—Thank you for being frank. Are you any more ready than Liesl to throw some light on the answer of the Brazen Head?

—Let me see. Yes, I am certainly “the man who granted his inmost wish.” You would never guess what it was. But he told me. People do tell me things. When I met him, which was on the night of his death, he offered me a lift back to my hotel in his car. As we drove he said—and as you know this was at one of the peaks of his career, when he was about to realize a dream which he, or your stepmother, had long cherished—he said, “You know, sometimes I wish I could step on the gas and drive right away from all of this, all the obligations, the jealousies, the nuisances, and the relentlessly demanding people.” I said, “Do you mean that? I could arrange it.” He said, “Could you?” I replied, “Nothing easier.” His face became very soft, like a child’s, and he said, “Very well. I’d be greatly obliged to you.” So I arranged it. You may be sure he knew no pain. Only the realization of his wish.

—But the stone? The stone in his mouth?

—Ah, well, that is not my story. You must ask the keeper of the stone. But I will tell you something Liesl doesn’t know, unless Ramsay has told her: “the woman he did not know” was my mother. Yes, she had some part in it.

With that I had to be contented because Liesl and a workman wanted to talk with him. But somehow I found myself liking him. Even more strange, I found myself believing him. But he was a hypnotist of great powers; I had seen him demonstrate that on the stage. Had he hypnotized Father and sent him to his death? And if so, why?

Later: That was how I put the question to Ramsay when I cornered him this afternoon in the room he uses for his writing. Pargetter’s advice: always go to a man in his room, for then he has no place to escape to, whereas you may leave when you please. What did he say?

—Davey, you are behaving like the amateur sleuth in a detective story. The reality of your father’s death is much more complex than anything you can uncover that way. First, you must understand that nobody—not Eisengrim or anyone—can make a man do something under hypnotism that he has not some genuine inclination to do. So: Who killed Boy Staunton? Didn’t the Head say, “Himself, first of all?” We all do it, you know, unless we are taken off by some unaccountable accident. We determine the time of our death, and perhaps the means. As for the “usual cabal” I myself think “the woman he knew and the woman he did not know” were the same person—your mother. He never had any serious appraisal of her weakness or her strength. She had strength, you know, that he never wanted or called on. She was Ben Cruikshank’s daughter, and don’t suppose that was nothing just because Ben wasn’t a village grandee like Doc Staunton. Boy never had any use for your mother as a grown-up woman, and she kept herself childish in the hope of pleasing him. When we have linked our destiny with somebody, we neglect them at our peril. But Boy never knew that. He was so well graced, so gifted, such a genius in his money-spinning way, that he never sensed the reality of other people. Her weakness galled him, but her occasional shows of strength shamed him.