The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery Read online

  ‘Water-bailiff,’ he said.

  ‘Not really, sir; more Mortdecai, to tell the truth.’

  ‘No no no; it was the water-bailiff I had to speak to, about my water, don’t you see. Fishing tomorrow. Hate it, if you want to know. Drink?’ He shepherded me to a side-table and poured me a bumper of single-malt whisky with his own hands – I almost wished my mother alive again, she would have been so proud. (My papa was but a baron with balls on his bauble, she felt it keenly. The disgrace, you understand.)

  ‘I say, do have a chair,’ he said, looking wildly about him as though fearful that he had been burgled of all such furnishings. ‘Now. This tiresome business at Scone. Had your Warden to tea this afternoon; jolly little chap. Ate nine cucumber sandwiches. Small ones, but still, very creditable, wouldn’t you say? Like to see these young chaps tucking in, don’t you? Well, now.’ There was another pause. The desk-box buzzed. ‘What? No, of course I’m not cross with you, Johnson. Now just you get your beauty sleep, you know how I hate it when you’ve circles under your eyes. Goodnight. No, I can’t; I’ve got the water-bailiff with me. Goodnight.’

  ‘Sorry, Mortdecai, damned water-bailiff pestering me again. Now; tiresome business at Scone, yes. Your Warden, you know, the cucumber sandwich feller, he’s convinced that this awful woman-don of yours was done to death with malice aforethought and things. Can’t have that. I’m Chief Constable here, did you know? Of course you did, of course. Forget my own name next; that damned water-bailiff. Upsets me terribly. Fuss fuss fuss. Moreover, the DCI in the city tells me that some nasty little Whitehall lackeys, “abominations of Moab” my DCI calls them, quite right, quite right, have had the damnable cheek to tell my men, not a damned word to me, mind you, that they’re to lay off the case or they’ll be bunged into the Tower. Shan’t have it. Damnable little jackanapes.’

  Exhausted with emotion, he lowered himself, yardstick by yardstick, into a massy chair with a strawberry-leafed coronet carved and gilded on the back. He had to sit askew to avoid the thing, squinted sideways at it as though he suspected leaf-curl. A door in the panelling behind him opened silently and the tear-streaked face of a beautiful youth appeared momentarily, then vanished. The Duke heard the latch click; he peered at me warily.

  ‘Who was that, eh? Who was it, I say?’

  ‘I fancy it was the water-bailiff, Duke,’ I said.

  ‘Damned fool,’ he said obscurely. ‘Now; as I said, I shan’t have this impudent meddling from a lot of blue-arsed baboons in Whitehall, shan’t have it. Do I make myself clear? Shall pitch in a really stiff Note to the Palace tomorrow; Elizabeth Battenberg doesn’t like blue-arsed baboons any more than I do. Secondly, look on my desk if you’d be so kind.’ I fetched an envelope made of the thickest, stiffest paper I’ve ever seen. ‘That’s letter,’ he explained. ‘Tells people that you are carrying out some highly confidential enquiries for me. Says categorically that you’re answerable only to me. D’you see? Good. Thirdly, you’ll be so good as to call on the DCI at the Police Station in Oxford tomorrow; he’ll give you a Special Constabulary warrant-card, you’re to be a Special Detective Inspector with Detached Duties and you can draw firearms if you care to. Fourthly, that wasn’t the water-bailiff just now, it was that soppy little rotter Johnson. Suppose I’ll have to go up and say goodnight to him.’

  He ushered me out carefully as though fearing that I might stumble.

  To the footman (for the butler had dematerialised) he said, ‘What’s that on your breath, you rascal, what is it?’

  ‘Beer, your Grace,’ said the footman.

  ‘Where’d you get it, I say where, eh?’

  ‘Kitchen, your Grace.’

  ‘Bring me some. I’ll see this gentleman to his carriage.’

  ‘Goodnight, Duke,’ I said.

  ‘I say, do call me Freddie,’ he said petulantly, as though I were being haughty to him.

  ‘Goodnight, Freddie.’

  ‘Goodnight, sir,’ he rejoined.

  As we drew up to the gates of Scone, I passed a suitable gratuity to the chauffeur. He saluted as he opened the door for me.

  ‘By the way,’ I said, ‘does his Grace keep a water-bailiff?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight, sir.’

