Reginald Hill - Dialogues of the Dead

And Hat realized that part at least of the singing in his ears was the sound of his mobile ringing.

From his place in the library office, through the open door, out across the enquiry desk, Pascoe could see them, twenty dark blue volumes, standing as straight and smart as guardsmen on parade. And he knew beyond doubt the meaning of that mysterious shape in the bowl of the P of the In Principio at the head of the First Dialogue.

Not a Bible or a missal as Urquhart had suggested, but a volume of the great Oxford English Dictionary.

No lettering on the drawing, of course-that would have made things too easy-but the narrow band across the top of the dust jacket spine was there while the white disc at the bottom represented the university coat of arms. From this distance he couldn’t make out the letters of the motto it contained, but he’d seen it often enough on his own OUP books to know what they spelled.

Dominus illuminatio mea .

The contents of the volumes were indicated by the first and last words each contained.

These he could read from here, but nevertheless he rose and went out to the shelf.

The first volume was easy.

A-Bazouki

The AA man, Andrew Ainstable. The boy who played the bazouki.

Next:

BBC–Chalypsography

Jax Ripley. And the other?

He took the volume down to check.

Steel engraving .

Oh, dreadful pun! Councillor Steel killed with a burin. And the Cyrillic letters engraved upon his head just to underline the joke.

The third volume.

Cham-Creeky

Cham. Illustrative quotation from 1759:

“… that great Cham of literature, Samuel Johnson.”

Then creeky…?

Stang Creek? Skip to the next volume.

Creel-Duzepere

Creel. Body in the creek, head in the creel. And duzepere?

A singular variant of douzepers meaning illustrious nobles, knights, or grandees .

Poor Pyke-Strengler. Perhaps if your father had not died …

The fifth volume.

Dvandva-Follis

Dvandva. A compound word in which the elements are related to each other as if joined by a copula . Actor-manager.

Follis. A small Roman coin , like that found in Ambrose Bird’s mouth.

And the first word in the next volume.

Follow

The $hadn’t been a dollar sign, but merely the removal of the letter S.

Bird and Follows. Who died, to make the whole thing even more complete, joined in a copula.

He went back into the office for privacy, closed the door, and pulled out his mobile.

The case was altered. Before, he hadn’t really been able to get his head round the idea of the gentle quiet librarian being in the frame for all these killings. Now all he could think was that he’d sent a solitary young constable out looking for a man who had leapt to the terrifying eminence of being prime suspect.

“Answer, sod you, answer!” he yelled at the phone.

“Hello?”

“Bowler, where are you?”

“At Dee’s flat, but …”

“OK, don’t go in …”

“I’m in.”

“Shit. OK. Smile sweetly and say you’ve got to fetch something from the car. Then get out. No buts. Do it!”

He waited. Then to his relief he heard the youngster’s voice saying, “Sir, what’s going in?”

Quickly he ran through what he’d seen, what he was guessing, adding, “It may be quite wrong or nothing to do with Dee but I want you to wait till …”

But Hat was screaming at him.

“Sir, what’s the next word? Tell me the next fucking word!”

Pascoe frowned, decided this was no time for a lecture on chain of command, went out of the office into the library and read, “Follows-Haswed,”pronouncing it as spelt, voicing the w. “Has wed … that’s it! A wedding was in the last Dialogue. Though in fact it might be pronounced Hasued …”

“I don’t give a fuck how it’s pronounced, what’s it mean?”

Once more Pascoe reacted to the urgency not the insubordination and checked.

“Marked with grey or brown,” he said. “The Dialogue poem said ‘but wasn’t white,’ remember? Now if only …Hat? You still there? Are you all right? Hat!”

But Hat wasn’t hearing. He was seeing a head of rich chestnut hair marked by a flash of silvery grey. And something else he saw too, trembling on his retina like the filaments of light presaging a migraine.

1576

Not a year. A date.

I have a date , the poem had said.

1.5.76.

The first of May, 1976.

Rye’s birthday.

The bastard had told them she was next and he’d been too blind to see it!

“Hat? What the hell’s going on? Is Dee there? Hat!”

“No, he’s not,” yelled Hat, going down the stairs five at a time. “He’s out at Stangcreek Cottage. And he’s got Rye with him. She’s haswed, her hair’s haswed, and she was born May the first, seventy-six-1576, remember?”

“Hat, wait there, I’m on my way. Wait there, that’s an order.”

“Fuck you,” screamed Hat into his phone.

He flung it on to the passenger seat of his car without switching it off and Pascoe, now moving down the Centre stairs at a speed almost equal to that of his young colleague, heard the crash of gears, squeal of tyres, and roar of an engine as the MG took off.

The chair she sat in like a burnished throne gleamed in the firelight.

Sensuously she let her fingers trace the serpentine grooves of the intricately carved arm rests till she came to the sudden hard swell of the lions’ heads.

She smiled down at Dick Dee who squatted before her on the three-legged stool. Between them lay a Paronomania board, which, fully open, looked like some exotic medieval map of the cosmos.

“Will you take it with you?” she asked. “The chair, I mean?”

“Strictly speaking, it isn’t mine,” he said.

“And are you always a strict speaker, Dick?”

“Strict,” he mused. “From strictus , past participle of stringere , to draw or bind tight. It’s a synantonym, of course …”

He paused and looked at her invitingly.

Taking her cue, she said, “A what?”

“A synantonym. One of those interesting words which can be their own opposite. Like overlook, impregnable, cleave.”

Rye considered, then said, “Those I can see, but strict?”

“There is a Scottish usage, meaning swift or rapid, particularly in relation to running water. So yes, I feel I can say I’m a strict speaker in one way or another.”

“But will you keep the chair?”

“In the sense of preserve it, yes. Indeed when I showed it to poor Geoffrey one day, he implied in his bumbling way that I might consider it a gift, though I doubt whether in law my unsupported recollection would be title enough. I fear you are in danger of being deflowered, my dear.”

Rye looked at the board. She had just laid, not without some complacency, azalea . Now Dee crossed it at the l with genitalia , then carefully removed the rest of her tiles.

“I did mention the rhyming rule, didn’t I?” he said. “Cross one of your opponent’s words with a rhyming word and you score both words and also win the right to remove your opponent’s tiles for your own use, if so desired.”

“But that means you could put my azalea back down on your next go,” she said with pretended indignation.

“Just so. It might be wise therefore to seek a way to block my genitalia.”