Bones and Silence

paused on the threshold but Chung went straight in. For a second he thought this was crass insensitivity, then she spoke and he realized it was quite the opposite.

'Mrs Horncastle, are you all right?'

He didn't recognize the woman till she looked up. But in the brief moment before she re-organized her features to a social smile, he recognized Chung was right to be concerned.

'Miss Chung. How are you?' she said.

'I'm fine. Like I say, how are you?'

'Oh, don't worry about me. Really I'm fine too.'

'You looked upset,' said Chung bluntly.

'Did I? Perhaps I did. It's silly. Don't laugh, but it's the dog.'

'The dog?'

'Yes.' She set her hand on the little brass dog's head and stroked it.

'I used to have a dog very like this, a little terrier, Sandy, I called him. He got on Eustace's nerves. Well, he could be naughty, I suppose. And whenever he wanted a walk, he used to jump up and lick my face, then run to the door and leap up at the handle as if he were trying to open it. Sometimes he scratched the paint and Eustace became really furious. But it was only paint, wasn't it?'

'I'd say so,' said Chung gravely. 'What happened to Sandy?'

'He died. He somehow got out by himself and wandered out of the close into the main road and got knocked over. People said I should get another, but Eustace said I would be foolish to risk getting so upset again over a dumb beast so I never did. I'd often noticed how like Sandy the Pliny dog was - at least I thought so, though Eustace said I was imagining the resemblance. But they were alike.'

Suddenly she laughed and said, 'Do you have dreams, Miss Chung?'

'You mean, like ambitions?'

'Oh no. I gave those up long ago. I mean dreams, while you're asleep. I expect you do. Who doesn't? They mean nothing. Well, I had a dream, only I've had it two or three times and repetition suggests significance, doesn't it? I dreamt I woke up but couldn't move and after a while I realized that I was made of brass, like Lady de Pliny here, lying on top of our tomb with a brass Eustace by my side. And even though I was brass, it was so cold, so bitterly cold, I could feel my whole being contracting with the chill of it, and I wanted to scream out in agony, only I couldn't, being brass. Then I felt a movement against my legs, and on and on, higher and higher, till suddenly there was the touch of something warm and moist on my face and I realized the little dog at my feet was licking me. Gradually the warmth of his tongue began to spread through my body till finally I was able to move. What pain those first movements cost me! I was like an old arthritic woman, tottery, weak, uncertain. I looked around and my little strength failed again. I wasn't just on a tomb, I was in a tomb, surrounded by solid walls running with damp and unbroken except by a huge metal door. It had a handle, but even when I crawled across to the door and pulled myself up by the handle, putting my full weight on it, I couldn't feel the slightest movement. Full of despair, all I could think of was to stagger back to my plinth and lie down again alongside Eustace, this time for ever. But when I set off back, the dog rushed by me and began leaping up at the handle, just like Sandy used to when he wanted to go for a walk. Of course, at home he could never reach it and even if he could, he could never have turned it. There I stood by my brass husband, watching the poor little beast leaping higher and higher, but always in vain, and do you know, I felt sorrier for him than I did for myself. So I determined to stagger back to the door and have one more try, when suddenly he gave a mighty bound and his teeth caught around the handle and for a moment he hung there, feet scrabbling at the door, and he looked so pathetic I could have wept. Then slowly the handle began to move. I couldn't believe it. Lower and lower he pulled it, lower and lower. Then there was a loud grating noise and the door swung slowly open, and through it I could see a sunlit lawn and hear birds singing. And Sandy let go and dropped to the ground and stood outside in the sunlight, barking at me to join him.

'Now wasn't that a silly dream, Miss Chung? A silly woman's dream?'

She tried for the bright tone of one who is amused at her own absurdity but Chung did not respond in kind.

'Oh no, Mrs Horncastle,' she said. 'I don't see anything silly in it. Nothing at all.'

She put her arm round the woman's shoulders as she spoke and Pascoe, who had been edging further and further back as the story progressed, turned and hurried from the gloomy cathedral alone and felt a quite illogical relief to find himself out in the chill winter daylight once again.

In fact it wasn't just the contrast which made the day seem brighter. Winter had threatened to deceive once more, and a pallid sun was giving the storm clouds a pewter lining. Dan Trimble would be pleased. A couple more days of decent weather should see the car park and garage complex completed well within its funding schedule. And it would be nice to be able to park near the rear door again instead of across the street.

The builders were hard at it erecting the small gatehouse modern security concerns made almost obligatory. It would be annoying to be checked in and out of your own backyard, but better than the risk of some madman driving in at will with a truckload of Semtex. He glimpsed Arnie Stringer but there was no sign of Swain though he'd noticed him on arrival that morning. Perhaps now his financial problems were likely to be over, he didn't feel the need to soil his own hands for more than a couple of hours each day.

As he passed the desk, Sergeant Broomfield looked up and said, 'Any luck?'

'Not yet. Any word on the yobboes who did Wieldy?'

'Nothing. But talking of yobboes, the Post has been at us about that barney in the Rose and Crown. They're doing a feature evidently. You can guess the sort of thing. The football might be lousy, but City supporters are after promotion to the hooligans' first division.'

'Shit. That's just putting ideas into their tiny minds,' groaned Pascoe. The landlord of the Rose and Crown was still in hospital with a serious eye injury. The eyes of all the potential witnesses seemed to have been damaged also for no two of them gave corresponding descriptions of any of the brawlers.

'Seymour back yet?' he asked.

'Don't be silly. It's only ten-fifteen. Send young Dennis into a nurses' home and you can't really expect him to surface for at least twenty-four hours! The Super's back though.'