Blotto, Twinks and the Great Road Race

Book 9: Blotto Twinks

by Simon Brett

Genres: International Crime & Mystery

Synopsis

Once again, the plumbing at Tawcester Towers is causing consternation for the Dowager Duchess, so she gives her blessing for Blotto to take part in the Great Road Race in his beloved Lagonda. . .so long as he wins. The first prize of 10,000 pre-War sovereigns will help towards repairing the leaky ancestral home. Blotto elects to take chauffeur Corky Froggett as his spare mechanic, and the team are pitted against Europe's finest in a race that takes them across the Alps to the Colosseum in Rome. Everyone will resort to dastardly deception and fiendish sabotage to ensure Blotto's Lagonda is not the first car over the finishing line. Meanwhile, Twinks is despatched by her mother to the Highlands to paint - and bag herself a wealthy husband, but she's determined not to be left out. . .

Release date: October 24, 2019

Publisher: Constable

Print pages: 320

Sample

‘What do you make of this, Blotto me old trouser leg?’ asked Twinks.

The real name of the questioner was Honoria Lyminster, daughter of the late Duke of Tawcester and sister of the current one. She stood outside the impressive portico of Tawcester Towers, looking, as was her custom, beautiful. Looking beautiful was effortless for Twinks and, because she never had to think about her beauty, it never seemed important to her. Many amorous swains had praised the perfection of her slender frame, the spun silver of her hair, the delicate contours of her cheekbones and the unfathomable azure of her eyes, but few, when expressing their views, had received a more positive response than a girlish giggle and a cry of ‘Don’t talk such toffee!’

That particular morning, under a sky of cloudless blue, she was dressed in a costume of grey silk whose fringe stopped far enough above the knee to reveal a pleasing amount of white-stockinged leg. The only discordant element in her ensemble was the large black umbrella she held above her immaculate coiffure. Though she stood in the sunlight, its black dome shone with recent waterdrops.

‘What’s tickling your troutlings, Twinks me old carpet-beater?’ asked a voice from inside the Tawcester Towers entrance hall.

It belonged to her elder brother, Devereux Lyminster, known by everyone of the appropriate class (and, after all, nobody else mattered) as ‘Blotto’. He was as impossibly handsome as his sister was beautiful. Tall, with the muscular frame of a natural sportsman, this paragon’s eyes did not have quite the intense blue of hers, and in him the white blonde of her hair was darkened to a wheaten thatch. That beneath this opulent crop was an almost total vacuum, and that the passage between his two ears was unimpeded by an excess of grey cells, was of no consequence to a member of the British aristocracy. Wherever his brain may have been, Blotto’s heart was in the right place, and that was the important thing. When it came to situations where ratiocination was required, he knew he could always rely on the vastly superior intellect of his sister.

‘Just pongle out here, Blotters, and you will be lapped around with enlightenment.’

As instructed, he pongled out through the massive front doors on to the stone step, where he immediately became aware that he was being deluged by a stream of water. Without moving from the spot, he looked upwards to see the source of this inundation and was rewarded by a cascade into his eyes. He brought his head down again.

‘So, what do you make of it, Blotters?’ asked Twinks.

‘Erm … It’s raining … ?’ he hazarded, still immobile beneath the shower bath.

‘But it’s not raining on me,’ his sister pointed out. ‘I’m in zing-zing condition out here in the sunshine. So, what do you think’s triggered the trickle?’

‘Erm … A very small cloud … ?’ Blotto hazarded again.

‘Not a bad stab for a solution, Blotters. But in it you have ignored one important detail. If you look up …’ Her brother did so and was rewarded with two more eye-socketsful of water ‘… you will see that the portico has a roof, which no discharge from a cloud could penetrate.’

‘Tickey-Tockey,’ said Blotto, again levelling his head, but not stepping away from the waterspout.

‘So, do you have another explanation, bro?’

‘Erm … A very small cloud that has managed to sneak in under the portico roof … ?’ he hazarded. But he didn’t sound very optimistic about the validity of the suggestion.

‘No. The solution to the conundrum, my old cream sponge, is that the water is not precipitation from the heavens but from a source inside the building.’

‘Good ticket,’ murmured Blotto.

‘And you know what that means?’

Beneath his continuing deluge, he nodded instinctively. Then he owned up and said, ‘No.’

‘It means that there is yet another problem with the Tawcester Towers plumbing.’

‘Oh, broken biscuits!’ And Blotto only said that out loud when things were really serious. Because, short of owning a string of racehorses, there was no more efficient way of pouring away money than trying to keep the Tawcester Towers plumbing in good repair.

‘Incidentally, Blotters …’

‘Yes?’

‘You don’t have to stand under that waterspout all day.’

‘Oh, Tickey-Tockey. No, I suppose I don’t.’

And he moved away from the deluge.

The flow of water in the portico was stemmed by one of the under-footmen, but the repair could by its nature only be temporary. As a famous little Dutch boy found out, there is a finite amount of time that a young man can stop a leak with a part of his body. A more permanent solution would have to be found. A solution that would involve the expenditure of money.

But that was not the immediate concern of Blotto and Twinks. They had plans for the next day.

