‘Yes, that’s how she seemed to me. Rather like one of the lovesick maidens in Patience.’
‘Eh?’
”Patience. Gilbert and Sullivan. Haven’t you ever seen it?’
‘Oh yes, now I recollect. My Aunt Agatha made me take her son Thos to it once. Not at all a bad little show, I thought, though a bit highbrow. We now come to Sir Watkyn Bassett, Madeline’s father.’
‘Yes, she mentioned her father.’
‘And well she might.’
‘What’s he like?’
‘One of those horrors from outer space. It may seem a hard thing to say of any man, but I would rank Sir Watkyn Bassett as an even bigger stinker than your father.’
‘Would you call Father a stinker?’
‘Not to his face, perhaps.’
‘He thinks you’re crazy.’
‘Bless his old heart.’
And you can’t say he’s wrong. Anyway, he’s not so bad, if you rub him the right way.’
‘Very possibly, but if you think a busy man like myself has time to go rubbing your father, either with or against the grain, you are greatly mistaken. The word “stinker”, by the way, reminds me that there is one redeeming aspect of life at Totleigh Towers, the presence in the neighbouring village of the Rev. H.P. (“Stinker”) Pinker, the local curate. You’ll like him. He used to play football for England. But watch out for Spode. He’s about eight feet high and has the sort of eye that can open an oyster at sixty paces. Take a line through gorillas you have met, and you will get the idea.’
‘You do seem to have some nice friends.’
‘No friends of mine. Though I’m fond of young Stiffy and am always prepared to clasp her to my bosom, provided she doesn’t start something. But then she always does start something. I think that completes the roster. Oh no, Gussie. I was forgetting Gussie.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘Fellow I’ve known for years and years. He’s engaged to Madeline Bassett. Chap named Gussie Fink-Nottle.’
She uttered a sharp squeak.
‘Does he wear horn-rimmed glasses?’
‘Yes.’
‘And keep newts?’
‘In great profusion. Why, do you know him?’
‘I’ve met him. We met at a studio party.’
‘I didn’t know he ever went to studio parties.’
‘He went to this one, and we talked most of the evening. I thought he was a lamb.’
‘You mean a fish.’
‘I don’t mean a fish.’
‘He looks like a fish.’
‘He does not look like a fish.’
‘Well, have it your own way,’ I said tolerantly, knowing it was futile to attempt to reason with a girl who had spent an evening vis-a-vis Gussie Fink-Nottle and didn’t think he looked like a fish. ‘So there you are, that’s Totleigh Towers. Wild horses wouldn’t drag me there, not that I suppose they would ever try, but you’ll probably have a good enough time,’ I said, for I didn’t wish to depress her unduly. ‘It’s a beautiful place, and it isn’t as if you were going there to pinch a cow-creamer.’
‘To what a what?’
‘Nothing, nothing. I was just thinking of something,’ I said, and turned the conv. to other topics.
She gave me the impression, when we parted, of being a bit pensive, which I could well understand, and I wasn’t feeling too unpensive myself. There’s a touch of the superstitious in my make-up, and the way the Bassett menage seemed to be raising its ugly head, if you know what I mean, struck me as sinister. I had a … what’s the word? begins with a p . . . pre-something . . . presentiment, that’s the baby … I had a presentiment that I was being tipped off by my guardian angel that Totleigh Towers was trying to come back into my life and that I would be well advised to watch my step and keep an eye skinned.
It was consequently a thoughtful Bertram Wooster who half an hour later sat toying with a stoup of malvoisie in the smoking room of the Drones Club. To the overtures of fellow-members who wanted to hurry me from sport to sport I turned a deaf ear, for I wished to brood. And I was trying to tell myself that all this Totleigh Towers business was purely coincidental and meant nothing, when the smoking-room waiter slid up and informed me that a gentleman stood without, asking to have speech with me. A clerical gentleman named Pinker, he said, and I gave another of my visible starts, the presentiment stronger on the wing than ever.