Dialogues of the Dead

10

On Saturday morning Rye Pomona had to field so many questions about Ripley’s TV programme from her colleagues en route to the reference library that she arrived ten minutes late and found that she’d missed the beginning of a half-furious row in the office.

The furious half was Percy Follows whose angry tirade bounced off the placid surface of Dick Dee, leaving no trace but a faint puzzlement.

“I’m sorry, Percy, but I got the distinct impression you didn’t want to be troubled with anything to do with the short story competition. In fact I recall your exact words-you always put things so memorably. You said that this was such an inconsiderable task, you could see little reason why it should disturb any of the essential routines of the department and none whatsoever why you yourself should be troubled with it beyond news of its successful completion.”

Rye took a positive pride in her boss’s performance. That attention to and memory for detail which made him such an efficient Head of Reference also gave him a forensic precision in an argument. Not wanting to interrupt such good entertainment, she didn’t go into the office but sat down at the enquiry desk. The department’s morning mail had been placed there plus the all too familiar plastic bag containing the latest and (her spirits rose) presumably the last batch of short stories from the Gazette.

Lying at the top of the bag, half in, half out, was a single sheet with only a few lines typed on it. Still listening to the row, she picked it up and read.

“But this wasn’t about the competition, was it?” Follows was blustering. “These Dialogues, so far as I can make out, must have got mixed up with that by accident. Ripley said they were probably meant for the news desk of the Gazette.”

Trying to put distance between the library and any bad fall-out from the Dialogues, thought Rye as her eyes continued to scan the verses.

In the office Dee was enquiring courteously, “Are you saying I should have known this and returned them to the Gazette?”

“That’s what Mary Agnew thinks,” said Follows. “She was on to me as soon as that Ripley woman finished last night. I don’t think she believed me when I protested total ignorance.”

“I’m sure on mature reflection she won’t have any difficulty with that concept,” said Dee.

This was good stuff, uttered so politely that Follows could only do himself damage by acknowledging the insult, thought Rye. The poem was pretty good stuff too. It would be nice to think that Hat Bowler had broadened his chat-up technique to include this old-fashioned approach, but somehow she couldn’t see him as a lovelorn poet. In any case, she didn’t need to be Miss Marple to detect the true source of the stanzas. Slowly she raised her eyes and found herself, without surprise, looking across the library at Charley Penn, twisted round in his usual chair, regarding her with undisguised pleasure.

She let the sheet slip to the floor, wiped her hand as if to remove some sticky substance, then ostentatiously applied herself to the task of opening the mail. There wasn’t much and what there was didn’t require her special attention, so finally with reluctance she turned her attention to the story bag. This might be the last consignment, but its bulk suggested there’d been a last-minute rush.

The row was still going on though clearly not going anywhere.

Dee was saying, “If I’d any idea this was going to blow up the way it has, of course I would have filled you in, Percy. But the police urged absolute discretion upon us, no exceptions.”

“No exceptions? Don’t you think you ought to have consulted me before involving the police in the first place?”

At last Follows had laid a glove on Dee, thought Rye. But the Library Chief didn’t have enough sense to jab at this weak point but kept flailing away in search of a knockout blow.

“And how the hell did Ripley get to know about this anyway? She took you to lunch yesterday. What did you talk about, Dick?”

Not a bad question, thought Rye, easing the stories out on to the counter.

“The short story competition, of course. It was clear she was on a fishing expedition, asking about strange and unusual entries. Without direct reference to the Dialogues, she gave me the impression she somehow knew a great deal about them, but I certainly didn’t add to her knowledge.”

True or false?

She certainly couldn’t imagine Dick Dee being indiscreet unless he wanted to be. On the other hand, he would probably be scrupulous in a deal, even if the terms were unspoken. And just because he’d never used the opportunities offered by their working proximity to make even the most casual of physical contacts, let alone cop a feel, why should she be surprised, and even a little jealous, to find that Jax Ripley with her blue eyes, blonde hair and wide mouth had proved the type to ring his bell? As for the journalist herself, she thought with less generosity, her burning passion for a good story would probably have made her very willing to waggle Dee’s clapper.

