Mister Mottley and the Key of D Read online

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  The next week was the longest of my life. The fiddler's ensemble was about to leave on tour, and Mottley was counting the days. Each one passed with no word, no answer to his messages.

  I hadn't come to Venice to play nursemaid, but Mottley had the most acute case of lovesickness I'd ever seen. He mooned about, and I mooned about with him, haunting the city's outré clubs and listening to manouche jazz. He even started playing his oboe again - a filthy habit, I told him. Why not just take absinthe or cocaine, instead of giving us all brain-damage too?

  After six days, I took the oboe away and told him to steal the damn violin or throw himself in the Grand Canal. I mean to say, a cheerful tune on the oboe sounds like a ward full of harpies with the colic, but a melancholy oboe will drive one right round the last bend.

  I immediately regretted my words, as Mottley chose the heist. He perked right up and started delegating. My job was to round up as many chums as possible (the larger the better) and convince them to crash a party at Czerbo's palazzo at a particular time the following evening. I had to concede the brilliant simplicity of this ruse, for a well-lubricated hearty will expect chuckers-out at any party worth getting into, and would keep the scowlers busy a good while. Once inside, he'd crack the safe, while I was to watch his back. This confused me for a moment, as I couldn't very well see anyone sneaking up behind us if I were looking at Mottley's back, but he soon sorted me out.

  The next night, the plan went off swimmingly. A few rounds of drinks along the Lido, and our pack of misdirected chums was coursing to San Polo like hounds after a sausage. They kept the Count's surly housemen so well-occupied, Mottley and I slipped right past them.

  In the upstairs salon, Mottley flung back the tapestry and applied his ear to the safe.

  "Mottley!" I said, "Where did you learn safecracking?"

  "Do you really want to know?" he snarled.

  I didn't. He spun the knob. The sound of the rumpus downstairs drifted through the window, but the room itself was deadly still. Then, quite suddenly, it wasn't still at all. Little Netvor had found us.

  The beast leapt snarling upon my trouser-cuffs as if they were personally responsible for all the ills dogflesh is heir to. "Back!" I cried helplessly. "Leave it, you little --"

  "Shut up!" Mottley hissed. "I can't hear!"

  He was right. If I tore the mouthful of trouser from the monster's grip and it gave tongue, it was bound to alert the housemen. I took off my jacket. I took a deep breath and swooped. It was a hard-fought battle, but I had the advantage of reach and strength. Though sweat, blood, and even a few tears were spilt, Netvor the Terrible was at last transformed into a neat and harmless bundle.

  In the silence that followed, I could almost hear the lock tumblers ticking over. Then I heard something else.

  "Mottley, are you sure Count Czobor isn't at home?"

  "No, he's receiving an award for philanthropy at the Opera gala tonight. Won't be home for hours yet." He snorted. "Philanthropy, I ask you."

  The sound continued. It was certainly voices. Two people were having some sort of argument in the next room but one, but I couldn't make out the words.

  "Mottley?"

  "Be quiet, I tell you!"

  The voices continued. I realized with a sinking feeling that those two people were not arguing. They were in complete agreement. A regular concert of mutual appreciation, if you take my meaning.

  "Mottley, someone's at home."

  "I told you, Czerbo's due at the Opera on the 6th. He'll be there all night."

  I grabbed his arm. "Mottley, it's the 5th!"

  Mottley turned to me in complete surprise. "When?"

  "Today. Thursday, February 5, 1931."

  Mottley's face went pale as a blancmange. He turned back to the safe. He'd had a reputation as a linguist at school -- I believed it now, for he could curse fluently in at least six tongues.

  Now, a chap with any nugget of common sense would have barged off out the window, sharpish. Indeed, it was this course to which I earnestly entreated him, plucking the while at his sleeve. But no -- Cupid's arrows make madmen of the best of us (or so I hear), and when one is mad to start with (which, as I mentioned before, Mottley certainly is) why then! Love turned him plum loony.

  On he went with his clicking, slapping a hand over my mouth by way of explanation.

  And that's how it came to pass, that just as Mottley swung open the safe, he joggled me. This caused me to lose my grip on the Hellhound, which launched itself in a backward half-gainer from my arms and shook off the shreds of my dinner jacket. It screeched and bounded round my knees like an India-rubber ball possessed by the tortured souls of the Seventh Circle.

  From the next room but one, I could hear the Count's cry of something Slovakian, probably translating to "What the devil?" Followed by rushing feet and the clearer cry of, "Stop, thief!"

  The rest you know -- violin, balcony, sabre (snatched off the mantelpiece), naked fiddler, and the surly chuckers-out hovering just behind the Count. And of course, the twang.

  As the echo died away, Mottley turned to me with a smile so bone-chillingly barmy that I nearly fell off the railing.

  "Of course," he said. He swung the del Gesu wide and slammed it into the stone wall with a splintering crash.

  Czobor gasped. The surlies grunted. The fiddler screamed, and Mottley watched as a shining silver sliver twirled into the air from the wreckage of the lovely instrument. He leapt to catch it, crying, "Shift it, Debenham!"

  The general advice for those contemplating a leap into the canals of Venice -- fully clothed or otherwise is -- don't. It could have been worse. It could have been summer.

