For a moment Marilou saw her husband with the newcomer's eyes but she saw also with relief that his gaze was fixed too firmly on Kohler's face to register the transfer of shock to her own.
James, here's Cissy Kohler to see you,' she heard herself saying briskly. 'Miss Kohler, why don't you go through and I'll make us some coffee.'
'We've got the coffee you made for our last visitor who decided not to stay, remember?' said Westropp. 'Cissy, come and sit down.'
The woman walked slowly through into the sitting- room. She was back in control now.
Westropp closed the door firmly in his wife's face, mouthing, 'Ten minutes.'
They sat opposite each other, he in the rocker, she on a chaise-longue. For a long while, neither spoke. It was not the silence of competitors, each hoping to force the other into a false move, but the silence of two people long accustomed to self-containment.
Finally he poured two cups of coffee.
She said, 'I've dreamt of this moment many times over many years. Sometimes it ended with you making love to me, sometimes it ended with me killing you.'
'And which dream did you enjoy most?' he asked courteously.
It was the delicately weighted irony which brought him back to life, like a fuzzy distorted image suddenly slipping into focus.
She said, 'Hello, Jamie.'
He said, 'Hello, Cissy.'
She said, 'You answered my letter cruelly.'
He said, 'You wrote your letter threateningly.'
She said, 'All I wanted was . . . understanding.'
'That's not how it read to me.'
'I was out of practice letter-writing.'
'I was out of practice understanding.'
'Don't you and . . . she understand each other, then?'
'We love each other. That is how I have survived. When we met I was ready to give up on survival. Then this new chance came. And with it your letter. The future and the past together. It was no contest, Cissy.'
'And no contest where I've been either. The past is all there is.'
'But now you're out of there. The future has started for you.'
'Not yet, Jamie. This is still the past.'
He moistened his lips with the coffee. He was a strange colour, almost yellow. She might have been talking to some ancient Oriental sage.
He said, 'When I read about your release in the papers, I thought: She won't come here. But somehow I knew you would. That's why I decided to head for home.'
'Because you wanted to hide?' she said.
'Why on earth should I want to hide? Because a hospital bed's no place for a man to receive visitors. In any case I'd always planned to come back here to die. Why have you come, Cissy?'
'Why did you think I would come?'
'Because I could see that, while for me there'd been twenty-seven years of forgetting, for you there's been twenty-seven years of remembering.'
'What are you trying to say, Jamie?' she asked gently.
'That it's all so long ago and I'm dying and you're free. That I can only guess at what prison has done to you. Cissy, but it doesn't matter whether you've come here in search of revenge or of forgiveness. I freely forgive you if that's what you want, and a few more weeks will provide any revenge you imagine you need. So why not walk away now and start your new life and leave me to finish my old one?'
He couldn't tell if she were seriously considering the proposal or not. She was certainly considering something. And as presumably she had discounted making love as a real possibility, he had to guess that she was weighing up the alternative consummation of her dream.
She was carrying a large handbag. She opened it and put her hand inside. He slipped his right hand under the cushion of the rocker and felt the smooth butt of the little silver automatic.
Strange the motives for killing. Was she willing to take a life which a couple more weeks would bring to a close anyway? And was he willing to kill to protect such a life?
Another moment might tell.
The doorbell rang.
She took a handkerchief from her bag and blew her nose.
He drew his hand from beneath the cushion and lifted his coffee cup. His hand was trembling slightly, but no more than you'd expect in a dying man.
He could hear voices, Marilou's and a man's. The door opened and Marilou appeared.
She said, lightly, 'You told me to wheel them in.'
She was studying him with concern but also with the wry amusement she had always shown at what she called his nursery games. Her utter openness was what had drawn him to her in the first place. In a life full of watchfulness, it had been marvellous to be at last with someone whose motives were never concealed. His heart swelled with love for her and with self-disgust at the long deceit he had practised on her. She must be spared knowledge of that. That alone would be worth killing, or dying for.
He smiled and said, ‘It's open house. You always said I needed to learn about good old southern hospitality.'
Marilou stood aside and Westropp looked with interest at the figure who filled the doorway. He was fat, but it wasn't a blubbery fatness, more the redistribution of bulk you get in an ageing wrestler whose muscles have lost their youthful elasticity but still retain much of their ancient strength. He had a head which would have seemed huge on shoulders less broad. What hair remained was cropped and grizzled, and the eyes which shone beneath the shaggy overhang of his brows were hard and unblinking.
They were fixed firmly on Cissy Kohler.
Westropp coughed drily and said, 'I don't think we've had the pleasure . . .'
'That's where you're wrong, Mr Westropp, or do you prefer Bellmain? Except it weren't much of a pleasure. Nineteen sixty-three, Mickledore Hall. Superintendent Andrew Dalziel. Only I were just a young detective then.'
'I'm afraid I don't remember you. Names didn't really register, except for Mr Tallantire's. As for faces, well, I think we've all changed.'
'Aye. Some things change. Some not.'
He advanced into the room. Marilou moved quickly after him, as if fearing he purposed an assault, and stood behind her husband with her hands on his thin shoulders. But Dalziel halted when he reached the chaise and said, 'Hello again, Miss Kohler. Nice to see you dry for a change.'
She looked at him calmly and said, 'What do you want?'
'The truth.'
A ray of amusement touched her lips palely.
'You've taken your time,' she said.
