’ said Pilbeam playfully. ‘Peep-bo!’
‘Did you see me put that pig in the caravan?’
Pilbeam nodded eleven times in rapid succession.
‘Certainly I saw you, Carmody. Why shouldn’t I see you, considering I’d been caught in the rain and taken shelter in the caravan and was in there with my trousers off, trying to dry them because I’m subject to lumbago?’
‘I didn’t see you.’
‘No, Carmody, you did not. And I’ll tell you why, Carmody. Because I heard a girl’s voice outside saying “Be quick, or somebody will come along!” and I hid. You don’t suppose I would let a sweet girl see me in knee-length mesh-knit underwear, do you? Not done, Carmody,’ said Pilbeam, severely. ‘Not cricket.’
Hugo was experiencing the bitterness which comes to all criminals who discover, too late, that they have undone themselves by trying to be clever. It had seemed at the time such a good idea to remove the Empress from the gamekeeper’s cottage in the West Wood and place her in Baxter’s caravan, where nobody would think of looking. How could he have anticipated that the caravan would be bulging with blighted detectives?
At this tense moment, the door opened and Beach appeared.
‘I beg your pardon, sir, but do you propose to wait any longer for Mr Ronald?’
‘Eh?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Pilbeam. ‘Who the devil’s Mr Ronald, I should like to know? I didn’t come to this place to do a fast-cure. I want my dinner, and I want it now. And if Mr Ronald doesn’t like it, he can do the other thing.’ He strode in a dominating manner to the door. ‘Come along, Carmody. Din-dins.’
Hugo had sunk into a chair.
‘I don’t want any dinner,’ he said, dully.
‘You don’t want any dinner?’
‘No.’
‘No dinner?’
‘No.’
Pilbeam shrugged his shoulders impatiently.
‘The man’s an ass,’ he said.
He headed for the stairs. His manner seemed to indicate that he washed his hands of Hugo.
Beach lingered.
‘Shall I bring you some sandwiches, sir?’
‘No thanks. What’s that?’
A loud crash had sounded. The butler went to the door and looked out.
‘It is Mr Pilbeam, sir. He appears to have fallen downstairs.’
For an instant a look of hope crept into Hugo’s careworn face.
‘Has he broken his neck?’
‘Apparently not, sir.’
‘Ah,’ said Hugo regretfully.
13 SWIFT THINKING BY THE EFFICIENT BAXTER
I
The Efficient Baxter had retired to the smoking-room shortly before half-past seven. He desired silence and solitude, and in this cosy haven he got both. For a few minutes nothing broke the stillness but the slow ticking of a clock on the mantelpiece. Then from the direction of the hall there came a new sound, faint at first but swelling and swelling to a frenzied blare, seeming to throb through the air with a note of passionate appeal like a woman wailing for her demon lover. It was that tocsin of the soul, that muezzin of the country-house, the dressing-for-dinner gong.
Baxter did not stir. The summons left him unmoved. He had heard it, of course. Butler Beach was a man who swung a pretty gong-stick. He had that quick forearm flick and wristy follow-through which stamp the master. If you were anywhere within a quarter of a mile or so, you could not help hearing him. But the sound had no appeal for Baxter. He did not propose to go in to dinner. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts.
They were not the sort of thoughts with which most men would have wished to be left alone, being both dark and bitter. That expedition to the gamekeeper’s cottage in the West Wood had not proved a pleasure-trip for Rupert Baxter. Reviewing it in his mind, he burned with baffled rage.
And yet everybody had been very nice to him – very nice and tactful. True, at the moment of the discovery that the cottage contained no pig and appeared to have been pigless from its foundation, there had been perhaps just the slightest suspicion of constraint. Lord Emsworth had grasped his ivory-knobbed stick a little more tightly, and had edged behind Beach in a rather noticeable way, his manner saying more plainly than was agreeable, ‘If he springs, be ready!’ And there had come into the butler’s face a look, hard to bear, which was a blend of censure and pity. But after that both of them had been charming.
