by Simon Brett
Spagsy Chiaparelli let out what had to be assumed to be a chuckle, though it caused no change of expression on his granite features. ‘Let’s say Chapstick and I have an understanding. Between us we cover the waterfront.’
‘Just the waterfront?’
‘When I say waterfront what I mean is the entire city.’
‘Ah. Hoopee-doopee for you,’ said Blotto. ‘The city you’re talking about is Chicago?’
‘What other city were you thinking of?’
‘I don’t know. I just wondered if you might happen to own New York as well.’
That shook Spagsy Chiaparelli. He focused his cold grey eyes on the blond-haired young man in front of him. Could this dumb cluck of an Englishman actually know of his hidden plans, the secret deal he’d been working on with the capo dei capi of the New York mafia, Harry ‘Three Bananas’ Pennoni? Could he know about the millions of dollars’ worth of gold bullion stolen from the US government with which he’d agreed to pay Pennoni for a slice of the Big Apple action? Was this duke not as stupid as he appeared to be? Was his ‘silly ass’ demeanour in fact a cunning front for an extremely devious undercover operator – possibly even one sent from New York by Pennoni to check the Chicago set-up?
Spagsy knew he had to proceed with caution. ‘Tell me, Duke,’ he said, ‘are you a member of Cosa Nostra?’
‘No,’ Blotto replied. ‘I’m Church of England.’
Spagsy Chiaparelli’s anxieties about the newcomer having a cunning front receded.
The band came to the end of another song. There was silence. They were clearly about to take a break but waiting for permission. Then Spagsy started clapping and the rest of the room followed his lead. He looked piercingly at the Englishman. ‘You like music?’
Blotto looked across at the singer. ‘I do when it’s sung by a breathsapper like that.’
‘You reckon the chanteuse is a good-looking broad?’
‘I’ll say! She’s absolutely the nun’s nightie.’
‘You taken a fancy to her, have you?’
Blotto was about to say that he thought she was a real bellbuzzer with three veg and gravy, when he became aware of a change in the quality of the silence around the table. Once again an uncharacteristic insight warned him that expressing too much interest in the singer might not be a tactful move, so far as Spagsy Chiaparelli was concerned. So he revised his response and just said, ‘She sings very well.’
The boss nodded, as if accepting the compliment personally, then looked up as the subject of their discussion sauntered across the room towards them. The closer she got, the better she looked to Blotto, and it was sad that he didn’t yet know the word ‘sexy’, because there really was no other way to describe her. What made the singer’s approach even more exciting was the fact that she seemed to be heading straight for him.
But just as Blotto was about to become engulfed in her aura of expensive perfume, she found her real destination, the seat next to his, where she dressed herself artfully over Spagsy Chiaparelli. ‘Hi, babe,’ said the Boss in a manner that was very definitely proprietorial.
‘Hi,’ she responded, her voice still as smoky as when she was singing. Then she turned her hazel eyes on Blotto and asked, ‘Who’s the dreamboat?’
Blotto wasn’t quite sure what a dreamboat was, but her look implied it was not something totally unattractive.
‘This is the Duke of Leicester,’ replied Spagsy, further mangling his name and title.
‘Wow!’ said the chanteuse. ‘A genuine English aristocrat?’
Blotto made no response but for a sheepish grin.
‘Lady asked if you were a genuine English aristocrat,’ Spagsy Chiaparelli prompted.
‘Oh yes. The genuine article. Family goes nearly all the way back to the Norman Conquest. Nothing leadpenny about me.’
‘Gee.’ The singer favoured him with a sultry smile. ‘I’ve never met a genuine English aristocrat before.’ She stretched a white hand out towards him. ‘Pleased to meetcha. I’m Choxy Mulligan.’
Blotto wasn’t sure whether the hand was being proffered to be kissed or shaken. Seeing the ominously total lack of expression in Spagsy Chiaparelli’s face, he shook it. ‘Very nice to meet you too, Miss Mulligan.’
‘Choxy,’ she insisted. ‘Everybody calls me Choxy.’
A raucous laugh came from one of the other men at the table who’d also overindulged alcoholically. ‘Just like everyone calls your boyfriend Spagsy!’
