Jeeves and the Missing Manuscript - Chapter 9

[mellifluous-gel.livejournal.com]

So, I was going to get to Stiffy at the lake... and then Jeeves decides that he needs to have a say in things. So! Next chapter will be a lakeside adventure with Stiffy and Bertie. Hope you enjoy what's here in the meanwhile. I needed to wind down after a big presentation today. Good times, what?

(EDIT: Good Lord... noticed quite a few little typos scattered about. I think I've caught them all, but please feel free to point them out, folks. Would rather not look like a silly whatsit for eternity, eh? XD)

Title: Jeeves and the Missing Manuscript
Chapter: 9/16
Pairing: Jeeves/Bertie
Rating for Chapter: PG-13
Summary: Bertie meets a young Agatha Christie and hits it off with her at a garden party. She even offers to let him read and comment on her latest manuscript, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, before she posts it to her publisher. Of course, mayhem ensues when the manuscript is stolen and Jeeves and Bertie must find and return it to the rightful owner. Mix in a dash of danger, anger, angst, and unrequited feeling, and it's the perfect storm for 'certain whatsits' to come to light.
Disclaimer: Jeeves, Bertie, and all characters associated with their idyllic world belong to P.G. Wodehouse. Mrs. Christie belongs to herself last I checked.
 

Mr. Wooster has asked, and I have assented, to enter here with a small note based on the events and my actions in the previous chapters of this narrative. I do not possess my employer’s particular gift for colorful prose, nor do I wish this missive to run to any great length, so I shall be direct: I am an invert, a gentleman’s personal gentleman who prefers the company of other gentlemen.

I had, initially, suspected that Mr. Wooster was of my own disposition given his aversion to marriage and his somewhat-disastrous encounters with females of the species, even those to whom he was related. However, I began to doubt myself as the years passed by, and I could find no conclusive evidence to support my hypothesis. Mr. Wooster did not collect materials of a pornographic nature, his most salacious possession being a clay paper weight cast in a dubious mold, which his sister, Mrs. Sylvia Scholfield, had given to him as a present on his seventh birthday. It is my understanding now that this was the year during which Mr. Wooster and Mrs. Scholfield’s parents died in a car crash.

To my chagrin, I had learned of the importance Mr. Wooster attached to the object only after attempting to remove it from his office with the rest of the rubbish some two months into my employ. It was the first and only time, I believe, that he yelled at me in anger. In that moment, as I found myself having to consciously resist the urge to step back and cringe, I came to fully appreciate that my employer was Mrs. Agatha Gregson’s nephew. I had not touched the object since, but perhaps in deference to my own aesthetic sensibilities, he had placed it in a less obtrusive spot behind a set of encyclopedias.

While I could find no questionable materials – at least in the context of a gentleman’s intimate preferences – in the flat, this did not preclude the possibility that Mr. Wooster simply did not care for such things when fulfilling his more basic needs. Given his ‘Code of the Woosters’, this seemed likely, and I ceased my hunt for whatever store of erotica my employer might possess.

Next, I turned to his behavior for some indication. Mr. Wooster is a gregarious gentleman who has great difficulty hiding his emotions from even the most obtuse men. While an endearing characteristic, this has necessitated my excluding him from knowledge of my machinations on more than one occasion in order to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion for all parties involved in whatever difficulties had arisen. In any case, I noted that Mr. Wooster tended to show more physical affection toward his male acquaintances than females, though I did not feel this was sufficient evidence on which to form an opinion for the same reasons I stated with regard to the lack of pornography.

With nothing on which to base any concrete conclusions, I relocated the question to the back of my mind with a number of other small curiosities. It was only some years after that the matter returned to the forefront of my conscious. It was directly following events which had led to Mr. Wooster biking eighteen miles in the rain. He had returned home, so thoroughly dejected at the sight of his friends making merry at his expense, that I felt for the first time that one of my wheezes, as he calls them, had gone awry.

