Read The Dylan Thomas Murders for Free Online

head and he started to moan. ‘Tom,’ I said in my best encouraging voice, ‘please kiss me.’ And he came to life...it was as if I had just pulled the plug on the Hoover dam. There was another passionate kiss, and he started fumbling with the buttons of my cardigan. And then disaster! An uproar in the garden. We could hear someone running down the path. Eliot leapt away from me and sat down at his little desk. I took up a studied pose at the window, looking down across the river. Oaten burst in, and was clearly disappointed to see that it was only Eliot and me in the shed. ‘There’s bloody poachers hiding about,’ he cried and went off down the garden.
    â€œAnyway, it was all shattered by Oaten’s interruption. We walked back up to the house and I wondered how I might ever again pull Eliot back into some semblance of ordinary humanity. I needn’t have worried because he was plotting his own escape. Annie brought us some coffee. Eliot diligently laid out the cups and poured the coffee and milk. He passed the cup to me, and I asked for some sugar. He had some ready on a spoon. He dropped it in the cup and immediately the coffee started to fizz, and scores of little fish popped up on the surface. Eliot was in hysterics. I was annoyed, it seemed such a childish thing to do. He came over, lifted me from the chair, and said: ‘I’ve only ever known dull duty.’
    â€œWe embraced, and he whispered: ‘My sweetest Volupine.’ We went upstairs to his room. There wasn’t much in the way of preliminaries, not least because the room was so chilly. Eliot was hesitant at first, and there was a spot of embarrassment over his truss, which he didn’t really want me to see. Anyway, I’ll spare you the details. Sophisticated he was not, but he was certainly lustful. We were at it all night, playing Bola, as he called it. A few weeks later, I realised that I was pregnant.”
    â€œAnd Eliot was the father?”
    â€œOr Dylan.” She paused, and looked away into the fire. “Dylan came to see me the following week.”
    â€œDid you tell them?”
    â€œDylan seemed rather taken aback, if not a little shocked. But we went for a long walk along the Aeron and by the time we’d come back, he was more like his usual self, and quite excited at the thought of another son, as he assumed it would be.
    â€œEliot was different. He seemed pleased at first, but when I told him I couldn’t be sure that he was the father, that it might as easily be Dylan, he was furious. No, not with me, but with Dylan, for some reason. He wasn’t at all rational about it and went off in a rage.”
    â€œAnd what happened?”
    â€œI stayed good friends with them both. Dylan would drive across to see us once or twice a year. I saw a lot of him when they were in New Quay, at Majoda.”
    â€œAnd Eliot...?”
    â€œHe came less frequently, but wrote quite a lot.”
    â€œAnd the child...?”
    â€œA boy, born the same week as Aeronwy, but a year older. That was always a problem for Dylan, two birthdays in the same week. I felt sorry for Caitlin, he wasn’t with her when Aeronwy was born, and she assumed he’d been pubbing. This was the time when she realised that Dylan had become two people, as she put it, though she didn’t know the reason. Anyway, he did his best for her. He left here soon after Waldo’s first birthday party, and rushed up to London in my father’s old dressing gown. It was terribly cold and that’s all I could find in the house for him, but he was too late for Aeronwy’s birth.”
    â€œAnd that was his name? Waldo.”
    â€œWaldo Sweeney Hilton. I asked each of them to choose a name for him, and that’s what they picked.”
    â€œWhat did he like to be called?”
    â€œOh, definitely Waldo.”
    I wondered if appearance would provide any clues so I asked her who he looked