Pigs Have Wings (24 page)

‘Listen,’ said Jerry.

It was an unfortunate word to have used, for at this moment Queen of Matchingham uttered another grunt. But again the visitor appeared not to have noticed it. Like Admiral Biffen, he seemed to be hard of hearing.

‘I suppose,’ said Jerry, proceeding rapidly, ‘you’re wondering what I’m doing in this house?’

With an old-world gesture, George Cyril Wellbeloved disclaimed any such vulgar curiosity.

‘I presume,’ he said politely, ‘that you live here, sir? Or, putting it another way, that this is your residence?’

Jerry shook his head.

‘No. I live in London.’

‘Sooner you than me,’ said George Cyril Wellbeloved. ‘Nasty noisy place.’

‘And why do I live in London?’

‘You like it, I suppose, sir. Some do, I’m told.’

‘No. I live in London because I have to. To be handy for the Yard.’

‘Sir?’

‘Scotland Yard. I’m a Scotland Yard man.’

‘Well, strike me pink,’ said George Cyril Wellbeloved, properly impressed. ‘Might I venture to inquire what you’re doing here, sir?’

‘I’m on duty. Working on a case. I was sent to watch out for a dangerous criminal known as Lavender Joe. So called because he always wears lavender gloves. From information received, we know that this man will be arriving tonight on the train from London that reaches Market Blandings at ten-fifteen, and we think that he will come to this house.’

George Cyril Wellbeloved asked what had put that idea into their heads, and Jerry said he was unable to tell him because of the Official Secrets Act, and George Cyril said ‘Ah, there was always something, wasn’t there.’

‘But it is possible,’ Jerry went on, ‘that before coming to Sunnybrae he will go somewhere else, and it is essential that I know where. I ought to be at the station, watching his every move, but I have to remain here. You see my difficulty?’

George Cyril Wellbeloved thought for a moment.

‘You can’t be in two places at once,’ he hazarded.

‘Exactly. You’ve hit it. My God, you’re shrewd. So I need your help. I want you to take my place at the station. Go there, meet the train that gets in at ten-fifteen and follow Lavender Joe wherever he goes. But mark this. It is quite possible that he will not come on the ten-fifteen train.’

‘That’ll be a bit of a mix-up. What they call an amparse. What do I do then?’

‘You will have to meet all the other trains from London, even if it means staying there all night.’

‘All night?’

‘Yes.’

‘Coo! Then I’d better have a bottle of beer first. Where d’you keep it?’

‘I haven’t any beer.’

George Cyril’s jaw fell.

‘No beer?’

‘No. What do you think this place is? A pub? Come, come, man, we have no time to waste talking about beer. It’s settled, then, that you go to the station and remain there as long as is necessary, and you ought to be starting right away. Thank you, Wellbeloved. You are a public-spirited citizen, and I’m proud of you. You’re doing a fine job, and the Yard will not forget it. Your heroism will be brought to the notice of the men up top.’

George Cyril blinked.

‘Heroism? How do you mean heroism?’

‘Lavender Joe is a very dangerous man,’ explained Jerry. ‘He carries weapons, and never hesitates to use them. So you must be careful. I wouldn’t like you to have your liver ripped out by a dagger of Oriental design.’

‘I wouldn’t like it myself.’

‘Well, we’ll hope it won’t come to that,’ said Jerry briskly. ‘Any questions you want to ask before you go?’

‘Yes,’ said George Cyril, equally brisk, if not more so. ‘What is there in it for me?’

Jerry stared.

‘How do you mean, what is there in it for you? You’ll be assisting Scotland Yard.’

‘Well, I think Scotland Yard ought to assist me,’ said George Cyril Wellbeloved.

A grunt from the kitchen seemed to suggest that Queen of Matchingham thoroughly approved of this business-like attitude, and Jerry, leaping as he heard it, felt it best not to argue.

‘It might run to a quid,’ he conceded.

‘Ten quid,’ corrected George Cyril Wellbeloved.

‘Three quid.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you,’ said George Cyril. ‘I don’t want to be hard on the Yard. Call it five.’

Jerry felt in his pocket.

‘All I have on me is three pounds two and twopence.’

‘Write a cheque.’

‘I haven’t a cheque book.’

‘You could use a slip of paper and stick a stamp on.’

‘I haven’t a stamp.’

George Cyril Wellbeloved sighed. He seemed to be feeling that Jerry was armed at all points.

