by Simon Brett
‘Well, it could be the right size of pyjamas,’ she said disconsolately. ‘The idea of inspiring great art does appeal to a woman’s vanity. Like being the model for the greatest work of the Trianguliste Movement – that’d tick the clock all right.’ She sighed with acid wistfulness. ‘Until, of course, you find out that the canvas of you has been destroyed because the artist has met someone else he finds more beautiful than you are. That tends rather to pancake a girl’s aspirations.’
This prompted another glum nod from Buzzer Bluntleigh. ‘And what about poetry? Aren’t women supposed to respond to boddos writing poems about them?’
‘Yes, that would be quite shrimpy.’ Dimpsy Wickett-Coote was reflective for a moment. ‘I’ve never actually had someone write a poem about me.’ Then the old rivalry reasserted itself. ‘Has Twinks had poems written about her?’
‘I wrote her one,’ the Marquis of Bluntleigh replied with an expression of deep apology.
‘And what effect did it have on her?’
‘I’ve no idea. She hasn’t mentioned it.’
‘Ah.’ The potential jealousy in Dimpsy’s expression receded.
The Marquis turned to their host. ‘I say, Blotto. Twinks did get that poem I wrote for her, didn’t she?’
‘Could hardly fail to, could she, Buzzer me old charabanc? You thrust it personally into her dainty little mitt.’
‘Yes, but did she read it?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘And what did she think of it?’
‘Ah.’ Blotto knew his reply had to be cautious. Didn’t want to send the Marquis even deeper down into his current gluepot. To report that his sister had described his poem as ‘total toffee’ might be hurtful to the poor thimble, so all he said was, ‘Tickey-tockey, Buzzer.’
‘Is that what she thought of it?’
‘No, it’s just what I said.’
‘Oh.’ The expression on the Marquis of Bluntleigh’s face suggested that Blotto hadn’t been much help. Buzzer turned his attention back to Dimpsy Wickett-Coote. ‘Do you think,’ he asked, ‘that a woman would be more impressed by a poem written in English or one written in French?’
‘Well, I suppose it would depend on the nationality of the amorous swain who was writing the thing.’
‘Yes. If it were someone English?’
‘I suppose that might impress some women.’
‘I think it would impress Twinks.’
‘You might be right,’ said Dimpsy. ‘Twinks is such a Grade A brainbox she might be impressed by someone with a mastery of languages. Do you have a mastery of languages, Buzzer?’
‘No.’
‘A mastery of one language would do. So long as that language is French.’
‘I speak as much French as I do Hottentot.’
‘And how’s your Hottentot?’
‘Non-existent,’ the Marquis of Bluntleigh confessed.
‘But just a minute,’ said Dimpsy. ‘I’m sure someone told me that your mother was French.’
‘Yes, she is.’
‘Then surely you must speak the spoffing lingo.’
‘No. My father was rather ashamed of the fact that he’d married someone French.’
‘Well, you can see his point.’
‘So he tried to pretend the mater was actually English.’
‘Oh?’
‘And he forbade her from speaking a word of French round the house. So I never heard any from her – not of course that I saw much of her, anyway.’
Dimpsy Wickett-Coote and Blotto nodded. That was perfectly reasonable. Mothers of their class kept away from their children as much as possible, allowing the business of upbringing to be delegated to a series of nursemaids and governesses. Until the age of sixteen, Dimpsy wouldn’t have recognized her mother if she’d bumped into her on the street.
‘I was thinking, Dimpsy …’ the Marquis went on. ‘You speak French, don’t you?’
‘Like a Breton onion seller, yes.’
‘Well, maybe you could teach me enough French to write a poem for Twinks?’
‘And what biddles would there be in that for me?’ she asked cautiously.
‘Well, if Twinks liked my poem and married me, then she’d be off the scene and Blocque and Tacquelle would have to go back to making do with you as the most beautiful girl in the world.’
The ‘making do’ was perhaps not the most tactful expression that he could have used, but, that blemish aside, Dimpsy Wickett-Coote was rather attracted to his proposal. ‘I think it’s a really sloozy idea, Buzzer. Let’s find a café and get to work over something warm and alcoholic.’