After he too had been shot by Chiaparelli – quite legally, of course, he was another multiple murderer – and his body disposed of (the police helping once again), Choxy Mulligan said she’d like a bourbon on the rocks, which was instantly supplied to her.
One hand held the drink as she sipped it, while the other twisted a tendril of red hair as she looked across at Blotto from under thick eyelashes. ‘You’re a real dish,’ she said.
‘Am I?’ asked Blotto, again not familiar with the expression, but reckoning a dish was probably something on roughly the same lines as a dreamboat. And therefore not unflattering.
Spagsy Chiaparelli clearly didn’t like the direction the conversation was taking. ‘Cut that out, Choxy!’ he snapped. ‘Unless you’re looking to get yourself beat up again. I know you got the morals of an alley cat, but this one’s already spoken for.’
‘Oh?’
‘The chimp’s gonna marry old Chapstick’s girl.’
Choxy Mulligan pouted. ‘What a waste.’
‘Hey, come on, get that drink down your throat. You’re paid to sing here, Choxy, not to cosy up to the clientele.’
She pouted again, but she knew not to stretch her patron’s patience too far. Slurping back her bourbon, Choxy Mulligan said, ‘Sure, we’ll get on with the next set,’ and slinked deliciously back towards the bandstand. As she passed Blotto, her body shielding what she was doing from Spagsy, he could have sworn she slipped something into his top pocket. But no, thought Blotto, that’s so unlikely as to be completely ridiculous. He must have imagined it.
At another table, she trailed a hand lasciviously along one man’s shoulder. He reached up to touch it. Spagsy Chiaparelli shot him.
Blotto smiled. ‘Don’t tell me – multiple murderer?’
‘That’s it exactly.’
‘How many this time?’
Spagsy looked around the table. ‘Thirty-two,’ his acolytes agreed.
As Choxy Mulligan started to sing again, some of the men (helped of course by the police) busied themselves with removing the latest corpse. Blotto sat back in a kind of bliss, sipping his drink and letting the voice of the chanteuse wash over him like liquid chocolate.
My man don’t love me,
’Cept when he wants me.
He don’t sweet-talk me,
He only taunts me.
My man don’t call me,
But still he haunts me.
With him I’m always playing
Second fiddle to the booze,
And that’s why I’m always singing
Those man-thirsty blues.
Blotto was struck that there did seem to be quite a recurrence of subject matter in Choxy Mulligan’s songs.
At the end of the evening, warmed by a good few more St Louis Steamhammers, he staggered out to find a cab. This took a surprisingly long time, the only ones he saw for a while being occupied by groups of men who kept shooting at groups of men in other cabs.
But while he waited and thought about his evening, mellowed by the Steamhammers, Blotto came to realize what a frightfully decent chap Spagsy Chiaparelli actually was. Definitely a force for good. Not in the conventional way, of course. Rather more like Robin Hood, an outlaw devoted to the cause of justice. Well, fair biddles to him. He’d probably been tracking all those multiple murderers for years and set up that particular evening to entrap them. That would explain why all the police had been present. And though that wasn’t exactly the way that kind of thing would be done in England, the criminals had undoubtedly deserved
to suffer the death penalty. Maybe, Blotto thought in his increasingly benign mood, our way isn’t necessarily always the best way. Perhaps the British system of justice has something to learn from the more immediate methods employed by our American cousins.
Blearily, as the cab he’d finally found drove him out of the city towards Chapstick Towers, Blotto remembered that strange sensation he’d had when Choxy Mulligan had passed him on the way back to the bandstand. Surely he’d been mistaken . . . ? She hadn’t really put anything in his top pocket, had she?
But he reached into it, just to be sure, and his hand closed round a piece of paper.
From the light of the occasional streetlamps he was able to read what was on it. A sequence of numbers. A kind of code perhaps. Definitely not the kind of thing he could work out. Something for Twinks, thought Blotto as he sank deeply into a St Louis Steamhammered sleep.
