Blotto, Twinks and the Dead Dowager Duchess Read online

  ‘Oh . . . er . . . um,’ was all he could say, even though he knew that Laetitia Melmont would regard his inarticulacy as even more proof of his devotion.

  ‘Well, come on, Blotto,’ said Twinks. ‘We’d better put a jumping cracker under it and beard these stenchers in their murdy den.’

  ‘Am I coming with you?’ asked Laetitia.

  ‘No,’ Twinks replied firmly. ‘You stay here, just in case someone comes in, finds you gone and gets a whiff that the Stilton’s iffy. And tuck the end of the chain into the handcuff so that it looks as if you’re still attached to the radiator.’

  ‘Oh, I do want to come with you. The thought of Blotto risking his life for me and me not seeing –’

  ‘You stay here!’ Twinks used the voice with which her mother had stopped the beasts in mid-pounce during her tiger-shooting days. ‘Read your book.’

  Laetitia Melmont looked so downcast that Blotto couldn’t stop himself from asking tenderly, ‘What is it you’re reading, me old gumboil?’

  She looked up at him, her eyes brimming with gratitude. ‘St Thomas Aquinas,’ she replied.

  ‘Ah.’ Blotto nodded. ‘Book about horses.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘“Equine”. Means “to do with horses”. From the Latin. I learned that at school.’

  ‘No, Blotto, it’s –’

  But Laetitia was once again interrupted by Twinks. ‘Come on, Blotto. It’s time for another confrontation with the League of the Crimson Hand!’

  20

  Confrontation at Llanystwyth House

  As Blotto and Twinks crept through the corridors of Llanystwyth House, there was no sign of any guards. Maybe Wellborough Choat was so confident that no one could penetrate his inner sanctum that he had focused all his security effort outside the building. If so, that would be pure creamy éclair for the sleuthing siblings

  To avoid drawing attention to their presence, they didn’t switch on any lights, but of course Twinks had produced from her reticule a small torch whose narrow beam guided them on their way towards the centre of the house. Once again his sister’s sense of direction had Blotto agape with admiration for her.

  One corridor led to another and it was a while before they found their way barred by a door. Twinks put a finger to her lips to anticipate any comment from her brother, then knelt down on the floor to peer through the keyhole into the space beyond. Having gained the information she required, she gestured to Blotto to reverse along the corridor until they were safely out of hearing range from the room ahead.

  ‘It’s a spoffing great dining hall,’ Twinks whispered. ‘All lit up, and two men sitting drinking at one end of a long table. I’ll lay a guinea to a groat that they’re Gerhardt Sachs and Wellborough Choat.’

  ‘Then let’s shift like a pair of cheetahs in spikes and confront the stenchers!’

  ‘No. Let’s check out the lie of the land first.’ Twinks could see the disappointment in her brother’s face. Blotto was a spur-of-the-moment kind of a boddo; he thought planning things usually spoiled the fun. ‘I saw through the keyhole,’ she went on, ‘that there’s a kind of first-floor gallery running round the room. If we can find our way up there, we’re rolling on camomile lawns. We can check up on what those bad tomatoes down there are up to.’

  Reluctantly, Blotto acceded to his sister’s wishes, and with the unfailing accuracy of a homing pigeon, Twinks led the way up some stairs to a small door which opened out on to the gallery she had described.

  The room in which they found themselves was very large, rising up to the full height of the house. The ceiling was a high glass dome. In more clement weather glass panels on this could be opened by a system of pulleys which were attached to cleats on the gallery walls. Down below was a large dining hall, heated by two massive open fires on either side. Over the high mantelpieces of each was fixed a ceremonial display of weapons – swords, daggers, pikes – splaying out from behind a shield bearing the design of three crimson feathers.

  Twinks led her brother along the gallery to the perfect vantage point, above the unoccupied end of the long table, with a good view of the two men hunched together over a brandy bottle. The sheepskin jacket he wore and the leather pilot’s cap and gloves laid on the table beside him suggested that the stockier of the villains was Gerhardt Sachs. By a process of elimination the other one must be Well-borough Choat. He was tall and angular, with the features of a disdainful weasel and the look of a man who’d spent his childhood tearing the wings off robins.

