Completely Unexpected Tales Read online

  The door was opened by a young footman who led me up to a bedroom on the first floor. Her ladyship, he explained, was resting, so were the other guests, but they would all be down in the main drawing-room in an hour or so, dressed for dinner.

  Now in my job it is necessary to do a lot of week-ending. I suppose I spend around fifty Saturdays and Sundays a year in other people’s houses, and as a result I have become fairly sensitive to unfamiliar atmosphere. I can tell good or bad almost by sniffing with my nose the moment I get in the front door; and this one I was in now I did not like. The place smelled wrong. There was the faint, desiccated whiff of something troublesome in the air; I was conscious of it even as I lay steaming luxuriously in my great marble bath; and I couldn’t help hoping that no unpleasant things were going to happen before Monday came.

  The first of them – though more of a surprise than an unpleas antness – occurred ten minutes later. I was sitting on the bed putting on my socks when softly the door opened, and an ancient lopsided gnome in black tails slid into the room. He was the butler, he explained, and his name was Jelks, and he did so hope I was comfortable and had everything I wanted.

  I told him I was and had.

  He said he would do all he could to make my week-end agreeable. I thanked him and waited for him to go. He hesitated, and then, in a voice dripping with unction, he begged permission to mention a rather delicate matter. I told him to go ahead.

  To be quite frank, he said, it was about tipping. The whole business of tipping made him acutely miserable.

  Oh? And why was that?

  Well, if I really wanted to know, he didn’t like the idea that his guests felt under an obligation to tip him when they left the house – as indeed they did. It was an undignified proceeding both for the tipper and the tipped. Moreover, he was well aware of the anguish that was often created in the minds of guests such as myself, if I would pardon the liberty, who might feel compelled by convention to give more than they could really afford.

  He paused, and two small crafty eyes watched my face for a sign. I murmured that he needn’t worry himself about such things so far as I was concerned.

  On the contrary, he said, he hoped sincerely that I would agree from the beginning to give him no tip at all.

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘Let’s not fuss about it now, and when the time comes we’ll see how we feel.’

  ‘No, sir!’ he cried. ‘Please, I really must insist.’

  So I agreed.

  He thanked me, and shuffled a step or two closer. Then, laying his head on one side and clasping his hands before him like a priest, he gave a tiny apologetic shrug of the shoulders. The small sharp eyes were still watching me, and I waited, one sock on, the other in my hands, trying to guess what was coming next.

  All that he would ask, he said softly, so softly now that his voice was like music heard faintly in the street outside a great concert hall, all that he would ask was that instead of a tip I should give him thirty-three and a third per cent of my winnings at cards over the week-end. If I lost, there would be nothing to pay.

  It was all so soft and smooth and sudden that I was not even surprised.

  ‘Do they play a lot of cards, Jelks?’

  ‘Yes, sir, a great deal.’

  ‘Isn’t thirty-three and a third a bit steep?’

  ‘I don’t think so, sir.’

  ‘I’ll give you ten per cent.’

  ‘No, sir, I couldn’t do that.’ He was now examining the fingernails of his left hand, and patiently frowning.

  ‘Then we’ll make it fifteen. All right?’

  ‘Thirty-three and a third, sir. It’s very reasonable. After all, sir, seeing that I don’t even know if you are a good player, what I’m actually doing, not meaning to be personal, is backing a horse and I’ve never even seen it run.’

  No doubt you think that I should never have started bargaining with the butler in the first place, and perhaps you are right. But being a liberal-minded person, I always try my best to be affable with the lower classes. Apart from that, the more I thought about it, the more I had to admit to myself that it was an offer no sportsman had the right to reject.

  ‘All right then, Jelks. As you wish.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ He moved towards the door, walking slowly sideways like a crab; but once more he hesitated, a hand on the knob. ‘If I may give you a little advice, sir – may I?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s simply that her ladyship tends to overbid her hand.’

  Now this was going too far. I was so startled I dropped my sock. After all, it’s one thing to have a harmless little sporting arrangement with the butler about tipping, but when he begins conniving with you to take money away from the hostess then it’s time to call a halt.

  ‘All right Jelks. Now that’ll do.’

  ‘No offence, sir, I hope. All I mean is you’re bound to be playing against her ladyship. She always partners Major Haddock.’

  ‘Major Haddock? You mean Major Jack Haddock?’ ‘Yes, sir.’

  I noticed there was the trace of a sneer around the corners of Jelks’s nose when he spoke about this man. And it was worse with Lady Turton. Each time he said ‘her ladyship’ he spoke the words with the outsides of his lips as though he were nibbling a lemon, and there was a subtle, mocking inflexion in his voice.

  ‘You’ll excuse me now, sir. Her ladyship will be down at seven o’clock. So will Major Haddock and the others.’ He slipped out of the door leaving behind him a certain dampness in the room and a faint smell of embrocation.

  Shortly after seven, I found my way to the main drawing-room, and Lady Turton, as beautiful as ever, got up to greet me.

  ‘I wasn’t even sure you were coming,’ she said in that peculiar lilting voice. ‘What’s your name again?’

  ‘I’m afraid I took you at your word, Lady Turton. I hope it’s all right.’

  ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘There’s forty-seven bedrooms in the house. This is my husband.’

  A small man came around the back of her and said, ‘You know, I’m so glad you were able to come.’ He had a lovely warm smile and when he took my hand I felt instantly a touch of friendship in his fingers.

  ‘And Carmen La Rosa,’ Lady Turton said.

  This was a powerfully built woman who looked as though she might have something to do with horses. She nodded at me, and although my hand was already half-way out she didn’t give me hers, thus forcing me to convert the movement into a noseblow.

  ‘You have a cold?’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  I did not like Miss Carmen La Rosa.

  ‘And this is Jack Haddock.’

  I knew this man slightly. He was a director of companies (whatever that may mean), and a well-known member of society. I had used his name a few times in my column, but I had never liked him, and this I think was mainly because I have a deep suspicion of all people who carry their military titles back with them into private life – especially majors and colonels. Standing there in his dinner-jacket with his full-blooded animal face and black eyebrows and large white teeth, he looked so handsome there was almost something indecent about it. He had a way of raising his upper lip when he smiled, baring the teeth, and he was smiling now as he gave me a hairy brown hand.

  ‘I hope you’re going to say some nice things about us in your column.’

  ‘He better had,’ Lady Turton said, ‘or I’ll say some nasty ones about him on my front page.’

  I laughed, but the three of them, Lady Turton, Major Haddock, and Carmen La Rosa had already turned away and were settling themselves back on the sofa. Jelks gave me a drink, and Sir Basil drew me gently aside for a quiet chat at the other end of the room. Every now and again Lady Turton would call her husband to fetch her something – another Martini, a cigarette, an ashtray, a handkerchief – and he, half rising from his chair, would be forestalled by the watchful Jelks who fetched it for him.

  Clearly, Jelks loved his master; and just as clearly he hated the wife. Each