The Throwback (27 page)

Lockhart pondered a while. ‘I was going to take him back to Manchester,’ he said. ‘He has no idea where he has been.’

‘Aye but he’s a fine knowledge of the house and he’s seen our faces,’ said Mr Dodd, ‘and with the woman hollering that the man was stuffed it will take no time for the law to put two and two together.’

Down in the cellar Mr Taglioni had put far more than two and two together and was drinking himself insensible on crusted port. He sat surrounded by empty bottles proclaiming in garbled tones that he was the finest stuffer in the world. It was not a word he liked to use but his tongue could no longer wrap itself round anything so polysyllabic as taxidermist.

‘There he goes again with his blathering and boasting,’
said Mr Dodd as they stood at the top of the cellar steps. ‘The finest stuffer in the world indeed. The word has too many meanings for my liking.’

Mrs Flawse shared his distaste. Tied to the bed on which she herself had been stuffed by her late stuffed husband Mr Taglioni’s repertoire filled her with dread. Mr Flawse did not help. Mr Dodd had inserted a tape cassette labelled ‘Family History, Findings in’, which thanks to Lockhart’s electronic ingenuity no sooner ended than it rewound itself and repeated its findings
ad nauseam
. Since the tape was forty-five minutes long and took three to rewind Mrs Flawse was subjected from below to Mr Taglioni’s drunken boasts and from the bedroom across the landing to endless re-runs of the tale of Headman Flawse, Bishop Flawse going to the stake, and a recitation of Minstrel Flawse’s song beneath the gibbet. It was this last which affected her.

I gan noo wha ma organ’s gan

When oft I lay abed,

So rither hang me upside doon

Than by ma empty head.

The first stanza was bad enough but the rest were even worse. By the time Mrs Flawse had heard the old man apparently demand fifteen times that Sir Oswald’s arse be prised apart and he be given back his prick because he couldn’t wait for Oswald to die before he had a pee, his
widow was in much the same condition. Not that she wanted a prick, but she certainly couldn’t wait much longer to have a pee. And all day Lockhart and Mr Dodd sat out of earshot in the kitchen debating what to do.

‘We canna let the Latin go,’ said Mr Dodd. ‘It would be better to dispose of him altogether.’

But Lockhart’s mind was working along more economical lines. Mr Taglioni’s repeated boast that he was the world’s finest stuffer and the ambiguity of that remark gave him pause for thought. And Mr Dodd’s attitude was strange. His adamant denial that Mr Boscombe in Dry Bones was Miss Flawse’s lover and his own father had been convincing. When Mr Dodd said something it was invariably true. Certainly he didn’t lie to Lockhart – or hadn’t in the past. And now he was stating categorically that the letters were no clue. It was what Miss Deyntry and the old Romany had warned him. ‘Paper and ink will do you no good.’ Lockhart accepted the fact and yet without Mr Boscombe he was without the possibility of finding his father before it was known that his grandfather was dead. Mr Dodd was right on that point. Mrs Flawse knew and knowing would tell as soon as she was released. Her screams rising to a crescendo that drowned even old Mr Flawse’s Family History and Mr Taglioni’s garbled utterances decided Lockhart to go to her relief. By the time he unlocked the bedroom door she was screaming that if she didn’t have a pee soon it was less a question of anyone else dying
than of her bursting. Lockhart untied her and she wobbled to the earth closet. When she returned to the kitchen Lockhart had made up his mind.

‘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 crook 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 wash-leather 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 up a sovereign 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.

‘OK, I agree. I 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.

‘OK, OK. 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 Divet 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 heard 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 prepared 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 wardrobe to replace the bloodstained garments the taxidermist had been wearing before, nothing fitted at all precisely. Mr Bullstrode looked at him with dismay and Dr Magrew with medical concern.

‘He doesn’t look a very fit man to me,’ he whispered to the solicitor as they followed Lockhart into the study.

‘I cannot express an opinion on his health,’ said Mr Bullstrode, ‘but the word fit does not apply to his apparel.’

‘It doesn’t apply to a man who is shortly to be flogged within an inch of his life,’ said Dr Magrew. Mr Bullstrode stopped in his tracks.

‘Good Lord,’ he muttered, ‘that stipulation had quite passed out of my mind.’

It had never entered Mr Taglioni’s. All he wanted to do was to get out of this dreadful house with his life, reputation and money still intact.

‘What are we waiting for?’ he asked as Mr Bullstrode hesitated.

‘Quite,’ said Lockhart, ‘let us get on with the business.’

Mr Bullstrode swallowed. ‘Would it not be more proper to have present your grandfather and his wife?’ he enquired. ‘After all, the one drew the will and last testament up and the other would appear to be about to be deprived of those benefits she would otherwise have received under it.’

‘My grandfather has stated that he does not feel up to leaving his bed,’ said Lockhart, and waited while Mr Flawse’s voice made fresh inroads into, this time, Dr Magrew’s professional reputation. ‘I think I can safely say the same for my step-grandmother. She is at present indisposed and naturally my father’s appearance here today, with all its consequences for her financially, might be said to chafe her more than a little.’

It was no more than the truth. A night spent rubbing the ropes that bound her hands up and down against the iron bedstead had indeed chafed her but she still persisted, while down in the study Mr Taglioni repeated word for word what he had been taught. Mr Bullstrode wrote down his words and was, in spite of himself, impressed. Mr Taglioni stated that he had been employed as a casual labourer by the Waterworks at the time and being an Italian had naturally attracted the attention of Miss Flawse.

‘I couldn’t help it,’ he protested, ‘I am Italian and English ladies, you know how English ladies like …’

‘Quite,’ said Mr Bullstrode who knew what was coming and wasn’t prepared to listen to it. ‘And so you fell in love?’ He continued to improve upon the singularly distressing tastes in the matter of foreigners displayed by the late Miss Clarissa Flawse.

‘Yes. We fell in love. You could put it like that.’

Muttering to himself that he wished to hell he couldn’t, Mr Bullstrode wrote this down. ‘And then what?’

‘What do you think? I stuff her.’