The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(59)

Grow old along with me – if you’re quick – for the best is yet to be. The tertium quid, the fat-bummed daddy-figure is – oh, you’ve guessed it – yes; Martland. Excepting myself, I’ve never seen anyone more ripe for death. Why I should hate him so much I cannot understand, he has never done me any serious harm; yet.

My recce this afternoon didn’t get very far; before I parted my porte-cochère of bramble I heard the sound of water buffaloes tromping through a swamp: it was Martland himself, on all fours, being a Woodcraft Indian, looking for spoor. Back I slunk, mustering a faint giggle. I could have shot him there and then, I nearly did. I could scarcely have missed the pungent, powdered division of his suety nates as he bent over – he’s going to get it in the end, why not that end? Take, oh take those hips away, that so sweetly were forsworn at Hailsham College for the Sons of Officers, and elsewhere.

But I am saving powder and shot for when – if – they find my creep-hole; this Smith and Wesson discharged in a narrow mine-shaft will sound enough like a poacher’s twelve-bore to bring the keeper and his two-fisted mates running: I wouldn’t give anything for Martland & Co’s chances against a determined keeper at this time of the year. Poor Martland, he hasn’t tackled anything rougher than a traffic warden since the War.

They are all supping cocoa or something around a wet and smokey woodfire outside their tent in Fleagarth: I have studied them carefully through the glasses and there is positively no deception.





What, still alive at forty-two – a fine upstanding chap like you?




Well, yes.

Just.

My manuscript, interlarded with useful currency notes, lies in the bowels of a Warton pillar box, en route for La Maison Spon. I wonder whose eyes will read these last jottings, whose scissors trim away which indiscretions, whose hand strike the match to burn them? Perhaps only your eyes, Blucher. Not yours, I hope, Martland, for I intend that you shall accompany me down to wherever naughty art dealers go when they die. And I shall not let you hold my hand.

They were all out on the Crag in the dark when I returned from Warton; it was a nightmare. For them too, I imagine. I have only a confused memory of creeping and quaking, stalking and counter-stalking, straining aching ears into the blackness and hearing more sounds than there were; finally, the mindless panic of knowing that I was lost.

I regrouped my mental forces – sadly depleted – and forced myself to crouch in a hole until I could orient myself and calm the jam session of my nerves. I had almost succeeded in becoming Major the Honble Dashwood ‘Mad Jack’ Mortdecai, V.D. and Scar, the ice-cool toast of the Ypres Salient, when a voice close beside me said,

‘Charlie?’

I vomited up my heart, bit it savagely and swallowed it again. My eyes were shut fast, waiting for the shot.

‘No,’ came a whisper from behind me, ‘it’s me.’ My heart shook itself, tried a tentative beat or two, settled into some sort of ragged rhythm. Martland and the woman rustled about a bit then floundered quietly down the slope.

Where was the American? He was at my lavatory again, that’s where he was. Probably booby-trapping it. I think he heard me coming, for all movement stopped. I lowered myself to the ground with infinite caution and could see him, eight feet tall against the sky. He took a noiseless step toward me, then another. To my surprise I was now quite calm, the wanky old avenger preparing to kill his man. My pistol was in the paint mine – just as well, perhaps. First, kick in the family jewels, I decided; second, leg-sweep behind knees; third, bounce rock on head until tender. If no rock, drop knee on face, break hyoid bone in throat with side of hand. Should serve. I began positively to look forward to his next step, although I am not a violent man by nature.

He took the next step – a cock pheasant exploded from under his feet with all the racket and drama of, well, of a rocketing cock pheasant. Now, one of the few things which do not startle old country-bred Mortdecai is a rocketing pheasant, but it was not so with the American; he squeaked, jumped, ducked, crouched and dragged out a great long thing which can only have been an automatic with a silencer fitted. As the shards of silence reassembled themselves I could hear him panting painfully in the dark. At last he rose, tucked the pistol away and drifted off down the slope, thoroughly ashamed of himself, I hope.

I had to come back here to the mine; pistol, food, suitcase and bicycle were and are all here: I need them all except, perhaps, the bicycle.

There is a safe and smelly snugness about this little grave already: I can scarcely hope that they will not nose me out but they cannot, after all, put me further underground than this. There’s a Stalingrad for all of us somewhere.



‘Ici g?t qui, pour avoir trop aimer les gaupes,

Descendit, jeune encore, au royaume des taupes.’





In any case, to run now would be to die sooner, in some spot of their choosing and in some way I might not much like. I prefer it here, where I dreamed the dreams of youth and, later, lifted many a lawless leg – to use the words of R. Burns (1759–96).

You will not find it hard to believe that, since returning to this, my oubliette, I have had more than one suck at my brother’s delicious whisky. I intend to have a couple more, then to consult sagacious sleep.





Only a little later