The Mortdecai Trilogy (53 page)

I knew what he was going to ask, of course, but I wasn’t going to help him, was I?

‘I don’t understand how I can help you,’ I said.

‘Well, put it like this. Your lady-wife knows both of the ladies violated in your neighbourhood, right? Well, do you think they might have mentioned anything to her about the assailant’s er, personal details, which they might not have cared to tell their husbands?’

‘I quite fail to follow you,’ I lied.

‘Oh yes you bloody do,’ he snarled. ‘I mean size of male member, whether circumcized, any little peculiarities; things like that.’

‘Oh, I see. Oh dear. Use your phone? Hullo, Johanna? Look …’

‘All right,’ she said after a while, ‘but “yech”.’

‘We don’t say “yech” in the United Kingdom,’ I said, ‘we say “faugh”.’

‘We only say that on the golf-course, but O.K. And I’ll try to do the other thing. It may take some time; I’ll have to have a Cosy Chat with the cow Sonia.’

‘Girl talk,’ I said whimsically.

‘Faugh!’ she said, pronouncing it perfectly.

‘This may take a few minutes,’ I said to the Commander, looking at him meaningfully. He knew what I meant, he hoisted a great 40-oz bottle of some nameless Scotch on to his desk and raised his eyebrows. I inclined a gracious head. He found two tooth-glasses; they looked a little insanitary but Scotch whisky kills all known germs, as every housewife knows.

Johanna rang back about eight fluid ounces later and rattled off her news in a distant and faintly amused voice.

‘That all?’ I asked.

‘What do you want – blue movies?’

‘Good-bye,’ I said.

‘Good-bye,’ she said, ‘and Charlie, remember to brush your teeth tonight, huh?’

I hung up and collected my thoughts.

‘My wife has recollected things that Mrs Davenant said to her shortly after the assault,’ I told the Commander. ‘She has also spoken to Mrs Breakspear and to the doctor’s wife. The evidence appears, on the face of it, to be conflicting. Violet Davenant said “he was huge, like a horse, he hurt me terribly”. Sonia Breakspear describes her assailant as “nothing to write to mother about” and the doctor’s wife says, “I don’t know – do you mean they come in different sizes?” She’s lying, of course; she was a nurse, you see, and all nurses who marry doctors instantly become virgins
ex officio
, it’s an understood thing.’

‘I have heard that,’ he said.

‘But Johanna thinks that if he had been something out of the ordinary in any way she would have said something.’

‘Yes.’

‘As to circumcision, Violet wouldn’t have known what one was talking about, Sonia says it wasn’t relevant, whatever that means, and the doctor’s wife says she thinks “yes”. Doesn’t help us much, does it?’

‘No, not really. Tells us more about the ladies than the rapist, if you follow me, sir.’

We gazed at each other.

‘Just so,’ is what I said in the end. When I left, shortly afterwards, he behaved as though he felt he had made a friend. For my part, I had reservations.

I didn’t have to take a taxi home after all, they lent me a police-car complete with driver. On arrival I offered him a pound note, which he sturdily refused. He wouldn’t take a drink, either; he must have thought that I was a spy from the Promotions Board, bless him. What he would accept, to give to the Police Sports Fund, was a bottle of Cyprus sherry which one of us had inadvertently won in a ‘raffle’ if you know what that is. I felt a pang for whichever athlete won the noxious pottle, but after all, they know the risks when they join the Force, don’t they?

How you deal with the tongue of an ox is as follows: you bid the butcher keep it in his pickle-tub for a fortnight, brushing aside his tearful pleas that it should be taken out after eight days. Then you rinse it lovingly and thrust it into the very smallest casserole that will contain it, packing the interstices with many an onion, carrot and other pot-herb. Cover it with heel-taps of wine, beer, cider and, if your cook will let you, the ripe, rich jelly from the bottom of the dripping-pot. Let it ruminate in the back of your oven until you can bear it no longer; whip it out, transfix it to a chopping-board with a brace of forks and – offer up grateful prayers to Whomever gave tongues to the speechless ox. (You can, of course, let it grow cold, when it will slice more delicately, but you will find that you can eat less of it.)

What I am trying to suggest, in my clumsy way, is that we had hot tongue for dinner, along with deliciously bitter turnip-tops and a
Pomme Duchesse
or two for the look of the thing. Eric and Johanna acquitted themselves nobly but I fancy I was well up amongst the leaders.

