The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery Read online

  ‘Yer what?’

  ‘Sorry, Jock. I mean, is there anything for starters?’

  ‘Oh. Ah. Well, I do happen to have a basin of me French pancake batter standing in the fridge but …’ I looked at him levelly. He looked back as levelly as a one-eyed chap can look.

  ‘Oh, very well,’ I said and tossed him the key to the cupboard where I keep the caviar. Jock may not be the tastiest evidence of Divine Creation but he yields to none in the matter of making caviar blinis. Nor the making of Pommes Reform, if it comes to that. My fortifying snack was marred only by the compassionate looks Jock cast me from time to time. These looks became even more comp. when he came downstairs from taking Johanna her coffee.

  ‘Madam have anything to say, Jock?’ I asked idly as I did a little housework on the moustache.

  ‘Yeah. She asked me if you’d got rid of that excrement yet.’

  ‘Surely she must have said “excrescence”?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, maybe that was the word.’

  I picked a pensive tooth.

  ‘Look, Mr Charlie …’

  I raised the toothpick threateningly.

  ‘Jock, if you are going to say “I told you so,” pray forget it: the surgeon warned me against flying into passionate rages until I am fully convalescent. If you were going to plead Madam’s cause, you may forget that, too. While I have my strength, no-one shall harm a hair of this lip.’

  ‘Matter of fact, I was only going to ask if you’d like a spot of music to sort of put a lid on your dinner,’ he retorted in wounded tones.

  ‘Sorry, Jock. Yes, certainly, do wheel on some music, I dote on such sounds.’

  Knowing my passion for Grand Opera, what the sturdy fellow put on the turntable was his treasured 78 mph record of ‘Chi mi frena in tal momento’ from Lucia di Lammermoor – a rather shrewd selection in the circumstances. Now, my own recording of this is sung by Enrico Caruso, Amelita Galli-Curci and three or four other chaps but Jock’s rendering is by Shirley Temple and S.Z. ‘Cuddles’ Zsakal. Jock, you see, has been hopelessly in love with Shirley Temple since the days when he was the youngest delinquent in Hoxton. The record or disc is tuneful, digestive and mildly aperient.

  ‘Thank you, Jock,’ I said courteously after he had played it twice. Then I shuffled off to bed, for my wounds still ached in the frosty weather and my moustache needed its beauty-sleep. For a bedtime story I took with me the illustrated edition of Klossowski’s French translation of Li-Yu’s infamous Jeou-P’ ou-T’ ouan, arguably the greatest pornogram in any language.

  My choice of reading was an error, for the Jeou-P’ ou-T’ ouan is not conducive to slumber. Within an hour I was tapping in a tentative, husbandly way at Johanna’s bedroom door.

  ‘Who’s there?’ she rasped in unwifely tones. ‘I warn you, I am armed!’

  ‘It’s Charlie. Your husband, remember? C.S.v.C. Mortdecai?’

  ‘Have you removed that excrement from your face?’

  ‘You mean “excrescence,” Johanna, surely?’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Oh, really. Listen, Mae West has often stated that kissing a man without a moustache is like eating an egg without salt …’ Too late I remembered that Johanna never salts her eggs.

  ‘So go look up Mae West,’ she retorted. ‘At least you’ll have a waistline and age-group in common. There are frequent flights to the US of A; I have just been studying them.’ She seemed to be trying to tell me something.

  ‘Oh well, goodnight,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  I stumbled back to my bed, a broken man.

  III

  Queen high backs into the game

  Kings may hunt and choose their chase;

  You that in love find luck and no mischance

  Right well consider all my case;

  I step but may not join the dance,

  Love bid me strive – ah may I yet find grace!

  Since earliest boyhood I have ever loved the truth, so I shall not pretend that I passed an untroubled, dreamless night. That last ‘yes’ of Johanna’s had stung like any scorpion. I was therefore in no sort of shape to answer cheerily to Jock’s goodmorninging, especially since the grey light of dawn told me that the time could be no later than 10 a.m., quite half an hour before it is possible for right-thinking men to drift to the surface.

  ‘A Dr Dryden to see you,’ said Jock. ‘Claims he was your tutor at Oxford. Cooden get through to you because of the telephone strike so he come here all the way. Personally. Forced his way into the house by stuffing pound notes into me hand.’

