Everyone who has taken a literature class knows that novels require a climax. Lesser known, perhaps, is that there are two kinds: the narrative climax and the dramatic climax.
The first, the narrative climax, appears in Careless in Red within a scene in which Lynley goes to the small Cornish town of Boscastle to interview Niamh Triglia, the mother of the long-dead Jamie Parsons. Prior to this conversation, Niamh has been engaged in making crab cakes (the THAD), which she shares with Lynley during their conversation. This conversation leads up to the narrative climax. As the conversation begins in the example that follows, Niamh is the speaker:
“Francis and I—that’s my late husband—were so similar to each other that we were often taken for brother and sister when we were younger.”
“You were married to him for a number of years, then?”
“Twenty-two years nearly to the day. But I’d known him before my first marriage ended. We’d been in primary school together. Isn’t it odd how something as simple as that—being in school together—can forge a bond and make things easier between people if they see each other later in life, even if they haven’t spoken in years? There was no period of discomfort between us when we first began to see each other after Jon and I divorced.” She scooped some aioli out of the bowl and handed it to him to do the same. She tasted the crab cake and pronounced it, “Doable. What do you think of them?”
“I think they’re excellent.”
“Flatterer. Handsome and well-bred, I see. Is your wife a good cook?”
“She’s completely appalling.”
“She has other strengths, then.”
He thought of Helen: the laughter of her, that unrepressed gaiety, so much compassion. “I find she has hundreds of strengths.”
“Which makes indifferent kitchen skills—”
“Completely irrelevant. There’s always takeaway.”
“Isn’t there just.” She smiled at him and then went on with, “I’m avoiding, as you’ve probably guessed. Has something happened to Jon?”
“Do you know where he is?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t spoken to him in years. Our eldest child—”
“Jamie.”
“Ah. So you know about Jamie?” And when Lynley nodded, she continued by saying thoughtfully, “I suppose we all carry some sort of scars from our childhood for this and that reason, and Jon had his share. His father was a hard man with set ideas about what his boys should do with their lives, and he’d decided that what they should do was science. Very stupid to decide your children’s lives for them, to my way of thinking, but there you have it. That’s what he did. Unfortunately, neither boy was the least interested in science, so they both disappointed him and he never let them forget it. Jon was determined not to be that kind of father to our children, especially to Jamie, and I have to say he made a success of it. We both made a success of parenthood. I stayed home with the children because he insisted and I agreed with him, and I think that made a difference. We were close to the children. The children were close to each other although strung along quite a bit in age. At any rate, we were a very tight and very happy little unit.”
“And then your son died.”
“And then Jamie died.” She set her knife and fork down and folded her hands in her lap. “Jamie was a lovely boy. Oh, he had his quirks—what boy his age doesn’t—but at heart he was lovely. Lovely and loving. And very very good to his little sisters. We were all devastated by his death, but Jon couldn’t come to grips with it. I thought he would, eventually. Give it time, I told myself. But when a person’s life becomes all about the death of another and about nothing else . . . I had the girls to think of, you see. I had myself to think of. I couldn’t live like that.”
“Like what?”
“It was all he talked about and, as far as I could tell, it was all he thought about. It was as if Jamie’s death had invaded his brain and eaten away everything that wasn’t Jamie’s death.”
“I’ve learned he wasn’t satisfied with the investigation, so he mounted his own.”
“He must have mounted half a dozen. But it made no difference. And each time that it made no difference, he went just a bit more mad. Of course, he’d lost the business by then and we’d gone through our savings and had lost our home, and that made things worse for him because he knew he was responsible for it happening, but he couldn’t get himself to stop. I tried to tell him it would make no difference to his grief and his loss to bring someone to justice, but he thought it would. He was sure it would. Just the way people think that if the killer of their loved one is put to death, that’s somehow going to assuage their own desolation. But how can it, really? The death of a killer doesn’t bring anyone else back to life, and that’s what we want and can never have.”
“What happened to Jonathan when you divorced?”
“The first three years or so, he phoned me occasionally. To give me ‘updates,’ he said. Of course, there never were any viable updates to give me, but he needed to believe he was making progress instead of doing what he was really doing.”
“Which was?”
“Making it less and less likely that anyone involved in Jamie’s death would . . . would crack, I suppose the word is. He saw in this an enormous conspiracy involving everyone in Pengelly Cove, with himself the outsider and them the close-mouthed community determined to protect its own.”
“But you didn’t see it that way?”
“I didn’t know how to see it. I wanted to be supportive of Jon and I tried to be at first, but for me the real point was that Jamie was dead. We’d lost him—all of us had lost him—and nothing Jon could do was going to alter that. My . . . I suppose you might call it my focus . . . was on that one fact, and it seemed to me—rightly or wrongly—that the result of what Jon was doing was to keep Jamie’s death fresh, like a sore that one rubs and causes to bleed instead of allowing it to heal. And I believed that healing was what we all needed.”
