Blotto, Twinks and the Ex-King's Daughter

by Simon Brett

  Then, with great ceremony, Twinks had put on her outdoor pale green coat and hat, said goodbye to her mother and brother and set off down to the garages. She had elected to walk because it was another lovely autumn day and she wanted to spend as little time as possible confined in the automobile.

  Corky Froggett was fully prepared for her arrival and welcomed her loudly at the gate of the garage which contained the day’s Rolls-Royce. ‘All ready to go up to London, milady? It’s a very nice day for going up to London. I’m sure you’ll have a great time in London.’ This emphasis was for the benefit of the two Mitteleuropian chauffeurs who were in earshot, polishing the silver bonnets of the gleaming Frimmelstopf roadsters, whose tops were down and whose leather upholstery was warming quietly in the autumn sun.

  ‘Yes, certainly ready for London,’ Twinks agreed, in case the chauffeurs had not yet got the point.

  ‘Then to London we shall go,’ said Corky, and led her into the dark recesses of the garage.

  Two minutes later he was at the wheel of the Rolls-Royce which proceeded regally out on to the driveway. In the back sat a figure dressed in the unmistakable pale green coat and hat of Lady Honoria Lyminster. The two Mitteleuropian chauffeurs watched her pass, both thinking disloyally that she was even prettier than ex-Princess Ethelinde.

  At the window of the loft above the garage Twinks, now dressed in a housemaid’s uniform, stood beside her brother watching the outline of the Rolls-Royce diminish down the drive.

  ‘Now listen, Blotto me old gumdrop, we’ve really got to be on our toes. Bogdan Grittelhoff was planning to snatch the ex-Princess as soon as I was off the premises. So far as he’s concerned, I now am. And I think he’ll be getting that message very soon.’ As if to illustrate her words, one of the Mitteleuropian chauffeurs detached himself casually from his Frimmelstopf roadster and set off on his way back to the main house.

  ‘So what we have to do is to watch everyone like hawks. Particularly the Grittelhoff brothers, ex-Princess Ethelinde and the corrupt footman Pottinger.’

  ‘Right you are, Twinks me old muffin, neither of my eyes will be left unpeeled.’ He picked up a pair of binoculars. ‘And through these I’ll be able to see which brother it is. Zoltan’s the one with the duelling scar on his eyebrow, and Bogdan’s got the mole on his earlobe. And I have got this right, haven’t I? Zoltan Grittelhoff is the good brother, so if I see him with ex-Princess Ethelinde, then he’s protecting her, ready to defend her with his life . . .?’

  ‘Well done, Blotto.’

  ‘. . . but if I see Bogdan Grittelhoff, the murderer, with ex-Princess Ethelinde, then I challenge the stencher and stop him in his evil tracks?’

  ‘You’ve ponged it right on the nose.’

  ‘Good ticket.’

  ‘Now you stay up here. The only way Bogdan Grittelhoff is going to get out of Tawcester Towers fast enough to escape pursuit is by using one of those . . .’ Twinks pointed down to the Frimmelstopf roadsters. ‘So if you see Bogdan Grittelhoff go near the cars, you wrap the Lagonda firmly around yourself and give chase. Is it ready?’

  ‘Certainly is. In the other garage underneath us. Corky Froggett’s got the old girl tuned like a Stradi . . . you know, one of those violin romboolies. The Lag’s as keen to get moving as a Derby winner in a horse box.’

  ‘Grandissimo! So, while you watch here, I’ll station myself in the library . . . you know, that alcove where you can see everyone coming and going through the hall. And if I see Bogdan Grittelhoff with ex-Princess Ethelinde, I’ll cling to them like a leech that lost its mother at an early age. Oh, larks! This is going to be fun!’

  ‘Hoopee-doopee, Twinks!’

  She slipped back into the big house unnoticed. There was always quite a turnover of housemaids at Tawcester Towers, so the sight of an unfamiliar face below stairs was no novelty. And above stairs no one noticed housemaids anyway (except, as has been mentioned before, certain brandy-fuelled male guests after dinner).

  To make her cover even more effective, Twinks had taken a leaf out of Harvey’s book and carried a feather duster to present the illusion of purpose in her actions.