  There were lights burning in the Senior Common Room; I telephoned from the Porter’s Lodge and told them to send over a bottle of very good Scotch to my rooms. My bed had been made and the fluffy pink piggy-wig night-dress-case was in residence on my pillow. I went to the door and dropped the odious gewgaw down the stairwell, so that it would come to rest outside the scout’s pantry, for I was in the high-handed mood of one who has just called a Duke by his Christian name.

  ‘One of our better Dukes,’ was my last waking thought.

  IX

  Player draws two aces

  And better fee

  Than she gave me

  She shall of me attain,

  For whereas she

  Showed cruelty,

  She shall my heart obtain.

  Chaps who have sipped with Dukes often forget to put their names down for a cup of tea in bed the next morning; this is common knowledge. I had forgotten to take this important step the night before and Turner, the scout, had not shown any initiative in the matter – perhaps he had been unnerved at finding his pantry threshold cumbered with fluffy pink piggy-wigs, who knows? At any rate, I awoke at my wonted hour quite tealess. Showered and shaven and unpretentiously clad, I shuffled over to the Senior Common Room, there to cajole a belated breakfast from an iron-faced steward. I still waken in the night, quaking with horror at the recollection of that breakfast: warm orange juice and cool coffee, dry scrambled eggs and damp toast – but words fail me. I suspect the iron-faced chap was trying to hint, ever so delicately, that breakfast is not served after 9.30. My heart bled for my fellow Fellows; what hardships the wretches endure in the cause of learning, to be sure.

  Not daring to ask for some healing brandy, I hastened back to Bronwen’s set for a jolt of whisky to pacify my enraged stomach, then called on the Domestic Bursar, a genial old sea-dog who had scraped through to the rank of Rear Admiral without losing any actual ships and had taken an early retirement while he was still ahead of the game. He was reticent about Bronwen and a little wary of me – clearly, he was not au fait with the inwardness of it all – so I started again, by flashing the Warden’s letter or ukase. When he did unpadlock his ditty-bag, he proved to be a mine of what might prove to be useful information. Bronwen, it seemed, when she first reported aboard, was in receipt of a stingily-endowed Fellowship, some teaching fees, a books-allowance of £40 per term, and the proceeds of eight University lectures, also per t. She had given every sign of subsisting on this income (which totalled per annum rather less than what a diligent dock-hand could make in a month); she wore the same baggy garments week in, week out, took all her meals in College, never tipped College servants at the end of term and rarely took shore-leave. At the beginning of the term before this one, however, the winter of her discontent seemed to have given way to a hint of spring; she was seen in a new tweed coat-and-skirt, acquired a small motorcar on the instalment plan and spent lavishly at Blackwell’s book-shop. Latterly she had taken to having nice little dinners sent up to her rooms, and wines and spirits began to figure on her battels. ‘And I remember the Dean of Degrees saying,’ he said finally, ‘that she had discussed with him a notion of taking a Sabbatical next term, visiting Poland and, er, that sort of place.’ (He’d know about Poland because of its port of Gdansk – the other countries presumably had no coasts. Bohemia sprang to mind.)

  ‘Thank you, Bursar,’ I said in a brisk and seamanlike voice, ‘that was most lucid, very helpful.’

  ‘I see you’re to be mustered as a temporary Fellow; mind if I ask …?’

  Well, I couldn’t say it was confidential, could I, that’s the surest way to attract attention and Rear Admirals are noted for their tittle-tattle and scuttlebutt, so I
mumbled something about in-depth sociological on-going consensuses and gathering material for published work etc. This soon dampened his curiosity; he did not seem a bookish old sea-dog, probably spent his evenings curled up with an Admiralty Chart of the Falkland Islands. Or curled up like an Admiralty Chart, beside his torpid old sea-bitch.

  For my part, I needed no charts; I set all plain sail for the shark-infested straits between Christ Church and Pembroke, on whose cruel rocks many a stout sea-don has left his whitened bones; then, dipping through the tropics by the palm-green shores of the Memorial Garden, I pitched up at the Police Station, where an Able-Bodied Sergeant piloted me to the Detective Chief Inspector’s state-room.

  A thick, hairy chap wearing thick, hairy tweeds rose from behind a telephone-encrusted desk and offered me a thick, hairy hand to shake. His manner was amiable – quite unlike the manner of the common copper of commerce.

  ‘Sermon,’ he said in a matey voice.

