The Mortdecai Trilogy

by Bonfiglioli, Kyril

  ‘We don’t much want to tell you, Mr Mortdecai. We just wanted to hear what you would say. So far we like your answers. Now tell us about the way you lost the Rolls Royce.’ At this point they switched the wire recorder on.

  I told them frankly about the collision but altered the subsequent events a little, telling them lovely stories about Jock’s gallant bid to save the Buick as it teetered on the brink; then how we had tried to back the Rolls on to the road, how the wheels had spun, the shoulder crumbled and the car gone to join the Buick.

  ‘And your suitcase, Mr Mortdecai?’

  ‘Brilliant presence of mind on the part of Jock – snatched it at the last moment.’

  They switched off the recorder.

  ‘We do not necessarily believe all or any of this, Mr Mortdecai, but again it happens to be the story we wanted. Now, have you anything else in your possession which you intended to deliver to Mr Krampf?’

  ‘No. Honour bright. Search us.’

  They started studying the ceiling again, they had all the time in the world.

  Later, the door knocked and a deputy brought in a paper sack of food; I almost fainted away at the wonderful fragrance of hamburgers and coffee. Jock and I ate two hamburgers each; our interrogators didn’t like the look of theirs. They pushed them away delicately with the backs of their fingers, in unison, as though they’d rehearsed it. There was a little carton of chilli to spread on the hamburgers. I had lots of it but it spoils the taste of whisky, you know.

  I cannot remember much about the rest of the questions, except that they went on for a long time and some of them were surprisingly vague and general. Sometimes the wire recorder was on, sometimes not. Probably another was on all the time, inside one of the briefcases. I got the impression that they were becoming very bored with the whole thing, but I was by then so sleepy with food and liquor and exhaustion that I could only concentrate with difficulty. Much of the time I simply told them the truth – a course Sir Henry Wotton (another man who went abroad to lie) recommended as a way of baffling your adversaries. Another chap once said, ‘If you wish to preserve your secret, wrap it up in frankness.’ I wrapped, profusely. But you know, playing a sort of fugue with truth and mendacity makes one lose, after a while, one’s grip on reality. My father always warned me against lying where the truth would do; he had early realized that my memory – essential equipment of the liar – was faulty. ‘Moreover,’ he used to say, ‘a lie is a work of art. We sell works of art, we don’t give them away. Eschew falsehood, my son.’ That is why I never lie when selling works of art. Buying them is another matter, of course.

  As I was saying, they asked a lot of rather vague questions, few of them apparently germane to the issue. Mind you, I wasn’t so terribly sure what the point at issue was, so perhaps I wasn’t the best judge. They wanted to know about Hockbottle although they seemed to know more about him than I did. On the other hand, they seemed not to have heard that he was dead; funny, that. I brought Colonel Blucher’s name into the conversation several times – I even tried pronouncing it ‘Blootcher’ – but they didn’t react at all.

  At last, they started stuffing their gear away into the matching briefcases with an air of finality, which warned me that the big question was about to be asked in an offhand, casual way as they rose to go.

  ‘Tell me, Mr Mortdecai,’ said one of them in an offhand, casual way as they rose to go, ‘what did you think of Mrs Krampf?’

  ‘Her heart,’ I said bitterly, ‘is like spittle on the palm that the Tartar slaps – no telling which way it will pitch.’

  ‘That’s very nice, Mr Mortdecai,’ said one, nodding appreciatively, ‘that’s M.P. Shiel, isn’t it? Do I understand that you consider her as being in some way responsible for your present predicament?’

  ‘Of course I do, I’m not a complete bloody idiot. ‘Patsy’ is the word over here, I believe.’

  ‘You could just be mistaken there,’ the other agent said gently. ‘You have no cogent reason for supposing that Mrs Krampf is other than sincere in her feelings toward you; certainly none for supposing that she has set you up.’

  I snarled.

  ‘Mr. Mortdecai, I don’t wish to be impertinent, but may I ask whether you have had a wide experience of women?’

  ‘Some of my best friends are women,’ I snapped, ‘though I certainly wouldn’t want my daughter to marry one of them.’