“Did you see him again? Did your girls see him again?”
She shook her head. “And doesn’t that compile tragedy upon tragedy? One child died terribly, but Jon lost all four upon his own choice because he chose the dead over the living. To me, that’s a greater tragedy than the loss of our son.”
“Some people,” Lynley said quietly, “have no other way to react to a sudden, inexplicable loss.”
“I daresay you’re right. But in Jon’s case, I think it was a deliberate choice. In making it, he was living the way he’d always lived, which was to put Jamie first. Here. Let me show you what I mean.”
She rose from the table and, wiping her hands down the front of her apron, she went into the sitting room. Lynley could see her walk over to the crowded bookshelves where she extricated a picture from among the large group on display. She brought it to the kitchen and handed it over, saying, “Sometimes photographs say things that words can’t convey.”
Lynley saw that she’d given him a family portrait. In it, a version of herself perhaps thirty years younger posed with husband and four winsome children. The scene was wintry, deep snow with a lodge and a ski lift in the background. In the foreground, suited up for sport with skis leaning up against their shoulders, the family stood happily ready for action, Niamh with a toddler in her arms and two other laughing daughters hanging on to her and perhaps a yard from them, Jamie and his father. Jonathan Parsons had his arm affectionately slung round Jamie’s neck, and he was pulling his son close to him. They both were grinning.
“That’s how it was,” Niamh said. “It didn’t seem to matter so very much because, after all, the girls had me. I told myself it was a man-man and woman-woman thing, and I ought to be pleased that Jon and Jamie were so close and the girls and I were as thick as thieves. But, of course, when Jamie died Jon saw himself as having lost it all. Three-quarters of his life was standing right in front of him, but he couldn’t see that. That was his tragedy. I didn’t want to make it mine.”
Lynley looked up from his study of the photo. “May I keep this for a time? I’ll return it to you, of course.”
She seemed surprised by the request. “Keep it? Whatever for?”
“I’d like to show it to someone. I’ll return it within a few days. By post. Or in person if you prefer. I’ll keep it quite safe.”
“Take it by all means,” she said. “But . . . I haven’t asked and I ought to have. Why have you come to talk about Jon?”
“A boy died north of here. Just beyond Casvelyn.”
“In a sea cave? Like Jamie?”
“In a fall from a cliff.”
“And you think this has something to do with Jamie’s death?”
“I’m not sure.” Lynley looked at the picture again. He said, “Where are your daughters now, Mrs. Triglia?”
At the point of a narrative climax, a decision is made by a character. This decision is going to affect the resolution of the novel. In this case, the decision is made by Lynley regarding a future action that he will take. He’s asked for the photograph, and he’s going to have an age progression done on it. The reader doesn’t know this last part, of course. At least, not yet. But Lynley’s request to keep the photograph signals to the reader that something’s going on. The subsequent action that Lynley takes will direct the course of the novel, precipitate the climax, and lead to the resolution of the story I’ve been putting together.
The reader never needs to know the exact nature of a planned future action. Indeed, in this particular scene revealing that would have constituted asking a dramatic question and then answering that same question as well. By doing that, I would be playing my hand far too soon. So instead of saying anything more about the picture, I have Lynley veer slightly off course by asking Niamh Triglia where her daughters are. This, I hope, will direct the reader’s thoughts to Daidre Trahair and all that she’s been hiding from Lynley. Is she one of the daughters, all grown up now? Is she therefore somehow involved in what happened to Santo Kerne? That’s where I want to place the reader’s suspicions, keeping them away from the real killer of Santo, Jago Reeth—that is, Jonathan Parsons, who has been waiting all these years to avenge his son’s death at the hands, he believes, of Ben Kerne. Thus, as soon as Lynley asks to take the photo with him, he’s made some sort of decision. From this decision, the story is propelled forward.
Like plot point scenes, the narrative climax has a few requirements, one of which is the building of tension leading to some kind of revelation. In this scene with Lynley and Niamh Triglia, we find this within Lynley’s growing understanding of the dynamics of the Parsons family as revealed by Niamh. The discussion leads her to fetch a photo of her family in order to make a point about Jonathan Parsons and his son. Their prior conversation makes this action logical.
There are various options available when you’re thinking about the construction of the narrative climax.
First, you can consider how you want your scene to be constructed and what particular techniques of the writing craft you might use within your structure. You can try them out in the running plot outline. You can choose what seems most powerful:
Direct dialogue
Indirect dialogue
Amount of narration
The use of summary narration
The scenic form itself
Second, you can look at potential THADs. In this scene, Niamh’s been making crab cakes. She shares them with Lynley. As the writer, I’m hoping this makes her more real to the reader and not just someone who’s plopped conveniently into the story in order to give out information.
