Кирил Бонфильоли - The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery

Precedence, protocol and pecking-order thus established, he parted the rich draperies from his mouth (the ungarnished mouth disappointed; it was pink and petite, quite unworthy of its princely pelmet) and uttered.

‘Ah,’ he said with his mouth. ‘You are Mr er ah um, what?’

‘Just so, Professor. Very kind of you to remember me.’

‘And you were up here at Scone, were you not, in er ah um …?’

‘Yes.’ He pretended to make a note in his journal and, who knows, perhaps he did. I warned myself not to take him too readily for a cloth-head, bluffing his way through academic life by virtue of a moustache; there are people of a certain kind of brilliance who choose to defend themselves against merely clever people by radiating daftness. Brilliant people never have to worry about their abilities: it is not the kind of thing we – sorry, I mean they – ever question. Daft people are like them in this respect. It is only the merely clever chaps like you and me who munch our fingernails to the quick, agonising over their placing in the 1 to 10 scale from ‘smart-arse’ to ‘Vice-Presidential material’ (that’s reading downwards, of course, from top to bottom).

‘You’ll take a glass of sherry, won’t you, Mr er ah um, eh?’

I agreed that his forecast was correct. He rummaged for sherry without enthusiasm and unabashedly confessed – or pretended – that he could find none. I fumbled with my cigarettes and lighter in an enquiring sort of way but this was met with a flat glare of such malevolence that cigarette-case and lighter seemed to leap back into my pocket as though of their own volition. He then proceeded to ignite, with every sign of extravagant relish, the foulest-smelling pipe I have ever sat across a desk from, and huffed and chuffed vile fumes across at me so vehemently that his great moustache cracked and snapped like a ring-master’s whip. I am a man of much humility, as you must by now have guessed, and in my time I have been put down by far more hateful Professors of Greek Palaeography – aye, and of Ancient History, too – but I confess I was ashamed that my moustache should have had to witness such a second humiliation.

The incivilities completed, I proffered the interleaved Lexicon , which he accepted between knobbly fingertips as though it were the corpse of some small, inedible animal, rich in fleas.

‘Beastly binding,’ he grunted after a while, ‘what they used to call “ecclesiastical calf,” blind-tooled, with Oxford corners.’ Well, I knew that. ‘Printed at Leyden in 1845; bound and interleaved in Oxford some thirty years later.’ I could have told him that, too, for I read print like a native, but I held my tongue. ‘Not of the least value to a collector, nor as a reference work, but I daresay a bookseller would give you a pound for it.’ I went on holding the tongue but the effort was great.

You must have come across those sad smokers who put their spent matches back into the box. They rationalise about it, mouthing rare words like ‘ecology’ but any psychiatrist worth his gestalt knows jolly well that it is a symbolic hoarding of the faeces and that the hoarder, fumbling amongst the grotty detritus to find an unused match, derives an intense if unconscious pleasure from this dirtying of the fingers. ‘Ah, well,’ is what I say, or sometimes, ‘whatever turns you on,’ but what I am saying now is that Prof. Weiss, as he began to leaf through the book, gave a wonderful imitation of a cleanly smoker who has borrowed a box of matches from one of the above.

‘Hmmm,’ he hmmmed, after conning a few of the early interleaves, ‘ hmmm. Evidently some diligent but unpromising young Grecian wrote these postilla , the sort of boy who used to come here to Scone because he was afraid of Balliol. I’ve seen hundreds of them, hundreds; at the end of their first term I usually advise them to change over to one of these new, bogus disciplines. English Literature or Sociology or something of that sort.’ He closed the book with a snap.

‘Well, good day to you, Mr er ah um; won’t you have a little more wine? No? Must you go? Can’t you stay? Such a shame; I was enjoying our little chat.’

Look, I really do have the greatest respect for my elders and academic betters; reverentia is meat and drink to me. On the other hand, I had eaten quite enough shit for one afternoon, especially since I was committed to dining at High Table later on.

‘Professor Weiss,’ I said, gently but crisply, ‘if you will be good enough to lift the domestic telephone which I see beside your right elbow and ask the Lodge to connect you with the Warden, he will assure you that I have not called to waste your time discussing the second-hand book market but to enlist your help in a matter of grave concern to the College. Or perhaps you will take my word for this? You will? Good. Then pray be so kind as to cast your eye over the manuscript passage which begins where I have inserted a large, readily-visible book-marker which I am sure you cannot have failed to notice. What I need is a quick construe. Graecum est, non legitur , you see.’

He blinked, rose to his feet and unerringly found a bottle of San Patricio Fino and filled two rare and beautiful glasses. Then he put on some stronger spectacles and began to scan the ball-pointed interleaves.

‘τάδε γράφω περì τοῦ βίου µου φοβούµενος,’ he began lucidly. ‘ “ I write this in fear of my life ” is what is meant I imagine, but βίος is quite the wrong word, don’t you know, it means life as in biography; now ζώης would be all right, as in zoology. What comes next? άνιστορῶν γαρ ŏπου ούχ ἒχρην – “ making enquiries where I should not ” – ᾰγαν φανερòς γέγονα – “ I have become too conspicuous ” – well, yes, that’s clear enough but not very elegantly put – τῷ 77844 προσέχων τòν νοῦν – “ while applying myself to 77844 ” – though I must say I don’t care for that asyndeton – ἒξ απροσδοκήτου µεµάθηκα – “ I have unexpectedly learnt ” – πῶς ἄρα ἐ φονεύθησαν οί ἐν 548923, καì άνθρωπον εὒρηκα περισωθέντα – “ how the people at 548923 were massacred; and I have found a survivor. ” ’

He sucked in a mouthful of sherry, patted dry his wine-soaked moustache, drew a gurgle from his egregious pipe, cleared his throat and made, with some reluctance, as though to continue. One might have thought he was playing for time; it certainly gave me time to think: pennies dropped, bells rang and sirens screamed in my craven brainpan. I leapt to my feet and snatched the dangerous vol. from his hands as courteously as one can snatch vols from the hands of Professors of Greek Palaeography; nor did I stand upon the order of my going.

‘Thanks awfully,’ I gibbered, ‘sorry to waste your time, do forgive me, clearly someone earning a little pin-money writing trashy thrillers, wouldn’t you say? Eh? Delicious sherry, how kind, silly of me, shouldn’t have taken up your valuable wine – time , I mean – most kind …’

He peered at me thoughtfully through spectacle-lenses as thick and obscure as boiled sweets. As I eyed the eyes behind them, which floated like dead goldfish in bowls, I remembered that I had forgotten that he had to be a great deal brainier than me.

‘No,’ he said, ‘it is you who are kind. I should very much have disliked to read any more of this “thriller,” as you are pleased to call it. Certain ah, extra-mural work I did during the War impressed on me vividly that one’s expectation of life is greatly increased by suppressing any curiosity about matters outside one’s own field. The heroine of your thriller seems to have learned this lesson too late, wouldn’t you say?’ I mumbled something as I edged towards the door.