An April Shroud

9

Dalziel moved swiftly once he had left the police station. There was one more call he had to make and he was short of time. Fortunately his destination was only round the corner from the station as he had ascertained in the chemist's.

He glanced quickly around when he reached the entrance to Gibb and Fowler's builders yard. The street was deserted except for a man entering a telephone-box about thirty yards behind him, and he pushed open the rickety wooden gates and went in.

It would have been simpler and more professional to get Sergeant Cross to do this, but for reasons he was still keeping obscure from himself, he did not wish to alert the local force more than he had done. Basically, he assured himself, it was just his own curiosity that was driving him on.

He was lucky to find the small, lop-sided and halitotic Mr Gibb in, or so the small, lop-sided and halitotic Mr Gibb assured him. Dalziel expressed his joy at such good fortune and tried to arrange Mr Gibb and himself in one of these curiously oblique conversational tableaux so favoured of television drama directors. Mr Gibb, however, would be satisfied with nothing less than confrontation so Dalziel produced his warrant card and came quickly to the point.

'Mr Gibb, why did your firm stop work on the job at Lake House?'

'It's no secret,' said Gibb. 'They'd got no money. We're not a charity, Superintendent. When I found out they couldn’t pay for what we'd done so far (which was nearly the whole job, I might add), I saw no reason to chuck good money after bad.'

'I see that,' said Dalziel. 'But you were so near finished, why not complete the job and give them a chance to make some money? You must have known they were short of capital for a long while.'

'You're right, we did. And that's the way we were thinking until, well, we got information suggesting that even if the place was finished, they didn't have a cat in hell's chance of getting the business under way. It would just mean they had a better-looking concern to sell off when the official receiver got to them, and I saw no reason why I should spend more time and materials just so other creditors could get a better dividend! So I said, if you don't pay now, that's it.'

'I see,' said Dalziel, releasing his held breath. 'You say you got information. How did you get it?'

Gibb looked uncomfortable, then said aggressively. 'It was a phone call. Some woman, anonymous. I wouldn't take notice of such a thing normally, but we'd been worried about that Fielding fellow for some time. You know the type, good talker, very convincing, gets you full of confidence till you go away and think things out a bit later. Know what I mean? So I thought I'll put him to the test, ask for a payment on account. Well, he started his usual patter. Mind you, it wasn't up to his usual standard. I mean, normally he could have talked the pants off a nun, but this time he seemed stuck for words. Perhaps it was his conscience.'

'Perhaps,' said Dalziel thoughtfully. 'So you stopped work. Would you start again if there was some money forthcoming?'

'Yes,' said Gibb without hesitation. 'Like a shot. We’re short of work just now. It's general. Six weeks ago, I was never in the office. Now, I'm never out of it.'

'You said I was lucky to catch you,' said Dalziel slyly.

'I thought you might be a customer then,' grinned Gibb through his ruined teeth. 'What's this all about anyway? Is there something up?'

'Not really,' assured Dalziel. 'Do me a favour, Mr Gibb, and don't let on I've been asking questions. You never know, you might be back on the Lake House job sooner than you think.'

That should keep him quiet, thought Dalziel as he left. The poor devil was probably down to his last Rolls-Royce. He strode back along the street, moving quickly for a man of his bulk.

I'm far too fat, he thought. I've let myself go. This belly's obscene. They'll need a domed lid on my coffin, like a casserole.

But it did have its uses sometimes. Like now, for instance, he thought, as he opened the door of the telephone-box and stepped inside, pinning the slightly built middle-aged man in the ill-fitting suit against the coin box.

'Right now,' said Dalziel. 'Who the hell are you?'

Even as he spoke he recognized the man. On the night he had been assaulted by Louisa in the Lady Hamilton it was this fellow who had come into the bar, asking about the disturbance. He had placed him then as a journalist. Whatever he was, it was probably this brief encounter which had made him familiar enough to stick out when Dalziel had got out of Bonnie's car in the square. Dalziel did not believe in coincidence and when the same man had been hanging around near the police station and subsequently near the builders yard, it bore investigation.

'What the blazes are you doing?' demanded the man. 'Let me out at once, or I'll call the police.'

'I am the police,' said Dalziel. 'So you needn't call too loud. Why're you following me? Come on, quick as you can!'