Third, you have a choice about conflict. Will there be some sort of conflict in the scene, leading up to the narrative climax? Will it be inner conflict or outer conflict? In this scene, the conflict comes from the revelation of the difficulties that led to the end of Niamh’s marriage to Jonathan Parsons. There is no conflict—or even tension—between Niamh and Lynley.
The dramatic climax is the highest point of the drama the writer has been creating. Often, we think of the dramatic climax as a moment in which the adversaries face off through some kind of enormously exciting scene, such as a gunfight, a chase scene, a battle between groups of characters, etc., but this is the stuff of motion pictures and not necessarily novels. While a novel’s dramatic climax can indeed be a scene of intense action, it’s actually a moment in which whatever the writer has been leading up to finally happens.
Considering Sense and Sensibility once again, we find Edward Ferrars arriving at Elinor Dashwood’s home and revealing that his brother was the person who married the loathsome gold digger Lucy Steele and not he. Elinor finally breaks down after holding it together through all her heartbreak and acting the part of pillar of strength for her mother and her sisters.
In the novel Jaws, we have an entirely different kind of climax. The men in the boat come face-to-face (or better said, they come face-to-teeth) with the great white shark in a kill-or-be-killed situation.
In my novel In the Presence of the Enemy, Sergeant Havers gets into a physical fight with the kidnapper of Leo Luxford in the crypt of an ancient castle where he has hidden the child.
My point is that in each of these cases, the novel has been leading up to this moment, and during this scene, you’ve got a lot to work with.
Tension should be building throughout the scene. It should build through dialogue, or it should build through a narrative of the ongoing action.
The conflict must reach its highest point.
Some kind of face-off needs to occur. Sometimes it’s a physical confrontation; sometimes it’s a psychological battle; sometimes it’s the action of one character outwitting another.
A revelation is made.
A high point is achieved within the climactic scene itself. This is what I refer to as the bang within the bang. For example, the climactic scene in my novel Payment in Blood is Lynley’s chase of the killer through the backstreets of Hampstead in London. The bang within the bang of that scene is the actual unmasking of the killer, who turns out to be someone Lynley did not at all expect to see, believing that someone else was responsible for the killings of Joy Sinclair and Hannah Darrow. In the climax of Missing Joseph, Lynley and St. James are in pursuit of Juliet Spence across moors in the snow. She’s been unmasked as the killer, and in anticipation of this she has taken her daughter and made a run for it. The bang within the bang in this scene is an actual bang. Hiding inside a barn, Juliet Spence fires a gun that the reader has seen in her possession earlier in the novel.
Here is the dramatic climax from Careless in Red. The first thing you’re going to notice is that nobody is running anywhere:
Jago Reeth made it clear that he wanted Ben Kerne alone, with no hangers-on from his family present. He suggested Hedra’s Hut for the venue, and he used the word venue as if a performance would be given there.
Bea told him he was a bloody damn fool if he expected the lot of them to traipse out to the sea cliff where that ancient perch was.
He replied that fool or not, if she wanted a conversation with him, he knew his rights and he was going to employ them.
She told him that one of his rights was not the right to decide where their meeting with Ben Kerne would occur.
He smiled and begged to differ with her. It might not have been his right, he said, but the fact of the matter was that she probably wanted him to be in a location where he felt easy with conversation. And Hedra’s Hut was that location. They’d be cosy enough there. Out of the cold and the wind. Snug as four bugs rolled in the same rug, if she knew what he meant.
“He’s got something up his sleeve,” was Sergeant Havers’s assessment of the situation once they set off trailing Jago Reeth’s Defender in the direction of Alsperyl. They’d wait at the village church for Mr. Kerne, Jago had informed them. “Best phone the superintendent and let him know where we’re going,” Havers went on. “I’d have backup as well. Those blokes from the station . . . ? Got to be a way they can hide themselves round the place.”
“Not unless they disguise themselves as cows, sheep, or gulls,” Bea told her. “This bloke’s thought of all the angles.”
Lynley, Bea found, wasn’t answering his mobile, which made her curse the man and wonder why she’d bothered to give him a phone in the first place. “Where’s the blasted man got off to?” she asked and then replied to her own question with a grim declaration of, “Well, I wager we know the answer to that, don’t we.”
At Alsperyl, which was no great distance from the Salthouse Inn, they remained in their respective cars, parked close to the village church. When Ben Kerne finally joined them, they’d been sitting there for nearly thirty minutes. During this time, Bea had phoned the station to give the word where they were and phoned Ray to do likewise.
Ray said, “Beatrice, are you barking mad? D’you have any idea how irregular this is?”
“I’ve got half a dozen ideas,” she told him. “I’ve also got sod all to work with unless this bloke gives me something I can use.”
“You can’t think he intends—”
“I don’t know what he intends. But there will be three of us and one of him and if we can’t manage—”
“You’ll check him for weapons?”
“I’m a fool but not a bloody fool, Ray.”
“I’m having whoever’s out on patrol in your area head to Alsperyl.”
