When I pried my eyes open the next morning Jeeves was just floating in with one of his patented morning pick-me-ups, demonstrating once again his superlative sense of timing.
"Drink this, sir," he murmured, even so low a sound cutting through my skull like a hot knife through butter.
Once I had gulped down that life-saving fluid and forced my bulging eyeballs back into their sockets I felt much more the thing. "Whew! Good morning, Jeeves! And what's the news today?"
"Good morning, sir. I trust you are feeling better?"
"Considerably," I nodded, despite the lingering impression that the top of my head was still zooming about the room.
"Lord Peter and an Inspector Parker have determined that the telegram summoning us to Brinkley Court was telephoned to the Market Snodsbury post office from this house," Jeeves continued. "The clerk at the post office stated her impression that it was a feminine voice, but could not confirm the recollection. As Mrs. Travers vigorously maintains that she sent no such summons, Lord Peter is looking into the matter."
"Ah." I leaned back against the pillows. "Any chance that what's her name, Walters's bit of fluff, could have 'phoned it in?"
"Mary?" Jeeves's brow raised an infinitesimal fraction of an inch. "It seems most unlikely, sir. Lord Peter and Inspector Parker have both interviewed her and I believe she would have been induced to tell the truth if she had."
Chaps like Flim don't need rubber hoses in dark cellars, only what Jeeves calls 'force of personality.' "If she didn't and Aunt Dahlia didn't, who did?" I asked, getting right to the nubbin of the matter.
"Logic suggests Miss Chandler, Lady Attenbury, or Lady Attenbury's maid," Jeeves suggested, "though we cannot entirely discount the other female servants."
"Anyone new among the distaff servants?" I asked, all those detective novels once again paying off.
"No, sir," Jeeves dashed my theory.
"Unless Myrtle was a dashed sight more disappointed in New York than expected I don't see why any of them would go to the trouble."
Jeeves gave me an austere look that suggested without words that I should not find myself proposing to la Chandler. "I believe the motive is more likely to divert suspicion from the real culprits onto yourself, sir; what the sensational press calls a 'frame up.'"
Despite everything that shook me to the core. "I say, that's rather rotten, what? Setting another chap up to take the blame?"
"I fear we are dealing with hardened criminals, sir."
***
I'm not much of one for going down to breakfast when staying at country houses, preferring to sneak up on the day after having the morning ration of calories in the safety of my own room. So it was late morning, getting on towards lunch-time, before I encountered Squid, smoking a gasper on the terrace.
"What ho," I said, raised to do the courteous thing even towards those who at last meeting looked ready to tear out my liver and spleen. "Topping morning." It was, too, the sun shining, sky blue, all that bally rot. I thought about quoting that thing of Jeeves's with the lark and snail, but it didn't seem to line up right in my head.
Squid gave a grunt and what might have been my name in response.
"Pretty rummy, the family jewels being pinched like that," I commented, hoping to draw him out on the subject. Even with Walters fingered, Squid was still my favourite suspect for fellow conspirator.
Squid threw his gasper to the ground. "What's your game, Wooster?"
The sudden change of subject left me dizzy, but I can make country-house chit-chat with the best. "Tennis, I suppose. Billiards, darts, a little golf. I can engage you in a round of any or all of the above. Excepting darts, of course, unless you want to go down to the Boot and Beatle or Laughing Cat with me. Aunt Dahlia has rather forbidden darts after that trick shot involving Seppings, Augustus the cat, and a painting of the third duke of Bunbury."
Squid opened his mouth and closed it again. His fists clenched and I stepped back a discreet foot or so. "Stay away from Myrtle," he growled at last, before turning away.
Hardly had he toddled off before le père de la famille tottered up. Attenbury looked embarrassed, like a Drone about to ask his bookie for another week's credit. "Mr. Wooster," he said by way of greeting. "I must ask your pardon for my unwarranted suspicions. Lord Peter has convinced me you can have had nothing to do with this despicable theft," he said, showing once again that even a peer of the realm was capable of making a manly apology.
