A Pelican at Blandings Read online

  Well, nothing had come of it, of course. A Victorian father with enough driving force for two fathers had shipped him off to South Africa, and Dolly had married a fellow named Cotterleigh in the Irish Guards and he had never seen her again, but the memory of her still lingered, and this made him a sympathetic listener to tales of young love. Instead, therefore, of urging his godson not to make an ass of himself or enquiring anxiously if he couldn't possibly get out of it, he displayed the utmost interest and said:

  'Good for you, Johnny. Tell me more. When did this happen?'

  'Tonight. Just before I came here.'

  'You really clicked, did you?'

  'I know it's hard to believe, but I did.'

  'Who is she?'

  'Her name's Linda Gilpin.'

  Gally frowned thoughtfully.

  'Gilpin. I know a young chap called Ricky Gilpin. The Duke of Dunstable's nephew. Any relation?'

  'His sister.'

  'So she's Dunstable's niece?'

  'Yes.'

  'Have you ever met Dunstable?'

  'No. I suppose I shall soon. What's he like?'

  'He's a stinker.'

  'Really?'

  'And always has been. I've known him for thirty years. He once tried to get elected to the Pelican, but he hadn't a hope. The top hat we used at committee meetings burst at the seams with black balls, several handfuls of them contributed by your father. We were very firm about letting stinkers into the Pelican.'

  'Why is he a stinker?'

  'Don't ask me. I'm not a psychiatrist.'

  'I mean what's wrong with him? What does he do?'

  'He doesn't do anything in particular. He just is. Too fond of money, for one thing. When I first knew him, he was a Guardee with an allowance big enough to choke a horse, and he hung on to it with both hands. Then he married a girl who had the stuff in sackfuls, the daughter of one of those chaps up North who make cups and basins and things, and she died and left him a fortune. Then he came into the title and all the land and cash that went with it, and now he's a millionaire twice over. But though so rich, he is constantly on the alert to become richer. He never misses a trick. If the opportunity presents itself of running a mile in tight shoes to chisel someone out of twopence, he springs to the task. I can't understand what these fellows see in money to make them sweat themselves to get it.'

  'Money's always useful.'

  'But not worth going to a lot of fuss and bother to get more of if you've already got your little bit. Dunstable makes me sick. I'm beginning to feel dubious about this step you're taking, Johnny. I wonder if you're being wise.'

  John reminded him of the fact, which he seemed to have overlooked, that it was not the Duke of Dunstable whom he was planning to marry, but merely a relative of his, and Gally admitted that he had a point there. It was not pleasant, though, to think that John would have to go through life calling the Duke Uncle Alaric, and John said that love would enable him to face even that prospect with fortitude.

  'Not that I expect to see enough of him to have to call him anything.'

  'You'll see him at the wedding.'

  'I'll be in a sort of trance at the wedding and won't notice him.'

  'Something in that,' Gally agreed. 'Bridegrooms are seldom in a frame of mind to take a calm look at their surroundings as the situation starts to develop. How well I remember your father when the parson was putting him through it. White as a sheet and quivering in every limb. I was his best man, and I'm convinced that if I hadn't kept near enough to him to grab him by the coat tails, he'd have run like a rabbit.'

  'I shan't do that. I shall quiver all right, but I'll stay put.'

  'I hope so, for nothing so surely introduces a sour note into the wedding ceremony as the abrupt disappearance of the groom in a cloud of dust. Tell me about this girl of yours.'

  'Don't tempt me. I should go on for hours.'

  'Nice, is she?'

  'That describes her exactly.'

  'Big? Small?'

  'Just the right size.'

  'Slim? Slender?'

  'Yes.'

  'Eyes?'

  'Blue.'

  'Hair?'

  'Brown. Sort of auburn. Chestnut.'

  'Make up your mind.'

  'All right, chestnut, then, damn you.'

  'No need to let your angry passions rise. Naturally I'm interested. I've known you since you were so high.'

