'The devil take the lot of you, ye bloodsucking swine of Satan. You couldn't be trusted not to steal the last morsel of meat from a starving beggar,' the late man bawled very appositely, and when an hour later Lockhart came up and suggested that something substantial for lunch like liver and bacon might help the taxidermist sober up, Mr Dodd would have none of it.
'Ye'll cook whatever you damned well please,' he said, 'but I'll not be eating meat this side of Candlemas.'
'Then you'll go back down and see he doesn't help himself to more wine,' said Lockhart. Mr Dodd went gingerly down to the cellar to find that Mr Taglioni had helped himself to just about everything else. What remained of Mr Flawse was not a pleasant sight. A fine figure of a man in his day, in death he was not at his best. But Mr Dodd steeled himself to his vigil while Mr Taglioni babbled on unintelligibly and delving deeper into the recesses finally demanded more lights. The expression was too close to the bone for Mr Dodd.
'You've had his bloody liver,' he shouted, 'what more bleeding lights do you need? They're in the fucking cucumber frame and if you think I'm going to get them, you can think again.'
By the time Mr Taglioni had managed to explain that by lights he meant more illumination, Mr Dodd had been sick twice and the taxidermist had a bloody nose. Lockhart came down to separate them.
'I'm not staying down here with this foreign ghoul,' said Mr Dodd vehemently. 'The way he goes on you'd not think he knew his arse from his elbow.'
'AH I ask for is lights,' said the Italian, 'and he goes berserk like I asked for something terrible.'
'You'll get something terrible,' said Mr Dodd, 'if I have to stay down here with you.'
Mr Taglioni shrugged. 'You bring me here to stuff this man. I didn't ask to come. I asked not to come. Now when I stuff him you say I get something terrible. Do I need telling? No. That I don't need. What I got is something terrible enough to last me a lifetime, my memories. And what about my conscience? You think my religion permits me to go round stuffing men?'
Mr Dodd was hustled upstairs by Lockhart and told to change the tapes. The late Mr Flawse's repertoire of imprecations was getting monotonous. Even Mrs Flawse complained. 'That's the twenty-fifth time he's told Dr Magrew to get out of the house,' she shouted through her bedroom door. 'Why doesn't the wretched man go? Can't he see he's not wanted?'
Mr Dodd changed the cassette to one labelled 'Heaven and Hell, Possible Existence of.' Not that there was any possibility in his own mind of doubting the existence of the latter. What was going on in the cellar was proof positive that Hell existed. It was Heaven he wanted to be convinced about, and he was just listening to the old man's deathbed argument borrowed in part from Carlyle about the unseen mysteries of the Divine Spirit when he caught the sound of steps on the stairs. He glanced put the door and saw Dr Magrew coming up. Mr Dodd slammed the door and promptly switched the cassette back to the previous one. It was marked 'Magrew and Bullstrode, Opinions of.' Unfortunately he chose Mr Bullstrode's side and a moment later Dr Magrew was privileged to hear his dear friend, the solicitor, described by his dear friend, Mr Flawse, as litigious spawn of a syphilitic whore who should never have been born but having been should have been gelded at birth before he could milk the likes of Mr Flawse of their wealth by consistently bad advice. This opinion had at least the merit of stopping the doctor in his tracks. He had always valued Mr Flawse's judgement and was interested to hear more. Meanwhile Mr Dodd had gone to the window and looked out. The snow had thawed sufficiently to let the doctor's car through to the bridge. Now he had to think of some means of denying him access to his departed patient. He was saved by Lockhart who emerged from the cellar with the tray on which stood the remnants of Mr Taglioni's lunch.
'Ah, Dr Magrew,' he called out, shutting the cellar door firmly behind him, 'how good of you to come. Grandfather is very much better this morning.'
'So I can hear,' said the doctor as Mr Dodd tried to change the cassette and Mr Taglioni, revivified by his lunch, burst into a foul imitation of Caruso. 'Quite remarkably better by the sound of it.'
From her bedroom Mrs Flawse demanded to know if that damned doctor was back again.