“Don’t do that. If I need backup, I can easily phone the Casvelyn station for it.”
“I don’t care what you can and cannot do. There’s Pete to consider, and if it comes down to it, there’s myself as well. I won’t rest easy unless I know you’ve got proper backup. Christ, this is bloody irregular.”
“As you’ve said.”
“Who’s with you at present?”
“Sergeant Havers.”
“Another woman? Where the hell is Lynley? What about that sergeant from the station? He looked like he had half a wit about him. For God’s sake, Bea—”
“Ray. This bloke’s round seventy years old. He’s got some sort of palsy. If we can’t take care of ourselves round him, we need to be carted off.”
“Nonetheless—”
“Good-bye, darling.” She rang off and shoved the mobile into her bag.
Shortly after she finished her phone calls—also telling Collins and McNulty at the Casvelyn station where she was—Ben Kerne arrived. He got out of his car and zipped his windcheater to the chin. He glanced at Jago Reeth’s Defender in some apparent confusion. He then saw Bea and Havers parked next to the lichenous stone wall that defined the churchyard and he walked over to them. As he approached, they got out of the car. Jago Reeth did likewise.
Bea saw that Jago Reeth’s eyes were fixed on Santo Kerne’s father. She saw that his expression had altered from the easy affability that he’d shown them in the Salthouse Inn. Now his features fairly blazed. She imagined it was the look seasoned warriors had once worn when they finally had the necks of their enemies beneath their boots and a sword pressing into their throats.
Jago Reeth said nothing to any of them. He merely jerked his head towards a kissing gate at the west end of the car park, next to the church’s notice board.
Bea spoke. “If we’re meant to attend you, Mr. Reeth, then I have a condition as well.”
He raised an eyebrow, the extent to which he apparently intended to communicate until they got to his preferred destination.
“Put your hands on the bonnet and spread your legs. And trust me, I’m not interested in checking to see what sort of cobblers you’ve got.”
Jago cooperated. Havers and Bea patted him down. His only weapon was a biro. Havers took this and tossed it over the wall into the churchyard.
Jago’s expression said, Satisfied?
Bea said, “Carry on.”
He headed in the direction of the kissing gate. He did not wait there to see if they were accompanying him. He was, apparently, perfectly certain that they would follow.
Ben Kerne said to Bea, “What’s going on? Why’ve you asked me . . . ? Who is that, Inspector?”
“You’ve not met Mr. Reeth before this?”
“That’s Jago Reeth? Santo spoke about him. The old surfer working for Madlyn’s dad. Santo quite liked him. I’d no idea. No. I’ve not met him.”
“I doubt he’s actually a surfer although he talks the talk. He doesn’t look familiar to you?”
“Should he?”
“As Jonathan Parsons, perhaps.”
Ben Kerne’s lip parted, but he said nothing. He watched Reeth trudging towards the kissing gate. “Where’s he going?” he asked.
“Where he’s willing to talk. To us and to you.” Bea put her hand on Kerne’s arm. “But you’ve no need to listen. You’ve no need to follow him. His condition to speak to us was to have you present and I realise this is half mad and the other half dangerous. But he’s got us—that’s the cops and not you—by the short and curlies and the only way we’re going to get a word from him is to play it his way for now.”
“On the phone, you didn’t say Parsons.”
“I didn’t want you driving here like a madman. And I don’t want you like a madman now. We already have one on our hands, I believe, and two would be overwhelming. Mr. Kerne, I can’t tell you how far out on a limb we are with this entire approach so I won’t even go into it. Are you able to listen to what he has to say? More, are you willing?”
“Did he . . . ?” Kerne seemed to search for a way to put it that wouldn’t make what he had to say into a fact he might have to accept. “Did he kill Santo?”
“That’s what we’re going to talk to him about. Are you able?”
He nodded. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his windcheater and indicated with a tilt of his head that he was ready. They set out towards the kissing gate.
On the other side of this gate, a field provided grazing for cows, and the way towards the sea edged along a barbed-wire fence. The path they walked on was muddy and uneven, marked deeply by ruts made from a tractor’s wheels. At the far end of the field lay another field, fenced off from the first by more barbed wire and accessed through yet another kissing gate. Ultimately, they walked perhaps half a mile or more and their destination was the South-West Coast Path, which crossed the second field high above the sea.
The wind was fierce here, coming onshore in continuous gusts. On these, the seabirds rose and fell. Kittiwakes called. Herring gulls replied. A lone green cormorant shot up from the cliff side as up ahead Jago Reeth approached the edge. The bird dove down, rose, and began to circle. Looking for prey, Bea thought, in the turbulent water.
They headed south on the coastal path, but within some twenty yards, a break in the gorse that stood between the path and perdition indicated a set of steep stone stairs. This, Bea saw, was their destination. Jago Reeth disappeared down them.
