by Simon Brett
‘No,’ her brother agreed gloomily. ‘Any buffalo worth the name would simply turn tail at the sight of her.’ There was a sombre silence, before he went on, ‘And she’s equally determined to see me manacled to Araminta of the silent fs.’
‘Desolation heaped on desolation,’ murmured Twinks.
Now, though deficient in the intellect department, Blotto was as honourable as the day is long (or short, according to the time of year). The interior of his brain was as pure as the driven snow, showing no track-marks of anything as intrusive as a thought. And it had certainly never played host to an unworthy thought.
Until that moment . . . A little-used synapse inside his brain connected two equally underemployed neurons, and the unworthy thought was born.
Someone more used to entertaining unworthy thoughts would have kept quiet about it. Unworthy thoughts are not often voiced, without unwished-for consequences. But to Blotto, the arrival of one was so unprecedented that he immediately shared his unworthy thought with his sister.
‘Just had a stirring amongst the grey cells, Twinks me old gravy boat.’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, my thoughtette was . . . the Earl of Hartlepool has lots of the old jingle-jangle, doesn’t he?’
‘Undoubtedly. But if you think that makes the old ammonite even mildly attractive to me, then—’
‘Rein in the roans a moment, Twinks. Let me finish my round.’ His sister was appropriately silent. ‘So, the Earl’s got the golden gravy trickling out of his ears . . . much more so than the Countess of Lytham St Annes?’
‘Yes. Give that pony a rosette.’
Blotto continued, ‘Which means more of the old spondulicks will come into the Lyminster coffers from your twiddling the reef-knot with the Earl of Hartlepool than will come from my twiddle with Araminta fffrench-Wyndeau?’
‘Still yes.’
‘So, your proposed marriage will bring in more than enough to sort out the Tawcester Towers plumbing?’
‘Yet another yes.’
‘Which means,’ Blotto came triumphantly to his conclusion, ‘if you got twiddled with the Earl of Hartlepool, the plumbing would be sorted – and there would not be any need for me to get twiddled with Araminta fffrench-Wyndeau!’
He knew, from the look on his sister’s face, that he’d gone way beyond the barbed wire. Her eyes drilled through to the core of him and exposed what he now knew to have been an unworthy thought.
He tried, unsuccessfully, to make up the ground he’d lost. ‘Sorry, Twinks me old rhubarb-forcer. Wrong words came out of the old tooth-trap. Meant to say that, to sort out the Tawcester Towers plumbing, only one of us needed to get married, and then was going to suggest that it should be me who made the ultimate sacrilege.’
‘I think you’ll find “sacrifice” is the word you’re looking for, Blotto,’ said his sister coolly. She didn’t berate him any further. She didn’t need to. Blotto knew how far he’d gone outside the rule book and was appropriately chastened.
Deftly, Twinks changed the subject. ‘The Earl of Hartlepool’s plan, so far as I can ascertain from the Mater, is that he and I should get married as soon as possible. And that, as soon as possible after that, I should bear a son and heir to the Hartlepool title and estates . . .’
‘Toad-in-the-hole!’ said Blotto.
‘. . . thus disinheriting Whiffler. Which would be an absolutely horracious thing to happen.’
‘So, what are you going to do, Twinks?’
‘I’m going to find Whiffler and rescue him!’
‘But how, by Denzil, will you manage to do that?’
‘I’ve already got the bloodhounds in full cry. I am certain that the person through whom I will track him down is Pierre Labouze.’ And Twinks quickly brought her brother up to speed with the progress she had made in contacting the impresario.
Her previous gloom had melted away, like a cloud in the face of summer sun. ‘Don’t don your worry-boots, Blotters!’ she announced. ‘We’ll find a way out of these gluepots! We’ll see to it that Whiffler doesn’t get disinherited!’
Blotto didn’t think it was probably the moment to say that the one aim of Giles ‘Whiffler’ Tortington’s life was to get himself disinherited.
12
Devious Plans
‘There’s no way round it, matey. It’s goin’ to happen. So you may as well get used to the idea.’
