I searched around desperately for some way to escape our fate – and could come up with nothing.
‘Would you mind if I look at my cards before you shoot us, old chap?’ Wesley asked.
‘What?’ Dimitri replied – clearly as mystified as I was.
‘Well, after all, if you’re going to blow us to Kingdom Come, the least you can do is let us see what our last hand would have been like.’
‘All right,’ Grand Duke Dimitri agreed.
Wesley picked up his cards and gave them no more than a cursory glance.
‘D’you know, if I’d been given a chance to play this hand, I’d have bid Seven No Trumps,’ he announced.
Still keeping his weapon on us, Dimitri picked up his own hand.
‘And it will be my lead?’ he asked.
‘No, old chap, it would have been your lead,’ Wesley corrected him.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Dead men can’t play cards, however keen they are.’
Grand Duke Dimitri put his pistol back in his pocket. ‘You bid Seven No Trumps?’
‘Yes.’
Dimitri was smiling broadly, as if the last few minutes had never happened. ‘And I double,’ he said.
‘Oh what the hell, Re-double,’ Wesley said.
The grin was so wide now it was almost cutting the Russian’s face in two.
‘I will lead with the Ace of Spades,’ he said grandly.
We would have gone down under any circumstances, but the way Wesley played out the hand – throwing winners on winners, ducking when he should have taken the trick – we were positively annihilated.
****
‘It had taken two weeks to build up our stake, and Wesley blew it on one hand,’ I told Cadbury Joyspear. ‘We walked out of the Russians’ suite as losers – but at least we did walk out.’
The Irishman was laughing, and so was most of his audience.
‘And if you’ll believe that, you’ll believe anyt’ing,’ the jovial host said.
It was going to be all right, I thought – Wesley’s insane idea had actually worked out.
‘But that wasn’t your only adventure, was it, Rob?’ Joyspear asked, after taking a surreptitious glance at the sheet his researcher had provided him with. ‘I believe youse were also involved in the trouble in Qagmire.’
‘No so much involved, as caught right in the middle of it,’ I said. ‘And, as usual, it was all Wesley’s idea …’
4
Things were going very well for us on the French Riviera, so well, in fact, that it was almost inevitable Wesley would decide it was time for us to move on.
‘Just met this Emir chappie down in the bar,’ he told me one night. ‘Apparently, he’s got hundreds of male relatives back home, and they’re all just bursting to learn how to play bridge.’
‘What’s that got to do with us?’ I asked cautiously.
‘He wants to recruit a couple of bridge tutors. And who better than the famous team of Heatherington-Gore and Bates?’
‘We’re doing all right here in Monte.’
‘We’d do even better in Qagmire.’
‘France is almost our own back yard,’ I argued. ‘We’re comfortable in it. We know our way around. The Middle East is a very different matter.’
‘Nonsense,’ Wesley said cheerfully. ‘It’s pretty much like here, except they’ve got more sand and they all wear tea-towels on their heads. We’d be living like kings in Qagmire – well, like emirs, anyway.’
‘And if something went wrong …?’
‘What could possibly go wrong, old chap?’
What indeed, Wesley? A revolution, perhaps? Thousands of armed fanatics running around all over the place, high on hashish and Anglophobia?
I didn’t say that at the time, of course. I didn’t even think it at the time. Any qualms I might have had about going to Qagmire were centred on more mundane matters – how would I feel about all the women being veiled? Would it be compulsory to eat sheep’s eyes? – and it wasn’t until eight months later, when it was already happening, that the idea of a popular uprising even occurred to me.
The first indication I had that anything was wrong was that Wesley came into my room in the palace – at four o’clock in the morning – and shook me awake.
Why the bloody hell was he carrying a couple of bed sheets in his hands, I wondered sleepily?
‘Not laundry day,’ I mumbled sleepily.
‘No, not laundry day,’ Wesley agreed. ‘Thing is, the situation’s turning rather unpleasant – chaps downstairs with rifles, shooting anything that moves. It might be a good idea to put these robes on and get out of here.’