‘But I’m meant to be showing you round the Louvre,’ Blotto objected. He was following Twinks’s instructions and didn’t want to let her down.
‘I’m sure you can entertain yourself in here,’ said Dimpsy tartly. ‘Give the glad eye to the odd painting. Might provide a bit of a jockey-up to your knowledge of the visual arts, eh, Blotto? Because you’re standing at this moment in front of the one picture in the world that even you are bound to recognize.’
Giving up on hopes of keeping his two guests with him, he turned to look at the painting Dimpsy had referred to. He saw a long-haired woman sitting with her hands folded against an indistinct background. On her yellowish face there was a vague expression. The expression on Blotto’s face as he looked at her was equally vague.
‘It is smaller than you expect perhaps?’ asked a heavily accented male voice behind him.
He looked round to see that Dimpsy and the Marquis had gone, but in their place stood a couple in the robes of a Maharajah and his Rani.
‘What’s smaller than I expect?’ asked Blotto.
‘The Mona Lisa,’ the man replied. ‘The masterpiece perhaps of Leonardo da Vinci.’
‘Ah,’ said Blotto. He looked again at the painting. ‘You could be right.’
‘You are interested in art, I think?’
‘Er … well … um …’
‘My Rani and I are very interested in art. All the way from Pranjipur we come to see the famous artworks of Paris. How far have you come may I ask, young man?’
‘I’ve come from Tawcester Towers.’
Blotto always spoke the name of his home with the confidence that everyone in the world would have heard of it, but he still felt slight surprise when the pair nodded and the man said, ‘We of course know this famous estate as the ancestral home of the Lyminster family.’
‘You’re bong on the nose there, me old pineapple.’
‘Everyone in India has heard of the exploits of the Lyminster family. Particularly on the cricket field. You have not by any chance during your sojourn at Tawcester Towers been so fortunate as to encounter the Honourable Devereux Lyminster – the young man who once scored an unbeaten hundred and seventy-six in the Eton and Harrow match?’
Blotto smiled boyishly. ‘I know the boddo you mean, yes.’
‘If you could ever arrange an introduction for me to that gentleman,’ said the Maharajah, ‘I would be eternally in your debt.’
‘So should I. I have for so long wished to meet him,’ agreed the Maharajah’s breathsapper of a wife.
‘You want me to arrange a meeting for you with the Honourable Devereux Lyminster?’ asked Blotto with a grin. ‘Well, you know, I don’t think that should be too hard a rusk to chew.’
He had just finished describing the cover drive that had brought up his hundred and was enjoying the Indian couple’s rapt admiration for his blow-by-blow account of the famous innings, when a thought struck Blotto. ‘Bit of a long chance, us just meeting up in the Louvre like that, wasn’t it?’
‘Not strange at all, really,’ said the man who had by now identified himself as the Maharajah of Pranjipur. ‘In real life there occurs a level of coincidence that would not be tolerated in a work of fiction.’
They were sitting in a café in the Jardin des Tuileries. Blotto felt relieved to be away from all that art. And he was in a considerably mellower mood. Apart from actually p
laying the game, there was nothing he liked more than the retelling of his exploits on the cricket pitch. And he couldn’t have asked for a more enthusiastic and attentive audience than the Maharajah and Rani of Pranjipur. Blotto found himself rather warming to the couple. Of course, they were foreign and there was nothing that could be done for them in that respect, poor thimbles, but at least they came from India, a country that was part of the British Empire. And, more importantly, a country that appreciated cricket.
Indeed the Maharajah seemed, from odd hints he dropped in the course of Blotto’s narrative, to have played the game himself to quite a respectable level. He mentioned the names of great English players with appropriate reverence and appeared to understand every nuance of Blotto’s description of how he readjusted the grip on his bat to deal with the notorious ‘googly’.
Knowing the man was a cricketer put the Englishman at his ease. Nobody who understood the laws of the game could be a complete stencher. As he looked into the earnest dark-brown face, Blotto found himself wondering whether the scar on the Maharajah of Pranjipur’s cheekbone could have been caused by an errant cricket ball from a fast bowler.
