Blotto, Twinks and the Rodents of the Riviera

by Simon Brett

  ‘But in this case,’ Twinks pointed out, ‘some of our guests have proved capable of larceny.’

  ‘Then it was our error,’ the Dowager Duchess announced, ‘for inviting such people. And to make a claim on insurance would be a public admission of that error.’

  ‘Except, of course,’ said her son, ‘since nothing’s insured, we couldn’t make a claim on insurance, anyway.’

  ‘That is not the point, Blotto. The issue is one of standards. Standards by which people of our sort have conducted themselves across the centuries. Stealing from each other has long been a tradition of the British upper classes. The expression “robber baron” did not come about by accident. Sacking and pillaging each other’s homes is an aristocratic pastime going back almost to pre-history. And if a nobleman’s castle was pillaged during, let us say, the Wars of the Roses, he did not seek reparation from an insurance company.’

  ‘So how did he seek reparation?’ asked Blotto, a trifle nervously.

  ‘He sought reparation by pillaging the castle of the nobleman who’d pillaged his. In this way valuables were kept circulating among the right people.’

  ‘But, Mater,’ asked Twinks, ‘are you suggesting that we do nothing about the theft of the paintings? That we just let the stenchers get away with it?’

  ‘Of course I’m not suggesting that,’ the Dowager Duchess rumbled like a volcano contemplating eruption. ‘The Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Sales-Malincourt have impugned the honour of the Tawcester family. What is more, they have offended against all traditional codes of hospitality. They have behaved exactly in the manner that one would have expected of French aristocrats.’

  ‘Though, in fact,’ said Twinks, ‘we have pretty strong reasons to suspect that they aren’t aristocrats, anyway.’

  ‘That’s what I said. French aristocrats aren’t proper aristocrats.’

  ‘No. But we believe that those two lumps of toadspawn were pretending to be members of the French aristocracy.’

  ‘What a bizarre thing to want to pretend to be.’

  ‘Not,’ Twinks pointed out, ‘if you want to snaffle an invitation to a weekend house party with a view to filching a Gainsborough and a Reynolds.’

  Grumpily, the Dowager Duchess conceded that her daughter had a point. ‘The important thing,’ she said, ‘is what we now do about what’s happened.’

  ‘The answer to that’s obvious, Mater.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Is it?’ echoed Blotto, as ever having a little difficulty keeping up with his sister’s thought processes.

  ‘We get the Gainsborough and the Reynolds back,’ announced Twinks.

  ‘And how do you achieve that?’

  ‘We go to France.’

  ‘And who is “we”, may I ask?’

  ‘Blotto, me, with Corky Froggett to drive us.’

  ‘Hm …’ The Dowager Duchess’s complexion turned a deeper shade of mauve as she contemplated this suggestion. ‘The fact is, Honoria, I am not sure that you can be spared at this time. Your presence is required here at Tawcester Towers.’

  ‘Why, Mater?’

  ‘It may not have escaped your notice that the Marquis of Bluntleigh is here as a long-term guest …’

  Oh, broken biscuits, thought Blotto. The mater was still pursuing her plan of breeding from Twinks and Buzzer Bluntleigh. That was a real stye in the eye. Once the Dowager Duchess got her teeth into an idea, her grip was like that of a Staffordshire bull terrier. And the similarities between the two species didn’t end there.

  Fortunately, as ever, Twinks had her arguments well marshalled. ‘Mater, you want the Gainsborough and the Reynolds back, don’t you?’ The Dowager Duchess could not deny that she did. ‘Which means that someone’s got to go to France to get them back. Now obviously the job can’t be done by anyone outside the family. Otherwise the news of theft would soon spread abroad and the Tawcesters would become a laughing stock. Well, Loofah can’t go and tangle with these four-faced French filchers, can he?’

  ‘It would not befit his ducal position.’

  ‘Bong on the nose, Mater. So the two remaining possibilities are … that Blotto and I go together, as suggested … or that Blotto goes to sort the thing out on his own?’

  There was no contest. The Dowager Duchess was a woman of few illusions, and she certainly entertained none about the intellectual capacity of her younger son. It was agreed that Blotto and Twinks should both go to France to rescue the stolen Ruperts. And they both felt confident they could sort out that little mission and still be back at Tawcester Towers in time for Christmas.

