The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(85)

‘You have just time to bathe, sir. We do not change for dinner. Allow me to take your hat and coat.’ He took them, also my umbrella. As I advanced gratefully to the great log-fire blazing in the fireplace of the ball I saw the butler leap at me, whirling my umbrella in the general direction of my lower jawbone. I ducked, of course, for ducking is one of my more polished skills, and took the umbrella away from him by roiling it over his thumb, then I dropped (but stay, let me explain: experts never whack at people with sticks, umbrellas and things, for the movement is a clumsy one, easily out-manoeuvred and incapable of doing any damage unless the stick be a right heavy one, which makes the manoeuvre even clumsier. No, the use of such a makeshift weapon is to lunge, stiff-armed, at the midriff: even if the ferrule does not pierce the skin it can be relied upon to smarten up the liver, spleen or diaphragm in an agonizing and often lethal way.) I dropped, as I was about to say, into a stiff-armed lunge at the midriff, calculated to do great harm to the sturdiest butler, but at the very latest split-second I perceived to my dismay that he, the butler, was in fact a she-butler and my point wavered, passing over her hip. She snatched it en passant and twitched it further, so that I staggered towards her in time to receive a raised knee. The knee was clumsily timed, I was able to take it harmlessly on my chest and, as I stumbled past, seized the ankle and threw her. Keeping my grip on the ankle I twirled it vigorously so that she rolled over and over and pitched up with a satisfying noise against the wainscot. Face down. I placed a foot in the small of her back.

‘Freeze,’ I snarled angrily, for I was angry. ‘Freeze or I’ll stamp on your kidneys until they pop like rotten tomatoes.’

‘Oh well done, Mortdecai, awf’lly well done!’ boomed a voice from the minstrel’s gallery. ‘Ethel, you may get up now – but extra combat-classes for you all this week, I’m afraid, dear. You made an awful nonsense of that attack, didn’t you?’

By now the owner of the voice was descending the great staircase; she was a massive creature, all beef down to the ankles, just like a Mullingar heifer. She advanced towards me, hand outstretched in a jovial way. I made to take the hand but hers slipped upwards and caught my thumb in an iron grip, bending it cruelly backwards. Well, I remembered how to deal with that, of course: you sit down, roll backwards and kick the offending hand away with the flat of both feet.

‘Capital, capital!’ she boomed. ‘Shan’t have much to teach you in the dirty-fighting class. Now, you see, we run a taut ship here and you must be on the qui vive at all times. For your own good, you know. But since this is your first night there’ll be no more surprises until after breakfast tomorrow. Honour bright.’ I relaxed. She smashed a great fist into the pit of my stomach and I subsided, whooping for breath, onto the carpet.

‘Subversion Lesson Number One,’ she said amiably, ‘don’t trust anyone. Ever. No, please, no lower-deck language; some of the girls are prudes.’ I stood up warily, planning a move. ‘No, Mr Mortdecai, you are not allowed to strike me, I am the Commandant. You call me Madam. Have you a gun?’

I pretended, snobbishly, to misunderstand. ‘A shot-gun?’ I said heavily, ‘No, I did not bring one. I was not told that you would be offering me any shooting.’

‘I mean, as you well know, a side-arm – a pistol if you prefer.’

‘No. I do not commonly come armed when invited to country houses.’ I spoke as stiffly as I could.

‘Then we must fit you up. What do you fancy? I always use this’ – and she plucked out a horrid old cannon – ‘but then I’m old-fashioned, you see.’ I sneered at the weapon.

‘Service Webley .38 on a .45 frame,’ I sneered. ‘Should be in a museum. Kicks like – like a female butler.’

‘Perhaps,’ she said placidly. ‘But it suits me.’ She absently loosed off a round which whirred past my ear and caused a log in the fireplace to leap pyrotechnically. My ears sang with the roar and adrenalin squirted from my every pore. ‘What weapon would you prefer, Mr Mortdecai?’ I pulled myself together.

‘Smith & Wesson,’ I said, ‘.38 Special Airweight.’

She nodded approvingly, strode to the house-telephone.

‘Armourer? Ah, Nancy; one Airweight, one box of graphite cartridges, one of solid, four spare clips, cleaning kit and a Thurston pocket holster.’

‘Shoulder-holster, please,’ I said defiantly, for my figure does not lend itself to the trousering of pistols.

‘No, Mortdecai, you’ll be wearing combat clothes, no time to unzip your blouse, you know.’ A chubby little matron bustled up with two cardboard boxes. The pistol was still in its original grease. I handed it back in a lordly way.

‘Pray clean it,’ I said lordlily, ‘and while you’re about it, file off that silly foresight.’

‘We look after our own pieces here,’ she snapped. ‘And you can have the foresight off in the morning when you report to the armoury. That’s if I decide you don’t need it.’

‘Clean it now, Mortdecai,’ said the Commandant, ‘and load it with the graphite rounds. They pulverize on contact, you know, quite harmless unless you get one in the eye. You’ll just have time before dinner.’

The butler, Ethel, showed me to my room and, as I lowered my suitcase to the ground, planted a succulent kiss on the top of my head, just where the hair is thinning a bit. I stared at her. She stuck out her tongue. ‘You didn’t hurt me a bit,’ she pouted.