After what seemed a great many hours we found a patch of shade afforded by some nameless starveling trees and without a word spoken we sank down in their ungenerous umbrage.
‘When a car passes going in our direction, Jock, we shall leap to our feet and hail it.’
‘All right, Mr Charlie.’
With that we both fell asleep instantly.
15
John of the Temple, whose fame so bragged,
Is burning alive in Paris square!
How can he curse, if his mouth is gagged?
Or wriggle his neck, with a collar there?
Or heave his chest, while a band goes round?
Or threat with his fist, since his arms are spliced?
Or kick with his feet, now his legs are bound?
– Thinks John, I will call upon Jesus Christ.
The Heretic’s Tragedy
A couple of hours later we were rudely awakened when a car travelling in our direction screeched to a halt beside us. It was the official looking car which had passed earlier and four huge rough men poured out of it, waving pistols and handcuffs and other symbols of Law ’n’ Order. In a trice, before we were properly awake, we were sitting manacled in the car, surrounded by deputy sheriffs. Jock, when he had sized up the situation, started to make a deep growling noise and to tense his muscles. The deputy beside him, with a deft backhanded flip, laid a leather-covered blackjack smartly against Jock’s upper lip and nostrils. It is exquisitely painful: tears sprang to Jock’s eyes and he fell silent.
‘Now look here!’ I cried angrily.
‘Shaddap.’
I too fell silent.
They hit Jock again when we arrived at the sheriff’s office in the single broad dusty street of an empty little town; he had shrugged off the deputy’s officious hands and made snarling noises, so one of them casually bent down and coshed him hard behind the knee. That is pretty painful too; we all had to wait a while before he could walk into the office – he was much too big to carry. They didn’t hit me; I was demure.
What they do to you in this particular sheriff’s office is as follows: they hang you up on a door by your handcuffs then they hit you quite gently but insistently on the kidneys, for quite a long time. It makes you cry, if you want to know. It would make anybody cry after a time. They don’t ask you any questions and they don’t leave any marks on you, except where the handcuffs bit in, and you did that yourself, struggling, didn’t you?
‘I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart, I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights …’
After a certain time the sheriff himself came into the room. He was a slight and studious man with an intelligent look and a disapproving scowl. The deputies stopped hitting our kidneys and pocketed their blackjacks.
‘Why have these men not been charged?’ he asked coldly. ‘How many times do I have to tell you that suspects are not to be questioned before they have been properly booked?’
‘We weren’t questioning them, sheriff,’ said one in an insubordinate tone. ‘If we was questioning them they’d be hanging the other way around and we’d be beating on their balls, you know that, sheriff. We was just kind of getting their minds right for being questioned by you, sheriff.’
He stroked his face all down one side, quite thoroughly, making a gentle, half-audible sound like an old lady caressing a pet toad.
‘Bring them in to me,’ he said and turned on his heel.
‘Bring’ was right – we couldn’t have made our own way to his office. He let us sit on chairs, but only because we couldn’t stand up. Now, suddenly, I was very angry indeed, a rare emotion for me and one which I have schooled myself to avoid since my disastrous childhood.
When I could speak properly through the choking and the sobs I gave him the full business, especially the diplomatic passport bit. It worked, he started to look angry himself and perhaps a little frightened. Our gyves were removed and our possessions returned to us, except for my Banker’s Special. Jock’s Luger was in the suitcase which, I was relieved to notice, had not been opened: Jock had prudently swallowed the key and, in the excitement of spoiling our personal plumbing, the deputies had not taken time out to force the lock. It was a very good lock and a very strong case.
‘Now you will have the goodness, perhaps, to explain this extraordinary treatment, Sir,’ I said, giving him my dirtiest glare, ‘and suggest reasons why I should not request my Ambassador to arrange to have you and your ruffians broken.’