'The police? So it's you. I didn't realize. My name's Spinx. Hold on.'

Spinx tried to reach into his top pocket but Dalziel never took chances and his great paw closed firmly on the man's wrist.

'What've you got there?'

'Just a card,' said Spinx, very frightened now.

Dalziel reached into the pocket, took out a business card and sighed. It was a sad business, this suspicion. But it might have been a razor.

Alfred Spinx said the card. Claims Department. Anchor Insurance.

'Come on, Alfred,' said Dalziel, stepping out of the box. 'Let's walk and talk.'

The open air seemed to make Spinx garrulous. He spoke in a strange not-quite-right accent and idiom as though he had learned English through a correspondence course with some minor public school in the thirties.

'I'm an insurance investigator,' he said. 'I used to be freelance, doing general work, you know. But the bottom's falling out of divorce now. Who needs evidence? Like a lot of dratted gypsies, break a pot and shout I divorce thee thrice, and that's it. I've thought seriously of emigrating, you know. By George, I have. To somewhere where they still have standards.'

'Flags, you mean?' said Dalziel wondering whether to take this sodding little twerp for real. 'Try Russia. They like flags there, so they tell me. But before you buy your ticket, why were you following me, Alfred?'

Spinx stopped and stared with nervous resolution at Dalziel.

'Excuse me, Mr… er…?''Dalziel. Superintendent.'

'Superintendent. I'd rather you didn't use my Christian name. I've studied a bit of criminology and I know it helps to establish a proper subordinate and familiar relationship with a suspect, but you know who I am now and I'd prefer to talk at the level of equals. We're colleagues in a sense after all, don't you know, you in the public, me in the private sector.'

The words came at a rush and Dalziel's first impulse was to laugh. But the man's attempt at dignity was not merely comic. In any case Dalziel wanted information and wanted it fast. He should be in the coffee shop now.

'I'm sorry, Mr Spinx. It is Mister? Good. But just a few questions if you'd be so kind. What precisely is the case you're working on at this moment.'

'The same as you, I imagine, Superintendent,' said Spinx. 'Mr Conrad Fielding's death.'

'Why should that interest you?'

'Any insurance company looks closely at any large claim on it, you must know that. We're probably even more suspicious than the police.' He spoke with pride.

'And there was the phone call,' prompted Dalziel.

'Yes. You'd know all about that, of course. Such things cannot be ignored, you understand.'

'Tell me about it again,' commanded Dalziel.

'Certainly. Wait a moment. Here we are. My book of words.'

He produced a plastic-covered notebook from his inside pocket, thumbed through it, his lips pattering together in time to the riffled pages, finally pursing in a reluctantly proffered kiss as he found his place.

'Here we are. It was a woman who phoned. Or so the oral evidence suggests. Hello.''

'What?' said Dalziel.

That's me,' explained Spinx. 'I've got the whole conversation. Hello! Then she said, You thinking of paying any insurance money on Conrad Fielding? Well, I wouldn't. Then I said, Hello! I was playing for time, you understand. Who's that speaking? She said, Never mind that. Just ask yourself what a man like that would be doing up a ladder in his condition. I said Hello! and she rang off.'

He shut the book and looked hopefully at Dalziel like a dog waiting to be patted. The fat man reached forward and plucked the book from his hands.

'Let's have a look,' he said opening it. 'Christ! What's this? Egyptian?'

'No,' said Spinx with pride, peering at the line of minute matchstick men which marched over the paper. 'My own shorthand code. A method I devised to preserve confidentiality, you understand.'

'It does that, right enough,' said Dalziel returning the book. 'So you told the police like a good citizen and did a bit of looking round yourself. That's what you were doing at the Lady Hamilton, was it? Keeping tabs on the family?'

'It was a last fling. I thought a little close observation might lead me to something,' admitted Spinx. 'It didn't and I'm having terrible trouble with my expenses. I only had an omelette, but the prices there are really shocking.'

'So you found nowt,' said Dalziel, impatiently glancing at his watch again. He was late. They were at the corner of the square in which the car was parked and he halted there, restraining Spinx with one brutish paw. 'The inquest said accident. So now you pay?'

'Well, we would have done,' said Spinx. 'Indeed the letter had been written and was ready for dispatch yesterday. Then I heard about you.'

