The Mortdecai Trilogy (54 page)

Something was being burned on the altar now, something which gave off a thick, delicious smoke that muddled our thoughts. The rooster was produced and displayed and then certain beastly things happened to it which, in an ordinary time and place, I dare say we shout have prevented. The priest turned round to us, arms raised, his gown now kilted up above his navel to keep it clear of the blood-stains. George turned completely around, his face sunk in his hands. Sam did not move but I could hear him whimpering very quietly, piteously. I am, as I have often pointed out, a mature and sensible man; moreover I had personally copied out the Ritual and knew what was coming – I was a little surprised, therefore, to find that I had crossed the fingers of both my hands.

It cannot have been Eric’s voice which began to bellow Great Salute and Imprecation of
S. Sécaire
: so little a man could never have whooped and bayed in so disgusting a fashion, nor can I believe that the rocks beneath the chapel could have shifted and groaned so hideously as they seemed to. In that thick, stupefying atmosphere, amidst those atavistic animal noises, nothing was real and when Eric seemed to rise some eight inches from the floor my fuddled surprise was only that I had not seen that he was barefooted and had not known that his right foot was horribly deformed. He was stuttering out the list of things which
S. Sécaire
offers to those against whom he is invoked when I saw his face blacken. He fell towards us on his face. His face, when it struck the stone floor, made a sound which I have been trying to forget ever since. It was inches from my shoe. The silk robe was almost up to his armpits; his body was not good to look at. He went on making odd noises – how was I to know that he was dead?

In any case, it was just then that the door burst open and all sorts of Centeniers, Vingteniers, Connétable’s officers, aye and
even members of the dread Paid Police themselves, thronged in and arrested every one of us again and again.

Now, according to my plans, you see, we should have been neatly arrested, charged with breaking and entering, and fined some five bob each the next day, giving enough details to enable the
Jersey Evening Post
to make it known to one and all – and particularly, of course, to the witchmaster rapist chap – that the Mass of St Sécaire had in fact been held, with him as the objective. I had, perhaps rather coyly, not made it perfectly clear to George and Sam that we should probably all have to spend the night in durance vile: that is to say, what you and I call ‘the nick’ – I don’t like to cause people premonitory pain, do you? – and of course they would not, in any case, have agreed to the notion.

As it turned out, neither Sam nor George had really pulled himself together before we arrived at the Cop-shop in Rouge Bouillon, nor did they fully understand that they were to be the involuntary guests of the Deputy Lieutenant and Commander-in-Chief of Jersey until they – we – were issued with two blankets apiece, a cup of cocoa and a capital piece of bread and dripping, which I for one was ready for. Luckily, there were plenty of cells – the tourist season had scarcely begun – so that I had one all to myself and was spared any recriminations which my friends might otherwise, in the heat of the moment, have thought fit to heap upon me. The infinitely kindly policeman-gaoler permitted me to keep my briefcase of pyjamas, sandwiches and Scotch, exacting only a token tribute from the last. I shall not pretend that I slept well but at least I brushed my teeth, unlike some I could name.

Where the dead red leaves of the years lie rotten,
The cold old crimes and the deeds thrown by,
The misconceived and the misbegotten,
I would find a sin to do ere I die,
Sure to dissolve and destroy me all through …

 

The Triumph of Time

 

We who assembled in the Commander’s office at half-past eight the next morning were but a moody crew. George and Sam seemed to be harbouring some petty resentment about the fact that I had had the simple foresight to pack my toothbrush and things. Perhaps, too, they just didn’t like being locked up: there are people like that.

George was stalking up and down, four paces to the left, four to the right, like the captain of a very small ship pacing whatever it is that master-mariners pace. He was snarling a string of names of influential people, all of whom, he made it clear, he was about to telephone, and in the order named. Sam sat in a sort of collapsed lump: like me, he is a lovely talker when he has had his pre-luncheon drinks, but not before, really.

When George had exhausted his mental address-book, the Commander of Detectives cleared his throat in a way that gave the merest hint of smugness.

