The Night Listener and Others (29 page)

“What ho, lovely morning,” I said, before I realized that the expansion of their individual eyeballs to the size of soup saucers might conceivably be due to the fact that I was standing there with Marjorie’s dripping head in one hand and the razor in the other. Realizing further what conclusions they might logically be drawing from said portrait of young Worster, I decided to put them at their ease. “I say, look what
I
found lying about…”

My attempted assurance of innocence was in vain, for the hairs upon their heads stood out like quills upon the fretful porpentine, which, as Jeaves has informed me, is the same thing as a porcupine, which makes a great deal of sense, since the occurrence of two quilled mammals having such similar names is rather unlikely. With such deviant criminal types, to think was to act, and the Spattery couple beat a fast retreat down the stairs up which they had come.

Naturally I followed, toting Marjorie’s head as though I were about to bowl at ninepins. You see, it had occurred to me that here was a perfect opportunity to cadge two birds in one bush, as it were. Though this fleeing couple were but a minor annoyance next to my two supposed
inamorata
and their jealous suitors, the Spatterys would eventually have to be dealt with, and when given a winning hand, one must play it to the hilt or the limit, whichever comes first.

The Worster legs are not considered the speediest, even among the somnolent limbs of my fellow Sluggards, but I outshone myself that day. It was as though I was running on someone else’s legs entirely, which sounds quite awkward when you come to think of it. What one imagines is trying to get someone else’s feet and ankles and calves and knees and thighs and hips (moving from bottom to top, as it were) to work under you, which seems frightfully complex. Perhaps to simplify matters I should say it was as though I’d suddenly become Eric Liddell or that Jew Harold Abrahams at their Olympic peak, or even that fleet-footed Negro, Jesse Owens. I was literally flying so that I didn’t even feel my toes on the ground, and in less than ten seconds I had caught up with Slick and Gertrude and forever closed their mouths by the bold stratagem of opening their necks.

My skill with the razor was increasing, I’m proud to admit. Two quick motions, and both of them were pumping their lives’ blood out on the close-cropped grass, a hybrid, Uncle Tim once told me, of imported Kentucky bluegrass and some English stuff named
arrenatherium avunciam
, though I may not have the spelling quite spot-on.

Aha, thought I, now I no longer had to worry about Aunt Delia discovering my expertise with horse dung, nor did I need to be concerned with Uncle Tim’s cow-creamer being stolen. Then the thought crept into the Worster mind that it might be a very good thing indeed if I didn’t have to worry about Aunt Delia and Uncle Tim at
all
in the future, to avoid permanently the thought of falling into disfavor with my dear but at times demanding auntie and her softspoken spouse.

I removed the late Mrs Spattery’s long, full skirt, belted it tight at the waist, and used it as a rucksack, into which I dropped the heads of Marjorie Bucket and both Spatterys, the expressions on whose faces were far more alarmed than was Marjorie’s. I tried to give them a bit of a smile, but to no avail, since the grins kept drooping into gloomy-Gus style frowns. Throwing the bag over my shoulder, I labored on.

Hortense Crayne was where I thought I should find her, in the garden, reciting Tennyson to a horde of butterflies who seemed to be ignoring her, but who might really have been enjoying the dickens out of
The Lady of Shallot
, for all I knew of butterflies’ literary tastes. “Oh, hullo, Bernie!” she cried in her piping little voice, her eyes all aglow. “Would you like to join me and the little multi-colored laborers of the pistils and stamens for a bit of verse?” I swear to you that I am not concocting this language from whole cloth. Actually, for Hortense, that passage was closer to Hemingwayesque than usual. “
Oooo!
“ she squealed, “what’s in your sack? Are you gathering mushrooms, those night-blooming sentinels of the woods that serve as the faeries’ parasols?”

“Right ho. In a nutshell,” answered I.

“Ah, and is that a mushroom-cutter you bear, a device to wickedly part them from their wee little stems, and deprive the faery folk of their brollies, Bernie dear?”

“It is indeed, my sweet, musty little mushroom,” I said, ensuring instantly that no further sugar-soaked morsels of verbiage would come again from that thin throat, its arteries so close to its pale skin. Plop, into the bag went her head. The butterflies seemed vastly relieved.

