The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(134)

Johanna and I do not share a bedroom, still less a bed. To sleep in the same bed with a member of the opposite sex is barbarous, unhygienic, unaesthetic and, in these blessed days of the electric blanket, quite unnecessary. It means, too, that wakefulness in one is visited upon the other partner and, worst of all, it is conducive to carnality in the mornings – terribly bad for the heart and makes you eat too large a breakfast. When I find a woman that I want to spend the whole night with – I mean, including sleep – in the same bed, then I shall know that I’m in love – or senile. Probably, by then, both.

It was in my dressing-room, then, that Jock aroused me on Easter Tuesday. His ‘good morning’ was no gruffer than usual; there was perhaps hope that he had declared a truce. Nevertheless, I tasted my tea guardedly, for the keenest weapon in Jock’s arsenal is to make tea with water which has not quite boiled: a fearful revenge, but then Jock is a man of violence, this is why I employ him.

The tea was good. Jock had selected the Assam Flowery BOP from Jackson’s atelier and had made it with his deftest touch. I beamed upon the honest fellow.

‘Jock, today I am to be a member of a posse. Pray lay out for me a suit of Levis, a ten-gallon hat, high-heeled boots, a Winchester ’73 rifle and a strong, durable horse.’

‘We ain’t got none of that, Mr Charlie.’

‘Then plus-fours, stout boots and a great cudgel.’

‘Right. Am I coming?’

‘Not at this stage, but please stay near the telephone until I call.’

‘Right. ’Course you know you won’t catch him, don’t you?’

I gaped.

‘Catch whom?’

‘The bloke who rogered Mrs Breakspear, of course. Silly bugger, he only had to say please, didn’t he?’

‘Watch your tongue. Mr Breakspear’s a friend of mine.’

‘Sorry, Mr Charlie. But everybody …’

‘Shut up. Anyway, how do you come to have heard of the, er, incident?’

‘Girl who delivers the newspapers.’

‘But the papers come from Grouville and they’re here before eight. How can it have got so far overnight?’

‘Jersey,’ he said enigmatically.

‘Yes. Of course. But what’s this about never catching him?’

‘Use your common-sense, Mr Charlie. Where are you going to look, for one thing?’

‘I had been asking myself that, I admit. What was the other thing?’

‘They say you won’t. The Jerseys. They know.’

‘Hm, yes, that is another thing.’

‘Yeah.’

At noon, clad in thick Irish thornproof tweeds and brandishing an ashplant, I clumped in my great boots into the drawing-room at Les Cherche-fuites. George was wearing flannels and a white shirt, Sam was wearing Bermuda shorts and a silk Palm Beach shirt. They gazed at me wonderingly.

‘This is only a conference,’ George explained gently.

‘Oh. I see.’

‘Have you brought many beaters?’ Sam asked.

‘No.’

‘But a loader, perhaps?’

My riposte was swift as light.

‘I usually drink a glass of bottled beer at about this time,’ I said, and went out to the kitchen to fetch it.

Back in the drawing-room I noticed a large, ill-assembled man in a blue suit fidgeting on the edge of an upright chair. His head was many sizes too small for his great frame but his hands made up for it; they were like shovels. He proved to be the Centenier, one Hyacinthe le Mignone, and he shook hands with great gentleness, like a man who is afraid of breaking things. His voice was just such a melancholy, long, withdrawing roar as Matthew Arnold used to delight in.

The conference had barely begun, only civilities and things had thitherto been exchanged. The Centenier began to utter.

‘Well, Mr Breakspear,’ he roared, ‘I ’aven’t yet turned up anything you could call a positive lead. We ’ave only two known sex-offenders worth the name in this Parish and neither of them seems to fit the bill. One of them has a diseased mind all right, eh? but ’is modus operandi is quite unlike that what your lady has related. ’E is chiefly interested in little girls’ bicycle-saddles which we reckon a ’armless hobby for an ageing man, though we keep a sharp eye on ’im, eh? ’E did indeed once coax a liddle lass into a daffodil field but as soon as ’e started getting above ’imself she stuck ’er finger in ’is eye and run and told ’er father, who ’appened to be the Vingtenier and ’urt the old man real nasty; I don’t reckon ’e’ll try that again, eh?’

This was entrancing stuff, it made me wish that I were a novelist.

‘The other one is just a kid of fifteen or so. ’e ’as bin blessed with a unusually large member, which ’e cannot resist showing to respectable women once in a while, eh? None of them ’as ever made a complaint but the boy always comes to me and confesses and tries to wag it at me – says ’e wants me to understand!’

‘And do you look?’ I asked, with a straight face.

‘My Chri’ no. I tell ’im to show it to the College of Surgeons and give ’im a kick up the arse, eh? I probably seen better anyway,’ he added with a betraying modesty.

‘The only other possibility,’ he went on, ‘oh, thanks, I shouldn’t really, my wife will give me hell if she smells it on me breath; the only other possibility is some person or persons unknown who in the Spring and early Summer months persists in stealing ladies’ knickers from washing lines. But this doesn’t sound like a desperate bloke who climbs in windows and takes on strong young ladies, does it? It sounds more like someone addicted to what we call the Solitary Vice. What’s more, he always pinches these great big old bloomers, eh? what we used to call bumbags, not the sort of pretty frilly things your lady will likely wear.’