The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery

by Kyril Bonfiglioli

  I did not seethe, nor did I fume, for my highly-qualified physician has promised me that seething and fuming are almost as harmful as cigarettes. I rummaged my Welsh friend’s set of rooms for something to appease my screaming stomach but there was nothing, nothing; not even a leek. Even I could not bring myself to make a bad joke about that.

  Furiously, I span the telephone dial and after only three mistakes I was connected to my wife in Jersey, if you see what I mean. She seemed to think, at first, that I was the taxi-driver, for she was about to travel to the airport, where she intended to climb aboard an aircraft.

  ‘Yes, dear?’ she said when I had established my identity. I held the telephone a little further from my ear because icicles were stabbing out of it.

  ‘Listen, Johanna,’ I snarled.

  ‘I am doing so, dear; and, so I guess, are most of the servants. You are interfering with their television. But do go on.’

  ‘Johanna dearest, light of my life, apple of my eye, my first and only love,’ I said in carefully-modulated tones, trying not to grate my teeth too loudly, ‘it is important to me to get in touch with your brother – you know, Colonel Blucher? My brother-in-law? – immediately. His secretary-bird has never heard of him.’

  ‘I know, Charlie dear. She just called me. What she said was, you should just follow the old procedure that you and he used way back when for, uh, when you got kind of scared – you know?’

  ‘I know,’ I grated. ‘And thanks. Have a nice day.’ We hung up almost simultaneously: she was a little faster than the Embassy secretary. A matter of bust-measurements, I suppose – not so far to reach, you see.

  Perhaps I should explain at this point that why I so freely splashed words about like ‘brother’ and ‘brother-in-law’ was because Colonel Blucher was – indeed, probably still is – Johanna’s brother and she is my wife and has papers to prove it, so he is, quite clearly, my brother-in-law, wouldn’t you say?

  I made a great effort of will and ceased the tooth-grating (for I am no longer a young man) and summoned up the old ‘procedure’ from some nasty mental cubby-hole. I dialled the number, let it ring the prescribed twelve times, hung up and dialled again. A prescribed, twelve-times rung, hung-up and dialled voice said that yes it was the Home & Colonial Stores – what hateful memories this boy-scout-spy nonsense conjured up – and I said that I was Willie and wanted to speak to Daddy because Mom was poorly. I added the word ‘ugh’ although it was not part of the ‘procedure.’ Blucher kept me waiting just long enough to make me feel unwanted but not long enough to allow any hostile wire-tappers or buggers to trace the call. He made affable noises. I tried not to snarl.

  ‘Look,’ I said levelly.

  ‘I’m looking, Willie. In fact I can see you clearly.’

  ‘Oh Christ, Franz, if there’s one thing more tiresome than a humourless man, it’s a humourless man who feels obliged to make funnies. Don’t, I beg you. Just listen. A certain lady has recently been treated with what your awful American clandestine people would call “extreme prejudice.” Got it?’

  He made gotting-it noises of the non-committal sort. I continued. ‘She made some cryptic sort of notes before, ah, leaving. Got it? Yes, well, people are now creeping up behind me and hitting me cruelly upon what I still like to think of as my head.’

  He made standard textbook noises of the sympathetic sort.

  ‘The notes were about a lot of people who were massacred some years ago in a country famous for its chamber-pots – oh dear, sharpen your wits, do: in England the chamber-pot is known to its friends as a “po.” PO – got it?’

  He made baffled noises in his brain – I could hear them – then he got it. ‘Yeah, got it. So what else is new?’

  ‘What else is new is disturbing: it seems that my certain lady stumbled across some information which says that the dreadful people who were supposed to have done the massacre didn’t; and that it was a different lot. A very different lot indeed.’

  ‘Look, Willie, maybe you know what you’re talking about but it’s Greek to me.’

  I cringed. ‘No no no, not Greek at all, far from it, rotten shot. It’s more, um, Coptic Ethiopian.’ (A stroke of inspiration there, for one of the few people I truly hate is the Fellow and Tutor in Coptic Ethiopian. If the line was being bugged by baddies, there was a good chance that the said baddies would give the said Fellow a bad time.)

