The Mortdecai Trilogy

by Bonfiglioli, Kyril

  I made him another drink, it was easier than saying anything.

  Jock, his timing as perfect as ever, announced luncheon and we sat down to gulls’ eggs, terrine of rabbit and cold curry puffs. I defy anyone to dwell on private miseries with one of Jock’s cold curry puffs melting on his tongue, they stand alone, they really do. We drank bottled beer, for I disapprove of wine at luncheon: it either promotes drowsiness or inflames the animal spirits – either way it wastes the afternoon. Sam was a trifle less jumpy when victualled; George seemed somnolent, unwilling to join in.

  ‘Now,’ Sam said, ‘tell us about the Oxford venture, Charlie. What did your emeritus Magus suggest?’

  I told them, trying to keep the apologetic tone from my voice, doing my best to offer blasphemous folly as the only kind of reason which could prevail. What had seemed to make sense in Oxford sounded merely crack-pot over a Jersey luncheon-table and their blank stares, their shared sidelong glances, did not much help me toward persuasiveness. I ended lamely.

  ‘And if you fellows can offer anything better,’ I ended lamely, ‘I’d be delighted to hear it.’

  There was a long, treacly silence. George ran an exploratory index finger over each hair in his eyebrows, then checked the lobes of his ears and the cleft in his chin before starting to remind himself of the contours of his thumb-shaped nose.

  Sam, on the other hand, was motionless, seeming rapt in the study of a curry-stain on the tablecloth.

  Jock came in and cleared things away while George and Sam maintained their silences. I was damned if I was going to help them start the ball rolling; indeed, it occurred to me that many worthy people would say that I was damned already.

  ‘All right,’ said Sam at last. ‘I’m prepared to give it a crack of the whip. If the swine’s as demented as he seems to be, then I suppose we can best fight him with this insane garbage.’

  George nodded slowly.

  ‘Probably the only language he understands,’ he said in a sort of gritty, country-magistrate’s voice. ‘Distasteful. Probably useless. Certainly expensive. But, as Charlie says, what else comes to mind? Seen stranger things than this taking effect, now I come to think of it. Yes; in India, places like that.’

  ‘You men do realize,’ I said, ‘that you’ll have to sort of participate, don’t you? I mean, there’s one or two rather dreary things that have to be done during the Mass, you see, and the unfrocked priest will, so to speak, have his hands full for much of the time.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sam.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said George. ‘But I’m damned if I’m memorizing any Black Paternosters backwards or any of that rot.’

  ‘Black Paternosters?’ I asked. ‘Have you been studying the subject a bit, George?’

  ‘We’ve all read our Dennis Wheatley at some time or another, Charlie,’ said Sam.

  ‘Speak for yourself!’ I said sharply.

  ‘Let me get it clear in my head,’ George said. ‘This mummery is supposed to discourage the witch-chap and make him feel that we’re as well in with demons and things as he is, so he’d better lay off, is that it?’

  ‘More or less, but there’s a bit more to it than that. You see, it embodies a fairly hefty curse which is supposed to make the object of our attentions waste away and die nastily, so if our man really believes in what he’s doing and is familiar with this particular ritual – and Dryden is pretty sure he does and is – he ought to be thoroughly scared and might well give up his activities altogether.’

  ‘West African witch-doctors can still do it,’ said George. ‘Thousands of well-documented cases. If the victim really believes he’s going to die on a certain day he just jolly well lies down and dies.’

  ‘Do you mean to say,’ Sam asked slowly, ‘that there’s a chance that this thing might actually kill our man?’

  ‘Well, yes, I’m afraid it seems quite possible.’

  ‘Excellent. When do we start?’

  ‘Just one moment,’ said George, ‘it’s occurred to me – how does the fellow know that this Mass has been performed and what Mass it is and who’s on the receiving end and so on?’

  ‘I’m glad you asked that,’ I said. ‘There’s only one way and it will cost us all a certain amount of embarrassment but it will work.’

  I then told them the method. After a noisy and acrimonious ten minutes they agreed to it, but our friendship did not come unscathed out of the discussion.

  Jock came in at that point with a telegram on a salver: he loves to show off in front of what he calls Company. I suspect that he’d really love to be a proper manservant; perhaps I’ll buy him a striped waistcoat for Christmas.

