A Pretty Mouth Read online

  Now, I do not like to speak ill of any member of the aristocracy, but I suspect, given what transpired next, that the Lord Calipash proposed his wager out of interest rather than sportsmanship. I suspect this due entirely to the quickness with which the Lord Calipash proposed these very high stakes: If my employer won, it was decided the Lord Calipash would give him the use of his country seat in Devon, Calipash Manor, for a week-long retreat, expenses paid, guest list to be determined by Mr. Wooster. But if the Lord Calipash won, then my employer would be compelled to give him the use of his valet—me—in order to help the Lord with a delicate endeavor that needed prompt and insightful attention.

  Though Mr. Wooster is deservedly proud of his ability with bar spoon and shaker, that day, owing I suspect to his being first a drinker of cocktails before a mixer of the same, he flubbed the proportions of his “Rob Roy” and produced a drink unworthy of the Highland cowherd for which the liquid refreshment receives its appellation. The libation’s reception by an impartial judge (Lord Tolbert of Holland Park, who was also staying at the Vivarium) was, unsurprisingly, not favorable. After shaking awake Lord Tolbert, who had fallen asleep in his chair, Mr. Wooster told him of the wager. Undeterred by the Lord Tolbert’s protestations that he was too indisposed to do anything as rigorous as taste one drink much less two, Mr. Wooster handed him the glass, he sipped—and spat. Feeling as though to get Lord Tolbert to sample Mr. Marincola’s cocktail would be adding insult to injury, the bet was peremptorily decided in the bartender’s favor, and it was with a dour air that my employer joined me, after the Lord Calipash staggered off to dress for dinner.

  “Well, Jeeves,” said Mr. Wooster, “I’ve done you a mischief this day, I fear.”

  “Is that so, sir?”

  “Promised your services to that cove Fizzy, to help him with some sort of trouble. Said he would only discuss it with you.”

  “I shall endeavor to assist him, sir.”

  “Well you’ll be endeavoring by yourself. I’ll still return to London tomorrow, need to get back to it, what? The daily grind, all the matters requiring my attention.”

  “I imagine your social club will have missed you sorely, sir.”

  “Do I detect a sour note in the dulcet chord of your voice, Jeeves?”

  “Oh, I hope not, sir.”

  “Wouldn’t show the proper feudal spirit at all.”

  “No, sir.”

  “You understand … things are a bit, well, dull here, is all.”

  I saw my employer looking out over the bar, where each and every patron dozed wanly in his chair, including Lord Tolbert, who had fallen back into his reverie the moment he was no longer needed as a judge; outside, on the deck, men and women alike napped in their lounge chairs, too.

  “Things do seem strangely quiet at the Vivarium, sir.”

  “Too quiet, if you ask me. Just—well, mind yourself, Jeeves, with this weird snoozy crew at Dolor-on-the-Downs, and keep a sharp lookout for Fizzy, too. Strange chap.” Mr. Wooster looked thoughtful for a moment. “Seem to recall something when we were at school, maybe about an alleged murder or two, nothing much. Oh, and some unpleasantness where he was found to be keeping a girl under his bed.”

  “Sir?”

  “No girls allowed in the rooms.”

  “I should imagine not, sir.”

  “But that wasn’t the real scandal. No, no. I saw the filly when the police came. Didn’t look well. Bony thing, pale. Needed to get more sun. But what can you do? Lads will be lads, what? And you know, old school chum and all that. You’ll be fine.”

  “As you say, sir.”

  “Just be happy his dreadful twin sister isn’t here on holiday with him. She’s a fright. We were thrown together a few times at mixers, she was at Girton and would come down from Cambridge sometimes. Never tried to get engaged to me, that’s the most I can say for her. She was one of those brassy, brazen, loud-talking, short-haired, tweed-wearing girls you find all too often in this lax post-war era. Yes,” said Mr. Wooster, shoving his hands into his pockets, “If Alethea were here, by Jove, you’d really have a problem.”

  I am sorry to report that Alethea Fitzroy actually was staying at the Vivarium. I had seen her arrive with her brother a few days after we did, but not since. All I knew from below-stairs gossip was that she used quite a lot of bath-water and took all her meals in her rooms.

