by Simon Brett
She racked her brains, but they proved stubbornly resistant to racking. She even sought outside assistance. At St Raphael’s College, Oxford, resided the one person in the world whose intellect was possibly even more powerful than her own, Professor Erasmus Holofernes. Because of the long delay in response to a ship-borne letter and the unavailability of transatlantic telephone services, she had sent him a cablegram, outlining their current predicament, but the professor had been uncharacteristically slow in replying. So there was no immediate help from that quarter.
Twinks tried to distract herself with her usual resources. These included leading a wild social life, but that didn’t seem to be on offer at Chapstick Towers. True, she had been introduced to a lot of Mary’s friends, but the vapid girls only seemed interested in the forthcoming wedding, and as for the young men . . . well, it was the usual thing. With deadening predictability they all fell in love with her, which Twinks found extremely tiresome. She kept swatting them off like so many mosquitoes.
There were of course other things she could do to occupy her mind. In rare moments of accidie she had frequently resorted to translation. For this trip she had brought with her from Tawcester Towers a copy of Montaigne’s Essais and had made a start on a Japanese version of that, but it didn’t seem to have engaged her mind as forcibly as such diversions usually did. She felt restless and dissatisfied with herself.
And she knew she would go on feeling that way until she had somehow managed to get Blotto out of the proposed marriage to Mary Chapstick. Only when the pair of them had returned permanently to Tawcester Towers would she feel any sense of serenity.
The trouble was that every time she brought her mind to bear on the problem, she was faced with the same unalterable facts. The usual reason for the cancellation of nuptials was sudden cold feet on behalf of one or other of the proposed participants. Well, Mary was very definitely a non-starter so far as that was concerned. Her feet – and indeed every other part of her – seemed to be permanently on the toasting fork.
And while Blotto’s feet could have been used very effectively to chill a whole cellarful of white wine, this wasn’t a new condition. He’d felt like that from the first moment the marriage had been suggested. But his innate sense of family honour – not to mention a healthy respect for the will of his mother – meant there was no question of his backing out voluntarily.
Of course, engagements had been broken off many times because of the infidelity of one or other of the parties involved, usually the man. If the affianced boddo were to go off and have a rampant public affair, ideally with a woman no better than she should be . . . well, the cancellation notices would soon be in the post.
But Twinks only very briefly entertained that idea. She was dealing with Blotto after all, and her brother’s general ineptitude about encounters with the opposite sex made it difficult to put his name in the same sentence as the words ‘rampant public affair’.
Another cause for the ending of an engagement could be the sudden realization on the part of one or other parent that the union was unsuitable for reasons of breeding, imbecility or criminality. But here again no change was likely to occur. The Dowager Duchess had known from the start that the Chapsticks were unsuitable – they were Americans, for the love of strawberries! – but she didn’t let that interfere with her plans. The financial security of Tawcester Towers – not to mention its plumbing – was more important than such social considerations. And if a younger son had to be sacrificed to achieve that end . . . well, worse things had happened to the Lyminsters during the Crusades.
The evening that Blotto had accompanied Luther P. Chapstick III to the Chainey Hotel Twinks had been left alone at Chapstick Towers (alone, that is, except for the army of servants and bodyguards who peopled the place, but of course someone of her breeding didn’t notice them). Mary had gone off to dine with her bridesmaids and, although Twinks had been invited, she’d refused the invitation. Too gracious to say that she was actually fed up to the back teeth with talk of the wedding, she’d pleaded the excuse of a headache. But in fact she did have plans for the evening.
Blotto had reported to her the details of his latest heart to heart conversation with his fiancée and from it Twinks had extracted one tiny scrap of hope – Mary’s mention of her previous admirer, Sophocles Katzenjammer. The feud between Luther P. Chapstick III and the Katzenjammers was clearly a ferocious one. If Blotto could somehow be manoeuvred into an alliance – or the appearance of an alliance – with the Katzenjammers . . . if he could perhaps just be caught with the smell of Katzenjammer Beef Extract on his breath . . . well, Mary’s father might suddenly feel very differently about allying his daughter to such a debased character.