Although I explained the situation, and he accepted this with his customary optimism and thanks, I could not help feeling that I had failed him. Sitting with him as he sipped at a warm cup of tea, ensconced in an extra blanket I had procured from one of the maids, I had the sudden impulse to embrace him. I did not proceed, of course, well used to contemplating any notion before acting upon it. I considered the circumstances and my own culpability in his obvious distress, and determined that the whim had sprung from what the Greeks would call storge, a familial love, as an uncle might feel for a beloved nephew. My employer, while only six years my junior, often comported himself as a much younger gentleman, requiring the attention of a patient relative to ensure his well-being. I had placed the emotional well-being of Mr. Wooster’s friends over his physical well-being in this instance. I reasoned that this must be the cause of my inappropriately affectionate feelings toward him.

However, as time passed and my warm thoughts toward Mr. Wooster began to take a decidedly lascivious bend, I realized that I had mistakenly attributed feelings deriving from eros as storge. More than that, I had made the conscious effort to label my feelings as such. Familial affection is more easily dealt with than sensual affection and longing for one’s employer.

I considered quitting to protect both myself and Mr. Wooster from any complications that might arise from the realization of my attraction. I am a selfish man, though, and I simply could not bring myself to walk away without determining whether or not circumstances might fall in such a manner as to allow for the negotiation of an understanding between myself and Mr. Wooster.

I turned once more to the question of Mr. Wooster’s preferences with great vigor, reexamining my previously-collected evidence and daring to hope. Additionally, I followed Mr. Wooster covertly over the course of several nights in order to ascertain if he was seeking his carnal pleasures elsewhere, though I thought it highly unlikely given that I had never detected the stench particular to such establishments upon his person.

In the meanwhile, I began pressing lightly at the boundary between appropriate and questionable contact in the hopes that his reaction would provide greater insight. As with all of my actions, my employer took a light brush of my fingers across his chest, or the overly-intent smoothing of his lapel ‘in stride’. I despaired, thinking him unaffected, until one morning some months later.

I had taken great pains to ensure that I ran my hands down the full length of his arms as I removed his pajama top that morning, for he had looked particularly angelic as I’d woken him, a beam of light transforming his hair into a golden halo about his head. As I was laying out his suit for the day, I became cognizant of soft, almost pained, noises emanating from the bathroom. Concerned that Mr. Wooster had somehow managed to hurt himself, I hurried to the door, but froze before entering as I heard him gasp, then sigh contentedly.

I dared to edge closer, shifting so that I could look in upon my employer, and saw that it was as I had suspected. Mr. Wooster sat in the tub with his legs spread apart, head thrown back, and one arm moving slowly up and down, grasping something just out of my line of sight. I swallowed the saliva collecting in my mouth and hastily removed myself to my own bathroom to deal with the growing tightness in my trousers.

While hopeful, I did not assume that the incidents had been connected – my stroking him and his subsequent arousal. Although I had never witnessed Mr. Wooster pleasuring himself in the bath in my previous years of service, that did not mean that it had never occurred, simply that he had been slightly more discreet. To test the hypothesis that my touches had brought about the situation, I made an effort to lavish him with what might be called ‘caresses’, if one were to look very closely, as I undressed him for the bath each morning over the course of the next two weeks.

I listened at the door for those small noises and was satisfied that I heard them every day. Then, at the start of the third week, I returned to a more mechanical and impersonal mode of disrobing my employer. Though it pained me, I withheld the physical affection I had offered before in order to gauge his response. I could not say that Mr. Wooster’s cheerful disposition was greatly impacted, but I did note that the noises came only once that week – after he had forced contact by contriving to stumble as he rose from his bed and grasped me for support. He also eyed me with more than the usual confusion as I went about my tasks in the flat.

Finally, I ended my self-imposed misery when he had approached me and asked, “I say, Jeeves, old chap... the young master hasn’t done anything to offend you, has he? I’ll be dashed if I can figure out what I’ve done, but you’ve been at your stuffiest stuffed frog all week. Terribly sorry for whatever it is, my man. You know how absolutely oblivious I can be sometimes, what?”

