‘Jock,’ I said crisply, ‘we are going to defenestrate Mr Martland.’
Jock’s eyes lit up.
‘I’ll get a razor blade, Mr Charlie.’
‘No no, Jock, wrong word. I mean we’re going to push him out of a window. Your bedroom window, I think. Yes, and we’ll undress him first and say that he was making advances to you and jumped out of the window in a frenzy of thwarted love.’
‘I say, Charlie, really, what a filthy rotten idea; I mean, think of my wife.’
‘I never think of policeman’s wives, their beauty maddens me like wine. Anyway, the sodomy bit will make your Minister slap a D-Notice on the whole thing, which is good for both of us.’
Jock was already leading him from the room by means of the ‘Quiet Come-Along’ which painfully involves the victim’s little finger. Jock had learned that one from a mental nurse. Capable lads, those.
Jock’s bedroom, as ever, was bursting with what passes for fresh air in W.I, the stuff was streaming in from the wide-open window. (Why do people build houses to keep the climate out, then cut holes in the walls to let it in again? I shall never understand.)
‘Show Mr Martland the spiky railings in the area, Jock,’ I said nastily. (You’ve no idea how nasty my voice can be when I try. I was an adjutant once, in your actual Guards.) Jock held him out so that he could see the railings then started to undress him. He just stood there, unresisting, a shaky smile trembling at one corner of his mouth, until Jock began to unbuckle his belt. Then he started to talk, rapidly.
The burden of his song was that if I could only be dissuaded from my course he would arrange for me to receive
(i) the untold riches of the Orient
(ii) his undying respect and esteem and
(iii) legal immunity for me and mine, yea, even unto the third and fourth generations. At this point I cocked an ear. (How I wish I could really move my ears, don’t you? The Bursar of my College could.)
‘You interest me strangely,’ I said. ‘Put him down a moment, Jock, for he is going to Tell All.’
We didn’t lay another finger on him, he went on and on of his own accord. You don’t have to be a coward to dislike dropping thirty feet on to spiky railings, especially in the nude. I’m sure that in his place I’d have blubbered.
The story so far turned out to be as follows, to wit: Hockbottle Gloag, with an extraordinary lack of finesse, had put the bite directly onto the ear of his old College Chum – the other part of the ‘consenting males’ sketch – sending him a 35-mm contact print of the naughty photograph. (This was by no means part of the agreed plan and was very vexing. I suppose he needed spending money, poor chap; I wish he’d asked me.) The now very august chum, living in dread of his wife’s Sister and other Relations, had decided to cough up the reasonable sum involved but had also asked an Assistant Commissioner of Police to dinner and had put out dainty feelers over the port, such as, ‘What do you fellows do about blackmailers nowadays, eh, Freddy?’ and so forth. The Assistant Commissioner, who had seen certain unpublished material about the Chum in a newspaper editor’s safe, shied like a startled stallion. Decided that it wasn’t anything he could afford to know about and – perhaps spitefully – gave Chum the name and number of old Martland. ‘Just in case anyone you know ever gets pestered, Sir, ha ha.’
Chummy then asks Martland to dinner and gives him all the news that’s fit to print. Martland says, ‘Leave it to us, Sir, we’re used to dealing with dastards of that kidney,’ and swings into action.
Next day, some sort of equerry, snorting genteelly into his Squadron-Leading moustaches, calls on Hockbottle and hands him over an attaché case full of great coarse ten-pound notes. Five minutes later, Martland and his gauleiters canter in and whisk poor Hockbottle off to the Cottage Hospital of evil fame. He gets a touch of the car battery just to soften him up and comes out of his faint with the regulation glass of Scotch under his nose. But he is made of sterner stuff than me: your actual boofter often is.
‘Faugh,’ he says, or it might have been ‘Pooh!’ petulantly; ‘take the nasty stuff away. Have you no Chartreuse? And you needn’t think you’re frightening me: I adore being roughed up by great big hairy dears like you.’ He proves it, shows them. They are revolted.
