The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(44)

‘Just who am I – are we – supposed to have murdered?’

‘Milton Quintus Desiré Krampf.’

‘Desiré?’

‘That’s how I have it.’

‘Gawblimey. You’re sure it wasn’t ‘Voulu?’

‘No,’ he said, in a literate sort of way and with half a smile. “‘Desiré” is how I have it here.’ One got the impression that if he’d been an Englishman he’d have seconded my ‘Gawblimey’ but one had, too, the impression that he was quite content not to be an Englishman, perhaps particularly not the portly Englishman now cowering manfully in front of him.

‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Frighten me.’

‘I never try to. Some people I hurt; it’s part of the job. Some I kill: that too. Who needs to frighten? I’m not that kind of a policeman.’

‘I bet you frighten your psychiatrist,’ I quipped and straightaway wished I hadn’t. He did not give me a cold, blank stare, he didn’t look at me at all. He looked at the desk top where the scratches and the fly shit were, then he opened a drawer and took out one of those thin, black, gnarled cheroots and lit it. He didn’t even blow the rank smoke in my face – he wasn’t that kind of a policeman.

But he had, somehow, succeeded in frightening me. My kidneys started to hurt terribly.

‘My kidneys are hurting me terribly,’ I said, ‘and I have to go to the lavatory.’

He gestured economically toward a door and I got there without actually screaming out loud. It was a very nice little lavatory. I rested my head against the cool, tiled wall and piddled wearily. There was no actual blood, which mildly surprised me. At eye level someone had scratched ‘MOTHER F’ into the wall before they had been interrupted. I speculated – ‘– ATHER’? – then collected myself, remembering Jock’s plight; adjusted clothing before leaving.

‘Your turn, Jock,’ I said firmly as I re-entered the room, ‘should have thought of you first.’ Jock shambled out; the sheriff didn’t look impatient, he didn’t really look anything – I wished he would. I cleared my throat.

‘Sheriff,’ I said, ‘I saw Mr Krampf’s body yesterday – goodness, was it only yesterday – and he had quite clearly died of a coronary in the ordinary way of business. What gives with the murder bit?’

‘You may speak English, Mr Mortdecai; I am an uneducated man but I read a great deal. Mr Krampf died of a deep puncture wound in the heart. Someone – you, I must suppose – introduced a long and very thin instrument into his side between the fifth and sixth ribs and carefully wiped off the very slight surface bleeding which would have ensued.

‘It is not a rare modus operandi on our West Coast: the Chinese Tongs used to favour a six-inch nail, the Japanese use a sharpened umbrella rib. It’s all-same Sicilian stiletto, I suppose, except that the Sicilians usually strike upwards through the diaphragm. Had Mr Krampf’s heart been young and sound he might well have survived so small a puncture – the muscle could have kind of clenched itself around the hole – but Mr Krampf’s heart was by no means healthy. Had he been a poor man his history of heart disease might have caused the manner of his death to escape notice, but he was not a man at all, he was a hundred million dollars. That means a great deal of insurance pressure in this country, Mr Mortdecai, and our insurance investigators make the Chicago riot police look like Girl Scouts. Even the drunkest doctor takes a veddy, veddy careful look at a hundred million dollars’ worth of dead meat.’

I pondered a bit. Dawn broke.

‘The old lady!’ I cried. ‘The Countess! A hatpin! She was a leading Krampf-hater and a hatpin owner if ever I saw one!’

He shook his head slowly. ‘Not a chance, Mr Mortdecai. I’m surprised to hear you trying to pin your slaying on the sweetest and innocentest little old lady you ever saw. Besides, we already checked. She covers her head with a shawl in church and doesn’t have a hat or a hatpin in her possession. We looked. Anyway, one of the servants has sworn a statement that you were seen entering Krampf’s personal suite, drunk, at about the time of death and that your servant Strapp acted like a homicidal maniac during your visit to the rancho, breaking the same servant’s nose and beating up everyone. Moreover, you are known to be Mrs Krampf’s lover – we have a really fascinating statement from the woman who makes her bed – so there’s a double motive of sex and money as well as opportunity. I’d say you should tell it all now, starting with where you hid the murder weapon, so I don’t have to have you interrogated.’

He repeated the word ‘interrogated’ as though he liked the sound of it. To say that my blood ran cold would be idle: it was already as cold as a tart’s kiss. Had I been guilty I would have ‘spilled my guts’ – may I use dialect? – there and then, rather than meet those deputies again, especially frontally. If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? A still, small voice whispered ‘stall’ in my ear.

‘Do you mean to say that you have arrested Johanna Krampf?’ I cried.

‘Mr Mortdecai, you cannot be as simple as you pretend. Mrs Krampf is now many millions of dollars herself; a poor sheriff does not arrest millions of dollars, they have not a stain on their character. Should I call in a stenographer now, so that you can make the statement?’