Dialogues of the Dead

“More a gesture? Aye, well mebbe the good doctor was making a gesture too. Mebbe he planned to be found sitting with his book in plenty of time to have his stomach pumped and then spend a happy convalescence been cosseted by his loving friends. You see yourself as a loving friend, do you, Mr. Roote?”

For a second it looked like there might be another outburst, but it came to nothing.

Instead he smiled and said, “Let me prevent you, Superintendent, in the archaic as well as the modern sense of the word. You think perhaps Sam and I were a gay couple who had a tiff that lunchtime, and I flounced out, and Sam decided to teach me a lesson by drinking a carefully measured non-fatal draught in the expectation that I would soon return in plenty of time to oversee his resuscitation, after which it would be all reconciliation and contrition, not to mention coition, for the rest of the day. But when I didn’t come, he didn’t stop drinking. And now I, filled with guilt, am trying to ease my agitated conscience by insisting it was murder.”

Pascoe felt an unworthy pang of pleasure at hearing what he thought of as Dalziel’s absurd theory so precisely anatomized.

The Fat Man, however, showed no sign of discomfiture.

“By gum, Chief Inspector,” he said to Pascoe, “didst tha hear that? Knowing the questions afore they’re asked! Get a few more doing that, and we’d only need to teach them to beat themselves up, and you and me ’ud be out of a job.”

“No, sir. We’d still need someone to hear the answer,” said Pascoe. “Which is, Mr. Roote?”

“The answer is no. Sam and I were friends, good friends, I believe. But above all he was my teacher, a man I respected more than any other I ever knew, a man who would have made a huge contribution to the world of learning and whose loss to me, both personally and intellectually, is almost more than I can bear. But bear it I must, if only to ensure that you bumbling incompetents don’t make as big a cock-up of this investigation as you’ve made of others in the past.”

“Nobody’s perfect,” said Dalziel. “But we got you, sunshine.”

Roote smiled and said, “So you did. But you didn’t get to keep me, did you?”

And Dalziel smiled back.

“We just catch them, lad. It’s the lawyers as decide which are going to be kept and stuffed, which chucked back as tiddlers till they’re big enough to be worth the keeping. You think you’re big enough yet, Mr. Roote? Or are you still a growing boy?”

Pascoe would have been interested to see how this verbal tennis played but the door of the interview room opened at that moment and Hat Bowler, who’d looked very relieved to be rid of his Roote-sitting duty, reappeared.

“Sir,” he said to Dalziel with some urgency. “Can I have a word?”

“Aye. Make a change to talk to a grown-up,” said Dalziel.

He rose and went out. Pascoe recorded this on the tape but didn’t switch it off.

Roote shook his head and said ruefully, “Knows how to get them in, doesn’t he? You’ve got to give it to Mr. Dalziel. He’s a lot brighter than he looks. Which perhaps explains why he chooses to look like he does.”

“What’s wrong with the way he looks?” asked Pascoe. “You’re not being sizeist, I hope?”

“I don’t think so, but every size has its limitations, doesn’t it?”

“Such as?”

Roote thought for a moment then gave a conspiratorial grin.

“Well, fat men can’t write sonnets,” he said.

He’s taking control, thought Pascoe. He wants me to ask why not. Or something. Change direction.

He said, “Tell me about ‘Dream-Pedlary.’”

The change seemed to work. For a second Roote looked nonplussed.

“It’s a poem,” said Pascoe. “By Beddoes.”

“Gee, thanks,” said Roote. “What’s it got to do with anything?”

“Dr. Johnson-Sam-was reading it. At least, that’s where the book on his lap was open.”

Roote closed his eyes as if in an effort of recollection.

“Complete Works, edited by Gosse, 1928 Fanfrolico Press edition,” he said.

“That’s right,” said Pascoe looking at his, as always, comprehensive notes. “Decorated with Holbein’s Dance of Death. How did you know it was this edition, Mr. Roote? There were several collections of Beddoes’ poems on Sam’s shelves.”

“It was one of his favourites. He liked the woodcuts. And he’d been using it earlier.”

“During your tutorial, you mean?”

Roote ignored the sceptical stress and said, “That’s right. But it was the first volume he was using, the one with the letters and Death’s Jest-Book. ‘Dream-Pedlary’ is in the Second Part. Whoever killed him must have put it there.”

“Indeed,” murmured Pascoe. “Any notion why?”

Roote closed his eyes and Pascoe saw his lips move silently. Despite his pallor and the dark hollows under his eyes, he looked for a moment like a child trying to recall its lesson. And Pascoe who had read and re-read the poem was able to follow the verses on those pale lips and observe the hesitation when they came to the fourth.