Mulliner Nights
The author of
almost a hundred books and the creator of Jeeves, Blandings Castle, Psmith,
Ukridge, Uncle Fred and Mr Mulliner, P.G. Wodehouse was born in 1881 and
educated at Dulwich College. After two years with the Hong Kong and Shanghai
Bank he became a full-time writer, contributing to a variety of periodicals
including
Punch
and the
Globe.
He married in 1914. As well as his
novels and short stories, he wrote lyrics for musical comedies with Guy Bolton
and Jerome Kern, and at one time had five musicals running simultaneously on
Broadway. His time in Hollywood also provided much source material for fiction.
At
the age of 93, in the New Year’s Honours List of 1975, he received a long-overdue
knighthood, only to die on St Valentine’s Day some 45 days later.
CONTENTS
T
he
conversation in the bar-parlour of the Angler’s Rest had turned to the subject
of the regrettably low standard of morality prevalent among the nobility and
landed gentry of Great Britain.
Miss
Postlethwaite, our erudite barmaid, had brought the matter up by mentioning
that in the novelette which she was reading a viscount had just thrown a family
solicitor over a cliff.
‘Because he
had found out his guilty secret,’ explained Miss Postlethwaite, polishing a
glass a little severely, for she was a good woman. ‘It was his guilty secret
this solicitor had found out, so the viscount threw him over a cliff. I
suppose, if one did but know, that sort of thing is going on all the time.’
Mr Mulliner
nodded gravely.
‘So much so,’
he agreed, ‘that I believe that whenever a family solicitor is found in two or
more pieces at the bottom of a cliff, the first thing the Big Four at Scotland
Yard do is make a roundup of all the viscounts in the neighbourhood.’
‘Baronets are
worse than viscounts,’ said a Pint of Stout vehemently. ‘I was done down by one
only last month over the sale of a cow.
‘Earls are
worse than baronets,’ insisted a Whisky Sour. ‘I could tell you something about
earls.’
‘How about
O.B.E.s?’ demanded a Mild and Bitter. ‘If you ask me, O.B.E.s want watching,
too.’
Mr Mulliner
sighed.
‘The fact is,’
he said, ‘reluctant though one may be to admit it, the entire British
aristocracy is seamed and honeycombed with immorality. I venture to assert
that, if you took a pin and jabbed it down anywhere in the pages of
Debrett’s
Peerage,
you would find it piercing the name of someone who was going about
the place with a conscience as tender as a sunburned neck. If anything were
needed to prove my assertion, the story of my nephew, Adrian Mulliner, the
detective, would do it.’
‘I didn’t know
you had a nephew who was a detective,’ said the Whisky Sour.
Oh, yes. He
has retired now, but at one time he was as keen an operator as anyone in the
profession (said Mr Mulliner). After leaving Oxford and trying his hand at one
or two uncongenial tasks, he had found his niche as a member of the firm of
Widgery and Boon, Investigators, of Albemarle Street. And it was during his
second year with this old-established house that he met and loved Lady
Millicent Shipton-Bellinger, younger daughter of the fifth Earl of Brangbolton.
It was the
Adventure of the Missing Sealyham that brought the young couple together. From
the purely professional standpoint, my nephew has never ranked this among his
greatest triumphs of ratiocination; but, considering what it led to, he might
well, I think, be justified in regarding it as the most important case of his
career. What happened was that he met the animal straying in the park, deduced
from the name and address on its collar that it belonged to Lady Millicent Shipton-Bellinger,
of 18a, Upper Brook Street, and took it thither at the conclusion of his stroll
and restored it.
‘Child’s-play’
is the phrase with which, if you happen to allude to it, Adrian Mulliner will
always airily dismiss this particular investigation; but Lady Millicent could
not have displayed more admiration and enthusiasm had it been the supremest
masterpiece of detective work. She fawned on my nephew. She invited him in to
tea, consisting of buttered toast, anchovy sandwiches and two kinds of cake;
and at the conclusion of the meal they parted on terms which, even at that
early stage in their acquaintance, were something warmer than those of mere
friendship.