He was impressed by the Rani too. One of the odd things Blotto had found in his dealings with women (who were, he knew, strange cattle in many ways) was how few of them had an understanding of – or even a liking for – cricket. But the Rani of Pranjipur definitely ticked the clock on that score. She listened intently to his reliving of the famous innings, seeming to regard every word that came out of his mouth as a rich jewel.
For a moment Blotto had the uncharacteristic thought that even matrimony might be tolerable if the female party to the contract appreciated cricket. Obviously he wasn’t thinking straight, but he did find he was falling under the allure of the Rani of Pranjipur. She was foreign, of course, but a bit of a breathsapper … in a foreign sort of way.
Beautifully proportioned, and with a beautiful oval face. Perfect complexion … well, except for a small mole on her chin. But the blemish perversely seemed to increase rather than diminish her attractions.
Blotto had difficulty taking his eyes off her as he relived the crowning moment of his innings, the standing ovation he received from team-mates and opponents as he entered the Lord’s pavilion after saving the honour of Eton. He related how embarrassed he had felt by all the attention and repeated the words with which he had responded to the compliments around him: ‘Don’t talk such toffee, you muffin-toasters. I’m not the pony who deserves a rosette. It was a spoffing team effort.’
A reverent silence followed the end of his narration. Then both the Maharajah and his Rani breathed sighs of admiration before he observed, ‘It was very fortunate that we met beside the Mona Lisa this morning.’
‘Mona who?’
‘The painting.’
‘Oh, the grumpy-faced yellow old fruitbat?’
‘Exactly. Held by some people to be the most beautiful woman in the world.’
‘Well, then those people need an urgent visit to the spec-doctor. Why, I can see a more beautiful woman at …’ Blotto was within a mosquito’s pimple of completing the sentence ‘this table’, when it occurred to him that some husbands got a bit funny about having their wives complimented. So he finished rather feebly ‘almost any event I go to.’
‘Her beauty may be a matter for discussion,’ said the Maharajah of Pranjipur, ‘but there is no doubt about her value.’
‘Oh?’
‘We are speaking of one of the most valuable paintings in the entire world. The Mona Lisa is worth hundreds of thousands of English pounds, possibly millions.’
Not for the first time, Blotto concluded that he never would understand the art world. If he had millions of English pounds, buying a picture of a grumpy yellow-faced woman would be so far down his list of potential purchases as to be invisible.
But the Maharajah of Pranjipur’s words also prompted another reaction in his slow brain. A discussion about the value of paintings offered him the perfect cue to divert the conversation towards the subject of the investigation which he and Twinks were currently pursuing.
‘So this Mona Lisa would be quite a target for art thieves, would it?’ he demanded, with what he thought of as remarkable subtlety.
‘Of course,’ the Maharajah agreed. ‘Indeed it has already been stolen once.’
‘Toad-in-the-hole!’
‘As a political gesture by an Italian nationalist.’
That sentence contained too many concepts that Blotto couldn’t begin to understand, so he confined his reaction to an ‘Oh.’
‘But who will be so bold as to say,’ the Maharajah continued, ‘that the Mona Lisa will never be stolen again?’
At this he and his wife exchanged looks and giggles that could only be described as mischievous.
Not noticing this, Blotto continued his line of investigation. ‘So the Mona Lisa would be worth more than a Gainsborough or a Reynolds?’
‘Very considerably more.’
‘Do you know anything about art thieves?’ asked Blotto boldly.
The Indian couple exchanged another look. ‘Maybe a little,’ the Maharajah conceded.
‘Because I’m in Paris with my sister Twinks trying to track down a couple of paintings that some spoffing lumps of toadspawn snaffled from our ancestral pile, Tawcester Towers.’
‘Really?’ The two spoke together, both Maharajah and Rani apparently surprised by this revelation.
‘And we think – well, my sister worked out –’ Blotto was always punctilious about giving credit where credit was due – ‘that the Gainsborough and the Reynolds were snaffled by a couple of stenchers called the Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Sales-Malincourt.’