  The wire was from Dryden. Its wording made me boggle for a moment: ‘DESHABILLE ARRIVES FALAISEWISE TOMORROW TURNIP PASTIES ESSENTIAL’.

  If Dryden has fault it is that he fancies himself a master of telegraphese; it grieves his friends mightily. There was a time when he could take it or leave it alone but now, I fear, he is ‘medically dependent’ as the booze-doctors say. The déshabille clearly meant ‘the unfrocked one’, the Falaise is one of the Weymouth-to-Jersey mail-packets, ‘pasties’ was obviously a textual emendation of ‘Pastis’ by some officious Post Office worker but ‘turnip’ remained as obscure as it had been on Oxford Station.

  ‘Jock,’ I said, ‘is there any Pastis in the house?’

  ‘There’s a bottle of Pernod, same thing innit?’

  ‘Lay in half a case of Pastis today, please. How are we off for turnips?’

  ‘Funny you should ask that, Mr Charlie; the old geezer in the garden just planted a row ’smorning. Planted another toad, too. But they won’t be ready for a couple of munce yet.’

  ‘There should be some of the little French ones in the shops by now. Try the covered market in St Helier, or French Lane. If not, perhaps they can be bought tinned or frozen or dried – I leave it up to you, you understand these back-alleys of the world of retailing – “nourri dans le sérail, tu en connais les détours” – but get some by tomorrow night, even if you have to pay cash.’

  ‘Right. How many?’

  ‘How do they sell them, do you know? I mean, by weight, d’you suppose, or by the yard or what? What?’

  ‘By the pound, I reckon.’

  ‘Well, would you say that a couple of pounds would be a good stiff dose for a consenting adult?’

  ‘Plenty.’

  ‘Right, then.’

  ‘Right, Mr Charlie.’

  ‘Fascinating though it is,’ said Sam heavily, ‘to see you in your rôle of pantry-man, are you certain that there are not subjects of almost equal importance to be discussed?’

  I explained all, but neither he nor George was much mollified. Their earlier doubts about our project were renewed by this talk of ‘leguminous mystification’ (Sam) and ‘awful Romish fellows soaked in absinthe’ (George). I soothed them a bit but they were still restive. Moreover, they had a scheme of their own up their sleeves which they now insisted we should carry into effect concurrently with the Satanic Mass ploy.

  ‘You see,’ said Sam, ‘we’ve been thinking about the victims as distinct from the witchcraft aspect – in case the latter is by any chance a red herring – and, although three victims is not a very useful number to generalize from, one can draw a few tentative conclusions. First, all three families who’ve suffered are English. This could suggest a hatred for English people generally.’

  ‘It could also suggest,’ I put in, ‘an Englishman who doesn’t fancy Jersey women.’

  ‘An Englishman?’ scoffed George, ‘with all that witch nonsense? Tommyrot.’

  ‘I thought we were leaving out the witchcraft aspect for the moment.’

  ‘So we are,’ said Sam, ‘and your point is well taken, if we are to be logical. But to proceed. George and I are both tolerably well off – though not in the class of the millionaire immigrants who seem so to excite the Jersiais’ dislike – but the husband of the last victim, the doctor, is only as rich as a thriving general practic
e can make him and he has been in Jersey for twenty years, well liked by one and all. However, we are all three in what’s called the middle class so it could be a class-hatred or/and an anti-English thing. Notice I say anti-English not anti-British, because Jersey is probably the loyalest of the Crown’s appanages. Then there’s the age of the victims: they’re all in their thirties. This could well be because we all happen to have wives in their thirties or it could indicate that the rapist simply likes women of that age. This could suggest again’ – it was choking him to say this, for he was evidently more in the mood for murder than reason – ‘that he actually likes a good-looking woman in her prime, in what I shall have to call a fairly normal way; I mean, if he was an assaulter of little girls or old ladies we could be sure that he was really vilely mad, couldn’t we? The last point is that the three victims are all closely grouped on the map, which suggests a pedestrian, don’t you think, or someone who doesn’t dare to use a motor-car – unlike the Beast of Jersey, of course, who is supposed to have driven all over the Island to his, ah, targets.’

