Galahad at Blandings (18 page)

The
butler did not fail to sense this distaste for chit-chat.

‘If you
prefer it, m’lady, I could return later.’

‘No,
no, Beach. Is it something important?’

‘Yes,
m’lady. It is with reference to the gentleman who arrived yesterday as a guest
at the castle,’ said Beach, choking on the operative word as he had done in his
interview with Gally.

Lady
Hermione stiffened dangerously. An autocratic chatelaine, she resented guests
arriving at the castle without her knowledge. She could scarcely believe that
her brother Clarence would have had the temerity to invite a friend to stay
unless he had first asked her permission, so she came — one might say leaped — to
the conclusion that the mystery guest must be a crony of her brother Galahad,
and her frown grew darker. One knew what Galahad’s cronies were like. The dregs
of civilisation. A silver ring bookmaker was the least disreputable chum he
would be likely to have added to the Blandings circle.

‘Who is
this man, Beach?’ she demanded tensely.

‘He
gives his name as Augustus Whipple, m’lady.’

Lady
Hermione’s indignation subsided a good deal. Nobody could associate for long
with Lord Emsworth without becoming familiar with the name Whipple, and she
knew the author of
On The Care Of The Pig
to be a man of some standing
in the best circles, a member of the Athenaeum Club, which she understood to be
a most respectable institution, and an occasional adviser to the Minister of
Agriculture. Clarence, she presumed, had invited him, and though she still felt
that in doing so without consulting her he had been guilty of a solecism, she
cooled off quite noticeably.

‘Oh, Mr
Whipple?’ she said, relieved. The vision she had had of one of Gally’s friends
wearing a loud checked suit and addressing her as ‘ducky’ in a voice hoarsened
by calling the odds at Sandown Park or Catterick Bridge faded. ‘I shall be
interested to meet him. Mr Whipple is a very well-known author.’

‘If
this
is
Mr Whipple, m’lady.’

‘I
don’t understand you.

‘I
suspect him of being an impostor,’ hissed Beach. It is difficult, even if one
wants to, to avoid hissing a sentence so well provided with sibilants, and he
did not want to.

His
statement ought not to have startled Lady Hermione as greatly as it did. She
should have been used to impostors by this time. They had been in and out of
Blandings Castle for years. A thoughtful writer had once said of the place that
it had impostors the way other houses had mice. Nevertheless she uttered a
sound which in a woman of less breeding might have been classified as a snort,
and the buttered toast she was holding fell from her hand.

An
impostor!’

‘Yes,
m’lady.’

‘But
what grounds have you for saying such a thing?’

‘It
seemed to me peculiar that shortly after his arrival another gentleman should
have rung up from London on the telephone saying that he, too, was Mr Augustus
Whipple.’

‘What!’

‘Yes,
m’lady. He was enquiring after his lordship’s state of health. He informed me
that he had received a telegram stating that his lordship was suffering from
German measles. It renders one suspicious of the
bona fides
of the
gentleman now in residence at the castle.’

‘It
certainly does!’

‘I must
confess to finding the whole situation mystifying.’

Lady
Hermione was not mystified. Not, she might have said had she been capable of
such vulgarity, by a jugful. As clearly as if the information had been written
in letters of fire on the wall of the boudoir she saw behind this superfluity
of Whipples the hand of her brother Galahad.

‘Oh!’
she said, and never had that monosyllable come closer to being the ‘Ho!’ of
Constable Evans of the Market Blandings police force. Her eyes were gleaming
balefully. She looked like a cook who has encountered an intrusive black beetle
in her kitchen. ‘Will you find Mr Galahad and say I would like to see him. No,
never mind, I will go and see him myself’

II

Gally was in the billiards
room when she found him, practising cannons with an expert hand. He laid down
his cue courteously as she entered. He was not glad to see her, for it was his
experience that her presence, like that of her sisters Constance, Dora and Julia,
nearly always spelt trouble, but he did his best to infuse a brotherly warmth
into his greeting.

