The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(153)

‘Well, there you are, aren’t you?’

‘Yes. What’s the word on Mrs Sam?’

‘Well, not great. I hear she got worse and they took her off to the mainland ’smorning. Mr Davenant’s been ringing up to find when you’re expected back; he sounds in a bit of a mess.’

‘Oh dear, do you think he’ll be round this evening?’

‘No, he was ringing up from England. He’ll be back tomorrow morning, wants to come to lunch.’

‘So he shall,’ I said. ‘So he shall. But, more to the point, is there anything for my supper tonight?’

‘Yeah, I got you a nice little treat of kidneys done in wine and mustard on fried bread with a few sauté potatoes all garlicky.’

‘The very thing!’ I cried. ‘I trust you will join me, Jock?’

‘Too bloody right I will, Mr Charlie.’





9





What adders came to shed their coats?

What coiled obscene

Small serpents with soft stretching throats

Caressed Faustine?





Faustine





Spring was infesting the air in no uncertain fashion the next day and I awoke, for once, with a feeling of well-being and an urge to go for long country walks. Needing to share this feeling I marched into Johanna’s room and flung the curtains wide.

‘How can you lie there,’ I cried, ‘with the sun streaming in and all the world going a-Maying?’

I didn’t quite catch the two words she mumbled in reply, but they were not ‘good morning’.

Soon I was downstairs, stamping about and disrupting the household by demanding a proper breakfast instead of my usual alka-seltzer and dexedrin. It was all quite delicious – porridge and kippers and bacon and eggs and toast and marmalade except that the last mouthful of bacon turned to ashes in my mouth when Jock dumped the mail beside my plate, for on top of the pile lay one of those dread, buff-coloured envelopes marked OHMS. I quaked as I read. Her Majesty’s Inspector of Taxes noted with feigned puzzlement that, according to my Tax Return for the previous year, my expenditure had exceeded my income; what, then, he asked with concern, had I been living on? He managed to suggest, although not in so many words, that he was worried about me. Was I eating properly?

I wrote him a cheque for an entirely irrelevant ￡111.99 which would fox the computer for a month or two, then I spent a happy ten minutes erasing the name and address on the letter and typing in a fresh one, re-directing it to my new-found friend, the lady-don of Scone College. Share the good things of life is what I always say. We shall pass this way but once, you know.

George arrived before Sam and told me about the rapist’s latest exploit. He had telephoned the victim’s husband that morning for they were friends and had confirmed the gossip that all the nasty magical trappings had been in evidence. There was still no description worth the name: the doctor’s wife had tried, sturdy lass, to snatch the man’s mask off while he was most deeply preoccupied with his task but he had immediately stunned her with a blow to the temple with the side of his clenched fist – a surprisingly kind blow and, it seemed to me, rather a knowledgeable one. All she could say with certainty was that he was strong, well-built and perhaps in early middle age.

‘It seems she’s not too shaken up,’ George went on, ‘been a nurse, you see, in the Army. Hard to shock those lassies. She’s more furious than anything else, I gather.’

‘And how’s Sonia?’

‘Oh, well, she still plays up a bit when she remembers to, but on the whole I’d say she was pretty well recovered. Not like poor Vi, she seems to have been knocked for six. By the way, be careful what you say to Sam, he’s taking it very hard. Quite murderous.’

Sam entered as though on cue; paler than usual, less kempt, a humourless look on his face. He swallowed half the drink I gave him before sitting down.

‘Well?’ was what he snapped when he did sit down.

‘No, Sam,’ I said, ‘nothing is well and I should prefer to discuss things after we have all refreshed ourselves a little, don’t you agree?’ He only glared, not agreeing at all, so I went about on the other tack.

‘But first,’ I said, ‘if you feel like talking about it, we are anxious to know how things are with Violet. Where is she, for instance?’

He finished his drink with a second swallow. It had been really quite a stiff drink for lunch-time. I made him another, giving myself a touch more freedom with the soda-water this time.

‘Awful bloody place near Virginia Water,’ he said at last. ‘Not the big Virginia Water place but one of the other nursing homes round there which specialize in what they like to call Nervous Disorders. Frightful Victorian barracks in Revived Lombardic Gothic; rather like Manchester Town Hall but with rhododendrons and monkey-puzzle trees all around it. Pink, portly consultants flouncing down the corridors, each with comet’s tail of adoring matrons and sisters and nurses and lavatory attendants trailing behind them, like little boys following a horse with a shovel and bucket for the good of their father’s roses. Foul bitch of a receptionist broke it to me gently that the charges were ￡60 a day then watched me narrowly to see if I winced. “Payable fortnightly in advance,” she went on. I gave her a cheque for eight hundred and forty pounds and she said that “doctor” would probably see Violet that night. I said that for eight hundred and forty pounds “doctor” would bloody well see her there and then. She looked at me as though I’d farted in church. We had words then, and I won, although I had to apologize for saying “bloody”.’