Twinks had only the one thread of thought to weave into the tapestry of a plan, but she didn’t have anything else. And the situation was so desperate that she had to start somewhere.
So, abandoning her Japanese translation in the middle of Montaigne’s Essai ‘To philosophize is to learn how to die’, and picking up her sequinned reticule, she left her room and set out to explore Chapstick Towers.
By now Twinks knew her way around the sprawling pile and she had no doubt about her initial destination. At the front of the house was a room whose interior was that of a hunting lodge transported from the grounds of an Austrian Schloss, which Luther P. Chapstick III used as his study. Previous casual exploration had revealed to Twinks that he always kept the door locked. But after checking round the hall (reassembled from a Maharajah’s palace in Lahore) to see that she was unobserved, it took a matter of moments for her to use the picklocks in her reticule to gain entrance.
Once inside, she relocked the door, reasoning that if any passing servant or bodyguard tried it, they would then find nothing untoward. The heavy curtains were drawn, so she had no anxiety about switching on the electric lights. Though she had not been in the room before, she went instinctively to the large desk, which had once belonged to Pope Gregory XIII and was set in a window bay which in daytime commanded unrivalled views over Lake Michigan.
The sixteenth-century Italian locksmiths had been clever, but not clever enough to thwart the contents of Twinks’s reticule. Within seconds she had Luther P. Chapstick III’s desk open. She didn’t know exactly what she was looking for, but at least for the first time since she’d arrived in the United States, Twinks felt she was doing something useful. The familiar thrill prompted by a new investigation ran through her slender body.
She had been vaguely hoping to find some details of the past history between the Chapsticks and the Katzenjammers, but what the desk offered was something infinitely more valuable. Something that Twinks reckoned could offer the very real prospect of getting Blotto out of his engagement to Mary Chapstick.
So excited was she by her discovery that, when she slipped out of the study on the way back to her bedroom, she did not notice that her movements were observed from the shadows in the hall by Jimmy ‘The Moose’ Fettuchini.
14
At Last – a Drink!
Blotto had expected that the Chainey Hotel Catering Manager would take him straight to one of the many bars around the lobby and provide him with alcohol, but he was informed that all he could get there would be soft drinks, teas, lemonades and other of the noxious sugary concoctions that he had been served at Chapstick Towers. The route to a real drink proved to be far more circuitous.
The Catering Manager led him through the hotel’s kitchens and out into a seedy, minimally lit street behind. Next to the closed metal shutter of a run-down garage was a small, rusting metal door. A mean single bulb shed a grudging light on dirty uncarpeted stairs. The Catering Manager nodded his head for Blotto to follow him down them.
The light hardly reached the next door at the foot of the stairs. Blotto could just see the outline of the Catering Manager’s arm raised and the knuckles tapping a rhythmic tattoo on the dull metal. There was a silence, then a circle of light appeared as a peephole was uncovered. The light was quickly b
locked and the glitter of a single eye could be seen at the aperture.
‘Ciao,’ said the Catering Manager. ‘Issa Giuseppe.’
The double doors provided very effective soundproofing and, as Blotto was ushered through the second one and the thick curtain that hung on its inside, his ears were suddenly assailed with noise. As his eyes accommodated to the dusky interior, he became aware of a band of coloured musicians over the far side of the room, jumping about vigorously to the hectic beat. Though Twinks was an aficionado of jazz, Blotto had had little experience of the new sound. And the little he’d had, had come courtesy of gramophone records. He’d never heard a live jazz band before.
Nor had he seen a live jazz singer. The musicians were fronted by a woman of exceptional, insolent beauty. She wasn’t young, probably only just hanging on to her thirties, but that augmented rather than diminished her attractions. She was dressed completely in black, a small shimmering black dress which failed to reach her black silk-stockinged knees. Black shoes with a high heel and straps across the front. About her neck hung long loops of threaded jet. The whiteness of her bare arms and face provided a sharp monochrome contrast. Her eyes were a dark, smoky blue.