It was the second visit to Whiffler’s place of incarceration from the clergyman whose face looked as if it had been tenderised with a mallet, and whose sonorous vowels had been born within the environs of Bow Bells.
‘But I don’t want to get married,’ Whiffler complained. ‘Or rather, I do want to get married, but I want to get married to the person I want to get married to.’
Through this tangled syntax, the clergyman – whose name, by the way, was the Revd Jeremiah Enge – got the young man’s drift. ‘Sorry, matey,’ he said, unapologetically. ‘You don’t have any say in the matter.’
‘But aren’t I at least allowed to know the name of the poor greengage who I’ve got to twiddle the reef-knot with?’
‘Not till after the ceremony,’ said the Revd Enge.
‘But that’s inhuman,’ Whiffler protested. ‘It’s the kind of thing that may happen in primitive countries that don’t know any better, but we’re in England, the spoffing cradle of freedom. Forced marriages just don’t happen here.’
‘No? Seem to happen every day with your lot. How much choice does the average toff have about who they end up spliced to? It’s all arranged by the parents, like a deal on the bloomin’ Stock Exchange.’
‘It may look like that, but—’
‘Doesn’t just look like that, it is like that.’
‘But what possible benefit can come from me being saddled with an unknown filly?’
‘Quite a lot of benefit.’
‘Financial benefit?’
‘You betcher. Otherwise, my bosses wouldn’t be goin’ through this whole rigmarole, would they?’
‘And who are your bosses?’
‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’
‘When I was in bed last night,’ said Whiffler, ‘and the two gorillas who’re meant to be guarding me thought I was asleep, I overheard them talking to each other.’
‘Oh, yeah?’
‘And they said a hundred-thousand-pound ransom was demanded for my safe return.’
‘Possibly.’
‘They said it hadn’t been paid.’
‘Maybe not.’
‘Well, I can assure you it never will be paid. My Aged P’s never been sentimental about me.’
‘So?’
‘So the financial benefits arising from my abduction are already a hundred thousand pounds down.’
‘Yes. No worries, though. That was only, like, a punt. To see if they could get a bit of the old mazuma on account. That was never goin’ to be where the real financial benefit come from.’
‘Well, for the love of strawberries, can you tell me where the “real financial benefit” is going to come from?’
‘Sorry, matey. No can do. Now, about this weddin’ of yours . . . As you probably pieced together, I will be the one actually conductin’ the service. And it has long been the custom that the officiatin’ minister has a few words with the engaged couple, explain’ to them the meanin’ of marriage, the importance of the, like, commitment what they’re takin’ on.’
‘Yes, me old boot-brush, but there’s one thing I’m sure you’ve noticed . . . ?
‘What’s that then?’
‘You talk about the engaged couple, but it can’t have escaped your attention that, apart from you, there is only one other boddo in this room.’
‘I had noticed that, yes,’ said the Revd Enge, with some dignity.
‘Well, shouldn’t you be spouting out your little homilies to my unknown fiancée, as well?’
‘I will speak to the young lady separately,’ came the imperturbable reply. ‘Now, marriage is an hono
urable estate, instituted by God, signifying the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church. It is not by any to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly . . .’
As the Revd Enge droned on, Whiffler could have been back at Eton, listening to the school chaplain. And, as he had done then, he completely tuned out the religious burble and returned to his own thoughts.
But his own thoughts weren’t very cheering ones.
‘A pretty girl,’ said Everard Stoop, in his customary clipped diction, ‘is like a tune.’ He looked appraisingly at Florrie Coster. ‘And beauty, of course, is in the eye of the cigarette holder.’
He had never been a man to worry about using his aphorisms more than once (maybe in the hope that they might, by constant repetition, one day become funny). Anyway, he was completely unaware that Twinks had heard the line before. He was unaware that he had ever seen Twinks before.
She had been worried to find him with Pierre Labouze in the rehearsal room when she arrived, sharp at nine, the following morning. Surely, he would recognise her?
But no. Context is everything, and Everard Stoop had no reason to associate the glacially aristocratic Honoria Lyminster he had encountered in the American Bar at the Savoy with the grubby Cockney specimen called Florrie Coster, with whom he was being presented that morning in Fulham.
