'How so? I thought a fact was a fact was a fact.' 'Sometimes they're like bits of china. You piece them together and you've got a bowl that'll hold water. Other times they're like bits of chocolate. You chew 'em up, and all you've got is shit.' 'Jee-suss! You know what, Dalziel? Inside you, there's a poet trying to get out. In fact, from the size of you, I'd say a whole anthology. Jee-suss!' The second divine invocation was at suddenly finding himself translated to a higher sphere, which was to say, the top of the electric stove.
Dalziel said, 'I ought to turn this thing on and see if I can boil some sense into you. You want to know if he killed your mother? What good'll that do you? All you do is give Philip a murderer for a father and Marilou a murderer for a husband.'
'And Cissy?' cried Waggs, who didn't lack courage. 'Don't I give her something too? Something she deserves? Listen, she's lost a life because of all this. Nothing that can happen to any of the rest of us can come close to that. She wants to see the guy she gave that life up for before he dies. She wants to hear something from him that might help her think it was even just a fraction worthwhile. She deserves that chance, doesn't she?'
'Why?' said Dalziel. 'She's got three deaths on her hands. In my book, that's at least two too many for second chances. Did they all three deserve to die? Your mother? That little lass? Daphne Bush? So what's that leave her deserving except what she got?'
But he didn't sound all that convincing, not even to himself.
He turned and went back into the hallway. The others were still there. He went towards the sitting-room door, but Marilou Bellmain barred his way.
'He will call us back in when he's finished his phone call,' she said.
'Missus, he finished long since,' said Dalziel, easing her aside.
Philip looked for a moment as if he might get chivalrous, but Dalziel gave him a look that would have stopped a horse, let alone a knight, and opened the door.
Westropp lay back in his rocker, his eyes closed, looking more like something the Egyptologists had just peeled the bandage off than a living being.
Marilou went to him and took his hands. Now the eyes opened like a lizard's on a rock. 'There you all are,' he said. 'I'm sorry, but I don't think I can go on with this just now. Another time, perhaps.
Yes, another time would be nice. But before you go, an apology.
Hopelessly inadequate, but what else can I offer? To you, Pip. To you, John. It was an accident, believe me. I may have sometimes wished your mother harm, but I never purposed it. And to you. Cissy, what can I say? Except that the events of that dreadful weekend, especially Emily's death, deprived me of the power of rational thought and action just as they must have deprived you, otherwise how could either of us have stood aside and let poor dear Mick die? I'm sorry for all the..
. misunderstanding. Aren't words inadequate, particularly when you've had a classical education? Now if you don't mind, I'd like a little time with Marilou.' Cissy Kohler was drawing in huge breaths as if air was going to be rationed. 'Is this it?' she managed to gulp out. ‘Is this all I get?' 'It's all there is,' said Westropp. 'Sometimes it is better to travel hopelessly than arrive. I know that too, believe me.'
She took a step towards him, fumbling with the clasp of her handbag.
Dalziel caught her in his arms, spun her round and pushed her through the doorway. Screened by his own bulk from the others, he dipped his hand into her bag, took out the small revolver he found there and slipped it into his left-hand pocket. He turned and called, 'Mrs Bellmain.' Marilou looked towards him impatiently and he said, 'Cissy's not too well.' It was the first time he had brought himself to call her Cissy. Marilou looked unhappily from Jay Waggs to her husband, who said, 'I'll be all right, dear. Don't be long.' She went out into the hall and Dalziel re-entered the room. Waggs took a step towards the man in the rocking-chair but there was no menace in the move. Rather he seemed to want a closer look. He said, 'I've been around the entertainment industry too long not to recognize the smell of bullshit.' 'You say so?' said Westropp. 'John, believe me, when I say I'm sorry…' 'Yeah, yeah, I gotta see that Cissy's OK. But this isn't the end, stepdaddy. There's a lot of mileage in this yet.'
He turned and pushed past Dalziel. 'Poor John,' said Westropp. 'For a man who makes a living out of selling ideas, his forecasts seem sadly off the mark.' 'At least he's worried about that woman out there,' growled Dalziel. Westropp shrugged, shoulder bones moving like sticks in a sack. Then he turned his attention to his son. 'Pip,' he said.