  ‘Shall we edge round the gallery and jump down on them like a couple of synchronized sacks of bricks?’ suggested Blotto in a low whisper.

  Twinks put a finger to her lips. ‘No, let’s find out what we can from up here first.’

  ‘But we’ve got a dead dormouse’s chance of finding out anything from up here.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it, Blotters. I happen to have a very powerful set of binoculars in my reticule.’ And she reached into the aforesaid receptacle to produce the delicate silver instrument. She raised it to her azure eyes and focused on the hands of Gerhardt Sachs.

  ‘Well, this is as easy as a barmaid’s virtue,’ she whispered.

  ‘What do you mean, old pineapple?’

  ‘I can read the letters tattooed on his middle finger from here.’ She memorized the sequence: ‘EOSN’.

  ‘What about the other chap?’

  Twinks shifted the beam of the binoculars to the hands of Wellborough Choat. ‘Stencher’s still wearing gloves,’ she complained.

  ‘Pity we can’t hear what the slimers are saying,’ observed Blotto.

  ‘Oh, but we can. I have the perfect device to help us do that.’

  ‘In your reticule?’

  ‘Of course.’ Twinks produced a small instrument with a long funnel-shaped tube attached to a black box with dials on it. ‘It’s a kind of electric long-range ear trumpet. You focus it like a light-beam and it magnifies the sound.’

  She pointed the wide end towards the two men, set the other to her ear and, after a little judicious twiddling, listened intently. Then she grinned at her brother. ‘Definitely on the right track, Blotto. They’re talking about the League of the Crimson Hand. And the next outrage being planned by the Crimson Thumb.’

  ‘Have they said what it is?’

  ‘No. But it’s going to be the biggest crime they’ve ever committed.’

  ‘The stenchers! So we are going to have to confront them, aren’t we?’ asked Blotto, unable to suppress his excitement at the possible fray ahead.

  ‘Possibly. Just rein in the roans for a moment while I have a little cogitette.’

  As ever, respectful of his sister’s superior brain power, Blotto was patiently silent. After a moment, Twinks announced her plan. ‘Assuming, as seems to be the case, that all the guards are on the outside, I think we should lock the main doors of the house. Then it’ll just be two against two – make the odds a bit more even, what?’

  ‘Uneven,’ Blotto corrected her proudly. ‘Any two people in the world against you and me are getting the wrong end of the sink-plunger, aren’t they, Twinks?’

  She smiled fondly at her brother. ‘What larks!’ she whispered. ‘Larksissimo!’

  ‘Shall I go and lock the doors?’

  ‘No, I’ll do it.’ She didn’t need to remind him of her superior sense of direction. Blotto nodded acquiescence. ‘And don’t fire the starting pistol till I’m back and in my blocks – tickey-tockey?’

  ‘Tickey-tockey, Twinks.’

  After she’d disappeared through the gallery door, though, Blotto began to feel the stirrings of rebellion. He’d never question, when it came to brainwork, that his sister was a few millennia ahead of him, but on the physical stuff he always won the rosette. And, after all, what they were facing wasn’t a big job. Just capturing the two bad tomatoes on the floor below. Blotto would have the advantage of surprise and, given the way they were putting away the brandy, he didn’t think his opponents would be at their shar
pest. It’d save time, too. He imagined the smile of pride on Twinks’s face when she returned to the gallery to find that the next stage of their task had been completed.

  For some time he had been eyeing the ropes designed to open and close the panels of the room’s glass dome, and calculating angles. Though his mathematical skills at Eton had been on a par with all of his other academic achievements (‘Lyminster Minor,’ one school report had read, ‘has yet to provide evidence that he possesses a brain’), when it came to practical problems he could show remarkable acuity.

  His computations complete, Blotto unwound the double ropes he had selected from their cleat and gave them few exploratory tugs to see that they were safely secured above. Then, assessing the requisite lengths for his purposes, he tied the parallel ropes together at two points. He climbed on to the rail of the gallery. Placing his right foot in the lower loop he’d created, and clasping his left hand firmly above the higher knot, he launched himself out into the space below.

