Dialogues of the Dead

“I’m impressed. Deeply offended but impressed,” said Urquhart.

He put away the pouch with the offending substance and said, “Can we start? I’ve got places to be.”

“Oh aye? Going ratting, are you?” asked Dalziel, letting his gaze run up and down the linguist’s dress.

Pottle said, “Now that we have got these necessary pecking-order rituals out of the way, I too should like to put in an appeal for expedition.”

“I’ll not argue with that. Quicker the better, in my view,” said Dalziel. “Pete, this is your circus, so you’d better crack the whip.”

“Thank you,” said Pascoe. “May I say first of all how grateful we are to Dr. Pottle and Dr. Urquhart for coming along this morning at such short notice. It seemed to me that as we must now admit without any prevarication that we have a serial killer on our hands, the wider we cast our net in search of expert assistance, and the sooner we set about casting it, the better. I realize you have had what is in analytical terms a ludicrously short time in which to study the Wordman documents, but what first impressions may lack in depth they can make up in freshness, Dr. Pottle.”

“Let me first apologize to my esteemed colleague, Dr. Urquhart, in case anything I say should seem to trespass on his mystery, for of course my only route to understanding the writer of these pieces is via the words the writer uses.”

“Dinna fash yersel’, Pozzo,” said the Scot. “I’ll not be backward in dishing out the psychobabble.”

“Thank you. First Dialogue. The very use of the word Dialogue is significant. A dialogue is an exchange of ideas and information between two or more people. For these to be true dialogues our Wordman-I use the term for convenience-must be listening as well as speaking. And I think we can see that he is doing this in two ways. Firstly there are gaps in the text, blank lines, and it is not difficult to fill these in with unrecorded replies to the Wordman’s comments or questions. For the most part these would be conversational trivia rather than matter of deep import such as you might expect to find in a dialogue proper. For example, in this first one, between How’re you doing? and Me, I’m fine, I think, we might interpolate OK. How about yourself? Then between Me, I’m fine I think and It’s hard to tell sometimes, we might put What do you mean, ‘think’? It should be noted that the tone here, as throughout the Dialogues in these small exchanges, is friendly and familiar, as between people who are very close and on a fairly equal footing.”

“I think we just about got there by ourselves,” said Pascoe apologetically, aware of steatopygous squeakings from Dalziel’s chair. “You said there were two forms of dialogue. …”

“Indeed. The other is the more formal and mysterious one in which the Wordman believes he is receiving advice, aid, and instruction from some otherworldly power who may or may not be or may be in part only the familiar communicant of the first form. Finally of course the Wordman is indulging in a dialogue with us. That is, with you the investigators of these crimes, with Mr. Urquhart and myself as your associates, and with the world at large who form as it were his wider audience.”

“Can I say something here?” said Urquhart. “You may have missed it, Pozzo, and me I only picked it up through a reference in a dictionary, but then I got a friend to check it out …”

“Friend?” said Pascoe, again pre-empting the Fat Man. “You haven’t been showing the Dialogues to anyone unauthorized, I hope.”

“Don’t get your Y-fronts in a tangle,” said Urquhart. “It was just a wee hairie in the Eng. Lit. Department that I bang from time to time and she disna ken any more than she needs to ken. What she told me was that there’s this thing in literature called a ‘Dialogue of the Dead.’ Started way back with Lucian …”

“That’d be Lord Lucian?” said Dalziel.

“Ha ha. Second-century Syrian rhetorician who wrote in Greek. There was a big revival of interest in England in the eighteenth century, the Augustans and what followed, all that classical crap. Biggest success was Lord Lyttelton’s Dialogues of the Dead in 1760. Twenty-eight dialogues including three by some bluestocking called Mrs. Montagu-the best three my wee friend assures me, but she may be partial. There were a few more written right through the nineteenth century but the form had pretty well died the death before Queen Vicky snuffed it.”

“And what did this form consist of?” enquired Pascoe.