by Simon Brett
‘But,’ asked Blotto, ‘don’t some of what you call the “toffs” object to getting their reef-knots twiddled that way?’
‘No, they don’t! They think their toast’s been buttered both sides. They’re used to being in the company of women who behave like effigies in a church. Women out the theatre at least move about a bit.’
The image of Araminta fffrench-Wyndeau came to Blotto’s inner eye. Pale, bloodless, as if carved from cold marble. She was very definitely in the effigy class. Whereas Dolly Diller . . .
Twinks pressed on with her information-gathering. ‘And this . . . business of Labouze and Stoop’s has been pongling along for some time, has it?’
‘Oh yeah.’ The pianist mentioned a couple of recent aristocrat-weds-showgirl stories which the gutter press had covered with salacious relish. ‘Pierre and Everard organised both of those. They’ll be on a nice percentage there.’
‘And you don’t think there’s anything murdier going on in their business . . . anything criminal?’
Émile took another long swallow of whisky. He was nearly halfway down the bottle. ‘I can’t see it’s criminal. All they’re doing is, like, running a match-making service. A profession what’s got a long history. Nothing illegal in that, is there?’
‘Maybe not.’ Twinks was still trying to find a connection between the Stoop/Labouze operation and the abduction of Whiffler Tortington by heavies in a black saloon.
Blotto also wanted an explanation of the snub that he had recently received. ‘Have you come across a pretty little greengage called Dolly Diller?’
‘’Course I have. She’s in Light and Frothy, isn’t she?’
‘Well, I was wondering whether she’d got the odd finger in these toff-marrying pies?’
‘Howdja mean?’
‘Is she being lined up to marry some aristocratic boddo, who’s got the jingle-jangle spilling out of his lugs?’ Blotto thought, if she was, that might explain her unwillingness to have anything more to do with him, as an impoverished younger son.
But he didn’t get anything on the subject out of Émile. ‘I wouldn’t know, but in her case, I’d doubt it.’ And the pianist spoke the words as if they closed the conversation.
‘Why do you say you doubt it?’ Blotto persisted.
Émile made no answer, taking another long swig from the Scotch bottle instead.
But Twinks wasn’t finished with him yet. She still didn’t feel she’d got all the information she’d paid for. ‘Do you know if this pair of filchers, Stoop and Labouze, ever use force to get the marriages arranged?’
‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ said Émile. He said it in a way that suggested, even if he did have any information on the subject, there was no way he was going to share it with them.
Twinks tried a few more questions, a few changes of approach, but achieved nothing. Émile’s shutter had come down.
Eventually, she gave up and asked, ‘Do you reckon I’m now being loaded down the barrel for something similar – you know, being married off?’
‘No doubt about it. Well, if you’re talking about yourself, your real self, I wouldn’t know. But that’s certainly what they’ll be lining up for Florrie Coster. A couple of years starring in West End revues, then married off to a toff. That’s the way their little business works.’ And, once again, he upturned the whisky bottle.
* * *
Before she went to bed, Twinks thought about the moral implications of what Émile had told them. Everard Stoop and Pierre Labouze’s enterprise was rather shabby, not the kind of thing people of breeding should involve themselves in, but, as the pianist had said, it wasn’t illegal. Twinks couldn’t get rid of the feeling, though, that there was something else, something darker, going on.
Before he went to bed, Blotto didn’t think about anything. Which was par for the course.
14
A Mystery Man
The following morning, Blotto was woken by a banging on the door of his suite before he’d even got into his toe-stretching routine. ‘It’s me, Twinks,’ came a voice from outside.
He mumbled a bleary ‘Come in!’, and his sister was instantly by his bedside. She was dressed in her full Florrie Coster get-up.
‘What are you doing up before the dawn chorus has even started gargling?’
‘I’m off to Fulham. Rehearsal again. With those two stenchers.’
‘Stenchers?’
‘Pierre Labouze and Everard Stoop. Surely you remember what we heard last night about their little games?’