  “Fizzy said he wouldn’t keep you for more than a few days. You should be back home in no time.”

  “Let us hope so, sir. Shall I help you dress for dinner and pack up your things?”

  “Excellent notion. Oh, and I’ll hop an early train tomorrow.”

  “How early, sir?”

  “Not before noon, I’d say. Need to be full of beans for when I’m back in the old metrop., you know.” Then Mr. Wooster lost all his color and began to twitch like a ferret.

  “Sir, are you in need of—”

  “Must run, Jeeves—there’s Cirrina, the odious manageress. She’s an eel, Jeeves—wrapped around me and began to squeeze the moment Aunt Agatha introduced us.”

  “The behavior you describe is more akin to a python than an eel, sir.”

  “Bother that, Jeeves. It was too close a shave—she’s a menace. Let us fly!”

  So it was after the luncheon hour the next day that I knocked on the Lord Calipash’s door.

  He flung it open, and for a moment we regarded one another in silence. I cannot say what the Lord Calipash was thinking, but I know for my part I was feeling ill at ease over the sartorial blindness of the Lord Calipash’s valet. I simply could not account for it. The gentleman was sandy-haired and pale, thus the lightness of the suit he wore gave him a sallow appearance, and he was wearing his trousers too low. And the trousers themselves! They had not been brushed or pressed properly for some time, and the material, though initially of good quality, was beginning to look worn and unbefitting someone of his station.

  “Come in, Jeeves,” he said at last, “and tell me what you know about octopuses.”

  I stepped inside and put my valise down beside the hall table. As I looked around, I began to wonder if the Lord Calipash had brought a valet with him—or employed one at all. First his clothing, and now, these chambers! The rooms were similar to Mr. Wooster’s, but with fewer windows and furnishings, and on a significantly lower floor. Though of an acceptable size the apartment seemed cramped, for it was strewn with shed clothing, cups with a quarter inch of wine in them, plates fouled with crumbs and bits of nibbled crust, and, I noted, several aquaria that I believe if I had enquired with the management, should have been elsewhere than the Lord Calipash’s private rooms.

  “I am not unacquainted with those unique characteristics of the cephalopodan mollusks of the order octopoda, m’lord,” I said. “What in particular, may I ask, has piqued your curiosity?”

  The Lord Calipash was smoking a cigarette, and before answering took a drag on it in a languid, idle manner that might have been pleasing in a gentleman with a more affable expression—but his contemptuous mien made his affections appear more dissolute than elegant.

  “What I want to know is what the deuce is so fascinating about the little blighters,” he said, exhaling twin blue plumes through his nostrils.

  “I could not say, m’lord. I am sure to octopodean enthusiasts, the creatures are possessed of many interesting attributes. Take, for example, amphioctopus marginatus, sometimes called the ‘coconut octopus.’ This unusual specimen from the Pacific Ocean has been seen using shells or discarded coconut husks as a form of shelter. Additionally, it—”

  “Never mind your ruddy coconut husks, Jeeves.”

  “No, m’lord.”

  “I don’t care a jot for this or that sort and what they do with their time.”

  “Yes, m’lord.”

  “What I want to know is why anyone would travel to Dolor-on-the-Downs to see one, and then choose to remain here for the whole of the spring and summer months, declining any and all invitations to do anything
other than laze about and be close to it.”

  “That would be curious behavior, m’lord.”

  The Lord Calipash looked peeved. “Was that supposed to be a joke?”

  “No, m’lord.”

  “Good. For such a thing has happened, Jeeves. In fact, it’s happening right now. Do you know, no less than eighteen chaps and fillies of my acquaintance have come here to this benighted hamlet to see the bally thing?”

  “I have noted several members of the noblesse staying at this establishment, m’lord.”

  “And they’re all jolly queer, aren’t they? Got to get a pry bar to get them out of their deck chairs, or even eat proper meals, much less have a sociable drink. Like that rotter Tolbert, you know, they’re all like that. Even Roger—Roger Winthrop—he who sent me a wire saying I simply had to come and see the thing. I should have known, I suppose. His telegram was rather … odd. Full of strange weirdnesses.”

  “I was not aware Mr. Winthrop was staying at the Vivarium, m’lord.”

  “Roger? Oh yes.”