  ‘Eh?’ I said – for it was barely noon, not a time at which the brain is nimble.

  ‘Sermon, Albert H., Detective Chief Inspector,’ he explained. His voice kept its mateyness; he seemed to understand, from his wide knowledge of rats of the underworld, that some chaps are not at their brightest in the grey light of dawn.

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Mortdecai.’

  ‘Eh?’ he said, his merry eyes twinkling intelligently. I pulled myself together.

  ‘No, not “A,” sort of more “C” really,’ I twinkled back. He beamed, moving his lips soundlessly as though memorising our little exchange for relating at the next Police Smoker. I could see that he and I were going to get on, that was clear.

  ‘Now, Mr Mortdecai, I must ask you to do a bit of swearing.’ I thought about this, shrugged a mental shoulder and offered a sample.

  ‘Bugger?’ I offered diffidently. He liked that very much, filed it away happily. Then he drew out a piece of printed card and told me to raise my right hand. I twigged, for I had been through this sketch at the outset of my brief and inglorious career as Queen’s Messenger. I, Charlie Strafford van Cleef Mortdecai, therefore, did thereby solemnly swear to keep the peace in Her Majesty’s Realms, to do this and that and to eschew the other. Oh yes, and I understood the Provisions of the Official Secrets Act and its Amendments, all of which had been read to me. I lowered the hand.

  ‘Thank you, Inspector,’ he said. I whirled around but found the office quite void of Inspectors.

  ‘Inspector Mortdecai, I should have said. Here’s your warrant-card, as per his Grace’s instructions – and, may I say, with my hearty concordance and best wishes for a mutually profitable corroboration. Don’t suppose you’ve a spare passport photo?’

  ‘Sorry. And, in any case, I haven’t had one taken since, ah …’ I gestured towards the ‘fring’d pool, fern’d grot’ on my lip, ‘… it’s still rather young, you understand, too early to take it from its mother, really.’

  ‘Not at all, a fine, sturdy growth I call it.’ He pressed a buzzer and addressed one of his telephones. ‘Artist. Now.’

  The policeman who entered wore the pinched, bitter expression of an artist who had to wear his hair shorn to regulation length.

  ‘Look at this gentleman. Got him? Right. Dig in the Lousy File, find a suitable mug-shot, touch it up to look like him. Right? Five minutes.’ I gazed admiringly at the DCI; he clearly ran as taut a ship as any Rear Admiral or Bursar.

  ‘As I was about to say, sir, you have my hearty good wishes and I’ll be delighted to help you as long as you clearly understand that I know nothing about anything. That bloody Official Secrets Act is a bugger, if I may coin a phrase, and I’ve got my pension and wife to think of. You, however, have no connivance of the fact that the matter has been put under a bushel, have you, because I don’t know what you’re investigating for his Grace, do I? Now, how can I help you?’

  ‘Well, I don’t really know yet, Chief Inspector; I’ve only just started. Sort of feeling my way, really. I found what may be a bit of gravy in College today; I’ll tell you all about it as soon as I’ve seen the lady’s bank manager this afternoon. And I’d like to do a bit more poking about in College, too, while people are still remembering things.’

  ‘Quite right, very sound technique. Which reminds me, the Chief Constable would like you to report to me – informally, of course, every day if possible – I’ll pass him all the dirt that’s fit to print. Verbally.’

  ‘Look, Chief Inspector, I hope you won’t take offence or anything – I mean, I’m just a novice, you know – but can I take it as read that the lady’s corpse and car were thoroughly examined for signs of hanky-panky and what not? I mean, just so that I can rule out that sort of thing straight away? Sorry if that seems …’

  ‘Lor love you, sir, of course I’m not offended, you do right to ask. You know, the ordinary customer thinks that us country flat-foots sit around with our thumbs in our bums all day and have to scream for Scotland Yard every time an old lady takes a tin-opener to her gas-meter, but in point of fact we have a highly talented class of villain in Oxford. Some of the guests in our little hotel – yes, that’s the local nick – are most ingenious indeed. I could name one or two of them who could steal your socks without taking your shoes off.’

  ‘My word! But if they are so adroit, why are they in the, ah, nick, then?’