"Say no more, say no more, old bean," I said, feeling no need to rub his nose in his mistake. "Already forgotten, what?"
"You are a true gentleman," Attenbury said, which is a thing no man minds hearing about himself, though a trifle embarrassing for one possessing my natural modesty. "You may wish to know," he continued, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, "that I have sacked my man Walters for his disgraceful behaviour the night before last."
"Cast him into the outer darkness with wailing and gnashing of teeth?" I asked, half-remembering that gag from the Bible--though it may possibly have been Shakespeare; all the best bits coming from one or the other.
Attenbury blinked like an owl, though he didn't turn his head around backwards. "The police insist that he remain in the area, unfortunately, so he has relocated to the pub in Market Snodsbury."
I winced in sympathy, knowing what the beds were like in your average country pub. Those chaps who like to sleep on all the nails would find them uncomfortably lumpy. "Right ho. Serves the blighter right."
"Indeed," he said, stealing Jeeves's best bit.
After another minute or so of chit-chat, nothing of any importance, Attenbury and I said our adieux and I found the longing growing in me for sustenance. Attenbury's mention of the pub sparked the specific desire for fish and chips, a dish that no self-respecting French chef of Anatole's standing has ever agreed to prepare. To inform Seppings of my impending absence was the work of but a minute, and not more than five more found me strolling towards the village with my hat on my head and a song in my heart.
I'd never slept at the Laughing Cat due to the general mateyness between Aunt Dahlia and myself guaranteeing me a bed in the old dosshouse at need, but I had sampled their ale on one or two occasions. After a stiffish mile or two in the sun I was panting like a hart for a glass of their best. Fortunately the barmaid was quick on her feet, able to set me up almost before I had finished entering the room. I wet my parched and arid tongue with half the cool and foamy before turning and surveying the room.
The main bar of the Laughing Cat was a dark, low-beamed room, lit only by two inadequate lamps behind the bar, and occupied at the present time only by a couple of sons of toil buried under tons of soil sitting at one of the tables. I didn't think they would cooperate in whipping up a game of darts while I waited for my f. and c., so I wandered out to the parlour.
I never know how much description to bung into these pieces. The readers' interest in description is soon exhausted, a female novelist once told me, but I find when I read it's useful to know where the furniture and such is. So I'll only say that the parlour of the Laughing Cat was a newish sort of place, added on to the old in an attempt to attract the smart young set passing through Market Snodsbury. It had big windows looking out at the river, lots of palm trees in pots, and tables outside with umbrellas for those who care for the draughtier sort of dining.
Not being so inclined, I took a seat at an indoor table near the window, though the view was rather blocked by an exuberant palm tree. The barmaid had brought out the f. and c. and I was addressing them with salt and vinegar when I heard voices from the other side of the greenery outside.
"…can keep a mistress in an apartment in Paris," a voice, which I might have been forced to call a man's voice of medium tenor if I hadn't recognized it as Flim's man Bunter, said. "But if you get friendly with one parlourmaid you're out on your ear. Our employers seemed convinced that ours must be a celibate vocation."
"Old Attenbury doesn't keep a mistress, more's the pity," another voice said with what might be called a lascivious undertone. I peered around the overly-enthusiastic greenery and saw a vaguely familiar looking cove sitting at one of the outside tables. He was an older man, perhaps in his early fifties, with greying hair that had once been brown and a small, neat moustache. I couldn't see Bunter from where I sat, but divined that he was sitting across from the other chap. "If he kept a mistress I might not be sitting here unemployed, if you know what I mean. A gent in Attenbury's position keeps those who know his secrets close to his bosom."
"If he's at all wise, he does," Bunter agreed, shocking me to the core. I had once heard Jeeves describe me as--describe me in less than flattering tones to a temporary, or we might say substitute valet, but this was worse, much worse. I could only be glad Flim wasn't here to hear this.