  The library alcove which she targeted she had known from childhood. One particular chair gave an unrivalled view of the front door, but allowed the watcher to remain unseen. She had sometimes watched from there when her father’s mistresses used to slip out of the house in the early hours.

  Had the chair not been invisible from the hall, perhaps someone else would have noticed the figure already seated there when Twinks arrived that morning. As it turned out, she was the one who made the discovery.

  He was a man in black, pinned to the chair’s leather upholstery by a dagger through his heart.

  10

  Hot Pursuit

  Blotto was suddenly aware of activity down by the Frimmelstopf roadsters. One of the chauffeurs rose from his seat on the running board, stubbed out his cigarette and stood to attention as his superiors arrived. Blotto focused his binoculars on the approaching couple.

  It was one of the Grittelhoff brothers! With ex-Princess Ethelinde! On the very day for which the kidnap had been planned!

  But concern quickly gave way to reassurance as the binoculars found the tall man’s eyebrow, which was neatly bisected by an old duelling scar. Zoltan, the good brother. And doing his duty as a bodyguard. The man opened the passenger door (and not for the first time Blotto thought how inconvenient it must be for Continentals to have everything in their cars on the wrong side). The ex-Princess was ushered ceremoniously into her seat. She really looked astonishingly pretty, as scrumptious as a cream tea in a Cornish café. In fact, although Blotto was usually immune to any kind of sentimental guff, that morning she put a flutter into his step and a skip into his heart. She had all the innocence of a mayfly landing on a glassy expanse of water, little knowing that there might be a socking great sea-trout lurking just below the surface.

  But at least she was in safe hands. From his eyrie, Blotto heard Zoltan Grittelhoff say, ‘So, to the south coast it is, Your Royal Highness’, and the ex-Princess’s ready smile confirmed that she was under no coercion. The trip in the car was being taken voluntarily. Had she been with Bogdan Grittelhoff, Blotto would have already been down there, challenging the kidnapper to release his prey. But the ex-Princess was in no danger; Zoltan was protecting her. The Mitteleuropian bodyguard sat in the driving seat, waiting while his chauffeur turned the starting handle, and Blotto watched with satisfaction, as the open-topped Frimmelstopf roadster kicked up the gravel on its way to safety, out of the Tawcester Towers estate.

  Zoltan Grittelhoff was doing the prudent thing. He was getting his charge away from danger. Blotto felt relieved. He would only have to take action if he saw Bogdan Grittelhoff or Pottinger setting off in pursuit of Zoltan’s Frimmelstopf roadster.

  He had just reached this comforting conclusion when someone burst into his refuge beneath the rafters.

  Twinks had raised the odd eyebrow as she hurtled through the Tawcester Towers Main Hall on her way back to the garages. Though housemaids with feather dusters were normally invisible to the upper classes, to see one running (except from a brandy-fuelled male guest after dinner) was something of a rarity.

  But Twinks was completely unaware of the effect she was producing. Her only thought was to let her brother know as soon as possible what she had found in the library.

  She erupted into the loft of the garages like an ocean liner pursued by torpedoes. Blotto just had time to register the thought that it was rare to see a housemaid with a feather duster in such a state of agitation, before Twinks shouted out, ‘The flares have been released! Action stations and all hands on deck! The evil Grittelhoff has declared his hand! The balloon’s gone up!’

  ‘Sorry, Twinks,’ said Blotto. ‘I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I’m talking,’ said his sister, ‘about another murder!’

  ‘Oh, biscuits,’ said Blotto, ‘I hope you’re telling me it’s o
nly a servant. I hope you’re not going to say it’s another of these spoffing Mitteleuropians.’

  ‘As it happens, it is not another of what you insist on calling “the spoffing Mitteleuropians”. But it is one of their confederates.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The treacherous footman Pottinger has been impaled by a dagger in the library!’

  ‘Who by?’ asked Blotto. Then, remembering that he had been at Eton, he amended his question to, ‘By whom?’

  ‘It can’t have been anyone other than Bogdan Grittelhoff. The two conspirators must’ve fallen out over their kidnap plans. Bogdan killed Pottinger and is now set on snatching the ex-Princess on his own. Where is the poor girl?’