  ‘Hey, Willie, don’t you think you should take an aspirin and kind of sleep a couple of hours? You sound a little confused, sort of tired and emotional, you know?’

  The Mortdecai teeth began to grate again, although I had bidden them not to.

  ‘Franz,’ I grated civilly. ‘I am not drunk. I am never drunk at this time of day. Are you taping this conversation? You are? Good. Play it back as soon as I have replaced the receiver. Study it. Think. I might capture your full attention if I said that the massacre in question took place in 194–and at a place called, oh, yes, well, let’s say its name begins with the letter—’

  ‘Shut up!’ he barked suddenly. I sighed with relief. He had, at last, really got it.

  ‘Charlie,’ he said, his voice switching octaves as he spoke the one word.

  ‘You mean Willie,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah. So enjoy; I made a mistake. Willie, get your ass over here now. Like now.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd, Franz; do you realise where I am?’

  ‘Yes, I realise. Just get here.’

  ‘But however could I get to the station … the taxis here! … and have you been on a British Rail train lately? I mean, even if there were a buffet car, it would be quite … oh, really …’

  ‘OK, OK, you’ve made your point. Is there anywhere in your College where a helicopter could land?’

  ‘Well, we do have a sort of lawn in the Quadrangle – that’s like a campus, hunh? – but the helicopter-driver would be instantly hacked to dolly-rags by enraged Head Gardeners wielding rakes and I would be stripped of my Honours Degree, which would be horrid in this inclement weather for I was always prone to chest-colds, even as a child …’

  He said a word which he had doubtless picked up in the West Point Military Academy for Young Gentlemen; I riposted with a word I had learnt in the Hailsham College for the Sons of Officers and Clergymen. Our teeth ground to a halt; we started afresh.

  ‘OK, Willie,’ he started afresh. ‘I’ll send a car. Be at the janitor’s shack of your school—’

  ‘Porter’s Lodge of my College?’

  ‘At the Porter’s Lodge of your College in precisely one hour.’

  ‘Nonsense; it can’t be done in the time. Say ninety minutes.’

  ‘Yes it can. I’m saying sixty minutes. Got it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said.

  To my intense annoyance, a motorcar or automobile swept up to the gates of Scone College precisely sixty minutes later. It was some kind of Ford which looked as though it had served in Northern Ireland; it bore corps diplomatique decals and the driver seemed unusually fresh-faced. He didn’t get out, he just wound down the window and favoured me with a display of big white teeth which you could construe as a civil smile or dumb insolence, according to how your liver felt that morning.

  ‘Your boss,’ I whispered murderously, ‘is clearly in a frolicsome mood. To send for me in a grotty old Ford – when he knows that I’m a car snob – oh, really!’

  His smile or grin stretched wider. I eyed him narrowly. There was a twinkle of chess-playing merriment in his eye which both warned and warmed me. He leapt out with surprising alacrity and opened the door, favouring me with a flourishing bow of which an émigré French dancing-master would have been proud.

  I swept into the passenger seat beside him, threw my hastily-packed overnight-bag onto the back seat, and elevated my Graeco-Roman nose in a haughty way. He trickled us through the Oxford traffic in that easy, off-hand fashion which reminds one of Dean Martin singing – he was good, really good. Nevertheless, as we floated up Headington Hill a puzzlement was nagging at me. I
cleared my throat.

  ‘Look here,’ I said. ‘What’s your name, eh?’

  ‘Samuel Johnson Brown, Lieutenant, US Army.’

  The puzzlement continued to nag. As we approached the roundabout which gives you access to the swings of the motorway – after you’ve been circling it three times while more seasoned roundabout-users shake their puny fists at you – I cleared my throat again.

  ‘Lt,’ I said (and I took great pleasure in pronouncing it in the British manner), ‘where did you set out from? I cannot find it in my heart to believe that you did Grosvenor Square to Scone College, Oxford (England) in sixty statutory minutes and in this old heap of battered tin. Pray explain.’

  ‘You heard of manufacturers’ specifications? You did? Yeah, well this jalopy didn’t. Lie back; enjoy.’ Whereby he trod savagely upon the accelerator pedal. I trod savagely on the passenger-brake as my spine hit the cushion behind me.

