Blotto, Twinks and the Rodents of the Riviera Page 11

  He looked downwards and detected that, yes, one of the saints looked different from the others. Most were shadowy figures, grey against the prevailing grey of the medieval stonework. But in one niche was a figure outlined in radiant, fuzzy white.

  Blotto had not witnessed a miracle before (if you discount the moment when his mother the Dowager Duchess once mistakenly showed him some affection when he was a baby). And he wasn’t quite sure about the proper reaction to seeing a stone statue come to life and speak. Kneeling down, though, he reckoned must be the minimum requirement.

  But before his knees touched the wooden floor, the magical voice spoke again. ‘Don’t don your worry-boots, Blotto me old tea caddy,’ it said. ‘Just get me out of this fumacious swamphole.’

  ‘Twinks … ?’ asked Blotto, hardly daring to believe that it was really her.

  ‘Yes, of course it’s me, you Grade A poodle! You don’t think I’d let myself be coffinated by a couple of little stenchers like that.’

  ‘But how did you escape?’

  ‘Time enough for that when you’ve extracted me from this gluepot.’

  ‘Tickey-tockey, Twinks. And how am I going to do that?’

  ‘I think it’s going to have to be the old Quasimodo routine, me old pineapple.’

  ‘Quasi—who?’

  Quickly reminding herself that her brother wouldn’t have a clue what she was talking about, Twinks explained, ‘Swinging from the bell-rope.’

  ‘Ah, read your semaphore. Good ticket.’ Blotto was pleased with the idea. He always found physical activity so much easier than the mental kind. With a cry of ‘Hoopee-doopee!’, he launched himself out to snatch at the rope that hung down from the beam supporting Emmanuel. His weight was sufficient for the great bell to let out a strike that seemed to shatter all the ambient air.

  Using the momentum from his leap, Blotto contrived to swing across and grab a jutting cornice of stone on the wall of the tower opposite his sister. Once there, he shifted his grip further down the bell-rope and, kicking off from the stonework, swung across the void to gather Twinks out of her niche and into his arms.

  Emmanuel registered the additional weight by tolling again, twice. How this irregular time-keeping might be interpreted by the wakeful citizens of Paris, Blotto and Twinks neither knew nor cared.

  Thereafter it was a simple matter for brother and sister to shin up the rope to the safety of the wooden gallery.

  ‘So what happened, Twinks me old fish-slice?’ asked Blotto. ‘How did you save yourself?’

  ‘Oh, it was all creamy éclair,’ replied his sister. ‘The trapdoor was obviously set up to get me. I should have been expecting something like that, but I was so keen to retrieve the Ruperts that I wasn’t concentrating. All I knew was that suddenly the floor had vanished beneath my feet.’

  ‘With a view to you ending up as a dollop of plum jam on the cathedral floor?’

  ‘Give that pony a rosette! That’s exactly the fate those murdey midgets had in mind for me. But of course there was no way I was going to let it happen.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Well, fortunately, I’m the kind of girl who never goes anywhere without her reticule. And as I felt myself falling, I reached into it and pulled out my housewife.’

  ‘You kept a housewife in there?’ asked Blotto, astounded. ‘Was this another of the midgets?’

  ‘No, no. I mean “housewife” in the sense of a sewing kit.’

  ‘Oh?’ Blotto had never heard the expression (but then there were quite a lot of other expressions he hadn’t heard either).

  ‘Anyway, me old banana flambé, I always keep in my housewife a reel of extra-strong silk thread … you know, in case a button comes off or I find myself falling from the bell tower of a French cathedral. I permanently have a large loop at the end of the silk and with that I managed, as I fell, to lasso the crozier of the carved bishop in the niche from which you have just rescued me. Easy as a house-maid’s virtue,’ concluded Twinks, rubbing her hands together with satisfaction.

  ‘I knew I shouldn’t have donned my worry-boots about you, Twinks. You always were a Grade A foundation stone.’

  ‘Do me best, Blotters.’ She became businesslike. ‘Anyway, enough of this guff. What we need to do now is take possession of the Ruperts and pongle off as soon as possible back to Tawcester Towers.’