  ‘I see. Well, I think we need not keep you from your journey any longer, Sir. The sheriff will be told that you did not kill Mr Krampf and since you no longer seem to be a possible embarrassment to Washington we have no further interest in you just now. If we turn out to be wrong we shall, uh, be able to find you, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ I agreed.

  As they crossed the room I rummaged desperately in my poor jumbled brain and picked out the big, knobbly question that hadn’t been asked.

  ‘Who did kill Krampf?’ I asked.

  They paused and looked back at me blankly.

  ‘We don’t have the faintest idea. We came down here to do it ourselves so it doesn’t matter too much.’

  It was a lovely exit line, you must admit.

  ‘Could I have a drop more whisky, Mr Charlie?’

  ‘Yes, of course, Jock, do; it’ll bring the roses back into your cheeks.’

  ‘Ta. Glug, suck. Aarhh. Well, that’s all right then, isn’t it, Mr Charlie?’

  I rounded on him savagely.

  ‘Of course it’s not all right, you sodding idiot, those two goons have every intention of stamping on both of us as soon as we’re well away from here. Look, you think those deputies out there are pigs? Well, they’re bloody suffragettes beside those two mealy-mouthed murderers – these are genuine Presidential trouble-shooters and the trouble is us.’

  ‘I don’t get it. Why di’n’t they shoot us then?’

  ‘Oh Christ Jock, look, would Mr Martland shoot us if he thought it was a good idea?’

  ‘Yeah, ’course.’

  ‘But would he do it in Half Moon Street Police Station in front of all the regular coppers?’

  ‘No, ’course not. Oh, I get it. Ooh.’

  ‘I’m sorry I called you a sodding idiot, Jock.’

  ‘That’s all right, Mr Charlie, you was a bit worked up, I expect.’

  ‘Yes, Jock.’

  The sheriff came in and gave us back the contents of our pockets, including my Banker’s Special. The cartridges were in a separate envelope. He was no longer urbane, he hated us now very much.

  ‘I have been instructed,’ he said, like a man spitting out fishbones, ‘not to book you for the murder you committed yesterday. There is a cab outside and I would like for you to get into it and get out of this county and never come back.’ He shut his eyes very tightly and kept them shut as though hoping to wake up in a different time stream, one in which C. Mortdecai and J. Strapp had never been born.

  We tiptoed out.

  The deputies were in the outer office, standing tall, wearing the mindless sneers of their kind. I walked up close to the larger and nastier of the two.

  ‘Your mother and father only met once,’ I said carefully, ‘and money changed hands. Probably a dime.’

  As we pushed the street door open Jock said, ‘What’s a dime in English money, Mr Charlie?’

  A huge, dishevelled car was quaking and farting at the curb outside. The driver, an evident alcoholic, told us that it was a fine evening and I could not find it in my heart to contradict him. He explained, as we climbed in, that he had another passenger to pick up en route and there she was on the next corner, as sweet and saucy a little wench as you could wish for.

  She sat between us, smoothing her minimal print skirt over her naughty dimpled thighs and smiling up at us like a fallen angel. There’s nothing like a pretty little girl to take a fellow’s mind off his troubles, is there, especially when she looks as though she can be had. She told us that her name was Cinderella Gottschalk and we believed her – I mean, she couldn’t h
ave made it up, could she – and Jock gave her the last drink in the bottle. She said that she declared it was real crazy drinking liquor or words to that effect. She wore her cute little breasts high up under her chin, the way they used to in the ’fifties, you remember. In short, we had become firm friends and were ten miles out of town before a car behind us hit its siren and pulled out alongside. Our driver was giggling as he pulled over to the side and stopped. The official car shrieked to a rocking halt across our bows and out leaped the same two deputies, wearing the same sneers and pointing the same pistols.

  ‘Oh my Gawd,’ said Jock – a phrase I have repeatedly asked him not to use – ‘what now?’

  ‘They probably forgot to ask me where I get my hair done,’ I said bravely. But it wasn’t that. They yanked the door open and addressed our little Southern Belle.

  ‘Parm me, Miss, how old are you?’

  ‘Why, Jed Tuttle,’ she sniggered, ‘you know mah age jest as well as …’

  ‘The age, Cindy,’ he snapped.

