Dialogues of the Dead (49 page)

>From his place in the library office, through the open door, out across the enquiry desk, Pascoe could see them, twenty dark blue volumes, standing as straight and smart as guardsmen on parade. And he knew beyond doubt the meaning of that mysterious shape in the bowl of the P of the In Principio at the head of the First Dialogue. Not a Bible or a missal as Urquhart had suggested, but a volume of the great Oxford English Dictionary. No lettering on the drawing, of course - that would have made things too easy - but the narrow band across the top of the dust jacket spine was there while the white disc at the bottom represented the university coat of arms. From this distance he couldn't make out the letters of the motto it contained, but he'd seen it often enough on his own OUP books to know what they spelled. Dominus illuminatio men. The contents of the volumes were indicated by the first and last words each contained. These he could read from here, but nevertheless he rose and went out to the shelf. The first volume was easy.

A - Bazouki The AA man, Andrew Ainstable. The boy who played the bazouki. Next;

BBC - Chalypsography

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Jax Ripley. And the other? He took the volume down to check.

Steel engraving. Oh, dreadfal pun! Councillor Steel killed with a burin. And the Cyrillic letters engraved upon his head just to underline the joke. The third volume.

Cham - Creeky

Cham. Illustrative quotation from 1759:

'. . . that great Cham of literature, Samuel Johnson.' Then creeky... ? Stang Creek? Skip to the next volume. Creel - Duzepere Creel. Body in the creek, head in the creel. And duzepere? A singular variant of douzepers meaning illustrious nobles, knights, or grandees. Poor Pyke-Strengler. Perhaps if your father had not died ... The fifth volume.

Dvandva -- Follis

Dvandva. A compound word in which the elements are related to each other as if joined by a copula.

Actor-manager. Follis. A small Roman coin, like that found in Ambrose Bird's mouth. And the first word in the next volume.

Follow The $ hadn't been a dollar sign, but merely the removal of the letter S. Bird and Follows. Who died, to make the whole thing even more complete, joined in a copula. He went back into the office for privacy, closed the door and pulled out his mobile. The case was altered. Before, he hadn't really been able to get his head round the idea of the gentle quiet librarian being in the frame for all these killings. Now all he could think

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was that he'd sent a solitary young constable out looking for a man who had leapt to the terrifying eminence of being prime suspect. 'Answer, sod you, answer!' he yelled at the phone. 'Hello?' 'Bowler, where are you?' 'At Dee's flat, but...' 'OK, don't go in .. .' 'I'm in.' 'Shit. OK. Smile sweetly and say you've got to fetch something from the car. Then get out. No buts. Do it!' He waited. Then to his relief he heard the youngster's voice saying, 'Sir, what's going in?' Quickly he ran through what he'd seen, what he was guessing, adding, 'It may be quite wrong or nothing to do with Dee but I want you to wait till. ..' But Hat was screaming at him. 'Sir, what's the next word? Tell me the next racking word!' Pascoe frowned, decided this was no time for a lecture on chain of command, went out of the office into the library and read, 'Follows - Haswed', pronouncing it as spelt, voicing the w. 'Has wed. . . that's it! A wedding was in the last Dialogue. Though in fact it might be pronounced Hasued. . .' 'I don't give a fuck how it's pronounced, what's it mean?' Once more Pascoe reacted to the urgency not the insubordination and checked. 'Marked with grey or brown,' he said. 'The Dialogue poem said "but wasn't white", remember? Now if only .. . Hat? You still there? Are you all right? Hat!' But Hat wasn't hearing. He was seeing a head of rich chestnut hair marked by a flash of silvery grey. And something else he saw too, trembling on his retina like the filaments of light presaging a migraine. 1576 Not a year. A date. / have a date, the poem had said. 1.5.76. The first of May, 1976. Rye's birthday.

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Chapter Forty-six

The chair she sat in like a burnished throne gleamed in the firelight. Sensuously she let her fingers trace the serpentine grooves of the intricately carved arm rests till she came to the sudden hard swell of the lions' heads. She smiled down at Dick Dee who squatted before her on the three-legged stool. Between them lay a Paronomania board, which, fully open, looked like some exotic medieval map of the cosmos. 'Will you take it with you?' she asked. 'The chair, I mean?' 'Strictly speaking, it isn't mine,' he said. 'And are you always a strict speaker, Dick?' 'Strict,' he mused. 'From strictus, past participle of stringere, to draw or bind tight. It's a synantonym, of course .. .' He paused and looked at her invitingly. Taking her cue, she said, 'A what?' 'A synantonym. One of those interesting words which can be their own opposite. Like overlook, impregnable, cleave.' Rye considered, then said, 'Those I can see, bur strict'?' 'There is a Scottish usage, meaning swift or rapid, particularly in relation to running water. So yes, I feel I can say I'm a strict speaker in one way or another.' 'But will you keep the chair?' 'In the sense of preserve it, yes. Indeed when I showed it to poor Geoffrey one day, he implied in his bumbling way that I might consider it a gift, though I doubt whether in law my unsupported recollection would be title enough. I fear you are in danger of being deflowered, my dear.' Rye looked at the board. She had just laid, not without some complacency, azalea. Now Dee crossed it at the 1 with genitalia, then carefully removed the rest of her tiles.

