by Simon Brett
‘Well,’ said his sister, ‘I might have to have a little cogitette about that. I’ll go up to my suite and rustle up a plan of action.’ She rose from her chair, causing a flurry of high blood pressure amongst the many married men in the dining room, who weren’t used to seeing such pulchritude at the breakfast table.
‘But, Twinks me old Ouija board,’ said an appalled Blotto, ‘you haven’t had anything to eat.’
‘I’ll order Room Service,’ said his sister. ‘Meet me for a starcher in the American Bar at twelve-thirty.’ And she glided out, trailed by the hungry looks of all those married men.
Now Twinks was on the case, Blotto felt secure. His barometer was once again set fair. He gestured to a waiter to bring him another plate, which he proceeded to fill up with more bacon, egg, sausages, kidneys, kippers, kedgeree and other delights.
‘I’ve spoken to Frou-Frou Gavotte,’ Twinks announced.
‘What? How did you get her telephone number?’
‘Easy as a housemaid’s virtue. I rang the Pocket Theatre. And the result is that Frou-Frou is joining us for lunch.’
They were standing at the American Bar, watching the creation of their pre-luncheon cocktails. From the extensive list available, Twinks had, by coincidence, ordered a Housemaid’s Virtue. Blotto had opted for his favourite, St Louis Steamhammer. The barman’s dexterity was as much part of the entertainment as the jazz piano tinkling away in the background.
‘I say, Twinks me old pan-scourer, you didn’t think to ask Dolly Diller too, did you?’
‘Why in the name of strawberries would I do that?’
‘Oh. No spoffing reason,’ said Blotto. But he couldn’t suppress a slight disappointment.
‘I’ve invited Frou-Frou Gavotte because she’s apparently got the wiggles for “Whiffler” Tortington. So, she might have some idea who the stenchers are who kidnapped him . . .’
‘Good ticket,’ said Blotto.
‘. . . whereas I am unaware of any connection between Dolly Diller and Whiffler.’
‘Tickey-Tockey,’ said Blotto. It was always wise to agree when his sister started to sound like their mother.
The cocktails were handed across by the barman, his antennae finely tuned to their first reactions. Twinks took a sip from her Housemaid’s Virtue and felt its beneficence tingle through every capillary to the furthest point of her nerve endings. Blotto took a substantial slug from his St Louis Steamhammer, and waited for the familiar sensation of being poleaxed by a poleaxe.
The barman smiled with the satisfaction of a job well done.
‘When a man is tired of London, he might as well move to the country.’
The words, spoken in a light, clipped voice, were greeted by a ripple of appreciative giggles. Blotto and Twinks looked across to the speaker. Though it was lunchtime, he wore a red velvet smoking jacket with black silk lapels. The skin on his face was very dry and tight, as though he might have spent time in tropical climes. One hand held a Martini, and the other a tortoiseshell cigarette holder of inordinate length. He was surrounded by a coterie of young men, who were the ones supplying giggles to his aphorisms.
‘London,’ he continued, ‘not Oxford, is the city of dreaming spires. Some dream of it, some aspire to it.’ Once again, the acolytes giggled.
‘If London didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent it.’ Cue for more hilarity.
‘Who is that self-aggrandising excrescence?’ Twinks hissed to the barman.
‘Ooh, I’m surprised you don’t recognise him, Madam. He’s Everard Stoop.’
‘That’s the boddo who wrote Light and Frothy,’ said Blotto.
‘He’s the wittiest man in London,’ the barman asserted.
‘That doesn’t say much for the other wits in London,’ observed Twinks, in full Dowager Duchess mode.
As if to prove her point, Everard Stoop announced, ‘Every inch in London is better than a mile in the countryside.’ At this sally, his covey of young men had difficulty in containing their mirth.
Blotto and Twinks turned away, to find a table out of earshot of these blunted shafts of wit, but were stopped when they heard Everard Stoop say, ‘Ah, but who is this? A thing of beauty is a beautiful thing.’
They turned back to see Everard kissing Frou-Frou Gavotte on both cheeks, in the excessive Continental manner. The revue star had clearly just arrived in the American Bar, and had not yet seen her luncheon hosts.
‘Good to see you, Everard old cock.’
