The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(67)

‘I understand it was fished out of the Thames at Wapping Old Stairs. The uh marine organisms had done a good job and the cause of death is recorded as “uncertain”. Police suspect a vengeance homicide.’

‘Goodness,’ I said, ‘their minds!’

He fidgeted fretfully. I was not asking the right questions. Chaps like him do not like to volunteer information, they like it to be wheedled out. I sighed.

‘All right,’ I said, ‘why must I marry Mrs Krampf? Is she planning to overthrow the Constitution of the United States?’

‘Charlie,’ he said heavily.

‘Please don’t be formal,’ I interrupted. ‘My acquaintances call me Mr Mortdecai.’

‘Mortdecai,’ he compromised, ‘if you have a fault it is a regrettable tendency towards flippancy. I am a humourless man and I recognize it – few humourless people can – I do ask you to bear this in mind and to remember that I hold the strings of your life in my hand.’

‘Like the Blind Fury with the Abhorrèd Shears,’ I chirrupped. It was his turn to sigh.

‘Ah, shit,’ is what he sighed. ‘Look, I perfectly realize that you are not afraid of death; in your own kooky way I believe you to be a pretty brave man. But death as an inevitability-concept-situation is very very far removed from the slow infliction of death by means of PAIN.’ He sort of barked that last word. Then he collected himself, leaned over the table towards me and spoke gently, reasonably.

‘Mortdecai, my Agency is concerned only with winning. We are not regular guys in any sense of the word; we have no code of behaviour which would stand the light of day, still less an in-depth investigation by the Washington Post. What we do have is a number of specialized operatives who are skilled in inflicting PAIN. Many of them have been doing it for years, they think about it all the time, I’m afraid that some of them kind of like it. Do I have to go on?’

I straightened up in my chair, looked bright, helpful, unflippant.

‘You have my undivided attention,’ I assured him. He looked meaningfully at Jock. I took the hint, suggested to Jock that we must be boring him and that the hotel swarmed with chambermaids whose bottoms needed pinching. He ambled off.

‘Right,’ said Blucher. ‘Now. Mrs Krampf seems to be kind of crazy about you. I won’t say I find that easy to understand, I guess it’s a case of whatever turns you on. I don’t have any clearcut idea right now of why we want you around her except that we know there must be something. Something big. A few months before her husband uh died, our uh accountancy branch, as we call it, had detected the clandestine movement of very large amounts of currency into and out of the Krampf empire. After his demise we looked for these movements to cease. They did not. In fact they increased. Understand, we’re not talking about low-grade, bush-league money-shifting – that’s for the IRS or Currency Control guys. We’re talking about sums of money which could buy a Central American republic – or two African ones – overnight and still leave you a little walking-about money. We don’t have any idea what it’s all about. So go marry Mrs Krampf and find out.’

‘Okay,’ I said briskly, colloquially, ‘I’ll cable her first thing tomorrow and slip her the good news.’

‘You don’t have to do that, Mortdecai. She’s already here.’

‘Here?’ I squeaked, looking about me wildly, like any pregnant nun. ‘What do you mean “here”?’

‘I mean right here in this hotel. In your room, I guess. Try looking in your bed.’

I made a sort of imploring noise. He patted me on the shoulder in a scoutmasterly way.

‘You ate a dozen and a half oysters at luncheon, Mortdecai. I believe in you. Go in there and win, boy.’ I gave him a look of pure hatred and crept whimpering into the hotel and up to my room.

She was there all right but she wasn’t in bed, thank goodness, nor even naked: she was wearing a thing which looked like a cream silk pillowcase with three holes cut in it – cost hundreds of pounds, probably – Mrs Spon would have priced it at a glance. It made her look a great deal more than naked. I fancy I blushed. She paused, poised, for a second or two, drinking me in like Wordsworth devouring a field of yellow – yes, yellow – daffodils. Then she rushed forward and into my arms with an impact which would have felled a lesser man.

‘Oh, Charlie Charlie Charlie,’ she cried,‘ Charlie Charlie Charlie!’

‘Yes yes yes,’ I countered, ‘there there there,’ patting her awkwardly on her charming left buttock. (That is not to say that the other, or right, buttock was not equally delectable, I only single out the left for praise because it was the one under advisement at the time, you understand.)

She squirmed ecstatically in my arms and, to my great relief, I felt the dozen and a half oysters getting down to their task in the dormant Mortdecai glands. (Wonderfully selfless little chaps, oysters, I always think; they let you swallow them alive without a murmur of protest and then, instead of wreaking revenge like the surly radish, they issue this splendid aphrodisiac dividend. What beautiful lives they must lead, to be sure.)

‘Well,’ I thought, ‘here goes,’ and made an unequivocal move towards what J. Donne (1573–1631) calls ‘the right true end of love’ but to my amazement she pushed me away firmly and sort of wiggled her frock back into position.