‘Grave charges,’ he said. ‘Graver, perhaps, than you realize. Certainly graver than we had anticipated. Serious view they’ll take of it. Serious. Unacceptable, you see.’

Sam made a brief reference to the Southern end of the digestive tract, in the plural, then relapsed into his lump.

‘No, no, sir,’ said the C of D, ‘that doesn’t help a bit, not that attitude doesn’t. Constructive is the word. Let’s be constructive. See what we can work out. Least harmful, least publicity, least cost to the taxpayer, eh?’

Sam made a suggestion which might or might not have given pleasure to the average taxpayer.

‘There you are again, you see, sir. Interesting biologically but not what you’d call constructive. Lucky we haven’t got a police stenographer in here, eh?’ The gentle threat floated gently to the ground. Sam grumbled, ‘Sorry’, and George said, ‘Hrrmph’. I said that I wasn’t used to drinking cocoa for breakfast. The C of D produced his whisky bottle in an insulting fashion.

Then he explained to us, with thinly-disguised relish, that we were up an improbably-named creek in a concrete canoe without a paddle and that the kindest thing he could do, before clapping us into his deepest dungeon, was to allow us to make one telephone call each. George’s advocate, the grandest imaginable, kept on saying ‘oh dear, oh dear’, until George slammed the instrument down. Sam’s advocate seemed to be saying ‘oy oy, oy oy’ until Sam told him curtly that he wanted no moaning at the bar.

My own chap is but a mere solicitor and his reaction was crisp. ‘Put the copper on,’ he said, crisply.

Two minutes later the C of D told us, crisply, that it had just occurred to him that he couldn’t hold us until he could think of some better charges and that, if we were prepared to go through a trifling formality at the box-office, we were free to go for the time being.

We went. I was prepared to chat freely on the way home but the others seemed both tacit and mute. I shall never understand people.

At home, Johanna greeted me with her cryptic smile, the one that makes her look like a rich man’s Mona Lisa, and the sisterly sort of kiss with which a wife tells you that she loves you; but. Scorning explanations, I swept off to my dressing-room, leaving instructions that I should be called at twenty minutes before luncheon.

‘Yes, dear,’ she said. She has a gift for words.

In the event it was Jock who aroused me from a hoggish slumber, which had been intermingled with fearful dreams.

‘Chops, Mr Charlie,’ he said, ‘and chips and them little French beans.’

‘You interest me strangely. By the way, Jock, did you make good your escape last night without any, ah, friction?’

‘Escape?’ he sneered. ‘That lot couldn’t catch VD in Port Said.’

‘
Please
, Jock. I wish to enjoy my luncheon.’

‘Yeah. Well, cook’s just turned the chops over so you got about four minutes to get downstairs, I reckon.’

I made it. I remember the chops vividly, they were delicious; so were them little French beans.

The afternoon hummed with telephone calls; I felt like W. B. Yeats in his bee-loud glade. First George, who upbraided me sternly, saying that Sonia had been quite frantic at being left alone all night. (‘Pooh’ is what I mentally said to that.) He was full of plans to import the flower of the English Bar to cow the Royal Court of Jersey.

‘Don’t be so damn silly,’ I said; ‘for one thing, they’d probably have no standing here; for another it would take them years to learn the quirks and quiddities of Jersey law. Leave it alone. Trust your Uncle Charlie.’

‘Now, look here, Mortdecai,’ he began. I explained courteously that I never listened to sentences beginning with those words. He started again, and again I had to interrupt him to explain that, although no great churchgoer, I found blasphemy distasteful. He breathed heavily into the instrument for perhaps half a minute. I felt that I should help him.

‘The weather, I believe, is fine for the time of the year, is it not?’

He hung up. I started the
Times
crossword.

Sam was the next to telephone.

‘Charlie, are you quite insane or do you really know what you’re about? George says you’re talking like a lunatic.’

‘Have I ever let you down?’ I asked simply.