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'I did mention the rhyming rule, didn't I?' he said. 'Cross one of your opponent's words with a rhyming word and you score both words and also win the right to remove your opponent's tiles for your own use, if so desired.' 'But that means you could put my azalea back down on your next go,' she said with pretended indignation. 'Just so. It might be wise therefore to seek a way to block my genitalia. 'Oh, I shall, never fear. If I'd known you invited me here to ; deflower me, I would never have come.' In fact she almost hadn't. ' After Percy Follows' funeral, when Dick Dee had told her he was going to clear out Stangcreek Cottage, she'd said, 'You're' giving it up? Trouble with the new lord?' •' 'As they're having difficulty establishing who it might be, no, j not yet. Just trouble with my relationship with the place. I've only f been back once since it happened and I got straight back in the car and returned to town. I no longer feel at ease there.' 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'You seemed so much at home. Have you got a lot of stuff?' 'Enough. Even camping out, it tends to accumulate.' A, pause, then, 'Look, you wouldn't care to come along and give ' me a hand? Two hands, in fact, and an extra car, would be very , useful.' She would have said no straight off if he hadn't gone on in a rush, 'And to tell the truth, I'm not very keen on going back there by myself.' Now she hesitated, but still with the odds on refusal, till sud denly he said, 'Oh hell! Rye, of course, you've got even more reason than I have for being reluctant to go out there again. My fears are all associative. You actually found the poor devil. It was i crass of me to ask you. I'm sorry.' Which worked better than any persuasion. ; 'And it's craven of me to hesitate,' she said. 'Of course I'll j come.' s He looked at her doubtfully. ; 'You're sure? Please don't feel you've got to.' 'Because you're my boss?' She laughed. 'I don't believe I've ever done anything I didn't want just because you were my boss.' 'I'm glad to hear it. What I meant was, because you're my friend.' She thought about this then smiled and said, 'Yes, I am. And yes, I shall come. But first I'll have to go home and get out of these sad rags. It's the only outfit I've got fit to wear at funerals, and they seem to be the big social occasion this season.' 'That's OK. I want to change too. Do we need to make our apologies for skipping the meats?' 'Who to? I think we just go, and them as miss us will miss us, and them as don't, won't.' 'I couldn't have put it better myself.' And now, an hour later, here they were at the cottage and so far Rye had felt none of the feared oppression, nor so far as she could see, had her companion. They hadn't made much progress with the packing up. It had felt damp and chill in the cottage and Dee had riddled the ashes in the grate, lit a whole packet of firelights and tossed on a couple of logs. 'I chopped 'em,' he said. 'We might as well benefit from them.' 'Good idea.'-She warmed her hands at the rapidly blazing fire and drew in the smell of the burning wood. 'I love that smell,' she said. The too. Ash, I think. The best. Ashes to ashes makes more sense if you view it as a process rather than rubbish disposal. To burn and die, giving off warmth and sweet odour, is not a bad image of life, don't you agree?' 'Does that still include sure and certain hope of resurrection?' asked Rye, smiling. 'You're asking whether I'm comfortable with the notion that poor Percy might return to us?' he said, returning her smile. 'We shall be changed, remember?' 'In that case .. . But enough of metalinguistics. To work. I've got plenty of bin liners and some cardboard boxes. Just shove the stuff in. Nothing to worry about, except the paintings, and they're not exactly Old Masters.' 'The young master's maybe?' said Rye. 'Thank 'ee kindly, miss,' he said. They'd started the packing but had been at it only a few minutes