  He’d got the distances just perfect. His body swung in an arc across the room, two feet above the floor at the lowest point of his trajectory. As he had anticipated, his first point of contact was the wall above the mantelpiece of the fire opposite. From the display of weapons there, he extracted a heavy broadsword before kicking off on a new course which sent him powering like a wrecking-ball towards the two men at the end of the table.

  Gerhardt Sachs and Wellborough Choat looked up in amazement at the human missile hurtling towards them. As he closed in, Blotto opened his legs to the perfect angle, so that each of the villains received a sole of (rather damp) patent leather dress shoe full in the face.

  The impact was such that both men were sent flying backwards, taking their chairs with them. Gerhardt Sachs lay still, winded or perhaps unconscious, while Well-borough Choat stumbled confusedly to his feet. By the time he was upright, he saw that Blotto had detached himself from the ropes and was standing on the table, wielding the large broadsword which had probably been captured by the Welsh in battle with some Norman Marcher Baron.

  ‘Give yourself up!’ commanded Blotto. ‘Take off your gloves, Wellborough Choat, and show me what you have tattooed on your index finger!’

  Feigning compliance, the tall man fumbled as if removing his gloves, but in fact produced a gun – a double-action Frimmelstopf Derringer. He pointed it up towards his adversary’s chest and pulled the trigger.

  Blotto moved sideways quickly enough to evade the bullet, though he felt it take a chunk of black herringbone wool out of his tailcoat. But Wellborough Choat was already lining up the second shot.

  Remembering his many hours cricket training in the nets, Blotto dropped to one knee and executed the perfect Sweep to Leg. He kept his broadsword blade angled downwards to deflect his primary target, the bullet from the double-action Frimmelstopf Derringer, which ricocheted satisfyingly to bury itself into the table. In the same movement, he straightened the blade so that the flat of it caught Wellborough Choat full on the shoulder and sent him flying to the floor. The villain ended up propped against the wainscot, battered and dazed.

  ‘I thought I told you to wait for me, me old trombone.’ Blotto turned at the sound of his sister’s dry voice behind him.

  She was walking up the hall, not looking as pleased with him as was her custom.

  ‘I just thought –’

  ‘How many times, Blotto, have I told you that thinking isn’t your cut of the joint? I’m the whale of whales when it comes to thinking.’

  ‘Yes, but fair biddles, Twinks me old tea tray. I’m a whale on the violent stuff. And there’s no thinking involved.’

  ‘Blotto, are you advocating the practice of mindless violence?’

  ‘Well, I, er, um . . .’

  ‘Anyway, no time to fritter. I’m going to rescue Laetitia Melmont. You check what’s tattooed on this stencher.’

  ‘Good ticket, Twinks. Do you have a notebook in your reticule?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘To write down the new letters with the other ones.’

  ‘I haven’t written anything down, Blotto. That might be a security risk if my reticule fell into the wrong hands. I’ve memorized the other letters.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Blotto, once again awe-struck by his sister’s superior mental capacity. ‘You must have a spoffing set of filing cabinets in that little brainbox of yours, Twinks.’

  ‘Oh, what guff!’

  ‘Anyway, you want me to do the same? Memorize the letters.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Her brother nodded. ‘Order received and understood, as your swain Jerome Handsomely would put it.’

  Twinks went off to rescue Laetitia Melmont. Blotto’s task was easy. Wellborough Choat was still far too concussed to resist having his index finger checked.

  Blotto read the letters: ‘WELT’. Odd, what on earth can that mean? he asked himself. Part of a shoe, isn’t it? He said the word to himself three or four times, hoping that would imprint the sequence indelibly on his memory. He would have repeated it a few more times, just to be sure, had not his sister come rushing back into the dining hall with a cry of ‘Laetitia’s not there!’

  She took in the scene around her and then demanded, ‘Just a minute. What’s happened to the other bad tomato?’

  Blotto looked with surprise at the spot where Gerhardt Sachs had ended up in a crumpled heap. There was no sign of him. What’s more, his sheepskin jacket, leather cap and gloves had disappeared from the table. The villain must have slipped away while he had been concentrating on Wellborough Choat.