Later, sinking back amongst the cushions and the apricot brandy, I detected a jarring note. Jock, clearing away the broken meats, was now wearing a black Jersey or Guernsey, a pair of black slacks, black running-shoes and all the signs of a man who might well be carrying a deadly weapon.

‘What’s this?’ I cried. ‘What’s this? Have you been watching the television again? I’ve told you and
told
you …’

‘We’re going out tonight, Mr Charlie, aren’t we? Going to
chapel
, remember?’

In truth I had quite forgotten. I shall not pretend that the oxtongue turned to ashes in my belly but it certainly started to give signs of discontent with its lot.

‘We’ll have to put it off, Jock; I forgot to get the cockerel.’

‘Me and Farver Eric collected it ’s’afternoon. Lovely bird it is, too, black as your hat.’

I drank all the coffee that was left and bolted the pill which Jock slipped me. Then, as is my wont when attending Satanic Masses in draughty medieval chapels, I packed a few iron rations such as liqueur Scotch, a paper of pheasant sandwiches and a small jar of
Pâté de Lièvre
into a briefcase; adding, after reflection, a pair of coarse warm pyjamas – who knew where I might spend the night? – and, mindful of Johanna’s admonition, a toothbrush and tooth-powder.

We drove to George’s house and collected Sam and him, both of them grumbling and sulking, then off we all sped on a total of eight wheels: Jock and Eric in my Mini, which was to be their get-away vehicle, and the rest of us in George’s large, capable, boring Rover. Just before we left I was kind enough to ask George whether his Rover was licensed, taxed, oiled and possessed of a Roadworthiness Certificate. He looked at me pityingly, of course, but I’m used to that. People are always looking at me pityingly; it’s because they think I’m potty, you see. Off, as I say, we sped through the night towards La Hougue Bie and were soon elaborately lost, which is a surprisingly easy thing to do in Jersey because all the country roads, thanks to something called
La Visite du Branquage
, look exactly the same. Indeed, getting lost in Jersey is one of the few outdoor sports one can enjoy in the colder evenings: it’s tough on petrol but it saves you a fortune in other ways. None of us got very cross except, of course, George. When we finally pitched up at the
site we parked the Rover at a discreet distance; Jock, it seemed, had already secreted the Mini in some furtive backwater which he had previously reconnoitred. We foregathered at the main gate. It really wasn’t worth diddling the padlock: George did a splendid Army-style gate-vault and I, full of stinking pride, followed suit and bruised my belly badly. Sam and Eric, long purged of any competitive spirit, simply crept between the bars. I didn’t see what Jock did, he’s a professional – he simply materialized beside us in the dark.

We huddled together glumly, just inside the gate, while Jock loped off soundlessly into the night, feather-footed as any questing vole, to ascertain that the honest proprietaries of the ossuaries were abed. It seemed a very long time before he reappeared.

‘Sorry, Mr Charlie, but there was this courting couple, see, and I had to put the fear into them, didn’t I? See them off, see?’

‘And are they quite gone now?’

He looked at me miffedly. When Jock sees people off, they stay seen off.

‘Yes, Mr Charlie. Off like bleeding rabbits, him still holding his trousers up, her leaving certain garments behind in a wasteful fashion which I happen to have in my pocket this moment if you wish to check.’

I shuddered delicately, told him I would take his word for it.

Urged by a now surly George and Sam, we made our way over to the great mound itself, that horrid pile of the guts of ages long-gone and never to be one-half comprehended. Jock busied himself briefly with the padlock and chain which guarded the entrance to the underground passage leading to the grave-chamber and disappeared with Eric, my tape-recorder and a plastic bag full of the best toads available. When they emerged we all made our way up the winding path which leads to the chapels crowning the mound. Jock was as good as his word: the lock of the Jerusalem Chapel fell to his bow and spear with no more protest than a subdued clunk.

Eric bustled into the chapel in a business-like way, as one to the manner born. George, Sam and I followed him with different degrees of reticence. The rooster had been fed with raisins soaked in rum by Jock: I wish to make it clear that it was not I who carried it. Eric wasted no time; he dabbed little bits of this and that on the remains of the ancient altar and then spread over it his splendid
corporal. The rest of us huddled, a little sheepishly perhaps, at the back of the tiny chancel – no larger than a bathroom in the better kind of country house. When I say ‘the rest of us’ I exclude Jock, of course, who was lurking somewhere in the shadows of the porch – his favourite place in times of turpitude and quite right too.

