by Simon Brett
‘Do you think you can muster one up, Twinks me old carving fork?’
‘I’ll do my bounciest to make it work,’ she replied.
Blotto was reverently silent. His admiration for his sister was boundless, and he knew that at times she could make a significant advance on an investigation by sheer exercise of willpower. He watched as her azure eyes shut and a fine tracery of lines formed around them with the effort of concentration.
There was a long silence, eventually broken by a tap on the door of their suite. Twinks’s brow cleared. ‘This’ll be it,’ she declared. ‘The really important breakthrough on the case.’
And so it proved to be. A footman appeared with a letter on a silver salver. It was addressed to ‘The Hon. Honoria Lyminster’. The missive had been discovered at the Villa Marzipan and couriered across to the Hôtel Majestic by one of Westmoreland Hubely’s oriental houseboys.
As soon as the door had closed behind the footman, Twinks tore the letter open and read:
If you are reading this, then it’s a great stroke of luck. I managed to scribble it while I was being abducted from the Villa Marzipan by the villainous acolytes of La Puce. I dropped it, hoping someone would get it to you. La Puce has not only seized me, but also Mimsy La Pim. I don’t know where they’re taking us, but my mother knows everything that happens on the Riviera. If you were to contact her at the Château d’Erimes, she might be able to send you down in the right direction and all will be well. It’s the only hope. With all my love to you, Twinks, and in the (not very strong) hope that we will meet again, Buzzer Bluntleigh.
‘What did I say, Blotto me old dose of castor oil?’ asked Twinks. ‘I think we’ve got our really important breakthrough on the case.’
23
The Château d’Erimes
The Château d’Erimes perched on a rocky hillside a few miles inland. Despite the distance, it commanded wonderful views of the Mediterranean.
As Corky Froggett brought the Lagonda to a halt at the apex of the semicircular gravel drive, Blotto looked up at the building with distaste. He vaguely remembered from his French lessons at Eton that ‘château’ meant ‘castle’, but the place wasn’t his idea of a castle. English castles were solid four-square structures built for the serious purpose of repelling the armies of one’s foes (or during unfortunate episodes like the Wars of the Roses, one’s relations). Whereas the French equivalent was all superfluous detail – lots of turrets with pointed slate roofs. In fact altogether far too many pointed bits. The effect was fussy and overelaborate. Like their food, thought Blotto.
In the car Twinks had been aware that the smell of the Brie in her brother’s pocket was not getting less with the passage of time. She contemplated mentioning it and asking whether Blotto really thought the aroma to be a suitable accompaniment for a social visit. Maybe the proper thing would be to leave the Brie in the Lagonda … ? But remembering the reverence with which Blotto had gazed upon this memento of his lost love, she curbed her tongue.
Rather than becoming a dowager, because her son remained as yet unmarried, Buzzer’s mother retained her title of the Marchioness of Bluntleigh and it was as such that she introduced herself when Blotto and Twinks were ushered into one of the Château d’Erimes’ many drawing rooms.
The Marchioness was all angles, like a stick insect that had recently been on a crash diet. She wore a black lace dress and carried a lorgnette which seemed just to add another spoke to her angularity. Her English was impeccable. Twinks remembered the Marquis of Bluntleigh once telling her that his mother had not been allowed to speak her native tongue in the house of his father, who had tried – quite understandably – to pass his wife off as English.
The social niceties of introduction concluded, Blotto announced, ‘We are here in an attempt to find Buzzer.’
‘Buzzer?’ the Marchioness echoed in bewilderment.
‘Buzzer was the name by which your son was always known at Eton.’
‘Why?’ asked the old lady. ‘I am not aware of my son ever having buzzed.’
‘No, no, nicknames aren’t given to people for any reason. I mean, our real names are Devereux and Honoria Lyminster, but everyone calls us “Blotto” and “Twinks”. The names don’t mean anything. That’s how it’s always worked amongst people of our class in England.’