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when Rye had happened on the game board. Even folded it was an object of exquisite design, with ornate brass hinges gleaming. gold against polished rosewood. 'May I open it?' she asked, s 'Of course.' 'Oh, but it's lovely,' she exclaimed as she saw the intricate zodiacal designs winding their way among the letter squares. 'I've seen the one you and Charley play on in the office, but this is even more ornate.' 'Yes, they're all different,' he said. 'But this I regard as thej masterboard. The star signs on it mean that certain words can5 gain added value if they're entered in certain significant locations. , For instance - I'm sure I know it, but it is best always to be sure f with a lady - remind me of your date of birth.' 'i 'The first of May 1976.' 'May the first, seventy-six. Mayday, Mayday. Yes, now I recall. That's Taurus, of course. So if you had the tiles to lay your own' name in your own star-sign, then you would gain extra points. If first, however you were able to place significant planets in the sign according to their conjunction on the date, and better still, at the time of your birth, then your point score would be, if you will excuse the trope, astronomical. But forgive me. I am intoxicated with the distillations of my own fermented fancy. Nothing more boring than the ramblings of a drunk!' 'Not boring,' she assured him. 'But maybe a touch baffling. I've looked at that copy of the rules you gave me, but to be honest they just left me more confused than when I started.' 'Always the case,' he said. 'The best games are like the best lives -- you only learn by living them. But let me try to elucidate ...' S It was a simple progression from elucidation via demonstration to play. 1 When he set up the third tile rack with the letters spelling'; Johnny on it, she looked a question at him. '; 'A young schoolfriend who died,' he said. 'The boy in the photo?' "I 'That's him. Little Johnny Oakeshott. He had the sweetest i nature of any creature I ever knew. Charley Penn and I were a good working team but Johnny somehow made us complete. ; Before, we were a very effective combination of intellect and ; imagination. To which Johnny added a human soul. Does that sound mawkish?' 'No,' she said. 'No, it doesn't.' He smiled at her and said, 'I always thought you would understand. We played the game three-handed in those days. Johnny was never any good at it, but he loved to feel he was taking part.' 'Then he died?' 'Yes,' he said sombrely. 'Stolen by some envious god. Since then we've always kept a rack for him. And there's a rule which never got written down which permits a player to use the letters in Johnny's rack if by adding them to his own letters he can form a whole word in any language.' 'Then what? He wins outright?' Dee shrugged and said, 'Who knows? It hasn't happened yet. I sometimes fantasize that if it did, we would find Johnny sitting there in his place, ready to play. A real spell, in every sense, you see. But this is morbid. Let me initiate you into my mystery.' And so the game began. Dee clearly enjoyed the role of patient teacher, though it did seem to Rye that every time she thought she was getting the hang of it, he introduced a new and still more complex element. Not that she felt this as competitive. Indeed she soon began to get a sense that the mature experience of the game would have more of the partnership of dancing in it than the clash of competition. The rich designs glowed on the board and the letter tiles, made of smooth ivory, slipped through the fingers like silken fish when you dipped your hand into their container to replenish your store. This container itself was a thing of beauty, no plain tin or battered cardboard box, but a heavy gold-hinged casket carved from rubeous crystal. 'My mother's sole heirloom,' he said when she asked about it. 'How her mother got hold of it I don't know, nor indeed, considering the circumstances of the family, how she held on to it when everything else of value must have gone to the saleroom or the pawnshop. It held what little jewellery she possessed, gimcrack stuff, mainly. Now it holds something far more precious. The seed of words waiting for their creator. All language is here, which means life itself, for nothing exists till these seeds are sown.'

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And he had shaken the crystal casket so that the pieces of ivory slid and rustled and seemed to syllable her name. Gradually, irresistibly, an erotic subtext had entered their game, a sort of sexy flirtation with sly innuendoes, hot-eyed side-glances, verbal caresses, entirely free from menace. She always felt that any time she wanted to step back, she need send only the slightest signal and, without fuss or recrimination, the normal friendly decorum of their working relationship would be restored. But she, sent no such signal. Bathed in the shifting chiaroscuro of the fire,^ her body felt warm and relaxed. Where this game was leading^,' she did not know, nor yet how far she wanted it to go. At som^i; point Dee had produced a bottle of dark red wine and a pair q^ tumblers, and the peppery liquid slipping down her throat wa(^ like the early throes of love-making, at the same time satisfying and increasing the drinker's appetite. The world of rock and water'' and vegetation outside the small weather-darkened windowy' seemed a long way away, and more distant still seemed that othef < world of people and buildings and engines and technology. lit; their memory seemed dark and comfortless it was because all theit warmth and light and comfort and pleasure seemed concentrated in this narrow room. As for the airy infinities of the great mysteri-i ous universe in which all worlds exist, what need to go out and stare at the skies when all its beauty and wisdom was contained here on this magic game board which lay at her feet like the cosmos under the gaze of God?