Blotto wasn’t that keen on London. Most of the things that interested him – cricket, hunting and shooting – were available to him on the Tawcester Towers estate, so he was generally happy to give the old Metrop a miss. But he had acceded to his sister’s wish – he usually did accede to her wishes – that he should drive her up to Town the following day. Twinks had an appointment with her hair-sculptor, Monsieur Patrice of Mayfair, a man whose handiwork could be absorbed at all events of the London season. Even perfection like that realised in the form of Twinks needed occasional maintenance.

The trip from Tawcestershire and back could be achieved inside the day, so Blotto would not face the unwelcome disruption of sleeping in a bed that was not his own. Also, the journey would give him the opportunity to unleash the full power of his beloved blue Lagonda, frightening peasants off the road all the way up to London and back. So, the journey was not completely without its attractions.

Once arrived at the Metropolis, while in Mayfair Twinks had her locks tweaked, titivated and transfigured by Monsieur Patrice, in St James’s her brother could lunch himself indulgently at his club, The Grenadiers, known affectionately to all its members as ‘The Gren’. There he was bound to meet some of his old muffin-toasters from Eton, so the occasion wouldn’t be too shabby. Lunch at The Gren always provided some compensation for those more squalid aspects of London – noise, dirt and people.

And, as soon as he arrived in the Marlborough Bar, having dropped off Twinks, his prognostication proved correct. Hardly had he taken the first sip of club claret when he felt a hand smote upon his shoulder and heard a familiar voice saying, ‘Pippy-pippy, Blotters! How’s the old wagon trundling?’

‘As right as a trivet’s rivet,’ he replied, turning to see the welcoming face of Trumbo McCorquodash. Though while at Eton the two had shared no match-winning stands on the cricket field, they had shared many midnight feasts. This was a custom which, Trumbo’s girth suggested, he had maintained in adult life. His body was so perfectly rotund that his arms, legs and head looked like afterthoughts.

‘What can I get you, me old pudding basin?’ asked Blotto, turning towards the bar.

‘I’m ahead of you,’ said Trumbo. A podgy hand waved towards a magnum of the club champagne on an adjacent table. ‘Swill down the red stuff, Blotters, and get stuck into the bubbles!’

Somehow, while they chewed the fat over hilarious scrapes they had shared at Eton, the contents of the bottle seemed magically to disappear. As they moved from club bar to club dining room, Trumbo ordered a second magnum to see them through lunch. ‘Never drink anything but champagne myself,’ he confided. ‘That’s how I keep my figure.’

There was so obviously no appropriate response to this that Blotto made none. Ordering lunch at The Gren required no great mental effort. Both members knew the menu off by heart, a feat of memory which presented no great difficulty because it offered exactly the kind of food they had eaten all their lives. London’s gentlemen’s clubs had always provided a great social service in helping their members in that difficult transition from schoolboy to adulthood. This they achieved by offering nursery food, much adolescent sniggering and – most important – no women to alleviate the general level of childishness.

With other of his old muffin-toasters, Blotto’s school-day reminiscences would mostly focus on cricket or hunting. But since Trumbo McCorquodash’s only possible role in the game had been usurped by the ball, and his tendency to roll off horses disqualified him from the pursuit of the fox, their conversation homed in on other topics. One unfailing source of mutual interest was the internal combustion engine. Along with his trusty cricket bat and his hunter Mephistopheles, the final part of Blotto’s triptych of adoration was his Lagonda. And Trumbo McCorquodash prided himself on a whole fleet of powerful cars, all of them boasting customised seats to accommodate his considerable bulk.

So, their journey through pea soup, shepherd’s pie with three veg and rice pudding was enlivened by discussion of carburettors, differentials and gear ratios. There was much talk of torque. And, before long, Trumbo got on to the subject of his latest acquisition.

‘Lovely Bentley six-and-a-half-litre. Overhead camshaft, four valves per cylinder – and the single-piece engine block and cylinder head is cast in iron, which of course means … ?’

‘You don’t need a spoffing head gasket!’

‘You’re bong on the nose there, Blotters! You still motor-munching with the Lagonda?’

‘Yes, by Wilberforce! Old girl remains as jammy as a cream tea.’

‘She’d never thrash the Bentley on a straight run, though.’

‘Oh, come on, Trumbo, you’re jiggling my kneecap. A Bentley may have a bit of oomph, but it’s as heavy as a Mark IV tank. Drives rather like one, too, I’ve heard along the birdwire.’

‘You’re pulling my pyjama cord, Blotters! The Bentley’d scrunch the Lag into a used cigarette paper any day.’

‘Trumbo, you’re talking absolute globbins! Two minutes from a standing start, the Lag’d leave the Ben just a dot on the horizon.’

‘A dot on the horizon in front, not behind.’

‘You’re talking through your elbow patch, you old trout-tickler!’

‘Well, come on, Blotters, let’s put it to the bench. Side by side, level start, Lag and Ben, one mile flat. Are you up for the tiddle?’

‘Am I up for the tiddle? Toad-in-the-hole, you’ve got a taker, Trumbo!’