‘Hullo,
Hermione. So you’re back? Rotten day for travelling. You must have stifled in
that train.’

There
was nothing in Lady Hermione’s manner to suggest that her feelings towards him
were not friendly, or as friendly as they ever were. It was her intention to
lull him into a false security before unmasking him and bathing him in
confusion.

‘It was
rather stuffy,’ she agreed. ‘Do you think there’s a storm coming up?’

‘I
shouldn’t be surprised. How was Veronica?’

‘She
seemed very well.’

‘I miss
her bonny face.

‘I’ll
tell her. She’ll be flattered. And how are you, Galahad?’

‘Oh,
ticking over much as usual.’

‘And
Clarence?’

‘He’s
fine.’

Lady
Hermione gave a little laugh.

‘I’m
talking as if I had been away a month. I suppose nothing has been happening
since I left?’

‘Nothing
sensational. We have another guest.’

‘Really?
Who is that?’

‘Fellow
of the name of Whipple.’

‘You
don’t mean Clarence’s Whipple, the man who wrote that pig book he’s always
reading?’

‘That’s
the chap. Clarence had a letter from him asking if he could come and take some
photographs of the Empress, so of course he invited him to stay.’

‘Of
course. Clarence must be delighted.’

‘Seventh
heaven.’

‘I
don’t wonder. There can’t be many men like Mr Whipple.’

‘Very
few so pigminded.’

‘I was
not thinking of that so much as of his extraordinary gift for being in two
places at the same time. I always think that makes a man so interesting.’

‘Eh?’

‘Well,
you can’t say it’s not remarkable that he should be at Blandings Castle and
still able to ring up on the telephone from London. I wonder how he does it.
With mirrors, do you think?’

Gally
was not easily disconcerted and only the fact that he removed his monocle and
began to polish it showed that her words had stirred him to any extent.
Replacing the monocle, he said:

‘Odd,
that. Very curious.

‘So I
thought when Beach told me. He took the call.’

‘From
Whipple?’

‘Speaking
from his London branch, not the Shropshire one.’

‘He
must have got the name wrong. One often catches names incorrectly on the
telephone. What did this fellow say?’

‘That
he was Augustus Whipple and that he was calling to ask how Clarence was, as he
had had a telegram saying that he was in bed with German measles. Quite a
mystery, isn’t it?’

Gally
pondered for a moment. Then his face brightened.

‘I
think I see the solution. Simple when you give your mind to it. It was
Visitors’ Day yesterday and Beach had to work like a beaver all the afternoon showing
the mob around the joint. He’s not so young as he was and it took it out of him
a lot. When it was over, he was at a low ebb and in need of a restorative. So
what happens? He limps off to his pantry, reaches for the port bottle,
incautiously overdoes it and becomes as soused as a herring, totally incapable
of understanding a word said to him on the phone. The name he mistook for
Whipple was probably Wilson or Wiggins or Williams, and what Wilson or Wiggins
or Williams was saying was that
he
had got German measles. It’s the only
explanation.’

Many
years previously in their mutual nursery Lady Hermione, even then a force to
be reckoned with, had once struck her brother Galahad on the head with her
favourite doll Belinda, laying him out as flat as a Dover sole. She was wishing
she could put her hands on a doll now. Or she would have been prepared to
settle for a hatchet.

‘I can
think of another,’ she said, ‘and that is that for some reason at which I
cannot attempt to guess you have sneaked one of your impossible friends into
the castle. I should say one more of your impossible friends, because this is
not the first time it has happened. Who is this man?’

‘You
want me to come clean?’

‘If you
will be so good.’

‘He’s a
chap called Sam Bagshott.’

‘Wanted
by the police, no doubt?’

