The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 3 (53 page)

‘A complete alibi, sir.’

‘Oh?’ said Esmond, looking baffled, like the villain in a melodrama. One could sense that the realization that he was not to be able to dish out a sharp sentence on Gussie had cut him to the quick.

‘Ho!’ said Constable Dobbs, not, probably, with an idea of contributing anything vital to the debate but just because policemen never lose a chance of saying ‘Ho!’ Then suddenly a strange light came into his face and he said ‘Ho!’ again, this time packing a lot of meaning into the word.

‘Ho!’ he said. ‘Then if it wasn’t the accused Wooster, it must have been the other chap. That fellow Meadowes, who was doing Mike. He was wearing a green beard, too.’

‘Ah!’ said Esmond.

‘Ha!’ said the aunts.

‘Oh!’ said Gertrude Winkworth, starting visibly.

‘Hoy!’ said Corky, also starting visibly.

I must say I felt like saying ‘Hoy!’ too. It astonished me that Jeeves had not spotted what must inevitably ensue if he gave Gussie that alibi. Just throwing Catsmeat to the wolves, I mean to say. It was not like him to overlook a snag like that.

I caught Corky’s eye. It was the eye of a girl seeing a loved brother going down for the third time in the soup. And then my gaze, swivelling round, picked up Gertrude Winkworth.

Gertrude Winkworth was plainly wrestling with some strong emotion. Her face was drawn, her bosom heaved. Her fragile handkerchief, torn by a sudden movement of the fingers, came apart in her hands.

Esmond was being very Justice-of-the-Peace-y.

‘Bring Meadowes here,’ he said curtly.

‘Very good, sir,’ said Jeeves, and pushed off.

When he had gone, the aunts started to question Constable Dobbs, demanding more details, and when it had been brought home to them that the dog in question was none other than the one which had barged into the drawing room on the night of my arrival and chased Aunt Charlotte to and fro, they were solidly in favour of Esmond sentencing this Meadowes to the worst the tariff would allow, Aunt Charlotte being particularly vehement.

They were still urging Esmond to display no weakness, when Jeeves returned, ushering in Catsmeat. Esmond gave him the bleak eye.

‘Meadowes?’

‘Yes, sir. You wished to speak to me?’

‘I not only wished to speak to you,’ said Esmond nastily, ‘I wished to give you thirty days without the option.’

I heard Constable Dobbs snort briefly, and recognized his snort as a snort of ecstasy. The impression I received was that a weaker man, not trained in the iron discipline of the Force, would have said ‘Whoopee!’ For, just as Esmond Haddock had got it in for Gussie for endeavouring to move in on Corky, so had Constable Dobbs got it in for Catsmeat for endeavouring to move in on the parlourmaid, Queenie. Both were strong men, who believed in treating rivals rough.

Catsmeat seemed puzzled.

‘I beg your pardon, sir?’

‘You heard,’ said Esmond. He intensified the bleakness of his eye. ‘Let me ask you a few simple questions. You sustained the role of Pat in the Pat-and-Mike entertainment this evening?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You wore a green beard?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And a check suit?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then you’re for it,’ said Esmond crisply, and the four aunts said So they should think, indeed, Aunt Charlotte going on to ask Esmond rather pathetically if thirty days was really all that the book of rules permitted. She had been reading a story about life in the United States, she said, and there, it seemed, even comparatively trivial offences rated ninety.

She was going on to say that the whole trend of modern life in England was towards a planned Americanization and that she, for one, approved of this, feeling that we had much to learn from our cousins across the sea, when there was a brusque repetition of that rising pheasant effect which had preceded the Hobbs-Queenie one-act sketch and the eye noted that Gertrude Winkworth had risen from her seat and precipitated herself into Catsmeat’s arms. No doubt she had picked up a hint or two from watching Queenie’s work for in its broad lines her performance was modelled on that of the recent parlourmaid. The main distinction was that whereas Silversmith’s ewe lamb had said ‘Oh, Ernie!’ she was saying ‘Oh, Claude!’

Esmond Haddock stared.

‘Hallo!’ he said, adding another three hallos from force of habit.

You might have thought that a fellow in Catsmeat’s position, faced with the prospect of going up the river for a calendar month, would have been too perturbed to have time for hugging girls, and it would scarcely have surprised me if he had extricated himself from Gertrude Winkworth’s embrace with a ‘Yes, yes, quite, but some other time, what?’ Not so, however. To clasp her to his bosom was with him the work of a moment, and you could see that he was regarding this as the important part of the evening’s proceedings, giving him little scope for attending to Justices of the Peace.

