The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery Read online

  COP-SHOP, OXFORD

  OFFICE OF DETECTIVE CHIEF INSPECTOR

  (Detective Cheese Inspector is seated behind desk, up-stage centre. Enter Warden of Scone, prompt-side, down-stage.)

  DCI: Ah, Warden, sit down, do. A cup of tea? No? Well now, to what do I owe the pleasure, as they say?

  W of S: Kind of you to spare me some of your valuable time, DCI. I know you’re a busy man so I shall come directly to the point. It’s about Bronwen Fellworthy.

  (Shadow passes across DCI’s face.)

  DCI: (Guardedly) Ah, yes; sad that, very. Yes.

  W of S: (Business with spectacles, notebook etc., then relates new evidence, summarised in previous act.) So you see, DCI, that my colleague and I are now firmly of the opinion that this was murder.

  DCI: (Heavily) Oh dear. Yes, you make a very convincing case, Warden. We certainly can’t rule out Foul Play now, can we?

  W of S: You will, then, be redoubling your investigations, no doubt?

  DCI: Well, er. No.

  W of S: Eh? Sorry, I thought I heard you say, ‘Well, er. No.’

  DCI: That’s right, sir. My very words. Verbatim. As a matter of fact there will be no investigation whatsoever.

  (Bitterness has crept into his voice.)

  This morning I received a telephone call from Head-quarters instructing me to close out the case. Since I did not know the caller I sent a telex to the highest echelon to which I have access, querying this astonishing order. I have just received a confirmatory telex phrased in a way which signifies that the order is not subject to comment and that I have no discriminatory powers in the matter. The signature, too, is coded to convey that the case is now under the umbrella of the Official Secrets Act, which means that I could be flung into my own nick even for this informal chat we are sharing.

  (Flings meaningful glance at W of S.)

  I cannot, of course, give you a sight of the telex …

  (Taps sheet of flimsy in centre of desk.)

  … but that is the burden of its song, as they say. Now perhaps you’ll excuse me for a second, I think I hear an unlicensed dog in the street.

  (Exit OP side up-stage. W of S dollies up to telex; reads.)

  W of S: (Silently)

  (Re-enter DCI.)

  DCI: (Heavily) While I was abating that nuisance just now, I picked up a message from the editor of the Oxford Echo. It seems he has just received a ‘D’ notice on Fellworthy.

  (Simmers, drums fingers on desk.)

  W of S: Look here, DCI, I don’t know what the protocol is in your profession, so you won’t mind my asking whether you would feel I was going behind your back or over your head or anything if I sought a confidential interview with the Chief Constable of the County?

  DCI: On the contrary, I’d be delighted. Hope you can stir something up between you. As you can imagine, I don’t much enjoy having the work of my Force interfered with by a lot of Whitehall washpots; it’s enough to make an honest copper turn in his whistle and truncheon.

  CURTAIN

  ‘My word, John,’ I said when Dryden had drawn to a close. ‘You promised me a nub and a nub is what you have delivered. Allow me to recharge your glass. Yes, if that isn’t a nub then I am no judge of nubs. And what happened when the Warden saw the Chief Constable?

  ‘I do not know. The interview was to be at luncheon today. The Warden will, I am sure, tell us all about it tomorrow night.’

  ‘Do you mean to say the Warden, too, is coming here?’

  ‘No, dear boy, it is you who are going there, I thought that was clear.’

  ‘Oh no it wasn’t and if you want to know, oh no I’m not.’ He gazed at me benignly, as you or I might gaze at a young moustache in need of parental guidance.

  ‘But the Warden has decided that you shall, Mortdecai. He has his teeth into this matter now and will not lightly let go. Not only has one of Scone’s Fellows been done to death, but People in High Places seem intent on whitening the sepulchre. He will not countenance this, for he has a tincture of Irish blood: in day-to-day matters he is the mildest of Wardens, but when that black blood of his is up, his strength is as the strength of, ah …’

  ‘… of ten, because his soul is pure?’

