I pushed open the music-room door. It was pitch-black inside, curtains drawn, no light on. I stepped inside saying, OK, Sis, time for little girls to be in bed.
A voice said, Suits me fine, and I switched on the light and saw it was Kay on the piano stool. She was stark naked.
I should have just turned and got out of there but I was so angry I advanced instead and began to yell at her. She span round on the stool and faced me, legs splayed, that smile on her face, the one that says, I know more about you than you know about yourself, and she said, Got any requests, Pal?
I grabbed her by the shoulders. I think I meant to drag her out of there by main force, but she just let herself come forward without resistance and next thing I was on my back with her on top of me. I was only wearing shorts so it was bare flesh to bare flesh just like last time, and like last time I could feel myself being aroused. But I wasnt an inexperienced adolescent any more. I tried to push her away but she clung on, wrapping her legs and arms round me, nails digging into my back, laughing like it was a game, and all I managed to do was roll her over so I was on top. By now I admit I wanted to fuck her, I wanted to fuck her so hard it really hurt her. Like rape, I suppose I mean. Not for pleasure but for power.
But I knew that was what she wanted too. For every reason. To satisfy her own depraved needs. For pleasure, and for power too. Once get me inside her and she knew shed be inside me for evermore.
What would have happened, I dont know. But at that moment I heard a voice calling her name. It was Helen on the stairs. She must have woken and gone to Kays room and when she found she wasnt there, she came looking for her.
I dont think any other voice could have put the brake on Kays lust. Dad, the Archbishop of Canterbury, anybody else and shed have just clung the tighter and revelled in being caught in flagrante with her stepson.
But not Helen. If in that whole mass of self-centred, self-indulgent, self-advancing, self-pleasuring impulse which makes up her being there is a single spark of unselfish feeling, its struck by Helen.
She pushed me off, stood up and slipped into her robe, which had been draped across the piano. Then she smiled that smile at me again and said, Maybe it will be third time lucky, eh, Pal?
She went out. I heard her greeting Helen in the hall, her voice perfectly normal, for all the world as if nothing had happened. Jesus, what an actress she would have made! But shes more than an actress, shes Lamia. She uses enchantment to hide the fact that she is really a serpent. I told her that once and she smiled as if Id complimented her and said she could see from the start that a love of poetry was another thing we had in common. God, she knows how to get under your skin.
Next morning I got up early and packed my bag. I didnt want to be there when my father returned. I needed time to work out how to deal with this situation. She greeted me in the hall nice and easy, as if nothing had happened. She was so convincing that for a moment I began to doubt my own memory! Then I remembered the scratches Id got on my back where shed dug her claws into me.
I told her I was seriously thinking of telling my father everything. She just laughed and said, In that case, perhaps I shall tell him how youve been lusting after me all these years, which I could just about put up with when you were a spotty little adolescent. But trying to force me to have sex with you now that, on paper at least, youre a grown man is something different. Thats attempted rape.
I got out then. No point in doing anything else. All the way back to Cambridge, I debated how I should tell Dad. This time I knew I had to say something. The bitch was taking Helen on a trip to the States in a couple of days and I suspected that, fearful of what Cress and I might reveal to Dad when we had him to ourselves during the Easter vac, she might try to get in first. I couldnt bear the thought of telling him such stuff face to face, so first of all I rang him in London. But I felt such a coward, and he was so distant and distracted, that I got to the end of our conversation without saying a word. It wasnt till later that I got to thinking maybe the reason he sounded so distracted was that the bitch had already started poisoning his mind against me. I had to do something. I should have been there to meet him when he got back-oh, how I wish Id gone to meet him-but I chickened out again and wrote a letter. He should have got it the day before Kay and Helen were due to fly to America.
I thought he would ring me straightaway. He didnt. I gave him a day then rang him. There was no answer.
So I left it. It was end of term, Id be home in a few days anyway. We could talk then.
Instead I found him. Well, you know that. God help me, I found him.
Did he get my letter? I believe so. I think that was what hed been burning in his wastepaper bin.
Did he have time to say anything to Kay before she left? My bet is he did. But that bitch would have been ready for it. Perhaps shed already pre-empted my accusation with her own version. So there he was, faced with having to accept either that his wife was a dissolute bitch whod tried to force herself on his son, or that his son was a depraved monster whod tried to rape his wife.