  ‘Hoopee-doopee!’ said Blotto.

  ‘Larksissimo!’ said Twinks.

  They inspected the trapdoor. Though they could pull it back up into position, the latch that was meant to hold it in place had been permanently damaged by whoever had set the booby-trap for Twinks. The wooden floor once again looked intact, but the slightest weight would take the flap down again. So rather than going straight to the Gainsborough and Reynolds, brother and sister edged the long way round three sides of the gallery to rescue the stolen paintings.

  Their view of the top of the spiral staircase was impeded by the huge bulk of Emmanuel when they heard approaching footsteps and voices. Blotto couldn’t understand what was being said.

  ‘They’re speaking French,’ his sister murmured.

  ‘The stenchers!’ he murmured back.

  ‘In fact,’ Twinks went on, ‘I recognize their voices. They’re the Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Sales-Malincourt.’

  ‘Or the Maharajah and Rani of Pranjipur,’ hissed Blotto.

  ‘Exactly.’ Twinks listened. ‘They’re saying they want to get the paintings before they are taken by La Puce.’

  Blotto chuckled softly. ‘Or rather by us,’ he said.

  Brother and sister were by now far enough round the great bell to see the approaching couple, currently disguised as a Catholic priest and a nun. They were far enough round also to see the pair spot the Tawcester Towers paintings and hurry towards them.

  But as soon as the combined weight of the thieves landed on the trapdoor, the inevitable happened. The flap dropped open, the pair vanished and the only thing left of them was the echo of their screams high in the vaulting of Notre-Dame.

  Blotto and Twinks exchanged looks but made no comment as they moved towards their goal. But to their amazement, just as they were almost close enough to touch the paintings, the Gainsborough and the Reynolds rose up in front of them. Candlelight caught on the thin wires by which they had been suspended, and by which they were now being lifted up to the top of the South Tower.

  It was a matter of moments for Blotto to find the narrow staircase that led up to the cathedral’s roof. When he reached it, thin moonlight washed over the night-time Paris that was spread out before him.

  And he could see, moving away from Notre-Dame in a southerly direction, a hot-air balloon, in whose gondola, he felt certain, were stashed the Tawcester Towers’ Gainsborough and Reynolds.

  16

  Back at Les Deux Mangetouts

  Dimpsy Wickett-Coote was rather enjoying herself at Les Deux Mangetouts. She thrived on masculine attention, and on this occasion she was the focus of four men’s interest. Drinking absinthe with her into the small hours were Eugène Blocque, Gaston Tacquelle, Chuck Waggen, Scott Frea and the Marquis of Bluntleigh.

  Now obviously, after their bonding at St Wilhelmina’s, Twinks remained her best friend, but Dimpsy was finding an evening away from her best friend had quite a lot to be said for it. Men, she had always found, lacked imagination and, without actually having the most beautiful woman in the world present, were prepared to find beauty in whoever they happened to be with. Which that evening was her, Dimpsy Wickett-Coote.

  It helped her cause that there were long-standing rivalries between the two Triangulistes, and also between the two American writers. Any woman on whom Eugène Blocque cast a lascivious eye automatically became the object of Gaston Tacquelle’s equally lascivious attentions. Exactly the same competitive spirit dominated the relationship between Chuck Waggen and Scott Frea.

  Only the Marquis of Bluntleigh remained morosely aware of the absence of his beloved Twinks. But four out of five
men paying court to her was, thought Dimpsy, not a bad percentage.

  ‘Perhaps I will return to painting your portrait, Dimpsy,’ said Eugène Blocque, before being overtaken by a bout of coughing. ‘I am sorry, it is the phtisie.’

  Gaston Tacquelle took up the challenge. ‘I will definitely return to painting you, Dimpsy,’ he announced before he too succumbed to the phtisie. ‘And what is more …’ he said when he’d recovered sufficiently to get words out, ‘I am nearer to death than that charlatan, that malade imaginaire, Eugène Blocque.’

  This is very promising, thought Dimpsy. Always a good sign when the two Triangulistes started competitive coughing.

