Caroline Minuscule (28 page)
Read Caroline Minuscule Online
Authors: Andrew Taylor
Dramatic solutions danced through his mind, attractive in their meretricious finality. He could take the
Sally-Anne
out into the North Sea and open her stop cocks. He could go after Hanbury and Amanda with Tanner's Smith and Wesson.
No, Dougal told himself, this was wrong: he was wondering what he should be feeling, rather than what he actually felt. But his true feelings were so difficult to catch that he suddenly doubted the value of pursuing them . . . why bother? Amanda had left him, just as certainly as he had killed Cedric (though perhaps less irrevocably).
A squall of rain hit the
Sally-Anne,
setting the boat skipping at her moorings: the noise of the rain drowned the silence.
Tomorrow he would go to London, pay off his debts and get a flight to somewhere warm. He would write to Amanda later. He would take Philip out to dinner â the old-fashioned grandeurs of Simpson's in the Strand would be suitable, perhaps, provided there weren't too many American tourists â and tell him how pleased the minister was. In May, he would be back in England to meet Malcolm; maybe they would be able to work out a congenial way to make a living â he couldn't face going back to finish the university term.
He poured himself another three fingers of brandy. A flicker of tipsy excitement shot through him. Whether or not he got his share of Vernon-Jones's legacy, the search for it seemed to have increased his options immeasurably, by removing some of those strange taboos which hedge people in . . . he now had more unmentionable details for his curriculum vitae.
Swaying to his feet, Dougal crossed to the galley to put the kettle on. He'd had enough thinking for the time being. He would go to bed with a pot of tea, the rest of the bottle of brandy and Lytton Strachey.
And let things settle in their own way.
Amanda's letter on the table, her clothes strewn like discarded intimacies on the starboard berth, mocked him. But only if he chose to listen.
He wondered what Caroline Munns would do when
she
grew up.