Dialogues of the Dead

GEOFF: So long as there’s a bit of good sport. Shall I push off then? Right. Here we go. Just one thing that bothers me, as they say in the tec novels. Has all this worked out for Rye? I mean, was it really you leading her on all the time? And if her motive was getting in touch with you, why can’t we hear her? Or did she have to get right through the whole twenty volumes of OED before she wrapped it up? In which case, sounds like she’s got a long way to go? And won’t the police get a bit suspicious when the Wordman killings carry on even with Dick here dead? Left hand down a bit, I think, old thing. Don’t want to hit that rock or whatever it is out there …can’t see a thing in this mist …oh yes, I can …it’s getting a bit clearer …it’s …it’s …Oh my God …!

And so their voices fade in the mist, or rather in my head, which is maybe the same thing, with Geoff’s questions unanswered.

Silence. The same silence which began as I stepped back into time and looked down at dear Dick’s ripped and bloody corpse, and dearer Hat’s pale and bleeding face.

Oh, Serge, Serge, why have you deserted me? In all the other dialogues, I heard you, sometimes faint, sometimes loud and clear, always unmistakably you. In this one I have invented words, for you, for all of them, hoping like a nurse giving the kiss of life, that eventually my breath would give you strength once more to take your own.

But here I sit in what used to be Dick’s chair, with all those old wordmen staring down at me from the walls, and I know that I am alone. Except for my memories.

Such memories.

How can I live with them?

I am of course mad by any normal standard of judging sanity.

And will be mad in my own judgment if I conclude that this has all been delusion, all done for nothing.

The questions I put into Geoff’s mouth need to be answered.

Perhaps others will answer them for me. Even if the police are so blind that they let me get away with this, theirs are not the only eyes that I have to fear.

Through the open door into the library, I can see Charley Penn sitting at his table, looking towards me with a gaze by turns speculative and sceptical and accusing, and always angry.

Beside him is that strange young man, Franny Roote, who whenever he catches my eye gives me a small, almost complicitous smile.

Or is it guilt that makes me see these things?

Something else that I can see through my open door is real enough, nought realler.

The twenty volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary sitting proudly on its high shelf.