Кирил Бонфильоли - The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery

‘Shoddop,’ he said. I fell silent, not out of any spirit of obedience but because I was busy spitting out a loosened tooth. I had a distinct sense of déjà vu. I daresay, now I come to think of it, the limousine’s carpet had the same feeling.

‘You will now be good, yes?’

Well, I suppose that, had I been a 100% true-born Englishman, I’d have said, ‘I defy you to do your damnedest, you dastard,’ or, even bravelier, ‘I should like to telephone the British Consul, please;’ but dentistry is so costly nowadays that what I actually said was:

‘Yes.’

In a last flicker of defiance I added the word ‘comrade.’ He didn’t hit me again; what he did do was nestle that terrifying pistol between my thighs – high up between my thighs – and smile at me. The smile was daunting enough, for most of his teeth were of stainless steel, but the pistol-barrel really bothered me. You see, dying from the blast of a .44 Magnum in what you probably like to think of as your brain is but the work of a moment, whereas the same muzzle-velocity released where the said .44’s muzzle was nuzzling would, arguably, have caused me acute discomfort and I’m just British enough to dislike screaming in front of foreigners. Moreover, it might well have taken me quite five minutes to die.

I arranged a polite expression onto the side of my face which had not yet been pistol-whipped.

‘Talk,’ he said.

Well, I talked, of course. You, who are brave, might not have talked so freely so soon but I, who am worldly-wise, knew perfectly well that at just ten minutes’ drive away there was a place where Mr Vitaly Fedorchuk and his lads can make the strongest man whimper for his mummy and his teddy bear inside an hour – with not a mark on his skin. Or his memory. So I talked while the talking was good; that is to say, while I was still cunning and fit enough to lie capably. It seemed to me that if I were sufficiently plausible they would not think it worth making an international scandal by giving me the warm bath business in Lubianka or whatever it’s called.

Russian words were exchanged and the car drew up beside the road; the comradely driver came and sat in the back seat with us. He gave me a strong brown paper bag to be sick into: they know about things like that. Then I told them everything. Yes, every scrap, for I am a coward, as I never tire of admitting; it seems to keep me alive. Well, in my blabbing I did perhaps make a couple of what my underpaid schoolmasters used to call ‘deliberate mistakes:’ I foolishly said that it was Professor Weiss who had the Greek manuscript (well, I couldn’t get my friend Tom Cadbury into trouble, could I?) and, when I related what I said I thought I seemed to remember of the narrative, I fancy I got the various Great Powers mixed up a bit; but who (as the lady said when she offered her guest the fifth Künzl Fancy Cake) is counting?

Curiously, they seemed quite satisfied. Did I want to catch a plane?

‘ Spats yeh bo !’ I said, in impeccable Russian. ‘ Da ,’ I added, doubling my vocabulary.

Then would I care to sign this document saying that I had caught my poor face in a revolver? I stared at them. The one who spoke English made English gestures suggesting a revolving door. I looked at the document. It might have been in, well, Greek for all I knew. ‘ Nyet ,’ I said bravely, playing my third card. My accent must have been good, for they understood me perfectly.

This time they did not hurt me much, and soon we agreed that I should write just such a legal waiver in impeccable English. I did so. I must have been a little tired, for my signature, although quite like enough to that on my passport to fool benighted Bolshies who read and write in Kyrillic, would not have fooled my bank manager for an instant. He’s been fooled by experts, you see. Often.

My two inquisitors, leaving not a rack behind, did not drop me off at the Metropole but at the airport. I hate to disappoint you, but the truth is that, with the aid of Col. Blucher’s impressive documents and even more impressive traveller’s cheques, in a few hours I was speeding homewards, with only one black eye and one missing tooth. More to my comfort, the speeding homewards was being done in a British Airways aircraft. As I entered this homeward-bound machine a smiling British stewardess, with one of those false smiles which only the British can do properly, gave me a Russian phrase book – honestly! I thanked her with a straight face for this uncovenanted mercy and asked her whether she, too, had lost her sense of direction in Moscow, for the phrase book might have been more useful in Moscow than in Heathrow. She smiled politely; air-hostesses are used to being asked odd questions by people who have had a few drinks to cover up their terror of flying.

I was decidedly overjoyed to see Lt Brown waiting for me at Heathrow, though how he knew I’d be there, I didn’t think to wonder. Neither would I have much cared, had I thought to wonder.

‘Grosvenor Square?’ he asked.

‘Good Lord, no!’ I exclaimed. I had no desire to see Blucher, and even less intention of enduring a fruitless debriefing at the hands of another jumped-up spy, even one related by marriage.

‘Scone College, Oxford,’ I said firmly.

Governesses, be they never so married, are always called Miss or Mademoiselle, everyone knows that. Conversely, housekeepers of canonical age and cooks who are grand enough to have a kitchen-maid to bully are always called Mrs, however intact be their chaste treasure. Both styles of address, after all, are simply short for Mistress – which lies somewhere between a mister and a mattress. Therefore all men and all sensible women deplore the absurd vocable ‘Ms,’ a coinage so daft that only a bra-burner could have dreamt it up. As a matter of fact it isn’t even a vocable at all in the proper sense of the word, for it cannot be pronounced (except in the Ki-N’Gorongoro dialect, of course, where it is made by a wet fluttering of the lips followed by an even wetter sibilance, and means something quite beastly). These petulant remarks of mine are to the point, as you will presently learn, unless you have just wrapped these pages in your bra and touched a match to them.

‘You look a bit shot at, Inspector Mortdecai,’ said the DCI when I reported to him at lunch time. ‘Been working hard at the case?’

‘I have certainly not been idle, DCI. Since arriving in Oxford I have interviewed one Warden of Scone, one Duke or Chief Constable, one Detective Chief Inspector, one Domestic Bursar, two Bank Managers, a Lodge Porter, a Junior Dean, a Dean of Degrees, a Protobibliothecarius, a Professor of Greek Palaeography, a Fellow of All Souls and a Dominican monk or friar. In addition I have made the acquaintance of one lady of East German persuasion, two strong handsome men with a mean line in pistol-whipping, and an assortment of air-hostesses.’

‘Crikey,’ he said. ‘What about the Pope, when are you seeing him?’ I looked at him strangely.

‘Funny you should say that … however, what I have to report is that I haven’t anything to report. That’s to say, I rather think I’ve got a line on the “Why” but it’s probably the aspect that Whitehall is anxious to suppress, so I daresay you’d just as soon I didn’t go into that, am I right? As to the “Who” and the “How,” I’m completely stymied.’

‘Tough titty. When are you going to see the husband?’

‘See the what what what?’ I gobbled. ‘What d’you mean, “husband;” what husband, what?’