'You reckon? Took a day and a half as I recall back in sixty-three. Don't see why it should take more than a minute and a half now.'
'For confirmation of my guilt, you mean?'
'You admit it, then?'
I never denied it, remember?' She looked towards Westropp. 'Jamie, there hasn't been a day for twenty-seven years that I haven't thought about little Emily.'
'Really?' said Westropp. 'I won't lay claim to quite such a distinguished record.'
The true test of the English upper classes is not the blueness of their blood but the coldness of their cut.
Westropp's was permafrost.
Dalziel saw something in Kohler freeze at its touch. But when she resumed speaking, her voice was at the same quiet monotone.
'The papers made it sound as if there was something deliberate in it, like throwing someone to the chasing wolves. That at least you must have known as absurd. Mr Dalziel, you were there. Did I look as if I were trying to run? Where would I run to?'
She turned to him in appeal. She'd chosen the wrong court.
He said, 'Oh, you were trying to get away right enough, luv. I saw you flip that canoe over like a matchbox in a bath.'
And now the cracks began to show, as her face screwed up in an effort at memory and then came apart like a weakened dam as the memories poured through.
She said, 'I just wanted to be somewhere quiet and think . . . and the children were so good . . . they fell asleep in the heat . . . and there was only me and the willow branches and the sunlight dappling through . . . and it was almost like I could hide in there forever. Then suddenly there was this voice. It bellowed my name, it seemed to come booming across the water like thunder. And I knew then there was nowhere to hide. I paddled out from under the trees. The voice called again. I could see the margin of the lake was lined with figures . . . black silhouettes like a frieze around an urn - and I couldn't face them . . .'
Now there were tears, flowing like the first in all those years. But the voice somehow remained quiet and even.
'You were right, Mr Dalziel, I was trying to escape. Can you believe I forgot about the children? There was just me and the voice and this one figure above all at the end of the jetty, and the water. Cool, dark, deep. I went over and in. Then I remembered the children. I started searching ... I could see nothing ... I glimpsed something sinking, turning ... I didn't know it was Pip, I just grabbed him and came up . . . the canoe was upside down, there was nowhere to put him while I dived for Emily . . . Pip was spluttering in my arms and trying to cry . . . the water erupted beside me and this man came up holding Emily, and for a moment I felt such joy, everything else was forgotten . . . then I saw her face . . . and I saw your face ... it was you, wasn't it, Mr Dalziel?'
'Oh yes. It were me,' said Dalziel.
She nodded. 'I've often seen your face in my dreams,' she said.
‘It's the kiddie's face I remember,' said Dalziel grimly.
The tears had stopped as suddenly as they'd begun.
She spoke again to Westropp.
'I've never remembered that properly before. There was a time in the beginning when I genuinely could remember almost nothing. Except that I needed no longer worry about making a decision. I was willing to write anything the police wanted me to write. There's a sort of selfishness in doing something for love, isn't there? But self doesn't come into it in the same way when what you're doing is expiation.'
“Expiation?" echoed Westropp, mockery in his voice to hide his pain.
That's right. I've learned all the long words. Remember you used to laugh at me, saying that Americans only used long words when short ones would do? Well, now I've had time to get me a proper English education.'
‘I wasn't commenting on your remarkable vocabulary, merely trying to catch your drift.'
Dalziel was suddenly sick of both her soul-searching and his cold control.
He said, 'Look, luv, we're both a bit short on time, him 'cos he's going to snuff it, me 'cos I want me lunch. So why not spit it out, whatever you've come here to say?'
They both turned to him, momentarily united in shock and Marilou Bellmain who had not stirred these several minutes took an angry step forward.
The doorbell rang.
'Saved by the bell,' said Dalziel.
Marilou shouldered past him and went into the entrance hall. They heard the front door open.
'Pip!' said Marilou. 'I'm glad you've come.' Then, her tone modulating from genuine to formal welcome, 'And John too. How nice.'
'We met at the gate,' said a young man's voice. 'How
's
Dad?'
'Fine. He's got visitors so maybe you should . . .'
But her stepson had already moved by her into the doorway.
'Dad, hi . . .' he began. Then his eyes registered Dalziel and Kohler and the smile froze on his lips. 'What the hell are you two doing here?'
Dalziel regarded him with interest. Seen in this context he was unmistakably Westropp's son, the same thin features, the same dark good looks.
He was also the young mugger Dalziel had knocked out in his New York hotel, the young CIA man who'd stolen Kohler's Bible.
But the surprises weren't finished.
'Pip, it's OK, calm down,' said Westropp. 'John, good to see you. You're looking well.'
Behind Philip Westropp, Jay Waggs had appeared.
Kohler looked from him to Westropp and back again.
'John
?' she said. 'Who the hell are you? What's going on?'
Waggs said, 'I would have told you before we came if you hadn't jumped the gun. I might even have caught up with you but I got sort of held up.'
He smiled faintly at Dalziel who was scratching his ursine neck in the same way a cat starts washing itself to show the world it's not in the least surprised.
'So who am I? Hell, Ciss, you've dandled me in your arms! And I told you true, Mr Dalziel, when I said I was mixed up in this business out of family loyalty. You got the wrong family, was all. That's right. I'm John Petersen, Pam Petersen's boy, and I've come to visit my poor sick stepdaddy in the hope that I may find out at last exactly who it was killed my dear dead mother.'