'If he tells Dr Magrew to get out of the house just one more time,' she wailed, 'I think I'll go off my head.'
Dr Magrew hesitated between so many injunctions. From the bedroom Mr Flawse had switched to politics and was berating the Baldwin government of 1935 for its pusillanimity while at the same time someone in the cellar was bawling about Bella bella carissima. Lockhart shook his head.
'Come down and have a drink,' he said. 'Grandfather's in an odd frame of mind.'
Certainly Dr Magrew was. In the course of separating Mr Dodd from the taxidermist Lockhart had, to put it mildly, been bloodied and the presence in a coffee cup on the tray of what from Dr Magrew's experience he could have sworn to be a human appendix dropped there absent-mindedly by Mr Tag-lioni, left him badly in need of a drink. He staggered down the staircase eagerly and presently was gulping down Mr Dodd's special distilled Northumbrian whisky by the tumbler.
'You know,' he said when he felt a little better, 'I had no idea your grandfather had such a low opinion of Mr Bullstrode.'
'You don't think that could just be the result of his concussion? The fall affected his mind as you said yourself.'
Down below Mr Taglioni, left to himself, had hit the crusted port again and with it Verdi. Dr Magrew stared at the floor.
'Am I imagining things,' he asked, 'but is there someone singing in your cellar?'
Lockhart shook his head. 'I can't hear anything,' he said
firmly. 'Christ,' said the doctor looking wildly round, 'you really
can't?'
'Only grandfather shouting upstairs.'
'I can hear that too,' said Dr Magrew. 'But…" He stared demoniacally at the floor. 'Well, if you say so. By the way, do you always wear a scarf over your face in the house?'
Lockhart took it off with a sanguine hand. From the cellar came a fresh burst of Neapolitan.
'I think I had better be gone,' said the doctor, staggering to his feet, 'I'm delighted your grandfather is making such good progress. I'll call again when I feel a little better myself.'
Lockhart escorted him to the door and was seeing him out when the taxidermist struck again.
'The eyes,' he shouted, 'my God I forgot to bring his eyes. Now what are we going to do?'
There was no doubting what Dr Magrew was going to do. He took one last demented look at the house and trundled off at a run down the drive to his car. Houses in which he saw human appendixes in otherwise empty coffee cups and people announced that they had forgotten to bring their eyes were not for him. He was going home to consult a fellow practitioner.
Behind him Lockhart turned blandly back into the Hall and calmed the distraught Mr Taglioni. 'I'll bring some,' he said, 'don't worry. I'll fetch a pair.'
'Where am I?' wailed the taxidermist. 'What is happening to me?'
Upstairs Mrs Flawse knew exactly where she was but had no idea what was happening to her. She peered out of the window in time to see the persistent Dr Magrew running to his car and then Lockhart appeared and walked to the peel tower. When he returned he was carrying the glass eyes of the tiger his grandfather had shot in India on his trip there in 1910. He thought they would do rather well. Old Mr Flawse had always been a ferocious man-eater.
Chapter seventeen
All that day and the next and the one following Mr Taglioni continued his gruesome task while Lockhart cooked and Mr Dodd sat in his shed and stared resentfully at the cucumber frames. In her bedroom Mrs Flawse had stood all she could of her blasted husband's voice echoing from across the landing about Heaven and Hell and guilt, sin and damnation. If the old fool would either die or stop repeating himself she wouldn't have minded but he went on and on and on, and by the third night Mrs Flawse was prepared to brave snow, sleet and storm and even heights to escape. She tied her sheets together and then tore her blankets into strips and knotted them to the sheets and the sheets to the bed and finally, donning her warmest clothes, she clambered out of the window and slid rather than climbed to the ground. The night was dark and the snow melted and against the black background of mud and moor she was invisible. She slushed off down the drive towards the bridge and had just crossed it and was trying to undo the gates when behind her she heard the sound that had welcomed her to Flawse Hall, the baying of hounds. They were still in the yard but a light shone in the window that had been her bedroom and the light had been off when she left.