He looked at me long and thoughtfully, his clever eyes flickering as his brain raced. I was a lot of trouble for him whichever way the cat jumped; a lot of paperwork at the best, a lot of grief at the worst. I could see him reach a decision and I trembled inwardly. Before he could speak I attacked again.
‘If you choose not to answer, of course, I can simply call the Embassy and give them the bald facts as they stand.’
‘Don’t push too hard, Mr Mortdecai. I am about to book you both on suspicion of murder and your diplomatic status isn’t worth a pile of rat dirt in that league.’
I spluttered in a British sort of way to hide my consternation. Surely no one could have seen Jock’s little momentary squib of ill-temper with the Buick – and anyway, at a distance it would surely have seemed that he was trying to save the poor fellow … ?
‘Just who am I – are we – supposed to have murdered?’
‘Milton Quintus Desiré Krampf.’
‘Desiré?’
‘That’s how I have it.’
‘Gawblimey. You’re sure it wasn’t ‘Voulu?’
‘No,’ he said, in a literate sort of way and with half a smile. “‘Desiré” is how I have it here.’ One got the impression that if he’d been an Englishman he’d have seconded my ‘Gawblimey’ but one had, too, the impression that he was quite content not to be an Englishman, perhaps particularly not the portly Englishman now cowering manfully in front of him.
‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Frighten me.’
‘I never try to. Some people I hurt; it’s part of the job. Some I kill: that too. Who needs to frighten? I’m not that kind of a policeman.’
‘I bet you frighten your psychiatrist,’ I quipped and straightaway wished I hadn’t. He did not give me a cold, blank stare, he didn’t look at me at all. He looked at the desk top where the scratches and the fly shit were, then he opened a drawer and took out one of those thin, black, gnarled cheroots and lit it. He didn’t even blow the rank smoke in my face – he wasn’t that kind of a policeman.
But he had, somehow, succeeded in frightening me. My kidneys started to hurt terribly.
‘My kidneys are hurting me terribly,’ I said, ‘and I have to go to the lavatory.’
He gestured economically toward a door and I got there without actually screaming out loud. It was a very nice little lavatory. I rested my head against the cool, tiled wall and piddled wearily. There was no actual blood, which mildly surprised me. At eye level someone had scratched ‘MOTHER F’ into the wall before they had been interrupted. I speculated – ‘– ATHER’? – then collected myself, remembering Jock’s plight; adjusted clothing before leaving.
‘Your turn, Jock,’ I said firmly as I re-entered the room, ‘should have thought of you first.’ Jock shambled out; the sheriff didn’t look impatient, he didn’t really look anything – I wished he would. I cleared my throat.
‘Sheriff,’ I said, ‘I saw Mr Krampf’s body yesterday – goodness, was it only yesterday – and he had quite clearly died of a coronary in the ordinary way of business. What gives with the murder bit?’
‘You may speak English, Mr Mortdecai; I am an uneducated man but I read a great deal. Mr Krampf died of a deep puncture wound in the heart. Someone – you, I must suppose – introduced a long and very thin instrument into his side between the fifth and sixth ribs and carefully wiped off the very slight surface bleeding which would have ensued.
‘It is not a rare modus operandi on our West Coast: the Chinese Tongs used to favour a six-inch nai
l, the Japanese use a sharpened umbrella rib. It’s all-same Sicilian stiletto, I suppose, except that the Sicilians usually strike upwards through the diaphragm. Had Mr Krampf’s heart been young and sound he might well have survived so small a puncture – the muscle could have kind of clenched itself around the hole – but Mr Krampf’s heart was by no means healthy. Had he been a poor man his history of heart disease might have caused the manner of his death to escape notice, but he was not a man at all, he was a hundred million dollars. That means a great deal of insurance pressure in this country, Mr Mortdecai, and our insurance investigators make the Chicago riot police look like Girl Scouts. Even the drunkest doctor takes a veddy, veddy careful look at a hundred million dollars’ worth of dead meat.’
I pondered a bit. Dawn broke.
