The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(118)

I wagged my head with admiration; so fine a liar was wasted in Wigmore Street. There had been times in his declaration when I had been on the point of believing him myself.

You must have noticed that most magistrates, when looking wise, peer over the tops of their spectacles. This one was trendy: he prodded the gig-lamps up to his forehead and peered under them. He asked the mendacious medico if he could advance any other extenuating circs., had the prisoner been the product of a broken home, a deprived childhood, that sort of thing?

‘Oh dear, yes, very,’ said the liar, speaking more truthfully than he realized, ‘but, erchrmmm, you understand, at this stage, sure you follow me …’ and he jerked his head a couple of millimetres in my direction.

‘Just so, just so,’ said the kindly stipendiary. Beaming at me, he hit me with a hundred quid for his fellow-magistrate’s conk – well, that was the least he could do, I realized that – added a few more bobs for contempt of court, bound me over in my own recognizances to keep the peace and begged me, like any father, to listen to my doctor and loved ones who knew what was best for me. He didn’t tell me to give up smoking cigarettes.

Going down the stairs, free as a bird and terrified as a clay pigeon, I accosted Jaggard. ‘Charge me with pinching the Rouault,’ I whined; ‘I’ll plead guilty, it’s a fair cop.’ He stared at me bleakly as only Detective-Inspectors can.

‘Unfortunately, sir,’ he said (the ‘sir’ stuck in his throat a bit), ‘it seems that just before the robbery your lady wife had agreed to buy that Rouault from Miss Gertrude Weltschmerzer for you. As a wedding-present. I have spoken to Miss Weltschmerzer on the international telephone. She confirms this.’ He spoke in the bitter tones of a policeman who has to live and work in a world where ‘law and order’ has become a dirty phrase. I truly felt sorry for him.

‘Well, well,’ I babbled, ‘that was nice of her, wasn’t it. Matter of fact, I’m thinking of buying her an antique pendant.’

‘You mean, like a spare?’ he said.

I stopped feeling sorry for him.

Downstairs, I collected my possessions, gave the plastic bag of whisky to the kindly Old Bill, along with the remainder of the duty-free cigarettes – who knows when you may need a friend in the Force? – and joined Johanna in her cute little Jensen Interceptor. Not a shot was fired as she drove us to Upper Brook Street. She looked beautiful behind the wheel, as all lovely women do behind the wheels of sports cars. All she said was ‘Oh, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie.’

All I said was, ‘Yes.’

Jock was at home, looking useful. I had forgotten to bring him any American comic-books but he didn’t sulk. I took him aside and murmured an instruction or two about dinner. My conversation with Johanna was desultory.

‘Charlie dear, don’t tire yourself telling me all about your adventures. I know most of it and can guess the rest.’

‘Darling Charlie, why are you keeping away from the windows in that kind of furtive way?’

‘Charlie, what on earth are those strange brown things you are eating?’

‘Fishcakes,’ I mumbled from a full mouth and a fuller heart. ‘Made by policemen’s widows.’

‘I see …’

‘Charlie, I expect you’re very tired?’

‘Very.’

‘Too tired?’

‘I didn’t say that, did I?’





21 Mortdecai takes an educational tour around a food-processing plant and improves his mind no end.





The dirty nurse, Experience, in her kind

Hath fouled me.





The Last Tournament





I awoke the next morning at an earlier hour than usual.

‘Johanna,’ I said, ‘could you please stop doing that for a moment?’

‘Shchroombleshly,’ she said, indistinctly.

‘How much did that Wigmore Street wank-shrink cost you?’

‘A thousand,’ she said, clearing her throat.

‘And the Rouault?’

‘Nothing. No, really, nothing – I just happened to have heard that Gertie Weltschmerzer was having to find a really serious sum of money to pay her last-husband-but-one not to publish his memoirs, so I called her and congratulated her on the convenient burglary and sort of dropped the name of the president of her insurance firm who happens to be an old buddy of mine and she made the sort of noises that rich women make – you know, like this …’

‘Later,’ I said. ‘First the narrative.’

‘Where was I? Oh yes, when she stopped making noises like a gobbler – that’s what we call a turkey in the States – I sort of reminded her that the Rouault couldn’t have been burgled because she’d sold it to me just a couple of days before. She had to think about that for a while because she’s a little dumb, you know? and then she said why, sure she remembered and she hoped my husband would enjoy it. That’s all, except that I feel I ought to check that my husband does enjoy it.’

I managed to enjoy it although it was, as I have said, quite indecently early in the morning.

Jock, announcing his imminent appearance by a polite cough which almost took the door off its hinges (I have taught him that good servants never knock), brought in a tray for Johanna laden with the sort of coffee which you and I drink after dinner but which Daughters of the Revolution pour into their stomachs at crack of dawn. Small wonder that the American Colonies were the first to win their independence – if that’s what they still call it. Before I could doze off again my own tray arrived, just a few eggs, a half-dozen slices of toast and a steaming pot of well-judged tea. Jock, you see, although not bred to service, has a heaven-sent knowledge of what the young master will require in the way of tea. I would pit him against any Wigmore Street physician when it comes to prescribing tea: there are times, as I’m sure you know, when these things matter. I mean, an art-dealer who has nothing to face that day but a brisk flurry of bidding at Sotheby’s needs naught but the soothing Oolong. A morning at Christie’s indicates the Lapsang Souchong. A battle-royal at Bonham’s over, say, a Pater which only one other dealer has spotted, calls for the Broken Orange Pekoe Tips – nay, even the Earl Grey itself. For an art-dealer in terror of his life, however, and one who has valiantly embarked on Part Two of his honeymoon in early middle age, only two specifics are in the field: Twining’s Queen Mary’s Blend or Fortnum’s Royal. What I’d call a two-horse race. I forget which it was; I only remember that I slunk out of bed before its fortifying effect made me forget that I am no longer a youngster. (That’s all right about the ‘size of the dog in the fight and the size of the fight in the dog’ but art-dealers in their late forties have livers to consider; other organs have to take their place in the queue.)