‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Was his eye black?’
‘It was.’
‘I thought it would be. Harold’s strength is as the strength of ten, because his heart is pure. Well, how about that embodying letter? I have a fountain pen. Let’s get the show on the road.’
I was expecting Pop Bassett to give an impersonation of a bomb falling on an ammunition dump, but he didn’t. Instead, he continued to exhibit that sort of chilly stiffness which you see in magistrates when they’re fining people five quid for boyish peccadilloes.
‘You appear to be under a misapprehension, Stephanie,’ he said in the metallic voice he had once used when addressing the prisoner Wooster. ‘I have no intention of entrusting Mr. Pinker with a vicarage.’
Stiffy took it big. She shook from wind-swept-hair-do to shoe-sole, and if she hadn’t clutched at Stinker’s arm might have taken a toss. One could understand her emotion. She had been coasting along, confident that she had it made, and suddenly out of a blue and smiling sky these words of doom. No doubt it was the suddenness and unexpectedness of the wallop that unmanned her, if you can call it unmanning when it happens to a girl. I suppose she was feeling very much as Spode had felt when Emerald Stoker’s basin had connected with his occiput. Her eyes bulged, and her voice came out in a passionate squeak.
‘But, Uncle Watkyn! You promised!’
I could have told her she was wasting her breath trying to appeal to the old buzzard’s better feelings, because magistrates, even when ex, don’t have any. The tremolo in her voice might have been expected to melt what is usually called a heart of stone, but it had no more effect on Pop Bassett than the chirping of the household canary.
‘Provisionally only,’ he said. ‘I was not aware, when I did so, that Mr. Pinker had brutally assaulted Roderick.’
At these words Stinker, who had been listening to the exchanges in a rigid sort of way, creating the illusion that he had been stuffed by a good taxidermist, came suddenly to life, though as all he did was make a sound like the last drops of water going out of a bath tub, it was hardly worth the trouble and expense. He succeeded, however, in attracting Pop Bassett’s attention, and the latter gave him the eye.
‘Yes, Mr. Pinker?’
It was a moment or two before Stinker followed up the gurgling noise with speech. And even then it wasn’t much in the way of speech. He said:
‘I – er – He – er -‘
‘Proceed, Mr. Pinker.’
‘It was – I mean it wasn’t -‘
‘If you could make yourself a little plainer, Mr. Pinker, it would be of great assistance to our investigations into the matter under discussion. I must confess to finding you far from lucid.’
It was the type of crack he had been accustomed in the old Bosher Street days to seeing in print with ‘laughter’ after it in brackets, but on this occasion it fell flatter than a Dover sole. It didn’t get a snicker out of me, nor out of Stinker, who merely knocked over a small china ornament and turned a deeper vermilion, while Stiffy came back at him in great shape.
‘There’s no need to talk like a magistrate, Uncle Watkyn.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘In fact, it would be better if you stopped talking at all and let me explain. What Harold’s trying to tell you is that he didn’t brutally assault Roderick, Roderick brutally assaulted him.’
‘Indeed? That was not the way I heard the story.’
‘Well, it’s the way it happened.’
‘I am perfectly willing to hear your version of the deplorable incident.’
‘All right, then. Here it comes. Harold was cooing to Roderick like a turtle dove, and Roderick suddenly hauled off and plugged him squarely on the beezer. If you don’t believe me, take a look at it. The poor angel spouted blood like a Versailles fountain. Well, what would you have expected Harold to do? Turn the other nose?’
‘I would have expected him to remember his position as a clerk in holy orders. He should have complained to me, and I would have seen to it that Roderick made ample apology.’