The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery

by Kyril Bonfiglioli

  ‘Hmm. Particular examples in this case?’

  ‘Yessir. Stopped for speeding once; cursed and screamed at the motorcycle officer in a demented way. Patrol car pulls up and he greets the officers matily, offers to submit to the breathalyser (no reaction) and says that he probably was going a bit over the speed limit; thought the officer who stopped him was one of them Hell’s Angels. In court next week, perfect performance as a good citizen; had had a hard day, everything going wrong – you know – regrets if he expressed himself a little freely to the officer; sorry to take up the court’s time etc., etc. Not a dry eye in the house. Not a stain on his character. On the way home, stops at the greengrocer’s and froths at the mouth horribly because they haven’t got any fresh lettuce.’

  ‘Surely, you mean the chemist’s, Holmes?’

  ‘No, sir, it was a fresh lettuce he wanted, not—’

  ‘Sorry, go on. The image of a psychopathic personality does seem to emerge. Dip into the bag again.’

  ‘Well, that fence you seen on the side of his drive. Frenzied he was about that. Frenzied. His gardener reckoned that half the number of posts would do the work and look better: he used horrible language at the gardener, sacked him on the spot. Same evening, he goes round to the gardener’s cottage, gives him a bottle of Scotch and three months’ wages and hopes there’s no hard feelings. Gardener accepts the wages, rejects the Scotch (being teetotal) and tells Dr F. to F. off.’ Something stirred in the Mortdecai brain-pan, just the first faint ‘blup’ of half-awakened porridge but an unmistakable ‘blup.’

  XX

  Third queen books a loser

  Comfort thyself my woeful heart,

  Resound ye woods and hear your fill.

  Alas, the grief and deadly doleful smart!

  It may be well, like it who will.

  Grudge on who list, this is my part.

  A second viewing failed to heighten my opinion of the Fellworthy mansion. Long and flat and immaculately featureless, it had obviously been erected by an anally retentive dwarf with a low-grade O level in Lego.

  ‘Never trust a gentleman who lives in a bungalow, sir,’ said Holmes, as we sailed up the drive, passing the hideous fence.

  ‘At least he’ll never be able to dress up as his dear deceased Mama and throw prowlers headlong down the stairs,’ I riposted, recalling the fate of the poor detective who took a tumble at the Bates Motel.

  ‘Very true, sir.’ Holmes was the ideal travelling companion, always bowing to one’s better judgement.

  Beside the front door, a bronze plaque carried an inscription that seemed to confirm earlier reports of the somewhat schizophrenic nature of Dr Fellworthy’s personality. “W.W. Fellworthy, MD (Oxon), FRCP, FRS” it read, “Trespassers Will Be Taken Care Of.”

  Before ringing the bell, I took the opportunity to spy through the spy-hole. I was met by another eye, spying back at me. The alien eye disappeared, there was the ostentatious sound of the unhooking of chains and the front door swung open while I was still bent double. The man who greeted us was as neat as a new pin, and nearly as lean. His face was so spruce that it might have been cleaned and scrubbed on a daily basis, employing only the spittle of young aristocrats. A pair of pince-nez was clipped onto a nose as sharp and ruthless as a kitchen appliance. But my eyes locked on to the feature that seemed to crawl along his upper lip like a worm dipped in soot. Never has a moustache been more like an eyebrow, and a well-plucked eyebrow at that. Had it been any skimpier, it might have doubled as a coastal footpath on an Ordnance Survey map.

  ‘How very good of you to come, Mr, ah …’ said the doctor, outstretching a well-polished paw. I watched as his eyes hovered in envy over my infinitely more luxuriant and manly meadow.

  “Mortdecai,’ I said. ‘The Honourable Charlie. My father was er … yes … hmm …’ I sometimes feel it appropriate to drop the odd clue to my aristocratic credentials. ‘And this is my young assistant, Detective Constable Holmes.’

  ‘Come in, gentlemen, come in!’ Fellworthy made an elaborate display of wiping his spotless shoes on the doormat, even though he had not been outside. Holmes and I took the hint and followed suit. I watched as six brisk swipes of Holmes’s shoes saw hairs of brush fly all over the shop and great arid valleys of nothingness appear upon the mat. Holmes was a solidly-built man who clearly put his black belt in karate to good use in even the most mundane of household tasks.