  ‘Or again, a comparative stranger,’ I put in gently, ‘like an Englishman who wasn’t familiar with all the “back doubles”?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sam said patiently, ‘it could, indeed, suggest that, too.’

  George made that noise, usually rendered as ‘Pshaw’, which only those who have served in the Indian Army can make.

  ‘So George and I, while you were away, drew up a list, as best we could, of good-looking English women, in their thirties, wives of substantial English rentiers or professional men, and living within a mile of here. We believe that the total of probable targets comes to no more than seventeen and that we four (I’m including Jock) could set ambushes which would give us almost a twenty-five per cent chance, each night, of being in the right place.’

  ‘Yes, but how would you convince the rapist, supposing that he is watching the house, that he had a clear field?’

  ‘Easily,’ said George, the military man taking over from the back-room boffins, ‘so long as we have the cooperation of the, ah, householders.’ (One felt that he had almost said ‘of the civilian population’.) ‘Each of us enters a selected house at the sort of hour when most people are working: say, just before noon – lots of these Jersey workmen spend half the afternoon in pubs, better avoid afternoons. Early in the evening, the husband goes off ostentatiously in his car, loudly saying that he won’t be much later than midnight, while wife waves goodbye at door. Then whichever one of us is on guard continues to lie low in the house or, if there’s good cover outside commanding all entrances, makes his way to the cover. The wife in question potters about downstairs for a bit then goes upstairs, puts light on in bedroom, perhaps shows herself for a moment at bedroom window, then puts out main bedroom lights, leaving bedside one on, and creeps off to some other room; locks herself in. We lie in wait. Armed.’

  ‘That sounds perfect,’ I said cautiously. ‘Perfect. Except for a couple of things, if you’ll bear with me.’

  Sam sighed boredly; George grunted guardedly.

  ‘As follows,’ I went on. ‘First, just supposing my half-serious theory that it is an Englishman were right, how could one tell that one was not tipping him one’s hand and, indeed, guarding his very own homestead?’

  ‘Well, if one must take that seriously, we simply take care not to let any householder under guard on a given evening know which other houses are being guarded.’

  ‘Good,’ I said, ‘but, better still, let him not know that any other houses are under surveillance.’

  ‘Well, all right, that makes sense, come to think of it.’

  ‘Second,’ I went on remorselessly, ‘what about our wives while we are out boy-scouting? Johanna is a pretty hand with a pistol but even so, without Jock’s presence, she might be a bit vulnerable, and she’s a natural next target. Sonia may or may not be off the fellow’s list now but, after her horrid experience, she probably wouldn’t much care to be left alone.’

  ‘Perfectly simple,’ George said impatiently, ‘Sonia gives a bridge party, invites Johanna, couple of extra men, no one leaves until we return.’

  I gaped, horror-stricken. I knew not what to say; I could only shoot a piteous glance at Sam.

  ‘What is uppermost in Charlie’s mind, I fancy,’ said Sam, ‘is that Johanna is really rather in the international league at Bridge – she has partnered Omar Sharif – while Sonia, although she plays with gusto and brio, has this trifling inability to remember what are trumps, and, worse for some reason known only to bridge-players, persists in recanting.’

  ‘Revoking,’ I said.

  ‘I dare say you’re right, Charlie.’

  George assumed his brigadier-voice; just like Matthew Arnold donning his singing-robe.

  ‘Look here, Mortdecai, I’d hate to think that you were making difficulties for the fun of it but I must say you’re not being exactly constructive in your criticism.’

  I cringed a bit; I felt that I had failed the Staff Course at Camberley. Mortdecai would never wear the coveted red tabs on his khaki. ‘RTU’ (Returned to Unit) would follow his name for ever – never ‘psc’ (passed staff-college).

  ‘Ah, shit!’ I thought, as better men have, I’m sure, thought before me, at similar crises in their lives.

  ‘Well,’ I said aloud, ‘no doubt some other sort of party could be arranged; it’s not something to fuss about, is it?’

  ‘That’s better.’ George was prepared to give the weedy subaltern another chance. ‘Of course there are other kinds of party: there are whist-drives, are there not, and beetle-drives and canasta-evenings; all sorts of things. One can deal with that sort of detail at, ah, the time.’ (Once again, I heard him, almost, say ‘at platoon level’. ‘After all,’ he seemed to be saying ‘what are sergeants for?’)