To chronicle the rest of the day would be superfluous, unnecessary, and repetitive, though not necessarily in that order. One was much like another, and I’ll spare the details, touching merely on the broader strokes. Uncle Tim I found in his study, and Aunt Delia in the drawing room. I was able to dispatch both rather easily, adding their heads to my makeshift sack, which was by now beginning to get a bit soggy. I went into the kitchen in search of something else I might use as a bag for my collection, and if it were waterproofed so much the better.

Monsieur André was up to his usual chefly activities in the kitchen, and from the looks of the prep area he was making his famous
crepes de la Boulogne
or something akin. He peered at me, raising his furry
Provençal
eyebrows at the sight of the dripping rucksack. I’d learned enough by now to keep the razor in my pocket, since most of my victims had found the sight of it somewhat disturbing.

It was then the thought unexpectedly sprung upon me of giving André extreme severance, to coin a phrase, from my late Aunt Delia’s employ. Now understand, there was no good reason why I should be forcing André into that abyss of uncertainty already entered by Bucket
et al
. His demise would do Bernard Worster no earthly good. The motive was lacking, if you see what I mean. Still, I just felt it was something I simply
had
to do. It was the same kind of obsession that a small boy feels when in possession of a catapult and Brazil nut and in close proximity to a toff in a topper.

“What ‘ave you zere?” André asked me, eyeing me narrowly.

“Where?” I replied. That I did not produce my razor and leap upon him instanter may be explained by the fact that he was holding a rather long and sharp kitchen knife with which he was slicing avocados or abercrombies or one of those obscure veggies.

“
Zere—
in zat bag?” he queried, gesturing with his large knife.

“Why…goat’s heads,” I replied, coming up with it rather swiftly, I thought.

“Goat’s ‘eads?” He looked a trifle dubious, understandably so.

“Indeed. Aunt Delia expressed some peckishness for goat’s head cheese, and the local goat head purveyor just dropped these off, and since I was on my way here, I thought I’d just bring them by.”

The question of whether or not André would have accepted this display of Worster persiflage will always be moot, as just then the fabric of the Spattery woman’s dress, silk or crepe or chenille or whatever they’re making them of these days, gave way at last, and four severed heads, including those of his employers, came bounding out of the sack, bouncing on the white tiles of the floor like footballs in need of a good inflate. André reacted as expected, with an extremely Gallic shriek of dismay, and in that convenient moment I produced the razor and did what, if ‘twere to be done, then ‘twere well to have been done quickly.

In another few ticks I had added André’s dome to the pile, which I now placed in a sturdy sack which had formerly held potatoes. It was a tad dusty, but I heard no complaints from the new tenants. Then off went I to find the survivors, Gustie Fink-Tottle and Rodney Spade.

On my way, I ran across a housemaid, a footman, and Seepings, the butler, whose weakness, imbecility, and age, in corresponding order, allowed me to perform the duties of my new office of Lord High Executioner of Binkley Court with ease. Along with the additional weight in my sack, I was tickled pink by the fact that my days of paying hush money to Seepings were at last over.

My confrontation with Rodney Spade, however, was nearly a rum go all ‘round. When I spotted him coming across the lawn, the expression on his face wasn’t so much that of a man who has just spied the bounder who stole away the affections of his beloved as it was that of a chap who has found the headless corpse of that same beloved in the garden and has just spied the bounder who is holding a bloody sack in which that beloved’s head is quite possibly contained. It was no wonder he was a trifle piqued.

“You
bastard!
“ he shouted in that big, bullying voice of his. “You mad, insane, homicidal
bastard!
“ the adjectives of which might have been true enough, but to question the legitimacy of B. Worster was slightly beyond the pale, I thought.

It was apparent that Spade was not to be easily mollified, and as he proceeded toward me like a juggernaut, drawing the sword part from out his sword-cane, I have to confess that the hairs on the back of the Worster neck came close to emulating that old porpentine gag of Jeaves which I utilized earlier in this chronicle. Still, I stood my ground, trying to remember some of that “we few, we happy few, we band of brothers” wheeze, though it seemed inappropriate considering my band of brothers were a potato sack full of heads.