  Lingering outside the Blue Morning Room stood the Marquis of Bluntleigh. From his face hung the gloopy lovelorn expression of a stage-door Johnnie. But it was no chorus girl for whom he waited. It was Twinks.

  As soon as she and Blotto emerged from the audience with their mother, the Marquis stepped forward, his Adam’s apple bobbling like a ping-pong ball on a fairground fountain. He thrust into his beloved’s hand a folded sheet of thick writing paper. ‘This is for you,’ he managed to articulate, before scurrying off down the corridor like a hare with an upset stomach.

  Twinks invited her brother up to the boudoir adjacent to her bedroom to plan their forthcoming trip. Once there she offered him a cup of cocoa and when he accepted, amazingly, she didn’t ring for a maid to make it. Instead she switched on the electric ring and prepared the drink herself. Blotto was sometimes quite shocked by his sister’s modern ways.

  While the milk was boiling, there was a knock on the boudoir door and on Twinks’s command Grimshaw, the Tawcester Towers butler, entered with a thick letter on a silver salver. ‘I’m sorry to trouble you, milady, but this has just arrived by special delivery. I was told you were expecting it.’

  ‘Oh, larksissimo! Good ticket, Grimshaw. You may go.’

  The minute the butler was out of the door, Twinks had the stout manila envelope open and was scanning its contents.

  ‘What’s the bizz-buzz?’ asked Blotto.

  ‘From Razzy.’

  He looked puzzled. ‘Not on the same page, Twinks me old prawn sandwich.’

  ‘Razzy. Professor Erasmus Holofernes. You know – don.’

  ‘Don? I thought you said he was called Razzy.’

  ‘No, he is a don. At St Raphael’s College, Oxford. I’ve often talked about him. He’s helped me with research on a few cases.’

  ‘Oh.’ There was a slight frostiness in Blotto’s tone. He did remember Holofernes now. A man with a machine-like brain that could instantly process volumes of information. And though Blotto was modest enough to recognize that he himself could never bring that kind of intellect to bear on a problem, he still resented Twinks’s recourse to anyone else when they were conducting an investigation. Blotto liked things better when it was just the two of them.

  But he couldn’t help being caught up in her excitement as Twinks cried, ‘Oh, this is jollissimo! Look what Razzy’s found for us!’

  Her use of the word ‘us’ rather than ‘me’ immediately thawed any residual frost in Blotto. While Twinks perused the thick file from the package, he looked at the photographs she had passed over to him. Both featured a man and a woman. In one they were dressed in the style of the last Emperor and Empress of Russia before things got rather uncomfortable for them. In the next they wore the clothes of a London Pearly King and Queen.

  ‘Who are these four people?’ asked Blotto.

  ‘There are only two of them,’ replied Twinks without looking up from her reading.

  It was rarely that her brother could score points off her so easily. ‘I’m sorry, Twinks me old sheet of blotting paper. There are four – two in each photograph. So snub-bins to you!’

  ‘Blotto me old tinkling sackbut, it’s the same people in both pics. According to Razzy, they are a pair of international jewel thieves. They are both French. Nobody knows their real names, but of course you and I know them as …?’

  This was too tough a question for Blotto. His brow cor
rugated like cardboard.

  As ever, his sister helped him out. ‘These two are the ones we know as the Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Sales-Malincourt.’

  ‘Toad-in-the-hole,’ murmured Blotto. ‘They look entirely different in each photograph.’

  ‘That is because they are masters of disguise. According to Razzy, they’re famous for it. They once snaffled the Contessa del Biagio’s sapphires disguised as chimney sweeps.’

  ‘That was spoffing clever …’

  ‘It was indeed.’

  ‘… to think of disguising sapphires as chimney sweeps.’

  ‘No, Blotters, what I meant was …’ But Twinks didn’t pursue it. ‘Yes, they are masters of disguise, but we can still always recognize the stenchers.’

  ‘Can we?’

  ‘Yes. Don’t you see on these photographs? They both have distinctive features that cannot be hidden by any amount of greasepaint or drapery.’

  Blotto looked hard. He couldn’t see anything. ‘Do they?’

