Uncle Dynamite (6 page)

‘Yes,
I’m Reginald.’

‘How
nice to meet you at last,’ wailed Lady Bostock like a soul in torment.

It is
never easy off-hand to find the ideal reply to such an observation. Discarding
‘Yes!’ as too complacent and ‘What ho!’ as too familiar, and not being
fortunate enough to think of ‘I’ve been looking forward so much to meeting
you,’
Pongo contented himself with another of his nervous giggles.

A
sudden light came into Lady Bostock’s haggard eyes.

‘Have
you ever judged bonny babies, Reginald?’

‘Me?’
said Pongo, reeling.

Before
he could speak further, an angel, in the very effective disguise of Sir Aylmer,
intervened to save him from the ghastly peril which had so suddenly risen to
confront him.

‘You
don’t want Reginald,’ he said, and Pongo, who a moment earlier would have scoffed
at the suggestion that it would ever be possible for him to want to leap at his
host and kiss him on both cheeks, was conscious of a powerful urge in that
direction. ‘I’ll tell you who gets the job.’

After
uttering the words ‘I’m dashed if I’m going to do it’ and receiving his wife’s
reassuring reply, Sir Aylmer had fallen into a silence, as if musing or
pondering, and it was plain now that the brain work on which he had been
engaged had borne fruit. His manner had become animated, and in his eye, which,
resting upon Pongo, had been dull and brooding, there was a triumphant gleam.

It was
a gleam which might have puzzled an untravelled beholder, but anybody who had
ever seen a Corsican feudist suddenly presented with the opportunity of
wreaking a sinister vengeance on a family foe would have recognized it
immediately. It was that strange, almost unearthly light which comes in the
eyes of wronged uncles when they see a chance of getting a bit of their own
back from erring nephews.

‘I’ll
tell you who gets the job,’ he repeated. ‘William.’

‘William?’

‘William,’
said Sir Aylmer, rolling the word round his tongue like vintage port. Lady
Bostock stared.

‘But
William…. Surely, dear…. The very last person….

‘William.’

‘But he
would hate it.’

‘William.’

‘You
know how terribly shy he is.’

‘William.
I don’t want any argument, Emily. It’s no good you standing there blinding and
stiffing. William judges the bonny babies. I insist. Perhaps now he’ll be sorry
he skulked in trains and went on toots with old Ickenham.’

Lady
Bostock sighed. But a habit of obsequiousness which had started at the altar
rails was too strong for her.

‘Very
well, dear.’

‘Good.
Tell him when you see him. Meanwhile, you say, the Vicar wants us to go down to
the vicarage and confer with him. Right. I’ll drive you in the car. Come
along.’

He
darted through the french windows, followed by Lady Bostock, and after a few
moments occupied in mopping his forehead with the handkerchief which so
perfectly matched his tie and socks, Pongo followed them.

He felt
he needed air. A similar sensation had often come to sensitive native chiefs at
the conclusion of an interview with Sir Aylmer Bostock on the subject of unpaid
hut taxes.

Sunshine and the pure
Hampshire breezes playing about his temples soon did wonders in the way of
restoring him to the normal. Presently, feeling almost himself again, he
returned to the house, and, as always happened with those who had once seen Sir
Aylmer’s collection of African curios, there came over him a morbid urge to
take another look at these weird exhibits, to ascertain whether they really
looked as frightful as they had appeared at first sight. He passed through the
french window into the collection room, and a pink policeman, who had been
bicycling dreamily up the drive, uttered a sharp ‘Ho!’ and accelerated his
pace, his eyes hard and his jaw protruding belligerently.

The
policeman’s name was Harold Potter. He represented the awful majesty of the Law
in Ashenden Oakshott. His pinkness was due to the warmth of the weather, and he
was dreamy because he had been musing on Elsie Bean, the Manor housemaid, to
whom he was affianced.

