Only ten days after the picture received its five Academy Awards, Langford’s remains were discovered by his housekeeper, Mrs. Scuttlesby, when she entered the library to serve him a glass of port wine and a wedge of wickedly sharp cheese.
(A parenthetical aside: This was not, of course, the same Mrs. Scuttlesby who serves with such honor and obsession as our head housekeeper on the Koontz estate. Langford’s Mrs. Scuttlesby was 46 when she discovered the actor’s remains that evening in 1934, which would make her 113 years old as I write this. Our Mrs. Scuttlesby, however, is only 46 years old as I write this, and will probably still be only 46 when I finish writing this, if I ever do. I’ve been assured by our Mrs. Scuttlesby (whose assurances are delivered with such adamancy that they cannot be ignored or taken lightly) that she is no relation to Langford’s Mrs. Scuttlesby, in spite of the curious fact that each of these women lacks a first name. Our Mrs. Scuttlesby was born in Nome, Alaska, the daughter of an ice farmer, and educated in domestic service at Oxford University, whereas nothing whatsoever is known about the birthplace or the education of Langford Crispin’s Mrs. Scuttlesby, which is proof positive that they cannot be the same woman, even if our beloved Mrs. Scuttlesby looked 113, which she most certainly does not.)
Where was I?
More important: Where was Langford Crispin?
Yes, I remember now: spread in a ghastly emulsification across the ceiling of his library. May the same never happen to you. Nor to me. I do have a list of people I wouldn’t mind seeing emulsified and pasted to ceilings in their various residences, though I’m too discreet to provide that list here.
So, Mrs. Scuttlesby – not ours, the other – entered the library with the port wine and cheese on a silver tray, and a clothespin on her nose. She didn’t ordinarily go around with a clothespin on her nose, you understand. She wasn’t an eccentric. On this fateful night, she had a clothespin on her nose because she was serving, as you may recall, a wickedly sharp cheese with the port wine. From this exotic and peculiarly green cheese, a favorite of Langford’s, issued an aroma so powerful and penetrating that it knocked small dogs unconscious, turned particularly sensitive young children into lifelong catatonics, and caused automobile headlamps to explode at a distance of half a block. Nevertheless, in spite of the cheese stench, Mxs. Scuttlesby – not ours, the other – might have smelled the hideous remains of dear Langford Crispin, pasted and putrefying on the ceiling, had she not been breathing, of necessity, through her mouth. In his official report, the first police officer on the scene noted that the stink of Langford’s remains was, indeed, more terrible than that produced by any cheese in the world, and when he tried to commandeer Mrs. Scuttlesby’s clothespin for his own use, a fight ensued that left the husky young constable with one broken leg, six broken fingers, two broken arms, a broken jaw, five dislodged teeth, a nose that looked like a crushed cactus blossom, and no hair; while Mxs. Scuttlesby – not ours, the other – sustained a bruise on her right thumb.
But I’m getting ahead of my story.
Let’s back up to where the police haven’t arrived yet.
Remember the scene: Mrs. Scuttlesby – not ours, the other – enters the library with a silver tray on which are port wine and cheese, her nose pinched by a clothespin, unaware of the horror overhead, perhaps thinking sad and deeply personal thoughts of the young man who never returned to her from the bloody battlefields of World War I, if such a young man ever existed. She put down the tray on the exquisite French marquetry table beside Langford Crispin’s favorite armchair – and saw The Book of Counted Sorrows tumbled on the floor between the chair and the toad-leather footstool. Being a tidy person by nature and a housekeeper by profession, she picked up the book and put it on the table beside the tray.
In recent days, ever since the opening of It Happened One Night, sans Langford’s brilliant portrayal of Norman Bates, the actor had been obsessed with Counted Sorrows. He had read the volume into the wee hours of the night, and then into the even more wee hours, and then finally into the most wee hours of all, so wee that they could not be measured by any but the most sensitive weenometer. More than once he had told Mrs. Scuttlesby – his, not ours – that this volume contained such stunning insights into the nature of life and the condition of humanity that he was afraid his mind could not contain the dazzling knowledge he’d received from these pages. “Oh, Mrs. Scuttlesby,” he had said earlier that very day, “sometimes I fear that the pressure of this dazzling knowledge will cause my head to explode and paste my brains to the ceiling, leaving you with a frightful mess to clean up.”