Кирил Бонфильоли - The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery

Before I could assemble a reply, Johanna swept in amidst a cloud of tourmaline mink. I presented John to her; she was wonderfully kind to him, said how nice it was that Charlie’s old school-pals still visited him, hoped that he could stay for ages and ages then whisked away to her boudoir, leaving a ravishing hint of M. Patou’s ‘Joy’ in the ecosystem and, evidently, leaving John Dryden a little squiggle-eyed. Before he could utter, I said, ‘John, to tell the truth I usually have a little nap at this time of the day; settles my luncheon, d’you see. Daresay you could use a similar little folding of the hands to sleep after your early start this morning. Come, let me show you your room. Jock will call you at 6 p.m., when the life-giving drinks-tray manifests itself. Dinner’s at eight, so you’ll have heaps of time for your bath. Oh, by the way, we don’t change here as a rule.’

‘No, indeed we do not,’ he said, wagging his head sadly. ‘Except for the worse.’

‘I meant that we don’t change for dinner.’

‘So did I, dear boy.’ You see what I mean about Dryden as a word-bandier.

Having consigned him to his room and given him a couple of Enid Blytons and a Kyril Bonfiglioli to read, I stole into the dressing-room where I changed into my most fetching sleeping-suit, brushed my teeth and tippy-toed towards the communicating door of Johanna’s bedroom, twirling my moustache and muttering many a ‘heh heh!’ like a Village Squire about to Have His Way with Poor Little Angeline. My hand was on the very knob of the door when I heard the key turn firmly. I, too, turned; first white with rage and then to my solitary bed. The illustrated edition of the Jeou-P’ ou-T’ ouan seemed to have lost its charm.

It is a terrible moment when a married man finds himself falling in love with his own wife; it’s comparable with that traumatic moment at school when you discover that you are growing up and the masters aren’t.

For my part, I needed no rousing by Jock; we whose senses have been honed to a razor’s edge by the whetstone of war can roll out of bed in one fifth of a second at the lightest tinkle of a drinks-tray on the floor below. Washed and dressed, I was offering the tall glass of iced gin a perfunctory sniff from the cork of the vermouth bottle just as Dryden staggered into the drawing-room, fighting at the penultimate waistcoat-button. I poured plentifully for him. Again he bagged my personal armchair but I bore him no malice: a guest in my house can have anything of mine. Almost anything. He was giving me a detailed account of how refreshingly he had napped, to which I was listening raptly, when Johanna swept in, her lovely face just visible over a cumulus of black diamond mink. She would not take a cheering glass because, she explained, she was going to play bridge at the Lieutenant Governor’s and needed all her wits about her.

‘But I’m sure you boys can amuse yourselves, cutting up old touches about your schooldays together, hunh?’ My old tutor made civil, puzzled noises; I ground a little more dentine off the molars.

‘Oh, hey, Charlie dear,’ she added, ‘do you have a little cash money around? Just in case I lose at bridge?’ Johanna never loses at bridge but I fished out my wallet, weeded off a couple of notes for myself and handed her the rest.

‘Hey, Charlie dear, I shan’t need all this; why, it must be nearly a hundred pounds!’

‘It is precisely one hundred and seven pounds,’ I said. ‘Enjoy.’ (What did she think I am – a Gentile or something?)

When she had made her exit and when Dryden had pulled himself together (he professes no interest in women but Johanna is something else again: she could have made Oscar Wilde sit up and beg) we turned to our drinks and to the matter in hand.

‘You were about to tell me, John, your reasons for believing that Bronwen Fellworthy’s demise was no accident. So far – pray tell me if I am wrong – you have evinced the facts that (a) this furious driving of hers was uncharacteristic; (b) two large men seem to have been taking an unnatural interest in her; and (c) two men, who may or may not have been the two already filed under “(b)”, sequestered certain papers from her rooms. I agree that this is puzzling but it makes no sort of pattern. The Jehu-like driving might derive from a fit of pique at having been put down by one of the Turl dons at luncheon; the first two men may well have been private detectives hired by someone’s jealous wife; and the second two may have been from the Public Record Office, searching for files she had absent-mindedly pinched. There is no case for murder, none. No jury would convict; no judge would hang a, well, a Liberal MP on such threads of evidence. Nor have you shown any Motive, Means or Opportunity.’ I folded my hands complacently, wondering whether I should slip an airline timetable onto his bedside table after dinner or before. But he was no whit abashed.

‘Oh Mortdecai, Mortdecai, you were ever a rash, headstrong youth. I recall the impetuous wager you made in connection with the seven nurses from the Radcliffe Infirmary …’

‘Yes, John,’ I said hastily, ‘but that was in another country and, besides, the wenches are dead, or married to handsome young doctors. More to the point, none of this is to the point, if I make myself clear.’

‘Forgive me, Mortdecai, you are right of course; one should not “raise the follies of our youth to be the shame of age.” ’ I had to admire that bit of in-fighting: only Dryden could so instantly have counter-punched with a line containing the dread word ‘age.’ I conceded.

‘Pray go on, John. I am all ears.’ He twisted the knife in the wound a bit by flicking a myopic glance at my upper slopes, as though trying to get a sight of the said ears through the tropical rainforest of moustache. I indulged him, I did not wince or cry aloud.

‘You see,’ he went on, wiping his spectacles in a disappointed sort of way, ‘there is just a little more to it than I have so far related.’ I screamed inside my head, for I knew those tones of old: they were the tones of a Fellow and Tutor who has something ripe and squashy up his sleeve. (I had last heard them a couple of decades before, when, as a second-year undergraduate, I was reading my weekly essay to Dryden. The subject was Sixteenth-Century English Prosody and, having passed the week amongst bad companions, I found myself with but half a morning in which to lay a learned egg. I sped to the Bodleian Library, as better men have sped before; found a relevant article in some obscure forty-year-old American Review of Renaissance Studies and copied it out entire. As I read it to Dryden that afternoon he appeared to be dozing at first, then heaved himself to his feet and roamed the room, taking out a volume here and there and saying ‘pray continue, dear boy’ in precisely those flat, silken tones to which I have just referred. I read on; he continued to fidget at his bookshelves, then – joined in . I faltered, breaking the duet. ‘Yes,’ he said, returning the book to its shelf, ‘I remember considering that to be a rather sound analysis at the time. I wonder whether I might ask you to delight me with two essays next week? How kind. Good day.’ You see the kind of contender I was matched against – a master of ring-craft. Rightly did the poet sing:

But I am in danger of digressing.)

‘Yes, just a little more to it than I have related,’ he said. I recharged his glass. ‘Thank you. You see, the Warden was dining at Corpus the night after Bronwen’s demise and fell into conversation with old Schimpfen who was, nominally, Bronwen’s Research Supervisor …’