  XV

  Ignorant end of the straight

  A nere example unto you of my foly and unthriftnes that hath, as I well deseruid, brought me into a thousand dangers and hazardes, enmyties, hatrids, prisonments, despits and indignations.

  —Sir Thomas Wyatt

  By the time I arrived in Blucher’s office – having laboured through the absurdities of US Embassy security – his mood had changed considerably.

  ‘Hello, Charlie,’ he said sombrely. He unlocked a drawer in his desk and lifted out Bronwen’s Shorter Greek Lexicon, which he placed silently onto the Moroccan leather blotter.

  ‘Ah, I see that you’ve received my book-of-the-month recommendation.’

  ‘Cut the crap, Charlie. This little beaut turned up just after you called. Now, since you’re here and since your ass is already on the line, you’ll be pleased to know that I’ve just volunteered you for some civic duty.’ He drew a large envelope from another drawer in his capacious desk, and continued with an air of mild irritation. ‘Which means, I’m afraid, that you’re outta here …’

  Blucher fairly stroked the documents as he drew them from the envelope. ‘Temporary Accreditation Wallet – should see that you don’t come up against any, uh, bureaucratic hindrances, so to speak. Your ticket. Flight leaves at 20.00. Traveller’s cheques – they’re in US dollars, so you’ll need to get them changed when you arrive.’

  ‘Splendid.’

  ‘And finally, the name and address of our top Sovietologist. Someone will meet you. I won’t give you any more details right now, just in case…’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Great! Any questions?’ He put all the paperwork back into the envelope and slid it across the desk.

  ‘No,’ I lied.

  ‘Excellent – have a great trip, call me when you get back.’

  ‘You’re most kind,’ I said, gripping the envelope with not a little disdain.

  ‘Oh, and Charlie? One more thing.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What the hell is that thing on your lip?’

  Well, there I was, having imbibed the most perfunctory cup of tea for decades, dragging my baggage (no, I mean my hand luggage) for what seemed miles along airport walkways – unaided by human hands because the airport busybodies wouldn’t allow even my US Embassy vehicle to park for even an instant. Jock would have sorted them out, but Lt Brown had no charisma, few and skimpy muscles all in the wrong places, and bloody Blucher had given us no VIP chit. ‘All part of the great plan,’ I daresay. (‘Never trust a brother-in-law,’ is what you probably daresay.)

  A sweating Mortdecai heaved himself up the staircase-thing which lets you climb into airplanes, ready to be smiled at and cosseted by charmingly insincere air-hostesses. I had forgotten that I was flying Aeroflot. The insincerity was palpable, the charm was a brief and grudging glimpse of stainless-steel dental work and I had to find my own seat. There is something about me that Russians do not like – it cannot be that I perhaps look just the least little bit Jewish; after all, I was only getting into their country, not trying to get out. Perhaps it is because I tend to say, in an effort to please, ‘Tovarich!’ – perhaps that carries Stalinist or, God forbid, Menshevik overtones. The only other Russian words I know are yes, no and something like ‘spats yeh bo’ (and I can never remember whether that means ‘please’ or ‘thank you’). Perhaps they don’t like the cut of my Vigo Street suits. Whatever the case, they don’t like me.

  Fortune, however, smiled in a tight-lipped kind of way so far as to afford me a row of seats unoccupied by any human bottom but mine own ill-favoured one (Alexander Pope, 1688–1744). The only harassment was that I had to sit, cigarette-less, for some eighty minutes before we were airborne, listening to egg-laying hen noises from the public-address system and the quite riveting cackle from a breeding-pair of young executives behind me.

  When I finally disembarked – dishevelled, disgusted and cursing the Wright brothers – I could have kissed the tarmac, if such a custom were allowed in a Russian airport, that is.

  I wasn’t expecting to see a chauffeur with a hand-stencilled sign reading “MR C. MORTDECAI – TOP SECRET US EMBASSY BUSINESS” but I did wish that Blucher had given me just a smidgen more to go on. After fully five minutes of keeping my disgruntled moustache waiting, I spied a lissom, blonde and – not to put too fine a point on it – rather delicious girl who seemed, or so I imagined, to be heading in my direction.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I asked innocently. ‘Would you be so kind as to tell me where I might change some American money?’

