The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(50)

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Suffragette with an axe, wasn’t it?’

‘And you can paint another picture over it and the restorer – perhaps centuries later – will clean back to the original – no bother. Remember your father’s Crivelli?’

His ears pricked up and the car wobbled.

‘Crivelli? No. What Crivelli? Did he have a Crivelli? A good one?’

‘It was a very good one, Bernardo Tatti said so. Your father bought it somewhere in the Veneto in 1949 or ’50. You know how they sell Old Masters in Italy – the important ones hardly ever go through commercial galleries. As soon as someone with serious money makes it known that he’s in the market for serious works of art he will find himself invited to a palazzo for the week-end. His titled host will very delicately indicate that he has to pay a lot of taxes in the near future – and that’s a joke in Italy – and may be forced, even, to sell an Old Master or two.

‘Your father bought the Crivelli like that. It bore certificates by the greatest experts: they always do, of course. You know. The subject was the Virgin and Child with a bare bottom and lots of pears and pomegranates and melons – quite lovely. Like the Frick Crivelli, but smaller.

‘The Duke or Count hinted that he wasn’t quite certain of his title to the picture but he could see that your father wasn’t a man to fuss about such trifles – it had to be smuggled out in any case, because of the law against export of works of art. Your father took it to an artist friend in Rome who gave it a coat of size then daubed a piece of Futurist-Vorticist rubbish on top. (Sorry, forgot that was your field.) Boldly signed and dated 1949, it went through the customs with no more than a pitying glance.

‘Back in the States, he sent it to the best restorer in New York with a note saying, “Clean off modern overpaint; restore and expose original.” After a few weeks he sent the restorer one of his cables – you know – “REPORT IMMEDIATELY PROGRESS ON QUOTE MODERN UNQUOTE PAINTING.”

‘The restorer cabled back, “HAVE REMOVED QUOTE MODERN UNQUOTE PAINTING STOP HAVE REMOVED QUOTE CRIVELLI UNQUOTE MADONNA STOP AM DOWN TO PORTRAIT OF MUSSOLINI STOP WHERE DO I STOP QUERY.’”

Dr Krampf didn’t laugh. He looked straight ahead, his knuckles tight on the wheel. After a while I said diffidently, ‘Well, your father came to think it very funny indeed after the first shock. And your father was not easily amused.’

‘My father was a simple-minded, sex-crazed jerk,’ he said evenly. ‘What had he given for the picture?’ I told him and he winced. Conversation flagged. The car went a little faster.

After a while Jock cleared his throat sheepishly.

‘Excuse me, Mr Charlie, could you ask Dr Crump to stop somewhere soon? I got to go to the bog. Call of nature,’ he added, by way of a grace note.

‘Really, Jock,’ I said sternly, to conceal my pleasure, ‘you should have thought of that before you came out. It’s all that chilli sauce, I expect.’

We stopped at an all-night diner attached to a motel. Twenty minutes later, crammed with distressful fried eggs, we decided that we might as well spend what was left of the night there. Jock passed me the suitcase key, as good as new: I had expected to see it pitted and corroded by his powerful digestive juices.

I locked my door although I was pretty sure Krampf would bide his time until he had us in his kind-of-very-private summer residence. As I climbed into bed I decided that I must make a careful, objective analysis of my situation in the light of facts alone. ‘If hopes were dupes,’ I told myself, ‘fears may be liars.’ Surely the razor-keen Mortdecai brain could think its way out of this nasty, but after all primitive, mess.

Unfortunately the razor-keen brain fell asleep as soon as its container hit the pillow. Most unfortunately, really, as it turned out.





17





And, thus we half-men struggle. At the end,

God, I conclude, compensates, punishes.





Andrea del Sarto





How sharper than a serpent’s tooth is an awakening without tea! Jock, honest fellow, brought me all sorts of motel provender but tea was not amongst those present. If Paris, as Galiani says, is the café of Europe, then the US of A must be the hot-dog stand of the world. ‘Faugh!’ I said, but I ate some to please Jock.

It was nearly noon; I had slept a solid eight hours. Bathed, shaved and dressed in my nattiest, I sallied out into the morning sunshine, full of the spirit of Sir Percy Blakeney-Mortdecai, le Bouton Ecarlate. ‘A la lantern with Citoyen de Krampf’, I murmured, flicking a speck of snot from the irreproachable Méchlin lace of my jabot.

There was a powder-blue Buick outside.

A.L. Rowse once said that making a really important historical discovery is very like sitting, inadvertently, on a cat. I felt, at that moment, like just such an historian – and, indeed, like just such a cat. Dr Krampf, who was in the driving seat, cannot have failed to notice my standing high jump and my strangled squeal, but he elaborately gave no sign of surprise. Jock and I got in, for it was evidently the car we had arrived in, and after a certain amount of good-morning swapping we set off.

This way and that, like Odysseus on so many occasions, I divided my swift mind. The suitcase key, the fruit of Jock’s honest labours, was twice blessed: it had furnished me with clean underwear and Jock with his friendly neighbourhood Luger – a pretty strong partnership. My diplomatic passport would probably pass muster in most smaller airports for perhaps another twenty-four hours, though hardly longer. We were two, Krampf at present but one. I was pretty certain that he was thinking of abolishing me – owners of powder-blue Buicks could be no friends of mine and I knew far too much about the provenance of his newly inherited collection and little things like who-killed-daddy – but he cannot have known for certain that we knew this. He, it was clear, had to get us to ground of his own choosing before he could fit us for cement overcoats – if that’s the phrase I want – but we were now in a position to dissuade him.