  'I suppose you dandled me on your knee when I was a baby?'

  'I wouldn't have done it on a bet. You were a revolting baby. More like a poached egg than anything. Well, from what you tell me she seems to be all right. A godfather's blessing is yours, if you care to have it. Where are you going for the honeymoon?'

  'We were thinking of Jamaica.'

  'Expensive place.'

  'So I hear.'

  'Which brings me to a point I should like to discuss. How about your finances? I know you're doing pretty well at the Bar, but will it run to marriage?'

  'I'm all right as far as money's concerned. I've got a nest egg. Do you know the Bender gallery?'

  'Shooting gallery?'

  'Picture gallery.'

  'Never heard of it.'

  'It's in Bond Street. Not one of the big ones, but doing all right, and I'm a kind of sleeping partner. Joe Bender does all the running of it. He's a man I knew at Oxford, and he took over the gallery from his father. He needed more capital and I had just been left quite a bit by an aunt of mine, so I put it in.'

  'All you'd got?'

  'Most of it.'

  'A rash move.'

  'Not rash at all. Joe's a very live wire, all tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles and zip. We'll make our fortunes.'

  'Says who?'

  'I read it in the crystal ball. Joe's just pulled off a big deal. Ever heard of Robichaux?'

  'No.'

  'French painter. One of the Barbizon group.'

  'What about him?'

  'He's suddenly started getting hot. That's always happening with these old French artists, Joe tells me. They jog along all their lives hardly able to give their stuff away, and then they die and suddenly the sky's the limit. There was a time when you could buy a Renoir for a few francs, and now look at him. If you want a Renoir today, you have to sell the family jewels. It's getting to be the same with this bloke Robichaux. A year or two ago nobody would touch him, but now a regular boom has started, and what I was going to say was that Joe sold a Robichaux the other day for a sum that made me gasp. I wouldn't have thought it possible.'

  'Anything's possible with the world as full of mugs as it is. Who was this cloth-headed purchaser?'

  'I was saving that up for the big surprise at the end. None other than my future uncle-by-marriage.'

  Gally snorted incredulously.

  'Dunstable?'

  'Yes, Uncle Alaric.'

  'I don't believe it.'

  'Why not?'

  'Dunstable never bought a picture in his life. A comic seaside postcard would be more his form.'

  'Perhaps he mistook it for a comic seaside postcard. Anyway, he bought it. You can ask Joe.'

  'Amazing. Was he tight?'

  'Not having been there when the deal went through, I couldn't tell you. I'll enquire if you like.'

  'Don't bother. We'll just take it as read that he must have been. There's a boom, you say, in this Robichaux chap's work?'

  'Price going up all the time, I believe.'

  Gally shook his head.

  'It still doesn't explain Dunstable's departure from the form book. With any ordinary man one would assume that he bought the thing on spec, hoping to sell at a profit, but not your Uncle Alaric. He wouldn't risk a bob on the deadest of certs. No, we fall back on our original theory, that he must have been stewed to the gills. Now who would that be?' said Gally, as the telephone rang. He went out into the hall, where the instrument was, and John was at liberty to devote his thoughts to the girl he loved.

  His had been a long and cautious courtship, culminating wit
h unforeseen suddenness in an abruptly blurted out proposal in the cab in which he was taking her home from a cocktail party, and his elation at the happy outcome of that proposal had been marred by the fact that there had been no time for anything in the nature of extended conversation. He was looking forward to going into the matter in what is called depth at their next meeting.

  He was just thinking how infinitely superior Linda Gilpin was to any of the poor female fishes of whom in the last few years he had mistakenly supposed himself to be enamoured, and was thanking his guardian angel for his excellent staffwork in not allowing him to become really involved with any of them, when Gally returned.

  He seemed amused.