  ‘Rising fourteen,’ she simpered, with a coy pout.

  My heart sank.

  ‘All right, you filthy deviates – out!’ said the deputy.

  They didn’t hit us when they got us back to the office, they were going off duty and had no time to spare. They simply bunged us into the Tank.

  ‘See you in the morning,’ they told us, cosily.

  ‘I demand to make a phone call.’

  ‘In the morning, maybe, when you’re sober.’

  They left us there without even saying goodnight.

  The Tank was a cube composed entirely of bars, except for the tiled floor which was covered with a thin crust of old vomit. The only furniture was an open plastic bucket which had not been emptied lately. Several kilowatts of fluorescent lighting poured pitilessly down from the ceiling high above. I could find no adequate words, but Jock rose to the occasion.

  ‘Well, fuck this for a game of darts,’ he said.

  ‘Just so.’

  We went to the corner furthest from the slop pail and propped our weary bodies against the bars. Much later, the night duty deputy appeared – an enormous, elderly fatty with a huge face like a bishop’s bottom, rosy and round and hot. He stood by the Tank and sniffed with a pained expression on his nose.

  ‘Youse stink like a coupla pigs or sompn,’ he said, wagging his great head. ‘Never could figure out how growed-up men could get theirselves in sich a state. I get drunk myself, times, but I don’t get myself all shitten up like pigs or sompn.’

  ‘It isn’t us stinking,’ I said politely, ‘it’s mostly this bucket. Do you think you could take it away?’

  ‘Nope. We got a cleaning lady for them chores and she’s to home by now. Anyways, say I take the bucket away, what you gonna spew into?’

  ‘We don’t want to be sick. We’re not drunk. We’re British diplomats and we protest strongly at this treatment, there’s going to be a big scandal when we get out of here, why don’t you let us make a phone call and do yourself a bit of good?’

  He stroked his great face carefully, all over; it took quite a while.

  ‘Nope,’ he said at last. ‘Have to ask the sheriff and he’s to home by now. He don’t admire to be disturbed at home, ’cept for homicide of white Caucasians.’

  ‘Well, at least give us something to sit on, couldn’t you: I mean, look at the floor – and this suit cost me, ah, four hundred dollars.’

  That fetched him, it was something he could understand. He came closer and studied my apparel carefully. Desperate for his sympathy, I straightened up and pirouetted, arms outstretched.

  ‘Son,’ he said finally, ‘you was robbed. Why, you could buy that same suit in Albuquerque for a hunnerd-eighty-fi’.’

  But he did pass a handful of newspapers through the bars to us before he left, shaking his head. He was one of Nature’s gentlemen, I daresay.

  We spread the papers on the least squamous section of the floor and lay down; the smell was not so bad at ground level. Sleep coshed me mercifully before I could even begin to dread the morrow.

  16

  My first thought was, he lied in every word.

  Childe Roland

  The sun rose like a great, boozy, red face staring into mine. On closer inspection it proved to be a great, boozy, red face staring into mine. It was also smiling stickily.

  ‘Wake up, son,’ the night deputy was saying, ‘you got a visitor – and you got bail!’

  I sprang to my feet and sat down again promptly, squealing at the pain in my kidneys. I let him help me up but Jock managed by himself – he wouldn’t take the time of day from a policeman. Behind the deputy there gangled a long, sad man trying hard to smile out of a mouth designed only for refusing credit. He paid out a few yards of arm with a knobbly hand on the end of it which shook mine unconvincingly. For a moment I thought I recognized him.

  ‘Krampf,’ he said.

  I studied the word but could make nothing of it as a conversational opening. In the end I said, ‘Krampf?’

  ‘Dr Milton Krampf III,’ he agreed.

  ‘Oh, sorry. C. Mortdecai.’

  We let go of each other’s hands but went on mumbling civilities. Meanwhile the night deputy lumbered round me, brushing off bits of nastiness from my suit.

  ‘Piss off,’ I hissed at him finally – a phrase well-adapted to hissing.

  Jock and I needed to wash; Krampf said he would complete the formalities of bail and collect our belongings while we did so. In the washroom I asked Jock whether he had yet recovered the key to the suitcase.