But the glory of her was the splash of colour provided by her hair, which was a deep, lustrous red, cut in the contemporary style like an acorn cup. And equally impressive was the voice that issued from her painted red lips, as she sang:
I’ve always been mistreated,
Beaten up and cheated.
My man he treats me cruel,
Plays me for a fool,
But when I walk out the door,
I soon come back for more,
Though he’s more interested in the booze.
That’s why I’m singing . . .
The . . .
Kept in my place, slapped in the face,
Worried around, knocked to the ground . . .
Pick myself up again blues.
The voice had been long marinated in gin and smoke, and it had a strange effect on Blotto. Although he was generally inept in social exchanges with the opposite sex, here was a communication that cut out the awkward necessity of conversation. It seemed to slice through to some deep core of his being and left him strangely stirred. He didn’t know how to describe the voice, but then he had not yet encountered the relatively new word ‘sexy’.
He stood frozen in the doorway, mesmerized by the singer’s looks and voice, and the Catering Manager had to shake him back to normal functioning. ‘Duke, you said you wanted a drink . . .’
‘Oh yes, yes I do,’ Blotto agreed. And as he dragged his eyes reluctantly away from the chanteuse, he became aware of a very welcome sight. On all of the tables in the crowded space stood bottles, all the customers had glasses in their hands, and the smoky air was loaded with the tang of alcohol. A lot of violin cases lay beside their owners’ chairs. At one table all of the customers were dressed in police uniforms, and they seemed to be carousing with even more enthusiasm than the rest of the crowd.
‘Then you better come and meet the Boss,’ said the Catering Manager, leading Blotto across to a table near the stage.
There was no doubt which of the men he was referring to. Though all of them were dressed in similar double-breasted suits, all had similar thick-set bodies and heavy jowls, there was one to whom the body angles of all the others deferred. His face was diagonally bisected by a scar in three sections, a line across the forehead losing itself in a bushy eyebrow, continuing across the broken nose and ending with a final oblique on the cheek. The man was very still – more facial expression had frequently been observed in paving slabs – but nothing escaped the scrutiny of his cold, reptilian eyes.
‘Boss,’ said the Catering Manager. ‘I’d like to introduce you to the Duke of Lyminster Deveroox.’ Blotto had long given up hope of Americans getting his title right, but he still winced at having the final ‘x’ of his Christian name sounded.
The ‘Boss’ very slowly raised his eyes to the newcomer, appraised him for a moment, then gestured to the empty seat beside him. ‘Join me,’ he said. ‘I’m Mr Chiaparelli.’
‘Known as Spagsy,’ added one of the heavies in a voice that suggested he’d been on the booze for a while.
The Boss’s glacial eyes flicked across to look at the man. ‘Did I hear myself giving you permission to call me Spagsy?’ he asked in a quiet, level voice.
‘No, Boss, I just—’
‘Nobody calls me Spagsy without my permission.’
In a smooth quick movement, he drew a small revolver out of a shoulder holster inside his pinstriped jacket and shot the offending man.
‘People gotta have respect,’ said Spagsy Chiaparelli. ‘Otherwise civilization goes out the window.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Blotto, who felt he couldn’t let the killing he’d just witnessed go completely unremarked, ‘but did you shoot that boddo simply because he called you . . . ?’ He teetered on the edge of saying ‘Spagsy’ but, remembering the reaction such a lapse had just prompted, thought better of it ‘. . . because he didn’t use the proper form of address to you?’
‘Hell, whadda you take me for?’ demanded the Boss, his hands innocently outstretched. ‘Some kinda hoodlum? The reason I shot that chimp was because he’s a multiple murderer.’
‘Toad-in-the-hole!’
‘With my own eyes I seen him shoot down fourteen men in cold blood.’ He appealed to the other men at the table for corroboration. ‘That scumdouche killed fourteen men, didn’t he?’