  This struck me as curious. Mr. Winthrop, as his valet will confirm I am sure, is a social gentleman; when he is out and about, one knows it. Yet something else concerned me more.

  “May I enquire what you meant by ‘strange weirdnesses,’ m’lord?”

  The Lord Calipash slunk over to his escritoire and pulled open the top drawer, then, after rifling through a messy stack of papers, withdrew a single piece of stationary.

  “Well go on. See for yourself.”

  DEAR FIZZY YOU MUST COME TO STAY AT THE VIVARIUM HERE AT DOLOR-ON-THE-DOWNS STOP THERE IS A FELLOW YOU SIMPLY MUST MEET STOP HE HAS EIGHT LEGS AND BLUE SPOTS STOP HAVE YOU GUESSED THE SECRET STOP IF YOU HAVENT HERES ANOTHER CLUE ITS BETTER THAN THOSE BOTTLES OF TOOTHACHE REMEDY WE USED TO GUZZLE AT SCHOOL STOP REALLY STOP

  “Well?” asked the Lord Calipash, when I looked up at him.

  “It is certainly perplexing, m’lord. You obviously guessed the octopus part of the riddle—but whatever do you think he means by toothache remedy?”

  “Heroin,” said the Lord Calipash shortly. “Bayer used to sell it, but it all got rather rum at Oxford when the lads started to really, I don’t know, crave it at all hours. So old Boffo stopped importing it and now it’s much harder to come by.”

  “I see. And have you … seen this octopus? Or sampled its …”

  “Yes to the first, no to the second. Alethea took a suck—my sister—but not me.”

  “And what was the lady’s opinion?” I asked, though I was more curious about the verbal action described by the Lord Calipash.

  This question seemed to sour the Lord Calipash’s mood significantly.

  “It’s hard to say,” he snapped. “Well, I suppose you should come and see. It’s part of my—our—conundrum.”

  Let me say that I know this next part of my narrative strains credulity, but it is wholly true. The Lord Calipash beckoned to me, bidding me follow him into the private bathroom off his suite. It was with some discomfort that I followed, saying that if the lady were occupied in some indiscreet manner I would not have intruded for all the world, but the Lord Calipash laughed unpleasantly and said that she certainly was, and that was the problem.

  The Lady Alethea was … in the bath. And when I say in the bath, I do not mean that she was laving herself in a tub full of frothy suds and rubber ducks. She was in the nude and fully submerged under the surface of the water, which trickled into the large basin out of the faucet, and though I did not like to look upon her so indisposed, when I noticed some, let us call them physical peculiarities, I could not help but stare.

  “It’s hereditary,” said the Lord Calipash. “Happens sometimes to Calipash females. Dunno what ancestor’s fault it is, but it’s a damn nuisance. Worse than the monthlies if you know what I mean.”

  “M’lord, I—”

  “No need to be polite about it, Jeeves, I know you can see the gills as well as I. To say nothing of the webbing between her fingers.” He leaned in to me and said behind his hand, “She gets it between the toes, too, but don’t tell her I told you.”

  I confess I was at a loss. I had no notion of what to say. I had never seen anything so strange during the whole of my life. Her condition baffled me—as did the Lord Calipash’s insouciance about it. For her part, Lady Alethea wriggled under the surface of the water and blew bubbles at us.

  Alastair lit another cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke back at his sister. “Well, what should we do about it?”

  “M’lord?”

  “How do we get her to change back?!” He seemed annoyed. “Bertie said you could solve any problem. Well?”

  “I—I believe I require further insight into the situation, m’lord,” I said. “Are you implying the, ah, octopus induced some sort of, ah …”

  “Well, we don’t know, do we?” The Lord Calipash sighed. “Usually it just happens during the dark of the moon. She goes all froggy for a night, so we bung her in a handy pond or tub or water-barrel and fish her out again in the morning and that’s that. But the dark of the moon was ages ago. Sucking on that blasted tentacle, I dunno, caused it, and ever since then she’s been like this. Is it permanent, do you think?”

  “I could not say, m’lord. Certainly I could call a doctor if you—”

  The Lord Calipash backhanded me across the mouth.

  “You will not speak of this to anyone,” he said softly, cracking his knuckles one-handed. “If you do I shall personally see to it that the rest of your natural life is as unpleasant and painful as possible. Do you understand me?”

