The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(21)

About a lifetime later I awoke, with great reluctance. Jock’s huge face hung moonlike over me, making worried noises. When I spoke, shattering echoes boomed and rattled through my poor head. I was filled with hatred and misery.

‘Did you kill him?’ I asked hungrily.

‘No, Mr Charlie. I waited at the bottom for a bit and the lift stopped at “3” and I waited a bit more then I tried the button and it came down empty so I went up in it to here and you weren’t outside so I went to the top of the stairs to see if I could see you and then I heard the lift going down again and I thought this could go on all bleeding night and I came in here looking for you and here you were and so I thought …’ I raised a hand feebly.

‘Stop,’ I said. ‘I cannot possibly follow all this at the moment. It makes my head hurt. Search the flat, lock the doors, get me to bed and find me the largest sleeping pill ever made. And get some clothes on, you idiot, you’ll catch your death.’

At this point I switched off C. Mortdecai as an individual and let the poor chap swim through the floor again, down to a sunless sea.

If anyone cut my throat after that, they were welcome.





7





Who’d stoop to blame

This sort of trifling? Even had you skill

In speech – (which I have not) – to make your will

Quite clear to such an one, and say, ‘Just this

Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,

Or there exceed the mark’ – …

– E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose

Never to stoop.





My Last Duchess





I very carefully levered up an eyelid and shut it again fast. A merciless sunbeam had squirted straight in, making my brain bleed.

Much later I tried again.

The sunshine had been smothered and Jock was hovering at the foot of my bed, wringing his hands. He was also carrying a tea tray, but I have the distinct impression that he was wringing the hands, too.

‘Go away,’ I whimpered. He set the tray down and poured a cup for me; it sounded, inside my poor head, like someone flushing a lavatory in an echo chamber. I whimpered a little more and turned away but Jock gently waggled my shoulder, murmuring, ‘Now now’ or ‘There there’ or words to that effect. I sat up to remonstrate with him – the action seemed to leave half my skull behind on the pillow. I felt the afflicted area gingerly: it was sort of spongy and squashy to the touch but to my surprise was not caked with blood. I decided that had my skull been fractured I would not have woken up at all. Not that it seemed to matter that morning.

The tea was not my customary Lapsang or Oolong but Twining’s robuster Queen Mary’s Blend: shrewd Jock, he knew that a morning like this called for sterner stuff. I got the first cupful down, then Jock fed me two Alka-Seltzers (the noise!), two Beecham’s Powders and two dexedrines, in the order named, washing the whole collection down with a second cup of Queen Mary’s best and brightest. I shall never say another harsh word about that sainted woman.

Soon I became capable once more of rational thought, and rational thought urged me to go back to sleep at once. I sank down in the general direction of the pillows but Jock firmly scooped me up and balanced cups of tea all over me so that I dared not move.

‘There’s this tart been ringing up all day,’ he said, ‘says she’s that deputy secretary bloke’s secretary and it’s about your travel papers and you ought to get around there if you can stand and her gaffer’ll see you any time up to half past four. It’s three now, nearly.’

Creaking and grunting I hoisted myself to the surface.

‘Who do you think it was then last night, Mr Charlie?’

‘Not one of Martland’s lot, anyway,’ I answered. ‘They would have expected the full treatment like last time. Anything missing?’

‘Not that I can see.’

‘Well, they didn’t go to all that trouble just to sock me on the back of the head, that’s for certain.’

‘Could have just been an ordinary villain: hadn’t cased us proper, didn’t reckon on two of us, lost his head and buggered off a bit sharpish. He left this stuck in the front door lock, that’s why the alarm light kept on.’

‘This’ was a pocket calendar made of stiff celluloid, the size and shape of a playing card, bearing on the reverse an impassioned plea for the reader to drink someone’s Milk Stout. It would diddle open almost any sort of spring cylinder lock. It would be useless against my Chubb dead-lock with the phosphor-bronze rollers in the wards, and anyone who had spent even a week’s remedial training in Borstal would have known that. I didn’t like it. Raw novices do not try their prentice hands on fifth floor penthouse flats in Upper Brook Street.

I started to think about it for the first time and liked it less and less.

‘Jock,’ I said, ‘if we disturbed him while he was trying to celly the lock, why wasn’t he there when we disturbed him? And since he wasn’t there, how could he discover there were two of us? And if he’d given it up before you popped out, why did he leave a useful celly behind and why did he linger in the lift instead of, ah, buggering off a bit sharpish?’

Jock opened his mouth a bit to help him think. I could see that it hurt him.