Does John know? Has William realised? William is very drunk, he can’t know. If he had realised that he is sitting with the very man who murdered his wife and his daughter and Margaret Brown then William would be beating him, slapping him, hitting him and chasing that man from John and Nettie’s home.
Nettie feels that she alone knows a murderer is among them. A man who shot three people in their own home. Nettie and John and William are three people. This is their home.
Stiff with terror, she tiptoes silently to the front door and slips out into the close. She stands at the top of the stairs, panting.
Good Lord, what is she doing? She can’t leave John in there. But she can’t call the police, either. If they find William with the actual murderer they’ll just arrest William again, they hate him so. She looks at the front door across the landing: she could wake the neighbours but what use is that? He’d just murder them too.
She looks back at her front door. She has to warn John but she doesn’t know how. She slips into the toilet on the landing to think.
This outside toilet has an open window cut high up on the wall, a godsend in summer but freezing now in the December air. Wind blows in, swaying the strip of flypaper uncurling from the light bulb, threatening to shower her with frozen dead flies. She only has her slippers on and the floor feels tacky, as if a child has missed the pan. It’s cold and horrible but Nettie would stay here for a year to be out of the house.
She wants to run. She has some money of her own scurried away, change saved from groceries. She keeps it wrapped in paper and tucked into the toe of her Sunday shoes. She would have to go back in, but then she could hide in the train station until morning and get on the first train to Aberdeen where her sister lives. But she can’t run. There is a murderer in her house and her John is in there. She can’t run or call the police or a neighbour. There is no one to call for help.
The combination of biting cold and terror make her need a tinkle. Exposing as little flesh as possible to the frosty air, she pulls her underskirt up and her underpants down, hovers on the pan and does her dirty business. She positions herself so that her wee hits the side of the bowl noiselessly. Outside toilets are very public, everyone has their own technique. Nettie’s mind is on the money wrapped in a paper in her Sunday shoes as she reaches for the newspaper, cut into strips and hung on the nail, to wipe herself. She freezes. That’s it! The newspapers!
Hurriedly cleaning herself, she pulls her clothes down, up and unlocks the door. She slips back into the house, trembling. Silently she shuts the door and, for as long as a shiver, she stands listening.
Manuel is still talking in a low tone, as if he is describing a dream.
John’s voice cuts through the dreamlike murmur: ‘What did he see in there?’
Manuel’s rhythm is thrown off by the question. ‘Um, in the room?’
‘Yes, did he describe the girl’s room?’
‘Well, just a bedroom. A bed. A torch on the bedside table. She had a radiogram in there. An old-fashioned one, a big, like, wooden cabinet. And a pink chenille bedspread, fluffy.’
‘Fluffy?’ John asks as if he’s misheard the word.
‘Aye.’ Manuel is confused by why this is being discussed. ‘Kind of puffy, fluffy, you know, like you could run your hand over the top of it? Fluffy.’
There is a pause. Nettie feels sure that John knows now.
‘Kind of chenille,’ says Manuel. Then he moves straight on to tell them that the girl sees his face there, at the door, and jumps back into the room. Tallis follows her in. There’s a struggle. He wants her to get onto the bed and she won’t do it. It annoys him, Tallis. He gets… he gets annoyed with her. Tallis socks her one and she goes down. Then he’s hungry so he goes and makes a sandwich. Gammon. And he drinks from the bottle of Mascaró Dry Gin.
‘The bottle in the front room?’ From the high pitch of William’s voice, Nettie can hear that he knows too.
‘The one on the drinks cabinet, next to the Whyte & Mackay. But he doesn’t get to finish his sandwich because the girl wakes up and screams.’ There is a pause. It sounds as if he is drinking.
John shouts: ‘WIFE? WIFE!’
Nettie hurries in. John looks up at her imploringly. He knows. He can see that Nettie does too. In a strained voice he says, ‘Might we have some tea, Nettie?’
Nettie fills the kettle and puts it on the range. Would the other two like a cup of tea? Her own voice sounds strange to her. Breathy. Last-words-y.
William would like a cup of tea, thank you, dear. Peter Manuel doesn’t answer but announces that he is off to use the cludgie.
He goes out to the close, leaving the front door ajar. He bangs the toilet door loud enough to wake the whole close. They hear him urinating.
Nettie keeps an eye on the door and she whispers: ‘Get him out of here or, so help me, I will call the papers.’
It’s an awful threat. They’ll be here faster than the police and they’ll make a month’s worth of stories out of it. They love this story and Watt.
John is livid but nods, his eyes are brimming. He turns to his brother. ‘Get that b. out of my home.’
William is not shocked by any of this. He is drunk and not the best liar anyway. Nettie can see that he knew all along. She has never entertained this thought before but now she wonders if the police are right and William did have a hand in killing his family.
The lavatory flushes and Manuel opens the toilet door before it is finished. The sound of sucking reverberates around the stone walls of the close.
He comes in, slams the front door behind him and sits back down. John confronts him: ‘How do you know all these details about the house?’
‘Well… people tell me things. What details?’
‘The key rack? The feel of the bedspread? How do you know that if it wasn’t you?’
Manuel isn’t thrown. He says, ‘Listen, the next morning Tallis, he came to me–going mad, he was, he tells me everything, in detail like. He says hide this gun.’
William jumps in. ‘Did you? Where?’
‘In the Clyde at a special bit, a bit only I know. I can get it back.’
Nettie delivers the tea. William nods at John. But John won’t look at him. Nettie pours two teas, carefully cupping the strainer with her shaking hand. William keeps talking, as if he has forgotten that the man is a murderer.
‘Listen: this story is no use to me,’ slurs William. ‘Even if you have the gun and take it to the police, it fails to clear me of anything, much less in the public imagination. My business is still affected.’
Hot tea drips into Nettie’s palm as she carries the strainer back to the sink. Manuel’s voice is a low murmur behind her. ‘Prove something if Charles Tallis was found shot dead, holding the gun used to kill your family, though, wouldn’t it? Clear everything up nicely, that would.’
Nettie freezes.
John gathers a breath to shout but he is cut off by William scraping his chair back and standing up. ‘Let’s go, Chief!’
Manuel stays in his seat. He’s confused by the change in atmosphere. ‘What?’
Nettie stands at the sink with the burning tea dripping into her palm.
‘Come on, Chief! Time to go!’