‘The old lady!’ I cried. ‘The Countess! A hatpin! She was a leading Krampf-hater and a hatpin owner if ever I saw one!’
He shook his head slowly. ‘Not a chance, Mr Mortdecai. I’m surprised to hear you trying to pin your slaying on the sweetest and innocentest little old lady you ever saw. Besides, we already checked. She covers her head with a shawl in church and doesn’t have a hat or a hatpin in her possession. We looked. Anyway, one of the servants has sworn a statement that you were seen entering Krampf’s personal suite, drunk, at about the time of death and that your servant Strapp acted like a homicidal maniac during your visit to the rancho, breaking the same servant’s nose and beating up everyone. Moreover, you are known to be Mrs Krampf’s lover – we have a really fascinating statement from the woman who makes her bed – so there’s a double motive of sex and money as well as opportunity. I’d say you should tell it all now, starting with where you hid the murder weapon, so I don’t have to have you interrogated.’
He repeated the word ‘interrogated’ as though he liked the sound of it. To say that my blood ran cold would be idle: it was already as cold as a tart’s kiss. Had I been guilty I would have ‘spilled my guts’ – may I use dialect? – there and then, rather than meet those deputies again, especially frontally. If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? A still, small voice whispered ‘stall’ in my ear.
‘Do you mean to say that you have arrested Johanna Krampf?’ I cried.
‘Mr Mortdecai, you cannot be as simple as you pretend. Mrs Krampf is now many millions of dollars herself; a poor sheriff does not arrest millions of dollars, they have not a stain on their character. Should I call in a stenographer now, so that you can make the statement?’
What had I to lose? In any case, no one could hurt me too obscenely in front of a sweet little bosomy stenographer.
So he pressed a buzzer and in clunked the nastier of the two deputies, a pencil engulfed in one meaty fist, a shorthand pad in the other.
I may have squeaked – I don’t remember and it is not important. There is no doubt that I was distressed.
‘Are you unwell, Mr Mortdecai?’ asked the sheriff pleasantly.
‘Not really,’ I said. ‘Just a touch of proctalgia.’ He didn’t ask what it meant; just as well, really.
‘Statement by C. Mortdecai,’ he said crisply to the stenographic ruffian, ‘given at so and so on such and such a date before me, so and so, and witnessed by such and such another.’ With that he shot a finger out at me, like one of those capable television chaps. I did not hesitate: it was time to put on a bit of dog.
‘I did not kill Krampf,’ I said, ‘and I have no idea who did. I am a British diplomat and protest strongly against this disgraceful treatment. I suggest you either release me at once or allow me to telephone the nearest British Consul before you ruin your career irretrievably. Can you spell “irretrievably”?’ I asked over my shoulder at the stenographer. But he was no longer taking down my words, he was advancing toward me with the blackjack in his hairy paw. Before I could even cringe the door opened and two almost identical men entered.
This final Kafkaesque touch was too much for me: I succumbed to hysterical giggles. No one looked at me; the deputy was slinking out, the sheriff was looking at the two men’s credentials, the two men were looking through the sheriff. Then the sheriff slunk out. I pulled myself together.
‘What is the meaning of this intrusion?’ I asked, still giggling like a little mad thing. They were very polite, pretended not to hear me, sat down side by side behind the sheriff’s desk. They were astonishingly alike; the same suits, the same haircuts, the same neat briefcases and the same slight bulges under the nattily tailored left armpits. They looked like Colonel Blucher’s younger brothers. They were probably rather alarming people in their quiet way. I pulled myself together and stopped giggling. I could tell Jock didn’t like them, he had started breathing through his nose, a sure sign.