‘And you too, Frou-Frou. You know, of course, that I adore you frou and frou.’ The giggles of the young men rose to an even higher pitch.
‘And tell me, darling, how did my wonderful little show at the Pocket Theatre go last night?’
‘Oh, lummee, Everard. Haven’t you heard?’
‘No, I’ve never been one to follow the heard instinct.’ He thought that particular one was so funny, he even allowed himself a little laugh at it. And the young men giggled helplessly.
‘Ooh, it was terrible. I’m still bent out of shape about it.’ But, before Frou-Frou launched into her narrative, she noticed Blotto and Twinks. ‘Oh, hi!’ she shrieked out across the bar. ‘I don’t think you’ve met Everard Stoop.’
Introductions were duly made. Because she had gone straight to Jack Carmichael’s dressing room, Twinks hadn’t met Frou-Frou the night before.
‘And have you seen Light and Frothy?’ asked its writer, eager for praise (like all writers). ‘It is absolutely the hottest ticket in town.’
‘Oh yes, went last night,’ said Blotto. ‘Beezer show.’
‘It had its moments,’ said Twinks coolly.
‘Not only moments,’ Everard Stoop quipped back. ‘It also had momentum.’
The young men roared, as the writer narrowed his small eyes and took in Twinks. ‘I say, you’re a bit of a bobby-dazzler, aren’t you?’
‘Don’t talk such meringue.’
‘Beauty,’ Everard Stoop pronounced, ‘is in the eye of the cigarette holder.’
While his coterie held each other’s sides in merriment, Twinks said drily, ‘I think it’s time we went through for lunch.’
‘I’m really frightened about what might have happened to him,’ said Frou-Frou. ‘There are some nasty types in London. I just hate the idea of Whiffler getting hurt. I’m worried sick.’
Being worried sick, Blotto and Twinks observed, had not had any effect on Frou-Frou’s appetite. She was wolfing down roast beef and all the trimmings like there was no tomorrow. (They didn’t know that actors always wolf food down like there’s no tomorrow. However successful they end up, they never forget the days when they didn’t know where the next meal was coming from.)
‘May I ask,’ said Twinks, ‘how long you and Whiffler had been . . . er, sharing the same umbrella?’
‘Ooh, he was at the First Night of Light and Frothy. Come round afterwards he did. Said he’d got the hotties for my totties. Asked me to go out for dinner with him that night. But I . . . um . . .’ She coloured. ‘I wasn’t free that night. Next evening, though, he was there again. He said he was turning up like a bad penny. I said he was turning up like a good penny. He doesn’t realise, you see, Whiffler doesn’t, what a gorgeous man he is.’ She turned the beam of her eyes on Blotto. ‘You’ve known him for a long time. You think he’s a gorgeous man, don’t you?’
Blotto’s face turned almost as red as that of his missing friend. Boddoes who’d been muffin-toasters together at Eton didn’t notice what other boddoes looked like. Wasn’t polite. They’d certainly never describe each other as ‘gorgeous’. Confused, Blotto responded that Whiffler had always been a ‘Grade A foundation stone’.
‘And gorgeous too,’ Frou-Frou insisted.
‘Thoroughly decent cove, by any measure of tape,’ Blotto agreed. And assuming that his friend had inducted his inamorata into the mysteries of cricket, he added, ‘And a very steady Number Four in the batting order.’
Frou-Frou made no comment, but continued, ‘So, we wen
t out for dinner after the second night of the show. And that was it, really. We been . . . sharing the same umbrella ever since.’
‘And how long ago is that?’ asked Twinks. ‘How long has Light and Frothy been running?’
‘Nearly three months,’ replied Frou-Frou, as if in awe, not of the show’s, but of the liaison’s longevity.
‘And, during that time, did Whiffler ever suggest to you that he might have any enemies?’
‘Only his father,’ replied Frou-Frou.
Twinks nodded. Like her brother, she knew the Earl of Hartlepool. She didn’t need any explanation of his inevitable Krakatoa-scale reaction to a marriage between his heir and the star of Light and Frothy. Frou-Frou just wasn’t Countess material.
‘Yes, but why would they kidnap him?’ Twinks asked.
‘To take him back to their castle or whatever-it-is in Shropshire and force him to marry some simpering pea-brain who comes from the right kind of family.’