‘Of course I knew that,’ the Marchioness said hastily, afraid that her incomprehension might be thought to demonstrate that she was unfamiliar with English customs and possibly even reveal that she was French. Then a new thought came to her. ‘Lady Honoria Lyminster …’ She pronounced the words slowly.
‘Yes,’ said Twinks, slightly bewildered. ‘That’s who I said I am.’
‘Of course. I know all about you. You are the young woman to whom my son has been paying court back in England.’
‘Yes. If “paying court” is how you wish to refer to it.’
The lorgnette was raised to the old lady’s eyes for a closer scrutiny. ‘Well, you’re certainly pretty enough for him to marry. Would you mind standing up for a moment?’ Twinks did as she was told. ‘And turn round, please.’ Again Twinks complied.
There was a long silence, before the Marchioness pronounced, ‘Yes, you look like good breeding stock. You have my permission to marry my son.’
Under other circumstances, Twinks might have responded to this with some passion, pointing out that, when she did finally succumb to marriage, it would be on her terms. But the situation was too urgent for such assertions. ‘More important at the moment,’ she said, ‘is actually finding your son.’
‘Oh, indeed. You said you were looking for him.’
‘Yes,’ said Blotto. ‘We saw him last night at a party in the Villa Marzipan.’ A sniff of distaste traversed the Marchioness’s face as she heard the location. The sniff brought to her nostrils the smell of what in other circumstances she would have sworn was overripe Brie. Now where on earth could that be coming from?
Blotto proceeded to explain about the note they’d received and show it to the old lady. She reacted with fright when she read the contents.
‘Do you know La Puce?’ asked Twinks.
‘I am of course aware of his existence. It is impossible to live on the Riviera without hearing of that monster’s evil doings.’
‘But you do not know his true identity?’
‘Of course not. Nobody knows the true identity of La Puce.’
‘Well,’ said Blotto, ‘We’re not going to don the jim-jams at bedtime until we’ve found out who the stencher is.’
Twinks looked across at her brother with pride. After the uncharacteristic gloom he had shown at the Hôtel Majestic, it was good to see him back as the Blotto she knew and loved, the Blotto who would defy any odds in the cause of decency and justice.
‘Anyway,’ she said, indicating the note in the Marchion-ess’s claw-like hand, ‘your son sent us here because he thought you could help in our search. He says you can put us on the right track. We’ve established that you don’t know the true identity of La Puce, so do you have a mouse-squeak of an idea what he meant?’
The old lady looked thoughtful for a moment. Then she said, ‘I really can’t think of anything. But then I’m so distraught about this terrible news. The idea that my son is in the clutches of La Puce … it’s driving every other thought out of my head.’
Her manner did not appear very distraught, but that didn’t surprise Blotto and Twinks. They knew what bad form it was for people of their class and nationality to reveal any emotion. So at least the Marchioness of Bluntleigh had learned that much about being an English aristocrat.
‘But your son the Marquis must have meant something,’ Twinks insisted. ‘He was apparently being abducted by La Puce or his acolytes, and he snatched a moment to write a note. Surely, with Wilberforce knows what kind of fate threatening him, whatever he writes in that note must be significant.’ The Marchioness agreed. ‘So is there anything in there that has a special meaning for you? Some kind of private cod
e your son might use?’
The old lady took her lorgnette back to the note for deeper scrutiny, but eventually confessed with regret that she could not read any private significance into its words.
Twinks took the paper back and focused the full beam of her mighty intellect on the contents. After only a few seconds, she announced, ‘Yes, there is something odd here.’
‘What?’ asked the Marchioness.
‘Come on, uncage the ferrets,’ said Blotto.
Twinks explained her revelation. ‘I think the Marquis wrote this letter with deliberate care, so that if it was intercepted by his captors, La Puce would find out nothing beyond the fact that we were being directed to the Château d’Erimes. But there’s something else he’s telling us here.’
‘What?’ repeated the Marchioness.
‘Give us the bizz-buzz,’ said Blotto.
