‘An old lady did.’
‘?’
‘Find the specs. In the gutter. Brought them in three days after the tragedy, said she’d just found them in the gutter – lying of course, she’d probably meant to flog them for the gold rims and lost her nerve. I never got round to sending them to the bereaved hubbie but if you’re going to call on him – and something tells me you are – you might hand them to him while you’re there. Save me some trouble and give you a sort of introduction, see. Also, if he has something on his conscience, it might rattle him a bit, cause him to Make a False Move.’ He rummaged in a drawer, slid the specs and case complete with evidence tags across the desk to me.
The case was of olive-green crushed Morocco – real, not Rexine – and the contents were equally expensive-looking, real tortoiseshell and hallmarked gold, huge, circular, saucer-sized lenses as worn by the uppity models in Tatler and made of that glass which darkens according to the amount of light present. Mind you, when I say ‘lenses’ I mean ‘lens,’ for one of them was just a few shards and flinders of glass still gripped by the remains of its crumpled rim. On a corner of the case the initials B.A.F. were tooled in gold. The maker’s name was chastely stamped just inside the lip. Sure enough, it was a Channel Islands product and, to my great delight the stamp read:
JNO. BATES
OPTOMETRIST
ST. OUEN JERSEY
My delight sprang from the fact that
JNO. BATES
OPTOMETRIST
is the courteous and genial ophthalmic optician who crafts my own gig-lamps. (Only for reading, you understand, and as a matter of fact I’m a bit coy about letting on that I need them even for that.) He actually loves his work and I have spent many a happy five minutes at his feet, as it were, drinking in such sippets of elementary optical science as he thinks I might be capable of understanding.
‘My word, Inspector, this is a slice of luck. This Mr Bates has copious files and a memory like a computer; if there is a lead to be had from these costly corneal correctors then that lead will be in the Bates retrieval-system, depend upon it!’ At that moment the door reverberated under what DC Holmes probably thought of as a discreet knock.
‘Any luck, Holmes?’
‘Yessir; no great problem. Hadn’t stayed at the three decent hotels so I set the rest aside and went for the restaurants. Got it second shot, at the Randolph. Head waiter remembers him well; makes a fuss about the wine every time but tips heavy. Accompanied by a right … I mean a somewhat plain lady.’
‘When was this?’
‘Saturday last, sir. Lunch-time.’ The DCI and I exchanged pregnant glances. Bronwen had died on the Monday.
‘Anything else, Holmes?’
‘I had a word with the Head Porter, sir. Dr Fellworthy went and fetched the lady’s car from the hotel garage himself, brought it round to the front, said he was sorry he’d been so long and the garage-lads were an idle lot, handed the lady into her car most affectionate, waved her goodbye and went back into the hotel for another brandy. Then he sends the porter for his own car, saying to hurry because he had to be in Prince’s Risborough by four.’ He flipped open his notebook. ‘Oh yes, the porter said he told the garage-lads there’d been a complaint about getting the lady’s car out so slow and they said it was a ruddy lie: Fellworthy had been sitting reading in the lady’s car for near five minutes.’
‘Reading? Reading what?’
‘They couldn’t see, but he’d got his glasses on and his head bent like he was reading.’
‘You’ve done wonderfully well, Holmes. Thank you.’
‘Pleasure, sir.’
‘I wonder whether you’d do just one more thing. Could you get someone to book me on the first plane to Jersey?’
‘Yessir. If the flights are full can I swing the “urgent police business” bit?’ I glanced at the DCI; he hesitated, then nodded firmly.
‘Need time to pack?’ asked the DCI, sensibly.
‘No thanks, I’ve plenty of gear in Jersey.’
‘Car to the station?’
‘Yes please. You think of everything.’
‘You’re not doing so bad yourself, if I may say so.’
‘Kind of you. Reminds me, don’t you think it’d be a good plan to warn your Information Room that if Fellworthy telephones they’re not to answer any questions, just put him through to you. And if he does, and it’s about the spectacles, could you stretch a point and say that they haven’t turned up?’