Blotto said he did, though his memory had not really woken up yet.
‘Anyway, Blotters, I’m going to see if I can find out more.’
‘More about what?’
‘About the connection between those two filchers and Whiffler’s disappearance.’
‘Oh, good ticket.’
‘And I’m still as curious as a cat in a fruit-cage about why Émile clammed up when Dolly Diller’s name was mentioned.’
‘Did he?’
‘Yes, of course he did.’ She restrained herself from asking her brother whether he ever noticed anything. ‘Anyway, I’ll see you later, Blotters.’
‘Tickey-Tockey.’
‘And, whatever you do, don’t go poking the proboscis off your own bat into the affairs of Dolly Diller.’
‘No danger, Twinks me old midge-repellent.’
And Blotto went back to sleep.
For Twinks, that day’s rehearsal was different. As well as Pierre Labouze and Everard Stoop, other actors and singers had been summoned to Fulham. No one had thought to mention the fact to her, but it was the first day of rehearsal for Light As a Feather, Labouze’s follow-up revue to Light and Frothy. It was clear, once scripts had been handed round, that the show was going to be a star vehicle, written round one central performer. Obviously, it had been written by Everard Stoop long before Florrie Coster came on the scene, but in her the writer and impresario had found their star.
Twinks could sense, from mutterings from the other cast members, that the elevation of a newcomer, with no theatrical experience, was not popular. Over the ensuing weeks, that might present problems for her. Because, although she now knew from Émile (who blanked her out that morning, as if he’d never seen her before) about Pierre and Everard’s little money-making scheme, she was determined to follow through on rehearsals for a while. Twinks’s finely tuned antennae had detected that there was some darker criminal activity going on, and she wasn’t about to give up the disguise of Florrie Coster until she had got to the bottom of it.
It also occurred to her that this was the third day she’d gone to Fulham in the same clothes, in which she had already performed two days’ worth of vigorous dancing. While that might have been par for the course for the real Florrie Coster (had she existed), this breach of hygiene did not sit comfortably with the daughter of the Dowager Duchess of Tawcester. Twinks made a mental note to pay a visit to Madame Clothilde of Mayfair to extend the range of Florrie Coster’s wardrobe.
‘Right, Émile,’ shouted Pierre Labouze, ‘could you just play us through the opening number, which, as I’m sure you’ll all agree, is another triomphe for the wonderful Everard Stoop!’
Twinks’s instant thought was: Bet it’s not as good as ‘Kensington Cavalcade’.
‘An opening number,’ said Everard Stoop, ‘is almost invariably one.’
The cast of Light As a Feather, who had all been told that Everard Stoop was ‘the wittiest man in London’, laughed appropriately – and sycophantically.
‘I will sing it through first,’ he said. ‘First impressions are what a dentist begins his morning with.’ More sycophantic laughter. ‘Émile, take it away!’
To tinkling accompaniment, Everard Stoop sang, in his thin tenor:
‘When you’ve pulled up stumps
And you’re in the dumps
And it looks like stormy weather,
When your brain’s confused
And you’re feeling used
When your lucky charm
Just causes harm –
Like your lucky sprig of heather . . .
You must change your style –
Just put on a smile
And make life light as a feather.’
For a start, thought Twinks, it’s virtually the same song as the opener to Light and Frothy. And I was right, it’s not nearly as good as ‘Kensington Cavalcade’.
It was a thoughtful Blotto who went down to the Gren at lunchtime. He had a couple (or so) of drinks with some of his old muffin-toasters, and then went through with them to lunch, where a good few bottles of the club claret were put away.
But, though far from literally sober, Blotto was in a sober mood. The Gren just didn’t feel the same without Dippy Le Froom and Whiffler Tortington. The one, he knew, was a victim of marriage. But what had Whiffler been a victim of? Blotto had to find out.
He couldn’t get out of his head the response he’d received from the pianist Émile the night before, when he’d asked if Dolly Diller was being lined up to marry some rich aristocrat. ‘In her case, I doubt it.’