  ‘On that I can set your mind at rest, Twinks me old muffin. Ex-Princess Ethelinde is in the safe hands of the loyal Zoltan Grittelhoff. He has just taken her off for a drive in one of the Frimmelstopf roadsters. And I must say the young greengage was looking very much as if she had just found out she had a Sunday birthday – not only blithe and bonny, but also distinctly good and gay. No, she’s fine – or she will be so long as we don’t see Bogdan Grittelhoff coming down here, covered in Pottinger’s blood, to get into the other Frimmelstopf roadster and set off in hot pursuit.’

  Even as he spoke, Twinks moved to the window and looked down. True to her brother’s imagining, Bogdan Grittelhoff, his brow knitted in fury, was hurrying towards the remaining Frimmelstopf roadster. To add to the horror, the front of his uniform was liberally daubed with blood (though whether it had actually come from the fatal wounds of Pottinger, whose blood group was extraordinarily rare, even Twinks couldn’t tell . . . well, not at that distance).

  ‘Look, Blotto!’

  ‘Rodents! The bounder’s going after them!’

  As if once again to illustrate Blotto’s words, Bogdan Grittelhoff – who they now thought of as the double murderer – was already swinging the Frimmelstopf roadster’s starting-handle.

  ‘Is the Lag ready?’ asked Twinks urgently.

  ‘Ready as a rare rump on a griddle,’ Blotto replied, as the pair of them clattered down the wooden stairs to the garage below.

  Bogdan Grittelhoff had got a lead on them and was almost out of the Tawcester Towers gates before the Lagonda’s self-starter galvanized the beautiful machine into action. But Blotto was confident. He trusted Corky Froggett’s evaluation of the two cars’ relative merits.

  They were well into the outskirts of Tawsworthy before the Mitteleuropian realized he was being followed. His reaction had a profound effect on that demure little county town. Generations after, stall-holders’ descendants would regale their grandchildren with tales of the great Market Day Race. They would describe how fruit and vegetables had been sent flying in every direction, sheep and cattle been terrified into stampeding by the roar of the competing engines. Tawsworthy Abbey had survived the Dissolution of the Monasteries more or less intact, but the front wing of the Frimmelstopf roadster took a large bite out of one of its flying buttresses. And the statue of St Sexburga, famous for her modesty, had its skirt ripped off by one of the Lagonda’s hub caps.

  In the narrow streets of the town, the Frimmelstopf proved more manoeuvrable that Blotto’s gargantuan machine, and by the time they left the debris of Tawsworthy behind them, Bogdan Grittelhoff had considerably increased his lead.

  But on the open road, the Lagonda flared its metaphorical nostrils, rather as Mephistopheles did at the beginning of a day’s hunting, and started to wolf down the tar-macadam between pursuer and quarry. Blotto and Twinks, the wind rippling through their blond hair and excitement glowing in their cheeks, both looked impossibly handsome.

  They had to slow down as the road took them through Little Grudging, but the other side of the town, the Lagonda really opened up, and its front bumper was soon alongside the driver’s door of the Frimmelstopf, as the cars careered by at well over a hundred miles an hour. Other road users just had to get out of their way, and the roadside fields were littered with the wreckage of hay wains, brewers’ drays and milkmen’s floats which just hadn’t been quick enough to take evasive action.

  ‘Give up, Grittelhoff!’ shouted Blotto. ‘Stop the car and take your medicine, or I’ll have to force you off the road!’

  ‘You cannot stop me, Englishman! I have a duty to perform! And I will use any means to see that it is performed!’

  Suddenly the Mitteleuropian had a gun in his hand.

  ‘Oh, how typical,’ said Blotto. ‘I might have known you wouldn’t fight fair.’

  ‘All is fair in the service of the King!’ cried Bogdan Grittelhoff, as the two cars sped along, and an elderly vicar on a bicycle was sent flying into a field.

  ‘Actually,’ said Twinks, ‘technically the King you serve is not the rightful King, so any duty –’

  But the man with the bloodied front seemed to have no interest at that moment in the niceties of the Mitteleuropian constitutional situation. Instead he sighted along the barrel of his pistol.