  ‘Yes. There – there is a mole on the woman’s chin, slightly to the right of centre. And there again – the man has a scar high on his left cheekbone. Don’t forget those details, Blotto me old shove-ha’penny board. They could be very significant when we get to Paris.’

  ‘I’ll remember them. A mole and a scar.’ He nodded his head as he assimilated the information.

  ‘You’re sure that’s nailed firmly to the interior of your brainbox, Blotters?’ Twinks asked with the maximum of tact. There had been occasions during previous investigations when she had found her brother’s memory wanting. Though he could remember each moment of every day’s hunting he’d ever participated in, his bag for every day’s shooting and the details of every cricket match recorded in Wisden, Blotto was less of a whale on those secret codes and minutiae of clues which were so essential to the business of detection.

  ‘Don’t worry. Mole on the right of the woman’s chin – scar on the man’s left cheekbone. Knowing that kind of guff, we’ll track down the stenchers.’

  ‘Of course we will, Blotters!’ She put down the file and turned on her brother a smile of sheer devilment. ‘Pure creamy éclair for us to be involved in another investigation, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s absolutely the lark’s larynx, Twinks me old tin tray.’

  During their perusal of Professor Holofernes’s research the milk had gone cold, but Twinks reboiled it and made their promised cocoa. When they were sitting sipping in blissful togetherness, Blotto noticed, fallen on the floor, the missive that the Marquis of Bluntleigh had given to his sister. ‘Going to check the SP on that? Might be another clue, eh?’

  Twinks picked up the paper and perused its contents. After a moment she sighed. ‘Oh dear, Blotters. I’m afraid Buzzer’s written me a poem.’

  ‘Well, you did ask him to.’

  ‘Yes, but I never thought he’d take the idea off the starting blocks. Still, I suppose it’s flattering for a girl to be a muse.’

  ‘To be a mews?’

  ‘Yes, Blotto.’

  ‘But how can a girl be a mews? I mean, a mews is a sort of stable block and—’

  ‘I think we’re talking about a different kind of muse, Blotto.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘A muse can be a woman who inspires art. Like Beatrice for Dante or Laura for Petrarch.’

  Blotto shook his head. ‘Don’t think I’ve met any of those boddos.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t have done. They lived a long time ago.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘But wouldn’t it be larksissimo for a girl to be someone’s muse? To be the inspiration for a great work of art, to live immortalised in that work of art.’

  Blotto didn’t like the animated glow that this thought brought to his sister’s cheeks. Once again he felt a stab of jealousy. Maybe the Marquis of Bluntleigh wasn’t the vac-uum-brain he appeared to be? Maybe he really had found the way to snaffle the heart of the Honourable Honoria Lyminster? Blotto watched with anxiety as Twinks read the handwritten lines.

  There was a long silence after she’d finished reading, a silence in which Blotto hung nervously. Then, to his enormous relief, Twinks thrust the paper into his hands with a cheery cry of: ‘What absolute guff!’

  ‘You mean it’s not great art?’

  ‘If that’s great art I’m an Apache dancer. It’s total toffee from top to tail. Go on, read it.’

  ‘But surely, Twinks, if it’s meant for you … I don’t want to be snibbing in someone else’s back yard.’

  ‘You won’t be. Go on, read it.’

  ‘I’m not much of a whale on poetry. I—’

  ‘For the love of strawberries, read it!’

  Blotto did as he was told. The Marquis of Bluntleigh’s poem ran thus:

  How beautiful you are, you really set me on fire –

  Though what I feel for you is a very respectable and honourable desire,

  Not the kind of thing that your mother or any other relative need worry about,

  But I really do want to know whether I’m in with a shout

  Of ending up as your husband, that is to say with you as my wife,

  Because I think we could make a fair fist of things if we shared together our life.

  There are lots of arguments in favour of such a thing happening,

  And if it did I would jolly well sing.

  You’re beautiful, as I said before in this poem, a lovely lass,

  And we both belong to the same class,

  Which means us getting married would be extremely suitable

  And, as I said before in this poem, you’re beautiful.

  Also I’m extremely well heeled with not just a title but a lot of family loot too,

  Not just some parvenu.

  Twinks, you make every one of my jolly old nerve-ends tingle

  And you’re the reason why I don’t want to end up as a mournful old man staying single.