“Yes, sir,” I had replied with a heavy sigh before assuring him that he was not at fault, and that I simply had not been sleeping well due to an illness in the family. He apologized profusely for my troubles and tried to order me out of the flat to tend to my ailing relative’s bedside. I was able to convince him that the relative was no longer in serious danger and that I would be my usual self by tomorrow. We argued back and forth, and I finally assented to taking the night off so as not to raise his suspicions further.

Which brings me to what might be called the ‘present’ in this narrative. Mr. Wooster can provide a much more detailed and entertaining account for our personal records than I, so I will leave that to him. I will only add one final note: When Mr. Wooster confessed to me in the bathroom that day at Twing Hall that his arousal was a direct result of studying my form, although I put forth the mask of displeasure at his decision to wear his reprehensible plaid trousers, beneath that, I felt the greatest sense of joy one can imagine. It is always most gratifying to have one’s hypotheses proved correct.

~ Reginald Jeeves

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Realizing that I would have to face Jeeves at some point, I squeezed my rubber d. one more time for good luck, gritted my teeth, and rose from the bath, drying myself off and wrapping a dressing gown around the freshly-scented Wooster frame. I would have liked to have strode out of the bathroom with my head held high, ordering Jeeves to fetch this or see to that, but I’m afraid I rather slinked, shuffling toward the bed with my eyes fairly glued to the floorboards. I sat down on the b. and watched as Jeeves’ feet tracked into the bathroom and heard the quiet shloup! of the tub draining seconds later. Then, the Jeevesian feet had returned, eerily silent as they shimmered across the floor.

“Mr. Wooster?” Good Lord. I was in for it, but this was what I’d wanted. Still, did a bit of a tiff over one’s trousers and what constitutes discussionable material warrant calling me ‘Mr. Wooster’ to my face? Seemed dashed excessive.

“Yes, Jeeves?” I asked, picking at a loose string on the bedspread.

“Did you intend to dress, sir?”

“Oh.” I cast my eye over the togs for the day. To his credit, Jeeves had managed to find a goldenrod waistcoat and jacket, and a dark green tie and socks that matched the color scheme of my trousers. “Yes, I suppose I should. Um... could you just... Jeeves...” I motioned helplessly with my hands, but paragon that he is, he understood immediately.

“I will be in the bathroom, sir,” he said. “Please call when you require my assistance.”

“Righto!” Jolly decent of the fellow to remove himself from the room instead of just facing the wall. I recalled the not-terribly-distant past when I had been moved by the Jeevesian backside and wasn’t keen on repeating the performance, especially with how frustrating it had been when certain parts of the Wooster corpus that had sprung to attention like those chappies on parade had decided they weren’t actually all for it, and had returned to the at-ease stance. Before I could trip aboard that train of thought again, I hopped back off at the station of Good Sense and made toward the intersection of La Rue Ne Soyez Pas and Le Boulevard Un Grand Chump, and began pulling on my undergarments.

Once I had tightened the garters on my socks, pulled my undervest down and my pants and trousers up, I summoned Jeeves with a ‘Er... right, then. Ready!’ He oozed in and proceeded to dress me with the professional detachment of one schooled in the arts of valeting. It was efficient, it was precise, and it was missing some indefinable thingness that made it feel off, like a stranger had been called in to replace Jeeves in this particular task.

I shuddered to think of my previous valets, or worse yet, some filly I’d be calling my wife one day, dressing me up. Agatha could have her dashed silly notions, but this Wooster knows when to stand firm and when to bow. On matters familial, I bowed like a stalk of wheat in a tornado. It was only Jeeves’ fish-fed brain that had kept me out of the matrimonial soup for so long. Closing in on thirty – as everyone was so keen to remind me this weekend – I knew I’d be donning the top hat and spongebag trousers sooner rather than later. Really a pity, though. I did like the idea of a merry bachelor’s life for myself and Jeeves... if he’d consent to it, of course. I wouldn’t want to go putting a nolle prosequi on the man’s love-life. There had been that cook and that waitress he’d told me he’d had an understanding with, after all.