15
Twinks Has a Plan
Mercifully, by the time Blotto got back to Chapstick Towers Mary had returned from her evening with the bridesmaids and retired for the night. Of her father there was no sign. Which meant Blotto could go straight to his sister’s bedroom. Ever resourceful, Twinks had packed in her reticule a travel kettle, saucepan and small gas ring on which she was soon preparing cocoa. It was almost like the sessions the siblings had shared in her boudoir at Tawcester Towers . . . except of course that they were in alien territory a long way from home. And they still had a major marriage-sized problem to solve.
But Twinks was in the most gleeful state that her brother had seen her since their arrival in the United States. She was bubbling with excitement, eager to share with Blotto the discoveries she had made in Luther P. Chapstick III’s study.
‘He’s certainly up to something very murdey.’
‘Oh,’ said Blotto, whose brain was still rather scrambled by the St Louis Steamhammers.
‘To do with the Katzenjammers.’
‘Oh,’ he said again, but her words had started to clear the fumes of alcohol. He remembered that Twinks had been out to discover some link between Chapstick and his arch-rival. And it sounded like she’d found it. Maybe they were already on the way to getting Mary Chapstick’s engagement to Sophocles Katzenjammer reconstituted . . . ?
‘I found plans in Luther P. Chapstick III’s desk for an act of serious sabotage against the Katzenjammers.’
‘Did you, by Denzil?’
‘I took copies of them with the miniature camera I always carry in my reticule,’ she announced, removing a sheaf of papers from the said receptacle.
Blotto looked at the dense pages of tightly written text. They blurred and oscillated beneath his scrutiny. ‘Just hit me with the headlines, could you, Twinks?’
‘Righty-ho. You’ll find this stuff’s really grandissimo, Blotters me old sock suspender. What Chapstick is planning to do is to infiltrate some of his boddos into the Katzenjammers’ factory and get them to put poison in the entire stock of Katzenjammer Beef Extract. Getting great jeroboamsful of people really sick, maybe a few even dying . . . well, that’s going to make the Katzenjammer Stilton pretty iffy, isn’t it? No company’s ever going to recover from that kind of bad publicity.’
‘Maybe not, Twinks me old warming-pan. But I don’t quite see how this fits my pigeon-hole.’
‘It’ll fit it, Blotto me old banana flambé, because I am going to reveal Chapstick’s evil plan to the Katzenjammers. I’ve already had copies of these papers sent to them by a secret courier. There’s going to be one hell of a stinkbomb going off when they find out what old Luther’s up to.’
‘Maybe. But I still don’t see quite how that’s going to help tug me out of the treacle tin.’
‘It will help you by proving that Luther P. Chapstick III is a thumping great crook! And surely, once it’s known that he’s capable of that kind of . . .’
Her words trickled away. Even as she spoke them, she realized the glaring hole in her logic. She had been so carried away by the thrill of her quest in Chapstick’s study that she had forgotten one of the basic rules of life in the Lyminster family.
It was a rare moment for Blotto. Not often did his sister make that kind of error (any kind of error, actually). At other times he might have rubbed her nose in it, even resorting to the nursery put-down: ‘So Snubbins to you!’ But on this occasion, perhaps from the benignity all those St Louis Steamhammers had produced in him, or his natural good nature, he didn’t glory in the moment of triumph. He just confirmed the known truth. ‘It wouldn’t make a blind bezonger’s bit of difference with the mater, would it?’
‘No,’ Twinks admitted wretchedly.
‘She’s not going to worry that the man with whose daughter I’m about to have the reef-knot twiddled turns out to be a criminal, is she?’
Another wretched ‘Oh.’
‘I mean, that kind of thing’s never mattered too much with people of our sort, has it? You only have to think how most members of the British aristocracy got their titles in the first place, don’t you?’
It was self-evidently true. The historical route into the upper echelons of British society had usually involved such services as beating up the monarch’s enemies, providing royal mistresses or stealing from the poor to subsidize the lavish royal lifestyle. Someone like the Dowager Duchess of Tawcester, brought up with those kind of values, would not regard a minor misdemeanour like potentially poisoning an entire population (particularly when that population consisted only of Americans) as any bar to her son’s marriage.
‘So we’re back in the same gluepot, aren’t we?’ said Blotto mournfully.
