The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(117)

The magistrate apologized to me, hoped that I had not been too much inconvenienced, dismissed me without a stain on my character. I was free to go.

I looked around me frantically: the turnkey was giving a friendly nod, Jaggard was sneering, Johanna was irradiating the most wifely smile you can imagine. I knew that the instant I stepped into the freedom of the street I was a dead man – curiously, too, the thought of those incomparable fishcakes surged into my mind. My best friends would not claim that I am a fast thinker; I like to mull these things over for a day or two, but it was clear that there was no time for mulling. I did a Fred Astaire double-shuffle around the turnkey or gaoler, strode up the steps to the magistrate, right hand outstretched. The beak’s expression made it clear that he didn’t have a lot of time for these Continental expressions of emotion but, after an inward struggle, held out his hand. I seized it, whisked his frail body from the bench and gave him the heel of my hand in the hooter. Sleepy before, he now became a sleeper in earnest. Hordes of capable people sprang out of the woodwork and restrained me (restrained means ‘hit’) but I recked little of their blows for, in the twinkling of an eye, I was once again in my comfy cell, secure in the knowledge that bail is rarely allowed to chaps who wantonly alter the appearance of Stipendiary Magistrates. I allowed myself a snort of whisky and poured the rest into the plastic duty-free bag, lest any vengeful copper should try to take it away from me.

I am not one of those who, in times of stress, sits on the edge of a bed gnashing his nails and cursing whichever fool or blackguard made this world: I am more one of those who lies down on the bed in question and snatches a nap. When the door opened at lunch-time I kept the eyes firmly closed. A voice which could only have emanated from one of those fierce young policemen said ‘Lunch.’ I remained tacit and mute. I heard him lift the empty whisky-bottle, shake it and replace it onto the table with a disgusted slam. He went out, locking the door. After counting from one to ten I opened an eye. The luncheon he had brought was in three of those little white cartons with tin-foil tops such as Chinese take-away places sell. I coaxed a little Scotch out of the plastic shopping bag, mingled it with water and went back to sleep. A dead rat might have coaxed a reaction from my salivary glands sooner than anything with bean-shoots and soy-sauce.

Sergeant Blackwell came to see me soon afterwards; he looked at my untouched lunch and said ‘Waste!’

‘Thirty-nine inches,’ I quipped, ‘bust, forty-two.’

‘Neither funny nor plausible,’ he said. Both true, of course. Then he took me upstairs to the charge-room and charged me with common assault, actual bodily harm, contempt of court and many another thing including, I fancy, unimaginative potty-training in early childhood, while I hung my head in a suitable fashion.

Back in my cell I asked for something to read; he was back in ten minutes with a tattered Bible.

‘I think I’ve read this,’ I said.

‘It’s all we’ve got,’ he retorted, ‘Enid Blyton is only for trusties.’

The Good Book was printed upon fine India paper and the first few pages had been used by sacreligious chaps for rolling fags with (that’s cigarettes), so that Genesis began at the bit where Cain says ‘My punishment is more than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; … and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass that every one that findeth me shall slay me.’ I never did find out what happened to Cain except that he went to the land of Nod which is to the East of Eden; I joined him there.

It was one of those days when a chap simply cannot get a good day’s sleep; it seemed I had scarcely closed my eyes before last night’s ‘Old Bill’ was warning me to get shaved for Six o’Clock Court. He watched me with something of admiration in his eye as I plied the disposable razor; many a villain, he told me, had sworn to give that particular magistrate a knuckle-sandwich but none had hitherto made good the threat. I could see that he found it hard to believe that my only motive was a determination to graze upon the fabled fishcakes.

Back in the intimate court-room, the cast was almost the same as it had been that morning, except that my custodian was now the ‘Old Bill’, the magistrate was one of those soppy, earnest chaps who long to hear of broken homes and deprived childhoods and Johanna was looking esculent in a cinnamon sheath such as you could not buy with a lifetime’s trading-stamps. Yes, and there was a flaccid man with a big face whom I had never seen before but who was clearly one of those Harley Street chaps who charge you fifty guineas for telling you to take a long sea voyage and more exercise.

Detective Inspector Jaggard flatly recited the facts about my disgraceful behaviour that morning. It seemed to me that the magistrate permitted a thin smile to cross his face as Jaggard related how his brother of the bench would never again be quite the same around the nose. My brief called Johanna to the witness-box. She dabbed a tearful eye with a couple of square inches of cambric as she told how valiantly I had fought against my, uh, terrible, uh, disability and how she was ready to stand by me until I had conquered it. For my part I gaped. Probably I was meant to gape. Then the flaccid chap was called: I had been wrong about him, his address was not Harley Street but Wigmore Street.

He had, it seemed, been treating me for more than a year and was getting some pretty good results; all sorts of mental diseases with names I cannot remember had succumbed to his therapy and the slight, residual hostility-issue-orientation towards legal authority was fast vanishing and he would stake his reputation that this morning’s little outburst was just a preter-ultimate orgasmic sublimation which was, not to put too fine a point on it, a jolly good thing and meant that I was now cured. He also had my wife’s assurance that I was very sorry and that I would pay for the nose.