Fifteen minutes later I was at Oxford station and, having a few minutes in hand, I dialled my own number in Jersey – the unlisted one – to warn Jock to meet me at the airport and see that there was something choice to eat. No-one answered; I vented my spleen with a few choice words to the answering machine.
XVII
A natural straight to the knave
Since that in love the pains be deadly,
Me think it best that readily
I do return to my first address;
For at this time too great is the press,
And perils appear too abundantly
For to love her.
Happy is the traveller who has no heavy luggage with him but a pocket-flask, a Times crossword and a firm-fitting moustache. The aeroplane was of the very latest kind but I confess I almost regretted the DC–7 of evil memory which Dryden and I had shared: I was brought up in the age of the biplane and the iron lung, I am not really at home in the age of the jet-lag and the plastic heart. I prefer the chip on my shoulder to be soggy-fried rather than silicon quartz and I cannot really believe in aircraft which are not furnished with sturdy propellers. Still, if there was nothing to fret about one wouldn’t travel by air, would one?
There was a genuine taxi for hire at Jersey airport and I reached home with time in hand for a bath before dinner. Jock had returned from his dominoes Saturnalia and greeted me tactiturnly – evidently he had checked the answering machine.
‘Sorry about the harsh words, Jock,’ I said cheerily. ‘Spoken in haste, you know. Daresay you’ve heard worse, eh?’
‘Yeah, well, it’s lucky Madam didn’t check the machine, she’d have had a fit. Not that she’d have understood half them dirty words.’
‘Want to bet? More to the point, what’s for dinner? How is the canary? Where is my tumbler of whisky and soda? And where is Madam?’
‘Nuffink; moulting; coming up; and dunno,’ he replied succinctly.
‘In that order?’ I asked, sinking into a passing armchair.
‘Yeah.’
‘Then, first the whisky and soda – and go steady with the soda, I’m not made of money, you know. Some employers mark the fall of every ginger ale, did you know that? Ah, thank you, that’s better. Now, pray explain all these disasters. Is the canary’s moult a normal, healthy shedding of foliage such as canaries are prone to? Oh, good. And what is all this about nothing for dinner? Surely you have a little something set aside to keep up your strength? I am not proud, I shall be happy to share it with you.’ He made insubordinate noises sotto voce until I tossed him the key to the caviar-cupboard. ‘Now, what was that other thing? Ah yes, whatever do you mean when you say that you don’t know where Madam is?’
‘I mean like I dunno. She rung up yesterday from the Continong – France or Egypt or one of them places – asked after me health.’
‘And mine, too, no doubt?’
‘Well, not exackly, Mr Charlie. She only asked if you’d tidied up your face yet and I said I cooden say. I forget what else she said.’
‘I’ll bet you do,’ I thought.
‘Mind you, it isn’t half coming on a treat, Mr Charlie.’ I smirked.
‘That’s if you like having a soup-strainer hanging from your moosh.’ I un-smirked.
Take my word for it, the best way to get a really good dinner is to share your thug’s personal little smackerel. We kicked off with as much Beluga caviar as a fashionable Jersey dentist could earn in an hour; then, since Jock had inadvertently made far too much toast
, it seemed only sensible to open a half-kilo tin of Johanna’s Strasbourg Pâté de Foie Gras Truffé. Having refreshed our palates with a couple of sorbets from the deep-freeze, we made shift to stay our stomachs with a tossed endive salad, helped down with a few slices of cold roast sirloin … but there; I must not weary you with humdrum details of our scratch indoor picnic for I am sure that you agree with me in deploring those who live for creature comforts.
The late-night movie was a bonus; Powell and Pressburger’s lovely 49th Parallel. Add a third bottle of Antiquary Scotch and you can well imagine that it was a tired, replete and happy Mortdecai who tottered to his blameless couch, moulting canaries and absentee wives quite forgotten for the nonce.
I shall not pretend that I awoke with a song on my lips, for I detest falsehood, but there is no doubt that, as Jock came clinking in with the tea-tray – he had selected the fortifying Earl Grey – the world seemed a ripe and juicy one. As he flung open the curtains the Jersey sun battered cheerily at the windows and I went so far as to ask Jock to open them wide. Ever thoughtful, he had placed a pair of sun-glasses on the tray; he thinks of everything.
