The Mortdecai Trilogy (49 page)

‘Jock,’ I said, ‘is there any Pastis in the house?’

‘There’s a bottle of Pernod, same thing innit?’

‘Lay in half a case of Pastis today, please. How are we off for turnips?’

‘Funny you should ask that, Mr Charlie; the old geezer in the garden just planted a row ’smorning. Planted another toad, too. But they won’t be ready for a couple of munce yet.’

‘There should be some of the little French ones in the shops by now. Try the covered market in St Helier, or French Lane. If not, perhaps they can be bought tinned or frozen or dried – I leave it up to you, you understand these back-alleys of the world of retailing – “
nourri dans le sérail, tu en connais les détours
” – but get some by tomorrow night, even if you have to pay cash.’

‘Right. How many?’

‘How do they sell them, do you know? I mean, by weight, d’you suppose, or by the yard or what? What?’

‘By the pound, I reckon.’

‘Well, would you say that a couple of pounds would be a good stiff dose for a consenting adult?’

‘Plenty.’

‘Right, then.’

‘Right, Mr Charlie.’

‘Fascinating though it is,’ said Sam heavily, ‘to see you in your rôle of pantry-man, are you certain that there are not subjects of almost equal importance to be discussed?’

I explained all, but neither he nor George was much mollified. Their earlier doubts about our project were renewed by this talk of ‘leguminous mystification’ (Sam) and ‘awful Romish fellows soaked in absinthe’ (George). I soothed them a bit but they were still restive. Moreover, they had a scheme of their own up their sleeves which they now insisted we should carry into effect concurrently with the Satanic Mass ploy.

‘You see,’ said Sam, ‘we’ve been thinking about the victims as distinct from the witchcraft aspect – in case the latter is by any chance a red herring – and, although three victims is not a very useful number to generalize from, one can draw a few tentative conclusions. First, all three families who’ve suffered are English. This could suggest a hatred for English people generally.’

‘It could also suggest,’ I put in, ‘an
Englishman
who doesn’t fancy Jersey women.’

‘An
Englishman
?’ scoffed George, ‘with all that witch nonsense? Tommyrot.’

‘I thought we were leaving out the witchcraft aspect for the moment.’

‘So we are,’ said Sam, ‘and your point is well taken, if we are to be logical. But to proceed. George and I are both tolerably well off – though not in the class of the millionaire immigrants who seem so to excite the Jersiais’ dislike – but the husband of the last victim, the doctor, is only as rich as a thriving general practice can make him and he has been in Jersey for twenty years, well liked by one and all. However, we are all three in what’s called the middle class so it could be a class-hatred or/and an anti-English thing. Notice I say anti-English not anti-British, because Jersey is probably the loyalest of the Crown’s appanages. Then there’s the age of the victims: they’re all in their thirties. This could well be because we
all happen to have wives in their thirties or it could indicate that the rapist simply likes women of that age. This could suggest again’ – it was choking him to say this, for he was evidently more in the mood for murder than reason – ‘that he actually
likes
a good-looking woman in her prime, in what I shall have to call a fairly normal way; I mean, if he was an assaulter of little girls or old ladies we could be sure that he was really vilely mad, couldn’t we? The last point is that the three victims are all closely grouped on the map, which suggests a pedestrian, don’t you think, or someone who doesn’t dare to use a motor-car – unlike the Beast of Jersey, of course, who is supposed to have driven all over the Island to his, ah, targets.’

‘Or again, a comparative stranger,’ I put in gently, ‘like an Englishman who wasn’t familiar with all the “back doubles”?’

‘Yes,’ Sam said patiently, ‘it could, indeed, suggest that, too.’

George made that noise, usually rendered as ‘Pshaw’, which only those who have served in the Indian Army can make.

‘So George and I, while you were away, drew up a list, as best we could, of good-looking English women, in their thirties, wives of substantial English
rentiers
or professional men, and living within a mile of here. We believe that the total of probable targets comes to no more than seventeen and that we four (I’m including Jock) could set ambushes which would give us almost a twenty-five per cent chance, each night, of being in the right place.’

‘Yes, but how would you convince the rapist, supposing that he is watching the house, that he had a clear field?’

