Dialogues of the Dead

Getting the weapon was so easy I hardly noticed that I’d taken it and certainly no one else did. Then I bided my time, in every sense of the phrase. Eventually people began to drift away, and when I saw my particular piece of flotsam join the drift, I followed close behind, but not so close as to draw attention. My aura was strong now, so strong I felt myself borne along on its brightness like a piece of debris on the wind which follows a nuclear blast. Breathe on me breath of God, I sang inside, for this surely must be what His breath feels like. I was aglow with its gloriole, but still time flowed strongly around me. Then I saw him turn away from the main drift and at the same moment I felt time begin to ebb.

“Well, it’s time we were off,” said Andy Dalziel. “Ars longa”-he gave the ess its full sibilance-“and if I stay here much longer, me belly’ll think me throat’s cut.”

Cap Marvell let her gaze linger on the quercine throat in question and said, “You must have a very imaginative belly.”

But the Lord Mayor who felt he had stayed far beyond the requirements of duty was on Dalziel’s side.

“You’re right, Andy,” he said. “If we show the way, then all these other good folk can be off to their lunches, eh?”

His touching belief that, as with royalty, nobody ate till he ate or left before he left, was contradicted by the steady flow of exiting guests as one o’clock approached. But his eagerness to join them was not shared by his wife, who had recovered from her brush with the Hon.’s jacket and was now displaying the oenological expertise recently acquired on a Sunday Times Wine Society weekend. Having expressed the opinion that over-oaked chardonnay had had its day, she had been brought a newly opened bottle of red by Percy Follows.

“Don’t tell me what it is,” she cried, sniffing deeply at the glass cradled in her hands. “Ah, this is good, this is interesting. I’m getting exotic fruit, I’m getting mangrove swamps, I’m getting coriander, I’m getting cumin, I’m getting jaggery.”

“Shouldn’t let it bother you, luv,” said Dalziel. “After fifteen pints of best, I sometimes get a bit jaggery meself. Now are we going, or what?”

“It’s a Shiraz Merlot blend, I’d say. Western Australia? About ’97?” said Margot.

All eyes turned on Follows who, keeping his hand clamped firmly over the bottle’s label, said, “Spot on, my dear. What a nose you have there.”

It was indeed a nose to be proud of. If you were a macaw, thought Cap.

She saw a similar thought form on Dalziel’s lips, got him in a restraint-lock disguised as an affectionate linking of arms, and said, “You’re right, dear. Time to be on our way.”

They moved off, closely followed by the mayor and his triumphing wife.

Ambrose Bird approached Follows, prised the bottle from his fingers, examined the label which read St-Émilion, and said magnificently, “Creep!”

And now the gallery really did begin to empty fast. Soon, of the hundred or so guests who’d attended, only a couple of dozen remained. Among them was Edgar Wield, the glass of chilled white wine he’d received on arrival now warm in his hand. He had little interest in art but his partner, Edwin Digweed, had wanted to come. Sensing Wield’s reluctance he had said acidly, “Very well. I shall remember this next time you want me to attend an autopsy.” Any more realistic argument might have made Wield dig his heels in, but this made him smile and give in with a good grace, neither of which would have been detectable to a stranger but both of which Digweed spotted and appreciated.

Now he waited with ironic patience for Digweed, who couldn’t sharpen a pencil without cutting his finger, to finish a deep discussion he was having with a hunky young wood-turner about the relative merits of elm and yew, and looked forward to the rest of the day which, with luck, would give him the pleasure of his partner’s company away from any disruptive crowd.

He saw Pascoe and Ellie by the exit talking to Ambrose Bird, or rather Ellie and the Last of the Actor-Managers were talking. Wield knew that if Ellie had a weakness, it was a tendency to be star-struck by fully paid-up luvvies. Pascoe, who wore the sweet smile with which he masked impatience, caught Wield’s eye, made a wry face, then moved towards him.