  ‘Don’t you dare shoot my sister,’ said Blotto. ‘Shoot me by all means, but don’t let’s bring women into this.’

  Bogdan Grittelhoff grinned wickedly and lowered the aim of his gun. He fired two quick shots into the Lagonda’s front tyre.

  As Blotto fought to control the huge car slithering across the roadway, he had a last sight of the Frimmelstopf’s diminishing backview and heard the triumphant laugh fading in his ears. Soon, as the Lagonda slewed to an uneven halt, the Mitteleuropian and his roadster were out of sight.

  ‘What a slimy stencher,’ said Blotto despondently. ‘He’s dumped us well and truly in the gluepot.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, Twinks me old muffin, that friend Grittelhoff has quit the scene, leaving us with not even a whiff of his cologne. And we have no hope of catching him.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because,’ her brother explained patiently, ‘we are in the middle of the English countryside and, beautiful though that undoubtedly is, it’s not terribly well equipped with telephones. So I’ll have to walk back to Little Grudging to find one in some hotel or something, then ring the Towers and, quite honestly, by the time Corky Froggett has got the message and come out here and changed the wheel . . . well, Bogdan Grittelhoff will have snatched the ex-Princess and be halfway across the Channel with her.’

  ‘Are you saying, Blotto, that you can’t change a wheel yourself?’

  ‘Of course not. That’s not the kind of thing boddos built in the heroic mould like me do. And it wouldn’t be fair on the servant classes if we did. They’d get very vinegared off if we started going round changing wheels for them. They’d lose all sense of purpose.’ A new thought struck him. Well, no, ‘struck’ is probably too speedy a word. Thoughts tended to lumber up to Blotto and nudge him. ‘Why? You’re not telling me that you can change a wheel, are you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Toad-in-the-hole, Twinks, you are modern.’

  It was a matter of moments for her to produce a set of silk overalls from her reticule and envelop her housemaid’s uniform in them, while Blotto removed the spare wheel from its housing. Twinks showed him where to find the Lag’s jack and tool-box (something Corky Froggett had always done for him in the past), and then pointed out to him which implements she needed passing to her.

  Within four minutes the new wheel was on and the old bullet-shredded one chucked into the dicky. Twinks, pristine clean and maid’s uniform unruffled once she’d removed her overalls, whooped, ‘Right, on we go!’

  Blotto stood irresolute beside the Lagonda. ‘You wouldn’t like to drive?’ he asked pathetically.

  The question stopped his sister in her tracks. ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, you seem to do everything else better than me . . .’

  ‘Don’t be a prize cauliflower, Blotto. The only things I do better than you are things that involve intelligence. When it comes to driving . . . or hunting . . . or playing cricket . . . well, they’re really y
our size of pyjamas. There’s no one to touch you.’

  The customary broad beam resettled about Blotto’s godlike features. ‘Thanks, Twinks,’ he said as he resumed his position in the driver’s seat. ‘Now the question is: where has the dastardly Grittelhoff gone?’

  ‘Not too much of a stumper. You overheard Zoltan Grittelhoff say he was taking the ex-Princess to the south coast. Bogdan Grittelhoff’s sole aim is to kidnap the ex-Princess, so to the south coast he will have gone in pursuit of his brother.’

  ‘You know, Twinks, if they put what’s in your brain in bottles, nobody’d be able to afford to buy them.’

  ‘Oh, what guff, Blotto! Come on, get that self-starter self-starting!’

  He did as instructed, and the Lag leapt forward like a puma that’s just drawn a bead on a lackadaisical llama. The route to the south coast was pretty straightforward. The main road led through the towns of Tittling, Tattling, Carping and Prattling, in each of which the residual shock on the faces of bystanders informed them that the Frimmelstopf roadster was only a little way ahead. They were on the right track and, with the thrill of the chase, the Lag went even faster. The autumn afternoon dwindled into evening, as the car ravenously gulped down the miles.

  But it had to screech to a halt when, the clifftops of the south coast almost in view, the road divided. They were just north of the seaside town of Smattering, and the signpost at the junction offered the alternatives of ‘Smattering Beach’ and ‘Smattering Harbour’.

  ‘What do we do now, Twinks?’

  ‘I think we’ll have to ask someone.’