‘Oddly
enough, yes,’ said Gally with a touch of admiration in his voice. This
exhibition of woman’s intuition had impressed him. ‘But that was due to an
absurd misunderstanding. He’s a most respectable fellow really. Son of my old
pal Boko Bagshott. And he’s here because he’s jolly well got to be here. It’s
imperative that he confers with the Callender girl, whom he loves but by whom
he has been given the air, and she’s away and nobody knows when she’ll be back.
Obviously he must stay put and await her arrival.’

‘Oh,
must he? I disagree with you. If you think he is going to remain here another
day, you are very much mistaken. I shall tell Beach to see that his things are
packed and that he is out of the place in the next half-hour.

Gally
continued tranquil.

‘I
wouldn’t.’

‘And if
I were not a very tolerant and easygoing woman, he would not be given time to
pack.’

‘I
still maintain that you would be making a mistake.’

‘I
suppose that remark has some sort of meaning, but I cannot imagine what.’

‘It
will flash on you in a moment. I must begin by mentioning that I had a chat
with Egbert before he left.’

‘Well?’

‘He
said you had gone to London to get Veronica to write to Tipton breaking the
engagement.

‘Well?’

‘It
bewildered me. I should have thought an up-and-coming young multi-millionaire
would have been the son-in-law of your dreams. Aren’t you fond of
multi-millionaires?’

‘Tipton
is not a multi-millionaire. He has lost all his money speculating on the Stock
Exchange.’

‘You
astound me. Who told you that?’

‘Clarence.’

‘And
you really look on Clarence as a reliable source?’

‘In the
present case, yes. He had the information from Tipton himself’

‘It
didn’t occur to you that Clarence, acting true to the form of a lifetime, might
have got everything muddled up? Let me brief you as to the real position of
affairs. Tipton hasn’t lost a penny, but like many a better man before him he
was in chokey and needed bail. He hadn’t the price on him, somebody in the
course of the evening having pinched his wallet, so he rang Clarence up at his
hotel, said he had lost all his money and could Clarence oblige him with a loan
of twenty dollars. That’s the whole story. If you have any lingering doubt in
your mind as to Tipton’s solvency, let me tell you that when he blew in the day
before yesterday he was at the wheel of a Rolls Royce and waving an
eight—thousand-pound necklace, a little gift for Vee which he had picked up in
London. I was not privileged to see his underclothing, but I should imagine it
consisted of thousand-dollar bills. Fellows like Tipton always wear them next
the skin.’

Some
people on receiving a shock turn pale, others purple. Lady Hermione did both.
The colour faded from her cheeks, then rushed back. There was a settee near
where she stood. She sank on to it bonelessly, staring as if she were seeing
some horrible sight — some sight, that is to say, even more horrible than a
brother with a black—rimmed monocle in his right eye. Her breath came in short
gasps, and Gally hastened to supply aid and comfort. He was a humane man and
had no wish to see a blood relation keeling over in an apoplectic fit.

‘It’s
all right,’ he said. ‘You can stop swooning. Egbert asked me to intercept
Veronica’s letter before it could reach Tipton, so I got up at the crack of
dawn and did.’

The
relief that flooded over Lady Hermione was so stupendous that she could not
speak. The whole world, even Gally, seemed beautiful to her. Having gurgled for
a while, she said:

‘Oh,
Galahad!’

‘I
thought you’d be pleased.’

‘Where
is it? Give it to me.

‘I
haven’t got it.’

Lady
Hermione, who had been lying back, sat up with a jerk. ‘You’ve lost it?’ she
cried, the apoplectic fit threatening to return.

‘No,
I’ve not lost it. I’ve given it to Sam. Whether or not he hands it on to Tipton
depends on you. Accept him as an honoured guest and give him that sunny smile of
yours from time to time, and you’ll be as right as rain. But the slightest
relaxation of old—world hospitality on your part and Tipton’s mail will be
augmented by a communication from the girl he loves. You had better begin
practising being the ideal hostess without delay, for both Sam and I have high
standards and you mustn’t fall short of them,’ said Gally, and feeling that
this was about as telling an exit line as could be found on the spur of the
moment he replaced his cue in the rack and left the room.