‘Go on, please, Mr Lyon.’
‘About eight months ago James began to have difficulty with his words. Not in remembering them or anything like that. More, in articulating them, his voice changed and his speech seemed to become slurred. Sometimes badly so, especially when he was tired. Next thing, he couldn’t swallow his food, kept choking, and it frightened him. It frightened me, too, actually. I had to learn the Heimlich manoeuvre, for all the good it did. Eventually, I bullied him into seeing a neurologist, and the man carried out various tests, scans and so on and then we got the news…’ The old man paused again as if reliving the moment.
‘The news?’ Alice prompted.
‘The news that he had motor neurone disease, a form of it anyway, something called “progressive bulbar palsy” to be exact. James’s intelligence would remain unaffected but, slowly, inexorably, crucial muscles would cease to function until, eventually, he wouldn’t be able to breathe unassisted.’
‘Why would that mean that you wouldn’t come forward when James was murdered?’
‘I am coming to that,’ the man said reproachfully, twisting and untwisting his hands. ‘James was a very determined man, you know. I would have nursed him until the end, I didn’t care. But he decreed otherwise and was implacable. He decided that he would end his own life. The thought of God’s reaction troubled him for a bit, but he concluded that no benign deity, worthy of such a name, would expect any creature to suffer a slow, terrifying death if an alternative quick, clean one was available. Even if that alternative death was suicide. So, he began planning his end. He did it meticulously, like everything else he did. He didn’t fancy Switzerland, that… er… Dignitas set-up. He chose the house in Moray Place. He used the house, particularly, during the week, and I think he saw it as the home of his ancestors in an almost Japanese way and thought it would be fitting to return-to wherever-from there. Also, and crucially, he didn’t want me involved in any way.’
‘Involved in what respect?’
‘In his suicide. If he had done it in Geanbank then… well, that was ours. Our home. I almost never went to Moray Place. It had always been his, whatever other houses we owned. He was going to take my amitriptyline-old stuff, I got it when my mother died-and the Brahms double violin concerto. Said he’d like to go listening to celestial music with a dram or two for company. I suspected when he left here on Monday afternoon that he’d determined to do it that evening. He’d choked at lunchtime and some of the muscles in his tongue had begun to twitch. Anyway, it was so different when he said goodbye. He didn’t cry or anything like that, James almost never cried, but he looked hollow… lost… it’s hard to explain. I tried to talk to him about it, but he wouldn’t. He said if I had no involvement, knew nothing about it, then I’d be quite safe from the Police. I phoned the house the next morning and there was no reply. I was in the process of collecting my things to go there when Liv called.’
‘Liv?’ Alice interrupted.
‘Liv Nordquist, our neighbour. She knew-about us, I mean. James trusted her completely. She knew about the disease too. She told me that James had been murdered… and that you, the Police, were already involved. So I’ve been waiting for you to come.’
Finally, Nicholas Lyon looked into the policewoman’s eyes and she nodded her head for him to continue.
‘That’s it, really. Why I didn’t come forward. In the papers it wasn’t “Gay Sheriff found murdered”. No. No-one could speculate about some homosexual crime of passion, or any of that sort of thing. And, yes, I believed that James was going to die that night but not… that he was going to be killed. I reckoned you’d come to me in the end. You see, James had lived as straight in the world, but my very existence made that a lie. And all I cared about, then, was that he was dead. Nothing else mattered.’
After the policewoman had gone, Nicholas Lyon wandered into the rose garden, desperate to calm himself, to restore his shattered nerves and dispel the fears that seemed to have taken control of his mind. A momentous change had occurred and it had happened against his will. Now, the known had become the unknown; the familiar, unfamiliar; and in this new, unwelcome environment he would have to survive.
‘Tuna fish today-nice chunks of greasy… eh, flesh. How would that suit you, Quill?’
Miss Spinnell opened the cupboard above the sink and scrabbled blindly inside, delving for the chosen tin. Two forefingers landed in a pool of oil and she withdrew them quickly, smelling them before reaching back inside and extracting the opened can.
‘They’ve done it again,’ she muttered to herself, ‘drinking the very milk from my cartons, and now the very… dog flesh… from my, eh… eh… tinister… boxes.’
Quill’s dish was soon full of a strange assortment of ingredients from the store cupboard, but he gobbled it down greedily before lapping up the bowl of Ribena that had been thoughtfully laid out for him.
When Alice arrived and knocked on the old woman’s door she was surprised by the silence that greeted her before Miss Spinnell’s thin voice could be heard. Where were the usual clanks, clicks and rattles that always heralded the relaxing of her domestic security, appropriate for a nuclear reactor, protecting her Broughton Place flat? The door did not open its usual ten inches, a single chain remaining, for inspection of all visitors.
‘What do you want, caller?’ The tone sounded surprisingly aggressive.
‘It’s just me, Miss Spinnell, I’ve come to collect Quill.’
‘I’m afraid that will be quite impossible tonight, I’ll have to keep him with me. I have been locked in here by those rogues. My door, simply, will not… out… ehm… open.’
Alice sighed. Work had been arduous enough without having to endure the additional burden imposed on her by her neighbour’s gradual loss of all remaining wits.
‘Perhaps, if you undid the locks, the internal ones, you could free yourself?’ she said slowly, attempting to keep the impatience she felt out of her voice, reminding herself of her beholden state.
The reply sounded querulous, doubtfuclass="underline" ‘I’ll give it a try, this once.’
The usual cacophony of metal on metal could be heard before the door swung open to reveal a slightly startled, blinking, Miss Spinnell with Quill sitting beside her, restrained by a lead.
‘Your dog must be tested,’ the old lady said stiffly.
Alice was baffled. ‘Tested? Tested for what?’
Miss Spinnell’s bulging eyeballs, in unison for once, travelled heavenwards. It was all so obvious. How could this socalled policewoman (God help us all) not understand?
‘His hearing. A hearing test. Men-men-I repeat, MEN… have been in my flat and locked the pair of us in, but was there so much as a howl, a growl, a bark even, to warn me? There was not. This… this,’ she struggled for the word ‘this… eh, horse… this hound… has a hearing problem and a carefree… er, caring owner would have detected it eons ago. Things could, possibly, then have been done, but it will be too late now. Poor Quill must be stone deaf.’
So saying, she patted Quill’s soft head before blithely issuing her order, ‘Off you go, boy.’
The phone rang in Alice’s flat. It was Alistair. Thankfully, no effort would be required.
‘Did Bruce have a go at you, too?’
‘Yes. I missed the meeting completely. I gather you did too. Not a great start, eh?’
‘Nope. How did you get on at Freeman’s other place?’
‘Well, it’s a long, long story. I met the Sheriff’s other half and I reckon that the plentiful alien DNA in Moray Place will turn out to have come from that source.’