“I wonder whatever happened to that waitress girl you were seeing, Jeeves,” I said, trying for conversation as he finished the row of buttons on my shirt and draped a tie around my shoulders, knotting it at my throat.

“Sir?”

“You know.” I waved a hand noncommittally. “The one Bingo was in love with. Margaret, or something starting with an 'M'.”

“Mabel, sir. I assisted her in contracting a matrimonial alliance with a gentleman I am acquainted with through the Junior Ganymede Club.”

I blinked as he picked up my waistcoat and helped me into it before going at those buttons, as well. “What? You mean you two broke it off?”

“To tell the truth, sir, there was nothing to break off,” he admitted. “The understanding to which I alluded during that particular incident had more to do with finding the then-Ms. Sayers a suitable gentleman, rather than engaging in amorous activities.”

“Ah... well. There you are.” And there I was, as well. All that was left was to tame the curly mop atop the Wooster lemon and toss on a spiffing pair of spats. I seated myself on the bed once more and Jeeves knelt to assist, until I realized this was a much-too-familiar posish. “It’s fine, Jeeves,” I assured hurriedly. “The young master can manage this bit on his own, what?”

“Very good, sir,” he replied in his soupiest voice, rising stiffly and proceeding to fold my pajamas as I fought with the laces.

“Now, Jeeves,” I began once I’d wrestled the bally l.’s into submission, “another chapter of Mrs. Christie’s manuscript, then we’ll pop downstairs for the requisite whatsit with all and sundry, and then up we come after tea. How does that sound?”

“As you wish, Mr. Wooster.” Well, if that couldn’t strike a blow to the Wooster spirits, then I don’t know what could.

After brushing my hair, shaving, and slapping on a bit of the manly eau de Wooster, I trudged over to the chair and took up the manuscript, feeling not a little put out, even with my absolutely topping new trousers on. I could already see the smile on Agatha’s face, though, when I told her I'd breezed through the manuscript in less than a day, which did well to put Bertram into the mood for a spot of thrills, chills, and Poirot’s insights on the matter. If I knew my retired detective chappies like I knew my Jeeveses, he’d be ferreting out the cold-blooded killer in three shakes of a barman’s shaker thingummy.

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“Hah! I knew it!” I couldn’t help shouting, stabbing at the pages before me.

“Sir?” Jeeves had finished with my socks and had been doing... something with my ties for the past half-hour. I suspected he’d named them and was attempting to alphabetize them. That always takes me a bit of time – the alphabetizing, you understand, not the naming of ties.

“It’s this Parker chappie, the dead fellow’s butler – well, he wasn’t dead at the start of the story, but he is now, you see,” I explained. “Anyway, this Parker is getting to be a mighty suspicious fellow, and I like the look of this Ms. Bourne, the parlormaid. She’s positively stinking with impropriety, what? Still! Parker... Hmm... I can tell you, Jeeves, I’d lay money on that bird being the murderer.”

“Indeed, sir?”

“Indeed, Jeeves. He’s just a little too helpful, buttling about... And it’s always the butler.”

My man paused for a long moment, then said, “It is my experience, sir, that the domestic staff, while perhaps unhappy in their present situations, are rarely in the habit of murdering their employers, and often go to great lengths to appear helpful. It is, after all, a requirement of individuals employed in any capacity as a servant to serve.”

“I still smell a rat, Jeeves,” I protested. “You mark me, it’ll be Parker.”

“Would not the most likely suspect in the narrative be Mr. Ackroyd’s stepson, Ralph Paton, sir?” Jeeves returned. “While I suspect him to be what I believe is referred to as a ‘red herring’ in the trade, several key pieces of evidence implicate him in the murder. Still, more likely in my mind, have you considered the–”

“Jeeves.” I stared at him, incre-whatsit coloring my tone and forcing the Wooster lips in a downward direction.

“Yes, sir?” He replied too promptly for me to be the only one to recognize his slip.

“Have you been reading Mrs. Christie’s manuscript?”

“I took the liberty of perusing the volume before waking you this morning and while you were bathing, sir.”

