10. The End of a Deep Fried Funk

What Ho Proles!

Eight hazy hours later, a more agreeable sort of man lay on his bed, admiring the ceiling in a way that demonstrates the life-affirming quality of well laid wallpaper when viewed through the veil of moderate inebriation. Finley Hall wore silence with a similar elegance, undiminished by the snoring of forty two conservatives resting on as many plump feather pillows. No doubt the eager young things were all ready for the garden party on the last day of the conference and a chance to shine in front of the Tory bigwigs due up from London for the free grub.

As for Yours Truly, my optimism had tipped out of the D- and come to rest in its usual ‘A’ zone. I was feeling particularly chummy since I’d briefed My Man on the plan I’d hatched at the nadir of my misery. It was a mood enhanced by the evidence of my ears which, if they were not slipping me a sly one, suggested the reliable fellow was now making his way up to the landing.

I opened the bedroom door and found him creeping along the corridor in the peculiar manner these servants have when they’re moving about above stairs. In his hands he carried a large bag of the Gladstone variety.

‘I wouldn’t have thought they’d be so heavy,’ I noted as I ushered him into the room and closed the door behind him.

I must have the chap well trained. He immediately began passing me the change of a twenty pound note I’d entrusted to his charge earlier in the evening. Handling money is always a thing I do with great concentration, which is why he caught me off guard when he opened the bag.
The mixture of heat and vinegar nearly took my eyebrows off.

‘Good God!’ I cried, at first fearing for my vision. ‘Can a human being really stomach that sort of thing?’ He snapped the bag closed and handed it to me. ‘In that case, we both know what to do,’ I said and, deciding I didn’t want such a hazardous material in my room for much longer, added: ‘And I suggest we go about doing it.’

My Man’s part of the deceit would begin and end with his using the telephone in the main hall. I gave him two minutes to get there and then I too crept outside, bag in hand.

The evening laboured under an unseasonably warm breeze which brought the perspiration out on the forehead. It was night unfit for deep sleep and I was relieved to find that like the rest of the Hall, Rosa Shaw and her friend had left their bedroom window open for the air. I stood beneath the window and gazed at the gently swaying drapes.

After a minute, a phone began to ring in the room above me and then a light came on. Seconds passed as hushed voices discussed something I knew to involve a high level Tory conspiracy in the dining room. Then I heard a bedroom door open and close and I had no time to lose.

The bag opened with a gasp of heat that hit me with the force of a small detonation. Putting aside all my misgivings, I took out the first parcel of chips and hurled it through the window. I quickly did the same with the second, then the third, and if I’m not mistaken, the fourth and fifth as well. Never can a man have hurled so much deep fried potato with such accuracy on a balmy night in April.

I did not wait to see the result but ran back to my room, slipped off my togs, and climbed into bed.

I was awoken by the delightful sound of argument about half an hour later. I looked out the bedroom window and down on the courtyard where two large figures were in heated debate beside a dark green Jag.

‘Come on Rosa!’ pleaded a voice I knew only too well.

‘You broke your promise,’ she said in return.

‘No I didn’t.’

‘You were eating chips in bed!’

‘I couldn’t help it!’

‘You mean to say they got their on their own and somebody forced you to eat them?’

‘Of course not,’ he answered. ‘I told you… Somebody must have thrown them through the window.’

‘To tempt you, I suppose?’

‘Obviously,’ he replied. ‘I have very clever enemies!’ I must say: it sounded as weak as egg-free custard and didn’t fancy his chances of winning this argument.

‘So, somebody lured me out of the way so they could indulge your selfish appetite?’ She barked a single laugh and climbed into the car. The engine roared into life, but not before she had rolled down the window. ‘There’s nobody so evil as to tempt a fat man with five bags of chips!’ she screamed and put her foot down hard on the accelerator. I thought back on the report I’d read in Lord Finley’s study. The words ‘tactful and reasonable’ came back to me and I wondered if there might not have been a more tactful and reasonable way of putting the facts of the case to the poor chap.

I pulled on my dressing gown and wandered down to the hall just as Jenkins came shuffling in.

‘Bad night, old chap?’ I asked.

He shrugged, his hands shoving the pockets of his dressing gown down to his ankles.

‘I’m just off to the car to get myself a nightcap,’ I explained. ‘I just can’t sleep in this unseasonable warmth. Fancy a snifter?’

He shrugged again and I steered him into a chair. ‘Wait here,’ I ordered and ran to the Bentley to recover the extra bottles of spirits I keep hidden in the dash.

When I returned I’m ashamed to say the fellow was weeping into his chest. ‘Come on,’ I said, now hoisting him to his feet. ‘There’s no need for that. We men don’t cry. We get drunk. Terribly terribly drunk.’

And, I’m proud to say, that is exactly what happened next.