‘Have I ever given you the chance before?’

‘How is Violet?’

‘In complete withdrawal. Diagnosis: not sure. Prognosis: can’t say. Being fed intravenously. Change the subject.’

‘All right. We had chops for luncheon. Come to dinner: Jock is making Aloo Ghosht Bangalore with his own hands.’

‘Charlie, I suppose you realize that if you haven’t got this thing right I may have to disembowel you with my own hands?’

‘Of course. But if I haven’t got it right you may not need to, you see. Come to dinner?’

‘Oh, all right. Eight o’clock?’

‘Come earlier. Let’s get sloshed.’

‘All right.’

Johanna, who had wandered in, said, ‘How nice to have one’s friends in so often.’

‘Tell Jock to put some more potatoes in the curry,’ I said. ‘Dear.’

The next call was the one I was dreading: it was from Jolly Solly my Wonder Solicitor.

‘Ho ho ho!’ he cried happily, rubbing his hands. (He has one of those loudspeaker telephones which leave both hands free – indispensable for confirmed hand-rubbers.) ‘Ho ho! Such an interesting mess as you’re in I never hoped to live to see. Legal history we shall make!’

‘Less chortling and more news,’ I demanded sourly.

‘Ah, yes, well, you’re naturally anxious. By the way, you’ve no aged parents whose grey hairs you might bring down in sorrow to the grave? No? Well, that’s good news, I suppose. The rest is mostly bad. They’re not yet sure how many charges they’ll bring against you, half the clerks in the Attorney-General’s office are working day and night on it, smacking their lips over the dripping roast. The preliminary list of choices is as follows:

‘Breaking and Entering.

‘Acting in a manner likely to cause a breach of the peace.

‘Foul and disgusting language.

‘Obstructing a Police Officer in the execution of his duty.

‘Sacrilege under Section 24 of the Larceny Act of 1914: that carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, bet you didn’t know that, ha ha.

‘Sedition, well, yes, arguable.

‘
Art. I de la Loi pour Empêcher le Mauvais Traitement des Animaux
– that only carries three months. Oh yes, and a £200 fine.

‘
Art. I de la Loi Modifiant le Droit Criminel
(
Sodomie & Bestialité
)
confirmée par Ordre de Sa Majesté en Conseil
, I really do hope
they don’t fix you up for that one: the maximum is life but the
minimum
is three years. Last chap was only deported, but he was potty.

‘Theft of one rooster or cockerel – no, the farmer swears Jock didn’t pay him for it. You might get that reduced to “Taking and Driving Away without Owner’s Permission”, ha ha.

‘Vagrancy. You didn’t have any cash on you, you see.

‘Failure to sign a driving licence.

‘Breach of the Drugs (Prevention of Misuse) (Jersey) Law of 1964 – that depends on what the stuff Fr Tichborne was burning turns out to be.

‘Breach – possibly – of
La Loi sur L’Exercise de la Médecine et Chirurgerie Vétérinaire
.’

I had no time to seek out a looking-glass, nor did I need to: I can say without hesitation that my face was white as any sheet – probably whiter than most.

‘That all?’ I quavered manfully.

‘By no means, Charlie, by no means. I’m afraid that all those can be doubled and redoubled in spades by repeating them with the words “conspiring to” in front of them. Then a number of civil actions would probably lie:

‘Trespass to the chapel and damage thereto.

‘Trespass to the dolmen and damage thereto.

‘Trespass to the Hougue Bie site generally and failure to pay the admission charge.

‘Damages in respect of the rooster or cockerel.

‘They’ll probably think of some more, they’ve hardly started. Then I’m afraid there’s all sorts of sticky possibilities under Ecclesiastical Law – and if that lot brings charges I’d plead guilty outright if I were you: cases in their courts drag out for years and the costs would break you.

‘Just for example, if the Bishopric of Coutances hears about it you could be in bad trouble; the Bishop has something called a Right of Interference in anything concerning a priest criminally.