It was
in order to enjoy a chat with Elsie Bean that he had come here, and until he
turned the corner and was in view of the house his thoughts had been all of
love. But at the sight of furtive forms slinking in through french windows
Potter, the Romeo, became in a flash Potter, the sleepless guardian of the
peace. His substantial feet pressed on the pedals like those of a racing
cyclist.

It
looked to Harold Potter like a fair cop.

And so
it came about that Pongo, his opinion of the intelligence of African natives
now even lower than before, was disturbed in his contemplation of their fatuous
handiwork by the sound of emotional breathing in his rear. He spun round, to
find himself gazing into the steely eyes of a large policeman with a ginger
moustache.

‘Ho!’
he cried, startled.

‘Ho!’
said Constable Potter, like an echo in the Swiss mountains.

It would be idle to
pretend that the situation was not one of some embarrassment. It belonged to
the type which would have enchanted Lord Ickenham, who enjoyed nothing better
than these variations in the calm monotone of life, but it brought Pongo out
from head to foot in a sort of prickly heat.

Unlike
most of his light-hearted companions of the Drones Club, who rather made pets
of policemen, tipping them when in funds and stealing their helmets on Boat
Race night, Pongo had always had a horror of the Force. That sombreness of his
on the day at the Dog Races, for which Lord Ickenham had reproached him, had
been occasioned by the fact that a member of that Force, who might have been
this one’s twin brother, had been attached to his coat collar and advising him
to come quietly.

He
smiled a weak smile.

‘Oh,
hullo,’ he said.

‘Hullo,’
replied Constable Potter coldly. ‘What’s all this?’

‘What’s
all what?’

‘What
are you doing on these enclosed premises?’

‘I’ve
been invited here for a brief visit.’

‘Ho!’

It
seemed to Pongo that he was not making headway. The situation, sticky at the
outset, appeared to be growing progressively stickier. He was relieved,
accordingly, when a third party arrived to break up the
tête-à-tête.

This
was a small, sturdy girl of resolute appearance with blue eyes and a turned-up
nose, clad in the uniform of a housemaid. She regarded with interest the
picture in still life before her.

‘Hullo,’
she said. ‘Where did you spring from, Harold? And who’s this?’

‘Chap
I’ve apprehended on enclosed premises,’ said Constable Potter briefly.

Pongo,
who had been dabbing at his forehead, waved his handkerchief in passionate
protest against this too professional view.

‘What’s
all this rot about enclosed premises?’ he demanded with spirit. ‘I resent the
way, officer, you keep chewing the fat about enclosed premises. Why shouldn’t I
be on enclosed premises, when specially invited? Here, you, what’s your name,
my dear old housemaid —‘

‘Miss
Bean, my fiancée,’ said Constable Potter, frigidly doing the honours.

‘Oh,
really? Heartiest congratulations. Pip-pip, Miss Bean.’

‘Toodle-oo.’

‘I hope
you’ll be very, very happy. Well, what I was going to say was that you will be
able to bear me out that I’m a guest at this joint. I’ve just arrived in my car
to spend a few days. I’m the celebrated Twistleton, the bird who’s engaged to
Miss Bostock. You must know all about me. No doubt the place has been ringing
with my name.’

‘Miss
Hermione is engaged to a gentleman named Twistleton.’

‘Exactly.’

‘And
Jane heard them saying at dinner that he was expected here, Harold. I believe
this is him.’

‘Well
spoken, young Bean,’ said Pongo with enthusiasm. He had taken an immediate
liking to this clear-reasoning girl. ‘Of course I’m him. Look,’ said Pongo,
turning back the pocket of his coat. ‘Read this definite statement by one of
the most reputable tailors in
London
. “R. G. Twistleton.” There you are, in black and white.’

‘It
could be somebody else’s coat that you’d bought second hand,’ argued Constable
Potter, fighting in the last ditch.

Pongo
gave him a look.

‘Don’t
say such things even in jest, officer. Rather,’ he said with a sudden flash of
inspiration, ‘ring up the Vicar and ask for Sir Aylmer, who is in conference
with him on the subject of bonny babies, and put it squarely up to the latter —
Sir Aylmer, I mean, not the bonny babies — whether he didn’t leave me here only
a few moments ago after a pleasant and invigorating chat.’

