Free Ancestral Vices by Tom Sharpe Page B

considered firing you but I can tell you this, never before have I considered it quite so seriously as I am at this moment. Now then, why am I on the first floor?’
    ‘Mrs Billington-Wall,’ said Croxley. ‘I tried to dissuade her but you’ve seen for yourself what she is like.’
    Lord Petrefact had. He nodded. ‘And what happened before that?’
    Croxley decided to avoid a replay of the mouth-to-mouth misunderstanding and to get down to basics. ‘Shall I start at the beginning?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Well it all began when that fellow Yapp decided to take a bath . . .’
    ‘A bath?’ goggled Lord Petrefact. ‘A bath?’
    ‘A bath,’ repeated Croxley. ‘Apparently he turned on the hot tap and waited until the bath was nearly full before getting in and . . .’
    But Lord Petrefact was no longer listening. It was clear that he had misjudged Yapp. The man wasn’t the milksop he had supposed. If the brute could begin a train of events that had ended with the total destruction of a downstairs room and its contents, not to mention bringing down an extremely heavy and valuable chandelier, simply by taking a bath, he was a force to be reckoned with. More, he was a human cataclysm, a walking disaster area, a man of such maniacal gifts as beggared the imagination. To let him loose on his Petrefact relatives would be to bring down on their heads something of such malevolent energy that they wouldn’t know what had hit them.
    ‘Where is he now?’ he demanded, interrupting the flow of Croxley’s account.
    ‘We’ve locked him in the old nursery.’
    Lord Petrefact jerked under the sheets. ‘In the old nursery? What the hell for?’
    ‘We thought it safest. After all, the insurance company are going to want to know how this . . .’
    But Lord Petrefact had no intention of wasting Yapp’s terrible gifts on insurance companies. ‘Let him out at once. I want to see that young man. Fetch him here this instant.’
    ‘But you heard what Mrs Billington-Wall . . . oh all right.’ He went out and down the corridor to the nursery and was about to unlock the door when he was interrupted by Mrs Billington-Wall.
    ‘And what do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded.
    Croxley looked at her with malign pathos. It was perfectly obvious what he was doing. Even the meanest intelligence could comprehend that he was unlocking a door and he was about to put these thoughts into simple words when the look in her eye deterred him. It was even meaner than her intelligence. ‘Lord Petrefact has requested the presence of Professor Walden Yapp,’ he said, hoping to hell that formality would quell her. It did nothing of the sort.
    ‘Then he’s far sicker than I would have supposed. Probably suffering from concussion. In any case there will be no communication with that creature in there until the police have interviewed him.’
    ‘Police?’ squawked Croxley. ‘You don’t mean to say . . . What police?’
    Mrs Billington-Wall’s eyes took on the qualities of an irritated laser. ‘The local police, of course. I’ve phoned them to come at once.’ And she shepherded the astonished Croxley back down the corridor.
    Only outside Lord Petrefact’s room did Croxley make a stand. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘there’s been some mistake. You may not like Professor Yapp, and I certainly don’t, but for some unknown reason Lord Petrefact does and when he hears you’ve called in the cops he isn’t going to take kindly to it. It’s in your own best interest to go downstairs and phone them again . . .’
    ‘I think I know my own best interests rather better than you do,’ said Mrs Billington-Wall, ‘and I’m not going to be party to an affray.’
    ‘Affray? Affray? Dear God, you didn’t tell them there’d been an affray here?’
    ‘And how would you describe the disgraceful occurrences of this morning?’
    Croxley sought for a suitable word and, apart from happenstance, which was rather too frivolous to appeal to this foul woman, could