  ‘Because we’re better at our jobs than they are at theirs. But to invert back to your question; yes, we did indeed do a very thorough job on the corpus delictibus – our Surgeon is a zealous young chap, always looking for a Perfect Crime. If you chucked yourself off the top of a skyscraper he’d check for snake-bites and other rare vegetable poisons unknown to science. No, there was no trace of toxic matter discernible: he reckoned she’d taken one Feminax (that’s for Period Pains) and about as much alcohol as you’d get in a spoonful of Buttercup Cough Syrup. We even took swabs from her eyes, what was left of them.’

  ‘Her eyes?’

  ‘Yes. See, some of our simple country villains here have noticed that you can buy a throat-spray without prescription which says on the label “avoid spraying near the eyes” – the active ingredient being benzocaine. So when they find some impudent outsider trying to tickle their slot-machine business, they fill him full of gin, give him a couple of eyefuls of the throat-spray, then put him on a push-bike – no lights, no brakes – and send him down Headington Hill in the rush hour.’

  ‘God bless my soul.’

  ‘Very likely, sir,’ he replied enigmatically. ‘As to the mortal coil of her car, well, they’re never the same after headlong collusions with buses, are they? In fact, we had to extrapolate the wreckage into two unequal halves to remove the deceased, using oxyacetylene apparatus. But our Motor Vehicles Sergeant knows more ways of frigging with a car than you’d believe – he could make a fortune at it if he got bent – and he’s pretty nigh certain that it hadn’t been got at. Anything else?’

  ‘Yes, Chief Inspector: are you free for lunch?’

  ‘Afraid not, er, Inspector M. But if you still like the bitter in the Feathers across the road I’d be happy to join you for ten minutes or so.’

  ‘Still?’ I asked wonderingly. ‘How d’you mean still? I mean, how do you know …?’

  He chuckled fatly. ‘Well, sir, that’s where I felt your collar – apprehended you – ooh, twenty-odd years ago. Bonfire night. You’d pinched my helmet – I was a uniformed constable at the time.’

  ‘Good Lord! Then it was you who …’

  ‘Kicked you up the bum, yes sir. Well, you had been sick in my helmet, hadn’t you?’

  ‘I fancy I had. Oh dear. But surely I …?’

  ‘Yes, sir; sent me a replacement helmet the very next day. About three inches across. Bought in Woolworths.’

  ‘Ah, but …’

  ‘Yes, sir, you had tucked a few quid inside; more than ample, it’s always a pleasure to deal with gentlemen.’ I shifted uneasily in my chair, for the old wound still irks me in frosty weather: it is no small thi
ng to receive a policeman’s daisy-root up the sump. He heaved a ruled notebook onto his desk and wrote the date in it, then, in a fair round hand, the words ‘Four Large Whiskies, Chief Constable’s Guest.’

  As we rose to leave, the artist appeared with an astonishingly good likeness of my moustache. The DCI gummed it onto my warrant-card, thumped it with a stamp and handed it to me. As we left the office my eyes strayed to his feet; they were shod in light suede shoes with crêpe soles.

  X

  Player calls for a fresh deck

  Where is my thought?

  Where wanders my desire?

  Where may the thing be sought

  That I require?

  By the time I had grown out of train-spotting, stamp-collecting and bird-watching, in the order stated, I was old enough to take up the study of bank managers. It is not a rewarding branch of Natural History because in England there is only one species: the English bank manager (known to naturalists as Palgrave’s Golden Treasurer). Age and diligence may cause variants in weight, waistline and value of motorcar but the species remains sui generis, so to speak, and impossible to mistake. Irish bank managers, now, may look like bishops or burglars, Beatles or bookies, but the English bank manager looks like an English b.m. Stand him in an identity parade, clothed in prison garb (which he will probably be wearing sooner or later anyway) and the veriest housewife – nay, even another bank manager – will instantly pick him out as a Lord of the Overdraft.

  Fortunately, they never read anything lighter than Snurge’s classic Short-Term Loans, so my own particular bank manager is unlikely to give me a hard time for writing the above.

  Armed with this early training, no sooner had I been shunted through the door inscribed ‘MANAGER’ than I had the chap behind the desk identified as the manager of that bank – Bronwen’s bank. Since I was neither a borrower nor a lender he did not rise, nor did he offer me a cigar, and the brief twitch of his pursed lips was a smile from the very bottom of the discards. I took the chair at which he waved a pallid flipper and spread out before him my credentials. He looked at them with unfeigned disinterest; his conscience must have been clear that week.