We donned the robes and headed for the back door – which in a palace approximately the size of Oxfordshire is not as easy as it seems. Several times we nearly fell foul of the revolutionaries. Once, we hid in a cupboard which would not have comfortably accommodated two very intimate midgets. Once, we flattened ourselves against a wall while a hoard of blood-thirsty fundamentalists thundered along the passageway which connected with ours.
‘Can’t understand why they’re all so annoyed,’ Wesley whispered. ‘The Emir’s always seemed a fine fellow to me.’
When we finally reached the exit, we found it was blocked by the bodies of several Royal Guardsmen who looked as if they’d been involuntary donors in a now-abandoned intestine transplant.
‘Frightfully un-British, all this, don’t you think?’ Wesley asked, turning slightly green.
‘They’re just like us, but with tea-towels on their heads,’ I reminded him.
‘Hmm, I think I might have got that slightly wrong,’ Wesley admitted.
We shifted some corpses, scrambled over others, and were finally out in the street. The air was thick with smoke and the stink of cordite, the sky glowed from the light of a hundred merrily burning buildings. All around us, people rushed frantically in one direction, only to frantically retrace their steps seconds later.
‘Can’t help thinking there are better places to be,’ Wesley said.
More by luck than judgement, we made it to the edge of the town, and from there to the sea. For the next four days we followed the coastline. We lived on dates and brackish water, hid while the sweltering sun beat down, and travelled only through the cool – very often chilling – darkness.
‘Let’s go to Qagmire,’ I quoted sarcastically, during one of these hellish treks. ‘We’ll live like emirs there.’
‘Matter of fact, we’re living rather better than the Emir,’ Wesley told me. ‘The last time I saw him, his head was bouncing about on top of a pole.’
It was on the fourth day, just before dusk, that we were finally spotted. We’d been hiding in a small oasis, and were just getting ready to move out when we saw the nomads. There were twelve of them, each sitting comfortably astride his camel. They rode slowly towards us, the setting sun at their backs, rifles at the ready. Escape was impossible – we had no choice but to face them.
Since we had both had several months of intensive Arabic lessons by this point (if two men speak different languages but need to communicate, it is generally the one who doesn’t own an oil well who is expected to make the effort), I had no worries about making myself understood at a relatively simple level. My only problem was that having a dozen rifles pointed at me seemed to have robbed me of the ability to make a coherent argument.
‘Leave the talking to me,’ Wesley said, sensing my dilemma.
‘All right,’ I agreed reluctantly. ‘But just remember – they’re not just us in tea-towels.’
‘Of course not,’ Wesley said huffily. ‘Learnt my lesson over that, haven’t I? I’ll talk to them on their own level.’
The nomads had formed a semi-circle around the edge of the oasis. Their leader, who would have been a shoo-in for the role of Bad Guy in any spaghetti western, edged his camel a little further forward. Wesley and I abandoned the protective covering of the trees,
and stepped out into the open.
‘Greetings!’ Wesley said in an Arabic which was even worse than his schoolboy French.
The nomad chief glared, but said nothing.
‘We’re a couple of humble desert dwellers, just like you, old chap,’ Wesley continued.
‘Humble desert dwellers!’ I whispered hysterically. ‘Tell him we’re travelling loonies, or extra-terrestrials. Tell him anything you like. But for God’s sake, don’t try to pass us off as Bedouins.’
The nomad leader spat thoughtfully on the sand. His men slid back the bolts of their rifles. Even the camels looked at us contemptuously.
But Wesley, once in his stride, was not to be put off.
‘Yes, humble desert dwellers,’ he repeated. ‘Camels doing all right, are they? Jolly good. May Allah bless your household, and all that sort of thing.’
The nomad leader looked from us to his men, then back at us. And slowly, his expression began to change; his eyes, which had been as hooded as a hawk’s, started to widen; the corners of his mouth were twitching, as though he were finding it difficult to maintain his villainous expression. A gurgle – which sounded much like the noise an oil well makes when on the point of blowing – was being forced through his teeth. And then the gurgle spilled out, as loud, uncontrollable laughter.
