Bones and Silence

He spoke sardonically, clearly intending to let Dalziel see he knew what the fat man was up to, but the gibe faded into surprise as he became aware of his surroundings. Somehow as they talked he and Dalziel had moved from the doorstep to the sitting-room and the fat man was now sitting at his ease in a broad old-fashioned wing chair.

'What the devil is it you want?' exploded Swain.

Dalziel's expression became earnest.

'First I want to say I'm sorry we seem to have got off on the wrong foot, Mr Swain. Now I've got a clear picture of what really happened, I'd like to start over again, so that, like Mr Thackeray said, we can get this all cleared up and you can enjoy your sorrow in private.'

'I'll drink to that,' said Swain, regaining some of his equilibrium.

'Now that's a grand idea. Scotch'll be lovely.'

Swain looked a little put out to be taken so literally, but he fetched Dalziel a reasonably large Scotch with a reasonably good grace.

'That's better,' said Dalziel. 'Nippy out. Looks like we're getting the real winter at last. You'll have been glad it kept off so long.'

'Will I?'

'Because of the car park job, I mean. Can't be much fun laying bricks in a blizzard. But no work, no pay, eh?'

'Dan Trimble wanted it done as soon as possible,' said Swain, inserting the familiarity casually. 'And the long term weather forecast was good.'

'But not the short term financial forecast? Still, no worries now, not once all them lovely dollars drop into your account.'

'What's that supposed to mean?' demanded Swain, angry again, but this time in control of his anger.

'Whoah!' exclaimed Dalziel. 'Don't get mad. I thought that was all behind us. I'm not meaning to be offensive, Mr Swain. You'll get your wife's brass, that's only right, that's the way she wanted it, else why make your wills the way you did?'

'What do you know about our wills?' asked Swain.

In fact Dalziel knew very little except what he'd guessed, but he saw no reason not to sow a little discord between Swain and his lawyer.

'You mustn't blame anyone,' he said. 'There's nowt confidential about a will. Question some people might ask though is, if your missus had managed to get back to the States, would she have changed it?'

'Changed it? Why?'

'In my experience, wives aren't bothered much about benefiting their husbands after giving them the old heave-ho!' sneered Dalziel.

But Swain was out of reach of his provocation now.

'Who says Gail was leaving me?' he asked quietly.

'Come on, Mr Swain. Stands to reason, doesn't it? She wanted you to take up a post with the family firm in California, you wanted her to pump money into your business here. She gives you an ultimatum, then shacks up with her boyfriend. Any chance of a drop more of this? It's a Glenlivet, isn't it?'

It was the need of thinking space rather than hospitality which took Swain back to the drinks cupboard, but Dalziel didn't mind. His gratitude was all to God for making some men clever enough to squeeze whisky out of barleycorn, and himself clever enough to squeeze it out of a stone.

'You seem to have been very busy sticking your nose into my affairs, Dalziel,' said the builder grimly.

'Your wife's affairs. Sorry, I didn't mean . . . but now you've brought the subject up, did she have a lot of affairs, Mr Swain, or was Waterson a one-off?'

'I don't know! How the hell should I know? Waterson was the first that I knew of and it came as a great shock to me!'

'Aye, so you said. But you didn't live in each other's pockets, did you? You had your interests, she had hers. Like this Arts Committee. And the Gun Club. Must've spent a lot of time there, made some close friends, especially when she were on the team.'

Swain's grimness dissolved into a harsh laugh.

'Mitchell, you mean? For heaven's sake, man, Gail grew up surrounded by real Hollywood studs. You don't think she was going to find that pathetic imitation anything but amusing, do you?'

'There's all kinds of amusement,' probed Dalziel.

Swain took a long pull at his whisky. To drown a resurgence of rage? If so, the Scotch proved a good palliative, for his response was measured and reasonable.

'OK, look, I don't know. I was deceived once, so why not a dozen times?'

He should have let his anger speak. It would have rung truer than this rueful acceptance of possible cuckoldry, thought Dalziel. Or was he, as Pascoe clearly thought, letting prejudice colour all his responses to Swain? He felt a sudden uncharacteristic flood of self-doubt. OK, so the man had plenty of motive for killing his wife, but most men did, and vice versa. Might it not after all have been simply a happy accident that just when he must have thought all was lost, Gail had turned out not to be in Los Angeles changing her will, but in Hambleton Road, killing herself?

He looked at Swain and thought, No! Swains don't have that sort of luck! In fact from what he'd learned of the family, they seemed to suffer from congenital bad luck. What they did have, some of them, was a certain capacity