Now Martland’s brief is only to put the fear of God into Hockbottle and to make it clear that this photograph nuisance must now cease. He has been specifically ordered not to pry and has been told nothing embarrassing, but by nature and long habit he is nosy and has, moreover, a quite unwholesome horror of pooves. He decides to get to the bottom of the mystery (an unfortunate expression perhaps) and to make Hockbottle Tell All.
‘Very well,’ he says grimly, ‘this one will really hurt you.’
‘Promises, promises,’ simpers Hockbottle.
So now they give him a treatment which hurts you at the base of the septum and this is one which even Hockbottle is unlikely to relish. When he regains consciousness this time, he is very angry and also scared of losing his good looks, and he tells Martland that he has some very powerful insurance c/o the Hon. Charlie Mortdecai and they’d better look out, so there. He then shuts up firmly and Martland, now enraged, gives him yet another treatment, hitherto reserved solely for Chinese double agents. Hockbottle, to everyone’s dismay, drops dead. Dicky ticker, d’you see.
Well, worse things happen in war, as they say, and no one ever really liked Hockbottle of course, except perhaps a few Guardsmen from Chelsea Barracks, but Martland is not a man who appreciates uncovenanted mercies. The whole thing strikes him as thoroughly unsatisfactory, especially since he still has not found out what it is all about.
Judge of his chagrin then, when Chum telephones in a serious tizzy and asks him to call round immediately, bringing the wretched Hockers with him. Martland says yes, certainly, he’ll be there in a few minutes but it’s a little er difficult to bring Mr er Gloag just at present. When he arrives he is shown, distraughtly, a most distressing letter. Even Martland, whose taste has a few little blemishes in it, boggles at the paper it is written on: imitation parchment with edges both deckled and gilt, richly embossed bogus coat of arms at the top and a polychrome view of a desert sunset at the foot of the page. The address, inscribed in Olde Englysshe lettering, is ‘Rancho de los Siete Dolores de la Virgen,’ New Mexico. In short, it is from my very good customer Milton Krampf.
The letter says – mind you, I never saw it, so I’m paraphrasing Martland’s account – that Mr Krampf admires the eminent Chum very much and wants to start a fan club (!) to distribute little known biographical material about said Chum to Senators, Congressmen, British MP’s and Paris Match. (Terrifying, that last bit, you will admit.) He further says that a Mr Hogwattle Gloat has been in touch with him and is prepared to kick in with some illustrated reminiscences of ‘your mutual schooldays in Cambridge’. He also says how about the three of them meeting someplace and seeing if they can’t work out something to their mutual advantages. In other words, it is the bite. Coy and clumsy perhaps, but unmistakably the bite. (That made, so far, two members of the cast who’d gone off their chumps, leaving only me sane and responsible. I think.)
Martland paused in his narrative and I did not urge him on, for this was very bad news, for when millionaires go mad poorer people get hurt. I was so disturbed that I unthinkingly gave Martland a drink. A bad mistake that, I needed him to stay on edge. As he filled with the old familiar juice you could see his confidence returning, his head reassuming the habitual, maddeningly pompous poise. How he must have been loathed by his brother officers as they watched him bully and arsehole-creep his way up the service. But one had to remember, all the time, that he was dangerous and far cleverer than he looked or talked.
‘Martland,’ I said after a time, ‘did you say that your hirelings followed me to Spinoza’s this morning?’
‘That’s right.’ Crisply, much too crisply. He was definitely feeling his oats again.
‘Jock, Mr Martland is telling me fibs. Smack him, ple
ase.’
Jock drifted out of the shadows, gently relieved Martland of his glass and bent down to stare benignly into his face. Martland stared back, wide-eyed, his mouth opening a little. A mistake that, the open mouth. Jock’s great hand swung round in a half circle and struck Martland’s cheek with a loud report.
Martland sailed over the arm of the sofa and fetched up against the wainscot. He sat there a while; his little eyes dripping tears of hatred and funk. His mouth, closed now, writhed – he was counting his teeth, I expect.
‘I think that perhaps that was silly of me,’ I said. ‘I mean, killing you is safe enough, it sort of ties things up for good, doesn’t it, but just hurting you will only make you vengeful.’ I let him think about that for a time, to get the nasty implications. He thought about it. He got them.
At last he cranked a sickly smirk on to his face – beastly sight, that – and came and sat down again.