Strong though we were of purpose, I suspect that a show of hands, had it been taken at that moment, would have indicated a pretty
nem. con.
desire to return home and forget the whole thing. Except for Eric. He was growing almost visibly, taking on the stature of the craftsman who knows that what he is doing is not a thing that anyone else could do better; the dignity, if you like, of a scientist devising a hydrogen bomb, torn by the knowledge of evil but driven by the compulsion of research and the jackboot of human history.

‘You will now be silent!’ he suddenly said in a voice of such authority that we all stood up straight. He was wearing a long, white
soutane
sort of thing made of heavy silk; the only illumination came from the single candle he had placed on the altar: an ordinary white one, I noticed, and the right way up. Any mumbo-jumbo, it was evident, was not likely to embody the word ‘abracadabra’. The candle lit up only the text of the travesty of the Mass before him and a small but startling patch of the embroidery on the corporal.

He said, or seemed to say, a few sentences under his breath. I did not try to hear, I have troubles of my own. Then, in a high, clear voice, he began to patter out the Introit, with the canting, carneying kind of intonation that old-fashioned Irish priests used to use – and still do for all I know. I dare say Sam may have picked up some of the Latin nastinesses that started to creep into the Ritual but I’m sure they were all Greek to George. I, who had both copied and, later, typed out, the Ritual, was expecting these passages, but nevertheless, on Eric’s lips they seemed to sound nastier every minute. When he came to the part which, in Lord Dunromin’s
MS
, had been filled only with a rectangle of red ink containing the words
Secrets Infâmes
, his voice, startlingly, dropped quite two octaves and in a horrid, bass grunt he began rhythmically to intone a number of names beginning with Ashtaroth, Astarte, Baal, Chemoz – people like that. I am happy to say that I do not remember more than a few of them – and if I did I certainly should not write them down here: I am not a superstitious man but I do not believe in poking sleeping gods in the eye with a sharp stick. I’m sure you understand me.

We three others had all, I suppose, been prepared for a mixture of tedium and embarrassment but it was quite extraordinary how little Eric Tichborne exuded a sort of aura of command – extraordinary, too, how he changed in stature. When his voice returned to the canting, seminary-priest’s whine the inflections seemed to rise and fall in an almost inhuman way which I seemed to have heard before. On the previous night. Coming from my own tape-recorder. I did not like it a bit.

During the particularly tasteless mockery of the
Kyrie Eleison
his voice seemed to be shaking with an emotion which could have been suppressed laughter or, indeed, suppressed tears. Certainly not Pastis. But the strangest thing came afterwards, for his speech seemed to accelerate to a point where he was rattling off words at a speed which one would not have thought the human voice-box capable of. It went on accelerating until it had become the unnerving twitter of – yes – of a tape-recorder played at too fast a speed. This suddenly, inexplicably, broke off and we could hear the agonized rasp of his breathing. This, too, changed, as we watched and listened, and as he bowed and cramped into a spasm apparently asthmatic: wrenching coughs and retchings racked his little frame and, in between, he yelled out bits of Ezekiel: ‘
… young men riding upon horses … there were her breasts pressed … there she bruised the teats of her virginity …
’

George half-rose and looked at me with a question. I shook my head. This was not something to interfere with. Bit by bit the little broken priest re-assembled himself, leaned upon the altar and pursued the increasingly filthy Ritual but more and more as though the words hurt him physically. It was probably an illusion caused by the candle-flame, but it seemed to me that he was being buffeted about by something that could not have been a wind. I stole a glance at the others: George’s face was a mask of disapproval and disgust, his mouth not quite closed. Sam, to my astonishment, displayed a face crumpled up with compassion and, if I was not mistaken, traced with tears.

I don’t know what my own face looked like.

Up at the altar, only his hands clearly visible in the pool of candlelight, Fr Tichborne jerked and swayed as his voice grew ever shriller, more frantic. I did not ask the others, afterwards, what they saw but to my mind the light seemed to thicken. I
became acutely conscious, all of a sudden, of being exactly above the grave-chamber of the dolmen. Through the soles of my feet I seemed to feel a grinding crepitation as though the great slabs of the roof underground were shifting against the slabs of the side-walls. I am very much grown up, mature and not in the least superstitious, but I don’t mind admitting that I wished, just then, that I were young enough to wish that my mother were there, if you take my meaning. Not that she would have helped, of course; she wasn’t that kind of mother.