The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(76)







Mortdecai dips a terrified toe into the shark-infested waters of regicide





O purblind race of miserable men,

How many among us at this very hour

Do forge a lifelong trouble for ourselves,

By taking true for false, or false for true!





Garaint and Enid





The suit was dreadful, quite dreadful. Clearly, it had been made for a colour-blind Roumanian pimp or perhaps ponce in the 1940s. The checks of the blue-and-orange pattern were, it must be admitted, not much larger than an ordinary packet of cigarettes: perhaps the pimp or ponce had been aiming at an inconspicuous effect. There were no dirty postcards in the pockets, nor any factory-reject french letters: this reassured me that it had at least been to the dry-cleaners. I bought it in a shop called GENTS’ WARDROBES PURCHASED and indeed its folds draped themselves from my shoulders in just the manner of a plywood wardrobe. GENTS’ WARDROBES PURCHASED also sold me a pair of shoes to match, although these, in their brown-and-white splendour, seemed to date from an even earlier day – a fortune-hunting petty nobleman might well have sported them in the Salon Privé at Monte in, say, 1936.

I glanced just once at myself in their fitting-room mirror: under the bludgeonings of suit I may have winced but I swear I did not cry aloud.

There seemed to be no end to the resources of GENTS’ W.P. ‘Vere,’ I asked in my best Mittel-Europ accent, ‘Vere could I buy a goot, strong, musical-instrument case for my musical instrument? I vould need vun of about so big’ – even as I gestured, the hateful suit sliced cruelly into my armpits – ‘ze kind dot ze Shicago gangsters used to carry dere sob-moshine gons in, ha ha!’

‘Have you come to the right place!’ cried Mr G.W.P. merrily. ‘Step this way, sir, mind the step; we make a little speciality of musical-instrument cases. There now, I’m sure you’ll find the box of your dreams amongst this little lot!’ I gave him a suspicious squint, for everyone knows that ‘box’ has another and naughtier meaning, but he did not seem to be pulling my plonker. There was in truth great store of stoutly-constructed musical-instrument kennels; it was a rare and bizarre sight. I had the measurements of the Mannlicher in my mind’s eye (any art-dealer worth his salt can glance at a frame and tell whether it will fit any picture in his stock or whether it can or cannot be cut down to size without altering the sweep of the carving) and I soon selected a perversely-shaped box or case designed, I don’t doubt, for a baritone saxophone and haggled over it just long enough to avoid arousing suspicion in G.W.P.’s breast.

I stuffed my execrable gents’ natty suiting and co-respondent shoes into the instrument-case and homeward plodded my moody way, as weary as any Stoke Poges ploughman, pausing only at Lillywhite’s to buy a checkered golfing-cap of the sort which I had until then believed only to exist in the works of P.G. Wodehouse. I used my Yorkshire accent in Lillywhite’s, to throw them off the scent, d’you see. The secret-agent cloak was by now falling across my shoulders so snugly that I felt like an ivy-mantled tower. I aroused, I believe, no suspicion; even without the accent they would have taken me for a North-Country man, no other would buy such a cap.

Jock flicked a baleful eye on the instrument-case when I arrived at the flat. The other, non-baleful eye, the glass one, was pointed at the empyrean or ceiling in a way which suggested that, could it speak, it would have said, ‘Oh my Gawd.’

‘Pray put this banjo-coffin into the wardrobe in my dressing-room,’ I said in dignified, masterly tones, ‘and I beg you not to glance inside, for the contents shock even me: the effect of them upon an honest ton of soil like yourself …’

‘You mean “son of toil”, Mr Charlie.’

‘Perhaps I do, perhaps I do. Be that as it may, tell me now, without evasion and in your own words, omitting no detail however slight, what is for dinner tonight?’

‘Madam is out,’ he said smugly. ‘Playing bridge.’

‘So?’ I said haughtily. ‘Are you trying to tell me that I must send out or, God forbid, go out for dinner? Is there nothing in the pantry? Are you, Jock, supping off bread and cheese? I find this hard to believe, for you were ever one to eat above your station in life.’ His eyes glowered, one at the floor, the other at the cornice, above his station in life.

‘I was just going to have a bit of a snack,’ he mumbled in as civil a voice as he could muster.

‘Yes?’ I prompted gently.

‘Yeah, well, a coupla blintzes with caviar inside and some sour cream what I found left over, didn’t I, and a few kipper fillets soused with wine I bought out of my own pocket and I can prove it; then nothink but a Minute Steak what was going to waste, wrapped round a liddle concodgion of me own made out of chicken-livers and that.’

‘Are you trying to tell me,’ I said levelly, ‘that there is only enough for you?’ He pondered loyally awhile.

‘Bit short on the caviar side,’ he said at last. I handed him my keys.

‘Ten minutes OK, Mr Charlie?’

‘You mean ten minutes after you have produced the drinks tray?’

‘ ’Course.’

‘Then; right, Jock.’

‘Right, Mr Charlie.’

When Johanna returned I was in bed with an improving book by St Francis de Sales or perhaps Le Marquis de Sade, I forget which, and was not quick enough to snap out the bedside light. She had won at bridge, she always does; this elates her. She was radiant. She sang as she danced about the room, scattering garments both here and there.

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