“Jeeves!” I cried, not a little shocked. “You weren’t supposed to read it!”

His eyebrow rose a fraction of an eighth of an inch. “I apologize for the misunderstanding, sir. Given that I have helped to edit your own volumes, I thought my insight might prove valuable to Mrs. Christie.”

“Pish!”

“Sir?” Now there was a distinct air of the scandalized about him.

“You just wanted to go snooping in Mrs. Christie’s manuscript and you knew if you didn’t ask you wouldn’t be told no.”

“Sir, I assure you, such was not my intention.”

“Of all the bally...” I growled, ignoring him and clutching the manuscript to my chest. Agatha had entrusted me, young Bertram, with the thing, not young Bertram and Jeeves. It had been special, secret, a secret I finally had from my man and now he’d gone and spoiled the surprise. The green-eyed whatsit stirred in the Wooster tum, and it wasn’t at all the pleasant feeling of his southern cousin, the other chap who turns the Wooster t. several shades of fluttery.

“I’m going out,” I announced, standing abruptly and stuffing the manuscript back into its envelope.

“Of course, sir,” Jeeves replied, as nonchalant about the young master’s agitation as ever. “Would you like to lock the manuscript in the desk?”

“No, I would not, Jeeves,” I said as I set the thing down on the d. in question so that my man could help me on with my coat. “I’ve seen you picking at locks, and I don’t want to see you looking at another page of this manuscript.”

“Sir, I would never–”

“I shall be taking the manuscript with me and reading it down by the lake,” I cut him off mid-protest. “At least beneath the shade of some tree or other, I shan’t have to worry about nosey valets biffing about where I can’t see them.”

He had stiffened considerably and for a moment, I entertained the idea of him actually boxing me around the ears as Tuppy had suggested. Jeeves is a marvel, though, and doesn’t need to resort to violence when he knows exactly where to poke a sharp stick with his words. “As you say, Mr. Wooster. I do apologize for acting in such a manner that you feel you can no longer trust me.”

I deflated, every last bit of fight whooshing out of me. It might have been easier if he’s just socked me in the belly. I knew how to gasp for air, but how does one go about refilling one’s metaphorical lungs?

“However,” he continued when I did not respond, merely hung my head like a chastised child. “Mrs. Christie indicated a desire that the manuscript should not leave your room. I could not advise taking it to the lake.”

How could I back down now, though? After my show of huffing and puffing, Jeeves would think me a spineless young clot if I gave in. I already had my relatives thinking that, I didn’t need my... valet – There had been another word I’d been about to use, but I threw it out the window of the mind as soon as it scuttled past, so that I barely had time to glimpse the blighter. – to think it, too.

“I’m going,” I mumbled, snatching up the manuscript, and fleeing before he could stop me with another reasonable-sounding argument.

Was this how beazels felt all the time? Up and down, and fluttery and sinking, all at once? It would certainly help to explain some of their more inexplicable behaviors. Why was I thinking about beazels? I meant to be thinking about Jeeves. No, not Jeeves. Thinking about Jeeves led to trouble. Roger Ackroyd and that suspicious snake of a butler, Parker. Those were the chaps I was thinking about. Where beazels came into that particular story, I couldn’t say, but I’m getting off point.

Agatha wouldn’t really mind if I popped down for a bit of the fresh stuff by the lake, would she? She’d merely been issuing guidelines. I’d just need to be careful not to get the manuscript wet. That should be simple enough, what? Not like I’m a chap to go falling into every open body of water out there. And really, what other dangers could a lake not six feet deep really pose to a chap so long as he kept out of the wet stuff?

Feeling considerably more chuffed, I sneaked out of Twing Hall undetected and hied myself to Ginny’s Lake.

(Back to Chapter 8)
(Onward to Chapter 10)

Comments

[hazeltea.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed this chapter. I see Bertie is still in his envious, rebellious phase here!

[mellifluous-gel.livejournal.com]

Yes, he's gone from child to teenager, the dear fellow. But we all tend to go through stages in our romantic awakening. Bertie's just doing it a bit late in the game. XD