"Oscar?"
She didn't want to leave the wall of Celestine's cell when it was undoing itself with such gusto—the bricks were dropping onto each other as the mortar between them decayed, and the shelves were creaking, ready to fall—but Oscar's shout demanded her attention. She headed back through the maze, the sound of the wall's capitulation echoing through the passageways, confounding her. But she found her way back to the stairs after a time, yelling for Oscar as she went. There was no reply from the library itself, so she decided to climb back up into the meeting room. That too was silent and empty, as was the foyer when she got to it, the only sign that Oscar had passed through a block of wood lying close to the door. What the hell was he up to? She went out to see if he'd returned to the car for some reason, but there was no sign of him in the sun, which narrowed the options to one: the tower above.
Irritated, but a little anxious now, she looked towards the open door that led back into the cellar, torn between returning to welcome Celestine and following Oscar up the tower. A man of his bulk was perfectly capable of defending himself, she reasoned, but she couldn't help but feel some residue of responsibility, given that she'd cajoled him into coming here in the first place.
One of the doors looked to be a lift, but when she appreached she heard the hum of its motor in action, so rather than wait she went to the stairs and began to climb. Though the flight was in darkness, she didn't let that slow her but mounted the stairs three and four at a time until she reached the door that led out onto the top floor. As she groped for the handle she heard a voice from the suite beyond. The words were indecipherable, but the voice sounded cultivated, almost clipped. Had one of the Tabula Rasa survived after all? Bloxham, perhaps, the Casanova of the cellar?
She pushed the door open. It was brighter on the other side, though not by that much. All the rooms along the corridor were murky pits, their drapes drawn. But the voice led her on through the gloom towards a pair of doors, one of which was ajar. A light was burning on the other side. She approached with caution, the carpet underfoot lush enough to silence her tread. Even when the speaker broke off from his monologue for a few moments she continued to advance, reaching the suite without a sound. There was little purpose in delay, she thought, once she was at the threshold. Without a word, she pushed open the door.
There was a table in the room, and on it lay Oscar, in a double pooclass="underline" one of light, the other of blood. She didn't scream, or even sicken, even though he was laid open like a patient in mid-surgery. Her thoughts flew past the horror to the man and his agonies. He was alive. She could see his heart beating like a fish in a red pool, gasping its last.
The surgeon's knife had been cast onto the table beside him, and its owner, who was presently concealed by shadow, said, "There you are. Come in, why don't you? Come in." He put his hands, which were clean, on the table. "It's only me, lovey."
"Dowd...."
"Ah! To be remembered. It seems such a little thing, doesn't it? But it's not. Really, it's not."
The old theatricality was still in his manner, but the mellifluous quality had gone from his voice. He sounded, and indeed looked, like a parody of himself, his face a mask carved by a hack.
"Do join us, lovey," he said. "We're in this together, after all."
Startled as she was to see him (though hadn't Oscar warned her that his type was difficult to kill?) she didn't feel intimidated by him. She'd seen his tricks and deceits and performances; she'd seen him hanging over an abyss, begging for life. He was ridiculous.
"I wouldn't touch Godolphin, by the way," he said.
She ignored the advice and went to the table.
"His life's hanging by a thread," Dowd went on. "If he's moved, I swear his innards will just drop out. My advice is let him lie. Enjoy the moment."
"Enjoy?" she said, the revulsion she felt surfacing, though she knew it was exactly what the bastard wanted to hear.
"Not so loud, sweetie," Dowd said, as if pained by her volume. "You'll wake the baby." He chuckled. "He is a baby, really, compared to us. Such a little life...."
"Why did you do this?"
"Where do I begin? With the petty reasons? No. With the big one. I did it to be free." He leaned in towards her, his face a chiaroscuro jigsaw beneath the lamp. "When he breathes his last, lovey—which'H be very soon now—that's the end of the Godolphins. When he's gone, we're in thrall to nobody."
"You were free in Yzordderrex."
"No. On a long leash, maybe, but never free. I felt his desires, I felt his discomforts. A little part of me knew I should be at home with him, making his tea and drying between his toes. In my heart, I was still his slave." He looked at the body again. "It seems almost miraculous, how he manages to linger."
He reached for the knife.
"Leave him!" she snapped, and he retreated with surprising alacrity.
She leaned towards Oscar, afraid to touch him for fear of shocking his traumatized system further and stopping it. There were tics in his face, and his white lips were full of tiny tremors.
"Oscar?" she murmured. "Can you hear me?"
"Oh, look at you, lovey," Dowd cooed. "Getting all doe-eyed over him. Remember how he used you. How he oppressed you."
She leaned closer to Oscar and said his name again.
"He never loved either of us," Dowd went on. "We were his goods and chattels. Part of his..."
Oscar's eyes flickered open.
"... inheritance," Dowd said, but the word was barely audible. As the eyes opened, Dowd retreated a second step, covering himself in shadow.
Oscar's white lips shaped the syllables of Judith's name, but there was no sound to accompany the motion.
"Oh, God," she murmured, "can you hear me? I want you to know this wasn't all for nothing. I found her. Do you understand? I found her."
Oscar made a tiny nod, then, with agonizing delicacy, ran his tongue over his lips and drew enough breath to say, "It wasn't true...."
She caught the words, but not their sense. "What wasn't true?" she said.
He licked again, his face knotting up with the effort of speech. This time there was only one word: "Inheritance. ..."
"Not an inheritance?" she said. "I know that."
He made the very tiniest smile, his gaze going over her face from brow to cheek, from cheek to lips, then back to her eyes, meeting them unabashed.
"I... loved ... you," he said.
"I know that too," she whispered.
Then his gaze lost its clarity. His heart stopped beating in its bloody pool; the knots on his face slipped with its cessation. He was gone. The last of the Godolphins, dead on the Tabula Rasa's table.
She stood upright, staring at the cadaver, though it distressed her to do so. If she was ever tempted to toy with darkness, let this sight be a scourge to that temptation. There was nothing poetic or noble in this scene, only waste.
"So there it is," Dowd said. "Funny. I don't feel any different. It may take time, of course. I suppose freedom has to be learned, like anything else." She could hear desperation beneath this babble, barely concealed. He was in pain. "You should know something," he said."I don't want to hear."
"No, listen, lovey, I want you to know.... He did exactly this to me, on this very table. He gutted me in front of the Society. Maybe it's a petty thing, wanting revenge, but then I'm just an actor chappie. What do I know?"