In Competition 3375 you were invited to submit an extract in which P.G. Wodehouse had a go at writing Raymond Chandler noir. Sad – and perhaps slightly pedantic – to report, quite a few entrants got this the wrong way round, writing Wodehouse’s material in a Chandler style, with references to hot dames at the Drones club etc. Some of these were admittedly very good but as The Spectator takes a stern line on the importance of reading the question, the following win £25 each.
‘Well done helping me sort that one out, Jeeves. The cops have arrested the chap with the face like an off-colour watermelon, and so Lydia won’t be going to the chair. More to the point, she seems to have given up on the idea that we are engaged.’
‘I gather that her affections are now directed towards Inspector Krenk of the Pasadena Police Department, sir. I heard her remarking to him that the stars were God’s diamond choker.’
‘That’s a relief. But that bally Senator Gilligan – he’s the cause of all this trouble, but the police can’t prove a thing, and it seems he’s going to walk scot-free. If you ask me, Jeeves, I don’t think anybody would be too upset if he were to be bumped off.’
‘I have already taken the liberty of dealing with the matter, sir.’
George Simmers
Down these mean streets a chap must go. I was wearing my double-breasted blue pinstripe and a tie so loud it could be heard three blocks away, injudicious according to my man, Jeeves. Complete rot. I looked absolutely topping and I didn’t care who knew it. I’d been hired by a criminal consortium of sinister aunts to rescue old associate Soppy Malone from the clutches of one of those gangster johnnies, nasty looking cove, eyes blacker than Roderick Spode’s shorts. I confronted the blighter in his lair, what-hoed him, he what-hoed me back, sent me reeling. Tinkerty tonk time. I needed a whangee, I needed a b. and s. I needed Jeeves. ‘I believe I can be of service, sir,’ he said. Came up with a ripping wheeze to get Soppy out of the soup tureen. The tie had to go though. It was a small price to pay.
Sue Pickard
The inner office door of Wooster Investigations burst open, and an absolute corker rushed in. A – tum-ti – of delight, as the poet chappie said. Jeeves would know who.
‘You gotta help me! Thad Dronby’s after me.’
‘Thad?’
‘Short for Thaddeus, sir,’ came a voice from the outer office. ‘One of the lesser-known apostles.’
‘He’s no… wait! I hear footsteps. I gotta hide.’
As the Wooster office looked as if the bailiffs had visited recently, I ushered her out onto the fire-escape. It was clearly National Door-bursting-open Day. A policeman advanced towards me.
‘Officer O’Malley. Where is she?’
‘A female policeman?’
‘Quit the gags. Mae Madison. Wanted for robbery in three states. And you’ve got her.’
He was about to biff Bertram but suddenly fell to the floor. ‘I say, Jeeves! Shooting a guardian of the l. is a bit off.’
‘He is not O’Malley, sir. This gentleman is Thad Dronby.’
Nicholas Hodgson
It gives a chap a rummy sort of feeling to have a pistol pointed his way. The cove behind the gun regarded me with a squiggle-eyed look that did not convey sentiments of warmth and cordiality. ‘You stole that silver cow from the wrong collector, Wooster’, he snarled. ‘Hand it over.’
‘Dash it all,’ I stammered. ‘What I mean is, I haven’t got the bally thing. I may be the only guest in the house who hasn’t snaffled any valuables this week, notwithstanding the bribes and threats employed to coax me into burglarious mischief.’
The door behind him opened noiselessly and Jeeves shimmered into the room. ‘What ho, Jeeves,’ I greeted him cheerily.
‘You’re more of a fool than I thought if you expect me to fall for that old…’ the gunman began, then collapsed with the remark unfinished as Jeeves coshed him behind one ear.
Chris O’Carroll
Jeeves was visiting the hot spots of Herne Bay, leaving me free to depose the anonymous suit for a racier number in strawberry linen. I could be adventurous too. Never have the Woosters turned their backs on the freebooting side of things. It was time for walking mean streets rather than seeking the nursery embrace of the Drones Club.
Exactly when it all went oops-a-daisy is difficult to establish. Possibly once I entered the shadowy bar and started drinking Exterminating Angels. Or when the lady performer showed her all. Certainly after a man came through the door with a gun in his hand.
I fainted then, resurfacing at home with Jeeves proffering brandy.
‘Where was I?’ I gasped
‘A gangster joint, sir. But the corpses have been removed and the police bribed. May I suggest, sir, no more forays into the demi-monde?’
‘You are miraculous, Jeeves.’
Basil Ransome-Davies
The soul of innocence, I sat in a Ventura Boulevard hostelry when, tout d’un coup, in toddles this whopper of a man, asking for Velma, and throwing customers about the place. Applying hard-earned Scouting skills, I pressed my cane into his back, and, disguising myself with rough ‘street’ vocabulary, said: ‘What ho, Mr Moose! You wouldn’t mind putting the old dabs in the air, would you?’
Evidently, though, he did mind, and soon had me pinioned across the bar, above which I could see a most gruesome boar’s head, and immediately I thought of Aunt Agatha, who’d told me that, across the pond, they enjoy a spot of lubrication. ‘I say, old chap,’ I gasped, wondering about his grasp of the Bard, ‘is that a pint of bourbon I see before me? Care for a snifter?’
‘Sure,’ he said, releasing the Wooster windpipe. ‘Let’s you and me nibble a couple.’
Nicholas Lee
No. 3378: We can be heroes
You are invited to submit a 18th-century-style mock-heroic poem in rhyming couplets (16 lines max) on some trivial recent event. Please email entries, if possible, to competition@spectator.co.uk by midday on 27 November.
Comments