Кирил Бонфильоли - The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery

‘Oh. Ah. Well, I do happen to have a basin of me French pancake batter standing in the fridge but …’ I looked at him levelly. He looked back as levelly as a one-eyed chap can look.

‘Oh, very well,’ I said and tossed him the key to the cupboard where I keep the caviar. Jock may not be the tastiest evidence of Divine Creation but he yields to none in the matter of making caviar blinis. Nor the making of Pommes Reform, if it comes to that. My fortifying snack was marred only by the compassionate looks Jock cast me from time to time. These looks became even more comp. when he came downstairs from taking Johanna her coffee.

‘Madam have anything to say, Jock?’ I asked idly as I did a little housework on the moustache.

‘Yeah. She asked me if you’d got rid of that excrement yet.’

‘Surely she must have said “excrescence”?’

‘Oh, yeah, maybe that was the word.’

I picked a pensive tooth.

‘Look, Mr Charlie …’

I raised the toothpick threateningly.

‘Jock, if you are going to say “I told you so,” pray forget it: the surgeon warned me against flying into passionate rages until I am fully convalescent. If you were going to plead Madam’s cause, you may forget that, too. While I have my strength, no-one shall harm a hair of this lip.’

‘Matter of fact, I was only going to ask if you’d like a spot of music to sort of put a lid on your dinner,’ he retorted in wounded tones.

‘Sorry, Jock. Yes, certainly, do wheel on some music, I dote on such sounds.’

Knowing my passion for Grand Opera, what the sturdy fellow put on the turntable was his treasured 78 mph record of ‘Chi mi frena in tal momento’ from Lucia di Lammermoor – a rather shrewd selection in the circumstances. Now, my own recording of this is sung by Enrico Caruso, Amelita Galli-Curci and three or four other chaps but Jock’s rendering is by Shirley Temple and S.Z. ‘Cuddles’ Zsakal. Jock, you see, has been hopelessly in love with Shirley Temple since the days when he was the youngest delinquent in Hoxton. The record or disc is tuneful, digestive and mildly aperient.

‘Thank you, Jock,’ I said courteously after he had played it twice. Then I shuffled off to bed, for my wounds still ached in the frosty weather and my moustache needed its beauty-sleep. For a bedtime story I took with me the illustrated edition of Klossowski’s French translation of Li-Yu’s infamous Jeou-P’ ou-T’ ouan , arguably the greatest pornogram in any language.

My choice of reading was an error, for the Jeou-P’ ou-T’ ouan is not conducive to slumber. Within an hour I was tapping in a tentative, husbandly way at Johanna’s bedroom door.

‘Who’s there?’ she rasped in unwifely tones. ‘I warn you, I am armed!’

‘It’s Charlie. Your husband, remember? C.S.v.C. Mortdecai?’

‘Have you removed that excrement from your face?’

‘You mean “excrescence,” Johanna, surely?’

‘Do I?’

‘Oh, really . Listen, Mae West has often stated that kissing a man without a moustache is like eating an egg without salt …’ Too late I remembered that Johanna never salts her eggs.

‘So go look up Mae West,’ she retorted. ‘At least you’ll have a waistline and age-group in common. There are frequent flights to the US of A; I have just been studying them.’ She seemed to be trying to tell me something.

‘Oh well, goodnight,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said.

I stumbled back to my bed, a broken man.

Since earliest boyhood I have ever loved the truth, so I shall not pretend that I passed an untroubled, dreamless night. That last ‘yes’ of Johanna’s had stung like any scorpion. I was therefore in no sort of shape to answer cheerily to Jock’s goodmorninging, especially since the grey light of dawn told me that the time could be no later than 10 a.m., quite half an hour before it is possible for right-thinking men to drift to the surface.

‘A Dr Dryden to see you,’ said Jock. ‘Claims he was your tutor at Oxford. Cooden get through to you because of the telephone strike so he come here all the way. Personally. Forced his way into the house by stuffing pound notes into me hand.’

I sobbed piteously, drawing pillows over my head, hoping that this might make the world disappear. Jock, who is usually all heart, drew them away and said that it was urgent. ‘Says it’s urgent’ is how he deftly phrased it. There was nothing for it but to sit up and glare at the world through bloodshot eyes. The tea-tray swam into focus, followed by Jock.

‘Jock,’ I said, selecting the word carefully. ‘Bring me the emergency kit. Five minutes later I shall have my French breakfast, after which you may produce this alleged tutor.’ The emergency kit, thanks to Jock’s insight, was already at hand: the Alka-Seltzer roaring in its glass, the half-tablet of dextroamphetamine on its own coy saucer, the vitamin capsules on another and the brandy and water beaming from a well-polished glass. After the decent interval stated, my French breakfast arrived: the big bowl of coffee so generously garnished with rum that only its fragrance betrayed the presence of coffee. With this came, of course, the hot-plate of anchovy toast – I have no patience with those weaklings who take cinnamon toast with their coffee.

Hard on the heels of this modest meal came Dryden, crying, ‘Well well well, my dear Mortdecai! What a capital morning it is, to be sure!’

Try as I may, I have never devised a retort to observations of that kind, so I fell back on an old favourite which never fails to please.

‘Yes,’ I said.

Then I said, ‘Have you breakfasted, John?’

‘Well, yes, after a fashion. In Oxford. At breakfast -time. Then I had a cup of something nameless on Reading station. But be of good cheer, Mortdecai, your excellent butler is bringing me a proper breakfast presently.’

‘Butler?’ I asked puzzledly. ‘ Butler ? Oh, do you mean the big, ugly chap with one eye?’

‘He is, indeed, a generously-built man and I fancy I detected a certain, ah, capriciousness in the collimation of his eyes but as to ugliness – who are we to make value-judgements of that kind? We cannot all boast of the symmetrically pleasing features with which you and I have been …’ At this point the words seemed to perish in his throat; he leant forward, pushed his spectacles onto his forehead and peered with alarm at my afforestation-area. He cleared his throat as though to speak but was rescued by the entry of Jock, who bore a tray loaded with all those delicacies of the season calculated for the latitude of breakfast. I freely admit to being a little miffed, for such breakfasts rarely come my way. Dryden, clearly, had laid out his pound notes to some profit. I could not bear the fragrance of the chops, the kippers, the devilled kidneys, the shirred eggs and the frizzled ham; I rolled out of bed and forced myself under the shower, muttering ‘grnnghmphrrgh,’ or words to that effect.

Mind you, a morning shower, especially if you are man enough to turn it to COLD before you get out, makes one superior to the lusts of the flesh; thus it was a superior Mortdecai who swept back into the bedroom clad in his costly Charvet dressing-gown … no, wait, posterity must not be paltered with, I’m pretty sure that it was the costly Sulka dressing-gown that day. The bedroom was redolent with the fragrance of costly breakfasts so I opened the window in a marked manner before hopping back into bed.