by Simon Brett
But stepping forward towards the prize, Twinks felt the wooden floor beneath her give. As her arms flailed against emptiness, her only thought was that she hadn’t been just the victim of a trap, but also of a trapdoor.
13
Les Folies Bergère
The two midgets the other side of the gallery looked round the great bell at the hanging flap of the trapdoor. ‘No one can survive a fall like that,’ observed one. In French.
‘No,’ agreed the other. ‘We have done what La Puce requires.’
‘Do we remove the body?’
‘No. We had no instructions to do that. When she is found in the morning it will be reported just as the death of another over-enthusiastic tourist.’
‘And do we remove the paintings?’
‘Were we instructed to remove the paintings?’
‘No.’
‘Then we do not remove them. When one is working for La Puce one does what is demanded of one – and nothing else! La Puce has no admiration for people who think for themselves.’
‘Very good. So our job here is done.’
‘It certainly is. Another triumph for … les rats de Paris!’
And they both let out evil laughs. In French, of course.
Blotto wasn’t quite sure what he was expecting from the Folies Bergère. It was also rather strange to be going out with Corky Froggett in a social context. In fact, it would be quite a hoot to tell some of his Old Etonian muffin-toasters that he had gone out for an evening of entertainment with his chauffeur! Toad-in-the-hole, how times were changing. Next thing Blotto could find himself being accused of having Socialist leanings!
(Only as a joke, of course – nobody would really imagine that he had any time for such filthy doctrines. Some of those Socialist stenchers even went as far as recommending the abolition of the aristocracy! What a pot-brained notion! If that sort of thing was allowed to happen in England, the country might end up like … well, like France. Blotto shuddered at the very idea.)
The first thing he noticed at the Folies Bergère was that there did seem to be a lot of women around – and this was even before the stage show started. What’s more, the women around the Folies Bergère weren’t the kind that Blotto was used to encountering. They were exotically caparisoned and there was something funny about the front of their dresses. Had Blotto known the word, he would have recognized the phenomenon as décolletage, but he didn’t. All that flesh was, however, a sight he had rarely seen. Well, a boddo wouldn’t if he’d been brought up at Tawcester Towers and educated at Eton.
So he just thought the women were in danger of catching their deaths of cold when they went outside. Maybe it was a function of poverty, he reasoned. The women could not afford quite enough of the lavish silks and velvets of their dresses to cover up the front bit. If so, he felt very sorry for the poor pineapples … talk about spoiling the ship for a ha’porth of tar. He even had the gallant, charitable thought that he should offer one of them his opera cloak, but there were so many that charity to one individual might be in danger of being interpreted by the others as favouritism.
The other striking thing about the women was how friendly they were. Arising from a history that went back to Agincourt and Crécy – and probably a lot further – Blotto had somehow got it into his mind that the French were a standoffish nation, given to frequent shrugging and reacting to most overtures with a dismissive ‘pouf’ sound.
But not a bit of it at the Folies Bergère. The women were almost excessively affable. They seemed delighted to see him and though he couldn’t understand most of what they were saying, they were apparently offering all kinds of delightful things. The only word he could catch in their cascade of French was ‘milord’. He was quite impressed that they’d got that right. Must be something about his bearing, he decided, that singled him out as a member of the aristocracy. Or maybe just his immaculate evening dress, his opera cloak, top hat and silver-topped cane.
But then he heard one of the women calling Corky Froggett ‘milord’ as well. At first Blotto thought that rather odd, but then he rationalized it to himself. These women, properly aware of their national inadequacies, recognized that by comparison with the French any Englishman was an aristocrat.
It was also noticeable that Corky seemed to be very well acquainted with some of the women. The chauffeur submitted to a lot of hugging and kissing and ooh-la-la-ing. Some of the giggling suggested that he and the women might have some kind of shared secret. Blotto couldn’t for the life of him imagine what that might be.