  The Lord Calipash was several inches shorter than me and I had at least a stone on him, but it seemed ill-advised to champion myself in that moment. I decided to wait—little did he know he could not so easily bully Reginald Jeeves.

  “My discretion is absolute, m’lord,” I said, withdrawing a handkerchief from my pocket and dabbing at the side of my mouth, where I felt the blood trickling down. “I merely thought if Lady Alethea was in some discomfort, then perhaps some medicine might aid her.”

  There was a splash, and the lady sat up in her tub. She was attractive in a nervous, lean way, like an overbred whippet. Her wet hair, cut into a ‘bob’ as they call it, streamed water all over her face. I tried not to look anywhere else, but I am only human.

  “If you don’t know how to deal with my condition yet, you can think about it more later. The first thing we need you to do is figure out how best we can snatch and then smuggle that stupid octopus back with us to London,” she said, in a gasping, breathy sort of voice. “I’m fine. I can even get up, but people notice, and my skin dries out terrible quick.”

  Most valets have, at some time or another, engaged in acts outside the guidelines of local law—it is part of our job, if our gentlemen require such, of course. I bowed to the lady.

  “I did not realize you desired to possess the cephalopod that induced your unfortunate condition, Lady Alethea,” I said. “I am sure it could be managed—but if I may, why? I only ask as your particular needs may affect my planning. Do you suspect a study of its venom would produce an antidote, perhaps?”

  “Never thought a moment about it,” said Lady Alethea. She swept her sodden hair out of her eyes with a webbed hand. I held back a shudder.

  “Our grand scheme is to harvest whatever comes out of it and sell it, Jeeves. We’ll make a mint!” The Lord Calipash rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “We can bottle it as a cure-all or tonic or whatever to idiots keen on health clubs and sanatoriums and things, and we can sell it on the black market to opium addicts, maybe promote it as a cure for morphine addiction, like they did with that heroin stuff.”

  “M’lord, I know a little of that scandal, and researchers discovered that heroin was metabolized as morphine, and, as it was faster acting, it was thusly more addictive than—”

  “Jeeves—Jeeves. Silence,” urged the Lord Calipash, withdrawing a small switchblade knife from his pocket and, after releasing the bla
de, fingering it in a manner I can only assume was meant to impress upon me that I should take him seriously. “You don’t need to worry about the, I dunno, ethics or whatnot. I promise you, if you aid us, then we will telegraph you the name of the product so you need never worry about purchasing it. Of course, if you tell anyone about what it really is, my earlier threats stand. Neither Alethea nor I have any wish to end up like our American cousins, the Mortlows. Humiliated, shamed, imprisoned. Bally depressing.”

  “But be assured, as a reward for your assistance, we’ll make sure you can look out for number one. That’s what we’re doing, after all,” added Lady Alethea.

  “My lady?”

  “We’re broke,” said the Lord Calipash. “Bankrupt. Glad Bertie didn’t win that little wager, Calipash Manor’s been seized by our creditors. A Swiss family lives there now, and much good may it do them. We made off with the most valuable things and have been hawking them at various jewelers and what have you. Infernal mess. Most of what we own is in this room, frankly.”

  “You’re being hyperbolic,” wheezed Lady Alethea. “We still have the flat in London, you know.”

  “For now.”

  “Anyways who is this fellow, Alastair?” asked Lady Alethea. “Never seen him before. Wherever did you find him?”

  “He’s Bertie Wooster’s valet, if you can imagine. Supposed to be brainy.”

  “Good thing. We need someone with more than a few kippers in the jug. Lord knows you’re not fit for thinking.”

  “And what are you fit for? Malt vinegar and brown paper?”

  This aspersion seemed to agitate the Lady Alethea, and I feared I might be party to a row. Fortunately, I was there to intercede. I did not do this on their behalf, however—merely that I discerned that they were both rather flighty and given to intellectual wandering; I wished to aid them so I could get away from them as quickly as possible afterwards.

  “Perhaps we would do best to plan this caper, m’lord, Lady Alethea,” I said, nodding to each in turn. “Tell me of where the beast is kept, and your vision for how you would best like this to all work out. I shall make my recommendations directly.”