The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(132)

‘Only trouble?’ he said. ‘It sounded like a steam traction-engine rally. I nearly went over but I thought it impertinent to interfere in what might be a private argument.’

I outlined the situation to him and he went to fetch Violet from the other end of the house. Her face was red and tear-stained and I cocked an inquiring eyebrow,

‘It’s all right,’ she said, ‘it’s just the crabs.’

‘The crabs?’ I cried, shocked by such candour. ‘My dear, however did you catch them?’

‘I didn’t. The plumber did.’

‘You are weeping because the plumber has contracted crabs?’

Sam would ordinarily have let this go on, relishing Violet’s tangled thought-patterns, but time pressed.

‘The plumber,’ he explained, ‘is a keen sea-fisher, as they all are here. He has today given us two fine shanker crabs, alive alive-oh. Violet is boiling them and the sound of their knocking on the saucepan-lid fills her with compassion. Hinc illae lackry-mae.’

Violet smiled sweetly, vacantly, through her tears.

A minute later we were at Les Cherche-fuites, where all was going as merrily as a wedding-bell. George was covered with mud, bits of wistaria and gravel-rash, and was making grating, brigadier-like noises into the telephone. Sonia was striking well-raped attitudes reminiscent of Emma Hamilton portraying Lucrece, and was fetching huge and unbecoming sobs up from deep in her thorax. Violet rushed to her and went into the ‘there, there’ and ‘now, now’ routine but to no avail, for Sonia merely shifted into the higher register. Violet steered her firmly off to the bathroom to wash her face or whatever women do for each other in times of stress.

George subsided into an armchair, glaring at the tumbler of Scotch I had pressed into his hand.

‘Bloody swine,’ he growled. ‘Raped my wife. Ruined my wistaria.’

‘I’ll send my man round first thing in the morning to have a look at it,’ said Sam. ‘The wistaria I mean. They’re very tenacious things – soon recover. Wistaria,’ he added; gratuitously, it seemed to me.

I started to tiptoe out: I love dramas but I am no sort of horticulturalist.

‘Don’t go,’ said George.

‘No, don’t go,’ said Sam.

I didn’t go, I hadn’t really wanted to. I wondered whether George had forgotten about the half of a cold duck and bottle of Fleurie. I helped myself to a little more of his Scotch.

‘Who were you telephoning, George?’ asked Sam.

‘Doctor.’

‘Wise, d’you think? Bit shaming for Sonia?’

‘Irrelevant. Bastard may have damaged her insides, given her some filthy disease, even a brat … God knows …’ His voice trailed off into a choking, hate-filled silence.

‘What I have to decide,’ he went on quietly, ‘is police or not.’

That was, indeed, a matter for thought. Even the Paid Police, if they could eventually be coaxed out from St Helier, could hardly be expected to make much of a possible footprint or two and a ravished wife’s incoherent babblings, while the Honorary Police, in the person of the local Vingtenier, pillar of the community though he might be, could do little more than search his brain for known or likely rapists in his twenty families (excluding those to whom he was related, which would rule out most) and then summon his Centenier. The Centenier, excellent and astute man, could do little more than search his brain: his appointment and specialized training were approximately those of the Chairman of a Parish Council in England and he had neither the equipment, the men, nor the skills necessary to carry out a drag-net operation or house-to-house search. And what to look for in such a search? Someone breathing hard? Worst of all, such a public fuss would stamp Sonia for ever as the ‘poor lady what got raped last Easter’.

‘On the whole,’ said Sam gently, ‘I’d think not.’

‘Yes,’ I said with my customary ambiguity.

‘I see all that,’ said George, ‘and obviously I agree with it. But there is a citizen’s duty. Personal embarrassment shouldn’t count. It’s the law, d’you see. Much more important than us. Even if it is an ass. Otherwise where are we?’

‘But if we know it can’t help?’ (Sam)

‘Well, yes, that’s the point, isn’t it?’ He thought for a while, ignoring the drink in his hand.

‘Yes, got it,’ he said at length, ‘I hold the Queen’s commission and in any case there’s that citizen’s arrest law, isn’t there. I’ll have a private chat with the Centenier tomorrow, explain my position. Then we three form a posse comitatus; hound the swine down. Yes, that’s it. Good night, you men. Report here at noon tomorrow. Bring your own sandwiches.’

Sam gazed at him aghast: Nature had not formed him to be a posse-member.

I, too, gazed at him aghast: there was clearly not going to be any cold duck that night.

Violet entered, weeping freely again.

‘It is really quite dreadful,’ she said, ‘poor dear girl. He did very odd things to her as well as, well, you know, and she is frightened out of her wits. He must have been a maniac, he was wearing a mask and funny-smelling clothes, and, oh yes, he had a sword painted on his tummy.’

George growled and cursed a bit; Sam’s eyebrows shot up and I began to muse furiously.