She said to her companions, “Hang on, then,” and she went to see where the stone steps led. She was reckoning they were a means to get to the beach, which lay some two hundred feet below the cliff top, and she intended to tell Jago Reeth that she had no intention of putting her life, Havers’s life, and Ben Kerne’s life at risk by following him down some perilous route to the water. But she found the steps went down only as far as fifteen of them could descend, and they terminated in another path, this one narrow and heavily grown on each side with gorse and sedge. It, too, headed south but for no great distance. Its conclusion was an ancient hut built partially into the face of the cliff that backed it. Jago Reeth, she saw, had just reached the hut’s doorway and swung it open. He saw her on the steps but made no further gesture. Their eyes met briefly before he ducked inside the old structure.
She returned to the top of the cliff. She spoke above the sound of the wind, the sea, and the gulls. “He’s just below, in the hut. He might well have something stowed inside, so I’m going in first. You can wait on the path, but don’t come near till I give you the word.”
She went down the steps and along the path, the gorse brushing against the legs of her trousers. She reached the hut and found that Jago had indeed prepared for this moment. Not with weapons, however. Either he or someone else had earlier supplied the hut with a spirit stove, a jug of water, and a small box of supplies. The man was, incredibly, brewing tea.
The hut was fashioned from the driftwood of wrecked ships, of which there had been countless numbers over the centuries. It was a small affair, with a bench that ran round three sides and an uneven stone floor. As long as it had been in this place, people had carved their initials into its walls, so they had the appearance now of a wooden Rosetta stone, this one immediately comprehensible and speaking both of lovers and of people whose internal insignificance made them seek an outward expression—any outward expression—that would give their existence meaning.
Bea told Reeth to step away from the spirit stove, which he did willingly enough. She checked it and the rest of his supplies, of which there were few enough: plastic cups, sugar, tea, powdered milk in sachets, one spoon for shared stirring. She was surprised the old man hadn’t thought of crumpets.
She ducked back out of the door and motioned Havers and Ben Kerne to join her. Once all four of them were inside the hut, there was barely room to move, but Jago Reeth still managed to make the tea, and he pressed a cup upon each of them, like the hostess of an Edwardian house party. Then he doused the flame on the stove and set the stove itself on the stones beneath the bench, perhaps as a way of reassuring them that he had no intention of using it as a weapon. At this, Bea decided to pat him down again for good measure. Having put the spirit stove in the hut in advance of their arrival, there was no telling what else he’d stowed in the place. But he was weaponless, as before.
With the hut’s double door shut and fastened, the sound of the wind and the gulls’ crying was muted. The atmosphere was close, and the four adults took up nearly every inch of the space. Bea said, “You’ve got us here, Mr. Reeth, at your pleasure. What is it you’d like to tell us?”
Jago Reeth held his tea in both hands. He nodded and spoke not to Bea but to Ben Kerne, and his tone was kind. “Losing a son. You’ve got my deepest sympathy. It’s the worst grief a man can know.”
“Losing any child’s a blow.” Ben Kerne sounded wary. It appeared to Bea that he was trying to read Jago Reeth. As was she. The air seemed to crackle with anticipation.
Next to Bea, Sergeant Havers took out her notebook. Bea expected Reeth to tell her to put it away, but instead the old man nodded and said, “I’ve no objection,” and to Kerne, “Have you?” When Ben shook his head, Jago added, “If you’ve come wired, Inspector, that’s fine as well. There are always things wanting documentation in a situation like this.”
Bea wanted to say what she’d earlier thought: He’d considered all the angles. But she was waiting to see, hear, or intuit the one angle he hadn’t yet considered. It had to be here somewhere, and she needed to be ready to deal with it when it raised its scaly head above the muck for a breath of air.
She said, “Do go on.”
“But there’s something worse about losing a son,” Jago Reeth said to Ben Kerne. “Unlike a daughter, a son carries the name. He’s the link between the past and the future. And it’s more, even, than just the name at the end of the day. He carries the reason for it all. For this . . .” He gave a look around the hut, as if the tiny building somehow contained the world and the billions of lifetimes present in the world.
“I’m not sure I make that sort of distinction,” Ben said. “Any loss . . . of a child . . . of any child . . .” He didn’t go on. He cleared his throat mightily.
Jago Reeth looked pleased. “Losing a son to murder is a horror, though, isn’t it? The fact of murder is almost as bad as knowing who killed him and not being able to lift a finger to bring the bloody sod to justice.”
Kerne said nothing. Nor did Bea or Barbara Havers. Bea and Kerne held their tea undrunk in their hands, and Ben Kerne set his carefully on the floor. Next to her, Bea felt Havers stir.
“That part’s bad,” Jago said. “As is the not knowing.”
“Not knowing what, exactly, Mr. Reeth?” Bea asked.
“The whys and the wherefores about it. And the hows. Bloke can spend the rest of his life tossing and turning, wondering and cursing and wishing . . . You know what I mean, I expect. Or if not now, you will, eh? It’s hell on earth and there’s no escaping. I feel for you, mate. For what you’re going through now and for what’s to come.”