'We've never been as close as I could have wished. I lost too much of your childhood, but I had to send you away to school till I finally settled down with Marilou…' His son said, 'Dad, please, it's OK, forget it…' His face was soft with grief. He leaned over Westropp as if to kiss him but the sick man turned his head away and patted his shoulder and in that moment Dalziel saw how distasteful the memory of his dead wife was still to him. Philip straightened up. Westropp said, 'We'll talk later. Ask Marilou if she'd mind not coming in till Mr Dalziel comes out.' The young man turned away, looked at Dalziel as if about to say something, but left without speaking. 'Funny,' said Dalziel. 'What?' 'Lot of men would make more of a live son than a dead daughter.' 'Well, well. A moralist perchance appears, led, heaven knows how, to this poor sod. You are a father perhaps yourself to know so much about these relationships?' 'No, but I know enough to guess that it's the lad who's the real poor sod here,' growled Dalziel. 'I'd put money it was your missus insisted he should come back from yon school in England to live with you.' He saw he'd hit home and he pressed on, 'Been working long for Rampling, has he?' 'I'm sorry?'
'Didn't you know he was one of that lot? Breaking and entering hotel bedrooms a speciality. Well, not really. He weren't much good at it.
Only did it, I dare say, 'cos he got told the bugger whose bedroom it was might be a threat to his dear old dad.' 'Your room, you mean? That was Pip? Well, well.' Westropp frowned, then said, 'But this is a diversion. I have little time for such things. You want something from me, I assume?' 'The truth.' ‘Iindeed? And perhaps you will perform me one or two little services in return?' 'Such as?' 'Always leave the bathroom as you'd like to find it. That was one of my old nanny's maxims. It's tidying-up time for me. For a start, perhaps you could dispose of this.' He produced a little automatic pistol from beneath his cushions. Dalziel took it gingerly, checked the safety was on, tried to put it in his left pocket, found it full of gun already, and transferred it to the right. 'Keeps me well balanced,' he said. 'Like you.' 'You think so?' 'Man has to be well balanced to live what you've lived through without cracking. Or completely cracked to start with.'
'Now that's not for me to say. All I know is that the greater obstacle to human progress is our capacity for bearing things. Ah, as the heart grows older, It will come to such sights colder By and by, nor spare a sigh…' It was, Dalziel guessed, a poem. Pascoe used the same funny voice when he slid into poetry too. But his face was never striated with pain and weariness like Westropp's. 'You want me to call a quack?' he asked. 'No, thank you. I have my medication.' He opened his hand to show a tiny pillbox. The lid snapped up at the touch of his finger. He took out a green and black capsule and examined it quizzically. 'Sometimes coals are needed in Newcastle after all,' he said. 'Catch.' He tossed the box to Dalziel who plucked it from the air and examined the coat of arms. 'It's all right. I didn't nick it from Windsor. It's mine by right of inheritance.' 'Worth a bob or two.' 'Probably. Keep it. Souvenir.' 'I don't need to be reminded.'
'No, you don't, do you? Interesting, that. Keep it anyway. You said you'd help tidy up. Let's press on. There's not much time.' 'I thought you had weeks.' 'Not weeks of control. Weeks of growing pain, increasing helplessness. No, thank you. I prefer to do my own tidying.' 'With my help?' ‘That's right. But the task is not onerous.
What precisely you are doing here, Mr Dalziel, I don't pretend to know, and I have not time to find out. I suspect your motives and your function go far beyond anything which can be called simply official.
But you will, I am sure, make an impressive messenger. And you need have no fear of maltreatment, for the message is good.' 'Oh aye? I hope it's short too.' 'Tell them…' 'Who's them?' interrupted Dalziel. 'Don't worry. You'll have no difficulty identifying them.
Tell them that when last you saw me, I was in full possession of my faculties and you found my assurance of tidiness convincing.' Dalziel thought a moment, then shook his head and said, 'No.' 'No? Is it perhaps too long for you? Shall I write it down?' 'Funny,' growled Dalziel. 'What you say about possession of your faculties, I'll need a lot more evidence of that. Like the truth, for instance. Let's stop farting about. Did you kill your missus or not?' 'Did I kill her?’ mused Westropp. 'You speak as if killing is a single act of a single person upon another single person.' 'Stop pissing around!' said Dalziel angrily. 'There's a woman out there needs to know what happened.' Westropp gave a thin, knowing smile. 'She needs to know or you need to know, Superintendent? Whose peace of mind is it you're worried about?' Even arrows that strike home cannot divert the charging buffalo. 'She was your mistress. You were lovers. You owe her something!' Westropp shook his head. 'If I do, it's beyond payment.
What's best for her to know? For all these years, I've believed her guilty, Dalziel. Not necessarily as charged,
