Jooster prompt- Rear Window
Jul. 9th, 2013 06:27 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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indeedsir_backup Jeeves comes home from his yearly holiday to find Bertie staked out in front of the living room window with binoculars and a notebook utterly convinced that he witnessed something criminal (a murder? kidnapping? gang of thugs hiding out?) in one of the neighboring buildings. Jeeves brushes it off/indulges Bertie with his usual aplomb (at least this idea has kept him from buying any unsuitable articles of clothing in Jeeves' absence) but what if Bertie's not wrong? What if he really has stumbled on to something that the code of the Wooster's won't let him drop, and its about to get him into serious trouble.
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Date: 2013-07-09 02:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-10 12:25 am (UTC)And the Wooster period ( late 20's and early 30's) were the pinnacle era of the pulp detective novel. Not sure who the British masters were ( other than the eternal Agatha Christie - who has already been ficced) but... such potential here. Classic villains. Classic detectives. (Classic m/m subtext LOL)
Crossover, anyone?
Humm? Blackmail? Scandle? Dubious ( to the time) romance?
PLEASE - someone get a muse on this!
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Date: 2013-07-10 06:32 pm (UTC)And, of course, we know Bertie, with his love of that sort of fiction, would naturally lean toward seeing a murder that Jeeves would dismiss as fanciful imaginings.
This is a cracking idea! Well done, you!
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Date: 2013-07-12 05:46 am (UTC)Rough, raw, totally unbeta’d – and only here to send the bunny hopping to a good home. I have no plans to build on this. (More accurately – no time and no muse… but that’s the same thing in the end. Right?) Adoptions very very welcome.
* * *
Jeeves nearly dropped his valise at the sight that greeted his return to Berkley Mansions. “Sir? Is that a telescope?”
“Right ho, Jeeves.” Mr. Wooster waved cheerily from his perch by the window. “ Bingo brought it by. Just the thing for distracting from my broken leg.”
Jeeves had rather thought he – being in command of the apartment and the domestic actions therein - would be the best thing for a broken leg. Thus his instant return by the evening train the moment news of his master’s accident had reached him. Evidently, instant action had not been fast enough.
Bertram Wooster lounged in a sort of nest built from blankets and decorative pillows. The ottoman had been pulled before one wing chair, forming a sort of support, and the whole matter hoisted up on a shaky platform of Encyclopedia Britannica volumes. Beyond the chair loomed an open window, glass up and screen removed. At his right elbow teetered the telescope just mentioned; long brass tube thrusting out the window while the eyepiece hovered at eye level. To the valet’s long-practiced observation, the entire assembly looked ready to unbalance though the window, and defenestrate his master along with the furnishings.
“Sir.” Jeeves moved to straiten out the nearest of the debris. “I’m not sure bird watching requires…”
“I’m not watching birds, Jeeves,” Wooster replied airily.
“Sir.” Jeeves shot a worried look at the lit and curtained windows across the street. “Invading the privacy of young ladies is…” Criminal, although he rather thought that too strong a term to use with an employer. Certainly over harsh for Bertram Wooster, who, despite certain incidents with police helmets and silver creamers, did not, Jeeves confidently believed, have a felonious bone in his well-clad body.
“Also not on the books, my man.” Wooster waved the prospect aside. “I have no interest at all in the beazle sorts, as you well should know. Nature’s bachelor.”
At least, Jeeves amended, as he had long suspected. If there was any surprise in the announcement, it was only in that the young gentleman had discovered what his servants (and aunts) had taken as settled news. He wondered, not indifferently, if Wooster had also decided that he was… so to speak… a bachelors’ bachelor.
“No.” Bertram Wooster turned his interest back to the telescope. “I’m instead intrigued by… forgive the pun… an intrigue.”
“Sir?” Jeeves was at his gentleman’s side now, straightening blankets while keeping a weather eye on the drop to the outside. He was, by default, watching the streetscape as well.
“Keep watch over there.” Bertram pushed the telescope eyepiece to Jeeves, sparing his free hand to point to the alleyway on the far arc of the scene. “Every night around eleven or so – far to late for social calls, if you get my meaning – this young chap come round. Then this other chap? The one who lives in that apartment there.”? Bertram swung his arm to indicate one of the apartments to the rear of the nearest buildings. “He pops out though the window and lets down the fire escape. Then the first chap climbs up.”
“Really, sir?”
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Date: 2013-07-12 05:46 am (UTC)Bertram leaped in his chair. In the process, he nearly sent two vases, the telescope, and Jeeves himself smashing though the open window. Fortunately, Jeeves had ample experience in dodging sudden enthusiasms.]
“I see, sir.” And he did, despite the concealment of the shadows and the short wall that would have shielded the action from any other angle. A shockingly handsome young man in a regrettable sweater-vest was picking his way down the alley.
“What’s more?” Bertram rested his weight on his man’s chest, sharing the telescope. “I was watching early one morning, and I saw that same chappy come out the window to make his way back down. And Jeeves? I’ve visited friends who live in those flats and the building has a perfectly functional door and lift.”
Neither of which, Reginald Jeeves observed, were likely to be called upon by the visitor, who was being welcomed up the fire stairs exactly as Bertram had predicted.
“At first I though the first fellow was a burglar, what with the window crawling and all, but don’t those sorts of second story man tend to come by without an announcement?” Bertie paused briefly, waiting for Jeeves to reply. When Jeeves did not, he continued. “I’d think even the most dedicated thief could only rob a place once or twice before the supply of cow creamers ran out.”
“It is unlikely the young gentlemen are thieves, sir.”
Any more than he was a virgin, a dark voice inside Reginald Jeeves added. Absent recognition of which, sadly, implied a depressingly high chance that his young gentleman still was.
“Then what, Jeeves? They must be up to some sort of mischief.”
“I shouldn’t say, sir.” Especially since, from his vantage over his gentleman’s shoulder, Jeeves spotted two faces move together in the second before the falling curtain cut off the drama.
“But you must!”
Bertie pressed closer.
Jeeves’ arm came up instinctively to support him.
“The mystery is quite driving me mad. I’ve been contemplating calling the constabulary.
“Oh, NO Sir!”
“Very well, Jeeves, I won't if you advise against it. But?” Bertram Wooster glanced up, blue eyes bright under long golden lashes. It was a look of perfect innocence – as in, theatrically perfect and therefore in no way innocent.
Jeeves realized, with the sort of sudden revelation last experienced by Saul of Tarsus while in process of checking the Baedeker Guide to Damascus, that he had – deny it though he might – been played. Thoroughly, utterly, played.
Bertie sighed, a soft brush of breath on his man’s cheek. “However else will I learn what those two are up to?”
Then again, Jeeves consoled himself. This didn’t have to be a game for one.
“Well, sir. If you are quite certain?” He let his fingers brush under the velvet collar of Bertram’s smoking jacket. “I do have a suspicion as to the motivation behind their rendezvous.”
“Really, Jeeves.” Bertie twitched the curtain shut. It was a statement. Himself and Jeeves on the inside and the rest of the world excluded. “Do tell!”
“Actually, sir?” Jeeves bent down, his lips brushing the other man’s. “You might understand more clearly were I to… demonstrate.”
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Date: 2013-07-12 04:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-12 07:29 pm (UTC)