It had been a strange answer, and one that implied there were secrets in the life of Dolly Diller.
Though he knew it was going against the advice Twinks had given him, Blotto was determined to find out what those secrets were.
After all, he reasoned with himself, Twinks isn’t always right. (Though, actually, if he’d looked back over their shared past, he would have remembered that, in fact, she always was.)
Because it was the first day of rehearsal for Light As a Feather, in the afternoon the cast members had to be measured for their costumes. Once again, the design of these would be in the expert hands of Madame Clothilde. For most of the cast, this meant an encounter in Fulham with one of the couturier’s immaculate subordinates, wielding a tape measure. For the show’s star, it meant a taxi-ride to Mayfair for a private appointment with the designer herself.
This couldn’t have suited Twinks better. It saved her making an appointment to arrange the expansion of Florrie Coster’s wardrobe.
She was surprised, when she announced herself in the ground-floor salon, that Madame Clothilde was not there, and had to be summoned by intercom from her elegant living quarters at the top of the building.
When the couturier did appear, she was not quite her customary perfectly appointed self. While in no way scruffy, she did look only ninety-nine per cent glamorous. And for Madame Clothilde, one percentage point was a huge deficiency.
The man who followed sheepishly behind her, with one button of his chauffeur’s uniform undone, looked positively dishevelled. Twinks was only slightly surprised to recognise Corky Froggett.
‘Erm, good afternoon, milady,’ he said awkwardly. ‘I must go and polish the Lagonda.’ And he scuttled out of the salon.
Neither Twinks nor Madame Clothilde made any mention of Corky’s presence – or indeed absence. ‘You did know that I had an appointment this afternoon?’ asked Twinks.
‘Mais évidemment.’
‘It’s for my Light As a Feather costumes.’
‘D’accord. For such a consultation we would normally go to one of the rooms upstairs. Today we go to the basement.’
Twinks was glad that Madame Clothilde was treating the situation with appropriate seriousness.
‘So . . . have Pierre Labouze or Everard Stoop seen through your disguise?’
‘No.’ Twinks dropped into Florrie Coster’s Cockney. ‘Them two fink Ah was dragged up in a gutter off the Balls Pond Road.’
‘Formidable! And I am sure you are here because Florrie Coster needs a little variety in her ensembles?’
‘You’re as sharp as a needle that’s cut its way through a haystack, Madame Clothilde.’
‘Oh, please . . . I think we know each other well enough for you to call me “Clothilde”.’
‘Tickey-Tockey . . . Clothilde.’
‘I had already considered the possibility, chérie, that your wardrobe might be in need of a little enhancement.’ Madame Clothilde opened one of the many cupboards to reveal an array of suitably tattered and much-repaired garments. ‘Take as many as you wish. You will be rehearsing with Pierre Labouze for a long time, I think?’
‘Only for as long as it takes me to find out what the stencher’s really up to. Then I’ll be off out of that rehearsal room like a cheetah on spikes.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Quickly, Twinks gave Madame Clothilde a summary of what she had been told by Émile the previous night.
‘This does not surprise me. In France Pierre Labouze has a bad reputation for mismanaging his financial affairs: many debts, many bankruptcies. He is the sort of man who is always trying some new scheme for money-making.’
‘Yes, but I think the filchers have got something else going on; something where the Stilton’s even iffier.’
‘Perhaps,’ came the guarded response.
Twinks was instantly alert. ‘Do you know something, Clothilde? Come on, uncage the ferrets!’
‘It is just . . . I have designed many revues for Pierre Labouze . . .’
‘I know.’
‘So, I have seen a lot of things that go on backstage . . .’
‘Fumaciously criminal things?’
‘Not necessarily. Mostly things like this marrying-off of showgirls to aristocrats . . . morally dubious, perhaps, but not downright criminal . . . There is one of the soubrettes, however, of whom I have more serious suspicions . . .’
