Tom Sharpe - The Throwback

'I have found my father,' he announced. Mrs Flawse stared at him with loathing.

'You're a liar, ?she said, 'a liar and a murderer. I saw what you had done to your grandfather and don't think…'

Lockhart didn't. Between them he and Mr Dodd dragged Mrs Flawse up to her room and tied her again to the bed. This time they gagged her.

'I told you the auld witch knew too much,' said Mr Dodd, 'and since she's lived for money she'll not die without it, threaten her how you may.'

'Then we must forestall her,' said Lockhart and went down to the cellar. Mr Taglioni, on to his fifth bottle, regarded him hazily through bloodshot eyes.

'Finest taxi… stuffer in the world. Me,' he burbled, 'fox, flowl, phleasant, you name it I'll stuff it. And now I've stuffed a man. Whatcha think of that?'

'Daddy,' said Lockhart and put his arm round Mr Taglioni's shoulder affectionately, 'my own dear daddy.'

'Daddy? Whose flucking daddy?' said Mr Taglioni, too drunk to appreciate the new role he was being cast in. Lockhart helped him to his feet and up the stairs. In the kitchen Mr Dodd was busy at the stove making a pot of coffee. Lockhart propped the taxidermist up against the settle where he tried to focus his eyes on these new and circling surroundings. It took an hour and a pint of black coffee together with a great deal of stew to sober him up. And all the time Lockhart insisted on calling him daddy. If anything more was needed to unnerve the Italian it was this.

'I'm not your flucking daddy,' he said, 'I don't know what you're talking about.'

Lockhart got up and went to his grandfather's study and unlocked the safe hidden behind the collected works of Surtees. When- he returned he was carrying a washleather bag. He beckoned to Mr Taglioni to come to the table and then emptied the bag's contents out in front of him. A thousand gold sovereigns littered the scrubbed pine table. Mr Taglioni goggled at them,

'What's all that money doing there?' he asked. He picked a sovereign up and fingered it. 'Gold. Pure gold. !

'All for you, daddy,' said Lockhart.

For once Mr Taglioni didn't question the word. 'For me? You're paying me in gold for stuffing a man?'

But Lockhart shook his head. 'No, daddy, for something else.'

'What?' said the taxidermist suspiciously.

'For being my father, ?said Lockhart. Mr Taglioni's eyes swivelled in his head almost as incredulously as the tiger's did in

the old man.

'Your father?' he gasped. 'You want me to be your father? For why should I be your father? You must have one already.'

'I am a bastard,' said Lockhart but Mr Taglioni knew that

already. 'So even a bastard must have a father. Your mother was a virgin?'

'You leave my mother out of this,' said Lockhart and Mr Dodd shoved a poker into the glowing fire of the range. By the time it was red-hot Mr Taglioni had made up his mind. Lockhart's alternatives left him little choice.

'Okay, I agree. 1 tell this Mr Bullstrode I am your father. I don't mind. You pay me this money. Is fine with me. Anything you say.'

Lockhart said a lot more. They concerned the likely prison sentence to be pronounced on a taxidermist who had stuffed an old man, having in all likelihood first murdered him for the thousand gold sovereigns in his safe.

'I no murdered anyone,' said Mr Taglioni frantically, 'you know that. He was dead when I came here.'

'You prove it,' said Lockhart. 'Where are his vital organs to be examined by a police surgeon and forensic expert to say

when he died?' 'In the cucumber frames,' said Mr Dodd involuntarily. It was

a circumstance that haunted his mind.

'Never mind that,' said Lockhart, 'the point I'm making is that you'll never be able to prove you didn't kill my grandfather and this money is the motive. Besides, we don't like foreigners in these parts. The jury would be biased against you.'

Mr Taglioni acknowledged that likelihood. Certainly everything else in whatever parts he was seemed to have a bias against him.

'Okay, okay. I say what you want me to say,' he said, 'and then I go with all this money? Right?' 'Right,' said Lockhart, 'you have my word as a gentleman.'

That night Mr Dodd went to Black Pockrington and, having first collected Miss Deyntry's car from the old lime kiln, drove to Hexham to inform Mr Bullstrode that he and Dr Magrew were required next day at the Hall to certify the sworn statement of Lockhart's father that he was indeed responsible for Miss Flawse's pregnancy. He then returned the car to Divit Hall.

Lockhart and Mr Taglioni sat on in the kitchen while the Italian learnt his lines. Upstairs Mrs Flawse struggled with her own. She had made up her mind that nothing, not even the prospect of a fortune, was going to keep her lying there in wait for a similar end to that of her husband. Come hell or high water she was going to get loose from the bed and absent from the Hall, and not even the thought of being pursued by the Flawse pack would deter her from making her escape. Unable to express herself vocally because of the gag, she concentrated on the ropes that tied her to the iron bedstead. She pushed her hands down and pulled them back over and over again with a tenacity that was a measure of her fear.

And in Hexham Mr Bullstrode pertinaciously tried to persuade Dr Magrew to return with him to Flawse Hall the next morning. Dr Magrew was not easily induced. His last visit had had a quite remarkable adverse effect on him.

'Bullstrode,' he said, 'it does not come easily to me in my professional capacity to reveal the confidences of a man I have known so many years and who may and indeed probably is at this moment on his deathbed, but I have to tell you that old Edwin had harsh things to say about you when last I beard him.'

'Indeed,' said Mr Bullstrode, 'he was doubtless rambling in delirium. You cannot rely on the sayings of a senile old man.'

'True,' said Dr Magrew, 'but there was a certain precision about some of his comments that didn't suggest senility to me.'

'Such as?' said Mr Bullstrode. But Dr Magrew was not pre-

pared to say. I will not repeat slander,' he said, 'but I am not of a mind to go back to the Hall until Edwin is either dead or ready to apologize to you.'

Mr Bullstrode took a more philosophical and financially advantageous view of the matter. 'As his personal physician you know best,' he said, 'but for myself I do not intend to forgo my professional fee as his solicitor, and the estate is a large one and will take a good deal of winding up. Besides, the will is sufficiently ambiguous to provide fertile ground for litigation. Now if Lockhart has found his father I doubt very much if Mrs Flawse will not contest the issue and the pickings of such a lengthy court action would be considerable. It would be foolish after so many years amicable acquaintance with Edwin to fail him in his hour of need.'

'Be it on your own head,' said Dr Magrew. 'I will come with you but I warn you there are strange occurrences going on at the Hall and I care not for them.'

He liked them even less when the following morning Mr Bullstrode stopped his car at the gated bridge and waited for Mr Dodd to come and unlock it. Even at this distance Mr Flawse's voice could be heard cursing the Almighty and blaming him for the state of the universe. As usual Mr Bullstrode's point of view was more pragmatic.

'I cannot say I agree with his sentiments,' he said, 'but if as you assert he has said some unkind words about me it would appear that I am at least in good company.'

He wasn't ten minutes later. Mr Taglioni's appearance did not inspire confidence. The taxidermist had been through too many inexplicable horrors to be at his best and while Lockhart had spent half the night seeing to it that his 'father' was word perfect in his new role, drink, fear and sleeplessness had done nothing to improve his looks. Mr Taglioni's clothes too had suffered. Provided by Lockhart from his grandfather's ward-