‘You
mean you’ve met Sir Aylmer?’

‘Of
course I’ve met Sir Aylmer. We’re just like that.’

Constable
Potter seemed reluctantly convinced.

‘Well,
I suppose it’s all right, then. I beg your pardon, sir.’

‘Quite
all right, officer.’

‘Then
I’ll be saying good afternoon, sir. How about a pot of tea in the kitchen,
Elsie?’

Elsie
Bean elevated her small nose.

‘You
can go to the kitchen, if you like. Not me. Your sister’s there, calling on
cook.’

‘Ho!’
Constable Potter stood for a moment in thought. The conflicting claims of tea
and a loved one’s society were plainly warring within him. One is sorry to
report that the former prevailed. ‘Well, I think I’ll mooch along and have a cup,’
he said, and mooched, as foreshadowed.

Elsie
Bean looked after his retreating blue back with a frown.

‘You
and your sister!’ she said.

The
note of acerbity in her voice was so manifest that Pongo could not help but be
intrigued. Here, he told himself, or he was very much mistaken, was a housemaid
with a secret sorrow. He stopped mopping his forehead and cocked an enquiring
eye at Elsie Bean.

‘Don’t
you like his sister?’

‘No, I
don’t.’

‘Well,
if there’s any sort of family resemblance, I can fully comprehend,’ said Pongo.
With Constable Potter’s departure Ashenden Manor seemed to him to have become a
sweeter, better place. ‘Why don’t you like his sister? What’s the matter with
her?’

Elsie
Bean was a friendly little soul who, though repeatedly encouraged to do so by
her employers, had never succeeded in achieving that demure aloofness which is
the hallmark of the well-trained maid. Too often in her dealings with the
ruling classes, in circumstances where a distant ‘Yes, sir,’ or ‘No, madam,’
would have been more suitable, you would find her becoming expansive and
conversational. And on the present occasion she regarded herself as a hostess.

‘I’ll
tell you what’s the matter with her. She goes on at him about how he mustn’t
leave the Force. It’s “Don’t you do it, Harold,” and “Don’t you let Elsie talk
you into acting against your true interests,” all the time. I haven’t any
patience.’

Pongo
concentrated tensely.

‘Let me
see if I’ve got this straight,’ he said. ‘You want him to turn in his boots and
truncheon? To cease, in a word, to be a copper?’

‘R.’

‘But
his sister doesn’t. Yes, I get the set-up. Why do you want him to turn in his
boots and truncheon?’ asked Pongo. A man who has been reading for the Bar for
some years gets into the way of putting the pertinent question.

Elsie
Bean seemed surprised that such a question should have been considered
necessary.

‘Well,
wouldn’t you? If you was a girl, would you like to be married to a policeman?
Feeling your old man was hated by all. If I went home to Bottleton East and
told my family I was going to get spliced to a copper, they’d have a fit. A
nice thing for my brother Bert to hear, when he comes out in September.’

Pongo
nodded intelligently. Until now, having supposed his companion to be a local
product, he had failed to grasp the nub, but her last words made everything
clear. He could quite see how a
London
girl, especially a child of the notoriously rather vivacious
quarter of Bottleton East, might shrink from linking her lot with that of a
professional tapper on shoulders and grasper of coat collars. In addition to
this brother Bert — at the moment, it appeared, unhappily no longer with us —
there were no doubt a number of Uncle Herbs and Cousin Georges in her entourage
who, were she to commit such a
mésalliance,
would consider, and rightly,
that she had inflicted a blot on the Bean escutcheon.

‘I see
what you mean,’ he said. ‘But what could he do if he resigned his portfolio?
Not easy to find jobs nowadays.’

‘I want
him to buy a pub. He’s got three hundred pounds. He won a football pool last
winter.’

‘The
lucky stiff.’