  ‘No, I was about to say “as the strength of Miss Meadows’s bed-cord” …’

  ‘Ah, yes; “which in dem day would a hilt a mule.” ’

  ‘Precisely. After you have been, ah, briefed by the Warden, you will also learn puzzling things about Bronwen Fellworthy from the Dean of Degrees, the Chaplain, the Camerarius, the Domestic Bursar and the Fellow and Tutor in Comparative Pathology.’

  ‘There is one flaw in your scenario, John. I am not going to Oxford this year.’ My words might have been written in sand for all the attention he paid them.

  ‘The Warden,’ he went on serenely, ‘asked me to think of a member of the College who was of mature years, not unacquainted with clandestine violence and investigatory techniques, not cramped by any too stringent a moral code and not likely to be recognised by one and all in Oxford. I thought at first of that chap who came up in your year, the one with the absurd Italian name, but the Librarian tells me that he has sunk to novel-writing and is living in syntax. Wouldn’t do at all. Raffish, you see, raffish. So here I am, Mortdecai, here I am, bidding you answer the clear, sweet call of your alma mater, who will grapple you to her breast with hoops of steel. The airline timetable which you so thoughtfully placed on my bedside table tells me that our aircraft leaves just after luncheon tomorrow.’

  I muffled an oath or two.

  ‘John,’ I said patiently, ‘there are many reasons why I must refuse this signal honour; many. Foremost among them is the fact that my acquaintance with police investigatory techniques has hitherto been – to put it bluntly – from the customer’s side of the counter. I’m sure you follow me.’

  ‘Goodness, yes,’ he cried merrily, ‘we know all about that. Indeed, few men of pitch and sinew have not, in their youth, plundered a coy barmaid of her chaste treasure or pinched a policeman’s helmet on Boat Race night. Such pranks are not held against us.’

  ‘John,’ I repeated, still patiently, ‘I was not speaking of the deflowering of barmaids, nor of the unhelming of coppers. I was thinking more of killing chaps. Not once or twice but again and again I have been faced with the necessity of topping people, usually because they were offering to top me. Pranks of that sort are held against one. Forgiven, yes. Forgotten, no.’ He boggled for a moment or so but stayed in the saddle.

  ‘But is that not positively a qualification for the task?’ he cried. ‘You will be able to enter into the slayer’s mind, will you not? Achieve empathy with him, forestall his every move, don’t you see?’ Well, of course, that kind of thing tends to put one into empathy with any slayer, however merciless, but I controlled my twitching hands. Scone could not afford to lose two dons in one term. I brought out my trump card.

  ‘More to the point,’ I grated, ‘I am at present in loco parentis to a nursling face-forest which requires my undivided care and attention. You may have noticed it. My gardener has warned me that to ship it to other climes would cause what we botanists call a check in growth.’

  ‘But don’t you see, dear boy,’ he cried, smacking a triumphant thigh, ‘don’t you see that this forest-primeval of yours – which I am sure is hardier than you think – is the very thing that the Examiners require? You will be able to walk around and about Oxford with impunity, the privacy of your features assured. Men may say “there goes a capital moustache” but none shall say “there goes a chap called Mortdecai.” Unsightly though it be to the casual and undiscerning eye, it will be a positive asset to you in your task, nay, a boon, a fringe-benefit one might say, ha ha.’

  Before I could summon up an adequately bitter retort, Johanna sailed in, radiant and desirable, tossing minks onto armchairs and pouring herself snifters of brandy. Any schoolboy would have recognised this radiance of hers as the radiance of a young woman who has just massacred a Li
eut. Gov.’s wife at her own bridge-table.

  ‘Charlie, you can have your pile back – whoops, sorry, I mean your wad,’ and she slapped a chunk of currency onto the sofa-table.

  ‘Are you sure that’s right, Johanna?’ I asked. ‘I mean, it seems a trifle plumper than when I disgorged it.’

  ‘It is precisely £33 plumper, dear. Since you were bankrolling my game I naturally cut you in at the usual 15% of the action. Well, goodnight now, boys.’

  Dryden’s lower jaw was resting on his breast-bone, his eyes were once again a-squiggle and a balloon seemed to rise from the top of his head, bearing the words ‘SWEET SOCKO!’ Before he could pluck out the Cupid’s arrow which was protruding from his left pectoral muscle, I sprang to the attack.

