The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(87)

‘No, no – I must go, mustn’t I, Commandant? Goodnight, dear Libra. My name is Kitty, by the way … if you care to know.’ With that she left the table, smiling at me. People with teeth like hers should not smile. For a sickening moment I feared that she might be off to my bedroom, to await me there like a sacrificial ram.

‘Do please stop grinding your teeth, Mr Mortdecai,’ said the Commandant as soon as Kitty was out of earshot. ‘She is really a most capable person except for the astrology nonsense.’ I could not quite stop grinding the teeth.

‘If only,’ I grated, ‘if only such capable people would spare a moment to apply a dab of logic onto what they call their thinking; if only …’

‘If only,’ mocked the Commandant. ‘If only! Paah! That is a phrase for kiddies to say to their teddy-bears. If only your uncle had wheels he’d be a tea-trolley. Come to that, if only your aunt had balls she’d be your uncle.’ I glowered at her, for this was, after all, not the Australian Embassy.

‘My aunts,’ I said in a rebuking sort of voice, ‘all possess balls. Indeed, I can call to mind few aunts who do not sport a cluster of such things. I cannot claim ever to have rummaged an aunt but I’m prepared to offer any amount of seven-to-three that …’

‘Enough!’ said the Commandant, raising a commanding hand. ‘No wagers are permitted here, pray remember that you are not in a WRNS mess.’ I would not have minded offering five-to-two against that proposition also, but took the coward’s way out and said that I was awfully sorry. Then I said that I was awfully tired, too, and asked permission to leave the festive board. (The stopper, I noticed, was firmly in the neck of the brandy-decanter.)

I pined to clock up a few sleeping-hours but it seemed that I must first collect my ‘lessons’ from the Commandant’s Office; these proved to be an arm-aching load of Xeroxed brochures about how to Kill/Maim/Cheat/Lie/Deceive/Subvert/Communicate/Bewilder/Terrorize/Persuade/Forge/Impersonate/Evade/Explode/Compromise and do all sorts of other horrid things to other people. A second stack was about how to recognize Aircraft/Weapons/Ships/ Missiles/CIA Agents/Narcotics and Counterfeit Currency while at the same time Living in Rough Country/Surviving at Sea/Confuting Interrogative Techniques and Mastering Five Simple Ways of Suicide (three of them almost painless).

Under my breath I muttered a short word concerning the hidden attributes of aunts.

‘Cheer up, Mortdecai,’ roared the Commandant, ‘you’re only here for three weeks and – only the first twenty days are painful!’ She must have got that one out of the Beano comic.

‘Ha ha,’ I said politely. ‘Goodnight, er, Madam.’

‘Goodnight … oh, wait a sec – catch!’ and with this she threw a blotting-pad towards me. Well, I wasn’t born yesterday, as I have often freely admitted. I let it fall at my feet, making no attempt to catch it, and I had the Airweight out and pointing at her equator before she had even begun to haul out her old Webley.

‘Oh, jolly good, Mortdecai,’ she crowed, ‘oh full marks!’

‘Old stuff,’ I said, closing the door behind me.

The only nice thing that happened to me that day was two minutes later, that night. No one was in my bedroom: no sacrificial rams, no half-assed Amazons hoping to sublimate their castration-complexes by boffing me on the head or other soft, vulnerable parts. Someone had been there, all right, because my suitcase had been unlocked – I had expected that, for any school-boy, indeed, any airport luggage-handler can open the ordinary suitcase in a trice, using only a set of those feeler-gauges which you can buy at any garage. I was unconcerned, for the smaller suitcase is made of sterner stuff: it has a combination lock with three cylinders, each bearing ten numbers. I cannot say off-hand how many permutations this affords but I would guess that it would take the average chambermaid something like a million years to hit upon the right one. Even your average chamber maid does not have that kind of time to spare unless she is exceptionally ugly and there are no tired business-men in the hotel.

‘BAD, Mortdecai,’ quacked the loudspeaker as I drew a pair of pyjamas from the larger suitcase, ‘bad. Lesson Four.’

‘Three,’ I snapped.

‘No, four. Never leave incriminating matter in easily-opened luggage.’ I allowed myself a smug smirk.

‘Anything incrim …, that is to say, private, is in the other, smaller suitcase.’

‘The other, smaller suitcase was the suitcase I meant,’ said the loudspeaker. I tried the smaller, unopenable suitcase. It, too, was unlocked. As I gaped the hated voice squawked out again.

‘Our research has shown us that people in middle life find it difficult to memorize random numbers; they tend to utilize numbers which they are unlikely to forget. If you must set your lock to the numbers of your birthday – 30th of the 9th, right? – then never tell the date of your birthday to people like Kitty. That was Lesson Three.’

I muttered something obscure.

‘What you suggest, Mortdecai, I have tried once or twice. It gave me little or no pleasure.’

‘I’m leaving,’ I said flatly. ‘Now.’

‘Ah, yes, well, that’s not really awfully easy: all students’ bedrooms are automatically time-locked and cannot possibly be re-opened until reveille. No, please don’t look at the window, don’t; the grounds are full of Fiona’s Dobermann Pinschers and the Dobermanns are full of blood-lust. You’d have to shoot an awful lot of them before you even got near the electrified fence and Fiona would be cross if you hurt even one of them. She lives for those doggies. She’s a sweet child but her temper is ungovernable and she will insist on carrying that silly old sawn-off shotgun.’