The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(177)

There was another deathly hush, broken only by peppermint noises from the old ladies. The Deputy Bailiff and Jurats retired to debate the finer points and I had a quick consultation with my pocket-flask.

Our judges returned after a very few minutes, wearing damned disinheriting countenances. When everyone was seated, we miscreants were bidden to stand up again. The Deputy Bailiff had a fine command of the language; as he summarized our follies we shrank in stature quite visibly.

Five sonorous minutes made it clear to us, and to all beholders, that we were the sort of reprobates without which the fair Isle of Jersey could well do; that much of the hooliganism, drunkenness and general lowering of moral standards on the Island was directly attributable to such as we; that men of our age should be giving an example to the younger generation and that it had better not happen again, or else.

He took a pause for breath.

‘Charlie Strafford Van Cleef Mortdecai,’ he said in a voice of doom. ‘You are deemed guilty on all three counts. What say you in answer?’

I caught the compelling eye of the old lady opposite. She was leaning forward, her mouth ajar, the great striped peppermint inside clearly visible.

‘I’m awfully sorry,’ I told the peppermint; ‘foolish, ill-advised, unforgivable. Yes. Sorry. Very.’

He told me that I was a man of good family; that I had acted in a disinterested way on my friends’ behalf, although foolishly; that the Court was satisfied with my expressions of regret, that the disgrace was probably punishment enough and that the Court was therefore disposed to be lenient. I hung my head to hide my smirk.

‘You are therefore committed to prison for a total of twenty-seven months.’ The old lady’s dentures snapped shut on the unlucky peppermint. ‘Or to pay an aggregate fine of four hundred and fifty pounds. Give the prisoner a chair, officer. You are also bound over to be of good behaviour for five years in your own recognizance of a further five hundred pounds.’

He slid his spectacles six inches down his splendid nose. ‘Can you pay?’ he asked in a kinder voice.

Sam drew fifty pounds less in fines but he didn’t get the bit about being of good family, which must have stung.

George drew the same as Sam because, as the Deputy Bailiff pointed out, he had a fine military record. He was on the point of sitting down when the Deputy Bailiff, displaying a sense of timing that Mohammed Ali would have envied, hit him with another hundred and fifty quid for the motor-insurance offence.

Outside, in Royal Square, Solly congratulated me.

‘You did very well. I was proud of you. And the Deputy Bailiff was very gentle.’

‘Gentle?’

‘Lord, yes. You should hear him telling off one of us lawyers if we put a foot wrong. Makes one feel like a Labour MP caught soliciting in a public lavatory. Which reminds me, what does one do with a toad?’

‘A toad?’ I squeaked.

‘Well, it could be a frog, I suppose. Sort of brown, warty thing.’

‘That’s a toad.’

‘Yes, well, it arrived this morning and my secretary can’t get it to eat. Offered it bread and jam, all sorts of things. Fussy little beast.’

‘When you say “arrived” … ?’

‘In a cigar-box. Also enclosed was a piece of lavatory paper, inscribed with the word “Mortdecai”. Er, it was used lavatory paper.’

I became glad that I had eaten so sparingly at luncheon. Pulling myself together, I said:

‘A ribald pun, simply, I should think. On the word crapaud, you see.’

‘I see,’ he said; but he gave me an odd look.

Sam and I dined early, at George’s house, then made our selection of women to be protected that night and started to place telephone calls. We were quite unprepared for the stiff hostility with which our suggestions were met; we were, it seemed, social lepers. The first two people we spoke to said, with no attempt at plausibility, that they were otherwise engaged; the third put the receiver down in a marked manner as soon as she heard our names; the fourth said that her husband could look after her perfectly adequately, thank you very much; the fifth said that if we telephoned again she would inform the police. Only the last, a gin-sodden, lust-crazed poetess welcomed our proposal – and her tones made it clear that she had it in mind to do a bit of raping on her own account.

We looked at each other blankly. The telephone rang.

‘It’s for you, Charlie. Johanna.’

‘Charlie,’ she said in honeyed tones, ‘you may care to know that my bridge-party tonight is off. Yes, off. Lady Pickersgill has telephoned to say that she has a bad cold. So has Lady Cortances. So has Mrs ffrench-Partridge. I hope you are proud of yourself.’

‘Gosh, Johanna, I can’t tell you how sorry …’

‘I have just telephoned the airport; they tell me that there are no planes leaving for London tonight. Moreover, the cleaning lady has just told me that she can no longer oblige: she must devote herself in future to caring for her old mother. Whose funeral she attended last year. Moreover, there is a television van parked in the road outside. Moreover, have you seen the evening paper?’ Without waiting for a Yes, No, or Don’t Know, she hung up.

I went out in the rain to the gate and collected the newspaper. (Your free-born Jersey tradesman will do much for you but he scorns the act of putting newspapers into letterboxes, isn’t that odd?)