The Mortdecai Trilogy (8 page)

Jock handed me a stiff envelope when I emerged: it had been delivered, while I slept, by what he described as a long streak of pee in a bowler hat. Jock, with unerring aim, had offered him a pint of beer in the kitchen, which had been refused with some brusqueness.

The writer, who seemed to be assistant private secretary to someone else’s permanent under-secretary or something, said that he was instructed to request me (or was it the other way about? – I forget) to present myself at Room 504 in one of the uglier new Government office blocks at 10.30 a.m. the following day, there to meet a Mr L.J. Crouch.

Now, I have only two basic rules for the conduct of my life, to wit:

Rule A
My time and services are at the complete disposal of the customer at any time of the day or night and no trouble is too great when the interests of others can be served.

Rule B
On the other hand, I’m buggered if I’m going to be buggered about.

I handed the note to Jock.

‘This clearly falls under Rule B, does it not, Jock?’

‘Dead right it does, Mr Charlie.’

Ten thirty is the time stated?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Then call me at eleven in the morning.’

‘O.K., Mr Charlie.’

Happier after that expression of poco-curantism, I strolled down to Veeraswamy’s and thoughtfully gorged myself with curried lamb and buttered chapatis. The splendidly dressed doorman gave me his usual splendidly military salute in exchange for the shiniest half crown I could find in my pocket. Cheap at the price. When depressed, go and find someone to salute you.

Curry, in my small experience, makes women want to go to bed and make love; it just makes me want to go to bed and get the weight off my stomach. Curiously ponderous stuff, curry.

I carried my freight distressfully to bed and Jock brought me whisky and soda to cool the blood. I read Karl Popper’s
Poverty of Historicism
for a while then fell asleep to dream guilty, furtive dreams about Punjabi colonels in deerstalker hats.

The burglar alarm went off at 3 a.m. When we are at home this only takes the form of a low, whining noise, pitched at a menacing frequency, which sounds in both bedrooms, both bathrooms, the drawing room and Jock’s bog. It stops as soon as each of us has pressed a switch, so that we know we are both alert. I pressed my switch and it stopped immediately. I went to my post, which is an armchair in the darkest corner of my bedroom, after I had stuffed my bolster under the covers to simulate a sleeping Mortdecai. Above the armchair is a trophy of antique firearms, one of which is an 8-bore shotgun by Joe Manton, loaded with dust shot in the right-hand barrel, BB in the other. An old-fashioned bell pull below it releases the clamps which hold it to the wall. My job was to lurk there motionless, watching the
door and the windows. Jock, meantime, would have checked the bellboard to ascertain where the alarm had been triggered from, then stationed himself by the tradesmen’s door whence he could cut off retreats and, if necessary, follow an intruder upstairs to my room. I lurked, in a deadly silence broken only by my load of curry, which was churning about inside me like socks in a washing machine. It is very difficult to be frightened when you are gripping a loaded 8-bore shotgun but I managed it. This should not have been
happening
, you see.

After an eon or two the alarm made one brief peep, which was my signal to go downstairs. Sodden with funk, I crept down to the kitchen, where Jock stood naked and shadowy by the door, balancing an old 9-mm Luger in his hand. On the bellboard a violet light marked FRONT DOOR was still flickering frantically. With a couple of jerks of the head Jock outlined our tactics: I slid into the drawing room where I could cover lobby and front door, Jock silently drew the bolts of the tradesmen’s door. I heard him wrench it open and bound into the corridor – then he called me low and urgently. I ran through the dining room, into the kitchen, out of the door. Only Jock was in the corridor. I followed his stare to the lift indicator: it said ‘5’ – my floor. At that moment the lift motor growled and the ‘5’ flicked out and Jock hurtled to the stairhead and vanished downwards with scarcely a sound. You should have seen Jock in action – an intimidating sight, especially when naked, as then. I ran down half a flight until I could see into the well of the staircase: Jock had taken up a position on the ground floor, covering the lift doors. After a second or two he jumped up and vanished into the back regions; puzzled for a moment, I suddenly realized that the lift must have gone down into the basement. I galloped down, humpetty-dump, all fright forgotten now, and had reached the third floor when a glance at the indicator showed me that the lift was again rising. Up I fled again, arriving at the fifth floor sadly blown. The indicator had stopped at ‘3’. I slammed into the flat, stumbled through into the drawing room and knelt down beside the record-player console. A button inside it communicated with the ‘Set-A-Thief’ duty room – I yearned for those thugs. I didn’t press the button, for someone hit me at the base of the skull, just where my gin-ache still lingered. My chin hooked on to the edge of the console and there I hung awhile, feeling very silly. Then he hit
me again and I sank effortlessly through the floor, miles and miles and miles.

