Кирил Бонфильоли - The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery

‘Kitchen, your Grace.’

‘Bring me some. I’ll see this gentleman to his carriage.’

‘Goodnight, Duke,’ I said.

‘I say, do call me Freddie,’ he said petulantly, as though I were being haughty to him.

‘Goodnight, Freddie.’

‘Goodnight, sir,’ he rejoined.

As we drew up to the gates of Scone, I passed a suitable gratuity to the chauffeur. He saluted as he opened the door for me.

‘By the way,’ I said, ‘does his Grace keep a water-bailiff?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight, sir.’

There were lights burning in the Senior Common Room; I telephoned from the Porter’s Lodge and told them to send over a bottle of very good Scotch to my rooms. My bed had been made and the fluffy pink piggy-wig night-dress-case was in residence on my pillow. I went to the door and dropped the odious gewgaw down the stairwell, so that it would come to rest outside the scout’s pantry, for I was in the high-handed mood of one who has just called a Duke by his Christian name.

‘One of our better Dukes,’ was my last waking thought.

Chaps who have sipped with Dukes often forget to put their names down for a cup of tea in bed the next morning; this is common knowledge. I had forgotten to take this important step the night before and Turner, the scout, had not shown any initiative in the matter – perhaps he had been unnerved at finding his pantry threshold cumbered with fluffy pink piggy-wigs, who knows? At any rate, I awoke at my wonted hour quite tealess. Showered and shaven and unpretentiously clad, I shuffled over to the Senior Common Room, there to cajole a belated breakfast from an iron-faced steward. I still waken in the night, quaking with horror at the recollection of that breakfast: warm orange juice and cool coffee, dry scrambled eggs and damp toast – but words fail me. I suspect the iron-faced chap was trying to hint, ever so delicately, that breakfast is not served after 9.30. My heart bled for my fellow Fellows; what hardships the wretches endure in the cause of learning, to be sure.

Not daring to ask for some healing brandy, I hastened back to Bronwen’s set for a jolt of whisky to pacify my enraged stomach, then called on the Domestic Bursar, a genial old sea-dog who had scraped through to the rank of Rear Admiral without losing any actual ships and had taken an early retirement while he was still ahead of the game. He was reticent about Bronwen and a little wary of me – clearly, he was not au fait with the inwardness of it all – so I started again, by flashing the Warden’s letter or ukase. When he did unpadlock his ditty-bag, he proved to be a mine of what might prove to be useful information. Bronwen, it seemed, when she first reported aboard, was in receipt of a stingily-endowed Fellowship, some teaching fees, a books-allowance of £40 per term, and the proceeds of eight University lectures, also per t. She had given every sign of subsisting on this income (which totalled per annum rather less than what a diligent dock-hand could make in a month); she wore the same baggy garments week in, week out, took all her meals in College, never tipped College servants at the end of term and rarely took shore-leave. At the beginning of the term before this one, however, the winter of her discontent seemed to have given way to a hint of spring; she was seen in a new tweed coat-and-skirt, acquired a small motorcar on the instalment plan and spent lavishly at Blackwell’s book-shop. Latterly she had taken to having nice little dinners sent up to her rooms, and wines and spirits began to figure on her battels. ‘And I remember the Dean of Degrees saying,’ he said finally, ‘that she had discussed with him a notion of taking a Sabbatical next term, visiting Poland and, er, that sort of place.’ (He’d know about Poland because of its port of Gdansk – the other countries presumably had no coasts. Bohemia sprang to mind.)

‘Thank you, Bursar,’ I said in a brisk and seamanlike voice, ‘that was most lucid, very helpful.’

‘I see you’re to be mustered as a temporary Fellow; mind if I ask …?’

Well, I couldn’t say it was confidential, could I, that’s the surest way to attract attention and Rear Admirals are noted for their tittle-tattle and scuttlebutt, so I mumbled something about in-depth sociological on-going consensuses and gathering material for published work etc. This soon dampened his curiosity; he did not seem a bookish old sea-dog, probably spent his evenings curled up with an Admiralty Chart of the Falkland Islands. Or curled up like an Admiralty Chart, beside his torpid old sea-bitch.

For my part, I needed no charts; I set all plain sail for the shark-infested straits between Christ Church and Pembroke, on whose cruel rocks many a stout sea-don has left his whitened bones; then, dipping through the tropics by the palm-green shores of the Memorial Garden, I pitched up at the Police Station, where an Able-Bodied Sergeant piloted me to the Detective Chief Inspector’s state-room.

A thick, hairy chap wearing thick, hairy tweeds rose from behind a telephone-encrusted desk and offered me a thick, hairy hand to shake. His manner was amiable – quite unlike the manner of the common copper of commerce.

‘Sermon,’ he said in a matey voice.

‘Eh?’ I said – for it was barely noon, not a time at which the brain is nimble.

‘Sermon, Albert H., Detective Chief Inspector,’ he explained. His voice kept its mateyness; he seemed to understand, from his wide knowledge of rats of the underworld, that some chaps are not at their brightest in the grey light of dawn.

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Mortdecai.’

‘Eh?’ he said, his merry eyes twinkling intelligently. I pulled myself together.

‘No, not “A,” sort of more “C” really,’ I twinkled back. He beamed, moving his lips soundlessly as though memorising our little exchange for relating at the next Police Smoker. I could see that he and I were going to get on, that was clear.

‘Now, Mr Mortdecai, I must ask you to do a bit of swearing.’ I thought about this, shrugged a mental shoulder and offered a sample.

‘ Bugger ?’ I offered diffidently. He liked that very much, filed it away happily. Then he drew out a piece of printed card and told me to raise my right hand. I twigged, for I had been through this sketch at the outset of my brief and inglorious career as Queen’s Messenger. I, Charlie Strafford van Cleef Mortdecai, therefore, did thereby solemnly swear to keep the peace in Her Majesty’s Realms, to do this and that and to eschew the other. Oh yes, and I understood the Provisions of the Official Secrets Act and its Amendments, all of which had been read to me. I lowered the hand.

‘Thank you, Inspector,’ he said. I whirled around but found the office quite void of Inspectors.

‘Inspector Mortdecai , I should have said. Here’s your warrant-card, as per his Grace’s instructions – and, may I say, with my hearty concordance and best wishes for a mutually profitable corroboration. Don’t suppose you’ve a spare passport photo?’

‘Sorry. And, in any case, I haven’t had one taken since, ah …’ I gestured towards the ‘fring’d pool, fern’d grot’ on my lip, ‘… it’s still rather young, you understand, too early to take it from its mother, really.’

‘Not at all, a fine, sturdy growth I call it.’ He pressed a buzzer and addressed one of his telephones. ‘Artist. Now.’

The policeman who entered wore the pinched, bitter expression of an artist who had to wear his hair shorn to regulation length.