‘Florrie,’ said Pierre Labouze, ‘I ’ave been telling Monsieur Stoop a great deal about you.’
‘Oh, yeah?’
‘And ’e would particularly like to ’ear your song.’
‘Which song’s ’at then?’
‘The one I ’eard you singing outside the Pocket Theatre.’
‘Oh, “Kensington Cavalcade”.’
‘Voilà. Do you have the sheet music for it? Émile will accompany you.’
‘Nah. Ain’t got no dots written down. All in me head. But don’t fret yerself. I can sing it unaccompanied, like I did then. Yer ready?’
‘Oui,’ said Pierre Labouze.
And Twinks, in her guise as Florrie Coster, launched into a note-perfect rendition of ‘Kensington Cavalcade’.
At the end, Pierre Labouze could not prevent himself from applauding. Everard Stoop, by contrast, did not move a limb. There was a sour expression on his thin face, as he said, ‘And you claim to have written this song yourself?’
‘’Course Ah done, guv’nor. What, you fink Ah bloomin’ nicked it from someone else?’
‘That is exactly what I’m thinking.’
‘Well, Ah wrote it, all wiv me own fair hand. An’ ’at’s the trufe, pure and simple.’
‘The truth,’ said Everard Stoop, ‘is rarely pure and often extremely complicated.’
‘But you have to admit she is good, she has the talent, non?’ urged Pierre Labouze.
‘The girl has a certain naïve competence, I agree. But if she wrote that song, then I’m the Emperor of China.’ Clearly worried that it was rather better than anything he had ever written, he turned again to Twinks. ‘Tell me, who wrote it really? Was it Nurl Card?’
‘No, it was not Noël Coward,’ she responded in her own icy voice, but before they could notice the lapse, went on, as Florrie, ‘’Ow many times do Ah ’ave to tell yer, Ah wrote the bloomin’ fing mahself! And ’at’s the trufe!’
‘Truth,’ observed Everard Stoop, ‘is stranger than lots of things people make up.’
‘Are you suggestin’ Ah’m makin’ fings up?’
‘To make one suggestion may be regarded as a misfortune; to make—’
‘Never mind this,’ said Pierre Labouze. ‘Her dancing, her singing, it is magnifique, n’est-ce pas?’
‘Yes, yes,’ Everard Stoop responded testily. He never liked being interrupted in mid bon mot.
‘A couple of years in my revues on the West End stage, and then, for our purposes, she will be parfait, non?’
‘She certainly has the potential,’ the writer conceded.
‘So, it is just down to you, Everard, to use your contacts in the right places . . .’
‘Yes, I know, I know. You can rely on me. I will find the right place for her.’ He spoke snappishly, still feeling upstaged by the excellence of ‘Kensington Cavalcade’.
As Honoria Lyminster, Twinks was getting extremely annoyed by being referred to like a commodity. And she reckoned Florrie Coster wouldn’t be exactly chuffed by the treatment either. ‘Could you tell me what the bloomin’ heck you’re on abaht? Yer may not ’ave noticed, but Ah am still ’ere, yer know.’
‘It is not your business,’ said Everard Stoop dismissively.
‘If it concerns mah future, then it certainly is mah flamin’ business!’
‘Oh, don’t be tiresome, you little chit! Someone like you doesn’t know the meaning of the word “business”.’
‘No?’ Then Florrie Coster said, in her best Cockney, ‘Business is the marriage of creativity and enterprise, whose offspring is profit.’
Everard Stoop looked very peeved. The girl wasn’t only better at writing songs than he was, she also came up with better bons mots.
Blotto’s morning started later than his sister’s. Cosseted by his luxurious bed in the Savoy, he had just reached the toe-stretching part of his waking-up process. He was in a blissful haze of indecision, not yet sure whether he had the energy to shave, bathe, dress and go down to eat in the hotel restaurant, or whether he’d just have breakfast sent up to his suite, when the bedside telephone rang.
‘Hello?’ he said blearily into the receiver.
‘This is Inspector Craig Dewar,’ said the familiar voice.
‘Good ticket.’
‘And I wondered if you might have anything for me . . . ?’