  I sobbed piteously, drawing pillows over my head, hoping that this might make the world disappear. Jock, who is usually all heart, drew them away and said that it was urgent. ‘Says it’s urgent’ is how he deftly phrased it. There was nothing for it but to sit up and glare at the world through bloodshot eyes. The tea-tray swam into focus, followed by Jock.

  ‘Jock,’ I said, selecting the word carefully. ‘Bring me the emergency kit. Five minutes later I shall have my French breakfast, after which you may produce this alleged tutor.’ The emergency kit, thanks to Jock’s insight, was already at hand: the Alka-Seltzer roaring in its glass, the half-tablet of dextroamphetamine on its own coy saucer, the vitamin capsules on another and the brandy and water beaming from a well-polished glass. After the decent interval stated, my French breakfast arrived: the big bowl of coffee so generously garnished with rum that only its fragrance betrayed the presence of coffee. With this came, of course, the hot-plate of anchovy toast – I have no patience with those weaklings who take cinnamon toast with their coffee.

  Hard on the heels of this modest meal came Dryden, crying, ‘Well well well, my dear Mortdecai! What a capital morning it is, to be sure!’

  Try as I may, I have never devised a retort to observations of that kind, so I fell back on an old favourite which never fails to please.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  Then I said, ‘Have you breakfasted, John?’

  ‘Well, yes, after a fashion. In Oxford. At breakfast-time. Then I had a cup of something nameless on Reading station. But be of good cheer, Mortdecai, your excellent butler is bringing me a proper breakfast presently.’

  ‘Butler?’ I asked puzzledly. ‘Butler? Oh, do you mean the big, ugly chap with one eye?’

  ‘He is, indeed, a generously-built man and I fancy I detected a certain, ah, capriciousness in the collimation of his eyes but as to ugliness – who are we to make value-judgements of that kind? We cannot all boast of the symmetrically pleasing features with which you and I have been …’ At this point the words seemed to perish in his throat; he leant forward, pushed his spectacles onto his forehead and peered with alarm at my afforestation-area. He cleared his throat as though to speak but was rescued by the entry of Jock, who bore a tray loaded with all those delicacies of the season calculated for the latitude of breakfast. I freely admit to being a little miffed, for such breakfasts rarely come my way. Dryden, clearly, had laid out his pound notes to some profit. I could not bear the fragrance of the chops, the kippers, the devilled kidneys, the shirred eggs and the frizzled ham; I rolled out of bed and forced myself under the shower, muttering ‘grnnghmphrrgh,’ or words to that effect.

  Mind you, a morning shower, especially if you are man enough to turn it to COLD before you get out, makes one superior to the lusts of the flesh; thus it was a superior Mortdecai who swept back into the bedroom clad in his costly Charvet dressing-gown … no, wait, posterity must not be paltered with, I’m pretty sure that it was the costly Sulka dressing-gown that day. The bedroom was redolent with the fragrance of costly breakfasts so I opened the window in a marked manner before hopping back into bed.

  ‘Now, John,’ I said. ‘Tell me all, omitting no detail however slight. Begin at the beginning and’ – here I glanced at my watch – ‘continue unto the very end.’ I composed myself into an attitude which the ordinary housewife would take to be a listening one but which is also most conducive to light sleep.

/>   ‘I shall be brief,’ he began, in the firm tones of one who is good for at least an hour’s orotund speech. (I may say that Fildes’s Donsform never lays him at better than evens in the annual Lecturers’ Puissance Trials.) ‘Something quite awful has happened at Scone – and I am not one who lightly uses the word “awful.” The Warden and Fellows are most upset. You remember Fellworthy?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Oh come, Mortdecai, you must remember her vividly: you and she Did Not Get On the night you met in the Senior Common Room.’

  ‘Ah, you mean Gwladys, the she-don you elected a couple of years ago; I recall her now, she seemed as though she had been enjoying a difficult menopause since early youth. Yes, she is rather awful, I agree, but surely time has healed all wounds?’

  ‘No no no, my dear chap, it is to her that the awful thing has happened. She is dead. Her motorcar came into headlong collision with one of those omnibi you see in the High nowadays. She died instantly. And her name was not Gwladys but Bronwen.’

