Кирил Бонфильоли - The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery

He gave me a ‘righto’ and a ‘good luck’ or two and I thank-you’d my way out.

So content was I with my sleuthing and my cunning plans that a younger, less pompous sleuth would have stuck his hands in his pockets and whistled a jaunty air. Foolish, hubristic Mortdecai, little did you guess how the jealous gods were even then spitting on their hands and rolling up their sleeves, preparing a world-overturning wallop for you, to be collected at the very Porter’s Lodge itself.

‘Er, Mr Mortdecai,’ muttered the Porter as I passed into the Lodge archway.

‘Yes, Fred?’ I answered courteously.

‘That horse …’

‘Finished last, eh? Don’t give it another thought.’

‘Well, to tell the truth, sir, I put your winnings on something which could hardly stand up, like you said, but it come up mud.’

‘Sorry, Fred, you’ll have to translate.’

‘Well, it rained, see, in the morning, like, and they nearly called the meeting off but they never. The course was like Shit Creek by the fifth race.’

‘Dear me,’ I said absently, ‘and I suppose they called it off, what?’

‘Well, not the fifth they didn’t. And it turns out your horse was ’arf-brother to an ’ippopotamouse, loves mud; bred in Cambridge I reckon …’ The awful truth advanced.

‘Fred, are you trying to tell me …?’

‘Yes, Mr Mortdecai. ’E romps home while the rest of the field are blowing bleeding bubbles. I’m sorry, I never knew, did I? Or I’d’ve ’ad a few bob on meself, wouldn’t I?’ I seethed; I do not like having the Eternal Scheme of Things turned upsy-down at the whim of an equine mud-lark.

‘Fred,’ I gritted, ‘this time let there be no mistake; deduct a handsome commission for your trouble, then put these winnings onto a horse guaranteed to have the botts, the glanders, the stifles and the spavins, break its leg with your own hands if necessary, but let your next bulletin tell of a resounding loss. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, sir. Oh, Turner is off duty tomorrow, I’ll tell the other bloke you want tea at 10.30, right?’

‘Right, Fred.’

I forget what we had for dinner at High Table. I choose to forget. Dryden was busy decocting an examination paper so I repaired to Bronwen’s set, booted the accursed pink piggy-wig downstairs yet again and went to bed with a pipkin of Scotch for my stomach’s sake (First Epistle of Paul to Timothy, V:23 – one of the few points on which Paul and I see eye to eye) and Bronwen’s copy of Douglas’s Old Calabria , that grossly neglected masterpiece, now in several masterful pieces, thanks to my recent visitors.

If you cannot trust a senior Scone scout, whom can you trust? I know all about industrial unrest, nuclear devices, the Untergang des Abendlandes , Women’s Liberation and other threats to civilisation-as-we-know-it, but none of these is an excuse for the cup of tepid slurry which was dumped on my bedside table the next morning.

‘Hoy!’ I croaked at the vanishing scout as soon as I had sprayed out the preliminary sip. He returned, puzzled.

‘Did you say “hoy,” sir?’

‘Yes, I did jolly well say “hoy,” although it is a word I seldom use. I distinctly recall ordering tea; this potation tastes of cocoa, dammit!’

‘Sorry, sir; if it tastes of cocoa I must have brought you the coffee by mistake.’ I eyed him dangerously but decided that he was not jesting. The tea, when it arrived, would have delighted ‘the old man of Peru, Who dined upon vegetable stew,’ but it held no charm for me. I tugged on a garment or two and shuffled crossly to Broad Street, where there is still a place at which the better kind of Balliol undergraduate can order breakfast in his dressing-gown and bedroom-slippers. The waitress – ‘nourrie dans le sérail’ – could tell at a glance that I was neither a Balliol man nor any kind of undergraduate, but she knew a Charvet dressing-gown when she saw one and the tea and richly buttered toast which she brought me would have earned a grunt of approval from Jock himself.

Later, dressed, shaven and otherwise fortified, I was in good mid-season form to greet DC Holmes when he swept discreetly up to the Porter’s Lodge in a discreetly plain-clothed motorcar.

‘Holmes,’ I said as we swooped towards leafy Bucks., ‘there is a testing task before you; steel yourself. Whilst I am upstairs in this rural cop-shop, making myself agreeable to the Superintendent, you will be on the Lower Deck, so to say, courteously accepting mugs of strong tea from the gum-booted arms of the Buckinghamshire law. Right?’

‘Yessir,’ he said; yes, there was a trace not of mutiny but of discontent in that ‘yessir:’ the sort of controlled discomfort of a hen laying a square egg.

‘No, look here, Holmes, it’s important: swallow your pride, be gracious to these country cousins and, when your lofty condescension has warmed their hearts, get the dirt from them. Anything at all about Dr Fellworthy, omitting no nuance however slight. Find, if you can, some rustic malcontent, some uniformed oaf, who blames the professional classes for all his own shortcomings; he’ll be the chap … but I’m sure you need no guidance from me.’

‘Yessir,’ he said, emitting no nuance however slight. How he forbore to call me “Watson” I shall never know; he must have been a man of iron.

The Superintendent or brother-in-law kept me waiting just ninety seconds; a good sign. He rose to greet me: another good sign. I briefly flashed a selected credential or two and he instantly offered me a cigarette. Any ethologist could have told that the pecking-order was clearly marked out.

As I had hoped, he bore all the signs of a man who has enjoyed his lunch. He bore, too, a confident, dominant, fearless aspect such as do all men who have to become hen-pecked cravens the moment they return to their lovely homes.

‘Dr Fellworthy,’ I said crisply.

‘Eh?’ said the Super with equal crispness. ‘Oh, that’s what it’s about, is it? Dr Fellworthy. Yes, very nice gentleman. Shocking tragedy, shocking. As it happens, I handled the case myself.’

Any cartoonist would have seen a well-defined ‘!’ emerging in a bubble from my head.

‘Yes,’ he went on, ‘I was a mere Sergeant at the time.’

The bubble stretched to bursting-point, it was now a ghetto of ‘!’s and ‘?’s. I reached into the scrambled eggs of what had been my brains and picked out a solid bit.

‘Super!’ I said. ‘No, no, I don’t mean “super,” sorry, I mean “Super” – as in “intendent,” you understand.’ He looked at me in an odd sort of way.

‘Superintendent,’ I said, ‘could we sort of start again? For instance, are we talking about W.W. Fellworthy, MD (Oxon), of this parish, widower?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who lost his wife in a shocking car accident?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’ve made Sergeant to Superintendent in those dozen or so days since the Tragedy?’

‘Eight or nine years ,’ he said gently. I resisted the temptation to beat my head against the edge of his desk; chaps with haughty moustaches must live up to them, you see. The Super pressed a buzzer on his desk and I whirled around, prepared to resist any male nurses in white coats who might enter with plain vans tucked under their arms.