About a lifetime later I awoke, with great reluctance. Jock’s huge face hung moonlike over me, making worried noises. When I spoke, shattering echoes boomed and rattled through my poor head. I was filled with hatred and misery.

‘Did you kill him?’ I asked hungrily.

‘No, Mr Charlie. I waited at the bottom for a bit and the lift stopped at “3” and I waited a bit more then I tried the button and it came down empty so I went up in it to here and you weren’t outside so I went to the top of the stairs to see if I could see you and then I heard the lift going down again and I thought this could go on all bleeding night and I came in here looking for you and here you were and so I thought …’ I raised a hand feebly.

‘Stop,’ I said. ‘I cannot possibly follow all this at the moment. It makes my head hurt. Search the flat, lock the doors, get me to bed and find me the largest sleeping pill ever made. And get some clothes on, you idiot, you’ll catch your death.’

At this point I switched off C. Mortdecai as an individual and let the poor chap swim through the floor again, down to a sunless sea.

If anyone cut my throat after that, they were welcome.

Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech – (which I have not) – to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, ‘Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark’ – …
– E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop.

 

My Last Duchess

 

I very carefully levered up an eyelid and shut it again fast. A merciless sunbeam had squirted straight in, making my brain bleed.

Much later I tried again.

The sunshine had been smothered and Jock was hovering at the foot of my bed, wringing his hands. He was also carrying a tea tray, but I have the distinct impression that he was wringing the hands, too.

‘Go away,’ I whimpered. He set the tray down and poured a cup for me; it sounded, inside my poor head, like someone flushing a lavatory in an echo chamber. I whimpered a little more and turned away but Jock gently waggled my shoulder, murmuring, ‘Now now’ or ‘There there’ or words to that effect. I sat up to remonstrate with him – the action seemed to leave half my skull behind on the pillow. I felt the afflicted area gingerly: it was sort of spongy and squashy to the touch but to my surprise was not caked with blood. I decided
that had my skull been fractured I would not have woken up at all. Not that it seemed to matter that morning.

The tea was not my customary Lapsang or Oolong but Twining’s robuster Queen Mary’s Blend: shrewd Jock, he knew that a morning like this called for sterner stuff. I got the first cupful down, then Jock fed me two Alka-Seltzers (the
noise!
), two Beecham’s Powders and two dexedrines, in the order named, washing the whole collection down with a second cup of Queen Mary’s best and brightest. I shall never say another harsh word about that sainted woman.

Soon I became capable once more of rational thought, and rational thought urged me to go back to sleep at once. I sank down in the general direction of the pillows but Jock firmly scooped me up and balanced cups of tea all over me so that I dared not move.

‘There’s this tart been ringing up all day,’ he said, ‘says she’s that deputy secretary bloke’s secretary and it’s about your travel papers and you ought to get around there if you can stand and her gaffer’ll see you any time up to half past four. It’s three now, nearly.’

Creaking and grunting I hoisted myself to the surface.

‘Who do you think it was then last night, Mr Charlie?’

‘Not one of Martland’s lot, anyway,’ I answered. ‘They would have expected the full treatment like last time. Anything missing?’

‘Not that I can see.’

‘Well, they didn’t go to all that trouble just to sock me on the back of the head, that’s for certain.’

‘Could have just been an ordinary villain: hadn’t cased us proper, didn’t reckon on two of us, lost his head and buggered off a bit sharpish. He left this stuck in the front door lock, that’s why the alarm light kept on.’

‘This’ was a pocket calendar made of stiff celluloid, the size and shape of a playing card, bearing on the reverse an impassioned plea for the reader to drink someone’s Milk Stout. It would diddle open almost any sort of spring cylinder lock. It would be useless against my Chubb dead-lock with the phosphor-bronze rollers in the wards, and anyone who had spent even a week’s remedial training in Borstal would have known that. I didn’t like it. Raw novices do not try their prentice hands on fifth floor penthouse flats in Upper Brook Street.

