The Girl in Blue (18 page)

‘I am
afraid not.’

‘Nor
have I. The fact is it’s impossible to get one’s brain working properly in a
stuffy library full of volumes of collected sermons. I can only think when I’m
walking. I shall now put in four or five miles, and I hope when I get back to
have something sizzling to submit to you.’

When
Jerry returned some eighty minutes later, his face was flushed not only with
exercise but with the light of inspiration. He informed Crispin that he had got
it.

The test
of a great general,’ he said, ‘is his ability to learn from his defeats. Where
the second-rater on getting clobbered by the opposition merely says “Ouch!” and
retires to his tent and tries to forget, the top-notcher lights his pipe and
sits down and says to himself “That last battle was a bit of a washout and
certainly won’t look any too well in my
Reminiscences,
but what I have
to do now is brood on it and see how I can profit by its lesson”. Take me, for
example. I have suffered a defeat. I have made myself an object of the deepest
suspicion to Ma Clayborne, for I’m not ass enough to suppose that she swallowed
that story I told her. She has me docketed as a bad guy who will bear watching,
and she will believe anything anyone says to my discredit. So what you must
tell her on her return from whooping it up at the vicarage is that I’ve been a
sneak thief since boyhood and a constant grief and anxiety to the family. Say I
was sacked from school for stealing, broke my mother’s heart and have cost you
a fortune in hush money. The only prudent thing for anyone to do who’s staying
at Mellingham while I am there, you tell her, is to hand over anything they
value to you and you’ll put it in the safe, like when you go on an ocean liner
and entrust your jewellery to the purser. Otherwise, you say, I shall
infallibly get away with it. Are you prepared to bet that she won’t thank you
brokenly for tipping her off and give you the miniature?’

Crispin
drew a deep breath. ‘Gerald, this is genius!’

‘I
thought you’d be pleased.’

‘I do
not see how it can fail.’

‘It can’t.
So off you go. She must be back by this time.’

3

Crispin went on his way
with a buoyant stride far different from the shambling totter with which he had
mounted the stairs so short a while ago, and Jerry sat thinking how
extraordinarily lucky his uncles were to have someone as clever as himself to
extricate them from their difficulties. No need for them to worry when on the
horns of dilemmas, for there were few of these that would not yield to
treatment by G. G. F. ‘West. He wondered why a man so gifted had never thought
of going into the diplomatic service.

He had
been musing thus for some minutes, when the door opened and Chippendale entered
with his customary affable air of being sure of his welcome. Jerry felt no
surprise on seeing him. He had been at Mellingham long enough to know that,
whatever other shortages might occur in that stately home of England, there
would never be any stint of Chippendale’s society. He had no wish, however, for
a tête-à-tête with him.

‘He isn’t
here,’ he said, hoping to avert this.

‘Pardon,
cocky?’

‘If you’re
looking for Mr Scrope, he’s stepped out.’

Chippendale
disclaimed any desire to see Mr Scrope. He had come, he said, to enquire after
Jerry’s head and to verify his suspicion that its owner’s sojourn in the
cupboard had been linked up with the search for the ruddy miniature. Sifting
the evidence, he said, he had deduced that Jerry must be one of Mr Willoughby
Scrope’s corps of assistants.

‘Like
you,’ said Jerry, seeing no point in not admitting the charge.

‘Well,
they always say The more, the merrier. I’m no longer an operative, by the way.’

‘Yes,
my uncle told me you had ratted.’

The
verb appeared to pain Chippendale.

‘I’ve
handed in my resignation, yes. I thought it best when I saw what lengths that
dame would go to when stirred. Which reminds me, how’s your poor head?’

‘Not
too good.’

‘I
thought it wouldn’t be. Muscular dame, that. Strong wrists. Not sure I
altogether approve of her. I like women to be feminine. American, isn’t she? I
thought so. They get that way in America from going on all those demonstration
marches and battling the police. And talking of police, do you know the thought
that crossed my mind as I watched her start her backswing? I was wishing it
could have been Simms in that cupboard instead of you.’