  Fellworthy appeared not to notice the absconding bristles as they jetted haphazardly this way and that, though I fancy I saw his wormy moustache slither vainly in protest, even as his mouth busily choreographed itself into an ingratiating smile.

  I decided to set the man at his ease with a bit of idle chat. ‘I couldn’t help but notice that you have a moustache hidden on your face, Doctor,’ I began. ‘Just above the lip, if I’m not mistaken. May I ask you how long have you been attempting to cultivate it?’

  Fellworthy didn’t miss a beat. ‘How very kind of you to ask, Mr Mortdecai,’ he replied. ‘I have been the owner of a moustache for twenty-three years.’

  ‘Twenty-three years,’ I sighed compassionately, ‘and still little bigger than a beansprout.’ I lovingly stroked my own great rainforest, now so luxuriant that a well-planned expedition into its interior might well have found Mr Kurtz and chums exchanging pleasantries at its very heart. ‘It might be time to start thinking of growing another one alongside it. The poor wee thing looks so very, very lonely. It could do with a little friend to keep it company. They could hold hands, sing songs and keep each other warm during those long winter nights.’

  During the course of my sage advice, the doctor developed a nervous twitch that began to play havoc with his frozen smile. ‘You are, I believe, here on business, gentlemen,’ he twitched, removing his pince-nez and placing them on one of those tables best suited to hosting a TV dinner. ‘You will understand that my time is … er … limited. Not to mention, ahem, costly.’

  ‘You will be delighted to hear, Dr Fellworthy,’ I said, dipping into my coat pocket, ‘that we have managed to retrieve the spectacles of your late wife.’

  His hand darted towards the glasses-case like a peckish python towards a passing bunny-rabbit. ‘How can I ever begin to thank you, gentlemen!’ he yarooped, grabbing the case from me. His top pocket lurched forward and swallowed it up. He glanced at his gold wrist-watch. ‘Now, if you’ll forgive me, gentlemen, I could go on chatting like this all day’ —he motioned us towards the door we had only just entered— ‘but I must return to my work. Most grateful indeed.’

  As he motioned us out, a dreadful noise emerged from the door marked “SURGERY.” It sounded as though a water-buffalo were breaking wind after being force-fed Lentil Surprise. It was followed by an equally dreadful clatter.

  ‘Anyone else in the building with you, sir?’ asked Holmes, getting straight to the point.

  ‘It must be … a kiwi fruit,’ he replied, his old twitch reasserting itself.

  Holmes raised an eyebrow, allowed it a quick flutter around his forehead, then lowered it back into place once again. ‘You employ a kiwi fruit to oversee the washing-up, do you, sir? I believe they can be most effective,’ he said, ‘for all but the most stubborn household stains.’

  ‘No, officer. I employ kiwi fruit only for purposes of experimentation. It is my area. I used to lead the world in testing cosmetics on animals; but there’s little call for it now. I had to release two hundred and fifty rabbits back into the wild, all done up to the nines. Now, if you’ll excuse me.’

  The door closed firmly behind us, followed by the unmistakable sound of chains being re-hooked. Cautiously, I looked through the spy-hole once again; once again, another eye looked back. ‘Mission accomplished,’ I murmured to Holmes. ‘Let us to the car.’

  ‘B-b-but, sir!’ exclaimed Holmes. ‘We can’t let him go without a bloody good bollocking! He’s guilty as dammit, sir!’

  ‘To the car, Holmes!’ I thundered.

  With Holmes’s mutterings ringing
in my ears, I drove approximately two hundred yards before taking a sharp right down a farm-track, ploughing through the odd sheep and lodging the car firmly behind a hedge. ‘We will continue on foot, Holmes,’ I said. ‘Follow me!’

  We charted an uncharted route across a muddy field. Mud! My feet have never enjoyed rubbing shoulders with mud, particularly mud as pushy and clingy as this. However hard I tried, I simply could not shake it off. But if life has taught me anything it is this: there comes a time when we must all slop through mud in order to arrive at a hideous bungalow.

  At the far side of the field, we peered through a hedge into the garden at the rear of the Fellworthy lodging. There was little decoration in the garden, only a tree-like metallic washing-line, upon which what appeared to be fifty or sixty ear-muffs were blowing in the wind. But Holmes, it proved, had sharper eyes than I.

  ‘Blimey, sir!’ he gasped. ‘Just look at ’em.’