‘Look, the Marquis is an educated man. We know that. He went to Eton.’
The Marchioness nodded confirmation.
Blotto, who was never one to talk up his own intellectual qualities, said, ‘Mind you, I went to Eton.’
His sister, choosing not to react to that, went on, ‘So one would expect him to write a grammatically correct letter – even at a moment of crisis while being abducted by the acolytes of La Puce.’ Another nod from the Marchioness. ‘And yet there is one sentence in this note that reads very oddly. Your son tells us that if we come here to visit you, you might be able to send us “down in the right direction and all will be well”. Now if he had just written “in the right direction”, that would sound better. But no, he says “down in the right direction”. Does that have any special meaning for you, Lady Bluntleigh?’
For a moment the old lady was silent. Then understanding irradiated her thin face. ‘Yes, I have it!’
‘Good ticket,’ said Blotto.
‘My son does not only say “down”, he also says that all will be “well”. You understand now?’
‘No,’ said Blotto.
‘Yes!’ said Twinks. ‘He is saying that we should go “down” a “well”.’
‘Exactly. In the main courtyard here at Château d’Erimes there is a deep well. Tradition and old wives’ tales in the village say that the well used to lead to a network of underground tunnels used by smugglers in times gone by.’
‘And of course,’ Twinks contributed triumphantly, ‘La Puce is well known for conducting his business from underground tunnels!’
‘Yes,’ enthused Blotto. ‘You must show us where this well is as quick as a lizard’s lick.’
‘But no one’s been down there for years,’ said the Marchioness. ‘It will be very dangerous.’
‘Larksissimo!’ said Twinks.
24
A Secret Passage!
There was an ornamental covering like a small gazebo over the opening of the well in the courtyard of the Château d’Erimes. A brass bucket hung from a rope coiled round a windlass with a handle, but there was not enough on the spool for it to go down very far. The well hadn’t been used for a long time; the structure at its head was purely decorative. The Marchioness of Bluntleigh confirmed that when she showed them the entrance.
At least its disuse meant that, as far as Blotto and Twinks could see down, the well was dry. There were also large staples fixed into the circular stone walls in a regular diagonal sequence, clearly intended to be used as steps into the void. How far down that convenient staircase would continue, there was no way of knowing.
The Marchioness, with appropriate lack of emotion, expressed the hope that they would find her son, and Blotto and Twinks assured her that they would. Then the pair hoisted themselves over the edge of the well’s lip and started their descent. Hoping that he was now on the way to rescuing Mimsy La Pim, Blotto’s derring-do had returned in its full glory and so naturally he went first. Apart from anything else, if one of the staples came loose from the crumbling wall and sent someone down to their death, that someone should definitely be him rather than his sister. The Dowager Duchess still had hopes of breeding from Twinks, after all. And, as a younger son, Blotto had always known he was expendable. His parents had wanted an heir and a spare, and he’d never had any illusions about which role was his.
His only regret, as he set off on the latest stage of their hazardous adventure, was that he couldn’t have his trusty cricket bat with him.
Their spiral course downwards on the metal staples was relatively easy, but they were soon beyond the reach of the daylight above. That, however, offered no problem. Twinks produced the electric torch from her infinitely resourceful reticule.
It was difficult for Blotto to judge how far down they were when the staples in the wall ran out. A torchlight recce suggested that they had reached the point where in previous years the well-water had reached. There was a definite line around the walls. A line of dried weed or algae, below which the stone was discoloured to a muddy green. Twinks’s torchbeam had insufficient range to reach far into the cylinder of darkness beneath them. Nor did it pick up any reflection from a watery surface, suggesting that the well was, at least as far as they could see, still dry.
‘Hm, bit of a tough rusk to chew,’ said Blotto after his sweeping free foot had failed to reach any further staples. ‘Shall I just shout “By Wilberforce” and jump?’
His sister quickly discouraged such daredevil antics. ‘No, Blotters. Even if you only got a broken ankle, that’d put a terrible chock in our cogwheel. We don’t know how far you’d fall.’
