Mr Dodd shook his head. 'I'll tell you this though. The auld bitch has got wind of what ye're up to and knows the old man is dead. If ye gan off to America she'll find a way out of the house to alert Mr Bullstrode. Ye saw what she did the other night. The woman's desperate dangerous and there's the Italian down below is a witness to the deed. Ye hadna thought of that.'
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 Tag-lioni'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 organs 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 Deyn-try 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 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.'