I started to think about it for the first time and liked it less and less.

‘Jock,’ I said, ‘if we disturbed him while he was trying to celly the lock, why wasn’t he
there
when we disturbed him? And since he wasn’t there, how could he discover there were two of us? And if he’d given it up
before
you popped out, why did he leave a useful celly behind and why did he linger in the lift instead of, ah, buggering off a bit sharpish?’

Jock opened his mouth a bit to help him think. I could see that it hurt him.

‘Never mind,’ I said, kindly, ‘I know how you feel. Mine hurts too. It seems to me that the villain poked his celly into the lock just to trigger the alarm, then lay in wait in the lift. When you popped out, he popped down, to draw you away. Then up again to the third, knowing you would wait for him downstairs like a sensible chap; out of the lift and up to the fifth on foot, knowing that he could handle me alone. Having done so, he hears you arrive, hides behind a door and exits quietly while you are succouring the young master. The whole idea was to get me alone with the door open and you safely out of the way for a few minutes. What we need to wonder is not how, or even who, but why.’

‘Taking something …’

‘If so, it must have been something portable, easily found – because he can’t have expected much time – and something very important to make the risk worthwhile. Something recently arrived, too, probably, because there is a sort of impromptu aroma about the whole thing.’

‘ … or leaving something,’ Jock continued with remorseless logic.

I jumped, making my headache rear up and smite me. It was a nasty thought, that one.

‘What on earth would anyone want to leave here?’ I squeaked, dreading the answer.

‘Well, like a bug,’ said Jock. ‘Or a couple of ounces of heroin, enough to put you inside for twelve munce. Or say arf a pound of plastic explosive …’

‘I am going back to bed,’ I said firmly. ‘I want no part of any of this. Nobody ordered bombs.’

‘No, Mr Charlie, you got to go to this assistant secretary geezer. I’ll nip round to the garage and fetch the big jam jar.’

‘What, and leave me alone in a flat
sown
with Teller mines?’ I wailed.

But he was gone. Grumbling bitterly I climbed into a random assortment of gents’ wear and crept through the flat and downstairs. Nothing exploded under my feet.

Jock was awaiting me at street level in the Rolls and as a special treat for me he was wearing his chauffeur’s cap. When we arrived at the Ministry he even jumped out and opened the door for me; he knew it would cheer me up, bless him.

Do you know, I honestly can’t remember which Ministry it was; this was soon after the Wilson administration, you see, and you remember how he muddled them all up and changed all the names. They say that there are still a few lorn civil servants haunting the pavements of Whitehall like ghosts, plucking at strangers’ sleeves and begging to be told the way to the Ministry of Technological Integration. Their salaries keep on coming, of course, because of Giro, but what really hurts them most is that their Ministries haven’t
missed
them yet.

Be that as it may, Jock left me at this Ministry and various super young men passed me through door after door – each young man more beautifully dressed, each door heavier and silenter than the last – until I was alone with L.J. Crouch. I had fortified myself against a sort of English Colonel Blucher but nothing could have been further from the facts. A great, jolly, big-boned, straw-haired chap lowered his boots from a well-chewed desk and lumbered to meet me, beaming merrily.

‘Ha!’ he roared, ‘Capital! Glad to see you on your feet, young feller! Best thing after a crunch – get up and charge about.
Nil illegitimis carborundum
, eh? Don’t let the bastards wear you down!’

I tittered feebly and sank into the fat leather armchair he indicated. Cigars, whisky and soda were conjured into my listless hands while I gazed around me. The furniture, unmistakably, came from a better class vicarage: all well made but sort of trodden on. In front of me, above his chair, sixty rat-faced boys squinted and goggled at me from a prep school group photograph; above them hung a piece of an Eights oar, splintered and charred and bearing the colours of St. Edmund Hall. In a corner sat an old brass naval
shell-case, crammed with stout sticks and fencing foils of the old butterfly-hilted
fleuret
pattern. Two walls were hung with early English watercolours of the good, drab, bluish kind. Nothing is more tedious, as Sir Karl Parker used to say, than an early English watercolour – unless it be a
faded
early English watercolour. But I cut my business teeth on them and always hold them in respect.

