The Mortdecai Trilogy by Kyril Bonfiglioli Read Free Book Online Page B

I suppose something on those lines could be worked out,’ he said at last. ‘You realize, of course, that the degree of co-operation expected from you would have to be proportionate to the difficulty of getting you what you ask?’
    ‘Oh yes,’ I replied brightly, ‘you will want me to kill Mr Krampf, won’t you?’
    ‘Yes, that’s right. How did you guess?’
    ‘Well, clearly, now that Hockbottle has been, er, terminated, you can’t possibly leave Krampf alive, knowing what he does, can you? And I may say it’s a bit rough on me because he happens to be a rather good customer of mine.’
    ‘Yes, I know.’
    ‘Yes, I thought you would know by now. Otherwise I probably wouldn’t have mentioned it, ha ha.’
    ‘Ha ha.’
    ‘Anyway, it’s clear that you can’t put any pressure on a chap as rich as Krampf except by killing him. It’s also clear that I can get close to him and that getting me to do it will save your estimates a fortune. Moreover, no one could possibly be as expendable as me from your point of view – and I can scarcely be traced to any official agency. Lastly, if I do it clumsily and get myself into an electric chair you’ve killed both Krampf and me with one gallstone.’
    ‘Well, some of that’s more or less true,’ he said.
    ‘Yes,’ I said.
    Then I sat at my silly little French desk – the one the witty dealer called a
malheur-du-jour
because he paid too much for it – and wrote a list of all the things I wanted Martland to do. It was quite long. His face darkened as he read but he bore it like a little man and tucked the paper carefully in his wallet. I noticed that he was not wearing a shoulder holster after all, but that had not been my first mistake that day by any means.
    The coffee was by now cold and horrid, so I courteously gave him what was left of it. I daresay he didn’t notice. Then he left after a chummy commonplace or two; for a moment I feared he was going to shake my hand again.
    ‘Jock,’ I said, ‘I am going back to bed. Be so kind as to bring me all the London telephone books, a shakerful of cocktails – any sort, let it be a surprise – and several watercress sandwiches made of soft white bread.’
    Bed is the only place for protracted telephoning. It is also excellently suited to reading, sleeping and listening to canaries. It is not at all a good place for sex: sex should take place in armchairs, or in bathrooms, or on lawns which have been brushed but not too recently mown, or on sandy beaches if you happen to have been circumcised. If you are too tired to have intercourse except in bed you are probably too tired anyway and should be husbanding yourstrength. Women are the great advocates of sex in bed because they have bad figures to hide (usually) and cold feet to warm (always). Boys are different, of course. But you probably knew that. I must try not to be didactic.
    After an hour I arose, draped the person in whipcord and hopsack and descended to the kitchen to give the canary one more chance to be civil to me. It was more than civil, almost busting its tiny gut with song, vowing that all would yet be well. I accepted its assurances guardedly.
    Calling for coat and hat I tripped downstairs – I never use the lift on Saturdays, it’s my day for exercise. (Well, I use it going
up
, naturally.)
    The concierge emerged from her lair and gibbered at me: I silenced her with a finger to my lips and significantly raised eyebrows. Never fails. She slunk back, mopping and mowing.
    I walked all the way to Sotheby’s, holding my tummy in nearly the whole time, terribly good for one. There was a picture belonging to me in the sale, a tiny canvas of a Venetian nobleman’s barge with liveried gondoliers and a wonderfully blue sky. I had bought it months before, hoping to persuade myself that it was by Longhi, but my efforts had been in vain so I had put it into Sotheby’s, who had austerely called it ‘Venetian School, XVIII Century.’ I ran it up to the figure