  ‘Mors communis omnibus, John, but how is this a matter for grief and for incontinent trips to Jersey? I mean to say, there is no world shortage of lady-dons, is there? They are like dragon’s teeth, raze one lady-don to the ground and a dozen lady-dons spring up in her place, this is well-known.’

  ‘You mistake me, perhaps wilfully, Mortdecai. The College is not greatly exercised by the question of replacing her – nor, I hasten to say, am I here to offer you the vacant Fellowship.’

  ‘Aw, shucks,’ I murmured.

  ‘Nor, indeed, must I pretend that she had made herself wholly popular: she was not, so to say, the toast of the Senior Common Room by the time of her demise … pray do not smirk, Mortdecai, it has a disturbing effect when viewed through that, ah …’ and he waved a few limp fingers in the general direction of my lip-garden, ‘… no, the core and centre of the matter is that, regardless of sex, creed, colour and affability – and here I speak for the whole of the SCR – she was a Fellow and Tutor of Scone College and the world must learn that Fellows and Tutors of Scone College shall not be done to death with impunity.’

  The starter-motor of my brain was churning frantically and now a cylinder or two of the engine itself started fitfully to fire.

  ‘John,’ I said wonderingly, ‘are you trying to say that you wish me to have the driver of the omnibus assassinated? This could, of course, be arranged but I must say that it seems an over-reaction on your part, not to say a fearful visitation on a bus driver for allowing his attention to waver for a moment; aye, and a bus driver who almost certainly has a wife or two to support. I mean to say, would you call this ancient, liberal and humane? What?’

  ‘If you would favour me with your undivided attention for a few more minutes, Mortdecai, you would understand that nothing of the sort is dreamed of. No blame whatsoever attaches to the omnibus driver; he was about his lawful occasions when Bronwen, driving furiously on the wrong side of the street, immolated herself upon the radiator of his bus.’

  ‘Pissed as a pudding, clearly,’ I said, pursing my lips disapprovingly then quickly unpursing them on account of the moustache, which was stiff with its morning ration of pomade. ‘Probably been dining and carousing at one of those women’s colleges – hotbeds of alcoholism, everyone knows that. Send ’em all back to Cambridge is what I say.’

  ‘Forgive me, dear boy, but you are in error again. The incident took place in the early afternoon and Bronwen had been lunching at one of those Turl Street colleges, famed for its stinginess with wine. Moreover, she was noted for her abstemious habits (we have ascertained that she had taken but one glass of sherry and one of Slovene Riesling) and was quite vexatiously cautious when driving. Nevertheless, all innocent bystanders agree that she started her motorcar, put on her tinted sun-spectacles and roared down the Turl like any Jehu, not abating her speed one whit as she turned the wrong way into the High, there to meet the omnibus – and her Maker.’

  The Mortdecai brain was now firing on all cylinders, albeit a little raggedly still. I closed my eyes for a moment to aid the thinking process. Jock clumped into the room. I re-opened the Mortdecai eyes.

  ‘Did you ring, Mr Charlie?’

  ‘Eh? I? No. I daresay Dr Dryden did.’

  ‘Ah yes, so I did, so I did. I was wondering, Mortdecai, whether this splendid chap could conjure up another of those richly-buttered muffins? Or perhaps a pair of them? Would that be a great imposition?’

  ‘Cook’s just starting to get lunch,’ said Jock in his blunt way.

  ‘Capital!’ cried Dryden. ‘For the oven-range will be already hot, will it not, and so the muffins no trouble?’

  ‘Two muffins of the best and brightest, please, Jock; richly apply the very best butter and serve on a lordly dish.’ Then I said to Dryden, ‘Was Bronwen subject to fits of ungovernable rage? Had she a tumour, perhaps, on the brain? Was she prone to epilepsy?’

  ‘No, she had not the falling-sickness and her habit of life was so regular and unremarkable as to verge on the tedious. Until last week, that is.’

  ‘You mean until death did her part?’

  ‘No, no; she died early this week. I refer to the two men.’

  ‘John,’ I said patiently, passing a patient hand across my furrowed brow, ‘I have been following your narrative intently so far and I’m prepared to offer you a great deal of seven to three that you have not yet drawn any two men into the sketch. What two men?’