  ‘Just a cotton-picking minute,’ Chuck Waggen interrupted. ‘Your painting stinks. All triangles. What use are they? Dimpsy deserves better. I’ll put her in my next book.’

  ‘No,’ said Scott Frea, picking up the challenge. ‘I’ll put her in my next book.’

  ‘My book will be better than yours.’

  ‘My book will be more sensitive than yours.’

  ‘Being in my book will make Dimpsy famous!’

  ‘Being in my book will make her even more famous!’

  ‘Being in my painting will make her famous!’ asserted Eugène Blocque.

  ‘Being in my painting will make her even more famous!’ asserted Gaston Tacquelle, before both painters collapsed in a mutual bout of coughing.

  ‘And the young mademoiselle’s looks,’ observed a passing waiter, ‘are very close to the Platonic form, as individuated in his Socratic dialogues, of ideal beauty.’

  It was a long time since Dimpsy Wickett-Coote had had such a good evening.

  Twinks sipped champagne in their suite at the Hôtel de Crillon. Neither she nor her brother were any the worse for their adventures in Notre-Dame, but both of them felt an angry sense of failure. To have been so close to retrieving the stolen Ruperts and then to lose them … it was enough to get anyone vinegared off.

  ‘What are we going to do then, Twinks me old toothbrush?’ asked Blotto.

  ‘Well, Blotto me old sock-suspender, let’s just assess how much new information we’ve got.’

  ‘I didn’t know we’d got any,’ said Blotto.

  ‘Oh yes we have, we’ve got jeroboamsful of the stuff.’ Her brother waited patiently, his brain in its customary state of vacancy waiting to be filled. ‘For a start we now know for certain that the Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Sales-Malincourt – or the Maharajah and Rani of Pranjipur – or whoever they really were – were not working alone.’

  ‘How do we know that, Twinks me old trouser turn-up?’

  ‘Because they were coffinated. They’d served their mas-ter’s purpose and he had no further use for them. Also, given that they’re both now plum jam on the floor of Notre-Dame, we know they weren’t the ones who took the paintings away in the hot-air balloon.’

  ‘So who do you think that was?’

  ‘I’d bet a guinea to a groat that they were les rats de Paris.’

  ‘Ah, now I’ve heard of those boddos.’ Slowly the recollection returned to him. ‘Yes, someone told me about them.’

  ‘Who?’

  Blotto suddenly – and for no reason that he could properly explain – felt embarrassed about mentioning Fifi. ‘Oh, just some old chap I met,’ he mumbled.

  ‘And I believe,’ said Twinks, ‘that les rats de Paris are in the pay of someone called La Puce.’

  ‘Yes, she said that too.’

  His sister didn’t pick up on the inconsistency of his informant’s gender, but asked where he’d been when he’d heard les rats de Paris mentioned.

  So Blotto gave her a quick résumé of his evening with Corky Froggett (who was at that moment sleeping off his concussion in his lodgings). The top hat was produced and the two bullet holes in it duly pointed out.

  ‘But they nearly killed you, Blotto!’

  ‘Suppose they did, me old carpet bag.’ He’d rather forgotten that in the evening’s subsequent excitements. He then filled his sister in on what had happened as he left the Folies Bergère.

  ‘So you actually saw les rats de Paris?’

  ‘Certainly did. Did you?’

  ‘No. There wasn’t a sight line from that niche in Notre-Dame. But I’d put my last shred of laddered silk stocking on the fact that they sabotaged that trapdoor. And that they were the ones who took away the Ruperts in the hot-air balloon. Hm, and you say they were very small, Blotters.’

  ‘Yes, midgets really.’

  ‘And there were more than two of them?’

  ‘I only saw two, but Fi—my informant said there were lots of them here in Paris.’

  ‘And all in the pay of La Puce …’ Twinks tapped a contemplative finger on the point of her perfect chin. ‘We need to find out more about La Puce, don’t we?’

  ‘You’re bong on the nose there. How do we do that?’

  A smile irradiated his sister’s countenance. ‘We do what we always do when we’re stuck in a swamphole without a tow-rope.’ She reached across to the telephone and removed the mouthpiece from its stand. ‘We consult Professor Erasmus Holofernes.’