The leader’s amusement spread to his followers. How they laughed, these nomads, brought up without the advantage of regular exposure to The Benny Hill Show and The Two Ronnies. They slapped their sides, they rocked in their saddles. Had they been on horses, they would undoubtedly have fallen off. As it was, they only managed to keep astride their camels by clinging tightly to the humps.
The chief, as befitted his position, was the first to regain something of his composure.
‘Whither are you going, oh my brother, oh fellow humble desert dweller?’ he asked, valiantly fighting back a fresh attack of the giggles.
‘Across the border to Morasq,’ Wesley said. ‘Thought I’d just pop over and visit my Uncle Ibrahim. Not seen the old boy for quite some time.’
A renewed bout of hysteria swept over the nomads.
‘We will escort you,’ the chief said. ‘For will it not bring great honour on our house that we should be the instrument which reunites you with the “Old Boy”?’
He gestured with his hand.
One of the other nomads trotted forward until he was level with us, and then swept me up onto his camel as if I weighed nothing.
A second man started to advance hopefully towards Wesley, but the chief waved him back.
‘I will carry this brother myself,’ he said, ‘for I have much to learn from him.’
We travelled through the night – the rest of the caravan following a respectful distance from Wesley and his chortling companion. It was dawn when we reached the outskirts of Morasq City.
‘We can go no further with you, for I have many enemies in Morasq,’ the chief said, helping Wesley to dismount.
‘No problem,’ my partner told him. ‘Been awfully decent of you to have brought us this far.’
‘You have given me much to think about, and many things to tell my grandchildren,’ the nomad said. And then, switching – grotesquely – from Arabic to English, he added. ‘Three cheers for the old school. Hip-hip-hooray … hip-hip-hooray … hip-hip-hooray.’
‘I taught him that,’ Wesley said, with obvious pride in his voice. ‘He says he’s going to use it as his new battle cry.’
‘May Allah grant you many wide-hipped wives that you might fill the world with little Donningtonians,’ the nomad chief said, reverting to his own language. ‘Goodbye, my brother.’
He wheeled his camel round, and rode reluctantly away.
‘Jolly fine chap,’ Wesley said, as we watched the Bedouins disappear over the nearest sand dune. ‘Would have made a damn good House Captain.’
Jolly fine chap he might have been, but I’m convinced that if I’d been in any other company but Wesley’s when I met him, I’d now be nothing but a set of bleached bones lying in the hot sand.
5
One of things I didn’t tell Joyspear about was my next meeting with Les Fliques.
The meeting took place in Paris this time. It had been over three years since I’d last seen the intrepid policeman, but knowing him as I did, it came as no surprise when, stepping out of my modest eighth arrondissement hotel, I found him – croissant in hand – loitering with intent.
‘How did you find me?’ I asked.
‘It’s never difficult to keep track of a lad with an obsession,’ Fliques said. ‘I’d have been to see you earlier, but a lot of the time you’ve been in places well beyond the travel budget of a humble chief inspector.’
‘You made promotion again!’ I said delightedly. ‘Congratulations.’
‘You made it again, too, didn’t you, Bobby?’ Fliques said.
‘Don’t call me Bobby,’ I told him, with a sudden anger which was so unexpected that it caught me quite off-guard. ‘Aunt Sadie always called me Rob, so that’s the name I go by now.’
Fliques nodded, understandingly. ‘Rob it is, then.’ He took a bite of his croissant. ‘They’re not at all bad, these foreign cakes. Shall we go for a little stroll, Rob?’
The hotel was just round the corner from the Champs-Elysées, and soon we were walking up the broad avenue towards the Arc de Triomphe.
‘There’s only one thing I don’t really understand about your Aunt Sadie’s death,’ Fliques said. ‘Where did you get the fake coins from?’
‘You’re not wired for sound, are you?’ I asked.
Fliques looked offended.
