Reginald Hill - Dialogues of the Dead

“How do you know he used a cafetière?”

“He always made real coffee. He despised instant. And he had a small one cup cafetière he used if he was by himself and a large one if he had company. It was the large one, wasn’t it?”

“You got into the room, Mr. Roote. You probably saw for yourself. On the table by his chair.”

“I wasn’t looking at the fucking furniture, you moron!” shouted Roote, leaping up with a violence that knocked his chair backwards and shifted the table towards his two interrogators.

“Interview suspended while the witness gets a hold of himself,” said Dalziel equably.

Outside, he said, “The lad seems upset. You weren’t making faces at him behind my back, were you?”

“No,” said Pascoe. “It’s Roote who’s making faces at us. We’ve got to get behind them.”

“Bit of plastic surgery with a truncheon, you mean? Nay, don’t take on so. I just can’t see if he’s involved why he’s so keen to cry murder.”

“He’s clever and he’s devious,” said Pascoe. “Just because we can’t see where he’s heading, doesn’t mean he’s lost.”

“Wish I could say the same for us. So, this bloody cafetière, which were Johnson using, the big ’un or the little ’un?”

“The large one. And yes, it looks as if several cups had been poured from it, always presuming he’d filled it to the top in the first place. Path. report suggests Johnson had downed a fair amount of coffee shortly before he died, but exact measures aren’t on the menu.”

“Never are when you want ’em. Useless sods, doctors,” said Dalziel. “What’s all this about a Yorkie bar?”

“Just winding him up. The other one had been taken out of its wrapper and put down on the mantelshelf. Probably Johnson was going to eat it but didn’t get round to it.”

“Wouldn’t mind one myself,” said Dalziel, rubbing his belly. “So what do you think, lad? I mean, if Roote weren’t mixed up in this, would you be doing owt other than tell the coroner it looks like he topped himself?”

Pascoe thought then said, “I’d still want to know where Johnson got the Midazolam. And why he put it in the whisky first rather than straight into his coffee.”

“Good questions,” said Dalziel. “Let’s get back in there, shall we? See if he’s settled down, then we’ll wind him up some more.”

They went back inside. Roote was, outwardly at least, back to his usual fully controlled self.

Dalziel took up the questioning as if nothing had happened.

“This tutorial you were having with Dr. Johnson, bit of an odd time for it, Sunday lunch? I mean, most folk are sitting down to roast beef and Yorkshire pud with their nearest and dearest.”

“I seem to recall we left you in The Dog and Duck, Superintendent,” said Roote.

“Aye, well, pubs is where I meet my nearest and dearest,” said the Fat Man. “So what were this tutorial about?”

“What has this got to do with anything?”

“It might help us understand Dr. Johnson’s state of mind when you left him,” murmured Pascoe.

“His state of mind is immaterial,” insisted Roote. “You’re not still trying to brush this aside as suicide, are you? Sam just wasn’t the suicidal type.”

“Takes a one to know a one, does it?” said Dalziel.

“Sorry?”

“You did slash your wrists a few months back, I seem to recall.”

“Yes, but that was …”

“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.”