One of them pulled out a little wire recorder, tested it briefly, switched it off and sat back, folding his arms. The other pulled out a slim manila file, read the contents with mild interest and sat back, folding his arms. They didn’t look at each other once, they didn’t look at Jock. First they looked at the ceiling for a while, as though it was something of a novelty, then they looked at me as though I was nothing of the kind. They looked at me as though they saw a great many of me every day and felt none the richer for it. One of them, on some unseen cue, at last uttered,
‘Mr Mortdecai, we are members of a small Federal Agency of which you have never heard. We report directly to the Vice-President. We are in a position to help you. We have formed the opinion that you are in urgent need of help and we may say that this opinion has been formed after some extensive study of your recent activities, which seem to have been dumb.’
‘Oh, ah,’ I said feebly.
‘I should make it very clear that we are not interested in law enforcement as such; indeed, such an interest would often conflict with our specific duties.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Do you know a chap called Colonel Blucher? Or, if it comes to that, another chap named Martland?’
‘Mr Mortdecai, we feel we can best help you at this juncture by encouraging you to answer our questions rather than ask any of your own. A few right answers could get you out of here in ten minutes; wrong answers, or a whole lot of questions, would make us lose interest in you and we’d just kind of hand you back to the sheriff. Personally, and off the record, I would not, myself, care to be held for murder in this county, would you, Smith?’
Smith shook his head emphatically, lips tightened.
‘Ask away,’ I quavered, ‘I have nothing to hide.’
‘Well, that’s already being a little less than candid, Sir, but we’ll let it pass this time. Would you tell us first, please, what you did with the negative and prints of a certain photograph, formerly in the possession of Milton Krampf?’
(Did you know that in the olden days when a sailor died at sea and the sailmaker was sewing him up in his tarpaulin jacket, along with an anchor shackle, prior to committing him to the deep, that the last stitch was always ritually passed through the corpse’s nose? It was to give him his last chance to come to life and cry out. I felt like just such a sailor at that moment. I came to life and cried out. This last stitch had finally awakened me from the cataleptic trance I must have been in for days. Far, far too many people knew far, far too much about my little affairs: the game was up, all was known, God was not in his heaven, the snail was unthorned and C. Mortdecai was dans la purée noire. He had been dumb.)
‘What negative?’ I asked brightly.
They looked at each other wearily and began to gather their things together. I was still being dumb.
‘Wait!’ I cried. ‘Silly of me. The negative. Yes, of course. The photographic negative. Yes. Oh, yes, yes, yes. As a matter of fact I burned it, much too dangerous to have about one.’
‘We are glad you said that, Sir, for we have reason to believe it is true. Indeed, we found traces of ash in a, uh, curious footbath in Mr Krampf’s private bathroom.’
You will agree, I’m sure, that this was no time to expatiate on the niceties of French plumbing.
&n
bsp; ‘Well, there you are, you see,’ I said.
‘How many prints, Mr Mortdecai?’
‘I burned the two with the negative; I only know of one other, in London, and the faces have been cut out of that – I daresay you know all about it.’
‘Thank you. We feared you might pretend to know of others and attempt to use this as a means of protecting yourself. It would not have protected you but it would have given us a fair amount of embarrassment.’
‘Oh, good.’
‘Mr Mortdecai, have you asked yourself how we happen to be here so soon after the killing?’
‘Look, I said I’d answer your questions and I will: if I have guts I’m prepared to spill them now – I’m quite unmanned. But if you want me to ask myself questions, you must get me something to eat and drink. Anything will do to eat; my drink is in the outer office if King Kong and Godzilla out there haven’t stolen it all. Oh, and my servant needs something too, of course.’
One of them put his head out of the door and muttered; my whisky, not too depleted, appeared and I sucked hungrily at it, then passed it to Jock. The boys in the Brooks Bros suits didn’t want any – they probably lived on iced water and tin tacks.
‘No,’ I resumed, ‘I have not asked myself that. If I really started to ask myself about the events of the last thirty-six hours I should probably be forced to conclude that there is a world-wide anti-Mortdecai conspiracy. But tell me, if it will cheer you up.’
The Mortdecai Trilogy Page 14