Dialogues of the Dead

SERGIUS: Ah, that’s the version she gave you, was it? A few minor inaccuracies. It wasn’t me driving, for a start. It was Rye. She was so desperate to get to the theatre for her potty little role that she’d have done anything. When I realized she was setting out in Mummy’s car, I ran after her and because she was having trouble changing up, I managed to jump into the passenger seat. She caused the crash. She killed me and those other two people. But you’re right about one thing. That was where all this started.

SAM: You’re saying because she feels guilty about accidentally killing three people all those years ago, she started bumping us off now? I hope you’ve got Beddoes over there. He’ll have loved this. It’s really Gothic!

SERGIUS: It’s a little more complicated. We were very close, real twins, to the point where we often seemed to share thoughts, and if anything happened to the other when we were apart, both of us felt it. So she was naturally devastated when I died, particularly as it was her fault, and when she wanted to ask my forgiveness, it didn’t seem silly to try and contact me via our shared thoughts as we used to when I was alive. Well, we got a dialogue going in her mind, but she was never sure if it was real or she was just making it up …

GEOFF: And was it real?

SERGIUS: How should I know? I wasn’t sure either if the dialogue I thought I was having with her was real or just my imagining. I mean, when you’re both alive and can meet to exchange notes, you can cross-check, right? But with me down here, her up there, how could either of us tell? Unless of course, we got a sign.

SAM: A sign? Oh, God preserve us from signs!

STUFFER: Aye, one thing I’ve learnt in politics is any bugger looking for signs is sure to find ’em, and there’s none of ’em to be trusted!

SERGIUS: You may be right, Councillor. Certainly once she started looking they came thick and fast. In fairness, you’ve got to understand her psychological state. It wasn’t just guilt at my death that was screwing up her thinking. It was the way her whole life had been stood on its head. Her acting career had been all she ever thought of before the accident, but after she recovered, she gave it up completely. What she told people-indeed what she told herself-was that she did it out of revulsion against the artificialities and pretences of the stage. In fact it was rather more basic. You see, she found she could no longer remember the words!

DICK: But she always had a marvellous memory for quotation.