‘Ah. Tickey-Tockey.’ There was a silence. ‘What sort of thing?’
‘Information. Didn’t we agree that, if you got any information about the whereabouts of your friend, Giles Tortington, you would share it with me?’
‘Ah. Yes. Beezer. On the same page now. Sorry, bit early. Brain’s still in its jim-jams.’
There was another silence. ‘So?’ said the Inspector.
‘So . . . what?’
‘Have you got any information for me? Have you made any progress with your investigation?’
‘Ah. Right. I read your semaphore, yes. Well, we haven’t got far along the track, I’m afraid.’
‘But you had dinner with Dolly Diller a couple of nights ago. Didn’t you get any information from her?’
‘No, don’t think so. She seemed mostly interested in how much of the old mazuma I’d got – or how much I was likely to inherit.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘No change.’
‘What about your sister? She’s a lot brighter than – I mean, she shares your skills as an investigator. Has she found out anything?’
‘Not enough to fill a bee’s belly-button, I’m afraid.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘Well, she reckons the person who might have the key to unlock the wardrobe is that French boddo, Pierre Labouze.’
‘Oh? But I bet she hasn’t managed to make contact with him? Labouze doesn’t talk to anyone.’
‘That was the message we got on the bush telegraph, yes. But Twinks is as clever as a fox with a new brain, so she’s managed to get him to talk to her.’
‘Oh? How?’
And Blotto explained about his sister’s transformation.
‘So, she’s with Pierre Labouze, as we speak, disguised as a singing-and-dancing flower-seller called Florrie Coster?’
‘You’re right on the right side of right there, Inspector.’
‘Thank you very much, Mr Lyminster. Well, busy life we lead here at Scotland Yard.’
Blotto felt almost sure he heard a chuckle from someone who wasn’t the Inspector at the other end of the line, but all he said was, ‘What about you, me old trombone?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Have you got a juicy gobbet of information for me? Come on, uncage the ferrets.’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Lymins
ter,’ replied Inspector Craig Dewar formally, ‘but I’m afraid it is not Scotland Yard policy to share details of our investigations with amateurs.’
It was the second time Blotto had received the same snub. He couldn’t help feeling, after he’d put the telephone down, that when it came to the matter of sharing information, his relationship with the Inspector was a trifle one-sided.
The house occupied by Madame Clothilde of Mayfair contained four distinct areas. The ground floor was taken up by her salon, where wealthy women were measured and fitted for Hunt Balls, Coronations or royal funerals. On the floor above were the sewing rooms, where the couturier’s designs, for dress-wear and theatrical costumes, were actually made. The basement, as Twinks had found out, was the centre of operations for Madame Clothilde’s disguise and transformation activities. Then the two floors at the top of the house made up the couturier’s private apartment.
And it was there that, since her reunion with Corky Froggett, Madame Clothilde – or Yvette – had spent most of her time.
Though neither participant was in the first flush of youth, their mutual ardour seemed to be undiminished, and their rekindled love made them both feel younger than ever.
‘We will never part, mon chéri,’ said Yvette. ‘Jamais.’
‘“Jammy”?’ the chauffeur echoed. ‘Yes, I’ve always had things jammy.’
They both laughed. It was a private joke that they had shared in France.
‘But, Corkee . . .’ Her way of saying his name never failed to make the few hairs on the front of his shins tingle. ‘Nothing now can stop us from being together for ever.’
‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘except my duty.’
‘Poof,’ she said, as only a Frenchwoman can say ‘poof’. ‘That is what you always said during la guerre. But now la guerre is over. You have no duty to anyone now, Corkee, except to little moi.’
The chauffeur did not think it was the moment to tell her that all other loyalties in his life would have to give way to the loyalty he felt to the Lyminster family and, particularly, to his young master. He knew that you had to ration truth when in the company of women.
The first item on that morning’s agenda for the Eradication of Ghastly Guns Society committee meeting was ‘Apologies for Absence’. The first item on every English committee meeting’s agenda is always ‘Apologies for Absence’. Some outside observers have been known to comment that it said something about the national character. Would the members of any other nation start with apologies?