The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(131)

I explained to him kindly that he was not a proper manservant, trained to gentlemen’s service, but only a mere thug and that I had noticed lately that he was getting notions above his station in life.

His answer was in the plural – and they bounce.

Shaking with rage at having nursed such a viper in my bosom, I huddled on some clothes and drove off to get dinner in St Helier, my tyres cutting up the gravel savagely and spraying it on to the lawn. (The gardener had, in any case, been making grumbling noises for weeks and I would be well shot of him: his snail-like working pace had earned him the sobriquet ‘Flash’ from Johanna.)

In St Helier, the restaurant I had readied my gastric juices for was, of course, closed. It wasn’t just Easter Bunny time, it was That Kind of Day, too. That did it. Stomach churning with chagrin and thwarted peptins, I went to the Club, determined to spite myself with cold steak-and-kidney pie and spurious new potatoes forced into pallid maturity in Cyprus with doses of chicken-crut and peasants’ pee.

On the steps I met George, coming down.

‘Eaten already?’ I asked.

‘No. Looked at the menu. A shop-girl would eat any quantity of it. I’m off. Come back with me and play backgammon. There’s half a duck in the fridge if the maid hasn’t swiped it. And you could make one of your potato salads. And I’d open a bottle of that Fleurie you like so much.’

It was a deal. Off we sped, he in his Rover, I in my absurd Mini GT which I bought because I can never resist a contradiction in terms.

As we swung into the courtyard and George killed the engine I heard the screams. He didn’t hear them until he’d opened the door of his better-insulated car, so I was first at the door, which was locked. He stabbed it with his key and was through the hall and up the stairs before I had recovered from the mighty shove he had given me.

In the bedroom was his wife, quite bare, legs spread wide and shrieking as though she were approaching a grade on the Atcheson, Topeka and Santa Fé Railroad, Inc.

I couldn’t help noticing that her bush, contrary to the usual practice, was of a lighter shade than the hair of her head. The window was open wide and a warm wind stirred the curtains but the room was fragrant with sex. George was already out of the window and taking a grip of the creeper on the wall outside. It ripped loose under his weight and he landed on the gravel below with what I suppose I may as well call a sickening thud and an oath more suitable to the Sergeants’ Mess than to his own station in life.

Sonia left off shrieking, pulled a rumpled sheet over her rumpled charms and started concentrating on tragic expressions and ugly gulping noises. I studied her curiously. It was an act, but then she was a woman, so she wasn’t necessarily acting, if you follow me. I had never before observed the behaviour-pattern of a recent rape-victim (I can’t say rapée, can I – it reminds one of that delicious Rapée Morvandelle that one puts into quiches.) (It’s also a kind of snuff, isn’t it?) nor had I any preconceptions as to how such a victim would react, but somehow I found the performance unsatisfying; suspension of disbelief wouldn’t quite come. However, there was no time to waste. I had no intention, I need scarcely say, of following George and the rapist out of the window: I am a little portly just at present and I was wearing a new and costly mohair suit, but I felt that something should be done and I felt, too, a little de trop in that bedroom.

‘There, there,’ I said, patting what I took to be her shoulder under the sheet but which proved, embarrassingly, to be what pornographers call a quivering mound and she began to steam-whistle again.

‘Oops, sorry,’ I mumbled as I fled, my carefully-built reputation for being uno di quelli shattered.

Downstairs and out through the back door, there was nothing to be seen but the ambiguous outlines of costly shrubs, no smell but the drowsy odours of night-scented whatever-they-ares and no sound but the growling of my still unfilled belly.

George might be anywhere, the rapist still more so, if his exploits had left him with any strength.



‘Chemise de femme,

Annure ad hoc

Pour la gaie prise

Et la belle choque’





was running through my head. Sonia’s nightdress, the short sort, calculated for sea-level, had been on the floor, you see, suggesting a leisurely and fastidious rapist.

There was nothing to be done out there in the garden; dirty fighting is one of my favourite outdoor sports, believe it or not, but I do like a little advantage – umbrageous shrubberies bulging with mad rapists are not my notion of advantageous ground. I attribute my long life and good health to cowardice.

I went indoors and lifted the telephone. Then I put it down again. Sonia might not want a doctor; probably a bidet and a codeine tablet would fill the bill, if I may coin a phrase. George might not want the police or any other third party to learn of the invasion of his wife’s secret garden.

What I did was, I made a stiff drink of gin and orange juice and tonic, such as I knew Sonia loved, and carried it up to the bedroom, administering it with many a ‘there, there, child’. Then I went downstairs and made a similar confection for myself, except that it was made of whisky and soda. Then I had another which tasted even better and gave me enough lightning-like decision to go across the courtyard and find Sam.

‘Sam,’ I said, when he answered my knock, ‘there is trouble across the way.’