The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(140)

‘You the police, then, eh?’

I chuckled fatly.

‘No, no. It’s a little more important than that,’ I said, in what he may well have taken for a Secret Service voice. ‘Have you seen or heard anyone else – on foot perhaps?’

‘No.’

‘Would you have noticed, do you think?’

‘Bloody right. I’m keeping me ear open for the young lady’s dad, ain’t I?’

‘Yes, of course. Quite right. Well, thanks for your help.’

I was almost at the car when he made a chirruping noise and beckoned me. I went back to him.

‘Funny you should ask that, mister. There’s a bugger in the field of taters behind us, just come in through the hedge. I can’t see him but I can hear him.’

‘Ow, Norman, it’s none of our business, etc.’

‘Belt up, daft cow.’ (How courtship has changed since our days, has it not?)

Norman and I stole into the field and, sure enough, a bugger was, indeed, tip-toeing through the taters. When the time and place were ripe I swept his feet from under him and Norman dived. The man squealed, cursed foully, kicked and clawed. When we had subdued him he proved to be Jock’s domino-pupil, much chagrined: about five pounds’ worth as it turned out. I gave Norman a sweetener too, and he eagerly proffered his name and address in case I ever needed any more deeds of derring-do.

The domino-man and I arrived at La Gouluterie at the very moment when George’s Rover arrived with George and Sam, who had been picked up on the Route Militaire. Jock swept up on his Ariel before we had entered the house. Nothing to report, from anyone.

Except the doctor. He didn’t like any part of this; he was a measles-and-mumps man and his mask of professional confidence was slipping. Much of what he said was for Sam’s ear alone but we others could see Sam’s face twist and darken as he listened. The professional murmuring went on, while Sam ground his teeth. George looked detachedly into space and I fidgeted. It was not, as the children say nowadays, my scene at all.

The situation was so fraught that Sam almost forgot to give the doctor his ritual glass of brown sherry before speeding him off on some other errand of mercy. (He was probably an excellent chap, a credit to Apothecaries’ Hall, but I find it hard to trust doctors with large, unhygienic moustaches. ‘He that sinneth, let him fall into the hands of the Physician’, I always say.)

Johanna came downstairs looking troubled: Violet had at last succumbed to the massive dose of sedative that the doctor had hosed into her (would you believe 15 millilitres of paraldehyde?) but she was in a pretty sorry state. We all went into conference and the story-until-now emerged as follows.

The assailant had apparently entered the house through the pantry window. Violet had been in her bedroom, taking off her make-up before showering. She had been clad only in those sensible woolly knickers which girls like Violet always wear. Suddenly a hideous shape had appeared in her dressing-table mirror – only for a second, because the light went out an instant later.

Sam had been in his study, which is lined with books, even the doors, which make it virtually sound-proof; but in any case Johanna doesn’t think Violet would have screamed, she would have been petrified with terror.

The rapist had been rough, to put it mildly, and had savaged Violet both here and there. The Marquis de Sade could have taken his correspondence course profitably. He seemed to have been motivated more by hatred than lust. Violet had babbled incoherently to Johanna for a few minutes before lapsing into a clenched sort of silence and the few cogent bits which Johanna could remember were:

‘He stank horridly, like a goat.’

‘He smelt of grease, but nasty.’

‘He was wearing a horrid mask, it smelt of rubber.’

‘He hated me.’

‘He had a sword painted on his tummy.’ (In Violet’s Noddy-world, even mad rapists have tummies, not bellies. Enid Blyton, Enid Blyton, how much we all owe you!)

‘He had spikes on his arms.’ (George and I looked at each other, this was straight from the Beast of Jersey case-book.) ‘He kept on saying beastly things, they were in a weird language – no, not patois – but I could tell they were beastly things.’

‘His hands were all covered with earth, they hurt me.’

The really nasty thing, however, the thing that had made her at last scream, was that, after the fiend had slid out of the window, she had felt something cold and wet, high up between her thighs.

It had wriggled.

‘It was a frog, for Christ’s sake,’ said Sam disgustedly, ‘the man is clearly insane.’

‘A frog?’ I asked.

‘That’s what I said.’

‘Sam, was it sort of greeny yellow with long hind-legs?’

‘God blast it, Charlie, you do try a man’s patience. I was in no mood to look at the thing’s legs. I just snatched it up and threw it.’

‘Where?’

He half rose, murder in his eyes, then thought better of it.

‘I think I threw it into the waste-paper basket,’ he said, in the strangled sort of voice you use when you want people to know that no further questions will be answered.

‘Johanna,’ I said, ‘will you please go and find it?’

She went. She found it. It wasn’t greenish-yellow with long legs, it was brown and naevous and squat.