“Thank you,” Ben Kerne said quietly. Bea had to admire him for his control. She could see how white the tops of his knuckles were.
“I knew your boy Santo. Lovely lad. Bit full of himself, like all boys are when they’re that age, eh, but lovely. And since this tragedy happened to him—”
“Since he was murdered,” Bea corrected Jago Reeth.
“Murder,” Reeth said, “is a tragedy, Inspector. No matter what kind of game of scent-and-chase you lot might think it is. It’s a tragedy, and when it happens, the only peace available is in knowing the truth of what happened and having others know it as well. If,” he added with a brief smile, “you know what I mean. And as I knew Santo, I’ve thought and thought about what happened to the lad. And I’ve decided that if an old broken-down bloke like myself can give you any peace, Mr. Kerne, that’s what I owe you.”
“You don’t owe me—”
“We all owe each other,” Jago cut in. “It’s forgetting that that leads us to tragedies.” He paused as if to let this sink in. He drained his tea and put the cup next to him on the bench. “So what I want to do is tell you how I reckon this happened to your boy. Because I’ve thought about it, see, as I’m sure you have and sure the cops here have as well. Who would’ve done this to such a fine lad, I been asking myself for days. How’d they manage it? And why?”
“None of that brings Santo back, does it?” Ben Kerne asked steadily.
“ ’Course not. But the knowing . . . the final understanding of it all: I wager there’s peace in that and that’s what I’ve got to offer you. Peace. So here’s what I reckon was—”
“No. I don’t think so, Mr. Reeth.” Bea had a sudden glimmer what Reeth intended, and in that glimmer she saw where this could lead.
But Ben Kerne said, “Let him go on, please. I want to hear him out, Inspector.”
“This will allow him to—”
“Please let him continue.”
Reeth waited affably for Bea to concur. She nodded sharply, but she wasn’t happy. To irregular and mad she had to add provocative.
“So here’s what I reckon,” Jago said. “Someone has a score to settle and this someone sets out to settle that score on the life of your lad. What sort of score, you wonder, right? Could be anything, couldn’t it. New score, old score. It doesn’t matter. But a form of accounting’s waiting out there, and Santo’s life’s the means of settling it. So this killer—could be a man, could be a woman, doesn’t much matter, does it, because the point is the lad and the lad’s death, see, which is what cops like these two always forget—this killer gets to know your lad because knowing him’s going to provide access. And knowing the lad leads to the means as well because your boy’s an openhearted sort and he talks. About this and that, but as things turn out, he talks a lot about his dad, same as most boys do. He says his dad’s riding him hard for lots of reasons but mostly because he wants women and surfing and not settling down, and who can blame him as he’s only eighteen. His dad, on the other hand, has his own wants for the boy, which makes the boy roil and talk and roil some more. Which makes him look for . . . What d’you call it? A substitute dad . . . ?”
“A surrogate dad.” Ben’s voice was heavier now.
“That would be the word. Or perhaps a surrogate mum, of course. Or a surrogate . . . what? Priest, confessor, priestess, whatever? At any rate, this person—man or woman, young or old—sees a door of trust opening and he—or she, of course—walks right through it. If you know what I mean.”
He was keeping his options open, Bea concluded. He was, as he had said himself, no bloody fool, and the advantage he had in this moment was the years he’d had to think about the approach he wanted to use when the time came for it.
“So this person . . . let’s call him or her the Confessor for want of a better term . . . this Confessor makes cups of tea and cups of chocolate and more cups of tea and more cups of chocolate and offers biscuits, but more important offers a place for Santo to do whatever and to be whoever. And the Confessor waits. And soon enough reckons that means are available to settle whatever score needs settling. The boy’s had yet another blowup with his dad. It’s an argument that goes nowhere like always and this time the lad’s taken all of his climbing equipment from where he’s kept it in the past—right alongside Dad’s—and he’s stowed it in the boot of his car. What does he intend? It’s that classic thing: I’ll show him, I will. I’ll show him what sort of bloke I am. He thinks I’m nothing but a lout but I’ll show him. And what better way to do it than with his own sport, which I’ll do better than he’s ever managed. So that puts his equipment within the grasp of the Confessor and the Confessor sees what we’ll call the Way.”
At this, Ben Kerne lowered his head. Bea said, “Mr. Kerne, I think this is—”
He said, “No.” He raised his head with effort. “More,” he said to Jago Reeth.