‘And it is to confront them that you are here in Paris?’ suggested the Maharajah.
‘You’ve won the coconut! That’s exactly what we’re doing here.’
‘Have you yet seen the malefactors you are seeking?’
‘No. They’d moved out of the address we had for them.’
‘Do you know what they look like?’
‘Well, we know what they look like as the Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Sales-Malincourt, but you see, the thing is, these two stenchers are masters of disguise. So they could be dressed up as members of the Russian Royal Family … or Pearly Kings and Queens.’
‘Or a maharajah and his wife?’ suggested the Rani of Pranjipur.
They all had a good laugh at that preposterous idea, but then the Maharajah got serious. ‘If you are genuinely trying to track down your Gainsborough and Reynolds, I have a suggestion for you. It is possible that we may be able to introduce you to some people who will know the whereabouts of the missing paintings.’
‘Hoopee-doopee! That’d absolutely be the lark’s larynx!’ cried Blotto, once again lured by the prospect of making faster headway on their investigation than his sister.
‘But these people,’ the Maharajah went on, ‘might expect payment for handing the goods over.’
‘That’s outside the rule book!’ complained Blotto. ‘If these bad tomatoes stole the paintings, they don’t deserve to get paid for returning them!’
‘Are you sure about that?’ The Maharajah smiled. ‘Is it not a strong tradition among the aristocratic families of England, capturing members of rival dynasties and holding them to ransom?’ Blotto was forced to admit that such behaviour was not unknown in the annals of Tawcester Towers. ‘You would have to think of the money you paid as a ransom for the release of the two Ruperts.’
‘Well, I’m not sure that …’ But suddenly his words stopped. Blotto had a blinding moment of intuition, of the kind that came so very rarely to him and so frequently to his sister. ‘How do you know that the Gainsborough and Reynolds I mentioned were both paintings of Ruperts?’
The Maharajah of Pranjipur looked nonplussed. Blotto pressed home his advantage, incisive as a prosecuting barrister in a murder trial. ‘I didn’t mention their names, did I?’
There was a silence, then t
he Rani said, ‘Yes, I think you did, actually.’
‘Oh.’ Blotto’s moment of potential glory had passed. He would have sworn he hadn’t mentioned the word ‘Rupert’, but if the Maharajah’s wife said he had … well, it wasn’t done to question the word of a lady, was it?
‘Anyway,’ said the Maharajah of Pranjipur, once again businesslike, ‘we will leave a message for you at the Hôtel de Crillon, with details of a rendezvous where you can meet the two people who are prepared to negotiate the return of your paintings. Whether you decide to make that meeting is up to you.’
‘Just a minute,’ said Blotto, in another moment of inspiration, ‘I don’t think I mentioned that I was staying at the Hôtel de Crillon.’
‘I think you did, actually, yes,’ said the Rani.
Once again, of course, he couldn’t question the word of a lady.
‘Anyway, my wife and I must be on our way.’ The two Indians rose from the table.
‘Hold back the hounds a moment!’ cried Blotto, as a new idea came to him.
The Maharajah and his wife froze, while the Englishman looked searchingly into their faces. The words of Twinks came back to him, the details she had pointed out in the photographs sent by Professor Erasmus Holofernes. A mole and a scar!
Blotto concentrated furiously as he dredged the details up from his memory. A mole on the right-hand side of the chin and a scar high up on the left cheekbone. Was he within an ace of revealing that the Maharajah of Pranjipur and the Rani of Pranjipur were in fact the Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Sales-Malincourt in disguise? Was he about to unmask the running sores who’d stolen the two Ruperts from Tawcester Towers?
But when he looked closely at the pair, his hopes evaporated. The mole was on the left-hand side of the Rani’s chin. And the scar was on the right-hand cheekbone of the Maharajah.
Bit of a coincidence, but these two obviously weren’t the lumps of toadspawn that he and Twinks were looking for. Blotto let the Maharajah and Rani of Pranjipur go on their way.
10
The Message Arrives