Blotto, Twinks and Riddle of the Sphinx Read online

  Also by Simon Brett

  Blotto, Twinks and the Ex-King’s Daughter

  Blotto, Twinks and the Dead Dowager Duchess

  Blotto, Twinks and the Rodents of the Riviera

  Blotto, Twinks and the Bootlegger’s Moll

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

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  London WC1B 4HP

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the UK by C&R Crime,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd., 2013

  Copyright © Simon Brett, 2013

  The right of Simon Brett to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in

  Publication Data is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-47210-303-1 (hardback)

  ISBN: 978-1-47210-313-0 (ebook)

  Printed and bound in the UK

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Jacket design and illustration by Ken Leeder

  To Tony and Judie

  1

  Money Worries Again!

  ‘I’m frightfully sorry,’ said Blotto, ‘but what do you mean when you say “investments”?’

  Mr Crouptickle looked quizzical. Doing this gave him no problem. He was wearing the kind of pince-nez in which it was virtually impossible not to look quizzical. Their pressure on his nose seemed to have an undue effect, as if they were responsible for squeezing his desiccated frame into his thin black suit. ‘I’m sorry, milord?’

  ‘Well, I’ve heard of “vestments” . . . kind of dresses worn by clerical boddos. Do they wear “investments” too? Or then again I’ve heard of “vests”. Are these “investment” flipmadoodles rather like that?’ asked Blotto.

  Betraying no outward emotion, the Tawcester Towers ‘man of business’ sighed inwardly. This was clearly going to be a long morning.

  He had been summoned to the Blue Morning Room by the Dowager Duchess of Tawcester, and a summons from her might never be ignored. Behind her granite features, the old matriarch appeared to be keeping up with what he was telling them. And there was no doubt that the daughter, Lady Honoria Lyminster, was taking in every word. She really was a stunning young woman, with silver-blonde hair, azure eyes and the kind of angelic figure that made the other angels jealous. Had Mr Crouptickle been of a more elevated class, he would have fallen instantly in love with her – that’s what all the young toffs did. But he knew his place. Mere ‘men of business’ could not aspire to fall in love with members of the aristocracy. The very idea was redolent of the foul whiff of Socialism.

  So two-thirds of his audience was understanding every word he said. But when it came to the Dowager Duchess’s younger son, Lord Devereux Lyminster, known universally to his peers as ‘Blotto’ . . . yes, it was going to be a long morning.

  ‘Are you saying you have never heard the word “investment”, milord?’

  ‘Well, I suppose I am. Certainly doesn’t tickle the old memory glands.’

  ‘An “investment”, sir, is an asset or object that is purchased in the hope that it will generate income or appreciate in the future.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Blotto. But between his thatch of blond hair and dazzling blue eyes the lines of puzzlement remained. ‘Could you spell it out to me a bit more, sort of uncage the ferrets, as it were?’

  ‘Erm . . . Well, milord . . .’ Mr Crouptickle was stumped. He couldn’t think how to make his definition any more clear.

  ‘Perhaps an example might help, Blotto me old pair of sugar tongs,’ said Lady Honoria Lyminster, known universally to her peers as ‘Twinks’, who was ever ready to help her less intellectually gifted brother out of a gluepot. ‘I mean, say you were to buy a racehorse for a couple of thousand guineas . . .’

  Blotto nodded eagerly. At last someone was talking his language.

  ‘And say the nag happened to win a big race . . . the Derby, let’s say . . .’

  Another enthusiastic nod.

  ‘Well, should you wish to sell it thereafter, its value would have considerably increased. Is that clear?’

  The furrows had reappeared on Blotto’s brow. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Why not, me old butter dish?’

  ‘Because if I had a horse that won the Derby, there’s no way I’d sell it for all the nuts in Brazil.’

  ‘No, but say someone less loyal than you were to be the Derby-winner owner . . . and he were to sell it, what then?’

  ‘Well, I’d say he was a bit of a stencher.’

  ‘Maybe, but you do understand the principle that the horse that had been bought for two thousand guineas and subsequently won the Derby had appreciated?’

  ‘What, appreciated winning the Derby?’

  ‘No,’ Twinks continued patiently. ‘Appreciated in value.’ She spelled it out. ‘Was – worth – more – money.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Well, that’s what an investment is. You buy something with a view to making more money when you sell it.’

  ‘Right.’ Blotto nodded slowly. ‘Yes, I’ve caught up with your drift.’ A new thought came to him. ‘So the boddos who’ve got these “investment” wodjermabits, they make a lot of money, do they?’

  ‘Investment,’ said Mr Crouptickle in a tone that was almost testy, ‘is the basis of capitalism.’

  ‘Ah.’ Blotto thought for a moment. ‘What’s “capitalism”?’

  The man of business wearily prepared himself for another explanation, but before he could utter it was interrupted by the foghorn voice of the Dowager Duchess. ‘Blotto doesn’t need to know things like that, Crouptickle.’ (It would never have occurred to Her Grace to address him by anything other than his surname. People of that class of minor professionals – accountants, solicitors, doctors and so on – did not merit the dignity of a ‘Mr’. And the idea that they might possess Christian names was frankly ridiculous.) ‘My son has been brought up in an entirely proper way for someone of his breeding, which means he knows that talking about money is vulgar.’