'About me?' said Dalziel in surprise. He recalled

Spinx's reaction in the phone-box. So it's you he had said when Dalziel identified himself. Which must mean…

'She phoned again, yesterday afternoon.'

The book was opened once more.

'Hello /' said Spinx.

'Just the gist,' growled Dalziel. 'Forget the witty interchange.'

'She said that if we were thinking of paying the money, we ought to know that the police were still looking into the business. There was one actually staying in the house at present. That was all. So we decided to bide our time again, you understand.'

'Well bloody well,' said Dalziel. 'It was the same woman?'

'I believe so.'

'Right,' said Dalziel. 'Listen, Mr Spinx, I've got to go now but I may want to talk to you again.'

'If you ring the number on my card, they'll find me,' said Spinx. 'Before you go, Superintendent, without breaching professional ethics, can you give me any hint of how your investigations are going?'

Dalziel examined the eager face before him. He didn't like small men and he didn't like private investigation and he didn't like the assumption that he had anything in common with this pathetic shadow. On the other hand Spinx wouldn't believe the truth and there was no point in antagonizing him by the rude rejoinder which was ever ready to leap from his tongue.

'Can't say,' said Dalziel. 'You understand?'

'Yes, of course.'

'Good. Now we mustn't be seen together. Cheerio!'

He stepped smartly into the square and strode towards the baker's shop. As he approached Bonnie emerged from the doorway with Tillotson and Mavis close behind.

'Hello,' said Bonnie. 'We thought you must have got lost, though God knows how in this place!'

'No, I just went a bit farther than I thought,' said Dalziel. 'Got your shopping?'

'Yes. We're ready for off, if you don't mind missing your coffee.'

They moved towards the car.

'Look,' said Tillotson. 'There's Sphincter.'

They followed his gaze. Standing at the corner of the street from which Dalziel hoped they had not seen him emerge was Spinx who stepped back furtively when he realized they were looking at him.

'Who?'

'His name's Spinx,' said Bonnie. 'He works for the insurance company that's being so bloody about coughing up for Conrad. The children call him Sphincter. Very apt.'

'He's just doing his job,' protested Mavis.

'He shouldn't have chosen such a nauseating job,' said Bonnie calmly. 'Strange, isn't it, Mr Dalziel, how little bankruptcy means to those with nothing to lose?'

It was hard to tell if she were getting at Spinx or at Mavis.

The drive home was silent, but when they reached the house they found plenty to talk about. The representatives of the Gumbelow Foundation had rung and confirmed they would be coming that afternoon bringing with them a photographer, a freelance feature-writer whom Dalziel had never heard of, and a couple of men from the BBC with sound-recording equipment. For a while it was touch and go whether Hereward Fielding would include this under the interdict he had placed upon television, but recollection of an unnamed kindness offered to him by a Third Programme producer in 1952 swayed the balance.

'But I will not recite for them,' Fielding averred fiercely. 'I never have done. Have you heard Eliot? Like an old man straining on a bedpan.'

Dalziel left them to their excitements and, pausing only to pick up a meat pie and a bottle of stout from the do-it-yourself lunch offering in the kitchen, he made his way towards the Banqueting Hall. When the investigatory mood was upon him he regarded open doors as invitations and closed doors as affronts and he peered into everywhere that wasn't locked. He found nothing of interest except a couple of rooms which looked as if some large and short-sighted squirrel had decided to use them as store houses. They were piled high with junk, old furniture, planks, tree branches even, and festooned with moth-eaten curtains and old clothes which would have been rejected by even the most desperate jumble sale.

The Banqueting Hall promised even less in the way of stimulation. He peered down at the patch of floor on which his memory of Cross's photograph told him Conrad Fielding had lain with an electric drill burrowing through his rib cage. A bit of gristly pork had got stuck in his teeth and he picked it out with a fingernail and burped. The floor had obviously been well scrubbed. Who by? he wondered as he placed his bottle and the remnants of the pie carefully on a wooden trestle and dragged a ladder from the shadows under the gallery. He was a careful man and after he had placed it against the wall, he wedged the trestle against the bottom rungs for extra stability before beginning his ascent. By the time he reached the level of the gallery he was wishing he hadn't bothered. The rungs felt far from secure under his bulk and the floor seemed a long way away. He reached across to the balustrade running across the gallery and felt somewhat reassured by the extra support.