‘Twenty-three,’ asserted one of the heavies. ‘But you weren’t there for all of them, Mr Chiaparelli.’
‘See?’ Again the Boss opened his hands out to Blotto. ‘Any dingle who takes twenty-three innocent boofers for a ride, he deserves the death penalty, doesn’t he?’
‘Well, maybe, but—’
‘So that’s what I give him, wannit?’
‘Maybe. Technically, though, I think a death penalty should only be given after a due process of law.’
‘A due process of law? You mean a trial, do you, Duke?’
‘Yes, I suppose—’
‘And what happens at a trial? A bunch of witnesses say they saw the fligger commit the crime, he’s found guilty – death penalty – bang! Same due process as what you just saw here.’
‘It’s still not exactly how these things’re done in England.’
‘Hey, we’re not in England now, are we? Here we’re in a new country. Here we just do things quicker is all.’ The impassive features were turned on Blotto with the tiniest flicker of surprise. ‘You weren’t thinking I was one of the bad guys, were you? I’m on the side of good. I wouldn’t shoot nobody except in the cause of justice. Look!’ He pointed to the group of men who were removing the body. ‘If I was a bad guy, would the police be helping with that?’
It was a very good point, thought Blotto. Three uniformed policemen were part of the corpse-carrying team. He felt rather guilty for the unworthy suspicions he’d had of Spagsy Chiaparelli. Other countries had different ways of doing things. Of course they weren’t right – only the British could always be relied on to do the right thing – but one had to respect their customs. He nodded to the Boss and said, ‘Good ticket.’
Spagsy graciously acknowledged the apology before saying, ‘You’ll be wanting a drink.’
‘You can say that again,’ agreed Blotto, who was still feeling a little confused. Although he had now accepted the full explanation for what had happened, he wasn’t sure of the correct etiquette to be followed when your host has just shot someone.
‘What you drink then, Duke?’
Blotto had been waiting so long to be asked that question that he had a momentary doubt as to what to answer. ‘Erm, what do you have?’
‘Everything.’
The memory came to Blotto of a particularly brain-rearranging cocktail that he’d been introduced to at the Savoy Hotel in London. ‘It wouldn’t be possible to organize a St Louis Steamhammer, would it, Mr Chiapa
relli?’ Recent experience had made him careful to get the correct mode of address.
‘Sure.’ Spagsy Chiaparelli snapped his fingers. A waiter materialized instantly beside him and one of his acolytes gave the drink order.
There was a silence . . . well, a silence except for the jazz band, the sultry singing of the chanteuse and the raucous chat from all the other tables.
Feeling he should perhaps break it, Blotto said, ‘This is beezer, isn’t it?’ Then, after no one reacted, he continued, ‘Certainly lighting the fireworks of fun here, aren’t we?’
Still silence. Blotto wasn’t usually very perceptive, but on this occasion he intuited that there was a rule at the table where he was sitting. No one initiated a conversation except for Spagsy Chiaparelli. If he didn’t say anything, then there was silence. Blotto stayed silent until his St Louis Steamhammer arrived.
Oh, the bliss of that first taste, the burning of the alcohol against the roof of his mouth. It wasn’t much more than a week since he’d had his last proper drink on the SS His Majesty, but to Blotto the deprivation had felt like a lifetime. He swallowed down the first mouthful of his St Louis Steamhammer and waited for the firecrackers to detonate inside his cranium.
As the pyrotechnic display began, continuing life seemed once more a possibility. Even the prospect of marriage to Mary Chapstick was momentarily less daunting.
Apparently divining the direction of his thoughts, Spagsy Chiaparelli said, ‘You’re marrying the Chapstick broad.’
‘That is the plan, yes. We’re twiddling up the old reef-knot at some church I’ve yet to have the pleasure of meeting, and then the reception’s going to be held in the Chainey Hotel . . . which I gather you own . . . ?’
‘I own it, yeah. I own most of Chicago.’
‘Well, that’s a rum baba. Because Luther P. Chapstick III says he owns most of it too.’