He ordered champagne and was again struck by how unstandoffish the women were. They seemed quite happy to sit at his and Corky’s table and share his wine. As they all waited for the evening’s entertainment to begin, Blotto couldn’t help observing that a particularly well-upholstered woman had taken a seat beside him and, for some unknown reason, was rubbing her leg against his under the table.
‘Good evening, milord,’ she said.
He good eveninged back.
‘My name is Fifi,’ she said.
‘Ah. Blotto.’
‘No, I am not.’ She raised her champagne glass. ‘Not yet, anyway.’ She took a long swallow and smiled at him.
Blotto smiled back, but couldn’t think of anything to say. Then remembering his late father the Duke’s fall-back question when visiting members of the oikish classes, he asked the woman what she did.
‘I am demimondaine,’ she replied.
‘Ah,’ said Blotto. ‘I’m Church of England.’
Fifi chuckled throatily, and once again Blotto felt the pressure of her leg running up and down his.
‘Got a bit of an itch, have you?’ he asked.
Fifi’s English was good enough in certain specialized areas for her to understand this and she replied, with what Blotto considered to be excessive sultriness, ‘I most certainly have, milord. Perhaps the milord would like to scratch my itch?’
‘Frightfully decent of you to offer,’ he replied, ‘but I think you’ll find rubbing it against the table leg does the trick.’
‘Ah.’
He thought he detected disappointment in her tone, which was a bit of a rum baba. ‘What’s the problem, Fifi?’ he asked. ‘Fleas?’
‘Fleece? Like a sheep?’
‘No, no, fleas. I thought that your itch might have been caused by fleas.’ Her expression remained blank. Sultry, but blank. Blotto looked round the table for support. ‘Any of you breathsappers know what the French is for a flea?’
‘Une puce,’ said one of the women.
‘La Puce,’ said another. And at her words a shudder ran round the whole table. Not only their table, but adjacent tables too. Blotto looked around in bewilderment. ‘Why’s that put lumps in everyone’s custard?’ he asked.
Who knows whether he might have got an answer? He didn’t, though, because at that moment the lights in the great auditorium dimmed and the evening’s show began.
Now Blotto wasn’t a whale on the theatre. So strong had been his reaction at Eton to being force-fed Shakespeare that he had managed to expunge almost every word of it from his memory. There was one famous bit he recalled which began, ‘To be …’, but he no longer was certain what came next. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind he thought the next words might be ‘a pilgrim’, but as a bet he wouldn’t even have put ten shillings on it.
That unfortunate early experience with Shakespeare had coloured his attitude to the drama in general. On the very few occasions when he hadn’t been able to duck going to the theatre, he would have been hard pushed to say whether his dominant feeling was boredom or confusion. One evening he’d inadvertently ended up watching Ibsen, and though the play had been translated into English, it would probably have made rather more sense to him in the original Norwegian. At the end he’d expressed the view that what the characters needed to get them out of their self-absorption was a good day’s hunting.
On the other hand, Blotto didn’t mind so much going to shows that didn’t have a
plot to keep up with. A few songs, a bit of dancing, pretty costumes … that could make an acceptable filler between cocktails and dinner when he had to leave his precious Tawcester Towers and go up to the metropolis. But experience of London revues hadn’t prepared him for the Folies Bergère.
Once again he had the thought that the women on stage must be frightfully cold. And in their case it was hard to explain the skimpiness of the costumes on grounds of poverty, because the inadequate strips of clothing they did wear were highly decorated with spangles and feathers. He wondered whether their mothers knew they were going round dressed like that.
It was also soon evident that a good mother would not have brought up her daughter to dance in the manner that the girls of the Folies Bergère danced. Like all people with narrow horizons, Blotto started a lot of sentences with the line: ‘Now I’m as broad-minded as the next boddo …’, but he would have had to confess to being rather shocked by the routines he witnessed that evening. He’d always made the tacit assumption that girls did have legs, but he’d never imagined that they had as much leg as he witnessed at the Folies Bergère. For most of the show he didn’t know where to look.