Either option was hell. His mind snapped and he took what must have seemed the only other option. And its all down to that bitch!
She may not have been in the study with him and she may not have pulled the trigger, but she drove him to it and I dont doubt that she did it deliberately. I think she could see he was on the edge and she pushed him as close as she could get, then left. I think she probably told him that if he didnt get things sorted, she was going to go public with her version, accuse me of attempted rape, call in the police. She wanted him to see that, whatever he did, his family was going to be blown apart. Except if he blew himself apart first.
Then she headed for the States. She wanted to be long gone if and when it happened. She must have jumped for joy when she heard the news. Now shed got it all. My sister, Helen. A huge chunk of Dads estate. And now she could spend all the time she wanted with her fancy man, that greasy Yank, Kafka.
Youve got to admit shes been quite blatant about it. Soon as she realized she wasnt going to get back inside Moscow House, where does she head? Out to his pleasure palace at Cothersley Hall!
But shes miscalculated badly if she thinks Im going to take this lying down.
No need to keep glancing at your watch, Superintendent. I wont keep you from your lunch any longer. This is my statement. You get it typed up and whatever else you do to make it official and Ill sign it. But I wanted you to hear it first, just so that youll know what youre dealing with next time you go smarming round that bitch. And just in case shes got you so magicked you think you might do her a favour by forgetting about this tape, I shouldnt put your career at risk. Im going to say it all again at the inquest, and the coroner might be very curious indeed to know why nothing in the police records has prepared him for this evidence.
End of statement. This is Palinurus Maciver Junior speaking. The time is one fifty-three p.m. on March 27th, 1992.
7
Well, said Pascoe. And what do you make of that, Shirley?
Sir?
Of the tape. You were listening?
Sorry, sir. My mind went wool-gathering. I didnt really take it in.
Meaning- if you want to say negligently, No matter, it was pretty dull anyway, and toss the cassette into your wastepaper basket, youll get no quarrel from me.
I see. Shall I play it through again then?
Meaning- thank you, but thats not the way I want to play this, not yet anyway.
No need, sir. I reckon I got the gist. Pal Maciver Junior blamed his stepmother for his fathers suicide.
Thats putting it mildly, said Pascoe. Anything more?
She shrugged as if to say, OK, you keep asking for it, youre going to get it.
And he also seemed to be suggesting that Mr Dalziel was far from objective in his attitude to said stepmother and might be disinclined to take these accusations seriously.
Which would, if true, be a serious matter, said Pascoe, curious to see how the young DC was going to deal with this.
Yes, sir. Though there did seem to be mitigating circumstances.
Did there? Such as?
Well, it was getting on to closing time, said Novello very seriously. And he was worried about his meat pie.
Pascoe stared at her. She stared back. Then his face cracked in a grin and after a moment she grinned back.
However, he resumed, it would seem that mitigation is unnecessary as, if your digest of the investigation is accurate, nothing of Pal Juniors accusations against his stepmother or insinuations against Mr Dalziel ever troubled the official record.
No, sir. Theres certainly nothing in the file, no signed transcript of the tape and no reference to it, and there was no mention of any of this at the inquest either.
No problem then, said Pascoe briskly. So heres what were going to do. If youre agreeable, that is. Youre going to forget you heard this tape. Both times.
Just a little reminder that the Fat Man didnt have a monopoly of divine omniscience.
Which tape? she asked.
Dont jump the gun, he said. Before amnesia sets in, Id be interested to hear your reactions to it. Anything at all.
She shrugged.
Ive met none of these people. I cant even make an educated guess as to whether theres anything in what Maciver said. As to why he changed his mind about hurling all these accusations around, well, in a straight fight, Cambridge undergrad versus the Super, I know where my money would be. But how about you, sir? Werent you around at the time?
Pascoe shook his head.
Sick leave. We established that last night when it became apparent that this latest suicide was a carbon copy of the old one.
Thats you off the hook then, sir.
Pascoe opened a drawer and slid the cassette into it.
What hook would that be, Detective? he said briskly.
Hook, sir? said Novello, interpreting the signal. Who said anything about a hook? Shall I take this stuff back down to the store now?
No, said Pascoe. Stick it in that cupboard there. Ill pass it on to Mr Ireland later.
Mr Ireland?
Yes. Once were completely satisfied no crimes been committed, a suicide, copycat or not, becomes Uniformeds baby.