‘Know about watercolours?’ asked Crouch, following my gaze.

‘A bit,’ I said, looking him straight in the eye. ‘You have a J. M. W. Turner of the Loire which can’t be right because the original is in the Ashmolean; a magnificent Callow of about 1840; a Farington which needs cleaning; a polychrome James Bourne – rare, those; a Peter de Wint hayfield with a repainted sky; an excellent John Sell Cotman; a pair of rather flashy Varleys from his last period; a Payne which was reproduced in
Connoisseur
before the war; a Rowlandson which Sabine had for sale in about 1940; a Francis Nicholson of Scarborough all faded pink – he
would
use indigo; a valuable Cozens and the finest Edridge I have ever seen.’

‘My word,’ he said. ‘Full marks, Mortdecai. I see you know about watercolours.’

‘Can’t resist showing off,’ I said sheepishly. ‘Just a knack, really.’

‘Mind you, the Edridge was sold me as a Girtin.’

‘They always are,’ I said simply.

‘Well, come on, what’ll you give me for the lot?’

A dealer has to get used to this sort of thing. I used to take offence once upon a time, before I learned the value of money.

‘Two thousand, two hundred and fifty,’ I said, still looking him straight in the eye. He was startled.

‘Pounds?’

‘Guineas,’ I replied. ‘Naturally.’

‘God bless my soul. I stopped buying years ago, when the dear old Walker Galleries closed. I knew prices had gone up but …’

‘The prices of these will be going down unless you get them out of this sunny room. They’ve taken about as much fading as they’ll stand.’

Ten minutes later he took my cheque with trembling fingers. I let him keep the Nicholson in exchange for an Albert Goodwin which had been hanging in the cloakroom. His outer door opened a fraction and closed again with a respectful click. He started like a guilty thing and looked at the clock. It was 4.30: he was going to
miss his train. So were his beautiful young men, if he didn’t look sharp.

‘Repeat after me,’ he said briskly, pulling a grubby piece of card from a desk drawer, ‘I, Charlie Strafford Van Cleef Mortdecai, a true and loyal servant of Her Britannic Majesty, do solemnly swear …’

I gaped at the man. Was he doubting my cheque?

‘Come on,’ he said, ‘cough it up, old chap.’

I coughed it up, line by line, swearing to be a faithful carrier of Her Majesty’s messages within and without her realms notwithstanding, heretofore, whatsoever and so help me God. Then he gave me a little jeweller’s box with a rummy-looking silver dog inside, a document starting ‘We, Barbara Castle, request and require’ and a thin, red leather folder stamped in gold with the words ‘Court of St. James’s.’ I signed things until my hand ached.

‘Don’t know what it’s all about and don’t want to,’ he kept saying as I signed. I respected his wishes.

The young men shunted me out, glaring at me for making them miss their trains. Creatures of habit, of course. Couldn’t stand the life myself.

Martland was parked on a double yellow line outside, pulling rank on a brace of traffic wardens; in another moment he would have been telling them to get their hair cut. He waved me crossly into his awful basketwork Mini and took me to the American Embassy, where a mild, bored man spattered my new papers with State Department seals and wished me a vurry, vurry happy visit to the US of A. Then back to the flat, where I gave Martland a drink and he gave me a wallet-load of airline tickets, freight vouchers and the like, also a typed list of timetables, names and procedures. (Codswallop, all of it, that last lot.) He was silent, sulky preoccupied. He said it wasn’t he that had had me turned over the night before, and he didn’t much care who had. On the other hand he didn’t seem particularly surprised: more vexed, really. I suspected that he was beginning to suspect, with me, that the tangled web we weave was starting to get our knickers in a twist. Like me, he may have been wondering who, after all, was manipulating whom.

‘Charlie,’ he said ponderously, his hand on the door knob, ‘if you are by any chance conning me over that Goya picture, or if you let me down over this Krampf matter, I shall have to have
you done, you realize that, don’t you? In fact I may have to do it anyway.’

I invited him to feel the back of my head, which felt like a goitre which had lost its sense of direction, but he refused in an offensive way. He slammed the door when he went out and my cosh-ache reverberated.