Twinks was about to reply haughtily that that was not how the English aristocracy behaved, but when she stopped to think about it, she realised that was exactly how the English aristocracy had always behaved. Their history was littered with examples of abductions and forced marriages. But such behaviour still seemed out of character for the Earl of Hartlepool. He was not a man to achieve his ends by force. In fact, Twinks recalled, the old boy was deeply involved in some organisation that campaigned for a total ban on firearms.
‘Let’s change tack for a moment here, Frou-Frou,’ she said. Have you got any enemies?’
‘Enemies?’
‘Yes, you know,’ Blotto chipped in. ‘Four-faced filchers who’ll sell you up the river for a handful of winkle shells.’
‘Oh, I don’t think I know anyone like that,’ said Frou-Frou Gavotte demurely.
‘What about in the theatre business?’ suggested Twinks. ‘I’ve heard it said that it’s hard to get to the top without trampling on a few fingers.’
‘I’ve always got on like a house on fire with everyone I’ve worked with.’ Still very demure.
‘What about that Boozy boddo who came to your dressing room last night?’ asked Blotto. ‘He was a stencher if ever I saw one. And French. And he had the brass front to claim that he owned you. Not only that he owned you, but that he owned Dolly as well.’
‘Pierre Labouze is just like that: all mouth and no trousers.’
‘He had trousers on last night,’ said Blotto, pleased at having caught her out in an inexactitude. ‘Black trousers. Black shirt. No tie – that’s always the mark of the oikish sponge-worm, but then what do you expect from the French?’
‘Are you saying, Frou-Frou,’ asked Twinks, ‘that this Pierre Labouze, whoever he may be—’
‘He’s the producer of the show. The impresario.’
‘And are you saying that he threatened you?’
‘He spoffing well did,’ said Blotto. ‘I was there. I heard the stencher.’
‘Like I said,’ insisted Frou-Frou, ‘Pierre is all talk. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. He certainly wouldn’t have hurt Whiffler. Apart from anything else, he was still inside the theatre when the abduction took place.’
‘Well, I suppose that’s all tiddle and pom,’ said Twinks without enthusiasm. ‘But if the crime wasn’t committed by someone from your professional life, what about your private life then?’
‘Starring in a West End revue, you don’t have much time for a private life. Mine only really started when I met Whiffler.’ Frou-Frou took a tiny handkerchief from her reticule and dabbed the corner of her eye with it. ‘Oh, I wonder where the poor boy is right now.’
Twinks was not to be sidetracked by this show of emotion. ‘Frou-Frou, could we get back in the box, please? Listen, you look absolutely splendiferous. You must be well into your thirt—’
‘I was brought up to believe,’ the actress interrupted, ‘that ladies never talk about their age.’
‘Unlike you, I happen to be a lady,’ Twinks responded acerbically, ‘and, in my experience, they talk about little else. Anyway, don’t shuffle round the shrubbery, Frou-Frou. You know what I mean. You haven’t got to your age . . .’ That prompted a small wince ‘. . . without other men having had the wiggles for you. Ex-lovers are always risky fish. Isn’t it possible that one of them might have resented seeing Whiffler slipping into the favourite’s saddle . . . ?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’ When Frou-Frou Gavotte felt like playing the dumb blonde, she could play it very well.
‘I can’t be much plainer,’ snapped Twinks. ‘Do you think one of your ex-boyfriends might have abducted Whiffler?’
‘Oh no. I don’t think so.’
‘Toad-in-the-hole! I’ve actually just had a buzzbanger of a thought!’ said Blotto.
His sister looked across the table at him with some scepticism. Deeply though she loved her brother, she knew that his thoughts were not always in the first division. But she waited patiently while he expounded his idea.
‘Chap I knew at Eton, Swiss boddo called Gunter Ehrlich – everyone called him “Holey”.’
‘Was he very religious?’ asked Twinks.
‘Great Wilberforce, no. It’s just that, you know, Swiss cheese is full of holes.’ Twinks did not comment on this fine example of schoolboy wit, as Blotto went on, ‘Anyway, Holey’s parents were as rich as Creosote.’
‘I think you mean “Croesus”,’ suggested Twinks.