Lord Emsworth had talked soothingly about light and shade effects. He had said – and Beach agreed with him – that in the darkness of a thunderstorm anybody might have been deceived into supposing that he had seen a butler feeding a pig in the gamekeeper’s cottage. It was probably, said Lord Emsworth – and Beach thought so, too – a bit of wood sticking out of the wall or something. He went on to tell a longish story of how he himself, when a boy, had fancied he had seen a cat with flaming eyes. He had concluded by advising Baxter – and Beach said the suggestion was a good one – to hurry home and have a nice cup of hot tea and go to bed.
His attitude, in short, could not have been pleasanter or more considerate. Yet Baxter, as he sat in the smoking-room, burned, as stated, with baffled rage.
The door-handle turned. Beach stood on the threshold.
‘If you have changed your mind, sir, about taking dinner, the meal is quite ready.’
He spoke as friend to friend. There was nothing in his manner to suggest that the man he addressed had ever accused him of stealing pigs. As far as Beach was concerned, all was forgotten and forgiven.
But the milk of human kindness, of which the butler was so full, had not yet been delivered on Baxter’s doorstep. The hostility in his eye, as he fixed it on his visitor, was so marked that a lesser man than Beach might have been disconcerted.
‘I don’t want any dinner.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘Bring me that whisky-and-soda quick.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The door closed as softly as it had opened, but not before a pang like a red-hot needle had pierced the ex-secretary’s bosom. It was caused by the fact that he had distinctly heard the butler, as he withdrew, utter a pitying sigh.
It was the sort of sigh which a kind-hearted man would have given on peeping into a padded cell in which some old friend was confined, and Baxter resented it with all the force of an imperious nature. He had not ceased to wonder what, if anything, could be done about it when the refreshments arrived, carried by James the footman. James placed them gently on the table, shot a swift glance of respectful commiseration at the patient, and passed away.
The sigh had cut Baxter like a knife. The look stabbed him like a dagger. For a moment he thought of calling the man back and asking him what the devil he meant by staring at him like that, but wiser counsels prevailed. He contented himself with draining a glass of whisky-and-soda and swallowing two sandwiches.
This done, he felt a little – not much, but a little – better. Before, he would gladly have murdered Beach and James and danced on their graves. Now, he would have been satisfied with straight murder.
However, he was alone at last. That was some slight consolation. Beach had come and gone. Footman James had come and gone. Everybody els
e must by now be either at Matchingham Hall or assembled in the dining-room. On the solitude which he so greatly desired there could be no further intrusion. He resumed his meditations.
For a time these dealt exclusively with the recent past, and were, in consequence, of a morbid character. Then, as the grateful glow of the whisky began to make itself felt, a softer mood came to Rupert Baxter. His mind turned to thoughts of Sue.
Men as efficient as Rupert Baxter do not fall in love in the generally accepted sense of the term. Their attitude towards the tender passion is more restrained than that of the ordinary feckless young man who loses his heart at first sight with a whoop and a shiver. Baxter approved of Sue. We cannot say more. But this approval, added to the fact that he had been informed by Lady Constance that the girl was the only daughter of a man who possessed sixty million dollars, had been enough to cause him to ear-mark her in his mind as the future Mrs Baxter. In that capacity he had docketed her and filed her away at the first moment of their meeting.
Naturally, therefore, the remarks which Lord Emsworth had let fall in her hearing had caused him grave concern. It hampers a man in his wooing if the girl he has selected for his bride starts with the idea that he is as mad as a coot. He congratulated himself on the promptitude with which he had handled the situation. That letter which he had written her could not fail to put him right in her eyes.
Rupert Baxter was a man in whose lexicon there was no such word as failure. An heiress like this Miss Schoonmaker would not, he was aware, lack for suitors: but he did not fear them. If only she were making a reasonably long stay at the castle, he felt that he could rely on his force of character to win the day. In fact, it seemed to him that he could almost hear the wedding bells ringing already. Then, coming out of his dreams, he realized that it was the telephone.
He reached for the instrument with a frown, annoyed at the interruption, and spoke with an irritated sharpness.