The Mortimer Mysteries

The Missing Mortimer

Story #1, set in 1924

Shortly after Isabel’s husband dies, his troubled young heir disappears. Acutely aware of how bad this looks for her, Isabel convinces Jimmy to help her find the boy before it’s too late.

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Isabel Mortimer, concerning Jimmy

"I don’t think I’ve see you so taken aback since Bobby Whats-his-name started chasing you at that party Mother threw to celebrate the armistice.”

Jimmy Howard, concerning Isabel

“Look, Constable Doyle, I know she’s not weeping and wringing her hands or whatever it is you expect women to do in these situations, but that’s just not what she’s like. She’s a problem-solver, like those indomitable aunts for whom Sunday dinner must go on rain or shine or bloody murder."

However.

She knows by heart all the patter for "I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General".

It's all Jimmy's fault, really. As children, they had seen Pirates of Penzance on multiple occasions, and Jimmy had gotten hold of some music for a couple of songs somehow. He tried to learn the song himself, but the fast-paced, complicated lyrics proved to be more than he could manage.

"No, no, no, no!" cried Isabel every time he fluffed a line. "That's not the right rhythm at all. It isn't 'animal, vegetable, or mineral'; it's 'vege-table, animal, or mineral'! Can't you hear it?"

"Why the hell would it be pronounced 'vege-table' with four syllables?"

"I don't know, do I? It fits the metre, that's all."

And Jimmy might then remember that line, but it wasn't long before he needed to be set to rights again. And so, by complete accident, Isabel learned all of the correct lines to the song. Over the years, Jimmy's already fuzzy memory of the words faded, but not so for Isabel, oh no!

Even now, a decade and more later, Jimmy knows that if he catches Isabel at a familiar gathering with a couple of sherries in her and plays his cards right, he can cajole her into giving a recitation—no singing, mind, she doesn't sing, she just recites at pace—of "I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General". Jimmy makes up for his sister's reluctance by leading the rest of the onlookers in a rousing chorus of the bits in between the patter.