‘All right. Three pounds two and tuppence.’

‘Here you are.’

‘Hoy!’ cried George Cyril Wellbeloved. ‘Where’s the tuppence?’

A sordid scene, and one feels thankful that it is over. A minute later, Jerry was alone.

Five minutes later, the front door bell rang again.

It seemed to Jerry, whom recent events had left a little peevish, that he had been doing nothing since he was a small boy in a sailor suit but listen to the tinkling of the front door bell of this infernal villa ready for immediate occupancy. The moment one ringer left, another took his place. In all his experience he had never been associated with such a gregarious crowd as the residents of Market Blandings and district. Whenever time hung heavy on their hands, it was as though the cry went up ‘Let’s all go round to Vail’s’.

The current pest, he felt morosely, was probably the Vicar, come to try to touch him for a subscription to his church’s organ fund, and he had resolved to stay where he was and let the reverend gentleman go on ringing till his thumb wore out, when he abruptly changed his mind. A voice had called his name, and he recognized it as the voice of the Hon. Galahad Threepwood, the one person in the world he most desired to see. Gally might have his defects – his sister Constance, his sister Dora, his sister Julia, and all his other sisters could have named you hundreds – but he was sure to be a mine of information on what to do when you discovered a stolen pig in your kitchen one jump ahead of the police.

He opened the door and finding Gally on the top step, practically flung himself on his bosom.

‘Mr Threepwood –’

‘Mr Threepwood be blowed. Call me Gally. I’m not Mr Threepwood to a nephew of Plug Basham’s. Is there something on your mind, my boy? You seem agitated. Or am I wrong?’

‘No, you’re not wrong. I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown. There’s a pig in the kitchen.’

‘Ah, you’ve noticed that?’

Jerry started.

‘You knew it was there?’

‘It’s what I’ve come about. This is no idle social call. Let us go inside and talk the whole thing over in a calm and detached spirit.’

He led the way to the living-room and settled himself comfortably in a chair.

‘I can’t understand why Fruity Biffen didn’t like this place,’ he said, gazing about him. ‘Pretty snug, it looks to me. Wax fruit, presents from Llandudno … I don’t see what more a man could ask. But Fruity always was a peculiar chap. Odd. Temperamental. Did I ever tell you the story of Fruity and –’

Jerry broke in on the reminiscence. A host ought not, of course, to interrupt a visitor, but then, looking at it another way, a visitor ought not to put pigs in a host’s kitchen. And a monstrous suspicion had begun to take root in Jerry’s mind.

‘Was it you who put that pig there?’ he demanded, clothing it in words.

‘Why, yes,’ said Gally. ‘That’s right. Or, rather, Beach did, acting on my instructions. You see, a good deal of what you might call cut-and-thrust has been going on these last few days, and your pig –’

‘I wish you wouldn’t call it my pig.’

‘The pig under advisement,’ amended Gally, ‘is one of the pawns in the game. To get a clear, over-all picture of the state of affairs, you must realize that my brother Clarence’s porker, Empress of Blandings, and Parsloe’s nominee, Queen of Matchingham, are running neck and neck for the Fat Pigs medal at the forthcoming Shropshire Agricultural Show, and Parsloe is a ruthless and unscrupulous man with a soul as black as the ace of spades who will resort to the lowest forms of crime to gain his ends. And so, knowing that it would be merely a question of time before he tried to pinch our pig, I thought it judicious to strike first by pinching his. Attack, as a thinker of my acquaintance pointed out not long ago, is the best form of defence. So we snitched the Queen while he on his side snitched the Empress. You always get a lot of this sort of wholesome give and take on these occasions. We put the Queen in a disused gamekeeper’s cottage in the west wood, but with fiendish cunning the opposition traced it there, so we had to find another haven in a hurry. I fortunately remembered that Sunnybrae was unoccupied.’

‘Unoccupied!’

‘Well, I thought it was.’

Jerry did not attempt to conceal his displeasure.

‘You might have told me.’

‘Yes, I suppose one should have done.’

‘I would have been spared a very nasty shock. When I opened that door and saw pigs in the kitchen as far as the eye could reach,’ said Jerry, with a shudder as he relived that high spot in his career, ‘I thought the top of my head had come off.’

Gally murmured sympathetically.

‘Quite a surprise it must have been, I should imagine.’

‘It was.’

‘Too bad. I can readily understand it tickling you up a bit. Though it is a very moot point whether such shocks aren’t good for one. They stimulate the adrenal glands.’

