Uncle Fred in the Springtime (2 page)

To Pongo Twistleton, whose
idea of a private investigator was a hawk-faced man with keen, piercing eyes
and the general deportment of a leopard, Claude Pott came as a complete
surprise. Hawks have no chins. Claude Pott had two. Leopards pad. Pott waddled.
And his eyes, so far from being keen and piercing, were dull and expressionless,
seeming, as is so often the case with those who go through life endeavouring to
conceal their thoughts from the world, to be covered with a sort of film or
glaze.

He was
a stout, round, bald, pursy little man of about fifty, who might have been
taken for a Silver Ring bookie or a minor Shakespearian actor — and, oddly
enough, in the course of a life in which he had played many parts, he had
actually been both.

‘Good
afternoon, Mr D.,’ said this gargoyle.

‘Hullo,
Mr Pott. When did you get back?’

‘Last
night, sir. And thinking it over in bed this morning it occurred to me that it
might be best if I were to deliver the concluding portion of my report
verbally, thus saving time.’

‘Oh,
there’s some more?’

‘Yes,
sir. I will apprise you of the facts,’ said Claude Pott, giving Pongo a rather
hard stare, ‘when you are at liberty.’

‘Oh,
that’s all right. You may speak freely before Mr Twistleton. He knows all. This
is Mr Twistleton, The Subject’s brother.’

‘Pongo
to pals,’ murmured that young man weakly. He was finding the hard stare trying.

The
austerity of the investigator’s manner relaxed.

‘Mr
Pongo Twistleton? Then you must be the nephew of the Earl of Ickenham that he
used to talk about.’

‘Yes,
he’s my uncle.’

‘A
splendid gentleman. One of the real old school. A sportsman to his fingertips.’

Pongo,
though fond of his uncle, could not quite bring himself to share this
wholehearted enthusiasm.

‘Yes,
Uncle Fred’s all right, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Apart from being loopy to the
tonsils. You know him, do you?’

‘I do
indeed, sir. It was he who most kindly advanced me the money to start in
business as a private investigator. So The Subject is Lord I.’s niece, is she?
How odd! That his lordship should have financed me in my venture, I mean, and
before I know where I am, I’m following his niece and taking notes of her
movements. Strange!’ said Mr Pott. ‘Queer!’

‘Curious,’
assented Pongo.

‘Unusual,’
said Claude Pott.

‘Bizarre,’
suggested Pongo.

‘Most.
Shows what a small world it is.’

‘Dashed
small.’

Horace,
who had been listening to these philosophical exchanges with some impatience,
intervened.

‘You
were going to make your report, Mr Pott.’

‘Cool!’
said Claude Pott, called to order. ‘That’s right, isn’t it? Well then, Mr D.,
to put the thing in a nutshell, I regret to have to inform you that there’s
been what you might call a bit of an unfortunate occurrence. On the nineteenth
Ap., which was yesterday, The Subject, having lunched at Hotel Picardy with
party consisting of two females, three males, proceeded to the golf club, where
she took out her hockey-knockers and started playing round with one associate,
the junior professional, self following at a cautious distance. For some time
nothing noteworthy transpired, but at the fourteenth hole … I don’t know if
you happen to be familiar with the golf links at Le Touquet, sir?’

‘Oh,
rather.’

‘Then
you will be aware that as you pass from the fourteenth tee along the fairway
you come opposite a house with a hedge in front of it. And just as The Subject
came opposite this house, there appeared behind the hedge two males, one with
cocktail shaker. They started yodelling to The Subject, evidently inviting her
to step along and have one, and The Subject, dismissing her associate, went
through the gate in the hedge and by the time I came up was lost to sight in
the house.’

A soft
groan broke from Horace Davenport. He had the air of a man who was
contemplating burying his face in his hands.

