Avram Davidson - The Avram Davidson Treasury - a tribute collection

Still growling, O’Donnell obeyed. Stirrup, regaining his aplomb, said: “ Count? Surely not. The peerage of Ireland, like other British peerages, contains countesses, but no counts. The husband of a countess is an earl.”

“The count’s toitle, sor,” said O’Donnell, looking at him with an eye as cold and gray as Galway Bay in winter, “is a Papal toitle. Oi trust ye’ve no objections?”

Stirrup hastily said he had none, then retreated to the other side of a table. The man whose wine glass had snapped in his hand finished wiping port from his fingers with a monogrammed handkerchief, then spoke in mellowed, measured tones.

“We must, of course,” he said, “make due allowances for Celtic — I do not say, West British — exuberance; but the matter now before us is too serious to permit any element of disorder to enter.” There was a general murmur of agreement. “Gentlemen, I move that the doors be locked. Those in favor will signify by saying ‘Aye.’ The ayes have it.”

He locked the doors and pocketed the key. “Thank you, Mr. Piggot,” said Peebles.

“Mr. Arbuthnot,” Stirrup said, loudly, “since I am here in response to your invitation, it is from you that I must demand an explanation for these actions.”

Arbuthnot smiled his slant smile again. Peebles said, “All in good time. By the way,” he inquired, “I trust you have no objections if I refer to you henceforth as the Accused? Protocol, you know, protocol.”

Stirrup said that he objected very much. “Most vehemently. Of what am I accused?” he asked plaintively.

Peebles flung out his arm and pointed at him. “You are accused, sir,” he cried, “of having for over thirty years pursued an infamous campaign of literary slander designed to bring into contempt and disrepute a profession the most ancient and honorable, dating back to Biblical days and specifically mentioned — I refer to Pharoah’s chief butler — in the Book of Deuteronomy.”

Knuckles were rapped on tables and the room rang with murmurs of, “Hear, hear!” and, “Oh, well said, sir!”

“Pardon me, Mr. Peebles,” said Blenkinsop. “The Book of Genesis.”

“Genesis? H’m, dear me, yes. You are correct. Thank you.”

“Not at all, not at all. Deuteronomy is very much like Genesis.”

Stirrup interrupted this feast of love. “I insist upon being informed what all this has to do with you, or with any of you except O’Donnell.”

Peebles peered at him with narrowed, heavy-lidded eyes.

“Are you under the impression, Mr. — is Accused under the impression that our esteemed colleague, Mr. Phelim O’Donnell, is the only butler here?”

Stirrup licked dry lips with a dry tongue. “Why, ah, yes,” he stammered. “Isn’t he? Is there another?” A growl went round the circle, which drew in closer.

“No, sir, he is not. I was a butler. We were all of us butlers! ”

A hoarse scream broke from Stirrup’s mouth. He lunged for the open windows, but was tripped up by the watchful Piggot.

Peebles frowned. “Mr. Blenkinsop,” he said, “will you be good enough to close the windows? Thank you. I must now warn the Accused against any further such outbursts. Yes, Accused, we were all of us, every one of us, members of that proud profession which you were the first to touch with the dusty brush of scorn. Now you must prepare to pay. Somehow, Mr. Stirrup, you have pushed aside what my former lady — the justly-famed Mme. Victoria Algernonovna Grabledsky, the theosophical authoress — used to call ‘The Veil of Isis.’ This room wherein you now stand is none other than the Great Pantry of the Butlers’ Valhalla. Hence—”

“May it please the court,” said Piggot, interrupting. “We find the Accused guilty as charged, and move to proceed with sentencing.”

“Help!” Stirrup cried, struggling in O’Donnell’s iron grasp. “ He-e-e-l-l-p! ”

Peebles said that would do him no good, that there was no one to help him. Then he looked around the room, rather helplessly. “Dear me,” he said, a petulant note in his voice; “whatever shall I use for a black cap while I pronounce sentence?”

A silence fell, broken by Richards. “In what manner shall sentence be carried out?” he asked.

Piggot, his face bright, spoke up. “I must confess, Mr. Peebles, to a fondness for the sashweight attached by a thin steel wire to the works of a grandfather’s clock,” said Piggot; “as utilized (in the Accused’s novel of detection, Murder In The Fens) by Murgatroyd, the butler at Fen House — who was, of course, really Sir Ethelred’s scapegrace cousin, Percy, disguised by a wig and false paunch. I recall that when I was in the service of Lord Alfred Strathmorgan, his lordship read that meretricious work and thereafter was wont to prod me quite painfully in my abdominal region, and to inquire, with what I considered a misplaced jocularity, if my paunch were real! Yes, I favor the sash-weight and the thin steel wire.”

Peebles nodded, judiciously. “Your suggestion, Mr. Piggot, while by no means devoid of merit, has a — shall I say — a certain degree of violence, which I should regret having to utilize so long as an alternative—”

“ I would like to ask the opinion of the gentlemen here assembled,” said Blenkinsop, “as to what they would think of a swift-acting, exotic Indonesian poison which, being of vegetative origin, leaves no trace; to be introduced via a hollowed corkscrew into a bottle of Mouton Rothschild’12? Needless to say, I refer to the Accused’s trashy novel The Vintage Vengeance . In that book the profligate Sir Athelny met his end at the hands of the butler, Bludsoe, whose old father’s long-established wine and spirits business was ruined when the avaricious Sir Athelny cornered the world’s supply of corks — thus occasioning the elder Bludsoe’s death by apoplexy. The late Clemantina, Dowager Duchess of Sodor and Skye, who was quite fond of her glass of wine, used frequently to tease me by inquiring if I had opened her bottle with a corkscrew of similar design and purpose; and I am not loath to confess that this habit of Her Grace’s annoyed me exceedingly.”

“The court can well sympathize with you in that, Mr. Blenkinsop.” The Great Pantry hummed with a murmur of accord.

Blenkinsop swallowed his chagrin at this memory, nodded his thanks for the court’s sympathy, and then said smoothly, “Of course we could not force the Accused to drink without rather a messy scene, but I have hopes he would feel enough sense of noblesse oblige to quaff the fatal beverage Socraticlike, so to speak.”

Stirrup wiped his mouth with his free hand. “While I should be delighted, under ordinary circumstances,” he said, “to drink a bottle of Mouton Rothschild ’12 I must inquire if you have on hand such an item as a swift-acting, exotic Indonesian poison, which, being of vegetative origin, leaves no trace? Frankly, I have neglected to bring mine.”

A mutter of disappointment was followed by a further consultation of the assembled butlers, but no sooner had they begun when a shot rang out, there was a shattering of glass, and O’Donnell fell forward. Richards turned him over; there was a bullet hole in the exact center of his forehead. Everyone’s eyes left Stirrup; his captor’s grip perceptibly loosened. Stirrup broke away, snatched up the poker, smashed the window and, jumping forward onto the terrace, ran for his life.

He reached the road just in time to see the headlights of an automobile moving away. “Help!” he shouted. “Help! Help!”

The car went into reverse, came back to him. Two men emerged.

“Oh, a stranger,” said the driver. He was a man with long gray hair, clad neatly, if unconventionally, in golf knickers, deerstalking cap, and smoking jacket.