Ashley Sterne The Ungrammarians Funeral

I was delighted to discover this sardonic short story by Ashley Sterne in the New Zealand National Library archive, Papers Past.  The story was originally published in the London Mail and then republished in the King Country Chronicle, Volume XXI, Issue 2291, 1 July 1926. 


A SHORT STORY.

THE UNGRAMMARIAN’S FUNERAL.

The carbonised remains of the odious Lady Cargoyle had barely cooled in the choice casserole generously provided (at an inclusive fee) by the select crematorium which had undertaken the lengthy and laborious process of incinerating her portly carcase before John Smith began to get busy again. I recognised the symptoms from afar, as experience had taught me. He became the soul of unrest. Every evening he would pace the floor of our sitting-room for hours on end, until the stuffed seagull in its glass case moulted in its agitation.

Always he got up in the middle of the night to shave. Day after day, and throughout each day, he would travel round the Inner Circle wrapt in thought, his unseeing eyes fixed upon the alluring pictorial advertisements for feminine underwear —a sheer waste of opportunity. Occasionally he would rise early, fill his pockets with sardines and hard-boiled eggs, and his hat with beer, and sally forth for a long day’s tramp over Lincoln Inn Fields or Doctors’ Commons, returning to our chambers late at night in an advanced state of intox —that is to say exhaustion —and vouchsafing naught but hiccups in reply to my anxious inquiries. One morning, however, after a particularly restless life, during which he had thrice woken me up: 1) To borrow fourpence, 2) To solicit my opinion respecting India 3 1/2 per cents.; and 3) To ask whether I was fond of asphalt: I determined to take the bull by the horns and beard the lion in his den.

“You have something on your mind,” I suggested, in the same casual manner as I might inquire if he had something on the Lincolnshire.

“You are right, Eric, I have,” agreed John Smith, relapsing again into a brooding silence.

“Tell me,” I urged. “Pour out your heart into my ear. Lay bare your bosom to my other ear. I am all ears.”

My friend muttered something which sounded like “not quite-but-very-nearly.” and then spoke out. “Look here, old pal, do you know that bloater—-I mean blighter —Lord Softroe?”

“You mean that fellow who got into the peerage for inventing the Army sausage?”

Smith nodded. “Formerly Jabez Ramsbotham’s pork butcher, of the Walworth Road.” he added.

“Well, yes and no,” I went on. “I know him to speak to, but not by sight.”

“I once rang him up in mistake for Hardroe, my solicitor.” John Smith rose from his seat at the breakfast table, and sat in another seat not at the breakfast table.  “I have decided to destroy Lord Softroe,” he said, after an ominous pause.

I had felt it coming. Whenever my friend spoke in these precise, steely tones, it always betokened trouble for somebody, usually of a fatal nature. “Why?” I asked.

“Listen! A fortnight ago, as you may remember. Lord Softroe took the chair at the annual dinner of the shareholders of Camberwell Free Prison, an admirable institution, of which Lord Softroe, in his commoner days, was a patron, and is to-day president.”

“I read the report of it in the Murderers’ Illustrated Monthly.”

“In the course of his after-dinner speech,” continued my friend, “he made use of the following expressions: ‘lt is not for me,’ said his lordship, ‘to any longer inopportunely stand between you and the musical programme which is to almost immediately follow. As far as I am concerned, my duties end here. Between you and I they officially ceased when I suggested you drinking the health of the public hangman coincidentally with the toast of this honourable institution. Under the circumstances I feel that of the two courses open to me the wisest is to at once and without further words resume my seat,’ What do you think of that?”

“That’s all right,” I said. “In resuming his seat, which he never ought to have left, his lordship behaved with admirable judgment.”

“But you miss the point,” exclaimed my friend. “Did you not detect that he thrice split his infinitives almost reduced them to matchwood. ‘To any longer inopportunely stand is one; ‘to almost immediately follow’ is another; ‘to at once and without further words resume’ is the third and longest—a positive Marathon of a split infinitive.”

“By Jove!” I cried indignantly, “the fellow deserves to be roasted whole on Bethnal Green.”

“But I haven’t done with him yet,” pursued John Smith. “Didn’t you observe that he said: ‘As far as I am concerned’ instead of ‘So far as I am concerned’; ‘between you and I’ instead of ‘between you and me’; ‘under the circumstances’ instead of ‘in the circumstances'; and ‘my wisest course’ instead of ‘any wiser course?”