"I bet you know a thing or two about Wimsey," the other cove suggested.
"His lordship isn't susceptible to embarrassment over a kept woman or two," Bunter said with perhaps a touch of frost. "Such is rather expected of a man of his age and position. Of course--" and suddenly his voice thawed into its former familiarity. "--there are other secrets worth reminding him of at need. I was his batsman in the war and it's not social embarrassment that Major Wimsey has to fear."
"Attenbury's son is 'round the twist," the other man said. "But everyone knows that, so it's not much use."
Listening to the two valets--for that was who Bunter's pal had to be, the ill-trousered Walters--quite casually discussing blackmail had distracted me from my lunch, which on exploratory prod now proved to be on the coolish side of warm. Despite this, I took a bite, hoping the fish would stimulate the old grey matter as to how to break the news to Flim that he had clasped an asp to his bosom--or was it a viper? Cleopatra, for reasons I've never been quite clear on, had been bitten by an asp before shuffling off this mortal coil, though from the play to which Aunt Agatha insisted I take the repulsive Thos., I rather thought she intended such eventuality. No, it was probably vipers one clasped to one's b. though I couldn't imagine how one could do this without noticing, vipers being rather stronger in the scales and fang department than, say, kittens.
While engaged in this rumination, I missed whatever Bunter might have said in reply to Walters's last comment. The next I noticed Walters was entering the door that connected patio to private parlour. He gave me a curious, perhaps even suspicious, look before crossing to the public bar and continuing out the front door. A moment or two later Bunter appeared through the patio door, carrying a beer glass upside down over his hand, which observations of Jeeves suggested was not the proper fashion for a g.'s g. to carry glassware, even when empty. He nodded when he saw me.
"Mr. Wooster, sir. How good to see you again." He evidenced no concern over what I might have heard, instead placing the empty beer glass down on my table. "If I might impose on you, sir, could you guard this while I retrieve my photographic gear? It is important that no one touch it."
I had received odder requests in my years, though off-hand I couldn't think of more than three. Still, a Wooster didn't let a pal down, even one with fewer moral scruples than my Aunt Dahlia. I nodded and he left, returning about as I finished my lunch. Burdening his arms was a considerable quantity of photographic equipment, which he set down on the next table.
"No one touched it, sir?" he asked, picking the beer glass up in the same odd way with his hand inside, and turning it this way and that.
"Nary a soul," I assured him. The Drones Club noblesse oblige reared its head, suggesting that an empty glass not remain thus. "I can get the barmaid to fill that for you if you would like."
He continued to study the thing as if it contained more amusement than was the norm for an empty glass, not even looking up. "Not beer, I think, but perhaps milk." His attention didn't seem to be on what he was saying.
I allowed myself one shudder before standing and going into the public bar to fetch this revolting beverage. Milk had the advantage that at least it was not fizzy lemonade, but had little further to recommend it, ranking rather lower than orange juice as a beverage for a man.
Bunter was engaged in puffing grey powder over the glass with a device that looked like an ear-wash bulb when I returned, so the milk might not have been a bad idea. The poor man must have been sitting out in the sun too long. He regarded the dirty glass with satisfaction and then took the proffered milk and poured it into the beer glass, confirming my suspicions that he was ripe for Sir Roderick Glossop's professional attentions. "Mercury powder, from the chemists, adheres to the oils the fingers leave on the glass," he explained absently and unintelligibly. "The milk should provide a better backdrop for photography."
He took several photographs of the repellent object before emptying the glass into the nearest palm, and wiping the grey dust off. "His lordship was kind enough to lend me the car for this errand," he said as he packed the photographic equipment up. "Might I offer you a lift back to Brinkley Court?"
I shook my head. There are limits to the extent that I wish to associate with the mentally ill. "No, thanks. I'll walk."
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