Кирил Бонфильоли - The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery

No, if you want an opinion on Jesuit matters, you do not pop over to the nearest Jesuit, you pop over to the nearest Dominican, which is precisely where I was popping. The lay-brother who squinted at me through the grille didn’t at all like the look of me until I opened my mackintosh and gave him a flash of my dinner-jacket, saying that I was an old pupil of Brother Lucas. Then he really hated me, for dinner-jackets are Worldly, you see, and Br Lucas is a world-wide authority on medieval heraldry, revered by one and all, and a notorious pain in the arse. The lay-brother admitted that Vespers were over and I made my way to Br Lucas’s cell, which was pretty cosy as cells go. He didn’t have to call me ‘Mr er ah um;’ Bros call you ‘my son’ if they can’t remember your name.

‘Fr,’ I said courteously (for you don’t call them ‘Br’ unless you’re a Br yourself), ‘I derived so much pleasure and profit from your seminar on the Heraldry of Augmentations in er ah um that I feel emboldened to draw upon your learning in two slight matters.’

‘Go on, my son,’ he murmured, ignoring the bottle of vodka which had slipped from my pocket onto his priedieu. (Well they are a mendicant order, aren’t they; they’re forbidden to indulge in stinking pride.) I said that my first problem concerned the ‘tierced in pairle reversed’ of the von Haldermanstettens: a famous heraldic crux which I hoped would give him a happy ten minutes of pedantry. He dried up after six minutes so I tickled him up by asking wilily why or and argent were juxtaposed in those arms, contrary to all the laws of blazonry. He revived, expounded lavishly. I snoozed with my eyes open. So can snakes. Then I hit him with the other question.

‘I was thinking,’ I said coyly, ‘of writing a little piece for a popular magazine about the difficult task H.H. Pope Pius XII had when it looked as though the Axis powers were certain to win World War II.’ His eyelids drooped sleepily. When a Dominican’s eyes droop sleepily it means that the Dominican is very wide awake indeed; even I know that.

‘To be frank, Fr,’ I went on awkwardly, ‘the sort of fee I’m offered by the magazine does not warrant my doing a lot of research, you understand, and I’m told that, in fact, all the relevant documents were published in 1966.’ He made a fat, happy noise, like a Pursuivant on a bend sinister.

‘Edited by the Jesuits?’ I murmured delicately.

‘ “Edited” is an excellent word,’ he murmured back. I cleared my throat.

‘Would you advise me to study this collection? In particular, would I find in it all the Polish diplomatic memoranda to the Vatican concerning, well, for instance, liquidation of Jews?’ He seemed to have fallen asleep. When Dominicans seem to have fallen asleep, even the hardiest Jesuit climbs the nearest tree and pulls it up after him. I waited, my hands folded in my lap to conceal the fact that I had crossed a pair of fingers.

‘Tell me,’ he murmured drowsily, ‘what does Flavius Josephus, that meticulous gossip-writer, tell us about Our Saviour?’

‘Why, nothing,’ I said. ‘It is a puzzling omission.’ He nodded.

‘And what does the New Testament tell us about Our Saviour’s life from puberty until His early thirties?’

‘Nothing,’ I said again, puzzledly.

‘And what, in the Sherlock Holmes story of Silver Blaze , was the significance of the dog that barked in the night?’

‘The fact that the dog did not bark, Fr,’ I said patiently. ‘But now, touching on this matter of the 1966 Acts and Documents … oh, yes, sorry, your point is taken. The old argumentum a silentio , what? Oh dear. Quite. Yes. Well, thanks awfully, Fr. Goodnight.’

He waved a benign brace of fingers at me and was piously approaching the prie-dieu before I was out of the door.

Furiously was how I mused on my way back across the Quadrangle to the late Bronwen’s set. This musing may not have been what P.G. Wodehouse would have described as ‘all to the gravy’ but it was just gravid enough to give me sufficient sense to call at the Porter’s Lodge, stuff the Shorter Greek Lexicon into an envelope addressed to one Col. Blucher at the US Embassy, London, and tell Fred to post it in two days unless I collected it beforehand – in person and unaccompanied. I asked him to repeat these instructions and, when he had them word-perfect, I released the captive pound note which flirted coyly between my thumb and forefinger.

How strange are the workings of Providence, to be sure! As I mounted the staircase to Bronwen’s rooms, not a single electric lightbulb was in action – but then, they never are in the better class of College, are they? Nonetheless, there was something not actually wrong, but sort of not quite right; I could feel it in me water, as Jock would say. I am zonk-prone, you see: people are forever zonking me with blunt instruments, sometimes on the base of the skull, sometimes behind the ear; they never tire of it, I know not why.

Look, I think it is only fair I should set out for the innocent reader the limits and parameters of my idiocy and cowardice, those two heaven-sent gifts which help a chap survive into what I choose to call early middle age. Reader, are you over the age of eight? Good. Then you must at some time have found yourself embroiled in some frightful catastrophe, such as an outbreak of fire in a theatre. Being the shrewd and sturdy chap that you must be (having pursued my simple narrative so far), you will have observed that in such an imbroglio three distinct kinds of idiot can be seen by the naked eye.

First; the staunch, officer-type idiot (usually sporting one of those absurd little moustaches which – unlike some I could name – are scarcely worth the mulching) who leaps onto a seat and in staunch, officer-type tones, commands everyone to keep calm, stay in their seats and on no account to panic.

Second; the idiots who listen to him, keep calm, stay in their seats and get incinerated.

Third; the idiots who, seeing no survival value in keeping calm and not panicking, rush to the exit and get trampled to death. Unless they happen to be among the leaders at the exit.

I am happy to say that I belong to this third class of idiot and, being pretty fleet of foot for my age, have always contrived to be placed amongst the first three out of the exit. I’m not saying that this is altogether creditable, nor that my mummy would have approved, but I am alive, am I not? Perhaps this is a good thing. I’m sure my life insurance company thinks so although again, my mummy might raise an objection, not to mention an eyebrow.

What I’m leading up to in my diffident sort of way is that when the Mortdecai second sense – no, I don’t mean sixth sense, I was never a braggart – when, I say, the M. second sense tells me that large, rough men are about to bonk me on my valuable skull, I tend prudently to trip away in an opposite direction and a rapid, silent fashion.

So Mortdecai, the portly survivor, marched briskly past the oak – that’s Oxford for outer door – of Bronwen’s rooms and audibly began to turn the next turn and mount the next flight of the staircase. How clever I was, to be sure. The flat of an overdeveloped foot met my chest firmly and in no time I was on my back, precisely at Bronwen’s oak. Someone of great strength raised me courteously to my feet, supported my neck with the inside of his elbow and barked the word ‘Shoddop!’ in my left ear. With a delicate tact of which Jock himself would be proud, he persuaded me to hand over my keys.