  ‘Of course,’ she breathed breathily. ‘Don’t worry about the money now. We get a taxi.’

  Well, as I’ve often said, I am an idiot but I’m not actually stupid, am I? I mean, juicy, flavour-of-the-week, ice-blonde Finnish girls may have their little foibles (in fact, you can have my word on that), but their fancies hardly ever run to slightly overweight British chaps in early middle age who haven’t shaved for twelve hours and have just explained that they are having difficulty getting enough kopecks to buy a postcard. This is a well-known tendency. However, I succumbed to my incurable faults of curiosity and salaciousness and got into the nearest taxi with her, whereupon we bumped slowly through the streets of Moscow until we arrived at the Metropole Hotel.

  The bleak-eyed hag at reception slid the key to my room across her venom-pitted desk and snarled something full of ‘zchu’s and ‘zhnak’s to my Finny denizen. I raised a worried eyebrow but she explained that the hag was only rebuking her for smoking in public. Screwing, it seemed, was OK but the decencies must be observed. Like, say, not dropping toffee-papers in the Moscow Metro.

  As soon as we were in my room she divested me with great zeal and many a well-feigned squeak of admiration; then allowed me partially to do the same for her. I had at last identified the accent of her nearly-perfect English: it was East German, oh dear. However, her Finnish disguise was good: all Baltic girls wear heavily-knitted, double-gussetted knickers except in centrally-heated hotels, where they wear none; every chap who has knocked around the Baltic a bit knows that.

  The Metropole’s central heating is famed.

  Just as I was about to work my wicked will on her (indeed, I was already twirling my moustache in a “Sir Jasper” sort of way) she closed my eyelids with a coy fingertip and flitted towards the bathroom and turned on some taps. I opened one eyelid a coy millimetre and was disappointed to see her flitting silently back to where she had coyly piled my clothes, and commencing to rummage them. ‘Oh, really!’ I thought; ‘a chap like me surely rates a better class of spy than this …’ But I had wronged her; all she fished out of my gents’ natty suiting was a mere felt pen (I never carry proper fountain pens on Aeroflot, I don’t trust the pressurisation of their cabins). I was happy that it was a mere felt pen rather than my razor-sharp gold-nosed Parker, because she wrote upon my actual body with it.

  ‘HUSH,’ she wrote. ‘THIS ROOM IS BUGGED.’ Well, I could have told her that. So we sort of held hands and gazed into each other’s eyes, so to say, for ten minutes or so – well,
let’s say twenty-five minutes, for I am no longer a young man, you know – without the least compunction on my part because, infra-red cameras or not, I can think of no-one who would be interested in a blackmail deal concerning me (Johanna would only get the giggles) and I could hardly be breaking any law unless the Soviet consent law starts at the age of thirty. Then she coyly – she was wonderfully good at coyness – asked me whether I had any traveller’s cheques.

  All the spice of the adventure vanished: this was, after all, no glamorous spy but just another up-market tramp. Ah, but wrong again is what I was. What she suggested was that we should go to the ‘American Attached Officers Club’ (well, I guessed what she meant) where they took any currency other than roubles and kopecks. She mumbled into the room-telephone, fumbled herself into her clothes (how cold her poor bottom must have been) and told me to meet her in a large black limousine which would be outside the hotel in some nine or ten minutes.

  Now, anyone who has followed my earlier craven adventures may perhaps recall that I have a rooted objection to entering large black limousines – things happen to me when I enter such vehicles. However, Russia cannot yet afford a Mafia (well, no, I’m not taking any bets on that) and the only people there who can afford cars at all have these large black limousines called Zygs or something like that. So down I tripped, after a prophylactic wash, and popped into a large black limousine whose driver was beckoning me in a comradely fashion.

  The door thunked and I turned to splash a grateful kiss on my luscious little Finesse’s cheek as she snuggled in the spacious back seat beside me. Alas, she proved now to be a large, sand-papery Russian, approximately three metres long and three metres wide. (You could tell he was Russian because of his suit, you see.)