  ‘Who would want so many ear-muffs, Holmes? Is the man a pansy?’

  ‘They’re not ear-muffs, sir. They’re … hamsters.’

  ‘Hamsters? What sort of monster would air his dead hamsters in public like that?’

  ‘Who said anything about dead? Look, sir, lick your finger – there’s no wind. Those hamsters are bloody wriggling!’

  Personally, I have nothing whatsoever against the hamster community. But to crawl up a washing-line, prise open a peg and hang oneself out to dry struck me as the action of a half-wit.

  ‘Shall we rescue ’em, sir?’ hissed Holmes.

  ‘Rescue them?’

  ‘The hamsters, sir. My sister used to have one. Answered to the name of Sandy.’

  ‘DC Holmes,’ I said, pulling vigorously on my moustache. ‘We are conducting a murder investigation. We are not Mr Steven McQueen on his scooter in The Great Escape. Look lively, man!’

  At a pre-arranged sign – a kick in the shins – Holmes nipped under the hedge and across the lawn. He came to a halt by the north wall of the bungalow, crossed his hands and bent forward ready for me to join him. I took a running jump onto said hands and – whuuup! – pulled myself up onto the roof of the bungalow. I then leant over and, with great difficulty, helped Holmes up beside me.

  A peek upwards while Fellworthy was making his lunge for the faux specs had alerted me to the fact that the bungalow was blessed with a skylight, running from one end of the roof to the other. Stealthily, Holmes and I now looked down through this skylight onto the strange scene below. Dr Fellworthy was sitting on the leather sofa in his sitting-room, bent over a long table, a solid if somewhat folksy affair constructed of oak and metal with a raffia inlay. Whenever he moved his head to the side, the glasses which Mr Bates had gone to so much trouble to recreate would swing into our view beside their olive-green crushed Morocco case on the table. What was he doing with them? Did his intense interest in them mean that we had judged him unjustly, and that the fellow really did have an emotional yearning for their safe return?

  Others might say that the Mortdecai heart is made of flint. I would deny it most strenuously. Flint indeed! Flint is far too fragile: granite, I think, is much more the material. But even my granite heart came close to breaking as I glimpsed the scene below me: the ageing doctor, pining for his deceased spouse, mournfully toying with his fondest memento of her. Glancing across the skylight at Holmes, I noticed that he, too, had a look of profound remorse skateboarding this way and that over his face. How could we have misjudged that poor medic so?

  While Holmes’s bulky sleeve gave chase to a runaway tear, Fellworthy walked out of the sitting-room, leaving the glasses and their case on the table. Seconds later, he returned with a plastic bag in one hand and a mallet in the other. Almost to our astonishment, he then placed the specs in the plastic bag, raised the mallet above his head, and with five well-placed blows, smashed them to smithereens. Without a second glance, he then transported the bag and its contents to a waste-paper basket, returned the mallet to its home, and poured himself a glass of Armagnac.

  ‘Blimey, sir,’ sighed Holmes. ‘He took agin those specs, didn’t he, sir? Would you say he’s acting like a man who’s got nothing to hide?’

  ‘I fancy those hamsters could tell us a tale or two, Holmes. But I have a trick up my—’

  ‘AND THERE IT SHALL REMAIN! HANDS IN THE AIR, GENTLEMEN!’ An unfamiliar voice – half man, half woman, half speak-your-weight machine – barked behind us. We turned around, hands in the air. But the owner of the voice was all too familiar.

  ‘Petal!’ exclaimed Holmes. Before us stood the monstrous, huge-bosomed policewoman upon whom I had first set eyes in the cop-shop in Bucks. With a few wires attached and the odd burst of helium up her arse, she might have found more remunerative employment as a barrage-balloon. Performing a hand-stand on a grassy knoll in a city centre, she would have been a dead cert for an RIBA gold medal. But for the moment, she was pointing a double-barrelled shotgun at us.

  ‘Petal, love, what are you doin’ here?’ Holmes spoke to her in one of those soft, kindly, caring voices that policemen reserve for overweight madwomen bearing shotguns. ‘Come on, love, put that down, love, there must be some mistake, let’s talk it over, you’re suffering from stress, too much on your plate, think of the kiddies …’

  ‘Shut it, Holmes!’ Petal bellowed back, giving him a hefty sock to the jaw with one of her spade-like hands. Holmes’s face blew up something rotten. Within seconds, it looked as though a pair of fuller-figured jelly-fish were fornicating all over it.