  ‘I’ll give you my decision in the morning, John. Meanwhile, can I offer you a nightcap? At what time do you like to be called? The switch to the electric blanket is on the left side of your bed. The biscuit-barrel and the night-lights are in the pedestal-cupboard on the right-hand side. Beware of the carafe on the bedside table, it contains water.’

  He took these delicate hints and the nightcap and soon we were toddling up to our respective beds, as sober as a judge. (You will note that I speak of only one judge; i.e. we shared one unit of judicial sobriety between the two of us.) Normally I would have urged such a guest to stay up until dawn, irrigating him with many an intoxicant and perhaps recouping my overheads by winning a few bob off him at gin rummy but I was by now concerned for Dryden’s health: he is no longer the don he was, however keen his mental powers remain.

  (Nor would I have you think that I am one of those who sneer at senescence: why should I admire the astronaut whose mind has just learnt to conform to the mouse-maze pattern loosely called ‘thought’ and who assures us that the moon is knee-deep in dust and nothing else, yet scoff at the man sixty years older who has begun to discard the mass of mouldering luggage we call ‘facts’ and says ‘I don’t believe a bloody word of it’? Put it like this: if you were the Man in the Moon, and a spaceship – perhaps the hundredth such intrusion in the last millennium – clumped down on your territory, would you put yourself out to go and greet the idiots and meekly accept the regulation Hershey bar? If your territory happened to consist of valuable green cheese, wouldn’t you arrange for a few feet of dust to be strewn over it? I’m not saying I’m necessarily right, mind; I’m just saying that explorers are usually quite as bad at their jobs as most people are. We still call a certain marsupial the Kangaroo because an early explorer asked an aborigine what the beast was called and the aborigine said ‘kang a run,’ which means ‘buggered if I know, mate’ or, in some dialects, ‘I’m a stranger here meself.’)

  That parenthesis was really so that I could put off having to relate the gruesome incident which happened that night, an incident which scarred me as deeply as any haemorrhoidectomy. I was, you see, in my Village Squire mood again and was certain that this time I would Have My Way because Johanna, when she has just separated a few bridge-playing friends from their hard-earned trading-stamps, becomes suffused with marital affection, mere putty in my hands. I play on her as on a stringed instrument: it’s something to do with bodily chemistry and red corpuscles, I believe. So, slipping on a suit of silken pyjamas and checking that all my own lance-corpuscles were on parade with bayonets fixed, I sauntered to the communicating door and rapped on it in a masterful way.

  ‘Hmmmm?’ she murmured in a mistressful, languorous way.

  ‘Open the door, O moon of my delight,’ I commanded, my voice husky with unslaked lust. ‘I have come to carry you off on my milk-white stallion into the burning desert and Work My Will on you under the tropic stars. A groundsheet will be provided of course, for I know you are sensitive to sand in your, er, shoes. At first you may find the saddle-bow uncomfortable but you will soon embrace Islam, I swear it by the Beard of the Prophet!’ (That sort of approach rarely fails to please.)

  ‘Oh, Charlie, dearest, can it be …?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said in an even huskier voice this time because by now the corpuscles had broken ranks and were advancing in skirmishing order, their Tommy-guns at the High Port.

  ‘… Can it be that our hearts beat as one, that we are twin souls?’ Her voice was tremulous with womanly submission. I thought about the question.

  ‘On the whole, I’d say “yes.” ’

  ‘Oh my sheikh! My instant, vanilla-flavoured milk-sheikh! You are trying to tell me that you have scimitared off that Moustache of the Prophet, aren’t you?’

  ‘Er, well, not exactly. But I have rinsed away every trace of Pomade Hongroise and it is now a silken Perfumed Garden, redolent of Secret du Désert; you will learn to love it.’

  A great silence fell.

  ‘Johanna?’

  Silence continued to fall.

  ‘Look, Johanna, you know jolly well that you are the tree upon which hangs the fruit of my life. This is your own, personalised, sanitised Sheikh of Araby who seeks admission to your tent. You thwart me at your peril.’

  ‘Get lost, Charlie Mortdecai. Go stuff a mattress with that thing. The moustache, I mean.’