“The Confessor waits for an opportunity, which presents itself soon enough because the lad’s open and easy with his belongings, one of which is his car. This is nothing at all to get into as it’s never locked and a quick manoeuver opens the boot and there it all is. Selection is the key. Perhaps a chock stone or a carabiner. Or a sling. Even the harness will do. All four, perhaps? No, that likely would be—if you’ll pardon the expression—overkill. If it’s a sling, there’s not a problem in the world as it’s nylon or whatever and easily cut by shears, a sharp knife, a razor, whatever. If it’s something else, things are a bit trickier, as everything else save the rope—and rope seems too bloody obvious a choice, not to mention too noticeable—is metal and a cutting device is going to be necessary. How to find one? Purchase one? No. That would be traceable. Borrow one? Again, someone’s going to recall the borrowing, yes? Use one without the knowledge of the owner? That seems more possible and decidedly more sensible, but where to find one? Friend, associate, acquaintance, employer? Someone whose movements are intimately known because they’ve been watched just as intimately? Any of those, yes? So the Confessor chooses the moment and the deed is done. One cut does it and afterwards no sign is left behind because, as we’ve said, the Confessor’s no fool and he knows—or she knows, because as we’ve seen, she is as possible as he when it comes to this—that it’s crucial there be no evidence afterwards. And the beauty of it all is that the equipment’s been marked with tape by the lad—or even by his father, perhaps—so that it can be distinguished from everyone else’s. Because this is what climbers do, you see. They mark their equipment because so often they climb together. It’s safer that way, climbing together, you see. And this tells the Confessor that there’s little to no chance that anyone other than the lad will use this sling, this carabiner, this harness . . . whatever it was that was damaged because, of course, I myself don’t know. But I’ve thought about it, and here’s what I’ve come up with. The one thing the Confessor has to take care with is the tape used to identify the equipment. If he—or she, of course—buys more tape, there’s a chance the new tape won’t match exactly or can be traced back. God knows how, but there’s that possibility, so the thing is to keep that tape usable. The Confessor manages this and it’s quite a project because that tape is tough, like electrical tape. He—or she, of course, like I said—rewraps it just so and maybe it’s not quite as tight as it once was but at least it’s the same and will the lad even notice? Unlikely, and even if he does, what he’s likely to do is smooth it down, apply more tape on top, something like that. So once the deed is done and the equipment’s replaced, all that’s left is waiting. And once what happens, happens—and it is a tragedy, no one doubts that—there’s nothing really that can’t be explained away.”
“There’s always something, Mr. Reeth,” Bea said.
Jago looked at her in a kindly way. “Fingerprints on the boot of the car? In the interior? On the keys to the car? Inside the boot? The Confessor and the boy spent hours together, perhaps they even worked together at . . . let’s say it was at his dad’s business. They each rode in the other’s car, they were mates, they were pals, they were surrogate father and surrogate son, they were surrogate mother and surrogate son, they were surrogate brothers, they were lovers, they were . . . anything. It doesn’t matter, you see, because it all can be explained away. Hair inside the boot of the car? The Confessor’s? Someone else’s? Same thing, really. The Confessor planted someone else’s or even his own or her own because it can be a woman, we’ve already seen that. What about fibres? Clothing fibres . . . perhaps on the tape that marked the equipment. Wouldn’t that be lovely? But the Confessor helped wrap that equipment or he or she touched that equipment because . . . why? Because the boot was used for other things as well—a surfing kit, perhaps?—and things would get moved round here and there and in and out. What about access to the equipment? Everyone had that. Every single person in the poor lad’s life. What about motive? Well, nearly everyone, it seems, had that as well. So at the end of the day, there is no answer. There is only speculation but no case to present. Which the killer probably considers the beauty of the crime but which you and I know, Mr. Kerne, is any crime’s biggest horror: that the killer simply walks away. Everyone knows who did it. Everyone admits it. Everyone shakes a head and says, What a tragedy. What a useless, senseless, maddening—”
“I think that’s enough, Mr. Reeth. Or Mr. Parsons,” Bea said.
“—horror because the killer walks away now he—or she, of course—has done his business.”
“I said that’s enough.”
“And the killer can’t be touched by the cops and all the cops can do is sit there and drink their tea and wait and hope to find something somewhere someday . . . But they get busy, don’t they? Other things on their plates. They shove you to one side and say don’t ring us every day, man, because when a case goes cold—like this one will—there’s no point to ringing, so we’ll ring you if and when we can make an arrest. But it never comes, does it, that arrest. So you end up with nothing but ashes in an urn and they may as well have burnt your body on the day they burned his because the soul of you is gone anyway.”
He was finished, it seemed, his recital completed. All that was left was the sound of harsh breathing, which was Jago Reeth’s, and outside, the cry of gulls and the gusting of the wind and the crash of the surf. In a suitably well-rounded television drama, Bea thought, Reeth would rise to his feet now. He would dash for the door and throw himself over the cliff, having at long last achieved the vengeance he’d anticipated and having no further reason to continue living. He’d take the leap and join his dead Jamie. But this, unfortunately, was not a television drama.
His face seemed lit from within. Spittle had collected at the corners of his mouth. His tremors had worsened. He was waiting, she saw, for Ben Kerne’s reaction to his performance, for Ben Kerne’s embracing of a truth that no one could alter and no one could resolve.
