The Mortdecai Trilogy Read Online Free Page B
Author: Kyril Bonfiglioli
benison.
Then I went a-slumming through the art-dealing district, carefully keeping my face straight as I looked in the shop windows – sorry,
gallery
windows – at the tatty Shayers and reach-me-down Koekkoeks. Heigh-ho. After a while I was sure that I had no tail (remember that bit, it matters) neither in front nor behind, and popped into Mason’s Yard. There are galleries there too, of course, but I was bent on seeing Mr Spinoza, who is only an art dealer in one very specialized sort of way.
Moishe Spinoza Barzilai is, as a matter of fact, Basil Wayne & Co., the great coach builders of whom even you, ignorant readers, must have heard, although not point one per cent of you will ever afford his lovely panel beating, still less his princely upholstery. Unless, of course, you are reading below your station in life and happen to be an Indian Maharajah or a Texan oil-field proprietor.
Mr Spinoza creates very special one-off bodies for the great cars of the world. He has heard of Hooper and Mulliner and speaks kindly, if a little vaguely, of them. He will restore or re-create the occasional vintage Rolls, Infanta or Mercedes if he feels like it. Bugattis, Cords, Hirondelles and Leyland Straight-Eights will be considered. So will about three other
marques
. But ask him to tart up a Mini with basketwork and silver condom dispensers or to build flip-back fornication benches into a Jaguar and he will spit right into your eye. I mean
really!
What he most loves is a Hispano-Suiza – an ‘Izzer-Swizzer.’ Can’t understand it myself, but there.
He also dabbles in crime. It’s a sort of hobby with him. He can’t need the money.
Currently, he was rebuilding for my best customer a latish Silver Ghost Rolls Royce, which was what I had come to inspect, in a way. My customer, Milton Krampf (yes, truly), had bought it from a right villain who had found it in a farmyard chocked up and running a chaff cutter and turnip slicer after a long career as stock truck, hearse, station wagon, shooting brake, baronial wedding present and mobile shagging station; in the reverse order, of course. Mr. Spinoza had found six perfectly right artillery wheels for it at one hundred pounds apiece, had built a scrupulously exact
Roi des Belges
open tourer body and painted it with sixteen coats of Queen Anne white, each one rubbed down wet-and-dry, and was nowfinishing the olive-green crushed Levant Morocco upholstery and free-handing with the fitch the lovely arabesques of the
carrosserie
lines. He wasn’t doing the work himself, of course; he’s blind. Was, rather.
I walked round the car, admiring it Platonically. There was no point in desiring it – it was a rich man’s car. Would do about seven miles to the gallon, which is all right if you own an oil field. Milton Krampf owns a lot of oil fields. First to last, the car would stand him in at about £24,000. Paying that would hurt him about as much as picking his nose. (They say a man who knows how rich he is ain’t rich – well, Krampf knows. A man telephones him every morning, one hour after the New York Stock Exchange opens, and tells him exactly how rich he is. It makes his day.)
A naughty apprentice told me that Mr Spinoza was in his office and I picked my way thither.
‘Hullo, Mr Spinoza,’ I cried cheerily, ‘here’s a fine morning to be alive in!’
He peered malevolently at a spot three inches above my left shoulder.
‘Oo hucking hastard,’ he spat. (No roof to his mouth, you know. Poor chap.) ‘Oo other hucking hiss-hot. How air oo hoe your hace here, oo hurd-murgling hod?’
The rest was a bit rude so I shan’t quote him too verbatim, if you don’t mind. What he was vexed about was my sending the MGB in with the little special matter in the headcloth at such an early hour the day before. ‘At sparrow-fart,’ as he neatly put it. Moreover, he was afraid that people would think he was working on it and he had evolved a dreadful mental image of queues of chaps in cloth
Then I went a-slumming through the art-dealing district, carefully keeping my face straight as I looked in the shop windows – sorry,
gallery
windows – at the tatty Shayers and reach-me-down Koekkoeks. Heigh-ho. After a while I was sure that I had no tail (remember that bit, it matters) neither in front nor behind, and popped into Mason’s Yard. There are galleries there too, of course, but I was bent on seeing Mr Spinoza, who is only an art dealer in one very specialized sort of way.
Moishe Spinoza Barzilai is, as a matter of fact, Basil Wayne & Co., the great coach builders of whom even you, ignorant readers, must have heard, although not point one per cent of you will ever afford his lovely panel beating, still less his princely upholstery. Unless, of course, you are reading below your station in life and happen to be an Indian Maharajah or a Texan oil-field proprietor.
Mr Spinoza creates very special one-off bodies for the great cars of the world. He has heard of Hooper and Mulliner and speaks kindly, if a little vaguely, of them. He will restore or re-create the occasional vintage Rolls, Infanta or Mercedes if he feels like it. Bugattis, Cords, Hirondelles and Leyland Straight-Eights will be considered. So will about three other
marques
. But ask him to tart up a Mini with basketwork and silver condom dispensers or to build flip-back fornication benches into a Jaguar and he will spit right into your eye. I mean
really!
What he most loves is a Hispano-Suiza – an ‘Izzer-Swizzer.’ Can’t understand it myself, but there.
He also dabbles in crime. It’s a sort of hobby with him. He can’t need the money.
Currently, he was rebuilding for my best customer a latish Silver Ghost Rolls Royce, which was what I had come to inspect, in a way. My customer, Milton Krampf (yes, truly), had bought it from a right villain who had found it in a farmyard chocked up and running a chaff cutter and turnip slicer after a long career as stock truck, hearse, station wagon, shooting brake, baronial wedding present and mobile shagging station; in the reverse order, of course. Mr. Spinoza had found six perfectly right artillery wheels for it at one hundred pounds apiece, had built a scrupulously exact
Roi des Belges
open tourer body and painted it with sixteen coats of Queen Anne white, each one rubbed down wet-and-dry, and was nowfinishing the olive-green crushed Levant Morocco upholstery and free-handing with the fitch the lovely arabesques of the
carrosserie
lines. He wasn’t doing the work himself, of course; he’s blind. Was, rather.
I walked round the car, admiring it Platonically. There was no point in desiring it – it was a rich man’s car. Would do about seven miles to the gallon, which is all right if you own an oil field. Milton Krampf owns a lot of oil fields. First to last, the car would stand him in at about £24,000. Paying that would hurt him about as much as picking his nose. (They say a man who knows how rich he is ain’t rich – well, Krampf knows. A man telephones him every morning, one hour after the New York Stock Exchange opens, and tells him exactly how rich he is. It makes his day.)
A naughty apprentice told me that Mr Spinoza was in his office and I picked my way thither.
‘Hullo, Mr Spinoza,’ I cried cheerily, ‘here’s a fine morning to be alive in!’
He peered malevolently at a spot three inches above my left shoulder.
‘Oo hucking hastard,’ he spat. (No roof to his mouth, you know. Poor chap.) ‘Oo other hucking hiss-hot. How air oo hoe your hace here, oo hurd-murgling hod?’
The rest was a bit rude so I shan’t quote him too verbatim, if you don’t mind. What he was vexed about was my sending the MGB in with the little special matter in the headcloth at such an early hour the day before. ‘At sparrow-fart,’ as he neatly put it. Moreover, he was afraid that people would think he was working on it and he had evolved a dreadful mental image of queues of chaps in cloth
Readers choose
Caroline B. Cooney
Carolyn McCray
Tammy Turner
Amy Rose Capetta
Kansuke Naka
Velvet Touch
Joya Fields
Nina Croft
Tim Ewbank
Iain Lawrence