  ‘Yes, George,’ I said, restraining my impulse to call him ‘Sir’. ‘But my last objection is one that I have raised before. The question of fire-arms. You simple cannot go popping off at people just because they’re rapists.’

  ‘I can,’ said Sam.

  ‘So can I,’ said George.

  ‘Well, I can’t. My .455 has to live chained up in the Pistol Club Armoury; my Banker’s Special and Johanna’s little Savage .28 have to be locked up in bed-side table drawers when we are in and in the safe when we’re out. I’d risk flourishing a pistol at a miscreant out-of-doors, I suppose, but if I shot someone, except in clear self-defence against an armed miscreant, I’d be in line for a long prison sentence. You men would, probably, be in a slightly better position because you’ve actually suffered from this chap and you’d get the benefit of the “no-jury-would-convict” convention, but I’d look pretty feeble up against a smart barrister explaining that I’d killed a chap because I’d thought he was a chap who’d ravished the wife of a chap I knew, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘All right,’ said Sam, ‘just don’t shoot to kill. You’re meant to be a first-class pistol-shot, aren’t you? Aim at his legs.’

  ‘First-class pistol-shots,’ I said, ‘know that to hit a human leg in motion with a pistol is a matter of the merest chance. Moreover, the human frame is extraordinarily perverse about dying. You can plant a bullet in the head and the subject walks away – witness that South African premier a few years ago. You can empty a magazine of ammunition into his left breast and he spends a few weeks in hospital, inconvenienced only by saw-edged bed-pans. Yet, pop a small-calibre bullet into the fleshy part of his leg and it nicks the femoral artery and he bleeds to death before the ambulance arrives. You get away with manslaughter and count yourself lucky.’

  There was a long and sulky silence. Finally Sam said:

  ‘Argh, go piss up your kilt, Mortdecai.’

  ‘Certainly,’ I replied stiffly, ‘but I shall require a certain amount of privacy for that. Must you go? Can’t you stay?’

  ‘Oh, now, look here chaps,’ said George, ‘come on. Let’s not get excited about trifles. It’s quite simple and Charlie’s talking per
fectly good sense. There’s no reason why he should risk a prison sentence just to oblige his friends.’

  His tone made it clear that he would do just that, but that he was a true-born Englishman, unlike certain Mortdecais he could name.

  ‘It’s quite simple,’ he repeated, ‘we all go armed but Charlie carries an empty gun. And a stout stick, or something of that sort. All agreed?’

  Sam made the kind of noise you make when you don’t mean ‘no’ but you’re too miffed to say ‘yes’.

  I said, ‘Well, now, I’m afraid there’s just one more thing.’

  ‘Oh, sweet Christ crucified!’ roared Sam. ‘What now?’

  I didn’t take offence this time. He had, after all, been through a bad time. But I had to make the point.

  ‘I’m afraid Jock mustn’t carry his pistol at all. His Lüger is highly illegal and moreover he has form.’

  ‘?’ said George.

  ‘Done some porridge,’ I explained.

  ‘?’

  ‘ “Porridge” is a term used by rats of the underworld,’ I said patiently, ‘and it means penal servitude. There is a legend, you see, that if, when eating the wholesome breakfast provided on the last morning of your “stretch”, you do not eat up all your nice porridge, you will be back in durance vile within the year. Any warder will tell you that. Jock has partly-eaten several plates of such porridge at Her Majesty’s expense and if he were to be caught with any kind of firearm at all it would go very hard with him. If he actually shot someone he’d get approximately ninety-nine years: with maximum remission for good behaviour, call it sixty-six. He’d be a hundred and ten when he got out and would expect me to give him his job back, although he’d almost certainly have forgotten how to make decent tea.’

  ‘Oh, stop drivelling, Charlie, your point is taken. Jock will be armed with a stout stick. All right?’

  ‘He has, I believe, a length of lead piping, covered with soft leather.’

  ‘Or a length of lead piping covered with soft leather. Is that all? Then I suggest we start tonight. Here are four sets of names and addresses. Any preferences?’