‘Acting
in your interests, I, too, passed through the gate and crept to the window from
behind which I could hear chat and revelry in progress. And I was just stooping
down to investigate further, when a hand fell on my shoulder and, turning, I
perceived one male. And at the same moment The Subject, poking her head out of
the window, observed “Nice work, Barmy. That’s the blighter that’s been
following me about all the week. You be knocking his head off, while Catsmeat
phones for the police. We’ll have him sent to the guillotine for ingrowing
molestation.” And I saw that there was only one course for me to pursue.’

‘I
wouldn’t have thought even that,’ said Pongo, who had been following the narrative
with close attention.

‘Yes,
sir — one. I could clear myself by issuing a full statement.’

A
sharp, agonized cry escaped Horace Davenport.

‘Yes,
sir. I’m sorry, but there was no alternative. I had no desire to get embroiled
with French rozzers. I issued my statement. While the male, Barmy, was calling
me a trailing arbutus and the male, Catsmeat, was saying did anyone know the
French for “police” and The Subject was talking about horsewhips, I explained
the situation fully. It took me some time to get the facts into their heads,
but I managed it finally and was permitted to depart, The Subject saying that
if she ever set eyes on me again —’Miss Twistleton,’ announced Webster.

‘Well,
goodbye, all,’ said Claude Pott.

A critic who had been
disappointed by the absence of the leopard note in Mr Pott’s demeanour would
have found nothing to complain of in that of Pongo’s sister Valerie. She was a
tall, handsome girl, who seemed to be running a temperature, and her whole
aspect, as she came into the room, was that of some jungle creature advancing
on its prey.

‘Worm!’
she said, opening the conversation. ‘Valerie, darling, let me explain!’

‘Let
me
explain,’ said Pongo.

His
sister directed at him a stare of a hardness far exceeding that of Mr Pott.

‘No, I
couldn’t keep my fat head out of it,’ said Pongo. ‘You don’t think I’m going to
stand supinely by and see a good man wronged, do you? Why should you barge in
here, gnashing your bally teeth, just because Horace sicked Claude Pott,
private investigator, on to you? If you had any sense, you would see that it
was a compliment, really. Shows how much he loves you.

‘Oh
does it? Well —’

‘Valerie,
darling!’

The
girl turned to Pongo.

‘Would
you,’ she said formally, ‘be good enough to ask your friend not to address me
as “Valerie, darling.” My name is Miss Twistleton.’

‘Your
name,’ said Pongo, with brotherly sternness, ‘will be mud if you pass up an
excellent bet like good old Horace Davenport — the whitest man I know — simply
because his great love made him want to keep an eye on you during Drones Club
weekend.’

‘I did
not—’

‘And as
events have proved he was thoroughly justified in the course he took. You
appear to have been cutting up like a glamour girl at a Hollywood party. What
about those two males, one with cocktail shaker?’

‘I did
not —’

‘And
the m. you drove to Montreuil with?’

‘Yes,’
said Horace, for the first time perking up and showing a little of the
Pendlebury-Davenport fire. ‘What about the m. you drove to Montreuil with?’

Valerie
Twistleton’s face was cold and hard.

‘If you
will allow me to speak for a moment and not keep interrupting every time I open
my mouth, I was about to say that I did not come here to argue. I merely came
to inform you that our engagement is at an end, and that a notice to that
effect will appear in
The Times
tomorrow morning. The only explanation I
can think of that offers a particle of excuse for your conduct is that you have
finally gone off your rocker. I’ve been expecting it for months. Look at your
Uncle Alaric. Barmy to the back teeth.’ Horace Davenport was in the depths, but
he could not let this pass.

‘That’s
all right about my Uncle Alaric. What price your Uncle Fred?’

‘What
about him?’

‘Loopy
to the tonsils.’

‘My
Uncle Fred is not loopy to the tonsils.’

‘Yes,
he is. Pongo says so.’

‘Pongo’s
an ass.’

Pongo
raised his eyebrows.

‘Cannot
we,’ he suggested coldly, ‘preserve the decencies of debate?’