  I was not popular with the concierge at my hotel. The poor fellow couldn't decide whether to turn my stinking, sopping form away or hustle me out of sight to my room. A damp bank-note reminded him where my room-key was hanging. I found a missive on the dressing-table: Stazione Santa Lucia. Now. M.

  No other trace. Madmen don't drip, I suppose.

  I found Mottley leaning on a pillar in the main concourse, smoking one of his endless gaspers and watching the luggage lockers. "What's going on? Why are we here?"

  A flash of silver dangled from Mottley's hand. "The key inside the violin. It belongs to that locker over there."

  "What's in it?"

  "Why, the del Gesu, you lackwit. What did you think would be in it?"

  "The great Cham's beard? How should I know? You smashed the del Gesu, Mottley!"

  He took another drag. "Of course I didn't. That wasn't the del Gesu, sounded nothing like it."

  I boggled. It's the inbreeding that does it, you know, these aristocratic families. I suppose it's all for the best that he can't seem to find a girl -- these conditions are hereditary. I began to wonder when the carabinieri would find us. After all, he'd broken into the home of a well-known foreign diplomat and smashed up a priceless antique. Hopefully with Mottley's money and my connections, we'd be able to find a decent solicitor.

  Mottley continued unabashed. "The violin we heard her play was a golden-age del Gesu -- rich, dark, vibrant. The one in the safe was a substitute. It looked all right, but that D note..." He shook his head.

  My head was starting to ache again. "So the del Gesu wasn't the del Gesu. And the damsel in distress?" I felt for my cigarette case.

  "No damsel, I suppose. But distress is the question. If she could make the switch any time, why recruit our help? There's a piece missing somewhere -- a lost harmonic, if you will."

  I froze in mid-light. "The dealer!"

  The flame spurting from the end of my cigarette broke my reverie. I stomped it out. "When you went off to see the damsel's etchings, there was another Englishman there, some kind of antiques expert. He handled the damn fiddle, inspected it all over."

  Mottley lunged at me, his grey eyes shooting sparks in the shadow of the pillar. "What was his name?"

  "Ah....Ford? Studebaker? Some kind of American car." He glared at me till
I felt quite ant-like. "Sorry, old chap. It's gone." I perked up. "But he knew you."

  Mottley clasped my lapels in what I cannot describe as a friendly manner. "You told him my name?"

  "No, no! I couldn't remember your pen-name. Czobor told him. He said he'd heard of you from your friend John Forthright."

  Mottley released me. "Damn." He paced between the pillars, shaking his hands in that way he has when he's thinking furiously. "Whoever this blighter is, he's run in with Scotland Yard."

  "So have you!" I objected. "That doesn't make you a thief."

  Speechless, Mottley ran both hands through his slicked-back hair, making it stand up like a parrot's poll. I remembered what we'd just been doing. "Oh."

  We leaned against the pillar, one either side, and watched the lockers. I lit another gasper. Trains came and went. I stretched my stiff back. It had been a long night, and a longer morning. "Tell me again why we haven't opened it?"

  "I want to see who comes to collect. If it's the dealer, then she's been done dirty. If she comes herself, then she's using any tool that comes to hand." He flicked me a sidelong glance. "Rather a blunt instrument, we were." He glanced up the concourse. "Psht." He drew back into the shadow.

  A curious little procession approached. In front, the station-manager strode in starched pomp. Behind him, a uniformed attendant scurried, wringing his hands and whimpering, "Irregular...oh, dear, most irregular..." The girl swept along behind them. She was dressed for traveling in a spanking white suit, with a fox around her neck and diamonds at her ears.

  She stopped before the lockers. "Here, I tell you. This is the one. Have I not shown you the rental receipt? He would not open it for me, this..."

  My Italian wasn't quite good enough to keep up. I could tell it wasn't complimentary, though.

  A sharp whistle broke from the other side of the pillar. The three turned to us. Mottley stepped into the light, and the fiddler gaped.

  Mottley stared at her a moment. I wish I were better at reading faces, for I can't describe the look that went over his. I just know it left me terribly sad.

  With a sharp flick, he tossed the key in a high arc. The girl put out her gloved hand and caught it. Her face melted, and she looked very, very young.

  Mottley spun on his heel and walked away. He left me flat-footed, but I soon caught him up.

  "Mottley!" I cried. "It could be empty. The real thief may be long gone with the violin."

  "It doesn't matter anymore," he said.

  That struck me still. "Of course it matters!"

  "Then you stay," he muttered and kept walking. But you know, in the end, I didn't.

  She's quite famous now. You'll see her posters at Covent Garden, the Salle Pleyel, Carnegie Hall. Plays a Stradivarius. Well, she'd have to, wouldn't she?

  * * * * *

  Would you have another spot of Mottley?

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Ellen Seltz has worked in the entertainment industry for twenty years, from Miami to New York and points in between. Her primary roles were actress and producer, but she’s also served as a comedy sketch writer, librettist, voice artist, propmaster, costumer, production assistant, camera operator and general dogsbody.

  She turned to fiction writing in the vain hope that the performers would do as they were told.

  Ellen is a native of Birmingham, Alabama, where she lives with her two daughters and her husband, an award-winning filmmaker and media producer. She enjoys vegetable gardening and vintage-style sewing.

  Meet Ellen on her blog www.ellenseltz.com