The unfaced stone wall gave little away. There were a variety of scratch marks on it, some of which might have been made by a ladder scraping along the stone as it tumbled to one side.

About fifteen feet up the wall, the stone ended and was replaced by a band of white roughcast about three feet thick which reached the angle of the roof. There were signs of drilling here and Dalziel wondered if Conrad Fielding had intended to fit another beam in here, though it would have spoilt the symmetry of those already erected.

He climbed a little higher and craned his head sideways in an attempt to see how the next beam along was fixed. It was nearly three feet away and he had to lean out at a dangerous angle to get a decent view. The position suddenly made him feel very giddy, so much so that as he leaned forward and clung closely to the ladder it seemed as if it moved quite violently from side to side. He held on tight for a moment, then began to descend. Half-way down he felt able to look to the ground and he stopped abruptly when he saw a figure below, grasping the ladder and peering up at him. It was Papworth.

Quickly now Dalziel almost slid down the remaining few feet.

'You want to be careful,' observed Papworth. 'I thought you were going over just now.'

Dalziel did not reply at once but retrieved his beer bottle and emptied what remained in a single draught.

'Lucky you were here,' he said.

Papworth shrugged, an ambiguous gesture.

'I heard you,' he said. 'What were you doing?'

It was a blunt question, bluntly put, but justifiable from an employee of the house to a comparative stranger, thought Dalziel charitably.

'Morbid curiosity,' he answered. 'I just wanted to see where it happened. Was he much good at do-it-yourself?'

'Fielding?' said Papworth. 'I suppose so.'

'He didn't ask you to give him a hand in here then?'

'No,' said Papworth turning away. 'I'm not paid to work at this.'

He began to walk towards the door.

'Just what are you paid to work at, Mr Papworth?' said Dalziel to his back.

'Maintenance,' said the man, pausing and glancing over his shoulder. 'House and garden. Not this.'

'I see,' said Dalziel. 'And Mrs Greave? She's in charge of cooking and cleaning. That right?'

'Right,' said Papworth.

'So neither of you would have much occasion to come in here,' continued Dalziel. 'Strange, I've found you in here twice.'

'Wrong,' said Papworth, turning. 'I've found you in here twice. I don't know what right you think you've got questioning me, mister. You stick to the family. Do what you want there. You can get your leg across each of 'em in turn, and see if it bothers me. But don't try leaning on me.'

'Sorry,' said Dalziel with a smile. 'Like I said, just morbid curiosity.'

Papworth set off for the door once more but a man more acquainted with the sunshine of Dalziel's smile would have known matters were not at an end.

'What about Mrs Greave?' mused Dalziel.

'What about her?' demanded Papworth, halting.

'You still here? I'm sorry. I was just wondering if it was all right to get my leg across Mrs Greave. Or is she taken?'

'What do you mean?' said Papworth, his brown leathery face set in a mask of suspicion.

'I mean, what about you and Mrs Greave? Have you got full-time rights there?'

'She's my daughter,' said Papworth in a low voice. Dalziel laughed.

'And I'm your long lost sister Annie,' he mocked. 'Come on, Papworth. There's nothing to be ashamed of. We all need it now and then! It won't stay in the mind for ever.'

'With a gut like yours, it's got to be in the mind,' snapped Papworth. He looked for a moment as if he were going to say a great deal more, but his control was good and he left without another word.

Dalziel watched him go, then resumed his inspection of the hall and his ingestion of the meat pie. Afterwards he collected his raincoat without meeting any of the others and set off at a gentle walk along the road which led to the village. The pub was still open when he got there and it seemed silly to miss the chance. The landlord proved to be an amiable and forthcoming drinking companion, ready to talk knowledgeably and scandalously about everything in the neighbourhood. Fortified with drink and information, Dalziel next retired to the telephone-box outside the little post office. He spent an interesting half-hour in there too.

As he strode vigorously back towards Lake House he was passed by a total of three cars, each containing two men. None offered him a lift though one did slow down. Thirty minutes later, when with somewhat diminished vigour he finally splashed through the water by the gate and climbed up the drive, he saw the trio parked outside the house.

The Gumbelow deputation had arrived.