‘Well, come on, Clothilde! Don’t shuffle round the shrubbery. Who are you talking about?’
‘You have met the showgirl called Dolly Diller?’
‘You bet your elbow patches I have! My brother Blotto thinks she’s the lark’s larynx. Well, he did a couple of nights ago, when she was larding him with lipstick. Last night, though, she gave him the ice cream’s elbow.’
‘Did she? That is interesting. And the first night, when she was pleasant to him, what did she talk to him about?’
Twinks could answer this in some detail. She had made Blotto go through his entire conversation with Dolly Diller – or, at least, as much of it as he could remember. ‘She seemed very interested in the Lyminster family history . . . in how much we were worth, how much Blotto himself was worth . . .’
Beneath her expertly applied make-up, Madame Clothilde turned pale. ‘This is très mauvais,’ she said. ‘Not good.’
‘Oh?’
‘I think your brother is in great danger.’
‘What? Why?’
‘Have you heard of a man called Barmy Evans?’
‘No. Who’s he when he’s got his spats on?’
‘Barmy Evans is one of the most wicked villains in London.’
‘Is he, by Denzil? But what’s he got to do with Blotto?’
‘Barmy Evans is the . . . what is the mot juste? He is the “protector” of Dolly Diller. He does not like it when other men get interested in Dolly Diller.’
‘Oh?’
‘In fact, he has killed every other man who has got interested in Dolly Diller.’
‘Lawkins!’ said Twinks. And she meant it.
Waiting outside the stage door of the Pocket Theatre had become rather familiar to Blotto. It still never occurred to him that he could be described as a Stage-Door Johnny, but he noticed there were fewer of them around before the show than there would be after. And, in the message he’d sent from the Savoy, he’d suggested having a quick word with Dolly Diller before that night’s performance of Light and Frothy. Then they could breezily clear up why she’d given him the ice cream’s elbow the previous night, and make arrangements about where they would dine after the show.
Blotto thought back to the first night he’d been to the Pocket Theatre, the night that Whiffler Tortington had been abducted.
And, even as he had the thought, the situation become even more familiar, as a black saloon with tinted windows dr
ew up in front of the theatre. Two men in black overcoats, with black hats pulled down over their eyes, got out of the back. Anyone other than Blotto might have thought he was experiencing déjà vu, but he didn’t know the expression, not having got that far in French at Eton.
The two men in black held the car door open, and Dolly Diller emerged, dressed once again in her white fox-fur coat.
As Blotto stepped forward to greet her, she pointed at him and said, ‘That’s the one Barmy wants to see.’
She continued on her way to the stage door. Blotto was so surprised that he didn’t have time to resist, as the two men in black seized him, one taking each arm, and bundled him into the back of the car.
15
Muffin-Eaters Reunited!
Blotto was blindfolded, and his wrists were handcuffed behind his back, but he still reckoned he could have got away from his captors if he’d wanted to. He certainly could have done so if he’d had his cricket bat with him. Some instinct, however, kept him from making any attempt to escape.
He managed to convince himself that this was a matter of strategy. He, Devereux Lyminster, wasn’t stupid enough to have fallen into the trap that had been prepared for him. No, no, he had willingly put himself into jeopardy, with a view to advancing his investigation into Whiffler’s disappearance.
So, he waited to see where the men in black were taking him.
And, when his blindfold was finally removed, he realised just how percipient he had been.
Because, facing him, in an anonymous flat less than half an hour’s drive from the Pocket Theatre, was Giles ‘Whiffler’ Tortington.
Splendissimo! thought Blotto, borrowing one of his sister’s favourite expressions, I’ve ponged the partridge!
Out loud, he said, ‘Spoffing good to see you, Whiffler me old Eccles cake!’
His old muffin-toaster gaped in surprise, unable to form words. His instinct was to go forward and shake Blotto by the hand, but being chained to one end of a radiator made that difficult.
‘You two may go,’ said Blotto to the men in black, with a curtness which could only come from generations of inbreeding.