‘I shan’t bear a grudge, Charlie. I dare say you feel I deserve a bit of a bashing after this morning. Not yourself yet, I mean to say.’
‘There is something in what you say,’ I said, truthfully, for there was something in what he said. ‘I have had a long day, full of mopery and mayhem. If I stay up any longer I am likely to make a serious error of judgment. Goodnight.’ With this I swept out of the room. Martland’s mouth was open again as I closed the door.
A brief, delicious session under the warm shower, a whisk of costly dentifrice around the old ivory castles, a puff of Johnson’s Baby Powder here and there, a dive between the sheets and I was my own man again. Krampf’s idiotic departure from his script worried me, perhaps more than the attempt on my own life now, but I felt that there was nothing which could not more profitably be worried about on the morrow which is, as is well known, another day.
I rinsed the cares from my mind with a few pages of Firbank and swam gently and tenderly down into sleep. Sleep is not, with me, a mere switching off: it is a very positive pleasure to be supped and savoured with expertise. It was a good night; sleep pampered me like a familiar, salty mistress who yet always has a new delight with which to surprise her jaded lover.
My blisters, too, were much better.
4
Morning’s at seven,
The hill-side’s dew-pearled,
Pippa Passes
I carolled at Jock as he aroused me, but my heart wasn’t really in the statement. Morning was in fact at ten, as usual, and Upper Brook Street was merely wet. It was a gritty, drizzling, clammy day and the sky was the colour of mouse dirt. Pippa would have stayed in bed and no snail in his senses would have climbed a thorn. My cup of tea, which usually droppeth like the gentle rain from heaven, tasted like a vulture’s crutch. The canary looked constipated and gave me a surly glance instead of the customary stave or two of song.
‘Mr Martland’s downstairs, Mr Charlie. Bin waiting half an hour.’
I snarled and drew a fold of silk sheet over my head, burrowing down back into the womby warmth where no one can hurt you.
‘You ought to see his moosh, where I hit him, it’s a treat, honest. All colours.’
That fetched me. The day had at least one treat to offer. Against my better judgment I got up.
A mouth wash, half a dexedrine, a morsel of anchovy toast and a Charvet dressing-gown – all in the order named – and I was ready to deal with any number of Martlands.
‘Lead me to this Martland,’ I ordered.
I must say he did look lovely; it wasn’t just the rich autumnal tints on his swollen moosh, it was the play of expressions over it which enchanted me. You may compile your own list of these; I have no heart for it just now. The one which matters for this narrative was the last: a kind of sheepish false bonhomie with a careful dash of wryness, like two drops of Worcester sauce in a plate of gravy soup.
He bounced up and strode toward me, face first, hand outstretched for a manly grip.
‘Friends again, Charlie?’ he mumbled.
It was my turn to drop the lower jaw – I broke out in a sweat of embarrassment and shame for the man. Well, I mean. I made a sort of gruff, gargling noise which seemed to satisfy him for he dropped my hand and settled back cosily on to the sofa. To hide my nonplussedness I ordered Jock to make coffee for us.
We waited for the coffee in silence, more or less. Martland tried a weather gambit – he’s one of those people who always know when the latest V-shaped depression is likely to emerge from its roost over Iceland. I explained kindly that until I had drunk coffee of a morning I was a poor judge of meteorology.
(What is the origin of this strange British preoccupation with the weather? How can adult male Empire-builders gravely discuss whether or no it is raining, has rained or is likely to rain? Can you imagine the most barren-minded Parisian, Viennese or Berliner demeaning himself by talking such piffle? ‘Ils sont fous ces Bretons,’ says Obelix, rightly. I suppose it is really just another manifestation of the Englishman’s fantasy about the soil. The most urbane cit is, in his inner heart, a yeoman farmer and yearns for leather gaiters and a shotgun.)
The coffee having arrived (how hard it is to write without the ablative absolute!) we guzzled genteelly for a while, passing each other sugar and cream and things and beaming falsely from time to time. Then I lowered the boom.
‘You were going to tell me how you knew I was at Spinoza’s,’ I said.
‘Charlie, why ever are you so fascinated by that particular detail?’