An academic researching the English class system might have extrapolated some useful data from the occasion. For while Blotto seemed preoccupied with the patent leather of his shoes, the reactions of Corky Froggett were very different. The chauffeur had no problem with where to direct his eyes. Indeed, his manner suggested he wished he’d brought a pair of binoculars. And the eyes which he focused on the stage could only be described as ‘pop’. Though Corky’s military training prevented him from actually drooling, beneath the stiff moustache his tongue hung like that of a panting Labrador who’s just finished chasing a particularly fleet-footed cat.
At the end of the evening’s entertainment Blotto felt more confused rather than less. Fascinating though it had been to share his chauffeur’s idea of a good night out, he did not think it was an experiment he would care to repeat. He felt suddenly nostalgic for home. How he would have loved to spend that night tucked up in his own bed in his draughty bedroom at Tawcester Towers, with no more challenging prospect for the morning than a day’s hunting on his beloved Mephistopheles.
But he had to shake such thoughts out of his head. He and Twinks were on a mission; they could not return to England without the stolen Gainsborough and Reynolds. Idly, Blotto wondered how his sister’s visit to Notre-Dame had developed. He felt a little surge of excitement from the idea that she might already have retrieved the stolen goods. Maybe the two Ruperts were, even as he had the thought, safely awaiting him at the Hôtel de Crillon along with Twinks. Maybe they would be able to drive back to Tawcester Towers the following day. He imagined Mephistopheles’s whinny of recognition as his master rounded the corner of the stable block.
For some reason, Corky Froggett seemed less keen to leave the Folies Bergère than his master. Indeed, when Blotto said they should be on their way, he saw on his chauffeur’s face the nearest approximation he had ever encountered there to insubordination. It was with some reluctance that Corky disentangled himself from one of the inadequately fronted women and set off to find the Lagonda.
As Blotto made to follow him, Fifi laid a hand on his arm, winked at him and said, ‘Remember, milord, when you wish to scratch my itch you know what to do, don’t you?’
He smiled at her and said helpfully, ‘My nanny always recommended putting witch hazel on it.’
The night air was cold outside the Folies Bergère, and there were a lot of people milling around, but Corky Froggett had got the Lagonda parked right opposite the entrance. Blotto was surprised to find Fifi still beside him as he left the music hall. Other women clutched at his cloak as he stepped through the throng, but he did not allow himself to be detained and made it to the side of the car just as the chauffeur opened the passenger door for him.
Fortunately, Blotto kept his topper on and had to crouch a little as he climbed into the Lagonda. Otherwise, the bullet that made neat entrance and exit wounds through his hat would have made them through his skull.
Master and chauffeur turned as one towards the sound of the shot. Only a few yards away they saw a midget holding a revolver in his hand. With a cry of something in French, the little man brought the gun barrel in line for another shot at Blotto.
He might have hit his target but for the sixteen stone of aggrieved vassal that hit him in the form of Corky Froggett. The second bullet shot harmlessly up into the Parisian night sky.
The chauffeur had the would-be assassin firmly in his grasp and would have held on, had not a second midget suddenly appeared out of the throng and smashed him over the head with a bludgeon. In the moment Corky’s hands flew to his head, the trapped midget broke free and, with more incomprehensible shouts, the two of them vanished into the sea of legs outside the Folies Bergère.
‘Are you all right, Corky old warrior?’ asked Blotto as he helped the chauffeur into a sitting position.
‘’Course I’m all right, milord. I’ll have a bruise the size of an ostrich egg in the morning, and concussion for a few days, I would imagine, but I’m all right.’ He tried to stand, but tottered dizzily down again and drifted into oblivion.
As Blotto rose to his feet, he was surprised to find himself wrapped in the voluptuous embrace of Fifi. ‘Milord,’ she kept saying, ‘milord, they tried to kill you – the salauds!’