‘But that’s what’d make it such beezer fun,’ said Blotto, a note of disappointment in his voice.
‘No,’ said Twinks, with an echo of the Dowager Duchess’s tone. ‘There’ll be plenty of time for heroics once we actually get on to the horizontal plane.’
Blotto took her point on board. ‘Tickey-tockey,’ he said before, as ever, appealing to his sister’s greater intellect. ‘So what do we do?’
‘We use what I used in Notre-Dame,’ said Twinks, reaching once again into her reticule and producing the housewife that contained her spool of extra-strong silk thread. Neatly she hooked the loop round one of the staples, testing the connection for firmness.
‘Shall we both pongle on down together?’ asked Blotto.
‘No, don’t think so, me old cabbage patch. The silk thread’s strong, but I’m not sure it’d take our combined weight. You go first. When you’ve landed on something solid, give three sharp tugs on the thread.’
‘Good ticket,’ said Blotto. ‘You’d better keep the torch.’
‘No. More important you can check out what’s down there.’
‘Tickey-tockey.’
It was difficult to hold on to something no thicker than button thread, but Blotto improvised a kind of loop around his body and descended in a manner that was almost abseiling.
Twinks, with her feet on one staple and her hands gripping another, watched as the torchlight below dwindled into darkness. Her only comfort was the continuing tautness of the slender silk that supported her brother.
It seemed an age till something happened. First the thread went slack and Twinks nearly panicked that it had broken. But the slackness came gently, rather than suddenly, which reassured her. And then from the depths below she heard a distant cry of ‘Hoopee-doopee!’, which reassured her even more.
That was quickly followed by the agreed three tugs on the thread, and Twinks started the descent to join her brother.
She found him waiting for her at the opening of a narrow horizontal shaft that led only in one direction from the bottom of the well. Blotto pointed the torch up the well-shaft, highlighting the thin thread of silk down which they had both travelled. ‘Pity we can’t take that flipmadoodle with us. Might come in handy.’
‘I doubt it, Blotters. I think we’ve nearly got down to sea level. I wouldn’t expect any more sharp descents ahead of us. Besides,’ she added, ‘if we do find Mimsy La Pim, we may well need an escape route to get her back to civilization. We’ll be glad we left the
thread in position then.’
‘Good ticket,’ said Blotto.
He then turned the torch on the passage that lay ahead of them. It was clearly a long time since there had been any water in the well. Everything the torchbeam lighted on was dry. Though the walls were discoloured with what had once been slimy weed, that had long browned and was crackly to the touch.
They had to stoop to progress along the passage, and Twinks remembered the detail she had been told by Professor Erasmus Holofernes, that La Puce always recruited midgets for his nefarious schemes. They could run at speed without bending through the sewers that were their boss’s favourite working milieu.
‘Any idea which direction we’re going in?’ asked Blotto.
‘Towards the sea,’ his sister replied immediately.
‘How do you know that?’
‘I’ve got a compass in my reticule. I checked it while you were making your way down here.’
‘But how could you see it in the dark?’
‘It has a luminous needle.’
‘You are a Grade A foundation stone,’ said Blotto. ‘You think of everything.’
As they walked along, uncomfortably crouched, Twinks’s words were confirmed by the distinct and increasingly powerful smell of salt water. Not only that, but another, less salubrious odour. Somewhere ahead, their nostrils told them – through the dominant odour of Blotto’s sacred Brie – the tunnel they were walking along was going to join up with a system of sewers.
The passage seemed to go on for ever. Each new stretch of the walls revealed by the torchbeam looked exactly like the previous bit. ‘I wonder how far we’ve come,’ asked Blotto.
‘Thirty-one yards two feet and eight inches vertically down the well,’ Twinks replied, ‘and four hundred and seventy-three yards one foot and three inches horizontally so far along this passage.’
‘Toad-in-the-hole, Twinks! How did you work that out?’