“Yes,” I affirmed, “I did notice all that.” I didn’t, but, after all—why—

“But his crowning offence,” said my friend, interrupting my parenthesis, “was the misuse of the gerund.”

“Gerald who?” I asked .

“Gerund — not Gerald,” snapped Smith. ‘He said ‘you drinking the health’ instead of ‘your drinking the health.’ What d’you think of that?”

“Oh, the despicable villain—the black-hearted rogue!” I cried, swallowing an egg whole in my excitement. “Cruelty to gerunds must be punished with the utmost rigour of the law. And one of the Upper House, too, to whom we look to set an example to the Labour members! Would you find Jack Jones maltreating a harmless gerund! Would you find Jimmy Maxton splitting a poor little harmless infinitive! Yes. I mean no!”

“Well, his number’s up,” remarked my friend (opening a bottle of stout and preparing to assume the black draught). “I will have Lord Softroe on toast ere herrings are in the bay again!”

“How will you lay hands on him?” I inquired, “and how will you kill him? And how will you —

“Wait, Eric, wait! Remember your family motto —‘Little by little.’ I can’t give you details now, because I haven't got any on me. But I shall find ways and means eventually. In the meantime it would perhaps be as well if I brewed a little more trimethylethyldethyline.”

“Poisoning is too good for the blackguard!” I exclaimed, vehemently. “He ought to be slowly grilled over an unexpurgated edition of Balzac.”

A week later I read of Lord Softroe’s unexpected death in the luncheon-time issue of Pear’s Annual.
He had retired to bed the previous night (I learned in the best of health and spirits—the latter a famous proprietary brand).

His lordship’s valet called him as usual in the morning and was, as usual, told to go to hell.

As Lord Softroe did not come down to breakfast at his customary hour, the valet once again ventured to knock on the bedroom door, but this time without a word of acknowledgment.

Fearing foul play, the man procured an egg-whisk (produced — sensation in court) and beat the door down.

Entering the room, he saw Lord Softroe had collapsed across the washing-stand, his face buried up to the hilt in the soap-dish. He was dead. Very dead, the valet thought. From the rigidity of his lordship's pyjamas, he was of the opinion that his master had been dead an hour.

Of course, it was Smith’s work, but how he had contrived to do it I could not imagine. He hadn’t been near our chambers for three days, and I had concluded he was still going round the Inner Circle thinking, thinking, thinking.

However, when I returned home later in the day, I found him sitting by the lire reading Henley (the poet, not the regatta) and caressing Phyllis Monkman (our cat, not the famous vocalist).

“I see you’ve brought it off,” I began.

“What?” he asked, still reading and caressing.

“The Softroe business,” I said.

“Oh, that!” he said, with an air of boredom. “I’d forgotten all about it. Yes —it’s all over. A splendid bit of work.”

“Tell me about it,” I requested.

“After trying several methods,” said Smith. “I succeeded in getting into the lordly mansion yesterday. You heard, perhaps, that the house is for sale? On the pretence of examining the fixtures and fittings for a prospective purchaser, I disguised myself as a plumber, and went all over the house. I had my little poison phial with me, but beyond that I had no clear idea of what I was going to do with it.”

“Why!” I interjected, “you could have gone into the larder under the excuse of seeing if any of the joints were leaking, and poured the stuff all over the food.”

Smith sneered.  “And killed the household! A nice pickle you would have made if you had decided to put a finger in the pie and settle his lordship’s hash! No, it was not until I was in the old boy‘s bedroom that I got my brain-wave. How could I ensure my subtle poison getting into Lord Softroe’s mouth and nobody else’s? His toothbrush!”

“Ah,” I cried, with relish.

“To pour a few drops among the bristles,” continued Smith, “was the work of a moment. The stuff is odourless and tasteless; its presence could never be detected. My one fear was that his lordship might wear complete upper and lower dentures. Fortunately, the result shows my fear was groundless, and another hideous menace is removed from amongst us.”

“That being so, and you being free now,” I said, “what about a few days’ golf at Eastbourne?”

“Not until after the funeral,” said John Smith. “Eric, sometimes I cannot help thinking you are a man without a heart.” — By Ashley Sterne, in the London Mail.