Ben finally lifted his head and gave the reaction. “Santo,” he said, “was not my son.”
Here, then, is where we’ve been heading all along: not only to the unmasking of Jago Reeth as the killer of Santo Kerne but also to his motive and to the revelation that Santo was not Ben Kerne’s son. This doesn’t mean, of course, that Ben did not love Santo. But that blood connection that Jago desperately wants is not there nor has it ever been.
The bang within the bang in the scene is contained in those final words: “Santo was not my son.” Jago didn’t know this, but neither did the reader.
The options available to the writer in the construction of the dramatic climax are the same as they are for the narrative climax: how the scene itself is constructed, which can be played with in the running plot outline; the various elements of craft that can be used; the decision about the presence of a THAD; how a THAD can ratchet up the drama or reveal character; the choice of setting (and here you can see that I make my second use of that wonderful hut on the cliff outside of Morwenstow); and the presence and style of the dialogue.
When I reached this scene in the running plot outline for Careless in Red, I made the decision that legal justice would not prevail for anyone. The reader would have the satisfaction of knowing the identity of the killer, but the reader would also see that the killer was going to get away with it. For Jago Reeth, there would be no justice served—as he perceives justice served—through the death of Santo Kerne. He’s been looking for a quid pro quo: Ben Kerne suffering the blood-loss as well as the lineage promised by a son; instead he’s discovered he’s not going to achieve it, as he learns that Santo wasn’t Ben’s son in the first place. All the years Jago Reeth waited and malevolently rubbed his hands together have come to nothing.
Finally, we have the denouement of the novel. I call this bringing all the balls down from the air without dropping any of them. In other words, it means bringing all the balls down in precisely the correct order so that the structure of the novel is tight to the end. In Careless in Red, the denouement comprises the final two chapters. During these final two chapters, what must happen is as follows.
The plot is itself resolved. This is the termination of the through line. In a crime novel, the identity of the criminal is revealed, and anything that needs to be sewn up by the detectives is handled.
Change has occurred in the lives or psyches of the characters. We see how they have been affected by what has gone on during the course of the novel. Or change has not occurred in the lives of the characters because they will not allow it. They’ve made a decision not to change. They cling to the self that has always worked for them.
Misunderstandings are clarified.
All the dramatic questions about the characters laid down in the course of the novel are resolved. (The only exceptions to this would be in the stories of the continuing characters, since over the course of the series itself, those questions will be answered.)
All the subplots are brought to a conclusion. The dramatic arc of each character’s journey needs to end. Nothing can be left hanging at this point. So in Careless in Red, we’re going to see some sort of resolution to Lynley’s story of grief, to Kerra Kerne’s story, to Bea and Ray Hannaford’s story, to Madlyn’s story, to Will Mendick’s story . . . In other words, there are no loose ends at the novel’s conclusion. Readers don’t close the book and say, “But what about . . . ?” because everything has been addressed. Some of the characters have changed because of what’s gone on. Some remain as unchanged as they are untouched.
The denouement of Careless in Red was complicated by two facts: 1) Lynley wasn’t present at the climax of the novel, and 2) The structure and placement of the final scenes had to be carefully considered in order to maintain tension until the story’s conclusion. That means that partial information had to be given so that the reader would carry on to “see how it all ends.”
It’s in the cause of maintaining the reader’s interest that the final three chapters of Careless in Red are constructed and placed as they are. Thus, we don’t witness the entirety of Lynley’s time with Daidre Trahair before the climax of the novel. Instead, that day he’s spent with her is broken up and placed throughout the remaining chapters right up to the end of the novel. This playing out of the story with Daidre felt right to me in ways that dealing with her in a single long scene didn’t.
We also have characters in the subplots whose stories need to be brought to a conclusion. As I deal with these subplots, I try to maintain the level of my writing so that not one of them is given short shrift. They’ve served to enrich the story and the reader needs to see and understand where they are at the story’s end. To give the illusion that these are real people with real lives in a real world, not all subplots end happily. But it’s my hope as I write that they all end in a way that the reader understands.
Choose one of your favorite novels and identify its climax. Read from that point to the end and study how the writer created the denouement. Books I’d recommend considering are Mystic River by Dennis Lehane, This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel, The Monkey’s Raincoat by Robert Crais, In Wilderness by Diane Thomas, and Strange but True by John Searles.
Using the same book, look at the elements of craft that are included in the denouement. Choose one scene from the denouement and alter it with an element of craft such as:
Changing the POV
Creating or eliminating a THAD
Altering the POV character’s attitude
Using something of your own—perhaps from a manuscript that you’ve completed and are seeking representation for—choose one scene and do with it exactly what you did in Optional Exercise 2. Was this easier? Why? Was it more difficult? Why? How did it change your initial intentions for the scene?