  ‘Yes, Your Grace,’ said the accountant humbly, just having had his complete raison d’être relegated to the darkest outer circle of unacceptability.

  ‘Proceed, Crouptickle,’ the Dowager Duchess continued, ‘with what you were telling us. And if Blotto doesn’t understand all the details . . . well, it won’t be the first time.’

  Son smiled gratefully at mother. Generous of her to say something so nice about him. Though, as was proper for someone of her class, she had never indulged in any displays of affection – and certainly no physical contact – with her children, the Mater was not, to Blotto’s mind, a bad old kipper.

  ‘Very well.’ The man of business squeezed the pince-nez even tighter on to his thin nose. ‘You will recollect, Your Grace, that some months ago you entrusted me with the disposal of some gold bullion. You did not volunteer me the information as to where it had come from, but—’

  ‘Nor do I intend to volunteer it now,’ snapped the Dowager Duchess. ‘Asking members of the aristocracy where they got their asse
ts from is the absolute depths of bad form.’

  Twinks could not help but agree with her mother on that point. Her studies of history had taught her that the acquisitiveness of the British upper classes knew no limits. Most of their property had derived from a concerted campaign of pillage and exploitation of those too feeble to fight back. And when all the pillage and exploitation had helped the monarch currently in power, that was how most of them had achieved their titles.

  Not that Twinks felt any shadow of guilt about the situation. Though of exceptional intelligence, she knew the boundaries within which sympathy could properly be exercised. The ideas of showing compassion to the lower classes, or of embracing the dangerous concept of equality, did not even enter her extraordinarily pretty head.

  ‘Very well, Your Grace,’ said Mr Crouptickle. ‘So, as I say, you asked me to dispose of this bullion of unknown provenance.’

  Blotto smiled in blissful recollection. He knew the bullion’s provenance, and that knowledge gave him a warm glow of satisfaction. Each gold ingot was stamped: ‘PROPERTY OF US GOVERNMENT’. It had been acquired – Blotto did not know how – by some Mafiosi in Chicago. He had brought it back from the United States in his Lagonda, after escaping the machinations of an evil cattle baron whose ambition had been to marry Blotto off to his daughter. That match was intended to sort out Tawcester Towers’s financial troubles, but the bullion had done the job just as effectively. Without getting Blotto entwined in the coils of matrimony. Beezer result all round, in his view.

  ‘Actually, Mr Crouptickle,’ said Twinks, ‘I’m not sure that I like your usage of the word “dispose”. That implies a rather terminal fate for the bullion . . . whereas all the Mater asked you to do was to invest it.’

  The man of business nodded obsequiously. ‘Indeed, milady. You have made a very accurate summary of the task with which Her Grace entrusted me.’

  ‘Can we get on with this?’ the Dowager Duchess demanded with some testiness. ‘I have summoned you here, Crouptickle, because there’s been some infernal mixup with the bank. The bank that has had the honour of dealing with the Lyminster family affairs for many generations. The little man who bears some title like “manager” has had the impertinence to say that there is no money in the Tawcester Towers account. As a result, a cheque which I sent to my dressmaker has . . . what I believe is called in common parlance . . . bounced. Do you have any explanation for this unhappy state of affairs, Crouptickle?’

  ‘I do,’ the man of business replied gravely.

  ‘Well, it had better be a spoffing good one,’ said Blotto, who found he was taking a personal interest in the bars of precious metal that he had inadvertently smuggled across the Atlantic. ‘We’re talking about Jeroboams full of money here. I mean, that bullion must have been worth its weight in gold.’

  ‘Exactly so, milord.’

  ‘Well, where is it now?’

  ‘It is with the people to whom it was sold . . . or with the people to whom they have sold it on,’ came the unctuous reply from Mr Crouptickle.

  ‘But why was it sold?’ demanded Twinks. ‘Gold has traditionally been a secure and appreciating asset at times of financial instability.’

  When his sister came out with sentences like that, Blotto could only gape admiringly. He gaped admiringly.

  ‘Why in the name of strawberries,’ she went on, ‘did you take it upon yourself to sell the bullion?’

  A smug smile flickered across Mr Crouptickle’s narrow features. ‘I did not take anything upon myself, milady. I know my place. I am a mere functionary. I act only as instructed.’

  ‘So who instructed you to sell the bullion?’

  By way of reply, the man of business’s eyes focused on his employer.

  ‘I told him to do it,’ the Dowager Duchess announced. There was no apology in her tone. Indeed she did not possess a tone that could accommodate apology.

  ‘But why, Mater?’ asked Twinks despairingly.

  ‘I met the Duchess of Dorking at a house party. She assured me that the bottom was about to fall out of the bullion market.’

  ‘What did she base this view on?’

  ‘I have no idea, Twinks. But that’s not the kind of question you ask a chum you’ve been at school with. It wouldn’t be nice.’

  ‘So the Duchess of Dorking told you to sell the bullion?’