‘Of course, they didn’t get all the old jingle-jangle the proper way, you know, by inheriting it. They actually loaded up the loot by working for it.’ The word was larded with contempt. ‘Owned some big bank in Switzerland, I think. Anyway, they’d got the spondulicks dripping out their lugs. Everything they touched turned to gold, like that old pineapple, King Minus.’
‘Midas,’ Twinks suggested.
‘Whoever. Anyway, Holey’s Aged Ps apparently collected precious jewels – diamonds, rubies, emeralds. They had gemstones with every colour of the scrotum.’
‘Spectrum,’ suggested Twinks, who was beginning to wonder whether her brother would ever get to the point.
‘So, without fiddling round the fir trees, what I’m saying is that they had plenty of the old golden gravy.’
‘Yes, I think you’ve made that clear,’ said his sister.
‘Anyway, so it turned out that, one afternoon after cricket, we went back to the old boarding house for supper, and there was no sign of Holey. Not a single nostril hair. And do you know what had happened?’ Blotto paused for dramatic effect.
‘He’d been kidnapped by some criminal stenchers and held to ransom.’
Her brother looked at Twinks in amazement. ‘How do you know that? Have I trundled out this tale before?’
‘No. I just worked it out.’
‘Toad-in-the-hole! That brainbox of yours should be put in the British Museum.’
‘So, what you’re suggesting, Blotters, is that Whiffler might have been kidnapped by people who won’t let him go until a ransom’s been paid?’
‘That’s about the size of it, yes.’
‘Splendissimo,’ said Twinks. As her brother’s ideas went, this wasn’t a bad one. In fact, of all the ones he’d ever put forward to her, this probably won the Victor Ludorum. ‘Give that pony a rosette!’
Blotto smiled bashfully. Boddoes like him had never been any good at accepting compliments.
‘The big Q is, though,’ Twinks went on, ‘who are the lumps of toadspawn who might have abducted Whiffler?’
‘Ah,’ Blotto confessed. ‘When it comes to that, I’m a bit of an empty revolver.’
‘It’s a splendiferous idea, bro, but I think we’d better wait till a ransom note appears.’
‘Tickey-Tockey. I’ll ring Reception and ask if anything in that line’s been delivered.’
‘Erm, Blotters . . . I think it’s more likely that a ransom demand would be sent to Whiffler’s father, the Earl, rather than to you.’
‘Ah,’ said Blotto. ‘Good ticket.’
‘I’ll contact him to see if I can get the SP on that.’
Blotto and Twinks both looked at Frou-Frou Gavotte, whose face bore an expression of boredom. As an actress, she wasn’t used to being away from the centre of a conversation for so long.
‘Any other stirrings in your grey cells, Frou-Frou?’ asked Twinks. A shake of the blonde head. ‘Then let us summon the dessert trolley.’
In the lift up to their suites, Twinks turned her azure eyes on to her brother’s. ‘I’d bet a guinea to a groat she’s lying.’
‘Well, I’ll be snickered,’ he said.
‘Frou-Frou Gavotte knows more than she’s letting on.’
5
The Short Arm of the Law
As soon as Twinks had reached her suite, she sat down at the writing desk and drew a notebook out of her sequinned reticule. She began by writing notes on the interview with Frou-Frou Gavotte. From those she developed more lines of enquiry into the abduction of Giles ‘Whiffler’ Tortington.
As soon as Blotto had reached his suite, he lay down on the bed to catch a little shuteye before it would be time to start the evening with another of the American barman’s St Louis Steamhammers.
It was only a few moments later that he was recalled from innocent oblivion by the jangling of the bedside telephone. An obsequious voice informed him that there was a police officer at Reception who wished to speak to him. Blotto asked that the man should be directed up to his suite.
He was crossing the landing on the way to fetch Twinks when the lift doors opened, and a small man in a black bowler hat and black overcoat emerged. ‘Are you Mr Devereux Lyminster?’ he asked.
Blotto could not deny that he was.
‘I am Detective Inspector Craig Dewar, of Scotland Yard.’
‘Beezer to see you. You’re the flattie who wants to ask me some questions?’
‘That is correct, sir. Though I would like to say I am not very happy with the word “flattie”.’
‘Oh, so sorry. Fully understand. My Mater gets vinegared off too when people use abbreviations. Should have said “flatfoot”.’
