Houses Full of Deceit

Chapter II: Alibi

If there is one thing I dislike, it is the man who tries to air his grievances when I wish to air mine. -- P. G. Wodehouse, Love Among the Chickens

They discussed the situation after breakfast.

"So," Yo-han said. "I take it you want me to prove your innocence and catch the real culprit."

Colman nodded. "When you catch them, don't bother handing them over to the police. I can deal with them myself."

Yo-han looked at him. He raised an eyebrow. Colman looked back. One of his eyebrows was naturally higher than the other, giving the impression he was copying Yo-han.

What was the point of trying to lecture an assassin on the morality of killing people? Yo-han gave up and moved on. "An alibi will be helpful."

"Not for me," Colman said with a too-bright smile. "At the time of the murders I was in Italy, killing my father."

Stunned silence fell. Yo-han's instinctive reaction was to recoil in horror. His stronger reaction, born from years of dealing with the most deranged family dramas imaginable, was to sigh wearily.

"Why," he said flatly, not even bothering to turn it into a question.

Colman shrugged. Beneath his flippant attitude and forced smile there was a mask of defiance. Beneath it was something Yo-han recognised only too well: grief mixed with the knowledge that something had been done too late. That some things could never be fixed.

"He killed my mother. I don't mean he literally shot her or stabbed her or threw her in a well, but he killed her just the same."

Yo-han suddenly understood Colman's motives perfectly. Hate could drive people to do terrible things, but grief could drive them even further.

Colman spoke as if he couldn't get the words out fast enough. "She was fifteen and he raped her. Then he sold her to a brothel because of me, because my existence would reveal his sins.

"Some of the women managed to buy their way out of the brothel. Mother never could. All of her money went to keeping me alive. The madam wanted to sell me out to customers who liked children. My mother refused, so she had to pay the madam extra from her earnings. Someone gave her syphilis. It rotted her brain until there were times when she didn't recognise me.

"Eventually her disease was too obvious, so the madam kicked us out. I begged and stole to keep us in a filthy room that we shared with a hundred rats. It was no use. She died when I was eleven.

"I killed a man for the first time when I was twelve. He wouldn't take 'no' for an answer.

"Standing over his body, I decided I'd make something of myself. I took his money and bought myself new clothes. Gave myself a new name. I'd always been good at lying and imitating accents. I lied my way through school and into the theatre. Along the way I discovered killing for money was an easy income.

"I knew my father's name from what my mother told me, back when she could still remember her past. I've tracked him down for years. Finally I caught him and killed him."

Colman smiled. It looked like a skull's grin. "There you have it. The disreputable life of Leopold Colman. Or possibly John Peter McIlwee. I don't know for certain what my mother named me."

Silence stretched between them. Yo-han had never given much thought to Colman's past. He had certainly never expected to see a dark reflection of himself in it.

It had been years since he'd allowed himself to think too much about his worst mistake. He had to live with the consequences every time he saw his father. No need to drag it up even more. The last person he would ever have thought of telling was a foreign assassin. Yet somehow that was exactly what Yo-han found himself doing.