The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(46)

You will agree, I’m sure, that this was no time to expatiate on the niceties of French plumbing.

‘Well, there you are, you see,’ I said.

‘How many prints, Mr Mortdecai?’

‘I burned the two with the negative; I only know of one other, in London, and the faces have been cut out of that – I daresay you know all about it.’

‘Thank you. We feared you might pretend to know of others and attempt to use this as a means of protecting yourself. It would not have protected you but it would have given us a fair amount of embarrassment.’

‘Oh, good.’

‘Mr Mortdecai, have you asked yourself how we happen to be here so soon after the killing?’

‘Look, I said I’d answer your questions and I will: if I have guts I’m prepared to spill them now – I’m quite unmanned. But if you want me to ask myself questions, you must get me something to eat and drink. Anything will do to eat; my drink is in the outer office if King Kong and Godzilla out there haven’t stolen it all. Oh, and my servant needs something too, of course.’

One of them put his head out of the door and muttered; my whisky, not too depleted, appeared and I sucked hungrily at it, then passed it to Jock. The boys in the Brooks Bros suits didn’t want any – they probably lived on iced water and tin tacks.

‘No,’ I resumed, ‘I have not asked myself that. If I really started to ask myself about the events of the last thirty-six hours I should probably be forced to conclude that there is a world-wide anti-Mortdecai conspiracy. But tell me, if it will cheer you up.’

‘We don’t much want to tell you, Mr Mortdecai. We just wanted to hear what you would say. So far we like your answers. Now tell us about the way you lost the Rolls Royce.’ At this point they switched the wire recorder on.

I told them frankly about the collision but altered the subsequent events a little, telling them lovely stories about Jock’s gallant bid to save the Buick as it teetered on the brink; then how we had tried to back the Rolls on to the road, how the wheels had spun, the shoulder crumbled and the car gone to join the Buick.

‘And your suitcase, Mr Mortdecai?’

‘Brilliant presence of mind on the part of Jock – snatched it at the last moment.’

They switched off the recorder.

‘We do not necessarily believe all or any of this, Mr Mortdecai, but again it happens to be the story we wanted. Now, have you anything else in your possession which you intended to deliver to Mr Krampf?’

‘No. Honour bright. Search us.’

They started studying the ceiling again, they had all the time in the world.

Later, the door knocked and a deputy brought in a paper sack of food; I almost fainted away at the wonderful fragrance of hamburgers and coffee. Jock and I ate two hamburgers each; our interrogators didn’t like the look of theirs. They pushed them away delicately with the backs of their fingers, in unison, as though they’d rehearsed it. There was a little carton of chilli to spread on the hamburgers. I had lots of it but it spoils the taste of whisky, you know.

I cannot remember much about the rest of the questions, except that they went on for a long time and some of them were surprisingly vague and general. Sometimes the wire recorder was on, sometimes not. Probably another was on all the time, inside one of the briefcases. I got the impression that they were becoming very bored with the whole thing, but I was by then so sleepy with food and liquor and exhaustion that I could only concentrate with difficulty. Much of the time I simply told them the truth – a course Sir Henry Wotton (another man who went abroad to lie) recommended as a way of baffling your adversaries. Another chap once said, ‘If you wish to preserve your secret, wrap it up in frankness.’ I wrapped, profusely. But you know, playing a sort of fugue with truth and mendacity makes one lose, after a while, one’s grip on reality. My father always warned me against lying where the truth would do; he had early realized that my memory – essential equipment of the liar – was faulty. ‘Moreover,’ he used to say, ‘a lie is a work of art. We sell works of art, we don’t give them away. Eschew falsehood, my son.’ That is why I never lie when selling works of art. Buying them is another matter, of course.

As I was saying, they asked a lot of rather vague questions, few of them apparently germane to the issue. Mind you, I wasn’t so terribly sure what the point at issue was, so perhaps I wasn’t the best judge. They wanted to know about Hockbottle although they seemed to know more about him than I did. On the other hand, they seemed not to have heard that he was dead; funny, that. I brought Colonel Blucher’s name into the conversation several times – I even tried pronouncing it ‘Blootcher’ – but they didn’t react at all.

At last, they started stuffing their gear away into the matching briefcases with an air of finality, which warned me that the big question was about to be asked in an offhand, casual way as they rose to go.

‘Tell me, Mr Mortdecai,’ said one of them in an offhand, casual way as they rose to go, ‘what did you think of Mrs Krampf?’

‘Her heart,’ I said bitterly, ‘is like spittle on the palm that the Tartar slaps – no telling which way it will pitch.’

‘That’s very nice, Mr Mortdecai,’ said one, nodding appreciatively, ‘that’s M.P. Shiel, isn’t it? Do I understand that you consider her as being in some way responsible for your present predicament?’