  Blotto and Twinks looked at each other, realization as usual dawning rather quicker on her face than his. ‘He must have got Laetitia!’ she shouted.

  Even as they rushed to the door, through chinks in the curtain came light from the reilluminated airstrip. At the same time they heard the ominous sound of a Frimmelstopf Fliegflügel being started up.

  ‘Oh, broken biscuits!’ said Blotto.

  They turned at a new sound: the front doors of the dining hall being crashed open. The uniformed guards had managed to get inside the house.

  Blotto and Twinks found themselves facing twenty uniformed men with rifles at the ready.

  ‘Larksissimo!’ murmured Twinks.

  ‘Hoopee-doopee!’ murmured Blotto.

  21

  Back to Croydon Aerodrome

  Blotto managed to defeat the twenty uniformed men with rifles who were guarding Llanystwyth House – usual thing, he’d have preferred to have his cricket bat with him, but he wasn’t so dusty with his bare hands – and then escorted his sister through to the garages at the back. There he commandeered a Frimmelstopf roadster and they set off along the narrow lanes of Wales in the direction of Croydon Aerodrome.

  The first few miles were a bit scary, because some of the guards came after them on motor bicycles, but Blotto’s expert driving managed to shake them off – literally, in most cases. A whole lot of motor bicycle and guard debris was found in the valleys of the Black Mountains the following morning.

  Blotto and Twinks didn’t have much opportunity to talk during the pursuit, but they relaxed when it was clear nobody else was following them. The roads were empty as they descended into the little town of Cwmgwynt. Their immediate troubles were, it seemed, over.

  At that moment, however, the Frimmelstopf roadster shuddered to a halt in the town centre, and no amount of efforts on the self-starter from Blotto suggested that its engine would ever start again.

  ‘Murdy Continental workmanship!’ he said eventually, giving the car’s wheel housing a kick of pure frustration.‘These tin toys are not a patch on the Lagonda. Oh, how I wish I had that little breathsapper with me at this moment!’

  ‘Well, you don’t,’ said Twinks, practical as ever. ‘So it’s no use chewing over old cud. We need to shift our shimmies out of this place before the League of the Crimson Hand get the bizz-buzz on what we’ve done and widen the search for us.’

  ‘That’s easy enough
to say, Twinks me old brass doorknocker, but how are we going to get out of this place?’

  They looked around. The first brushstrokes of dawn had been laid over the darkness of the night, and they could see that the town of Cwmgwynt was small and depressed, presumably by being in Wales. The cottages seemed to cling together for comfort. There was an uninviting hotel called The Golden Sheep, some unwelcoming shops and an unamused chapel. Because of the time – by now about half past six in the morning – everything was shut. The only person on the streets was a dispirited-looking milkman, too caught up in his own thoughts even to notice the unusual sight in Cwmgwynt of a couple dressed for dinner at the Savoy.

  ‘Hotels usually either have their own hire cars or know where they can be procured,’ Twinks announced, stepping determinedly towards The Golden Sheep.

  The front door was locked, but she had no hesitation in ringing the Night Bell. Equally she had no hesitation in telling the sleepy porter who opened up for them that she needed him to organize a car ‘and put a jumping cracker under it!’ Nor did hesitation feature in her ordering the porter to wake up the local garage owner and someone to drive them in the hire car to Croydon Aerodrome. Twinks was, basically, born to rule, and, given that she was so aristocratic and beautiful, her inferiors everywhere gloried in being bossed around by her.

  Because of the chauffeur in front, during the long, tedious journey from Cwmgwynt Blotto and Twinks did not dare to speak of the case which they were investigating. Blotto suggested playing some of the guessing games they had played on journeys as children, but after his sister had won the first thirty-four rounds the idea seemed to pall. No opportunities for him to crow, ‘So snubbins to you, Twinks!’

  For the rest of the journey silence hung between them. It was a silence which comprised boredom and, neither could deny, a strong anxiety. Though they were making headway in their investigation of the League of the Crimson Hand, Laetitia Melmont had been abducted once again and they were still far from being the winners of the contest.