Jerry
said he would have been glad if it had been anybody in the cupboard instead of
him. Who, he asked, was Simms?

The
local Gestapo. Constable Simms he calls himself. Him and me have a feud on
owing to his harsh and arbitrary methods.’

‘Harsh,
is he?’

‘And
arbitrary. If you described him as going about seeking whom he might devour,
you wouldn’t be far wrong.’

‘Sounds
a stinker.’

‘And
is. I’d like to get back at him, but it’s difficult with a fellow that size.’

‘I see
what you mean. You would be giving away too much weight. He’s a big stinker,
and you’re a little stinker.’

Again
Chippendale showed in his manner that he found Jerry lacking in tact.

‘Well,
that’s one way of putting it.’

‘So you’re
baffled.’

‘Yes
and no. I wouldn’t care to take on a human hippopotamus like him in physical
combat, but I have a scheme or method as you might say which would lower his
pride to the dust if put into operation. Only I’d need an accomplice.’

‘Better
advertise. What is the scheme or method?’

‘I’ll
tell you. I must begin by saying that this bluebottle has trouble with his
feet.’

But
having begun by saying it he was precluded from elaborating his theme by the
re-entry of Crispin, and Jerry was left to ponder, if he cared to do so, on
what connection Constable Simms’s foot trouble could have with the triumph
Chippendale was hoping for, always provided that he could find the necessary
accomplice. Possibly Simms suffered from corns, and it would be the task of the
accomplice to tread on them. Though why this, though painful, should lower the
officer’s pride to the dust it was not easy to see.

As
Crispin advanced into the room, it was plain that all was not well with him. He
was wearing the unmistakable air of a man who has failed to find the blue bird.
His eyes protruded, his moustache drooped, and what hair he had was ruffled as
if he had been running agitated hands through it. He looked like one of those
messengers in Greek tragedy who come bringing news of ruin and disaster, and
they were about as glum a lot as you could meet in a month of Sundays.

But
there was this difference between him and such a messenger. The latter would
have made a long speech full of ‘Woe, woe’ and stuff about the anger of the
gods. Crispin got down to the
res
without preamble.

‘She’s
given that miniature to the vicar for his jumble sale in aid of the Church Lads
Annual Outing,’ he said, speaking in a voice which for its hollowness and lack
of vivacity might have come from a tomb.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

T
he
shock of bad news affects different people in different ways. Some hardy souls
are able to take it with a stiff upper lip, but on none of the three upper lips
at the moment under advisement was there anything remotely resembling rigidity.
Crispin, who on receipt of Barney’s bombshell had quivered like a jelly in a
high wind, was still quivering: Jerry uttered an odd gurgling sound which might
have proceeded from the children’s toy known as the dying rooster: while
Chippendale once more requested some unspecified person to chase his aunt Fanny
up a gum tree. It would not be too much to say that consternation reigned.

Crispin
was the first to break the silence which had fallen on the room.

‘She
must be mad! Why, the thing’s a Gainsborough. It’s worth a fortune. What on
earth could have made her do it?’

‘Religion,
cocky,’ said Chippendale, never at a loss for the logical explanation. ‘Religious
fervour. It takes the females that way sometimes. I had an aunt who pawned my
father’s false teeth in order to contribute to the mission for propagating the
gospel among the unenlightened natives of West Africa.

Grilled
subsequently by the family, she said she was laying up treasure in heaven, but
she can’t have laid up much, because false teeth are what you might call a drag
on the market and don’t fetch more than a few bob. It’s my aunt Myrtle I’m
speaking of,’ he went on, as if anxious to obviate any chance of confusion
between this relative and the one who was so often chased up gum trees. ‘I’ll
tell you something funny about my aunt Myrtle… Pardon?’ he said, for Jerry
had spoken.