‘Easily,’ said George, the military man taking over from the back-room boffins, ‘so long as we have the cooperation of the, ah, householders.’ (One felt that he had almost said ‘of the civilian population’.) ‘Each of us enters a selected house at the sort of hour when most people are working: say, just before noon – lots of these Jersey workmen spend half the afternoon in pubs, better avoid afternoons. Early in the evening, the husband goes off ostentatiously in his car, loudly saying that he won’t be much later than midnight, while wife waves goodbye at door. Then whichever one of us is on guard continues to lie low in the house or, if there’s good cover outside commanding all entrances, makes his way to the cover. The wife in question potters about downstairs for a bit then goes upstairs, puts light on in bedroom, perhaps shows herself for a moment at bedroom window, then puts out main bedroom lights,
leaving bedside one on, and creeps off to some other room; locks herself in. We lie in wait. Armed.’

‘That sounds perfect,’ I said cautiously. ‘Perfect. Except for a couple of things, if you’ll bear with me.’

Sam sighed boredly; George grunted guardedly.

‘As follows,’ I went on. ‘First, just supposing my half-serious theory that it is an Englishman were right, how could one tell that one was not tipping him one’s hand and, indeed, guarding his very own homestead?’

‘Well, if one must take that seriously, we simply take care not to let any householder under guard on a given evening know which other houses are being guarded.’

‘Good,’ I said, ‘but, better still, let him not know that
any
other houses are under surveillance.’

‘Well, all right, that makes sense, come to think of it.’

‘Second,’ I went on remorselessly, ‘what about our wives while we are out boy-scouting? Johanna is a pretty hand with a pistol but even so, without Jock’s presence, she might be a bit vulnerable, and she’s a natural next target. Sonia may or may not be off the fellow’s list now but, after her horrid experience, she probably wouldn’t much care to be left alone.’

‘Perfectly simple,’ George said impatiently, ‘Sonia gives a bridge party, invites Johanna, couple of extra men, no one leaves until we return.’

I gaped, horror-stricken. I knew not what to say; I could only shoot a piteous glance at Sam.

‘What is uppermost in Charlie’s mind, I fancy,’ said Sam, ‘is that Johanna is really rather in the international league at Bridge – she has partnered Omar Sharif – while Sonia, although she plays with gusto and brio, has this trifling inability to remember what are trumps, and, worse for some reason known only to bridge-players, persists in recanting.’

‘Revoking,’ I said.

‘I dare say you’re right, Charlie.’

George assumed his brigadier-voice; just like Matthew Arnold donning his singing-robe.

‘Look here, Mortdecai, I’d hate to think that you were making difficulties for the
fun
of it but I must say you’re not being exactly constructive in your criticism.’

I cringed a bit; I felt that I had failed the Staff Course at Camberley. Mortdecai would never wear the coveted red tabs on his khaki. ‘RTU’ (Returned to Unit) would follow his name for ever – never ‘psc’ (passed staff-college).

‘Ah,
shit
!’ I thought, as better men have, I’m sure, thought before me, at similar crises in their lives.

‘Well,’ I said aloud, ‘no doubt some other sort of party could be arranged; it’s not something to fuss about, is it?’

‘That’s better.’ George was prepared to give the weedy subaltern another chance. ‘Of
course
there are other kinds of party: there are whist-drives, are there not, and beetle-drives and canasta-evenings; all sorts of things. One can deal with that sort of detail at, ah, the time.’ (Once again, I heard him, almost, say ‘at platoon level’. ‘After all,’ he seemed to be saying ‘what are sergeants
for
?’)

‘Yes, George,’ I said, restraining my impulse to call him ‘Sir’. ‘But my last objection is one that I have raised before. The question of fire-arms. You simple cannot go popping off at people just because they’re rapists.’

‘I can,’ said Sam.

‘So can I,’ said George.

‘Well, I can’t. My .455 has to live chained up in the Pistol Club Armoury; my Banker’s Special and Johanna’s little Savage .28 have to be locked up in bed-side table drawers when we are in and in the safe when we’re out. I’d risk
flourishing
a pistol at a miscreant out-of-doors, I suppose, but if I shot someone, except in clear self-defence against an
armed
miscreant, I’d be in line for a long prison sentence. You men would, probably, be in a slightly better position because you’ve actually suffered from this chap and you’d get the benefit of the “no-jury-would-convict” convention, but I’d look pretty feeble up against a smart barrister explaining that I’d killed a chap because I’d thought he was a chap who’d ravished the wife of a chap I knew, wouldn’t I?’