‘Did you remember to make an appointment for me with Mr Bates?’ I asked confidently as the healing brew trickled in amongst my red corpuscles.
‘Yeah, ’course. Said he could fit you in right after lunch. Two-fifteen. Gives you nice time to get over to St Helier for the dentist.’
‘Dentist?’ I quavered – the sun seemed to go into an eclipse – ‘How do you mean, “dentist”? I gave no orders about dentists.’
‘Madam did,’ he said smugly. ‘You remember; she booked you in for a check-up twice a year and today’s the day. Yeah, that’s it, now I remember what she said on the phone, what I cooden remember last night. She said to make sure you didn’t forget and then she sort of laughed a bit.’ He coaxed another cup of tea into my nerveless fingers.
‘Don’t fret, Mr Charlie, ’sonly a check-up, he probably won’t even use the drill, let alone the pliers.’ When it comes to comforting, Job’s buddies could profit from Jock’s correspondence course. ‘An’ your usual is by your gloves on the hall-table.’ Splendid chap, he’d remembered that I make a practice of chewing a clove of garlic just before visiting fashionable dentists: it cuts down your time in the torture-chair amazingly. Try it.
Mr Bates, the orthoptist, greeted me with his usual benign smile; he had the knack of making you feel that your visit has made his day. He would have made an excellent bishop; one of the good, old-fashioned sort that believes in God, you remember.
‘Well, now,’ he said, after we’d exchanged felicities, ‘how can I help you? Been sitting on your frames again? Or do you need something a little stronger for reading? You shouldn’t yet, you know, if you’ve been doing the eye-exercises I showed you.’
‘I’m afraid it’s a bit more serious than that, Mr Bates.’
‘Oh dear, that’s most surprising; as I recall, last year you had normal presbyopia for a man of your age and, let me see, a little astigmatism in the left eye. Come into the office and let’s have a look, shall we?’ In the office I showed him my temporary warrant-card and begged him – quite unnecessarily – to keep mum. Then I showed him the leather case.
‘Goodness, yes; I remember this well, it was a very special order indeed. It isn’t often we’re asked for quite such a luxurious pair, even in Jersey. Yes, and I remember suggesting to her husband that it might be a good idea to put her middle initial on the case … I mean, “B.F.” by itself … yes, I have the name now: Fellworthy. She came to see me complaining of headaches and wanted to know whether her spectacles were causing the trouble. Poor woman, I found she had very high astigmatism in both eyes, combined with spherical errors different in each eye. Let me just get out her card. Hmm; yes, indeed. The astigmatism had not deteriorated, of course – it doesn’t, you know – but she needed stronger “spheres” on both eyes and I so prescribed.
‘Two minutes after she’d left, her husband came in again and said that he wanted to surprise her with something very de luxe and in high fashion: he particularly fancied those enormous circular lenses …’ I took the wrecked specs out of the case and handed them to him. ‘Yes, these are they, and I remember warning him that the cost …’ His words withered away. You know how opticians, when handed a pair of glasses, hold them a few inches from their own eyes and move them back and forth? Mr Bates was doing just that when he broke off his sentence. His face went grey and, for the first time in our acquaintance, the benign smile vanished from his face.
‘What in the name of …?’ he began; then turned the glasses to a vertical position and looked through the unbroken lens again. His look of shock changed to one of grim anger.
‘Some infernal idiot has rotated this lens through ninety degrees,’ he said, controlling his voice with an effort. ‘What madman—’
‘Er, no chance, I suppose, that the lens could have got loose and sort of wobbled itself round?’
‘Positively not. And to wobble, as you put it, through precisely ninety degrees – that would be far too much of a coincidence.’
‘Sorry, silly of me.’
‘No-one could shift those lenses a tenth of a millimetre without using …’ – he snatched up a jeweller’s loupe from his desk and screwed it into his eye – ‘… yes, look here!’ I took the loupe and looked. ‘Do you see the two tiny gold screws which clamp the rims onto the lenses? Look carefully, they’re burred and scratched where someone has loosened them and then tightened them again; do you see the two sets of scratches?’ I saw.
