LITMIR.BIZ

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him Nigel’s loose again. Then perhaps you’ll join us in the study. It’s time to talk.’

      Uniff left and the other young people drifted out after him. When Mrs Fielding spoke, Dalziel noted approvingly, the others jumped. He liked a strong leader.

      ‘I’m sorry to leave you alone, Mr Dalziel,’ she said. ‘But we have to have a business conference. Make yourself at home.’

      ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I’ll keep the soup hot for Nigel.’

      ‘That boy. You must think us very odd.’

      Dalziel did not deny it.

      ‘He sounds a sensible lad,’ he said, indicating the note.

      ‘You think that’s sensible?’ she asked, surprised.

      ‘Well, it’s neatly laid out. One, two, three. I like that,’ he said with the authority of one whose own official reports were infamous for their brevity. I came, I saw, I arrested was the Dalziel ideal according to Pascoe.

      ‘It’s possible to be methodical and still find trouble,’ she answered. ‘There’s probably a cold joint in the pantry if you’re hungry. We usually eat on our feet during the day and sit down for a meal about six-thirty.’

      She left and Dalziel glanced at his watch. It was one o’clock. Five hours.

      He went into the kitchen in search of food. There was a small deep freeze into which he peered hopefully. It contained very little and nothing of particular appeal. He shuffled the contents around in the hope of coming across one of his favourite frozen dinners-for-two, but there was no sign of such delights. One foil-wrapped package caught his eye. The remnants of a cold joint perhaps. He unwrapped it.

      ‘Well bugger me!’ said Dalziel.

      Inside the foil, sealed in a transparent plastic bag, was a dead rat.

      These sods might be hard up but there were limits, he told himself. Gingerly he re-interred the corpse in its icy tomb and closed the lid.

      His appetite had left him for the moment so he lit a cigarette and sat down once more to muse upon this odd household.

      Just how odd was it? he asked himself. Well, the atmosphere for a start. It didn’t feel very funereal. Not that that signified much. He’d been at funerals where by the time the poor sod was planted, half the mourners were paralytic and the rest were lining up for the return to the loved one’s house like homesteaders at the start of a land-race.

      Anyway atmosphere was too vague. You could breakfast on atmosphere, but you’d better make your dinner out of facts.

      Fact one was the age of the non-Fieldings. Coeval with Bertie and Louisa, they were hardly the mourners one would expect at the funeral of a man of Fielding’s assumed age.

      Fact two was this business conference going on. What were they doing – reading the will? Not likely these days. Then what?

      Fact three was the lad, Nigel. His farewell note hinted at household relationships more turbulent than the usual teenage antipathies.

      Fact four was the enigmatic remarks people kept dropping about Fielding’s death.

      And fact five was a freezer with a dead rat in it.

      He stood up and dropped his fag end into Bertie’s mug. When it came down to it, he distrusted facts almost as much as atmosphere. He knew at least three innocent men who would be bashing their bishops in Her Majesty’s prisons for many years to come because of so-called facts. On the other hand, on other occasions other facts had saved all three from well-deserved sentences. We are in God’s hands.

      So he abandoned facts and set off on a walkabout of the house hoping to encounter truth.

      He strolled along the brown horror of the entrance hall opening doors at random. One room contained a full-size billiard table, presumably the one on which the coffin had rested. There were two or three balls on the table and a cue leaned up against a pocket. Someone had not waited long to resume playing.

      Dalziel moved on and reached the next door just as a telephone rang inside.

      ‘Hello!’ said old Fielding’s reedy but still imperious voice. ‘Yes. This is Hereward Fielding speaking.’

      So that’s what ‘Herrie’ was short for. Jesus wept!

      He remained at the door. He was firmly of the conviction that if you didn’t have enough sense to lower your voice, then you either wanted or deserved to be overheard.

      ‘No, I will not change my mind,’ said Fielding. ‘And I am too old to be bribed, persuaded or flattered into doing so. Now please, leave me alone. I have just buried my son today, yes, my son. Spare me your sympathy. You may come tomorrow if you wish, but I make no promises about my availability. Good day.’

      The phone was replaced with a loud click. Dalziel pushed open the door and entered.

      The room was large and ugly, its furnishings and decoration old enough to be tatty without getting anywhere near the ever-shifting bourne of the antique. Fielding had turned from the telephone to a wall cabinet, the door of which seemed to be jammed. He glanced up at Dalziel.

      ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said, heaving. The door flew open and a glass unbalanced and fell to the threadbare carpet. He ignored it, but plucked another from inside and with it a bottle. Dalziel fixed his gaze on this. It took a strong man to stand with a bottle in one hand, a glass in the other, and not offer him a drink.

      ‘Can I help you?’ asked Fielding.

      ‘No. The others seem to be in conference and I was just having a look around,’ said Dalziel.

      ‘Were you? Well, this room, by general consensus the coldest and draughtiest in this cold and draughty house, is sometimes regarded as my sitting-room. Though naturally should anyone else wish to eat, drink, sleep, play records, make love or merely take a walk in it, my selfish demands for privacy are not allowed to get in the way.’

      ‘That’s good of you,’ said Dalziel heartily, closing the door behind him. ‘Terrible, this weather. I pity all the poor sods on holiday.’

      ‘I understood you were on holiday,’ said Fielding, filling his glass.

      ‘So I am,’ said Dalziel, mildly surprised at the idea. ‘Pity me then. Yes, it’s still chucking it down. I hope your grandson’s all right.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘Your grandson. He’s run away, I believe. I’m sorry, didn’t you know?’

      The old man took a long swallow from his glass. What was it? wondered Dalziel. He couldn’t see the label which was obscured by Fielding’s long bony fingers, but the liquid was an attractive pale amber.

      ‘It would be too optimistic to hope you might mean Bertie?’ said Fielding.

      ‘No. The lad. Nigel.’

      ‘I feared so. It was ever thus. Wilde was wrong. You don’t have to kill the things you love. Just wait long enough and they’ll go away.’

      ‘Who?’ said Dalziel, pouncing on this further reference to killing and wanting to get its provenance right.

      ‘Who? You mean, who … Oscar Wilde. The Ballad of Reading Gaol.’

      ‘Oh, the poof,’ said Dalziel, his interest evaporating.

      Unexpectedly Fielding laughed.

      ‘That’s the one,’ he said. ‘Will you have a drink, Mr …?’

      ‘Dalziel. Yes, I will.’ Here’s another one who thinks he’s summed me up and can start patronizing me, thought Dalziel as his huge hand held the glass he had retrieved from the floor steadfastly under the bottle till the meniscus touched the rim and Fielding said ironically, ‘Say when.’

      It was brandy, a cheap brand Dalziel

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