Кирил Бонфильоли - The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery

‘You shouldna done that, Petal,’ winced the Detective Constable.

I seized the moment.

‘Then you shouldn’t have irritated the poor lady, Holmes. What did you expect? My sympathies are entirely with you, Petal, my poppet.’ I knew how to deal with these bulldogs in a way that Holmes quite clearly did not. You either have it or you don’t. To be frank, in all my dealings with women, I have always found that flattery can move she-mountains. ‘And may I add, Petal, you look quite splendid in uniform, brandishing that gun so lustily, with the wind playing upon your hair like Neptune sifting with his trident through the very finest sea-weed.’

‘You what?’ she boomed. Her hand darted to my crotch like the claw of a mechanical digger. She then clutched my most prized possession and squeezed it until tears began spurting from my ears.

Without further ado, Petal kicked us off the roof of the bungalow. I landed face-first in a flower-bed, my poor moustache coated in clay. I barely had time to remonstrate before Petal was shinning down after us with the agility of a gorilla, but without the looks. ‘March!’ she boomed, pointing the gun at our backs and pushing us through the back door.

‘Boots off!’ she bellowed. I remembered the great store Dr Fellworthy set by personal cleanliness. ‘The doctor is ready to see you now.’ Clamped in her clammy clutch, we were paraded into the sitting-room before Dr Fellworthy, who was lovingly fingering a selection of hypodermic syringes.

‘Ah, gentlemen! I see you have already met my assistant, Metal.’

‘Petal,’ Holmes corrected him.

‘Wrong: Metal. Precious Metal. “Petal” is merely the pseudonym with which she has so successfully infiltrated the Police Force. You must take me for an imbecile! Precious Metal has been informing me of your incompetent meddling every step of the way. Call yourselves detectives? More like defectives!’

‘Ha ha ha ha ha, sir! Ha ha ha ha ha, sir! Very good, sir. Very good.’ Never had I seen Holmes more genuflective. Obsequiousness in others can be charming, but only when directed towards oneself. Directed towards Fellworthy, it was not a pretty sight.

‘What are you doing, Holmes?’ I hissed.

‘Buying time, sir.’

‘I’m afraid we have sold clean out,’ said Fellworthy, glancing at his watch. ‘Gentlemen, I was about to say, “Prepare to die.” I believe that is the correct form. But there is no time for preparation. You must die first, and prepare yourselves later.’

Fellworthy drew a syringe with liquid of a most uncalled-for shade of pink and made ready to lunge. Facing death, my thoughts turned to the dearly beloved I would be leaving behind, principal among them my moustache. How would it get by without its dear Papa? One hears strong rumour that facial hair has mastered the trick of life after death, that it continues to sprout and blossom long after its hapless carrier has shuffled off his mortal coil. But life for a moustache in a coffin must be a pretty joyless affair. Inwardly, I cursed myself for having left no stipulation in my will for some sort of periscope arrangement, affording my moustache a glimpse of sunshine and rain, a glimpse of life carrying on as per u.

‘Goodbye, sir! It’s been a pleasure working with you, sir!’ said Holmes, choking back his tears. I could barely bring myself to grunt a response. Holmes had proved himself unworthy of his position. He was simply not up to the job. This far on in the proceedings, Jock would have already unscrewed Fellworthy’s head from his body and would even now be kicking it around the room for a little gratuitous footy practice. Where was the big ugly one, now that I needed him?

‘Jock! Jock! JOCK!’ I screamed at the top of my voice. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that, in these life-and-death situations, it is more the done thing to shout, ‘Mummy!’ But then you never knew my mummy, did you?

In Petal’s steely grip, I watched helpless, my upper lip playing havoc with the draughtsmanship of my foliage, as Fellworthy raised the syringe above his shoulder (a little melodramatically for my taste) and plunged it downwards –

‘Yeeeeeehaaaaaaaarrrrrrrggggghhhhh!’

– deep into Petal’s arm. How could I have mistrusted Holmes so? With one swift karate chop, he had deftly re-directed the fatal needle.

‘What the devil?’ exclaimed Fellworthy, recovering himself and stabbing again with his syringe –

‘Yooooooooooowwwwww!’

– deep into Petal’s other arm.

‘Don’t worry, sir – I’ll handle him!’ With a swift high-kick which the most energetic member of the Folies-Bergère might have envied, Holmes caught Fellworthy on the jaw, and sent him skidding across the living-room, slap through that inelegant coffee table. ‘Whoops, sorry, Doctor!’ he cackled as his hand sharpened into a slicer. With an upward blow, he struck Fellworthy deep in the groin. A thwack to the knees with his truncheon (‘Oh dear, pardon me, Doctor!’) followed by a head-butt to the stomach (‘Silly me! There I go again, Doctor!’), and Fellworthy was wriggling about on the parquet floor like the fidgetiest young maggot at a Montessori open day. Petal, on the other hand, was quite dead, the profile of her corpse taking me back down memory lane, to an exhausting walking holiday I once enjoyed in the Cairngorms.

‘Lucky for us the doctor’s so unsteady on his pins, eh, sir?’ said Holmes with a chuckle.

‘Luck does not come into it,’ I snapped back a trifle tetchily.

I allowed myself a self-satisfied smile. It was only when my whiskers made contact with my eyebrows that it occurred to me that I might be overdoing it.

‘Sometimes, my dear Holmes,’ I added. ‘It pays to remain calm.’

At that moment, Fellworthy’s boot made forceful contact with my private parts and I was sent hurtling through the air, the wings of my moustache ensuring that my journey was smooth, even though the landing proved a mite bumpy.

It took a couple of discreet jabs to the windpipe from Holmes’s little finger to bring Fellworthy back into line. At first, he was – how shall I put it? – a little delicate. But on awkward social occasions, I have always prided myself on getting the tongue-tied to, shall we say, open up. It’s surprising how much magic may be worked using only a length of rope, a wooden chair, and the gentle wave of a lethal syringe.

‘I loved Bronwen,’ he moaned. ‘Loved her, loved her, loved her.’

‘You loved her?’ I said. Easier to have loved an armadillo, I would have thought. But I kept my mouth shut.

‘I begged her, begged her, to take me back, to give me another chance. She said it was either the kiwi fruit or her – she said I could not be married to both.’

‘The kiwi fruit?’

‘Genetic modification, you fool. It’ll soon be all the rage. After the rabbits, I turned my attention to the kiwi. Why did no-one want to eat it any more? For a while, it had been the talk of the town. Kiwi this, kiwi that: they were selling like hot cakes. But then – nothing. I was contacted by the International Kiwi Association. They were desperate. Their research showed that consumers were turning to more convenient fruits such as the tangerine and the banana. They asked me to modify the kiwi to bring it more in line with consumer demands. After many false starts, I hit upon the idea of the Hamwi—’

‘The Hamwi? What the hell is a Hamwi?’

‘Half hamster, half kiwi, of course. The very first hamster-based fruit! It would walk off the shelves! And I was so very close to cracking it! The acclaim – the prestige – the honours – the money! But, oh no, Bronwen did not approve. I would have to choose. The kiwi or her. But I couldn’t choose and if I couldn’t have her, no-one else would! Collecting her car that day, I seized my chance: I rotated the lenses on her driving spectacles through ninety degrees. When she took to that wheel, it would have been like travelling on a rollercoaster upside down with her eyes crossed …’