Кирил Бонфильоли - The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery

‘Now, John,’ I said. ‘Tell me all, omitting no detail however slight. Begin at the beginning and’ – here I glanced at my watch – ‘continue unto the very end.’ I composed myself into an attitude which the ordinary housewife would take to be a listening one but which is also most conducive to light sleep.

‘I shall be brief,’ he began, in the firm tones of one who is good for at least an hour’s orotund speech. (I may say that Fildes’s Donsform never lays him at better than evens in the annual Lecturers’ Puissance Trials.) ‘Something quite awful has happened at Scone – and I am not one who lightly uses the word “awful.” The Warden and Fellows are most upset. You remember Fellworthy?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Oh come, Mortdecai, you must remember her vividly : you and she Did Not Get On the night you met in the Senior Common Room.’

‘Ah, you mean Gwladys, the she-don you elected a couple of years ago; I recall her now, she seemed as though she had been enjoying a difficult menopause since early youth. Yes, she is rather awful, I agree, but surely time has healed all wounds?’

‘No no no, my dear chap, it is to her that the awful thing has happened. She is dead. Her motorcar came into headlong collision with one of those omnibi you see in the High nowadays. She died instantly. And her name was not Gwladys but Bronwen.’

‘ Mors communis omnibus , John, but how is this a matter for grief and for incontinent trips to Jersey? I mean to say, there is no world shortage of lady-dons, is there? They are like dragon’s teeth, raze one lady-don to the ground and a dozen lady-dons spring up in her place, this is well-known.’

‘You mistake me, perhaps wilfully, Mortdecai. The College is not greatly exercised by the question of replacing her – nor, I hasten to say, am I here to offer you the vacant Fellowship.’

‘Aw, shucks,’ I murmured.

‘Nor, indeed, must I pretend that she had made herself wholly popular: she was not, so to say, the toast of the Senior Common Room by the time of her demise … pray do not smirk, Mortdecai, it has a disturbing effect when viewed through that, ah …’ and he waved a few limp fingers in the general direction of my lip-garden, ‘… no, the core and centre of the matter is that, regardless of sex, creed, colour and affability – and here I speak for the whole of the SCR – she was a Fellow and Tutor of Scone College and the world must learn that Fellows and Tutors of Scone College shall not be done to death with impunity.’

The starter-motor of my brain was churning frantically and now a cylinder or two of the engine itself started fitfully to fire.

‘John,’ I said wonderingly, ‘are you trying to say that you wish me to have the driver of the omnibus assassinated? This could, of course, be arranged but I must say that it seems an over-reaction on your part, not to say a fearful visitation on a bus driver for allowing his attention to waver for a moment; aye, and a bus driver who almost certainly has a wife or two to support. I mean to say, would you call this ancient, liberal and humane? What?’

‘If you would favour me with your undivided attention for a few more minutes, Mortdecai, you would understand that nothing of the sort is dreamed of. No blame whatsoever attaches to the omnibus driver; he was about his lawful occasions when Bronwen, driving furiously on the wrong side of the street, immolated herself upon the radiator of his bus.’

‘Pissed as a pudding, clearly,’ I said, pursing my lips disapprovingly then quickly unpursing them on account of the moustache, which was stiff with its morning ration of pomade. ‘Probably been dining and carousing at one of those women’s colleges – hotbeds of alcoholism, everyone knows that. Send ’em all back to Cambridge is what I say.’

‘Forgive me, dear boy, but you are in error again. The incident took place in the early afternoon and Bronwen had been lunching at one of those Turl Street colleges, famed for its stinginess with wine. Moreover, she was noted for her abstemious habits (we have ascertained that she had taken but one glass of sherry and one of Slovene Riesling) and was quite vexatiously cautious when driving. Nevertheless, all innocent bystanders agree that she started her motorcar, put on her tinted sun-spectacles and roared down the Turl like any Jehu, not abating her speed one whit as she turned the wrong way into the High, there to meet the omnibus – and her Maker.’

The Mortdecai brain was now firing on all cylinders, albeit a little raggedly still. I closed my eyes for a moment to aid the thinking process. Jock clumped into the room. I re-opened the Mortdecai eyes.

‘Did you ring, Mr Charlie?’

‘Eh? I? No. I daresay Dr Dryden did.’

‘Ah yes, so I did, so I did. I was wondering, Mortdecai, whether this splendid chap could conjure up another of those richly-buttered muffins? Or perhaps a pair of them? Would that be a great imposition?’

‘Cook’s just starting to get lunch,’ said Jock in his blunt way.

‘Capital!’ cried Dryden. ‘For the oven-range will be already hot, will it not, and so the muffins no trouble?’

‘Two muffins of the best and brightest, please, Jock; richly apply the very best butter and serve on a lordly dish.’ Then I said to Dryden, ‘Was Bronwen subject to fits of ungovernable rage? Had she a tumour, perhaps, on the brain? Was she prone to epilepsy?’

‘No, she had not the falling-sickness and her habit of life was so regular and unremarkable as to verge on the tedious. Until last week, that is.’

‘You mean until death did her part?’

‘No, no; she died early this week. I refer to the two men.’

‘John,’ I said patiently, passing a patient hand across my furrowed brow, ‘I have been following your narrative intently so far and I’m prepared to offer you a great deal of seven to three that you have not yet drawn any two men into the sketch. What two men?’

‘Well, you should really ask which two men, for there were two lots, each of two men, you see.’

I shut my eyes tightly and took a few deep breaths.

‘No, I fear I do not see, John. For once you are not being your usual lucid self.’

‘It is hard to pursue a rational train of thought in the midst of all these interruptions,’ he answered petulantly, as Jock placed a laden muffineer before him. ‘Thank you, my good man,’ he added, ‘these appear quite delicious.’ Jock left the room, closing the door in a manner which made it clear that the pound notes were now accounted for in full and that calling people ‘my good man’ is usually reckoned an extra.

‘Concentrate upon those muffins, John,’ I urged, ‘and collect your thoughts while I put on a clothe or two. I shall meet you downstairs presently.’

My head swam as I draped the lightweight heath-mixture tweed about my person and drew on the plain half-hose and the supple footwear. The tie which Jock had laid out for me seemed to have been hand-crafted from a richly buttered baby’s napkin or diaper but I had to admit that it matched my moustache.

Luncheon is what we presently met at. I’ll say this for Dryden, neither pedantry nor paederasty had marred his gusto for the more solid pleasures of the table; it was a pleasure and a privilege to watch him ply the eating-irons, his face as innocently happy as that of, say, Lord Snow reviewing a posthumous book by F.R. Leavis. Jock, too, was warming to the man, I could see that; he loves the sight of a sturdy food-eater practising his craft and has often chided me for picking at my food. Again and again he charged Dryden’s trencher with partridges and things, beaming at the summary way he dealt with the polysaturated foodstuffs. A finale of cold blackberry and apple pie was followed by a coda of Limburger – enough to choke a yoke of oxen – and a touch of my almost-best port.