Кирил Бонфильоли - The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery

‘Holmes,’ I said kindly, ‘you are, I can see, a man of tact. Please tactfully telephone around the hotels and motels and find whether, when and where a Dr W.W. Fellworthy stayed in this fair city during this term. Try the Mitre first, then the Randolph, for he is not short of the readies. If he didn’t stay the night he will have lunched with a lady at somewhere pretty up-market. If you have no luck, find out which College he was at, he may have been given a bed by some academic crony. No, wait, save time, don’t check each College, ask the Faculty of Medicine; they’ll know. Got all that?’

‘Yessir. Name of Fellworthy, Dr W.W. Tactful enquiries hotels; ditto luncheon head waiters; ascertain College from Faculty of Medicine; query slept in College.’

‘Damn shame,’ I said as he clunked out, ‘that you didn’t find the specs. I feel they might have given us a lead.’

‘An old lady did.’

‘?’

‘Find the specs. In the gutter. Brought them in three days after the tragedy, said she’d just found them in the gutter – lying of course, she’d probably meant to flog them for the gold rims and lost her nerve. I never got round to sending them to the bereaved hubbie but if you’re going to call on him – and something tells me you are – you might hand them to him while you’re there. Save me some trouble and give you a sort of introduction, see. Also, if he has something on his conscience, it might rattle him a bit, cause him to Make a False Move.’ He rummaged in a drawer, slid the specs and case complete with evidence tags across the desk to me.

The case was of olive-green crushed Morocco – real, not Rexine – and the contents were equally expensive-looking, real tortoiseshell and hallmarked gold, huge, circular, saucer-sized lenses as worn by the uppity models in Tatler and made of that glass which darkens according to the amount of light present. Mind you, when I say ‘lenses’ I mean ‘lens,’ for one of them was just a few shards and flinders of glass still gripped by the remains of its crumpled rim. On a corner of the case the initials B.A.F. were tooled in gold. The maker’s name was chastely stamped just inside the lip. Sure enough, it was a Channel Islands product and, to my great delight the stamp read:

JNO. BATES

OPTOMETRIST

ST. OUEN JERSEY

My delight sprang from the fact that

JNO. BATES

OPTOMETRIST

is the courteous and genial ophthalmic optician who crafts my own gig-lamps. (Only for reading, you understand, and as a matter of fact I’m a bit coy about letting on that I need them even for that.) He actually loves his work and I have spent many a happy five minutes at his feet, as it were, drinking in such sippets of elementary optical science as he thinks I might be capable of understanding.

‘My word, Inspector, this is a slice of luck. This Mr Bates has copious files and a memory like a computer; if there is a lead to be had from these costly corneal correctors then that lead will be in the Bates retrieval-system, depend upon it!’ At that moment the door reverberated under what DC Holmes probably thought of as a discreet knock.

‘Any luck, Holmes?’

‘Yessir; no great problem. Hadn’t stayed at the three decent hotels so I set the rest aside and went for the restaurants. Got it second shot, at the Randolph. Head waiter remembers him well; makes a fuss about the wine every time but tips heavy. Accompanied by a right … I mean a somewhat plain lady.’

‘When was this?’

‘Saturday last, sir. Lunch-time.’ The DCI and I exchanged pregnant glances. Bronwen had died on the Monday.

‘Anything else, Holmes?’

‘I had a word with the Head Porter, sir. Dr Fellworthy went and fetched the lady’s car from the hotel garage himself, brought it round to the front, said he was sorry he’d been so long and the garage-lads were an idle lot, handed the lady into her car most affectionate, waved her goodbye and went back into the hotel for another brandy. Then he sends the porter for his own car, saying to hurry because he had to be in Prince’s Risborough by four.’ He flipped open his notebook. ‘Oh yes, the porter said he told the garage-lads there’d been a complaint about getting the lady’s car out so slow and they said it was a ruddy lie: Fellworthy had been sitting reading in the lady’s car for near five minutes.’

‘ Reading ? Reading what?’

‘They couldn’t see, but he’d got his glasses on and his head bent like he was reading.’

‘You’ve done wonderfully well, Holmes. Thank you.’

‘Pleasure, sir.’

‘I wonder whether you’d do just one more thing. Could you get someone to book me on the first plane to Jersey?’

‘Yessir. If the flights are full can I swing the “urgent police business” bit?’ I glanced at the DCI; he hesitated, then nodded firmly.

‘Need time to pack?’ asked the DCI, sensibly.

‘No thanks, I’ve plenty of gear in Jersey.’

‘Car to the station?’

‘Yes please. You think of everything.’

‘You’re not doing so bad yourself, if I may say so.’

‘Kind of you. Reminds me, don’t you think it’d be a good plan to warn your Information Room that if Fellworthy telephones they’re not to answer any questions, just put him through to you. And if he does, and it’s about the spectacles, could you stretch a point and say that they haven’t turned up?’

Fifteen minutes later I was at Oxford station and, having a few minutes in hand, I dialled my own number in Jersey – the unlisted one – to warn Jock to meet me at the airport and see that there was something choice to eat. No-one answered; I vented my spleen with a few choice words to the answering machine.

Happy is the traveller who has no heavy luggage with him but a pocket-flask, a Times crossword and a firm-fitting moustache. The aeroplane was of the very latest kind but I confess I almost regretted the DC–7 of evil memory which Dryden and I had shared: I was brought up in the age of the biplane and the iron lung, I am not really at home in the age of the jet-lag and the plastic heart. I prefer the chip on my shoulder to be soggy-fried rather than silicon quartz and I cannot really believe in aircraft which are not furnished with sturdy propellers. Still, if there was nothing to fret about one wouldn’t travel by air, would one?

There was a genuine taxi for hire at Jersey airport and I reached home with time in hand for a bath before dinner. Jock had returned from his dominoes Saturnalia and greeted me tactiturnly – evidently he had checked the answering machine.

‘Sorry about the harsh words, Jock,’ I said cheerily. ‘Spoken in haste, you know. Daresay you’ve heard worse, eh?’

‘Yeah, well, it’s lucky Madam didn’t check the machine, she’d have had a fit. Not that she’d have understood half them dirty words.’

‘Want to bet? More to the point, what’s for dinner? How is the canary? Where is my tumbler of whisky and soda? And where is Madam?’

‘Nuffink; moulting; coming up; and dunno,’ he replied succinctly.

‘In that order?’ I asked, sinking into a passing armchair.

‘Yeah.’

‘Then, first the whisky and soda – and go steady with the soda, I’m not made of money, you know. Some employers mark the fall of every ginger ale, did you know that? Ah, thank you, that’s better. Now, pray explain all these disasters. Is the canary’s moult a normal, healthy shedding of foliage such as canaries are prone to? Oh, good. And what is all this about nothing for dinner? Surely you have a little something set aside to keep up your strength? I am not proud, I shall be happy to share it with you.’ He made insubordinate noises sotto voce until I tossed him the key to the caviar-cupboard. ‘Now, what was that other thing? Ah yes, whatever do you mean when you say that you don’t know where Madam is?’