It was a very good question indeed, but one which I had no intention of answering. I stared at him blankly.
‘Oh, well, it’s quite simple really. We happen to know that old Spinoza has – had, rather – about a quarter of a million grubby pound notes from the Great Train job. He paid for them in clean fivers and got a hundred and seventy-five pounds per cent. Bloody old crook. Well, we knew he would be having to unload soon so we hired a little yob who works for one of the galleries in Mason’s Yard to watch the place for us. Anyone, well, interesting, goes to see Spinoza, we get the word on our yob’s little walkie-talkie.’
‘Really,’ I said. ‘Now I do call that riveting. What about callers before gallery hours?’
‘Ah, yes, well, there we have to take a chance, of course. I mean, there just aren’t funds to run shifts on all these jobs. Cost a fortune.’
I made a mental ‘whew’ of relief, believing him. A thought struck me.
‘Martland, is your nark a little tit called Perce, works for the O’Flaherty Gallery?’
‘Well, yes, I think that is his name, as a matter of fact.’
‘Just so,’ I said.
I cocked an ear; Jock was outside the door, breathing through his nose, making mental notes, if you can properly call them that. There’s no doubt that I was much relieved to learn that only Perce was suborned; had Mr Spinoza been playing the strumpet with me all would have been lost. In spades. I must have allowed my expression to relax for I realized that Martland was looking at me curiously. This would not do. Change the subject.
‘Well now,’ I cried heartily, ‘what’s the deal? Where are these riches of the Orient you were pressing upon me last night? “Nay, even unto half your kingdom” was the sum mentioned, I believe?’
‘Oh, really, come now Charlie, last night was last night, wasn’t it? I mean, we were both a bit overwrought, weren’t we? You’re surely not holding me to that …?’
‘The window is still there,’ I said simply, ‘and so is Jock. And I may say that I am still overwrought; no one has ever tried to murder me in cold blood before.’
‘But obviously I’ve taken precautions this time, haven’t I?’ he said, and he patted a hip pocket. This told me that his pistol, if anywhere, was under his armpit, of course.
‘Let us play a game, Martland. If you can get that thing out before Jock hits you on the head, you win the coconut.’
‘Oh come on, Charlie, let’s stop sodding about. I’m quite prepared to offer you substantial ah benefits and ah concessions if you’ll play along wi
th our side over this business. You know damn well I’m in the shit and if I can’t recruit you that awful old man in the Home Office will be baying for your blood again. What will you settle for? I’m sure you aren’t interested in the sort of money my department can offer.’
‘I think I’d like a Bonzo dog.’
‘Oh God, Charlie, can’t you be serious?’
‘No, really, a greyhound; you know, a silver one.’
‘You can’t mean you want to be a Queen’s Messenger? What in God’s name for? And what makes you think I could swing that?’
I said, ‘First, yes, I do; second, mind your own business; third, you can swing it if you have to. I also want the diplomatic passport that goes with it and the privilege of taking a diplomatic bag to the Embassy in Washington.’
He leaned back in his chair, all knowing and relaxed now. ‘And what is likely to be in the bag, or is that not my business either?’
‘A Rolls Royce, as a matter of fact. Well, it won’t actually be in a bag, of course, but it will be smothered in diplomatic seals. Same thing.’
He looked grave, worried; his under-engined brain revving furiously as its deux chevaux tried to cope with this gradient.
‘Charlie, if it’s going to be full of drugs the answer is no repeat no. If it’s grubby pound notes in a reasonable quantity I might see my way, but I don’t think I could protect you afterwards.’
‘It is neither,’ I said firmly. ‘On my word of honour.’ I looked him squarely and frankly in the eye as I said it, so that he would be sure that I was lying. (Those notes from the Train will have to be changed soon, won’t they?) He eyed me back like a trusting comrade, then carefully placed all ten fingertips together, eyeing them with modest pride as though he’d done something clever. He was thinking hard and didn’t care who knew it.
‘Well, I suppose something on those lines could be worked out,’ he said at last. ‘You realize, of course, that the degree of co-operation expected from you would have to be proportionate to the difficulty of getting you what you ask?’
The Mortdecai Trilogy Page 4