  Now, by his own admission, Blotto didn’t know much about poetry. But he looked up from the page with an expression of delighted relief. Even someone with a knowledge of poetry as limited as his could recognize bilge-water when he saw it. The threat of the Marquis of Bluntleigh stealing away his sister seemed suddenly to have diminished.

  5

  To France!

  The crossing to France was rough and they were glad that the Lagonda had been lashed down firmly on to the ferry’s deck. Blotto was also glad that safely in one of his valises in the car was his favourite cricket bat. He wasn’t optimistic of finding a game across the Channel. He knew the French were a degenerate lot whose only idea of sport was pongling around on push-bikes, but he always felt reassured to know the bat was in his luggage. Blotto had a ritual of stroking the battered willow last thing at night and the familiar whiff of linseed oil always wafted him into dreamless sleep.

  During the crossing Twinks entertained herself lying on a bunk and reading Sun Tzu’s The Art of War in the original Chinese, while her brother and Corky Froggett bought each other an unending sequence of brandies in the ship’s bar.

  ‘The thing is, milord,’ the chauffeur pontificated, his moustache and hair bristling, ‘that the French have never had any guts. They showed that during the last big dustup. Just rolled over and let the Jerries trample all over ’em. Then we had to come in and sort things out for them. It’s all that fancified food they eat. Give ’em some boiled beef and carrots – that’d sort ’em out.’

  It went against Blotto’s sense of fair play to criticize anyone, but he couldn’t help feeling a sneaking sympathy for what Corky Froggett was saying. He had nothing against the French, all he felt for them was pity. They did make life unnecessarily complicated for themselves. And it wasn’t just their food. All that rombooley about driving on the wrong side of the road – where did that idea come from? And then making tiny nippers learn French at such an early age … That was hardly fair on the poor little squibs, was it? How much easier it would be for them if they did the natural thing and learned Engl
ish.

  Meanwhile Corky Froggett was chuntering on. ‘Didn’t feel right, milord, you know, when I was over here fighting the Jerries on the same side as the French. They’re our natural enemies, the French are, have been through history. Now if it had been us against the Germans and the French, well, that would have made a lot more sense. And the odds would have been fairer. We’d still have won, and all. I’m a finely tuned killing machine, you know, milord, and it really went against my instincts not being allowed to kill any of the French …’

  Blotto had always recognized that Corky Froggett had a tendency towards the homicidal. But at least his heart was in the right place.

  Once they had checked into their suite at the Hôtel de Crillon, Twinks immediately telephoned Dimpsy Wickett-Coote, a schoolfriend who was currently living in Paris (and also, according to the old girls’ bush telegraph, in sin). The two girls had met as twelve-year-olds at St Wilhelmina’s Convent. (Up until that point Twinks had been educated by governesses at Tawcester Towers, but it was the view of her mother that she needed to mix with other ‘gels’. And though the Dowager Duchess despised Catholicism, preferring the relaxed uncertainties of the Church of England, she approved of the discipline that nuns imposed on their charges.)

  At St Wilhelmina’s there had been an instant rapport between the two girls. Dimpsy wasn’t as intelligent as Twinks (but then no one in the entire history of the known universe was as intelligent as Twinks), but she shared with her a lively curiosity about the world, and an unwillingness to toe the line of convention.

  Nor did Dimpsy’s breeding quite match up to her friend’s. Indeed until his purchase of a peerage from the Lloyd George government, her father had been a mere Mr Wickett-Coote. But Twinks did not allow such considerations to affect her, and though obviously she didn’t treat Dimpsy as an equal, she was happy to regard her as a coconspirator. The escapades of the pair, and their ongoing war of attrition against the nuns, could have filled many volumes of school stories.

  They left St Wilhelmina’s at the age of eighteen, both lucky to make it that long, given the number of times the Mother Superior had threatened to expel them. Thereafter their paths had diverged, Twinks making her base at Tawcester Towers and concentrating on the investigation of murders, while Dimpsy moved to London and devoted her life to shocking her parents by linking up with a series of ever more unsuitable men. As a result, the two had met little in the previous few years – in fact, when Twinks came to think of it, only twice, at each other’s coming-out balls – but their friendship had been maintained by a constantexchange of near-hysterical letters, written in a private slang incomprehensible to any but the participants (and sometimes not even to them).