amazing. But I can think of a lot of other books it wouldn’t be amazing to find he’d written, except of course that it would be, as some of the authors are dead and none of those who aren’t lives in Mid-Yorkshire.”
“Which is just the point. Penn does live in Mid-Yorkshire,” said Hat. “What about this other stuff he’s interested in, the German thing?”
“Heinrich Heine? Nothing there I can think of except insofar as he’s a model for Harry Hacker. Harry was Heine’s given name, you know.”
“Harry? Thought you said it was Heinrich.”
“That came later. One of Penn’s translations called him Harry and I asked about it and he told me that at birth Heine was named Harry afteran English acquaintance of the family. It gave him a lot of grief as a kid, particularly as the sound the local rag and bone man used to yell to urge his donkey on came out something like Harry! Heine changed it to the German form when he converted to Christianity, aged twenty-seven.”
Now Hat was very attentive.
“You mean the other kids used to take the piss out of him because of his name?”
“Apparently. I don’t know if there was anti-Semitism there too, but the way Penn told it made it sound pretty traumatic.”
“Yes, it would,” said Hat, excited. “Same kind of thing happened to him at school.”
He told her what they’d found out about Penn’s background.
She frowned and said, “You’re digging deep, aren’t you? I presume you’ve been checking out Dick in the same way.”
“Yeah, well you’ve got to get all the relevant facts about everyone in an enquiry. In fairness to them really.”
His weak justification got the scornful laugh it deserved.
“So what relevant facts did you discover about Dick?” she demanded.
Why was it when he was talking to Rye there always came a point when, despite the rasp of Dalziel’s injunction in his mental ear, remember you’re a cop!, it seemed easiest to tell her everything?
He told her everything, picking up the framed photograph on the desk when he came to Johnny Oakeshott’s death and saying, “I presume that’s him in the middle. Penn’s got the same picture in his flat. Obviously he meant a lot to them both.”
Rye took the picture and stared at the angelically smiling little boy.
“When someone you’re close to dies young, yes, it does mean a lot. What’s sinister about that?”
He recalled her brother, Sergius, and said, “Yes, of course it must, I didn’t mean there was anything odd about that. But the attempts to get in touch with him…” Then just in case it turned out that Rye had tried making contact through a spiritualist, or some such daft kind of thing that girls might do, he pressed on, “But this stuff with the dictionaries, that’s got to be a bit weird, hasn’t it?”
“It’s no big deal,” she said dismissively. “Everyone who knows him well knows about the dictionaries. As for his name, all you had to do was look at the electoral register. Or the council employees list. Or the telephone directory. The fact that he’s known as Dick is no more significant than you being Hat or me being Rye.”
“Yes, but Orson…”
“No worse that Ethelbert. Or Raina for that matter.”
“No, I meant, Orson Welles…”
She looked baffled for a moment then began to smile and eventually laughed out loud.
“Don’t tell me. Orson Welles…Citizen Kane…rosebud! I’ve heard of drowning men clutching at straws, but this is going out to sea in a colander. I mean, where does it lead next? Touch of Evil maybe? Though come to think of it, when I look at your Mr. Dalziel, you may be on to something there…”
He didn’t get the reference but didn’t think it sounded a useful line to pursue.
“These dictionaries of Dee’s, you knew about them then?” he said.
“Yes. I’ve seen some of them.”
He thought instantly of what Wingate had said about the Erotic Dictionary and said jealously, “Which ones?”
“I really can’t remember. Does it matter?”
“No. Where did you see them? Here?”
He looked around the office in search of the offending tomes.
“No. At his flat.”
“You’ve been to his flat?”
“Any reason why I shouldn’t have been?”
“No, of course not. I was just wondering what it was like.”
She smiled and said, “Nothing special. A bit cramped but maybe that’s because every inch of space is crammed with dictionaries.”
“Yeah?” he said eagerly.
“Yeah,” said Rye. “Not because he’s obsessed or round the twist or anything like that, but because they are at the centre of his intellectual life. He’s writing a book about them, a history of dictionaries. It will probably become the standard work when it’s published.”
She spoke with a sort of vicarious pride.
“When will that be?”
“Another four, five years, I’d guess.”
“Oh well. I’d probably wait for the movie anyway,” said Hat. “Or the statue.”
He sat back in his chair and sipped his coffee and looked at the pictures hanging on the wall. Once more it struck him that they were all men. But he wasn’t about to remark on it, not even neutrally. Previously any hint that Dee was in the frame had provoked angry indignation. By contrast, this rational debunking he was hearing now was affectionate banter and had to indicate that he’d made progress in his quest to win her heart. No way he was going to risk that by what might sound like a homophobic sneer!
He said, “This the Dee ancestral portrait gallery?”
“No,” said Rye. “These are all, I believe, famous creators of or contributors to dictionaries. That one’s Nathaniel Bailey, I think. Noah Webster. Dr. Johnson, of course. And this one here might interest a man in your line of work.”
She pointed at the largest, positioned right in front of the desk, a sepia-tinted photo of a bearded man sitting on a kitchen chair with a book on his knee and on his head a peakless cap which gave him the look of a Russian refugee.
“Why’s that?”
“Well, his name was William Minor, he was an American doctor and a prolific and very important contributor of early instances of word usage to what eventually became the Oxford English Dictionary.”
“Fascinating,” said Hat. “So what’s his claim to fame as far as the police are concerned? Found the first use of the word copper, did he?”
“No, I don’t think so. It’s the fact that he spent the best part of forty years, the years in which he made his contributions to the OED, locked up in Broadmoor for murder.”
“Good God,” said Hat staring with renewed interest at the photograph.
Contrary to received opinion that there is no art to read the mind’s construction in the face, many of the faces that he’d seen staring back at him from official mug-shot albums seemed to have criminality deeply engraved in every lineament, but this serene figure could have modelled for the Nice Old Gent in The Railway Children.
“And what happened to him in the end?”
“Oh, he went back to America and died,” said Rye.
“You’re missing the best bit,” said a new voice. “As indeed was poor Minor.”
They turned to the doorway where Charley Penn had materialized like Loki, the Aesir spirit of malicious mischief, his sardonic smile showing his uneven teeth.
How long had he been in eavesdropping distance? wondered Hat.
“Can I help you, Mr. Penn?” said Rye with enough frost in her voice to blast a rathe primrose.
“Just looking for Dick,” he said.
“He’s in the basement. They’re working on the Roman Market Experience.”
“Of course. Per Ardua ad Asda, one might say. I think I’ll go and see the fun. Nice to see you again, Mr.