  ‘Exactly. And put the proceeds into stocks and shares.’

  Twinks turned her doom-laden face from her mother to Mr Crouptickle. ‘And that’s what you did?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Did you think it was a wise course of action?’

  ‘It is not my place to have an opinion on a matter like that, milady.’

  ‘But you’re an accountant or something, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, milady.’

  ‘So you must have opinions.’

  ‘I may have opinions, but I would not be so presumptuous as to imagine that they were of greater validity than those of your mother.’

  ‘So what happened to the Mater’s investments?’ asked Twinks wearily.

  There was something approximating to satisfaction in Mr Crouptickle’s voice as he replied, ‘The Stock Market Crash, milady.’

  2

  The Search for a Solution

  ‘This really has put the crud in the crumpet,’ observed Blotto. ‘When I brought that bullion back from America, I thought Tawcester Towers’s financial problems were off the gaff for good.’

  ‘So did I,’ agreed Twinks. ‘Whereas now it seems we’re up an even taller gum tree with no ladder.’

  They were sitting in her boudoir. She’d used her newfangled electric kettle to make cocoa for them. They had spent many times together in that room, but rarely in such low spirits.

  ‘And it does actually seem,’ Twinks went on, ‘that the whole clangdumble was the Mater’s fault.’

  Blotto was shocked. ‘I say, rein in the old roans for a moment, old girl. Criticising the Aged P is a bit beyond the barbed wire. Not the gentlemanly thing.’

  ‘In case you hadn’t noticed,’ said Twinks, ‘I’m not a gentleman. I’m a lady.’

  Her brother blushed. Twinks was such a modern girl, talking about things like that. He was vaguely aware that there was a difference between male and female, but it wasn’t something he’d ever heard mentioned out loud.

  ‘Anyway,’ Twinks continued, ‘it doesn’t really matter who was responsible – though there’s no doubt it was in fact the Mater—’

  ‘Now I’m not sure you should say things like—’

  She steamrolled over him. ‘What is important is how we extricate ourselves from this particular treacle tin.’

  Blotto’s expression changed. Worries about criticising the Mater dissipated, to be replaced by a look of benign anticipation. ‘So what are we going to do?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘To extricate ourselves from this particular treacle tin?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What? Oh come on, Twinks, don’t play card tricks on me with this one. We’ve got a problem – and I know in that situation you can always be relied on to have a solution to it, zappety-ping.’

  ‘Well, in this instance I haven’t.’

  Blotto looked closely at his sister, searching for the twinkle in her azure eye. Surely she wasn’t serious? Surely sorting out the current glitch wasn’t beyond the capacity of her grade A brainbox? ‘Are you sniggling me, Twinks?’ he asked.

  ‘No, I’m not. I genuinely haven’t got a mouse squeak of an idea how we’re going to get out of this one.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Blotto. He couldn’t deny a feeling of disappointment. From the nursery onwards, whenever he had encountered a wrinkle in the sunny fabric of his life, his sister had always been there to iron it out.

  There was a long silence. Sister looked as despondent as brother. Blotto decided he must take the initiative to bring a little cheer back into their lives. ‘You know, Twinks me old boot-blacking brush,’ he began, ‘I rece
ntly talked to a common person . . .’

  She looked aghast. ‘How in the name of Denzil did that happen?’

  ‘I was travelling by train.’

  ‘But surely you were in a first-class carriage?’

  ‘Oh, indeed I was. But you’d be amazed by the kind of oikish spongeworms who can afford to travel in first-class carriages these days. You’ll never guess what this fellow I met did for a living . . . ?’

  ‘Amaze me!’

  ‘He was a politician.’

  The anticipated expression of contempt did not form on Twinks’s beautiful face. ‘You mean he was a member of the House of Lords? Because our brother Loofah, the Duke of Tawcester, sometimes attends the Upper—’

  ‘No, this chap was a member of the House of Commons.’

  This time the delayed disgust did flood the fair features. ‘But why on earth did you speak to him, Blotto? Had you been introduced?’

  ‘No, we hadn’t. The boddo just started talking to me.’

  ‘Great whiffling water rats! You mean he initiated conversation with someone he’d never met before?’

  ‘That’s about the volume of it.’

  ‘What a stencher!’

  ‘I was a bit face-flipped, I must say.’

  ‘But what possible reason could the lump of toadspawn have had to talk to you?’

  ‘Apparently the stencher in question is running for Parliament. I think he thought I might be one of his constituents.’

  ‘What, he might get a vote out of you?’

  ‘I think that was his ruse.’

  ‘And does the constituency he’s standing for actually cover Tawcester Towers?’ Although Twinks was widely read in international affairs, it had never occurred to her that anything of interest might be happening in the politics right on her doorstep.

  ‘Apparently so,’ her brother replied.

  She relaxed. ‘Well then, he didn’t have to worry, did he?’

  ‘Sorry? Not on the same page, Twinks me old washboard . . . ?’

  ‘Well, he’s already got your vote. The Lyminster family have voted Tory ever since party politics began. We virtually invented the Tory party.’