‘Well, I like my adrenal glands the way they are.’

‘Quite, quite. Heaven forbid that I should try to dictate to any man about his adrenal glands. Have them exactly as you wish, my boy. This is Liberty Hall. But you appear a little vexed with me, and I cannot see how I can be blamed for what has occurred. How was I to know that you would be coming to roost at Sunnybrae? Why did you, by the way?’

‘I didn’t like the Emsworth Arms.’

‘Bed not up to your specifications?’

‘No. Hard lumps all over it.’

‘You young fellows think too much of your comfort,’ said Gally reprovingly. ‘Why, when I was your age, I frequently slept on billiard tables. I remember on one occasion Plug Basham, Puffy Benger, and I shared two chairs and an ironing board. It was when –’

Again Jerry interrupted, once more probably missing something good.

‘Touching on this pig –’

‘Ah, yes, the pig. I know the pig you mean. Go on, my boy.’

‘It may interest you to learn that the police have been here, hot on its trail.’

‘The police?’

‘Well, a policeman. He saw the light in the window and came to make inquiries.’

‘You didn’t show him over the house, I hope?’

‘No, we talked on the steps.’

‘Good.’

‘He was full of the stolen pig –’

‘Courting dyspepsia.’

‘Eh?’

‘I merely meant it sounded rather indigestible. Go on. This policeman was full of the stolen pig, you were saying.’

‘And he expects to make an early arrest.’

‘One smiles.’

‘I don’t.’

‘I do, and mockingly at that. I also laugh with a light tinkle in my voice. Have no anxiety about the local flatties, my boy. They couldn’t find a bass drum in a telephone booth. What became of him?’

‘He left. Shortly afterwards a man called Wellbeloved arrived.’

Gally gave a little jump.

‘Wellbeloved?’

‘He said he was Sir Gregory Parsloe’s pig man. He, too, had seen the light in the window and thought it was Admiral Biffen come back. He and Admiral Biffen used to swig beer together, it seems.’

Gally nodded.

‘That part about Fruity swigging beer rings true, but I should have thought he would have been more careful in his choice of friends. This Wellbeloved is a man of wrath, a deliberate and systematic viper if ever there was one. Did you talk to him on the steps?’

‘No. He came in.’

‘What on earth did you let him in for?’

‘I didn’t let him in. Apparently I had left the front door open. I was sitting wondering what to do for the best, and I sensed a presence and there he was.’

‘What, in here? With only that door separating him from the pig?’

‘He didn’t see the pig.’

‘But he has ears. Didn’t the animal grunt?’

‘Yes, several times. I was surprised he didn’t hear it.’

Gally rose. His face was a little twisted, as a man’s face so often is in the bitter hour of defeat.

‘He heard it,’ he said shortly. ‘A good pig man can hear his personal pig grunt ten miles away in the middle of a thunderstorm and recognize its distinctive note even if a thousand other pigs are giving tongue simultaneously. He knew that pig was there, all right. I wonder he didn’t denounce you on the spot. What did happen?’

‘I got rid of him.’

‘How?’

‘I thought up a story to tell him.’

‘What story?’

‘Oh, just a story.’

Gally sniffed.

‘Well, whatever it was, I’ll bet he didn’t swallow it.’

‘He seemed to.’

‘He would. Just humouring you, of course. He’s probably squealing to Parsloe at this very moment. Ah, well, this is the end. I’ll have to take the creature back to its sty. The secret of a happy and successful life is to know when things have got too hot and cut your losses. It’s galling. One hates to admit defeat. Still, there it is.’

Jerry hesitated.

‘You won’t want me, will you?’

‘To help with the pig? No, I can manage.’

‘Good. I’m feeling a little unstrung.’

‘You’d better wait here and entertain Beach. He will be arriving shortly.’

‘Walking?’

‘Bicycling,’ said Gally. ‘And it will be a lasting grief to me that I was not able to see him doing it. Well, bung-o.’

With a set face, he opened the door and strode into the kitchen.

It was about ten minutes after he had gone that there came from the great outdoors the unmistakable sound of a butler falling off a bicycle.

The years rob us of our boyish accomplishments. There had been a time, back in the distant past, when Sebastian Beach had yielded to none as a performer on the velocipede – once, indeed, actually emerging victorious in the choir boys’ handicap at a village sports meeting, open to all whose voices had not broken before the second Sunday in Epiphany. But those days were gone for ever.