At least here, in real life, there would be no unresolved endings. The SS Sergeant Major was arrested for being complicit in the murders involved in The Case of the Dancing Jews. DI Robinson turned up further e-mails showing that Smith/Mayerova/Koch had been the driving force behind the murders – while renewed forensic examination of the various murder scenes, now that he knew who he was trying to implicate, was yielding dividends that would mean he probably wouldn't have to rely in court on the evidence I had amassed through mostly unconventional methods. An extradition warrant had also been received for the former Mark Mayerova, naming him as a war criminal. Smith Motors remained open for a while, but the publicity surrounding the case meant a huge drop in custom. Some unknown (!) graffiti artist painting These guys are fucking Nazis! across their showroom windows didn't help business much either. As DI Robinson has hinted to me over a Starbucks coffee – I'm back to the top of the menu once again, and loving it – the Mayerova brothers aren't quite so menacing any more. They're blaming each other. It's all starting to come out, and he's quite hopeful that the location of Rosemary Trevor's body will soon be forthcoming.
As for me, I wasn't in it for the publicity, I was in it for the satisfaction of triumphing over evil and demonstrating that a life in crime fiction has its practical applications. Needless to say, members of the public with a mystery to solve have been making their way to my shop door in increasing numbers. As before, I do not accept all of these cases, preferring to cherry-pick those that are both the most challenging and the least dangerous. I do not intend ever to be involved in murder again, or with Nazis; there are plenty of missing trousers, dogs, lampshades and bicycles to keep a bookselling amateur detective busy for decades to come. As for Alison, after a period of sulking because I did not once refer to her in my performance – and it was a performance, every pause rehearsed, every pithy comment worked over – as my partner in crime-solving, or even as my sidekick, she has come around a bit. With my encouragement she has now gone part time in the jewellery store in order to devote much more time to her comic-book art. I have even helped her with a few scripts myself. She has not returned to Brendan Coyle's creative writing class, and is all the better for it.
I thought the business about me suggesting that I was going to marry her, which somehow crept out during my public resolution of The Case of the Dancing Jews, had slipped from her mind, but I should have known better. Though we resumed our courting and on occasion had the sex, she managed to keep the subject under her hat until some six weeks after the events surrounding the case. On an evening when she had said she wasn't coming out to play because she was working on a comic, she unexpectedly appeared at my front door, despite the fact that I have made it clear to her in the past that I do not welcome such surprises. I do not expect her to make an appointment, but some prior warning always allows me to get the house in order. In fact, the house is always in order, scrupulous order, but that is hardly the point.
Nevertheless, I welcomed her in, and I made her coffee, and I sat her down at the kitchen table.
'You look vexed,' I said.
'Are you ever going to marry me?' she asked.
I said, 'Whoa, hold your horses.'
I offered her a Jacob's Orange Club biscuit. She ignored it.
'Why would you say a thing like that in public and not mean it?'
'I was striving for effect.'
'Have you any idea how hurtful that is?' She shook her head. 'You don't, do you? You know what your problem is? You're an emotional cripple.'
'You shouldn't say cripple.' As an attempt at humour, it failed miserably. 'I am what I am,' I said.
'That night at the party in Daniel Trevor's house you were the life and soul, you were singing and laughing and joking and you got on with everyone. There was none of this hate.'
'I don't hate. I suspect. Maybe it's to do with what I do; when your life revolves around murder, fact and fiction, it's natural to—'
'It's got sod-all to do with what you do.'
'That wasn't me at the party. I was drunk. Do you want me to be drunk all the time?'
'It was a glimpse of who you can be, with the inhibitions down, with the paranoia in check, with your suspicions allayed. People aren't horrible, but you treat them like they are.'
That was, frankly, ridiculous. I give everyone a fair shake. The fact that they usually fail miserably is their problem, not mine.
'Well if I'm so dreadful, Alison, what are you doing here?'
She studied me. 'Because I see hope for you.'
'With you?'
'With me. Is that so strange? I think you're like a baby butterfly caught in a cocoon and you've never been able to break out.'
'Chrysalis,' I pointed out. 'The pupa stage of the butterfly is—'
'Shut up,' she said. 'I'm serious. You need to get away from here. It's . . . killing you. It's like a museum, or a mausoleum. You should . . . move in with me.'
She looked at the table. She picked up a Club. So that was what she was after. She was everything I had ever dreamed of, but still.
'I have responsibilities.'
'No you don't.'
'But M—'
'You don't have a mother.'
'Don't be ridiculous, everyone has a—'
'Stop it. Stop it now. Your mother is dead. She is your excuse for hiding from the real world. Do you think I don't know? How come she's never here? How come she never answers the phone? How come she depends on you for everything, and yet you spent days and nights in No Alibis without once going home to feed her?'
'Do you think I've invented my mother?'
'Yes, I do.'
'Do you not think she's upstairs now listening to every word?'
'Then ask her to come down.'
'She can't come down. She's infirm.'
'Then let me go up.'
'She doesn't like visitors.'
'Even the girl you're going to marry?'
'Especially the girl I'm going to marry.'
'She doesn't approve?'
'She doesn't approve of anyone.'
'Please,' said Alison, 'stop this . . . I love you, and I know you love me. How often is that going to come along?'
'I can't,' I said.
She steamed. She blew air out of her cheeks. She pushed her coffee away. 'It's not exactly Starbucks,' she said.
'It's not even close.'
'You wouldn't have a Coke?'
'Diet?'
She nodded. I got up. I have forty-eight cans of Diet Coke in my fridge. In case there is a strike, or a plague.
When I turned with her can, Alison was no longer at the table.
'Alison?'
There had been no sound of the front door opening or closing. I hurried into the hall.
'Alison?'
I stopped at the bottom of the stairs.
Alison was already on the first-floor landing. She looked back at me. 'I'm going to have it out with her,' she said.
'You can't!'
'I have to!'
She hurried up the next set of stairs.
'No, Alison, don't . . .!'
I thundered up behind her.
'Come out, come out, wherever you are!' Alison cried, all the time rising higher, getting closer to Mother's room. She threw open every door that she passed. 'Are you in here? No! Are you in here?'
My legs are not good, and my breathing was laboured; she was young and lithe, and by the time she got to the top room, to Mother's room, she was still well ahead of me. She put her hand to the door. She hesitated. She looked back at me.
'No, Alison, please don't . . .'
But she was determined.
She threw the door open and strode in.
She was such a clever girl, but it was a tactical mistake.
You should never enter Mother's room alone.
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Mystery Man Page 27