‘This
isn’t a debate. As I told you before, I came here simply to inform Mr Davenport
that our engagement is jolly well terminated.’

There
was a set look on Horace’s face. He took off his spectacles, and polished them
with an ominous calm.

‘So you’re
handing me the mitten?’

‘Yes, I
am.’

‘You’ll
be sorry.’

‘No. I
shan’t.’

‘I
shall go straight to the devil.’

‘All
right, trot along.’

‘I
shall plunge into a riot of reckless living.’

‘Go
ahead.’

‘And my
first step, I may mention, will be to take Polly Pott to that Bohemian Ball at
the Albert Hall.’

‘Poor
soul! I hope you will do the square thing by her.’

‘I fail
to understand you.’

‘Well,
she’ll need a pair of crutches next day. In common fairness you ought to pay
for them.’

There
was a silence. Only the sound of tense breathing could be heard — the breathing
of a man with whom a woman has gone just too far.

‘If you
will be kind of enough to buzz off,’ said Horace icily, ‘I will be ringing her
up now.’

The
door slammed. He went to the telephone.

Pongo
cleared his throat. It was not precisely the moment he would have chosen for
putting his fortune to the test, had he been free to choose, but his needs were
immediate, the day was already well advanced and no business done, and he had
gathered that Horace’s time in the near future was likely to be rather fully
occupied. So now he cleared his throat and, shooting his cuffs, called upon the
splendid Twistleton courage to nerve him for his task.

‘Horace,
old man.’ ‘Hullo?’

‘Horace,
old chap.’

‘Hullo?
Polly?’

‘Horace_
old egg.’

‘Half a
minute. There’s somebody talking. Well?’

‘Horace,
old top, you remember what we were starting to chat about when the recent Pott
blew in. What I was going to say, when we were interrupted, was that owing to circumstances
over which I had no — or very little — control….’

‘Buck
up. Don’t take all day over it.’

Pongo
saw that preambles would have to be dispensed with.

‘Can
you lend me two hundred quid?’

‘No.’

‘Oh?
Right ho. Well, in that case,’ said Pongo stiffly, ‘tinkerty-tonk.’

He left
the room and walked round to the garage where he kept his Buffy-Porson
two-seater, and instructed the proprietor to have it in readiness for him on
the morrow.

‘Going
far, sir?’

‘To
Ickenham, in Hampshire,’ said Pongo.

He
spoke moodily. He had not planned to reveal his financial difficulties to his
Uncle Fred, but he could think of no other source of revenue.

2

Having put the finishing
touches to his nephew’s sitting-room and removed himself from Bloxham Mansions
in a cab, the Duke of Dunstable, feeling much better after his little bit of
exercise, had driven to Paddington Station and caught the 2.45 train to Market
Blandings in the county of Shropshire. For he had invited himself — he was a
man of too impatient spirit to hang about waiting for other people to invite
him — to spend an indefinite period as the guest of Clarence, ninth Earl of
Emsworth, and his sister, Lady Constance Keeble, at that haunt of ancient
peace, Blandings Castle.

The
postcard which he had dispatched some days previously announcing his impending
arrival and ordering an airy ground-floor bedroom with a southern exposure and
a quiet sitting-room in which he could work with his secretary, Rupert Baxter,
on his history of the family had had a mixed reception at the Blandings
breakfast table.

Lord
Emsworth, frankly appalled, had received the bad news with a sharp ‘Eh, what?
Oh, I say, dash it!’ He had disliked the Duke in a dreamy way for forty-seven
years, and as for Rupert Baxter he had hoped never to be obliged to meet him
again either in this world or the next. Until fairly recently that efficient
young man had been his own secretary, and his attitude towards him was a little
like that of some miraculously cured convalescent towards the hideous disease
which has come within an ace of laying him low. It was true, of course, that
this time the frightful fellow would be infesting the castle in the capacity of
somebody else’s employee, but he drew small comfort from that. The mere thought
of being under the same roof with Rupert Baxter was revolting to him.