The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(56)

You’d never guess where I am writing this. I’m sitting, knees doubled up to my chin, on my childhood’s lavatory in the nursery wing of my brother’s house. It has happier memories for me than most of the rest of the house, which is haunted by my father’s cupidity and chronic envy, my mother’s febrile regret at having married an impossible cad and now by my brother’s crawling disgust at everything and everyone. Including himself. And especially me – he wouldn’t spit in my face if it were on fire, unless he could spit petrol.

Beside me on the wall there is a roll of soft, pink lavatory paper: our nurse would never have allowed that, she believed in Spartan bums for the children of the upper classes and we had to use the old-fashioned, crackling, broken-glass variety.

I have just been in my old bedroom which is always kept ready for me, never altered or disturbed; just the kind of false note my brother loves sardonically to strike. He often says, ‘Do remember that you always have a home here, Charlie,’ then waits for me to look sick. Under a floorboard in my room I groped for and found a large oilskin package containing my first and favourite handgun, a 1920 Police and Military Model Smith and Wesson .455, the most beautiful heavy revolver ever designed. A few years ago, before I took up whisky as an indoor sport, I could do impressive things to a playing card with this pistol at twenty paces, and I am confident that I could still hit a larger target in a good light. Like, say, Martland.

There is one box of military ammunition for it – nickel jacketed and very noisy – and most of a box of plain lead target stuff, hand-loaded with a low powder charge, much more useful for what I have in mind. You wouldn’t be allowed to use it in war, of course, that soft lead ball can do dreadful things to anything it hits, I’m happy to say.

I shall finish my bottle of Teacher’s, with a wary eye on the door lest a long-dead Nanny should catch me, then go downstairs and visit my brother. I shall not tell him how I got into the house. I shall just let him worry about it, it’s the sort of thing he does worry about. I have no intention of shooting him, it would be an inexcusable self-indulgence at this time. In any case, it would probably be doing him a favour and I owe him a lot of things but no favours.

I called him brother, Englishman and friend!

As I let myself quietly into the library, my brother Robin was sitting with his back to me, writing his memoirs with a scratchy noise. Without turning round or ceasing to scratch at the paper he said,

‘Hullo, Charlie, I didn’t hear anyone let you in?’

‘Expecting me, Robin?’

‘Everyone else knocks.’ Pause. ‘Didn’t you have any trouble with the dogs as you came through the kitchen garden?’

‘Look, those dogs of yours are as much use as tits on a warthog. If I’d been a burglar they’d have offered to hold my torch.’

‘You’ll be wanting a drink,’ he said, flatly, insultingly.

‘I’ve given it up, thanks.’

He stopped scribbling and turned round. Looked me up and down, slowly, caressingly.

‘Going ratting?’ he asked at last.

‘No, you needn’t worry tonight.’

‘Would you like something to eat?’

‘Yes, please. Not now,’ I added as his hand went to the bell. ‘I’ll help myself later. Tell me who has been asking for me lately.’

‘No village drabs with babies in their arms this year. Just a couple of comedians from some obscure branch of the Foreign Office, I didn’t ask what they wanted. Oh, and a hard-faced bitch who said you’d been heard of in Silverdale and wanted to ask you to address the Lakeland Ladies’ Etching Society or something of that sort.’

‘I see. What did you tell them?’

‘Said I thought you were in America, was that right?’

‘Quite right, Robin. Thanks.’ I didn’t ask him how he knew I had been in America; he wouldn’t have told me and I didn’t really care. He sets aside a certain portion of his valuable time to following my doings, in the hopes that one day I’ll give him an opening. He’s like that.

‘Robin, I’m on a Government assignment which I can’t tell you about but it does involve getting quietly up into the Lake District and living rough for a few days – I need some stuff. A sleeping bag, some tinned food, a bicycle, torch, batteries, that sort of thing.’ I watched him thinking how many of the items he could plausibly pretend not to have. I unbuttoned my coat, which fell open: the handle of the Smith and Wesson stuck up out of my waistband like a dog’s leg.

‘Come along,’ he said cordially, ‘let’s see what we can rustle up.’

We rustled up everything in the end, although I had to remind him where some of the things were kept. I also took the Lake District sheet of the one-inch Ordnance Survey map to add colour to my fibs and two bottles of Black Label whisky.

‘Thought you’d given it up, dear boy?’

‘This is just for washing wounds out with,’ I explained courteously.

I also took a bottle of turpentine. You, shrewd reader, will have guessed why, but he was mystified.

‘Look,’ I said as he let me out, ‘please don’t tell anyone, anyone, that I’ve been here, or where I’m going, will you?’

‘Of course not,’ he said warmly, looking me straight in the eye to show me his falseness. I waited.