  'Odd coincidence,' he said, 'that we should have been talking about Dunstable. That was my brother Clarence, and he was talking about him, too. It seems that hell has broken loose at Blandings. My sister Connie has blown in from America with a female friend, which alone would have been enough to shake Clarence to his foundations, and on top of that Dunstable is arriving with his niece on the early train tomorrow. No wonder he's feeling like the Lady of Shalott when the curse had come upon her. Connie and friend would be bad enough. Add Dunstable and niece and he feels—rightly —that the mixture is too rich. Niece,' said Gally. 'Would that be your donah, or has he several?'

  His words had stunned John. He knew that the Duke had only one relative of that description. He said he could not understand it.

  'What puzzles you?'

  'Linda didn't say anything about going to Blandings.'

  'When would this be?'

  'In the taxi, when I asked her to marry me.'

  'She probably didn't know about it then. Dunstable must have sprung it on her when she got home.'

  'We were to have had lunch tomorrow.'

  'You weren't going to see her earlier than that? A whole morning wasted?'

  'I have to be in court all the morning. Some damned motor accident case.'

  'Oh? Well, I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that lunch is off. And so am I. A brother's call for help is not a thing to be ignored,' said Gally. 'I leave for Blandings Castle in the morning.'

  CHAPTER THREE

  To get from London to Market Blandings, which is where one alights for Blandings Castle, the traveller starts from Paddington, and at 11.12 on the following morning Gally, smoking a cigarette on the platform outside his compartment and waiting for the 11.18 to begin its journey, looked about him with the approval he always felt for this particular terminus.

  He liked its refined calm, so different from the hustle and bustle of such stations as Liverpool Street and Waterloo. Here all was cloistral peace. The trains as they got up steam puffed in a quiet undertone. The porters went about their duties with the reserve of junior Cabinet ministers. Guards, when compelled to whistle, whistled softly. And even the occasional cocker spaniel, on its way back to its Worcestershire or Shropshire home, postponed its barking to a more suitable time, knowing instinctively that a raised voice in these surroundings would be the worst of form.

  But all too soon it was borne in upon him that snakes could sometimes penetrate into this gentlemanly Garden of Eden. One of them was coming along the platform at this moment, a large, stout, walrus-moustached man with a brown paper parcel under his arm. He was brushing aside like flies the little groups of cultured men accustomed to mingling with basset hounds and the women in tailored suits who looked like horses, and at the sight of him Gally dived hastily into his compartment and tried to lurk behind his morning journal.

  It was a wasted effort. Not so easily as this was it possible to evade Alaric, Duke of Dunstable.

  'Thought it was you, Threepwood,' said the Duke, seating himself. 'Must be two years since we met.'

  'Two wonderful years.'

  'Eh?'

  'I was saying how wonderful it was seeing you again.'

  'Ah.'

  'Clarence tells me you've had a fire at your place.'

  'Yes. Wires fused.'

  'So you're coming to Blandings.'

  'Never could stand London.'

  'Bad fire, was it?'

  'Made the place smell. I cleared out.'

  'And Connie came to the rescue of the homeless waif.'

  'Eh?'

  'She invited you to Blandings.'

  The Duke snorted a little. It was as though his pride had been touched.

  'Good God, she didn't invite me. I rang up last night and said I was coming.'

  'I see.'

  'I was surprised to find she was over here. I was expecting Emsworth to answer the telephone. What made her leave America, do you know?'

  'I've no idea.'

  'Some sudden whim, I suppose. In a week or so she'll get another and go dashing back. Women are all potty. Never know their own minds from one day to another. What's taking you to Blandings?'

  'Clarence was anxious for my company.'

  'Why?'

  'Who can say? Some sudden whim, do you think?'

  'Could be. Is he still mooning over that pig of his?'

  'He courts its society a good deal, I believe.'

  'Much too fat, that pig.'

  'Clarence doesn't think so.'

  'No, because he's as potty as Connie. Pottier. Fact of the matter is, the whole world's potty these days. Look at Connie, going off to live in America with a man with a head like a Spanish onion. Look at those two nephews of mine, both married to girls I wouldn't have let them so much as whistle at if I'd been able to stop them. And look at my niece. Came back to the hotel last night giggling and humming, and wouldn't tell me what it was all about. Definitely potty.'