  It took all of Twinks’s considerable feminine charms to persuade the night porter at St Raphael’s College, Oxford, that the Professor would not mind being woken up to talk to her. The don was, the porter explained, very particular about getting his nine hours’ sleep, an essential part of the maintenance routine for his gigantic brain. When, some years before, he’d been woken by a college servant because the room below his was on fire, Professor Holofernes had done his utmost to have the man sacked. It would be more than the porter’s job was worth to …

  But Twinks prevailed, as she always did. The Professor may have vented his fury on the unfortunate porter, but by the time he was through to his caller, he couldn’t have been more charming or more delighted to hear from her.

  ‘What is it, my dear? What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’m in Paris, Razzy. Need some dope on a filth-fingering stencher called La Puce.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Something in the Professor’s voice made her ask, ‘You’ve heard of him?’

  ‘A little. Give me half an hour and I’ll telephone you back with more.’

  Twinks replaced the receiver and smiled serenely at her brother. ‘Soon we’ll know everything there is to know,’ she announced.

  Her mind’s eye pictured the scene at St Raphael’s College. Though Professor Erasmus Holofernes’s room resembled nothing so much as a paper store that had been in the path of a hurricane, his mental filing system could find any document he needed within seconds. His extensive international correspondence brought sackloads of mail to the porter’s lodge every morning. Professor Erasmus Holofernes did basically know everything about everything.

  Blotto and Twinks’s mood had mellowed. Their tantalizing failure to rescue the Ruperts earlier that evening seemed less important now Razzy was on the case. They sipped their champagne in companionable silence.

  It was exactly twenty-eight minutes later that the phone rang. Twinks snatched it up. ‘What’s the bizz-buzz, Razzy?’

  ‘My advice to you, young lady,’ came the reply, ‘is to be extremely careful in any investigations you make into the activities of the one who is known as La Puce. You are dealing with a very dangerous individual.’

  ‘Larksissimo!’ said Twinks.

  ‘He heads a large criminal organization whose tentacles spread into most European countries. He controls this empire through a network of spies, thieves and murderers. These acolytes have different names in the different countries. In France they are known as …’

  He left a dramatic pause, into which Twinks leapt with the words, ‘Les rats de Paris.’

  ‘Exactly so. And he always recruits midgets. This is because in many cities La Puce uses the sewers as thoroughfares for his criminal activity, and the midgets can run through spaces and tunnels that would be difficult for men of normal size.’

  ‘Is La Puce himself also
a midget?’ asked Twinks.

  From the other end of the line Professor Erasmus Holofernes tutted with annoyance. ‘This is a question to which I am afraid I cannot provide an answer. Though much is known about the crimes committed by La Puce, virtually nothing is known about the man himself. It is believed that he operates under the cover of someone whose business affairs are completely above-board. Someone who can infiltrate himself into high society without raising suspicion. Who that person is, though, nobody knows.’

  ‘But do you have any idea where we might find him?’

  ‘On that matter I have some information, but sadly not very much. The crimes of La Puce are very distinctive. They bear, as it were, his imprimatur. And from the concentration of such crimes in a certain area it has over the years been possible to deduce where he is operating. Twelve years ago the concentration was in Vienna. Then Oslo, Frankfurt, Genoa and Seville. In recent months the concentration of his characteristic crimes has been on the French Riviera.’

  ‘Then,’ announced Twinks, with a wink to her brother, ‘it is to the French Riviera that we will go!’

  17

  To the Riviera!

  It was with some relief that Dimpsy Wickett-Coote received the message that had been rung through to Les Deux Mangetouts. Her best friend Twinks would be leaving Paris the following morning on her way to the South of France. The problem of competition for Dimpsy had suddenly disappeared.

  So it was with a broad smile that she passed on the news to the group sipping their illegal absinthe around the table.

  The Marquis of Bluntleigh immediately rose to his feet. ‘I must follow Twinks to the Riviera,’ he announced, and left the café.

  That didn’t worry Dimpsy too much. The Marquis had never made any kind of play for her, so his absence would not present any problems. So long as she’d got four men drooling over her, Dimpsy Wickett-Coote was quite content.