As it turns out, I needn’t have worried. I took out my trusty razor, and when Spade lunged I parried, and the razor just snipped a full two feet off Spade’s blade. He stood there aghast and unmanned, if you’re a proponent of that Freud fellow, as if wondering how on earth his mighty and erect blade had suddenly been reduced to a nub, but he hadn’t long to wonder. Now all that remained was Gustie.

As Hortense Crayne was to gardens and woods, Gustie Fink-Tottle was to lakes and ponds. Newts were his passion, for some reason unfathomable, I’m sure, to even Freud, let alone B. Worster. And there he was, on the shore of that mirror-surfaced lake on the west lawn of Binkley Court, lying on his tummy, his face right at the water’s edge, on the lookout for newts and insensible to all else. It was like potting those fish in that barrel.

I walked softly up behind him on Uncle Tim’s carpet-like hybrid of blue-grass and
arrenatherium avunciam
(pardon the sp.), and did what you might well expect of me, if you’ve been more than skimming this tale of mine. He uttered not a peep, which was best, since Gustie can be frightfully whiny when the spirit moves him. His blood drifted onto the surface of the lake, making for quite a visual spectacle, spreading on the water like red posy petals. It looked so lovely that without even thinking I opened my sack and tossed, one by one, the heads of my relations, sweethearts, and acquaintances into the lake, rejoicing in both the loft I was able to get and the plashy plop with which they struck.

I had half expected them to sink (detached heads
are
heavy, to which the Worster biceps can personally testify), but they floated buoyantly, even festively, upon the waters, and I sat down by the topless tower of Ilium that Gustie’s corpse had become, still twitching as though he had ants in his corduroy pants, and just enjoyed the view for a time. The various heads, ten all told, bobbed like apples in a tub, and I could make out the various features as they slowly turned in the gentle breeze, Spade’s Roman nose, Hortense’s dimpled chin, Aunt Delia’s
double
chin, and much more.

I felt extremely at my ease, just the way I always did after Jeaves had gotten me out of a predicament and all was well with the world again, only better. There beat within the Worster bosom a magnificent and warming sense of self-accomplishment, of a man who had taken the bull by the teats and rectified the situation. Who needed Jeaves anyway? B. Worster was in the pink!

The phrase came unbidden, inspired in part, I fancy, by the pinkish tinge the waters of the lake were acquiring from the items floating therein. I sat there for the longest time, holding the razor in my hand, watching the heads, gleefully bobbing along, the occasional sparrow descending to pick at a particularly toothsome bit.

After a time, however, I started to feel queer all over, a bit fainty, like one of those swooning lasses that Aunt Delia used to write about in her stories for
Milady’s Dressing Room
, that women’s journal she used to edit and publish with Uncle Tim’s money. Perhaps, I thought, a dandle of the Worster tootsies in the refreshing water would buck me up.

But as I undid my spats and prepared to struggle with the laces of my shoes, I found that my feet came right out without having to untie them, and also that said feet had shrunk significantly. Indeed they resembled tiny hooves more than feet. This fairly alarming discovery, along with the rather unpleasant, almost charnel, taste in my mouth, put in me the desire to return to the house, rest the poor appendages on a comfy ottoman, and have a whiskey and soda with a gathering of ice, but I knew it would be a tough go trying to keep on my trusty brogues for the hike back to the manor house.

Necessity, as Jeaves always tells me, is the mother of invention, and I instantly saw before me what might make very serviceable shoes for my severely redesigned feet. A long pole lay by the side of the lake, probably to extend to overzealous swimmers who had not the strength to return to shore on their own, and with it I was finally able to fish out two of the heads, those of Rodney Spade and Hortense Crayne. Setting them as firmly as poss. on their neck stems, I pressed, one at a time, my greatly reduced pedal extremities into the tops of their pates until each foot popped through like a tooth into a chocolate-covered cherry.

Though I had expected the result to feel somewhat sploogy, it was less than unpleasant, although the fit of Hortense’s head was a bit tight, due, no doubt, to her smaller brain cavity. The restriction of my left foot (the one in the Crayne cranium) caused me to limp a bit as I walked back to the house, and the trailing locks of Hortense’s platinum hair tended to get tangled up in the occasional weed or twig, but finally I hobbled in through the front door and made my way to my room to retrieve the pint bottle of spirits that I had secreted among my cravats.