‘There’s got to be a way out!’ his sister asserted. The colour passion brought to her cheeks made her more beautiful than ever. ‘We’re Lyminsters! When the going gets a bit dicky, we don’t just fold up like theatre programmes!’ Her perfect forehead furrowed with the effort of thought. ‘Maybe there still is something in the Katzenjammer connection . . . ? Knowing about Chapstick’s evil plans might put them on our side. Then perhaps this Sophocles Katzenjammer booby will step in as understudy for your part in the Mary Chapstick wedding circus . . . ?’
‘Perhaps.’ Blotto didn’t sound optimistic. ‘But from what Mary’s said of her father’s attitude to the Katzenjammers, he’d just never let it happen.’
‘No.’ Frustration welled up in Twinks. It wasn’t only that she was accustomed to getting her own way, it was also that she regarded the current situation as a reflection of her personal inadequacy. Her much-vaunted brainbox wasn’t living up to its vaunts. ‘Anyway,’ she said listlessly, ‘how was your evening?’
So Blotto gave her a Steamhammer-by-Steamhammer account of events at the Chainey Hotel and in the secret speakeasy behind it. He finished on a high note. ‘The really beezer thing about it, though, is that I have proved it is possible to get a drink in this bliss-bereft country. I think from now on I’m going to stay permanently wobbulated. It’s the only way I’m going to get through this wocky wedding.’
‘And, Blotters, how was it the singer described you?’
He blushed to the roots of his corn-gold hair. ‘A “dreamboat”, I think . . . and a “dish” . . .’ Twinks looked thoughtful. ‘What are you having a cogitette about then, eh?’
‘Just wondering . . . if maybe this singer . . .’
‘Choxy Mulligan.’
‘Exactly. If she might be our way out of the gluepot . . .’
‘How?’
‘Well, if she really has chosen you off the menu . . .’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,’ said Blotto, embarrassed again.
‘Then maybe if you were to giddy-up her interest, Mary Chapstick might get to hear about it and . . . who knows what might happen? Did this Choxy do anything else, except look at you like a pike at a troutling?’
‘Well, she did actually shove a piece of paper in my pocket . . .’
‘Show me.’
As ever, Blotto followed his sister’s instructions. ‘I think it must be some kind of c
ode.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ said Twinks.
‘Then what is it?’
‘It’s a telephone number. Choxy Mulligan has given you her telephone number!’
Blotto looked puzzled. ‘Why on earth would she do that?’
‘Because . . .’ Twinks clapped her hands together with glee. ‘Oh, this is larksissimo! This is playing right into our hands. Blotto, our troubles are really at an end!’
‘How?’
‘Because Choxy Mulligan has given you her phone number!’
‘Yes, but what should I do with it?’
‘What should you do with it? You should ring her, Blotto me old fruitbasket!’
16
Sticking to the Script
While Tawcester Towers only boasted a single telephone in its draughty hall, Chapstick Towers seemed to have one in virtually every room. And though both Blotto and Twinks would in normal circumstances have disapproved of such ostentation, the following morning they were very glad of it. Luther P. Chapstick III had not yet returned from the Chainey Hotel and his daughter had mercifully gone out on the one mission on which her fiancé couldn’t accompany her – a fitting for her wedding dress. So the siblings had a wide choice of telephonic apparatus from which to make the pivotal call. They decided to do it from the one in Blotto’s bedroom.
Having woken with his head still pounding from the effect of the St Louis Steamhammers, Blotto had also woken with a guilty conscience. He remembered Mary Chapstick’s words about the pain for a woman of being stood up, and yet that would be the effect of putting their current plan into action. It took all of his sister’s powers of persuasion to get him back on the right track.
‘Listen, Blotters me old riding crop,’ she said. ‘Desperate circumstances call for desperate measures. I know when it comes to being honourable, you’re a Grade A foundation stone, but we’ve never been in a gluier gluepot than the present one. You don’t love Mary, do you?’
‘Well, she’s a pleasant enough old pineapple, not to mention a bit of a breathsapper, and I’m sure she could make some lucky boddo feel like he’d won the raffle. But I’m not that boddo. So no, I don’t love her.’