‘Oh, Gertrude!’ he said. ‘Be with you in a minute,’ he added to Esmond. ‘Oh, Gertrude!’ he proceeded, once more addressing his remarks to the lovely burden. And, precisely as Constable Dobbs had done in a similar situation, he covered her upturned face with burning kisses.

‘Eeek!’ said the aunts, speaking as one aunt.

I didn’t blame them for being fogged and unable to follow the run of the scenario. It is unusual for a niece to behave towards a visiting valet as their niece Gertrude was behaving as of even date, and if they
squeaked
like mice, I maintain they had every right to do so. Theirs had been a sheltered life, and this was all new stuff to them.

Esmond, too, seemed a bit not abreast.

‘What’s all this?’ he said, a remark which would have proceeded more fittingly from the lips of Constable Dobbs. In fact, I saw the officer shoot a sharp look at him, as if stung by this infringement of copyright.

Corky came forward and slipped her arm through his. It was plain that she felt the time had come for a frank, manly explanation.

‘It’s my brother Catsmeat, Esmond.’

‘What is?’

‘This is.’

‘What, that?’

‘Yes. He came here as a valet for love of Gertrude, and a darned good third-reel situation, if you ask me.’

Esmond wrinkled his brow. He looked rather as he had done when discussing that story of mine with me on the night of my arrival.

‘Let’s go into this,’ he said. ‘Let’s thresh it out. This character is not Meadowes?’

‘No.’

‘He’s not a valet?’

‘No.’

‘But he
is
your brother Catsmeat?’

‘Yes.’

Esmond’s face cleared.

‘Now I’ve got it,’ he said. ‘Now it’s all straight. How are you, Catsmeat?’

‘I’m fine,’ said Catsmeat.

‘That’s good,’ said Esmond heartily. ‘That’s splendid.’

He paused, and started. I suppose the baying that arose at this point from the pack of aunts, together with the fact that he had just tripped over his spurs, had given him the momentary illusion that he was in the hunting field, for a ‘Yoicks’ trembled on his lips and he raised an arm as if about to give his horse one on the spot where it would do most good.

The aunts were a bit on the incoherent side, but gradually what you might call a message emerged from their utterances. They were trying to impress on Esmond that the fact that the accused was Corky’s brother Catsmeat merely deepened the blackness of his crime and that he was to carry on and administer the sentence as planned.

Their observations would have gone stronger with Esmond if he had been listening to them. But he wasn’t. His attention was riveted on
Catsmeat
and Gertrude, who had seized the opportunity afforded by the lull in the proceedings to exchange a series of burning kisses.

‘Are you and Gertrude going to get married?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Catsmeat.

‘Yes,’ said Gertrude.

‘No,’ said the aunts.

‘Please,’ said Esmond, raising a hand. ‘What’s the procedure?’ he asked, once more addressing himself to Catsmeat.

Catsmeat said he thought the best scheme would be for them to nip up to London right away and put the thing through on the morrow. He had the licence all ready and waiting, he explained, and he saw no difficulties ahead that a good registry office couldn’t solve. Esmond said he agreed with him, and suggested that they should borrow his car, and Catsmeat said that was awfully good of him, and Esmond said Not at all. ‘Please,’ he added to the aunts, who were now shrieking like Banshees.

It was at this point that Constable Dobbs thrust himself forward.

‘Hoy,’ said Constable Dobbs.

Esmond proved fully equal to the situation.

‘I see what you’re driving at, Dobbs. You very naturally wish to make a pinch. But consider, Dobbs, how slender is the evidence which you can bring forward to support your charge. You say you chased a man in a green beard and a check suit up a tree. But the visibility was very poor, and you admit yourself that you were being struck by thunderbolts all the time, which must have distracted your attention, so it is more than probable that you were mistaken. I put it to you, Dobbs, that when you thought you saw a man in a green beard and a check suit, it may quite easily have been a clean-shaven man in something quiet and blue?’

He paused for a reply, and one could divine that the officer was thinking it over.