Jerry
explained that he had merely said ‘Damn your aunt Myrtle’, and Chippendale,
amused by the coincidence, told him that those were the very words his father
had uttered on becoming aware of his bereavement.

‘He was
greatly attached to those teeth. He used to be able to crack Brazil nuts with
them, and of course without them he couldn’t preserve that debonair appearance.
You’d hardly believe the things he said about the unenlightened natives of West
Africa, though a moment of reflection would have told him that they weren’t to
be blamed for what had occurred. But I merely brought up that about my aunt
Myrtle to illustrate what I was saying with ref to women coming over all
religious.’

Jerry,
who was recovering only slowly and had not yet regained his usual amiability,
asked sourly what was so religious in giving a donation to a jumble sale in aid
of the Church Lads Annual Outing.

‘I don’t
even know what church lads are.’

Chippendale
seemed surprised at this gap in a friend’s knowledge. Always eager to be of
help, he hastened to fill it.

They’re
just a lot of pie-faced young perishers who collect in gangs in these rural
parishes. Choir boys, mostly. They attend Sunday school and sing in the choir,
and once a year they let ‘em loose to have an outing. They go off in a
charabanc with buns and hard-boiled eggs and lemonade, and that of course runs
into money. You don’t get buns and hard-boiled eggs and lemonade for nothing,
let alone hire of charabanc and tip to driver, so the vicar has this jumble
sale to bump up the cash receipts. Ask me, he’s a mug to take the trouble. Much
simpler to drown the little barstards in a bucket. That would teach them to
make personal remarks about people’s physical appearance. Do you know what one
of them called me yesterday?’

The
question was addressed to Crispin, who responded with a petulance equal to
Jerry’s.

‘I do
not wish to hear what he called you yesterday.’

‘I’d
rather not have heard it myself. Where they pick up these expressions is more
than I could tell you. In Sunday school, I suppose. But I was telling you about
my aunt Myrtle. She had false teeth same as Father, but whereas his fitted him
like the paper on the wall, hers didn’t, and she had to get another set, which
left her with the first lot on her hands. She never liked wasting anything, but
she couldn’t think what to do with them. Why she didn’t pawn them and give the
proceeds to the West Africans, I don’t know, but apparently it didn’t occur to
her. The idea she got after a lot of thought was to make them the basis, if you
know what the word means, of a mouse trap. She got a scientific feller she knew
to fix one up with the teeth inside it in such a way that any mouse that shoved
its nose in would get its loaf of bread snapped off, and all would have been
well if she hadn’t gone into the kitchen in the dark one night with no shoes on
and tripped over the trap, which promptly came down like a ton of bricks on her
big toe, nearly severing it. And the doctors at the hospital decided to amputate
in case gangrene might set in. And as the teeth were legally hers, the result
was that she became the only woman in East Dulwich, where she was living at the
time, who could truthfully say that she had bitten her own toe off. It gave her
prestige. ‘Well, I can’t stay chaffing with you all day, mates, so if you don’t
want me for anything further, I’ll be getting about my duties.’

After
he had left them Jerry and Crispin sat in silence for perhaps an hour, full of
what Alfred, Lord Tennyson, once described as thoughts too deep for tears. Of
the two mourners it was Jerry who mourned the more bitterly, for he was
tortured by the galling realization that in supposing that he had the sort of
brain that can solve any dilemma he had been mistaken. As Chippendale would
have said, it lowered his pride to the dust.

He
could see no way out of the impasse. The idea of burgling the vicarage and
tying the vicar up and sticking lighted matches between his toes till he
disgorged the miniature he dismissed as impracticable. It had a momentary
attraction, but prudence told him that that sort of thing would lead to his
arrest by Constable Simms. And while this would probably result in the zealous
officer being promoted to sergeant, he preferred that his rise to the heights
should be achieved by other means. Let Constable Simms devote his energies to
trying to alleviate the trouble he had with his feet, whatever that was.