Fast forward ten minutes. Hayden was trying to get Rusty to eat. Turkey Brunch, yummy yummy. Marrowbone jelly, mnnnn. As a desperate last resort, he led by example, taking a few bites himself. Mnnnn, yummy yummy, mnnnn. But his attention was elsewhere. Pascal O’Dea’s confession now lay scrunched in a ball on top of the waste basket, useless. Hayden was furious. The three aunts were delighted with their ‘slooting’ jibes, but he’d show ’em. He wouldn’t rest until Eddie’s murder was slooted.
‘Slooted, ladies. Finally, irrevocably, definitively. What do you have to say to that?’ Nothing! That’s what they’d have to say to that.
As soon as he’d established that Rusty wasn’t interested in Madden’s award-winning Turkey Brunch, he put the remains of the tin in the fridge, filled the kettle, laid out the tea tray and opened his notebook. He drew a line down the page. One side: In The Frame. Other side: Not In The Frame. In The Frame? Brannigan. The Popes. Marina. Possibly Brannigan and Marina. Person or persons unknown. Not In The Frame? Pascal O’Dea.
It was a start.
He wet the tea, sat back down and drummed his fingers on the desk. Hayden in pensive mode. Four minutes passed. He’d forgotten all about the tea as he tried to work out who Eddie might have upset over the years. The church. The arts establishment. Ah! His parents. But hold on; they were in Waikiki at the time of Eddie’s death. End of that line of enquiry. He placed them neatly in Not In The Frame, which now read:
• Pascal.
• Mother.
• Father.
He’d split his parents up to make it look as if he was getting somewhere, which he wasn’t. He found it impossible to sleep that night, no further forward with his lines of enquiry, no further forward with his book.
It was after midnight. Hayden was engrossed in the More Sam tape, which gave an added piquancy to the Eddie/Sam relationship. The final section involves an altercation between Eddie and leading literary critic PJ O’Malley.9 A tetchy PJ was furious with Eddie ‘for having the audacity to influence the pre-eminent playwright of the twentieth century [sic]. It upsets the dominant narrative,’ he spluttered. ‘You’re undermining the reputation of the man I love.’ It gets worse. ‘You’ll live to regret it, because let me tell you this: I have the contacts.’
The recording ends with the celebrated critic’s petulant refusal of a Sweet Ambrosia top-up on the grounds that he hadn’t accepted a drink in the first place, and the pitter-patter of cerebral feet as he flounced to the exit. Hayden didn’t bother adding his name to the possible suspect list. PJ O’Malley had the contacts? He was probably referring to the London Review of Books.
Hayden was having a quiet chuckle about this when the front doorbell rang. No response from a terminally depressed Rusty, not even a twitch of his good ear, but Hayden tensed up. It was 01.27, well outside visiting hours; unless, of course, the under-cover-of-darkness factor applied, in which case it wasn’t. He put the light out, crept softly to the door and listened. He expected the tuneless whistling of Lou Brannigan, or the menacing silence of the Popes. But no. All he could make out was a high-pitched chirruping sound; a bit like the Dublin Zoo bird enclosure at feeding time. The doorbell rang again.
‘Coo-ee, Hayding. We know you’re in there.’
He braced himself and opened up. What the hell did they want at this hour?
‘Aren’t you going to invite your old aunties in?’
‘It’s very dark out here. We could be abducted, Hayding.’
Hayden examined his wrist pointedly.
‘One tirty, Hayding. On the dot.’
‘We’ll just squeeze past.’
Hayden ushered them in with the long-suffering sigh he reserved for his three beloved aunts and global catastrophes, and followed them into the living room. He assumed they’d come for a reason, but you never knew. They lit on the tape box and suddenly went quiet. Not that it stopped them talking.
‘What’s this? I tought you filed all Eddie’s tapes away, Dottie.’
‘Dodie. And that, as I recall, was your job.’
Hayden detected a distinct edge to this little exchange. They turned, possibly accusingly, towards him. Something told him to act dumb, so he did. You don’t tell your aunts anything they don’t need to know. Tapes? What tapes? Nothing to do with me, guv. They seemed relieved.
‘Well anyway, Hayding, bit of an oversight, we conclude, so back on the shelf it goes.’
What was all that about? Hayden had no idea. Task completed, however, they seemed to revert to their sweetly batty little selves.
‘More Sam, dough. Remember Samuel, ladies?’
‘We do indeed.’
‘Indeed we do.’
‘Swanned off to Paris, Hayding.’
‘Done very well for himself.’
‘A wonderfully experimental lover as I recall. He was certingly ahead of the curve on gender identity.’
‘Happy day, dough. Happy days.’
‘Happy Days indeed, Hayding. That’s what he was working on at the time.’
‘Metod writing. Asked us to call him Winnie.’
Hayden raised a hand for silence. This, he felt, could go on all night. ‘What can I do for you, ladies?’ he asked.
They seemed relieved to change the subject.
‘A very good and apposite question, Hayding. Only we seen the urn being delivered.’
‘We didn’t want to intrude on private grief.’
‘But we’re here to carry out our dear departed brudder Eddie’s express wishes.’
‘To recapitulate, Hayding. The Hellfire Club, deep in the heart of the Dubling Mountings. First full moon. Tree tirty-tree.’
‘Beelzebub here I come, quote unquote.’
‘Wasn’t he gas, though?’
‘A hoot,’ scowled Hayden.
‘Tree tirty-tree be the light of the moon.’
‘The mooon, Hayding.’
‘The moooooon!’
Rusty may have been about to join in, indeed it might well have contributed to the healing process for the poor dog, but Hayden had had enough.
‘Stop it,’ he snapped. ‘You’re unnerving me.’
‘Well, come on then.’
‘Grab the urn, stick it in this Madden’s bag for life –’
‘– which, by the way, we’d like back as we’ve been monitoring its longevity –’
‘– and let’s skedaddle. Tempus is fugiting fast.’
They rattled a set of car keys and cackled happily.
‘The broomstick is parked on the roof.’
9 Pre-order your copy of The Annotated Sloot now for the full transcript.