  Gally could of course have shed light on the mystery of the humming niece, but he felt that if she herself had been so reticent, it was not for him to speak. He allowed the slur of mental instability to continue to rest upon her.

  'Where is this unbalanced niece? Clarence said she would be coming with you. Not ill, I hope?'

  'No, she's all right except for all that humming and giggling. She's got to appear in court today; she's a witness in some case that comes on this morning. She'll be coming later. Do you know anything about pictures?' asked the Duke, wearying of the subject of nieces and changing it with his customary abruptness.

  'Not much. I heard you had bought one.'

  'Who told you that?'

  'A usually reliable source.'

  'Well, it's quite true. It's what they call a reclining nude. You know the sort of thing. Girl with no clothes on, lying on a mossy bank. By some French fellow. I bought it at one of those art galleries.'

  'I suppose they told you it was a monument to man's attainment of the unattainable and the work of a Master with his brush dipped in immortality?'

  'Eh?'

  'Let it go. I was only thinking that that's the way art galleries generally talk when a mug walks into the shop.'

  The Duke's moustache shot up. His manner showed resentment.

  'Think I'm a mug, do you? Well, you're wrong. I knew what I was doing, all right. Shall I tell you why I bought that reclining nude? Do you know a chap called Trout? Wilbur J. Trout?'

  'Not had that pleasure. What about him?'

  'He's an American. What the Yanks call a playboy. He's in London, and I ran into him at the club. He has a guest card. We got into conversation, and he told me he loved his wife. Blotto, of course.'

  'What makes you say that?'

  'Well, would a chap tell a chap he loved his wife, if he wasn't?'

  'He might if the other chap had your charm.'

  'True. Yes, something in that.'

  'Yours is a very winning manner. Invites confidences.'

  'I suppose it does. Yes, I see what you mean. Well, anyway, as I was saying, he told me he loved his wife. She was his third wife. Or did he say fourth? Never mind, it's immaterial. The point is that she recently divorced him, but he still loves her. He said he was carrying the torch for her, which struck me as a peculiar expression, but that's what he said. He was crying into his cocktail as he s
poke, and that seemed odd, too, because he was a big, beefy chap who you'd have thought would have been above that sort of thing. He told me he used to be a great footballer, played for Harvard or Yale or one of those places. Ginger-coloured hair, broken nose which I suppose he got at football unless one of his wives gave it him, inherited millions from his father, who was a big business man out in California.'

  Gally stirred uneasily in his seat. He had always been a better raconteur than listener, and it seemed to him that his companion was a long time coming to the point, assuming that there was a point to which he was coming.

  'All this,' he said, 'would be of the greatest help if I were planning to write a biography of Wilbur Trout or doing The Trout Story for the films, but how does it link up with reclining nudes and you as an art collector?'

  'I'm coming to that.'

  'Good. Come as quick as you can.'

  'Where was I?'

  'He told you he loved his wife.'

  'That's right. And then he said something that held me spell-bound.'

  'Like me. I can hardly wait for the plot to unfold. I'll bet it turns out that it was the butler who did it.'

  'What do you mean, the butler? What butler? I never mentioned any butler.'

  'Don't give it another thought. What did he say that interested you so much?'

  'He said he saw this picture in the window of this picture gallery, and blowed if it wasn't the living image of his third wife, the one he was carrying the torch for. And when he told me he was going to buy it because he had to have it just to remind him of her, no matter what it cost, I naturally said to myself "What ho!".'

  'Why did you say that to yourself?'

  'Because I saw that this was where I could make a bit. Ten minutes later I was round at the gallery buying the thing, confident that I would be able to sell it to him for double the price I'd paid, which, let me tell you, was stiff. It's a crime what these galleries charge you. Still, I'll get it all back and more.'