  ‘Christ, Mr Charlie, I only swallowed it dinnertime, di’n’t I, and I haven’t been since then.’

  ‘No, that’s right. I say, you couldn’t sort of try now, could you?’

  ‘No, I couldn’t. I just been thinking about whether I could and I can’t. I expect it’s the change of water, always binds me.’

  ‘Rubbish, Jock, you know you don’t drink water. Did you have much chilli sauce with your hamburgers?’

  ‘What, that hot stuff? Yeah.’

  ‘Oh good.’

  The night deputy was dancing about in agony of apology: it appeared that one of the deputies had taken my pistol with him, so as to drop it off at the forensic laboratory in the morning. This was bad news, for our only other weapon was Jock’s Luger in the suitcase, whose key was, as it were, in petto. He offered to telephone for it but I had no wish to tarry: there was a teleprinter in the outer office and at any moment the British Embassy would be replying to the inquiries which someone must have put in train. The Ambassador had made it clear, you will recall, that the protection of the grand old British flag was not for me and, once repudiated, my diplomatic passport was about as valid as a nine-shilling note.

  Outside, the night was as black as Newgate’s knocker and the rain was crashing down; when it rains in those parts it really puts its heart into the job. We dived into Krampf’s big pale car – with a nice social sense he shunted Jock into the back seat with suitcase. I asked him civilly where he was thinking of taking us.

  ‘Why, I thought you might care to come visit with me a little,’ he said easily. ‘We have this kind of very private summer residence on the Gulf Coast – mine now, I guess – and that’s where the pictures are. Especially the special ones, you know? You’ll want to see them.’

  ‘Oh Christ,’ I thought, ‘that’s all I need. The mad millionaire’s secret hideaway full of hot old masters and cool young mistresses.’

  ‘That will be delightful,’ I said. Then, ‘May I ask you how you contrived to rescue us so opportunely, Dr Krampf?’

  ‘Surely, it was easy. Yesterday I was a pretentious kunstkenner with a rich daddy – in my whole life I have earned maybe a hundred dollars by art history. Today I am a hundred million dollars – give or take a few million which Johanna gets – and that sort of money gets anybody out of jail here. I don’t mean you bribe with it or anything like that, you just have to have it. Oh, I guess you mean how did I come to
be here? That’s easy, too; I flew in about noon to the ranch to arrange about shipping the body, it’ll be on its way as soon as the police are finished with it. Family mausoleum is up in Vermont; good thing it’s summer – in winter the ground gets so hard up there they just sharpen one end and hammer you into the ground, ha, ha.’

  ‘Ha ha,’ I agreed. I never liked my father, either, but I wouldn’t have spoken of him as ‘it’ the day after his death.

  ‘The police at the rancho heard about the Rolls and, uh, the other auto piling up and later they heard you’d been apprehended. Two guys from the FBI or some other Federal setup were there by then and they left soon after, said they were coming on here. I followed as soon as I’d sorted things out, in case they were being stupid. I mean, I knew that a man with your views on Giorgione couldn’t be all bad, ha ha. Yeah, sure I know your work, I read Burlington Magazine every month, it’s essential reading. I mean, for instance, you can’t fully understand the achievement of Mondrian until you understand how Mantegna paved the way for him.’

  I gagged quietly.

  ‘Which reminds me,’ he went on, ‘I believe you were bringing my father a certain canvas; would you like to tell me where it is? I guess it’s mine now?’

  I said I guessed it was. The Spanish Government, of course, probably held a different view, but then they think they own Gibraltar too, don’t they?

  ‘It’s in the Rolls, lined into the soft-top. I’m afraid you’ll have a little difficulty retrieving it but at least it’s safe for the time being, what? Oh, by the way, there’s a little formality at the box office which your father didn’t live to complete.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. Sort of, fifty thousand pounds, really.’

  ‘Isn’t that rather cheap, Mr Mortdecai?’

  ‘Ah, well, you see the chap who actually swiped it has already been paid; the fifty thou is just my own little sort of pourboire.’

  ‘I get it. Well, how and where do you want it? Swiss bank, numbered account, I guess?’