‘Then there’s a particularly horrid Papal Bull of 1483 which is still in force wherein Pope Sixtus IV protects Jersey churches against all sorts of things with an automatic sentence of “excommunication, anathema, eternal malediction and confiscation of property”. Shouldn’t worry too much about that unless you happen to be a
Papist – the confiscation of property bit wouldn’t hold much water today.’

‘Oh good,’ I said heavily. ‘And
now
have you exhausted all the possibilities? I mean, I’ve heard about the man in New Orleans who’s serving 999 years, but I am no longer a young man, you know.’

‘Well, as a matter of fact, I’m afraid there could be quite a lot more. You see, there’s practically no codified statutory criminal law in Jersey; virtually all offences are Common Law ones. What that means, to the ordinary customer, is that the Attorney–General can prosecute you for anything deemed offensive or anti-social simply by sticking the word “unlawfully” in front of a description of whatever it was that you did and was objected to. Do you follow me?’

I whimpered assent.

‘But let me bring a little sunshine into your life. All domestic motor insurance policies are automatically invalidated when the vehicle is used for an illegal purpose, so they’ll certainly nab George Breakspear for driving uninsured. Yes, I thought that might cheer you up a bit. Oh, and by the way, you’re lucky that your nasty little ceremony didn’t actually succeed in raising up the Devil in person: there’s a foot-and-mouth restriction in force at the moment and they would have got you under the Diseases of Animals Act for transporting a cloven-footed beast without a licence, ha ha.’

‘Yes, ha ha indeed. In the meantime, what do I do?’

‘Wait,’ he said, ‘and pray.’

I hung up.

Neither waiting nor praying is a skill I can boast of. Thinking was what was required – but thinking requires Scotch whisky, as all great thinkers agree and I had, in an idle moment, made an absurd promise to Johanna. The clock stood at ten to three. I turned the hands on to five-past six and rang the bell for Jock. He brought in the life-giving drinks-tray in what I can only call an insubordinate manner and wordlessly corrected the clock.

‘Jock,’ I said as the decanter gurgled, ‘I rather fancy I am in the shit. It’s because of Fr Tichborne dying, you see. Difficult to control the thing now.’

‘Wasn’t his fault, was it?’ said Jock sulkily.

‘Of course not, he was an excellent chap, the soul of courtesy; wouldn’t have dreamed of embarrassing us on purpose. But the fact remains that it’s made everything very difficult. What’s to be done?’

‘Well, kissing goes by favour, dunnit? Specially in Jersey.’

‘I’ve never really known what that means. What do you take it to mean?’

‘Well, say, if the filth’ (by which he meant the CID), ‘is getting a bit too close to you, you ring up one of your mates who was at Borstal with you and he fits the copper up with a corruption rap. Doesn’t matter if it don’t stick: they have to suspend him till it’s investigated and the new bloke they put on your case hasn’t got his contacks, has he, and most of what the first bloke had he kept in his head, didn’t he, so you got a couple of munce to sort things out, see?’

‘I think I see. Goodness. But I suppose it’s the way of the world. I certainly can’t think of anything else. Thank you, Jock.’

I rang up George.

‘George,’ I said in dulcet tones, ‘I really must apologize for my incivility just now. Heat of the moment, you understand. Not myself, eh?’

I accepted his grunt as an acceptance of my apology.

‘It seems to me,’ I went on, ‘that our watchword must be “kissing goes by favour” – we must use our
influence
, bring gentle pressure to bear, don’t you think? For instance, how well do you know the more august chaps in Jersey; were you at Borst … I mean Harrow with any of them? I mean chaps like the chap you rang up from the Police Station yesterday?’

‘Very well indeed, some of them.’

‘Well, there you are then. Ask them to tea, fill them up with
tuck
– hot buttered crumpets, little meat pies, cherry brandy – all the nice things they won’t be allowed to have at home – then remind them of your schooldays together, all those innocent pranks, you know the sort of thing.’

‘I am doing precisely that at this moment. Is there anything else?’