Indeed, it is
my belief that the girl fell in love with Adrian as instantaneously as he with
her. On him, it was her radiant blonde beauty that exercised the spell. She, on
her side, was fascinated, I fancy, not only by the regularity of his features,
which, as is the case with all the Mulliners, was considerable, but also by the
fact that he was dark and thin and wore an air of inscrutable melancholy.
This, as a
matter of fact, was due to the troublesome attacks of dyspepsia from which he
had suffered since boyhood; but to the girl it naturally seemed evidence of a
great and romantic soul. Nobody, she felt, could look so grave and sad, had he
not hidden deeps in him.
One can see
the thing from her point of view. All her life she had been accustomed to
brainless juveniles who eked out their meagre eyesight with monocles and, as
far as conversation was concerned, were a spent force after they had asked her
if she had seen the Academy or did she think she would prefer a glass of
lemonade. The effect on her of a dark, keen-eyed man like Adrian Mulliner, who
spoke well and easily of footprints, psychology and the underworld, must have
been stupendous.
At any rate,
their love ripened rapidly. It could not have been two weeks after their first
meeting when Adrian, as he was giving her lunch one day at the Senior
Bloodstain, the detectives’ club in Rupert Street, proposed and was accepted.
And for the next twenty-four hours, one is safe in saying, there was in the
whole of London, including the outlying suburban districts, no happier private
investigator than he.
Next day,
however, when he again met Millicent for lunch, he was disturbed to perceive on
her beautiful face an emotion which his trained eye immediately recognized as
anguish.
‘Oh, Adrian,’
said the girl brokenly. ‘The worst has happened. My father refuses to hear of
our marrying. When I told him we were engaged, he said “Pooh!” quite a number
of times, and added that he had never heard such clashed nonsense in his life.
You see, ever since my Uncle Joe’s trouble in nineteen-twenty-eight, father has
had a horror of detectives.’
‘I don’t think
I have met your Uncle Joe.’
‘You will have
the opportunity next year. With the usual allowance for good conduct he should
be with us again about July. And there is another thing.’
‘Not another?’
‘Yes. Do you
know Sir Jasper Addleton, O.B.E.?’
‘The
financier?’
‘Father wants
me to marry him. Isn’t it awful!’
‘I have
certainly heard more enjoyable bits of news,’ agreed Adrian. This wants a good
deal of careful thinking over.’
The process of
thinking over his unfortunate situation had the effect of rendering excessively
acute the pangs of Adrian Mulliner’s dyspepsia. During the past two weeks the
ecstasy of being with Millicent and deducing that she loved him had caused a
complete cessation of the attacks; but now they began again, worse than ever.
At length, after a sleepless night during which he experienced all the emotions
of one who has carelessly swallowed a family of scorpions, he sought a
specialist.
The specialist
was one of those keen, modern minds who disdain the outworn formulæ of the more
conservative mass of the medical profession. He examined Adrian carefully, then
sat back in his chair, with the tips of his fingers touching.
‘Smile!’ he
said.
‘Eh?’ said
Adrian.
‘Smile, Mr
Mulliner.’
‘Did you say
smile?’
‘That’s it.
Smile.’
‘But,’ Adrian
pointed out, ‘I’ve just lost the only girl I ever loved.’
‘Well, that’s
fine,’ said the specialist, who was a bachelor. ‘Come on, now, if you please.
Start smiling.’
Adrian was a
little bewildered.
‘Listen,’ he
said. ‘What
is
all this about smiling? We started, if I recollect,
talking about my gastric juices. Now, in some mysterious way, we seem to have
got on to the subject of smiles. How do you mean — smile? I never smile. I
haven’t smiled since the butler tripped over the spaniel and upset the melted
butter on my Aunt Elizabeth, when I was a boy of twelve.’
The specialist
nodded.
‘Precisely.
And that is why your digestive organs trouble you. Dyspepsia,’ he proceeded, ‘is
now recognized by the progressive element of the profession as purely mental.
We do not treat it with drugs and medicines. Happiness is the only cure. Be
gay, Mr Mulliner. Be cheerful. And, if you can’t do that, at any rate smile.
The mere exercise of the risible muscles is in itself beneficial. Go out now
and make a point, whenever you have a spare moment, of smiling.’