‘Well, I’m gathering up your gauntlet. Name your terms. Where and when?’

‘No point in shuffling round the shrubbery. What’s wrong with now? That magnum of the bubbly stuff has really set me up for a bit of driving. And what say we do the race down Pall Mall?’ Blotto’s rather limited imagination could not envisage a more attractive way of passing an afternoon in London.

‘Ah.’ A shadow crept across Trumbo McCorquodash’s moon face. ‘Bit of a stye in the eye there, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh?’

‘Haven’t got the Ben with me. Came up to the Metrop on the choo-choo.’

‘That’s a bit of a candle-snuffer. Still, no use crying over slopped champers. Have to rebook the fixture. There’s a nice bit of open road on the way back to Tawcester Towers. We could set the stumps up there.’

‘Good ticket. Is it an open stretch?’

‘You bet your knee-hairs it is. We could use both carriageways. Might be a bit of traffic going the other way, but only boddoes like farmers and commercial travellers, so they’ll get out of the way if they know what’s good for them. And if they don’t … well, no skin off our bones.’

‘Sounds a real buzzbanger of an idea, Blotters …’ Excitement spread across Trumbo’s round face as a new thought came to him. ‘Unless of course you fancy putting the motors to the test over a rather longer course …’

Blotto’s fine brow furrowed, as if in thought. ‘Sorry, not on the same page?’

‘I heard recently, from a bunch of ne’er-do-wells I mix with over the nags, about a Great Road Race.’

‘Toad-in-the-hole! What’s that when it’s got its spats on?’

‘Some merry thimble’s setting up a Great Road Race across Europe. Bullies off in Trafalgar Square, then the motors zap down to the South Coast, ferry to France, and from there I gather it’s non-stop through Europe till the chequered flag in Rome!’

‘Sounds a beezer wheeze, Trumbers.’

‘Going to be an international line-up of steering-wheelers. Boddoes from all over the world trying to prove their speedsters are better than ours.’

‘No chance! Not one of those garlic-guzzlers could beat the Lag – or even the Ben, come to that.’

‘If we both do it, Blotters, we can have a private side bet on which one of us finishes first.’

‘Well, we could,’ Blotto conceded, ‘but I’d feel bad about making off with your jingle-jangle.’

‘Huh. I’ll take yours without quibble or qualm. In fact, might be simpler if you write me a cheque right now, because I know it’ll be the Ben that biffs it.’

‘Puddledash! The Lag could coast it with one wheel tied behind its back.’

‘Anyway, whoever does cross the finishing line first won’t be hard up for the odd spondulicks.’

‘Oh?’

‘There’s a lot of golden gravy at stake. In fact, the prize for the winner is ten thousand of the King’s best smackers, to be presented in the form of pre-War sovereigns.’

‘Toad-in-the-hole!’ said Blotto. ‘Where does a boddo sign up?’

There were cliffs and bluffs all over the world which had proved intractable challenges to international rock-climbers, but none was craggier than the features of the Dowager Duchess of Tawcester. When she was in a bad mood, they would have frightened off even the most tenacious of mountain goats.

And she was in a bad mood the following morning in the Blue Morning Room. Its cause was yet again the Tawcester Towers plumbing. Though a rota of under-footmen had been established to stem the flow in the portico with their bodies, she knew that could only be a temporary repair. Since the demise of the feudal system – a development which the Dowager Duchess regarded as an unmitigated disaster – there was a limit to what could be demanded of the servant class. As the poison of Socialism spread, some of them even reckoned that they had rights of their own. All of which meant that money would be needed to provide a more permanent solution to the plumbing problem.

So that morning was not an auspicious time for Blotto to propose an enterprise which would put a further drain on the estate coffers. He was glad Twinks was present to give him moral support. He had summoned his sister from her boudoir, where she had been working on her latest intellectual project, a study of aviation. She was particularly interested in the virtual lift-off machines being developed under the name of ‘helicopters’, and the (literally) groundbreaking work in that field by Jacques and Louis Bréguet, Paul Cornu and Jacob Ellehammer. But, when her brother needed her, Twinks had happily put her research to one side and set off with him towards the Blue Morning Room.

‘A Great Road Race?’ the Dowager Duchess echoed, adding a lavish layer of contempt to his words.

‘Yes, Mater. I heard about it from Trumbo McCorquodash. You remember Trumbo?’

‘Second son of the Earl of Godalming?’

‘You’re bong on the nose there.’

‘Bearing more than a passing resemblance to a barrage balloon?’

‘That’s the Johnny.’

‘If he’s anything like his father, he’s a terrible spendthrift. There wasn’t a tradesman in London he didn’t owe money to. Is the son the same?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid Trumbo can be a little splash-happy with the old jingle-jangle.’

‘Don’t apologise, Blotto,’ his mother boomed. ‘As you should know, debt is the mark of gentleman.’

‘Couldn’t agree more, Mater.’ He smiled, encouraged. ‘So, if you don’t mind me building up a bit of debt, I’m sure my entry into the Great Road Race will be—’

‘I didn’t say that, Blotto. In this household, there will be no excess spending until the plumbing’s fixed!’

‘Oh, but, Ma. . .