‘All right,’ said Sam, ‘just don’t shoot to kill. You’re meant to be a first-class pistol-shot, aren’t you? Aim at his legs.’

‘First-class pistol-shots,’ I said, ‘know that to hit a human leg in motion with a pistol is a matter of the merest chance. Moreover, the human frame is extraordinarily perverse about dying. You can plant a bullet in the head and the subject walks away – witness that South African premier a few years ago. You can empty a magazine
of ammunition into his left breast and he spends a few weeks in hospital, inconvenienced only by saw-edged bed-pans. Yet, pop a small-calibre bullet into the fleshy part of his leg and it nicks the femoral artery and he bleeds to death before the ambulance arrives. You get away with manslaughter and count yourself lucky.’

There was a long and sulky silence. Finally Sam said:

‘Argh, go piss up your kilt, Mortdecai.’

‘Certainly,’ I replied stiffly, ‘but I shall require a certain amount of privacy for that. Must you go? Can’t you stay?’

‘Oh, now, look here chaps,’ said George, ‘come
on
. Let’s not get excited about trifles. It’s quite simple and Charlie’s talking perfectly good sense. There’s no reason why he should risk a prison sentence just to oblige his friends.’

His tone made it clear that
he
would do just that, but that he was a true-born Englishman, unlike certain Mortdecais he could name.

‘It’s quite simple,’ he repeated, ‘we all go armed but Charlie carries an empty gun. And a stout stick, or something of that sort. All agreed?’

Sam made the kind of noise you make when you don’t mean ‘no’ but you’re too miffed to say ‘yes’.

I said, ‘Well, now, I’m afraid there’s just one more thing.’

‘Oh, sweet Christ crucified!’ roared Sam. ‘What now?’

I didn’t take offence this time. He had, after all, been through a bad time. But I had to make the point.

‘I’m afraid Jock mustn’t carry his pistol at all. His Lüger is highly illegal and moreover he has
form
.’

‘?’ said George.

‘Done some
porridge
,’ I explained.

‘?’

‘ “Porridge” is a term used by rats of the underworld,’ I said patiently, ‘and it means penal servitude. There is a legend, you see, that if, when eating the wholesome breakfast provided on the last morning of your “stretch”, you do not eat up all your nice porridge, you will be back in durance vile within the year. Any warder will tell you that. Jock has partly-eaten several plates of such porridge at Her Majesty’s expense and if he were to be caught with any kind of firearm at all it would go very hard with him. If he actually shot someone he’d get approximately ninety-nine years: with maximum remission for good behaviour, call it sixty-six. He’d
be a hundred and ten when he got out and would expect me to give him his job back, although he’d almost certainly have forgotten how to make decent tea.’

‘Oh, stop drivelling, Charlie, your point is taken. Jock will be armed with a stout stick. All right?’

‘He has, I believe, a length of lead piping, covered with soft leather.’

‘Or a length of lead piping covered with soft leather. Is that all? Then I suggest we start tonight. Here are four sets of names and addresses. Any preferences?’

Quick as a flash I laid claim to Brisbane House, for Lady Quinn-Philpott has the finest cellar in the North of the Island, and no rapist in his senses would tackle her, for her strength is as the strength of ten, because her soul is pure, you see. Moreover, she has a Dobermann Pinscher. The others made their dispositions, leaving Jock, by default, in charge of a tomato-grower’s bungalow, inhabited by the most rapable wife you can imagine. Indeed, if Johanna ever left me any time for private study I could quite fancy her myself. I suspected that, if the rapist appeared at that bungalow on that night, he would have to ask Jock to move over.

George telephoned hither and thither arranging for our vigils. Sam seemed to be trying to win a wager as to how rapidly he could empty my whisky decanter. I explained to Jock exactly how my sandwich-case was to be filled. Johanna threw one of her rare tantrums when told that she was to spend the evening playing cards with Sonia. Jock had a shower and overhauled, I daresay, his stock of the products of the London Rubber Company – that excellent condominium. At last they all went away and I was free to do some serious thinking on the sofa, with my shoes off and my eyes closed. A heavy luncheon always brings out the philosopher in me.

The evening’s ambuscades were, of course, a complete washout as far as raper-catching was concerned.