  ‘Well, you should really ask which two men, for there were two lots, each of two men, you see.’

  I shut my eyes tightly and took a few deep breaths.

  ‘No, I fear I do not see, John. For once you are not being your usual lucid self.’

  ‘It is hard to pursue a rational train of thought in the midst of all these interruptions,’ he answered petulantly, as Jock placed a laden muffineer before him. ‘Thank you, my good man,’ he added, ‘these appear quite delicious.’ Jock left the room, closing the door in a manner which made it clear that the pound notes were now accounted for in full and that calling people ‘my good man’ is usually reckoned an extra.

  ‘Concentrate upon those muffins, John,’ I urged, ‘and collect your thoughts while I put on a clothe or two. I shall meet you downstairs presently.’

  My head swam as I draped the lightweight heath-mixture tweed about my person and drew on the plain half-hose and the supple footwear. The tie which Jock had laid out for me seemed to have been hand-crafted from a richly buttered baby’s napkin or diaper but I had to admit that it matched my moustache.

  IV

  Never draw to a pair of deuces

  The Rocks do not cruelly

  Repulse the waves continually,

  As she my suit and affection,

  So that I am past remedy:

  Whereby my lute and I have done.

  Luncheon is what we presently met at. I’ll say this for Dryden, neither pedantry nor paederasty had marred his gusto for the more solid pleasures of the table; it was a pleasure and a privilege to watch him ply the eating-irons, his face as innocently happy as that of, say, Lord Snow reviewing a posthumous book by F.R. Leavis. Jock, too, was warming to the man, I could see that; he loves the sight of a sturdy food-eater practising his craft and has often chided me for picking at my food. Again and again he charged Dryden’s trencher with partridges and things, beaming at the summary way he dealt with the polysaturated foodstuffs. A finale of cold blackberry and apple pie was followed by a coda of Limburger – enough to choke a yoke of oxen – and a touch of my almost-best port.

  At last Dryden tottered into the drawing-room and subsided into my personal armchair, gazing benignly at me through a poisonous Limburger haze. (I was rather glad that he had polished off that cheese, for it is not so much a dairy product as an instrument of biological warfare; it has to be kept chained down, and uninitiated guests have been known to ask pointed questions about the drainage system.)

  He gazed, as I say, benignly and paid my household many a compliment.
(Scone College, you see, is one of the brainier places in Oxford and the food there is correspondingly vile; I have heard that even Balliol dons blench when invited to dine at Scone’s High Table.)

  ‘Now,’ he said eupeptically, ‘where were we?’

  ‘We were at a sort of crux, John. First you spoke of two men, then of two lots of two men. I long to know what you can have meant.’

  ‘Well, Mortdecai, to tell the truth we cannot be quite certain that there was a total of four men, for one of the two pairs may well have been the same as the other two for all we know; you see that, I’m sure?’

  ‘I am sure that I shall see, just so soon as you have told me all, in a sequential sort of way.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Well, d’you see, Fred – you remember Fred the Lodge Porter?’

  ‘He is etched on my memory,’ I replied bitterly. ‘Many an alleged race-horse did he recommend to me in my salad days and most of them ran like alligators in Wellington boots. Yes, I remember Fred all right.’

  ‘Well, he is now Head Porter, perhaps as a reward for teaching so many young men the perils of the Turf. Be that as it may, soon after Bronwen’s death he asked to see the Domestic Bursar and told him that some days earlier Bronwen had confided in him that she was beginning to suspect that two large men in dark suits were following her.’

  ‘Wishful thinking?’ I suggested.

  ‘Just what anyone would have thought, Mortdecai, but Fred had, as it happens, been accosted in the friendliest way by two just such men in the White Horse tavern in the Broad; they treated him to a consolatory pint of ale after he had been narrowly defeated by the reigning champion, whom he had hoped to depose, at a game called shove-the-halfpenny. They encouraged him to gossip about his job and expressed surprise at learning that there was a lady-don at Scone and asked him many a question, plying him with ale. This puzzled him no little, for they were not, he is sure, policemen – chaps of Fred’s kidney can recognise policemen, you know, however plain their clothes.’