  ‘You shouldna done that, Petal,’ winced the Detective Constable.

  I seized the moment.

  ‘Then you shouldn’t have irritated the poor lady, Holmes. What did you expect? My sympathies are entirely with you, Petal, my poppet.’ I knew how to deal with these bulldogs in a way that Holmes quite clearly did not. You either have it or you don’t. To be frank, in all my dealings with women, I have always found that flattery can move she-mountains. ‘And may I add, Petal, you look quite splendid in uniform, brandishing that gun so lustily, with the wind playing upon your hair like Neptune sifting with his trident through the very finest sea-weed.’

  ‘You what?’ she boomed. Her hand darted to my crotch like the claw of a mechanical digger. She then clutched my most prized possession and squeezed it until tears began spurting from my ears.

  Without further ado, Petal kicked us off the roof of the bungalow. I landed face-first in a flower-bed, my poor moustache coated in clay. I barely had time to remonstrate before Petal was shinning down after us with the agility of a gorilla, but without the looks. ‘March!’ she boomed, pointing the gun at our backs and pushing us through the back door.

  ‘Boots off!’ she bellowed. I remembered the great store Dr Fellworthy set by personal cleanliness. ‘The doctor is ready to see you now.’ Clamped in her clammy clutch, we were paraded into the sitting-room before Dr Fellworthy, who was lovingly fingering a selection of hypodermic syringes.

  ‘Ah, gentlemen! I see you have already met my assistant, Metal.’

  ‘Petal,’ Holmes corrected him.

  ‘Wrong: Metal. Precious Metal. “Petal” is merely the pseudonym with which she has so successfully infiltrated the Police Force. You must take me for an imbecile! Precious Metal has been informing me of your incompetent meddling every step of the way. Call yourselves detectives? More like defectives!’

  ‘Ha ha ha ha ha, sir! Ha ha ha ha ha, sir! Very good, sir. Very good.’ Never had I seen Holmes more genuflective. Obsequiousness in others can be charming, but only when directed towards oneself. Directed towards Fellworthy, it was not a pretty sight.

  ‘What are you doing, Holmes?’ I hissed.

  ‘Buying time, sir.’

  ‘I’m afraid we have sold clean out,’ said Fellworthy, glancing at his watch. ‘Gentlemen, I was about to say, “Prepare to die.” I believe that is the correct form. But there is no time for preparation. You must die first, and prepare yourselves later.’

  Fellworthy drew a syringe with liqu
id of a most uncalled-for shade of pink and made ready to lunge. Facing death, my thoughts turned to the dearly beloved I would be leaving behind, principal among them my moustache. How would it get by without its dear Papa? One hears strong rumour that facial hair has mastered the trick of life after death, that it continues to sprout and blossom long after its hapless carrier has shuffled off his mortal coil. But life for a moustache in a coffin must be a pretty joyless affair. Inwardly, I cursed myself for having left no stipulation in my will for some sort of periscope arrangement, affording my moustache a glimpse of sunshine and rain, a glimpse of life carrying on as per u.

  ‘Goodbye, sir! It’s been a pleasure working with you, sir!’ said Holmes, choking back his tears. I could barely bring myself to grunt a response. Holmes had proved himself unworthy of his position. He was simply not up to the job. This far on in the proceedings, Jock would have already unscrewed Fellworthy’s head from his body and would even now be kicking it around the room for a little gratuitous footy practice. Where was the big ugly one, now that I needed him?

  ‘Jock! Jock! JOCK!’ I screamed at the top of my voice. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that, in these life-and-death situations, it is more the done thing to shout, ‘Mummy!’ But then you never knew my mummy, did you?

  In Petal’s steely grip, I watched helpless, my upper lip playing havoc with the draughtsmanship of my foliage, as Fellworthy raised the syringe above his shoulder (a little melodramatically for my taste) and plunged it downwards –

  ‘Yeeeeeehaaaaaaaarrrrrrrggggghhhhh!’

  – deep into Petal’s arm. How could I have mistrusted Holmes so? With one swift karate chop, he had deftly re-directed the fatal needle.

  ‘What the devil?’ exclaimed Fellworthy, recovering himself and stabbing again with his syringe –

  ‘Yooooooooooowwwwww!’

  – deep into Petal’s other arm.