‘Mr Bates,’ I said soberly, ‘what would be the effect on Mrs Fellworthy if she unsuspectingly put on these glasses while she was driving a car in traffic?’ He thought carefully for a while, evidently trying to phrase his answer into the kind of layman’s language which even I would understand.
‘Try to imagine,’ he said at last, ‘that you are far too close to one of those huge, curved CinemaScope screens, watching a film of a motor-race. Then imagine that you are also standing on your head with your eyes crossed and blind drunk. That, roughly speaking, would be the effect. You would think that the world, or you yourself, had gone insane. If there was strong sunshine, the darkening of the lenses would make it even worse. You would, in short, be more frightened than you’d ever been in your life; the steadiest man in the world would, I should think, panic uncontrollably.’ He touched the crumpled frames with gentle finger-tips. ‘Is that what happened to …?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Moreover, she was in a bad state of nerves already; in fact she’d been living in terror of her life for many days before it happened.’
‘Poor woman,’ he murmured. He didn’t ask any questions, he’s not like that. I thought for a while then asked him for a stout envelope and some Scotch tape.
‘Please write this on the envelope, Mr Bates: “I certify that this pair of spectacles and case were supplied by me in perfect order to Mrs Bronwen Fellworthy on such and such a date and that they are now in the exact condition as when Special Inspector Mortdecai showed them to me today, on such and such a date, signed etc.” Now, I’ll countersign, witnessing your signature and we’ll seal all the edges and stick Scotch tape across all the writing. Thanks. Now, I must ask you to help me some more.’
I told him what I wanted. He said it would take at least a week. I said three days at the outside. ‘Go to London or Paris or wherever necessary, go in person if that would help: expense is no object. You know what is involved. When you’re ready, ring my home number and ask for Mr Strapp, he’s my, ah, driver. He’ll fly the package straight to me – I’ll be in Oxford. I’ll explain it all to you just as soon as I’m free to do so.’
Jock was double-parked outside. He scowled when I said that I was going to let the dentist down: I hated to disappoint him but I’d had enough violence for one day. What I needed was a sedative, such as Scotch whisky, and a telephone.
At the house and suitably sedated, I applied myself to the telephone. T
he DCI was off duty but I reached the excellent DC Holmes.
‘Look, Holmes,’ I said, ‘I know this sounds a bit potty but do you think you could find out what the weather was like on that day? You know, that Monday. The one we were discussing yesterday.’ He chuckled.
‘Don’t need to look that one up, sir; we’d had nigh on a month of grey sky and drizzle. It didn’t let up till that particular Monday, just about lunch-time; then the sun came out a fair treat. Why I remember exactly was, it was my day off and I had to take my landlady’s kids to their school Sports Day.’
‘You’re a ruddy marvel, Holmes,’ I marvelled. ‘Now, can you take down a message for the DCI, please. Top secret. Tell him our suspicions are fully confirmed, that I’ll see him latish tomorrow afternoon and, yes, tell him that the good doctor was not reading when he was sitting in his wife’s car in the hotel garage. Tell him to try that on his pianola. Right?’
‘Yessir.’
I spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening congratulating myself on my infinite resource and sagacity; planning and mentally rehearsing my visit to Dr Fellworthy when the time should be ripe; whizzing through the crossword at an unprecedented speed; taking an aperitif now and then to limber up for the dinner which lay in the offing or oven; paying a duty visit to the moult-stricken feathered friend; and wondering whether Johanna would telephone. She didn’t, of course; they never do, do they?
Dinner, however, healed all wounds and since I was doomed to an indefinite number of Scone High Table’s poisoned pottages, I allowed myself, for once, to eat heartily, like some dromedary ship of the desert tanking up at an oasis. (Not, I hasten to say, that I actually drank any water: I never do, you don’t know where it’s been.)
I took Vol. IV of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to bed with me and in no time I was sleeping righteously.
XVIII
Dealer shows his hand
Throughout the world, if it were sought,
The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery Page 13