The thing that poisons life for a country policeman, the thing that makes him pick at the coverlet and brings him out in rashes, is the ever-present fear that one of these days he may talk out of turn and get in wrong with a Justice of the Peace. He knows what happens when you get in wrong with Justices of the Peace. They lay for you. They bide their time. And sooner or later they catch you bending, and the next thing you know you’ve drawn a strong rebuke from the Bench. And if there is one experience the young copper wishes to avoid, it is being in the witness-box and having the Bench look coldly at him and say something beginning with ‘Then are we to understand, officer …?’ and culminating in the legal equivalent of the raspberry
or
Bronx cheer. And it was evident to him that defiance of Esmond on the present occasion must inevitably lead to that.

‘I put it to you, Dobbs,’ said Esmond.

Constable Dobbs sighed. There is, I suppose, no spiritual agony so keen as that of the rozzer who has made a cop and seen it turn blue on him. But he bowed to the inev.

‘Perhaps you’re right, sir.’

‘Of course I’m right,’ said Esmond heartily. ‘I knew you would see it when it was pointed out to you. We don’t want any miscarriages of justice, what?’

‘No, sir.’

‘I should say not. If there’s one thing that gives me the pip, it’s a miscarriage of justice. Catsmeat, you are dismissed without a stain on your character.’

Catsmeat said that was fine, and Esmond said he thought he would be pleased.

‘I suppose you and Gertrude aren’t going to hang around, spending a lot of time packing?’

‘No, we thought we’d leg it instanter.’

‘Exactly what I would suggest.’

‘If Gertrude wants clothes,’ said Corky, ‘she can get them at my apartment.’

‘Splendid,’ said Esmond. ‘Then the quickest way to the garage is along there.’

He indicated the french windows, which, the night being balmy, had been left open. He slapped Catsmeat on the back, and shook Gertrude by the hand, and they trickled out.

Constable Dobbs, watching them recede, heaved another sigh, and Esmond slapped his back, too.

‘I know just how you’re feeling, Dobbsy,’ he said. ‘But when you think it over, I’m sure that you’ll be glad you haven’t been instrumental in throwing a spanner into the happiness of two young hearts in springtime. If I were you, I’d pop off to the kitchen and have a word with Queenie. There must be much that you want to discuss.’

Constable Dobbs’s was not a face that lent itself readily to any great display of emotion. It looked as if it had been carved out of some hard kind of wood by a sculptor who had studied at a Correspondence School and had got to about Lesson Three. But at this suggestion it definitely brightened.

‘You’re right, sir,’ he said, and with a brief ‘Good night, all’ vanished in the direction indicated, his air that of a policeman
who
is feeling that life, while greyish in spots, is not without its compensations.

‘So that’s that,’ said Esmond.

‘That’s that,’ said Corky. ‘I think your aunts are trying to attract your attention, angel.’

All through the preceding scene, though pressure of other matter prevented me mentioning it, the aunts had been extremely vocal. Indeed, it would not be putting it too strongly to say that they had been kicking up the hell of a row. And this row must have penetrated to the upper regions of the house, for at this moment the door suddenly opened, revealing Dame Daphne Winkworth. She wore a pink dressing-gown, and had the appearance of a woman who has been taking aspirins and bathing her temples with eau-de-Cologne.

‘Really!’ she said. She spoke with a goodish bit of asperity, and one couldn’t fairly blame her. When you go up to your bedroom with a headache, you don’t want to be dragged down again half an hour later by disturbances from below. ‘Will someone be so kind as to tell me what is the reason for this uproar?’

Four simultaneous aunts were so kind. The fact that they all spoke together might have rendered their remarks hard to follow, had not the subject matter been identical. Gertrude, they said, had just eloped with Miss Pirbright’s brother, and Esmond had not only expressed his approval of the move but had actually offered the young couple his car.

‘There!’ they said, as the sound of an engine gathering speed and the cheery toot-toot of a klaxon made themselves heard in the silent night, pointing up their statement.

Dame Daphne blinked as if she had been struck on the mazard with a wet dishcloth. She turned on the young squire menacingly, and one could understand her peevishness. There are few things more sickening for a mother than to learn that her only child has eloped with a man whom she has always regarded as a blot on the species. Not surprising if it spoils her day.

‘Esmond! Is this true?’

The voice in which she spoke would have had me clambering up the wall and seeking refuge on the chandelier, had she been addressing me, but Esmond Haddock did not wilt. The man seemed fearless. He was like the central figure in one of those circus posters which show an intrepid bozo in a military uniform facing with death-defying determination twelve murderous, man-eating monarchs of the jungle.