‘Of course I’m not. This is between you and me, Rob, and when I collar you, I don’t want it to be because some bloke in a white coat has fitted me with a souped-up deaf-aid. So tell me, where did the coins come from?’
‘I made them myself,’ I said. ‘I did it in the school’s art and craft workshop.’
Fliques stopped dead in his tracks. ‘You admit it? Just like that?’
‘Just like that!’
‘You’ve never admitted anything at all before,’ Fliques said, clearly baffled by my new openness.
‘I never had an “accident” happen to anyone I really cared about before, either,’ I told him.
Fliques nodded, and we started walking again.
‘I suppose you told your aunt that it was Digger Morton’s buried treasure,’ he said.
****
Yes, that was what I’d told her, running breathlessly into the house and waking her up at five o’clock early one June morning.
‘Digger Morton’s treasure,’ she’d repeated excitedly, holding the coin I’d given her as though it were a holy relic. ‘Where did you find it?’
‘It was in that big hole on the building site.’
Her eyes narrowed, suspiciously.
‘What were you doing there?’ she demanded.
I was well-prepared for that question.
‘I was looking for some way to sabotage the project,’ I said. Sadie nodded, as if, knowing me as she did, that was just the sort of thing she’d expect me to do.
‘I’ll get a shovel,’ she said. ‘We can start digging before anyone else wakes up.’
‘And with all the money we’ll get from the treasure, you won’t have to sell your shares in Shelton Bourne plc, will you?’ I suggested.
‘We’ll see,’ Aunt Sadie said absently, as she pulled her green wellington boots on.
We rushed to the building site, and squeezed through the gap I’d previously cut in the wire. Before us stretched the hole into which the foundations were soon to be poured.
‘Where’s the ladder?’ Sadie said, half-mad with greed.
I showed her, and we descended into the pit.
‘Show me where you found the coin,’ she ordered me.
I pointed to the far edge of the pit. ‘Over there.’
‘Then that’s where we’ll
start.’
I had buried ten of the fake coins in all, and it took her over two hours to find them. She worked like a demon, and wouldn’t allow me to take over the digging – not even for a second. By the time there was the noise of heavy machinery starting up overhead, her hair was a mass of sweaty rat-tails and her face a mask of ugly obsession.
‘This is only the start,’ she gasped, not easing off her effort one iota. ‘There has to be a trunk or something further down.’
More machinery snarled from beyond the lip of the shaft.
‘It’s not safe to be down here any longer, Aunt Sadie,’ I said. ‘They’ll probably be working on this hole any minute.’
‘It has to be here somewhere,’ Sadie muttered wildly.
‘We could be killed,’ I told her.
‘Then go and tell them to stop working,’ Sadie said impatiently, slashing at the earth again.
I made one last effort.
‘Come with me, Aunt Sadie,’ I begged. ‘We can stop them together, and then we can come back down here and have another look.’
‘You go!’ my aunt said, turning over a clod of earth, and gazing hopefully at the looser soil underneath. ‘You bloody go! I’ve got to keep looking.’
According to my master-plan, I should have climbed calmly back up the ladder, strolled inconspicuously to the gap in the wire, and been well away from the site when the accident occurred.
I thought I could do it.
I really did.
After all, I’d always kept my head before. My hand hadn’t shaken when I’d phoned Tom and told him about Aunt Jacqueline’s plans. My voice hadn’t cracked when I’d shopped Aunt Peggy to Les Fliques. My heart hadn’t beaten any faster when I’d exposed Aunt Catherine for the heartless blackmailer she was …
But this time was different. This time, I wasn’t dealing with one of the others, it was Aunt Sadie – and however much other people might suffer as a result of her deliverance from danger, I couldn’t allow her to be hurt.
I scrambled wildly up the ladder, the roar of machinery filling my ears. My head cleared the top of the shaft, and I could see a large tipper truck, filled with hard-core, backing towards the edge under which Aunt Sadie was digging.
A Conspiracy of Aunts Page 18