‘Hello,’ said Blotto, who knew the routine by now. ‘Do you know who they were?’ he asked.
Fifi nodded. ‘They are two of many such evil creatures who are known as les rats de Paris!’
‘“Rah”?’ he echoed. ‘As in “Rah-rah”?’
‘Rats!’ said Fifi.
‘Rats! I agree,’ said Blotto. ‘Damned poor show.’
‘No, the dwarves are called the rats of Paris. There are many of them … and all of them are in the pay of … La Puce!’
Everyone who was within hearing of Fifi, even though they hadn’t been listening to her up until that point, shuddered as they heard those two fateful words.
‘What was it those rat boddos shouted?’ asked Blotto.
‘As he fired the first shot, the one with the gun shouted that you should go and join your soeur.’
‘Oh, that’s rather bad form.’
‘What is?’
‘Well, to call me “sir”. Everyone else has got it right and called me “milord”.’
‘No, milord, it is “soeur” meaning your sister. The rat de Paris said you should go and join your sister.’
‘Ah,’ said Blotto. Then slowly, working it out, he went on, ‘And he said that as he was hoping to kill me?’
‘Exactly so, milord.’
Blotto’s mental processes ground on at their customary speed. ‘So, if he thought he was killing me and he said I should join my sister … what he meant was …’
Fifi nodded as Blotto took in the implications of his own words.
‘I must get to Notre-Dame!’ he cried. ‘I must find out what’s happened to Twinks!’
14
Twinks in Jeopardy!
Bundling the unconscious Corky Froggett into the back seat, Blotto drove the Lagonda across Paris like a man possessed. And it seemed only a matter of moments before he was on the Île de la Cité and running towards the looming mass of Notre-Dame.
Remembering the instructions in the message delivered to the Hôtel de Crillon, he quickly located the small door in the South Tower and let himself into the cathedral. Some of the votive candles had burnt out since his sister’s arrival, but enough light still spilled across the vast space for Blotto to find the second door. The fitness from summers of cricket and winters of hunting stood him in good stead as he ran blindly up the spiral staircase into the darkness above.
When finally he reached the top, he was confronted by the same scene as his sister had been. The two Ruperts, still illuminated by the candles in front of them, were tantalizingly close.
But there was a differenc
e between what Blotto saw in the gallery and what Twinks had seen. Between him and the stolen paintings was a break in the wooden flooring, a void from the far side of which the hinged trapdoor hung downwards.
Even for someone of such glacially slow comprehension as Blotto, it wasn’t difficult to piece together what had happened.
What had happened to Twinks.
15
Hanging by a Thread!
Brother and sister had survived many scrapes in the past, and their innate optimism prompted them to look for the best in any predicament. But Blotto was finding it tricky to glean anything good in the depths of the current gluepot.
He blamed himself. Of course he blamed himself. He should have ignored the conditions given in the message they had received at the Hôtel de Crillon. He should never have allowed his sister to go to Notre-Dame on her own.
‘Twinks,’ he said miserably – and, unknowingly, aloud. ‘Twinks! What have I allowed to happen to you?’
His words echoed in the high emptiness of the ancient cathedral. He looked down into the void beneath the open trapdoor. Meagre light from the guttering candles flickered on to monumental pillars and carved saints somehow shrunken in their niches.
He reckoned it was another moment when praying to someone or something might be worth a try. But he didn’t try it with much optimism.
And once again his prayer was answered. (A more reflective person than Blotto might have seen a correlation between his praying and his prayers being answered, might even have been converted to belief in an omnipotent deity who could make the world a better place. He might have found faith. But Blotto’s mind didn’t work like that. He was happy to stay Church of England.)
Not only was his prayer answered, but it was answered by what appeared to be a miracle. A voice emerged from one of the niched saints, crying, ‘It’s all right, Blotto. Everything’s tickey-tockey!’