  If you are unclear about the precise meaning of the word ‘aghast’ you should consult an up-to-date Illustrated Dictionary, where you will find an artist’s impression of a rejected husband with his left earhole glued to a keyhole. I considered asking her, in suitably strangled tones, whether she wanted me to beg on my knees but I realised that I already was on my knees – one cannot cajole through keyholes in a standing posture – and pretty soppy I must have looked, too. Well-nourished husbands in early middle age and silk pyjamas are not seen at their best when kneeling and pleading at their wives’ keyholes, especially when viewed from a southerly aspect. I pulled myself together, made one last onset.

  ‘Johanna,’ I onset, ‘you cannot deny that you are the wife of my bosom; you probably have a certificate to prove it, sewn into your stays. Shall the frail barque of our wedded bliss be shipwrecked on so small a reef as this scrap of shy moustache?’

  ‘Yes,’ she cried crisply. ‘And it is no reef upon which the frail barque you speak of is foundering, the frail barque is becalmed in the doldrums of a Sargasso Sea of suppurating seaweed. If you choose to walk through life with streamers of Giant Kelp trailing from every nostril, well, that is a matter for you and your God to decide. What I have decided is that this bed is not wide enough for the three of us: that thing has come between us. I have been an indulgent wife; your Kermit the Frog is always welcome in my bath and your teddy bear has spent many a night under my pillow, beside my nightdress, but a line must be drawn somewhere and pot-plants are where I draw it; they have no place in the nuptial couch.’

  I rose stiffly to my feet, for the draught through the keyhole was bitter. I did not vouchsafe a ‘goodnight’ for I knew it would only elicit another stinging ‘yes.’ As I crept into my narrow bed and reached for the latest edition of Playboy, I was reminded that Sir Preston Potter’s immortal beaver was dubbed ‘Love-in-Idleness’ by the Master himself. I began to see the inwardness of that sobriquet.

  VII

  Dealer folds

  But Lord how strange is this:

  Once, as methought, Fortune me kissed,

  Now all is changed that once me blissed,

  For want of will in woe I plain,

  I find no peace and all my War is vain.

  Go burning sighs unto her frozen heart,

  Lament my loss, my labour and my pain.

  I see that she would have me slain!

  Oh happy they that have forgiveness got!

  Lo, this I seek and sue, and yet have not,

  It paineth still: a wound from every dart.

  Some officious early bird roused me from fitful slumber with its bellow of triumph at having lassoed a laggardly worm. (Try telling worms about the merits of early rising.) Billowy-bosomed Sleep, whom I love almost as much as twelve-year-old whisky, would not return, so I set myself to musing on the problems which had to
be faced that day. I tabulate these, for my mind is tidy although my soul is a mess.

  Johanna’s proud spirit must be quelled; she must be brought to heel.

  Since force majeure seemed unlikely to prevail (that knee of hers stings cruelly), the best course, surely, was to prove to her that the moustache of contention was not a mere toy but a precision scientific instrument: a thing of worth, a moustache with a mission.

  Setting all that aside for the nonce, it was imperative to think of some way of gift-wrapping the ultimate ‘NO’ which I proposed to issue to Dryden as soon as he had crunched up his Rice Krispies, his kippers and his richly buttered toast. This problem had priority, for if my presentation of the ‘NO’ was at all fumbled I would receive a reproachful stare from Dryden, carrying all the weight of vicarious stares from the Warden and Fellows of Scone College. Reproachful stares of that calibre are hell on the well-being of chaps recovering from minor surgery: my snip-cock or surgeon had specifically warned me to avoid such stares.

  I mused despairingly – when, when was Jock going to appear with the tea-tray? – until, all of a sudden, a great light shone and I saw, as in a vision, all the bits of the puzzle falling into place:

  I would quell Johanna’s proud s. by stalking off to Oxford after all, nevertheless, and in a marked manner. No longer would she be able so cruelly to titter at a Mortdecai whining through the lock of an all-too-stable door.

  I would explain to her, as to an uncomprehending child, that the moustache she had spurned was now about to prove itself as a necessary adjunct for a Sleuth venturing forth on a desperate mission, perhaps never to return.