‘So, will you take the case? Will you discover what has become of my real brother?’
‘Madam,’ said I, ‘I will. I will be honoured to take on a case for such a notable family as the Perbrights. I will need details, many details. Perhaps we might continue this conversation over dinner tonight.’
‘If you think it would help,’ said Lola.
‘Madam, it is essential. I need as much information as I can get. Tell me, have you ever eaten in a Wimpy Bar?’
23
I don’t know exactly what happened to Lola, or why she did not turn up for dinner at the Wimpy Bar that night, but there must have been a very good reason. Probably to do with her brother, Pongo. But whatever it was, she never mentioned it and I was far too polite to ask.
‘Why Pongo?’ asked my brother the following morning as he and I found ourselves plodding through the snow, bound for the Perbright residence.
‘Why such a foolish name?’ I asked of Andy and Andy nodded in reply. ‘It’s a toff thing. They all have names like that – Pongo and Binky, Berty, Rupert and Rhino.’
‘Rhino?’
‘Rhino, Wainscott, Trowel.’
‘And how come you know so much about toffs?’
‘I know a great many things. I read a lot. I subscribe to Junior Know-All Today magazine. It is a mine of information. And I know all about alchemy, too. Captain Lynch told me all about it. Anything to do with gold and Captain Lynch is on the case.’
‘Perhaps you’ll want his advice on this case.’
We reached a gate. And a big one, too. Before a great big house.
‘We’ll solve this case together,’ I said to Andy. ‘No one else need apply. And I don’t think it’s a real case anyway. I suspect that Lola is suffering from some mental aberration.’
‘She’d have to be if she had dinner with you last night. How did that go, by the way? You came home very early and went straight to bed.’
‘It’s a big house, isn’t it?’ I said, looking up at the big house before us. It rose like a hymn in praise of the banker’s craft. Victorian Gothic, my all-time favourite. There were even some turrets and a kind of black dome affair that might very well have been a camera obscura. ‘I think I’ll be happy here,’ I now said to Andy. ‘When we marry, I’ll probably live here for a while before I get a big house of my own.’
And Andy made laughter-snortings into his gloved hands. And I recognised those gloves and they were mine.
‘Come on,’ I told him. ‘And remember that you’re deaf, dumb and blind, so don’t say anything unless I ask you to.’
‘I’ve been wanting to talk to you about that, because-’
But I was up the path now and at the front door and I rang the bell. Which was an old-fashioned hand-pull jobbie, which rang a distant brass-bell-on-a-springy-thing jobbie, distantly. In the servants’ quarters, most likely.
And at rather a slackened pace, I considered, an underling arrived and opened the front door for us. A doddering manservant he was, somewhat bow-backed and mangy of hair, and dandruff-flaked about the shoulder regions.
‘Mr Lazlo Woodbine and associate,’ I informed this superannuated wretch. ‘Hasten in conveying us to your mistress – we are expected.’
‘You’re being a lot more Sherlock Holmes than Lazlo Woodbine,’ Andy whispered into my ear.
‘I’m more comfortable with it,’ I said. And then I shushed him and made motions towards the manservant.
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said this ancient. ‘Miss Lola-Bonsai is awaiting you in the music room.’
‘Lola-Bonsai,’ I said to Andy. ‘How posh is that? Double-barrelled Christian name.’
‘This manservant smells of cheese,’ whispered Andy as he and I were ushered inside. The entrance hall was well hung with what surely were ancestral portraits – noble men all striking noble poses. Many were battlefield poses. And many of the posers lacked for a limb or two. I drew Andy’s attention to a name plaque attached beneath one of their likenesses. Lord Rhino Wainscott Perbright, it read.
The music room played host to a grand piano and I was sorely tempted to ask whether I might have a little tickle of the ivories. But I considered that it would have been unprofessional to do so. And anyway, I could thrash about on that old Joanna as much as I liked as soon as Lola-Bonsai and I had tied the knot.
There were heavy velvet curtains and these were half-drawn, which lent the room a certain sombreness. A fire blazed well in an ample hearth, though, and an ormolu mantel clock ticked and tocked on the marble mantel shelf. Tick and tock it went, a-ticking our lives away.
Lola was seated at a permanent table. [13] She was playing noughts and crosses with real noughts and she laid these delicately aside and rose to her feet as my brother and I were guided into the room.
‘Thank you, Sacheveral,’ she said to the manservant. ‘Perhaps you would be kind enough to make some coffee for our guests.’
The manservant made some throat-clearing sounds that had a distinct death-rattle quality to them and then shuffled away, never to return. I’d sack him straight away, the moment I moved in, thought I.
‘He’s been in the family for several generations,’ said Lola, smiling at me once again. ‘I’d let him go, but what would become of him?’
I could think of numerous things, all involving a merciful end. ‘He looks after you and your brother,’ I said, ‘Does anyone else live here?’
‘Just myself and that something pretending to be my brother.’
I nodded thoughtfully and then said, ‘Perhaps I might now meet this impostor.’
‘He’s at work in his laboratory. But if we beat loud and long enough at the door, he will eventually let us in.’
‘Lead on then, fair lady,’ said I. And I gestured to Andy that he should stay where he was.
Lola led the way. And I followed Lola. And Andy, in turn, followed me.
Up a broad sweep of carpeted stairs, along a corridor adorned with further ancestral portraits. Up a smaller staircase, along a narrower corridor, up a little itsy-bitsy staircase and into a corridor so narrow that we had to edge along it with our breath held in. And then Lola began beating on a door and shouting for admittance and after a considerable period of this, sounds were heard of bolts being drawn and a narrow door creaked open.
It had about it the narrowness of a floorboard and it required considerable effort to squeeze ourselves into the room that lay beyond. Which thankfully was a spacious room with a high-domed night-dark ceiling.
‘Pongo,’ said Lola-Bonsai. And the strain was evident upon her face as she spoke the name of her brother. ‘Pongo, these gentlemen have come to see you regarding a pressing matter.’
Pongo viewed my brother and me. And I do have to say that I liked the look of Pongo. He looked like an all- right-kind-of-a-cove to me. He was tall and dignified, with dark hair swept back behind his ears and a very natty Clark Gable-style pencil moustache. His features and his person ran to gauntness and this gauntness suited him. His eyes were blue and pale as a dawning sky and these eyes he now fixed upon me. And a slender right hand he extended also.
‘Mr Woodbine?’ said the possibly ersatz Pongo. ‘Mr Lazlo Woodbine? ’
‘Why, yes,’ I replied as I shook on this hand. ‘But how did you know? Did your sister tell you we were coming?’
‘Not a bit of it. I recognised you immediately – the fedora, the trench coat, the way you carry yourself – you are Woodbine. You could be no other.’
‘Well,’ I said. And I grinned, fairly grinned. What an excellent fellow, I thought.
‘And this must be-’ And then he put a finger to his lips. ‘But he does not speak, for he is enigmatic. He is an
