Кирил Бонфильоли - The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery

‘Ah, Dennis!’ I said.

‘Oh, Christ!’ he said. ‘You again.’

‘No no no, quite wrong, this is not the Second Coming, merely C. Mortdecai. Look, Dennis, you remember that slim vol. in binding of a certain colour which you showed me that time we got sloshed at luncheon? Oh do stop groaning; just take a squint at it and let me have the meaning of a couple of groups of numbers, eh?’

When bank cashiers grow up into bank managers there is a sort of rite de passage , part of which is having to take a kind of Hippocrytic Oath that they will never use expressions ending with the word ‘off’ to customers. I fancy I tried him sorely on this occasion. Choking back his spleen, he told me in a level voice that I knew perfectly well he could do no such thing.

I said that I quite understood and that I’d enjoyed our chat and had he seen our mutual chum Oakesy of late. He understood: I swear I could hear the sound of a moustache being chewed. Our mutual chum Oakesy, you see, is a bank inspector by trade.

Someone once said that if you whispered ‘all is known’ into the ear of, let us say, an American Cardinal, he would hastily pack a few pyxes and monstrances into a bag, don false whiskers and call at the nearest travel agency. Your actual bank manager is subject to similar, if lesser, qualms. Bank inspectors are rather like the Police Force’s ‘Rubber Heels,’ indeed they share the same motto: ‘ Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes ,’ which I have heard variously rendered as ‘We Cop the Coppers’ or ‘We Tell on the Tellers.’ They hunt in couples: the junior inspector receives a telephone call at 8 a.m., telling him to meet a senior ditto at, say, Ealing Broadway Underground station as soon as may be. They meet; they solemnly initial a sealed envelope and open it. Inside there is a slip of paper saying, perhaps, ‘Market Street, Eastbourne.’

At HQ, meantime, the Despatcher of Inspectors is cackling hatefully as he cuddles his Bradshaw’s Railway Guide , for the train the inspectors will catch at Victoria has a restaurant car but it is too late for what British Rail jestingly calls “breakfast” and too early for a life-giving drink. Heh, heh! At Eastbourne, they stamp into the bank’s Market Street branch, flourishing many a dread credential and reciting an Ogden Nash-like poem which goes after this fashion:

Keys,

Please.

Then they glance swiftly around to observe which cashier has gone green about the gills, which teller is slipping his pocket-money back into the petty-cash box and feeding the racing pages of the Daily Mirror into the shredding-machine, which assistant manager is sidling out in the general direction of Gatwick Airport. Although I have never, thank God, been engaged in the banking trade, my very stomach heaves in empathy with those venal varlets.

If it comes to that, I shouldn’t much care to be an American Cardinal, either.

What I am trying to get around to saying is that the very mention of our friend Oakesy’s name sorted out the thinking-processes of my friend Dennis almost instantly. He expressed an urge to ring me back in ten minutes but was my telephone secure ? I made it so: the usual gaggle of ladies past the prime of life was glaring and gibbering into the booth; I dropped the two little stink-bombs, scrunched them underfoot and emerged, smiling sheepishly and examining the soles of my shoes, as one who fears he may have stepped in a pile of Sunday newspapers.

My little ruse worked; when I returned to the booth or kiosk ten minutes later there were no other clients. When the instrument said ‘ dring, dring ’ I clapped a hankie to the nose, entered, and was tersely told that the prefixes I had cited were those of (a) the Fetter Lane branch of the Narodny Bank of Moscow and (b) a private sort of bank which concerned itself exclusively with the cash-flow of the F. Xavier Kleiglight University of South Wichita, Kansas, USA.

‘Spray that again, Dennis,’ I said, ‘I think some of it went down my shirt-front.’ He spelled the words out, then hung up without a friendly word.

My feet found their own way back to Scone, for I was wrapt in thought until I was awakened by Fred the Head Porter saying ‘Horses, sir?’ I realised that I was standing in the gateway arch, muttering ‘Whitehall Moabites, Moscow banks, Bronwen Fellworthys, Kleiglight Universities’ while ticking these off on a finger apiece, hoping that this would help me to see what they had in common.

‘No, Fred,’ I replied absently, ‘not horses.’ Like a flash he whipped out a newspaper, saying:

‘In that case, Mr Mortdecai, I’ll let you in on—’

‘Stop it, Fred, I beg you. Here’s a couple of quid, back the wretched slug of your selection for me, but do not tell me its ill-omened name; your horses are always too polite for my taste.’

‘How d’you mean, sir?’

‘I mean they always courteously usher the rest of the field towards the post.’

He was not hurt; you can’t hurt chaps like Fred.

I was half-way across the Front Quadrangle when I remembered, pirouetted through 180° and retraced my steps to the Lodge.

‘Fred,’ I said to Fred. ‘About those two men in the White Horse.’ He compressed his lips, shook his head.

‘Sorry, sir, never heard of them. Warden’s orders. Never saw no two men.’ I flashed the Warden’s letter of credence. He decompressed the lips.

‘Describe them, Fred.’

‘Big, heavy buggers. Almost twins. Looked like fuzz but not quite, like. Grey hats. Pale eyes.’

‘Fair hair? Ill-cut clothes? Like Russians?’

‘Never seen them with their hats off. Big, heavy coats, neat but not what you’d call fashionable. Talked a bit odd, p’r’aps, but you get all sorts here, as you know; bad as Balliol. Only Russian we got here is young Mr Ivanov and he speaks better English nor what I do. When he’s sober; he’s mostly pissed – we call him “ I’ve enough ,” har har.’

‘Har har, jolly good. What did they call each other, d’you remember? Not, for instance, “Basil” or “Tovarich” or “Piotr Alekseivitch” etc.?’

‘Well now, that’s funny, Mr Mortdecai, now I come to think on it I can’t recolleck they ever called each other nothing. Not as I can recolleck, no. Funny, that.’

‘But interesting, eh? Well, let me know if you remember anything else, even if it doesn’t seem important, eh?’

I was half-way across the Quad again when I remembered again. This time I hailed a cruising undergraduate and asked him to point me towards the Junior Dean. He in turn hailed another, as follows:

‘Hoy, Angus, where does Little Noddy keep his pot?’

‘XIV.’

‘Staircase XIV,’ relayed the first. ‘That’s over there, the one after XIII but before XV.’ I thanked him courteously.

‘My pleasure, Uncle,’ he replied. That was another puzzle for me as I paced Junior Dean-wards; the youth cannot have seriously thought me his uncle, could he? I mean, my brother has neither chick nor child and I never had a sister of my own; although I’ve had a few other chaps’ sisters, now I come to think of it.

Little Noddy proved to be a costive little booby with a bad case of blepharism and other tics: clearly addicted to the Solitary Vice. That was probably just as well, for he did not strike me as one to win the heart of a fair lady, to name but one sex. His breath vied with his feet as atmospheric pollutants. More to the point, he was a brimming beaker of non-information about the two men who had given him the receipt for whatever they had taken from Bronwen’s rooms. Ten minutes of eager spluttering boiled down to the fact that he was pretty certain that there were two of them, and of the male gender. He showed me the receipt, which read ‘Received of Scone College one case and contents.’ The signature, as Dryden had assured me, was quite illegible. The date showed the number of the month before the day, which might be construed as non-British. Which reminded me: