He was lucky. The pile of rubble which he had noticed when he last saw Jean Mariello was still there. He found a rusty screwdriver and started to chip away at the new plaster.
Willy had made the task easier by the slapdash way in which he had replaced the bricks. As he flaked off plaster and dug into the mortar, Charles tried to visualise the scene. Willy Mariello, the spoilt child, saw things going against him. The group had split up. His new career as an actor was not going to lead to instant stardom. His marriage was in shreds and Anna had rejected him. Bored and frustrated, he suddenly decided he was sick of his house. Where was the fireplace he had dreamed of? — replaced by bloody central heating. It would be a big job to change it. But Willy was impulsive; he did not like to go the boring correct way about things. Smash the fireplace covering first, and then see if he liked it.
But something had made him decide to fill the space in again. Charles prised away one brick, but the light did not reach the void. If only he had a torch. He began to be acutely conscious of the pain in his shoulder as he drove the screwdriver into the recalcitrant mortar. He was sweating.
He had to remove six bricks before he could see anything in the space. But as the sixth was worked out of its socket, the light flowed in and he shared the revulsion that Willy Mariello must have felt at the discovery. In spite of the discoloration of dirt and time and the decay of the fabric of the trousers and sock, what he saw had once been a human leg.
Nausea rising in his throat, he made himself confirm the initial impression. But there was no doubt. He found flesh dried down on to bone. It seemed that there was a complete body in the fireplace.
Again his movements were automatic. As he rose he realised how long he had been kneeling on the floor. The pain burned in his tattered leg. He decided to use the front door.
As he opened it, a large block of stone from the portico crashed down in front of him. It was the slab carved with the date. 1797. If he had not remembered the faulty catch and broken into the house the obvious way, it would have killed him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
At last he shut the ponderous tome,
With a fast and fervent clasp
He strain’d the dusky covers close,
And fixed the brazen hasp:
“Oh, God! could I so close my mind,
And clasp it with a clasp!”
James Milne opened the door of his flat. ‘Ah,’ he said. It was not an expression of surprise, just an acknowledgement of information received. ‘Won’t you come in?’
‘Thank you.’
‘Malt?’
‘Thank you.’ It was exactly as before, both sitting in their comfortable chairs with their glasses of malt whisky, surrounded by books.
‘I heard you had arrived in Edinburgh from one of the Derby students.’
‘Yes. I know you knew I was here.’
The Laird understood. ‘You’ve been to Meadow Lane?’
‘Yes. As you see, the slab missed me. One of your little plans that didn’t work.’
‘Ah well.’ The man did not seem emotional, just tired. ‘After that, I’m surprised you came round here on your own.’
‘You mean the malt could be poisoned or you could have a gun hidden somewhere?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘No. That’s not your style. The method must be indirect, done without you present. Then you can just shut your mind to the fact that it ever happened, and go back to your books.’
‘You seem to understand me very well, Charles.’
‘I think I do. Various things you said. Something about envying a writer his ability to live by remote control.’
‘Yes. And you said writing wasn’t like that.’
‘It isn’t.’
The Laird chuckled, as if their old conviviality had been re-established. Then he was silent for a moment. ‘Right, how much do you know?’
‘Just about everything. As you see from my face and hands, I’ve been dismantling a wall.’
An expression of pain cut across Milne’s face. ‘So you’ve seen it?’
‘Just as Willy Mariello did.’
‘Yes. He came and told me on the morning before he died.’
‘And did he say he was going to the police?’
‘No, no, that wasn’t his idea at all. He suggested that I was a wealthy man and…’
‘Blackmail. That would fit everything I’ve heard of Willy. And sort out his mortgage arrears. He could live off you for the rest of his life.’
‘I don’t know. That’s what he suggested. Regular payments or.. ’
‘He’d go to the police.’ The Laird nodded. ‘And that was why you had to kill him.’
There was a slight hesitation before a muttered ‘Yes.’
‘Who was it, James?’
The man looked flustered and pathetic. ‘No one. It was… just someone I knew… a… no one…’
‘Who?’
‘A boy. From the school. From Kilbruce. A pupil of mine. He was called… Lockhart.’ The Laird put his words together with difficulty. ‘He was a good boy. I liked him. He seemed interested in my books and… He… used to come round for tea or… That was all, really. In spite of what they said, that was all.
‘Then one evening he came round… he wasn’t in school uniform
… and he said he was going to run away to London, and he’d left a note at school and sent one to his parents. I said I thought it was foolish, but I couldn’t stop him. And that… I’d miss him… Just that, nothing more.
‘But when I said it, he said something… vile… a comment on why I’d miss him. He said… it was just like all the others.. that I… It wasn’t true!’ His hands were kneading the arms of his chair rapaciously. ‘I don’t know what happened then. I… he was dead. Perhaps I strangled him, I don’t know. But suddenly he was dead.
‘Then I knew I had to get rid of the body. The men had just finished installing the central heating. I thought of the fireplace. There were no development plans for the area. The house wouldn’t be demolished, and no one was going to revert to open fires after central heating had been put in.’ (No one except an impulsive fool like Willy Mariello, Charles reflected wryly.) ‘It’d never be found out while I was alive, and there was nobody to mind when I was dead. So that’s what I did.’
‘And everyone assumed the boy had gone to London as he said, and disappeared?’
‘Yes. You keep reading of cases of kids doing that.’
There was a long pause. ‘And you managed to live in the house and forget it?’
‘Yes. It had been so quick. Sometimes I really thought it hadn’t happened, that I’d read about it in a book or… I didn’t think about it.’
‘Just as you wouldn’t have thought about me if Tam had drowned me or if that piece of masonry had crushed my skull.’
‘Exactly,’ he said with engaging honesty. ‘I’ve always found it difficult to believe in the reality of other people. You know, I like them, but if I don’t see them, it’s as if they’d never existed. Except my mother, she was real.’
His eyes glazed over and Charles pulled him roughly back on to the subject. ‘Right. So we know why you had to kill Willy Mariello.’
‘Yes. The dagger was just a trial run, really. I never thought it would work. But I saw them downstairs at lunch time on Tuesday and thought that’d do until I found a better way. There was a long chance it might work.’ A gleam of intellectual satisfaction came into his eye. ‘And it did. The perfect remote control crime.’
‘Yes,’ said Charles wryly. ‘And then I rather played into your hands by confiding in you as my Dr Watson.’
‘You did. At least it made me fairly certain that I wasn’t on your list of suspects. That is, until the middle of last week.’
‘Why? What happened then?’
‘You started getting evasive, which seemed odd. I felt you were holding something back. But what really scared me was when you said you were going to give the case up, because it involved someone you knew well. I thought you were on to me then.’