She almost laughed aloud at the way her metaphor had developed, and close by heard an answering chuckle. Penn had left his seat and come to the desk.

“Good, isn’t it?” he murmured. “I’m so glad I got here early. Ah, there it is. I should hate it to get mixed up with these …effusions.”

He stooped and picked up the poem from the floor.

“I stopped at the desk with a bunch of stuff I wanted to talk over with Dick, but the fun was just starting and I didn’t want to interrupt. This must have slipped out. A version of “Du bist wie eine Blume.” I quite like it. What did you think?”

“Me? Didn’t really take it in. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m busy. Unless you’d like to help me sort out your fellow writers?”

He grinned at the attempted gibe and moved away, saying, “I fear not. How could my little light bear the glare of all that talent?”

But she wasn’t paying attention. As was her usual practice, she’d been dividing the stories into handwritten and typewritten, following which she would dump all those in the former group which didn’t reach her increasingly exacting standards of legibility. But it was a typewritten sheet she had in her hands and was studying with growing agitation.

“Oh shit,” she said.

“In any case,” Dick Dee was saying, “I dare say that despite Miss Ripley’s efforts to stir it up, this will after all turn out to be nothing more than a storm in a tea-cup, leaving her (to re-direct the image) with egg on her face, and your good self without so much as a breadcrumb on the snow-white lace doyley of your reputation.”

It was, Rye had come to know, a habit of Dee’s to coat his more acerbic ironies with garishly colourful layers of language, but the assurance seemed enough to mollify Percy Follows, a process signified physically as he came out of the office by an attempted smoothing down of his mane of golden hair which at times of stress exploded electrically like the tail feathers of a randy bird of paradise.

I shouldn’t bother, Perce, thought Rye.

Dee followed, smiled at Rye and said, “Good morning.”

“Morning. Sorry I was late,” she said, watching Follows and hoping he would leave the Reference.

“Were you? I’m not in a position to notice. I seem to have mislaid my watch again. You haven’t seen it?”

Dee’s watch was a running joke. He didn’t like working at a keyboard with it on, claiming it unbalanced his prose, but once removed it seemed to have what Penn called Fernweh, a longing to be somewhere distant.

“Try the middle shelf. It seems very fond of there.”

He ducked down behind the reception desk, came up smiling.

“How clever of you. I’m back in time’s ever rolling stream which means I suppose we should get down to some work. Percy, are we finished?”

Follows said, “I hope so, Dick. I hope we’ve heard the last of this silly business, but if there are any further developments, I want to be the first to know. I hope you and your staff understand that.”

He looked accusingly at Rye who smiled at him, thought, OK, Perce, if that’s what you want, let me make your day, and said to Dee, “Dick, I’m afraid we’ve got another one.”

She held up the sheets of paper carefully by one corner.

She could see Dee understood her instantly but Follows was a little slower to catch on.

“Another …? Oh God, you don’t mean another of these Dialogue things? Let me see.”

He attempted to snatch it from her fingers but she moved away.

“I don’t think it would be too clever for anyone else to handle it,” she said. “I think we ought to get it round to the police straightaway.”

“That’s what you think, is it?” said Follows, his hair sun-bursting once again.

She thought for a moment he was going to try ordering her to hand the Dialogue over. The library staff, he liked to claim, were one big happy family, but, as Dick Dee had once remarked, democracy was not a form of organization much practised in family life.

But on this occasion Follows had enough sense not to push things to confrontation.

“Very well,” he said. “And perhaps we should make a copy for Miss sodding Ripley while we’re at it. Though it wouldn’t surprise me if she didn’t have one already.”

“No,” said Rye. “I don’t think so. Though she may be privy to the gist.”

She shook the sheets of paper gently.

“I hope it’s all a sick fantasy, but if I read this aright, I think the Wordman is telling us that he’s just murdered Jax Ripley.”