An April Shroud

10

The house was full of noise, most of it emanating from Herewaid Fielding's sitting-room. Dalziel met Bonnie in the hall. She looked exasperated but her face lit up when she saw him. He did not know what he had done to cause this reaction but felt himself basking in the glow.

'There you are!' she said.

'I went for a walk,' he explained.

'We'll have to do something about that surplus energy,' she said. 'These people have arrived; you know, the award people. But Herrie's throwing another tantrum. I used to think Conrad was the world champion, but he was minor country stuff compared with this. Do you think you could speak to him?'

'Me?' said Dalziel. 'You must be joking! I'm not even good with animals. Besides I don't know what the old bugg – fellow is talking about half the time.'

'That's part of your charm,' said Bonnie. 'He mentioned you at lunch today, said it was nice to have someone safe and ordinary about the place for a change. I know it's a liberty, but if you could just let him know you think it's daft to turn down good money, he might take some notice.'

Dalziel let himself be led into the sitting-room, the whiles considering safe and ordinary. They were not adjectives many of his acquaintance would have applied to him, he thought. But safe in particular was an interesting choice for the old man to make. The room seemed crowded with people, all gathered round the bay window in which, looking both defiant and trepid, stood Fielding. Dalziel's expert eye categorized the onlookers in a trice. The family and the other residents were there, of course. In addition there were two men in athletic middle age and well cut grey suits, wearing such similarly cast serious expressions that differences of feature were eliminated and they might have been brothers. They also might have been gang leaders, astronauts, presidential aides or Mormon PR men, but they were unmistakably American. Alongside them preserving the symmetry of the tableau were two equally unmistakably Englishmen (it's something about the eyes, decided Dalziel) who had had the misfortune to turn up, presumably without premeditation, in identical off-white corduroy suits. They looked as if they were part of an advertising campaign for spaghetti, thought Dalziel. One was balding rapidly but wore his hair so long at the back that it seemed as if the weight of it had merely pulled his forehead up over his crown. Associated with him was a pop-eyed girl, festooned with the impedimenta of photography and wearing a light green tunic which matched her chosen make-up. The other spaghetti man was presumably the radio interviewer for no one else could so impassively have ignored the comments and questions of a small negro with hornrimmed spectacles who was fiddling apparently haphazardly with a large tape-recorder.

'Let's all have a drink, shall we?' said Bonnie in her best no-nonsense voice. No one, Dalziel noticed with approval, attempted to breach Herrie's well fortified drink cupboard, but Tillotson disappeared and returned almost immediately with a laden tray, which must have been prepared for just such an emergency. Pausing only to seize two large glasses of scotch, Dalziel joined the old man.

'You drinking?' he asked, glancing at the almost empty brandy balloon which stood on the window sill. 'Well, sup up and try this.'

'You're still here,' stated Fielding with a scornful surprise. But he took the drink.

'Aye,' said Dalziel. 'I only start enjoying parties when I've outstayed my welcome.'

'I'm sorry. I had no right to be rude,' said Fielding, suddenly contrite.

'Don't apologize for Christ's sake,' said Dalziel. 'Once you start that game, you never can stop. I've no right to tell you to take this sodding money, but I'm going to. Why don't you want it?'

'It's not the money, it's the principle of the thing,' protested Fielding, raising his voice so that the others could hear him. 'All these people can talk about is Westminster Bridge which I published in 1938. They seem to imagine I've written nothing since then.'

'Keep your voice down,' said Dalziel grimly. 'All you want to worry about writing now is cheques. Don't give me this point of principle crap. What's the matter with the money?'

Hereward Fielding glared at him with an air of indignation approaching the apoplectic. Dalziel began to feel that his excursion into diplomacy was going to be as unsuccessful as it had been uncharacteristic. But now the old man's face paled to a less hectic hue and he said in a low conversational tone, 'Money's not everything.'

Dalziel sensed that this banal assertion was not a mere continuation of the hurt pride debate.

'A thousand quid's two hundred bottles of good brandy,' he said reasonably. 'That's a lot of drinking.'

'Which needs a lot of time,' mused Fielding. 'It's your considered opinion, is it, Dalziel, that I would have this time?'

It was an odd question, but Dalziel took it in his stride.

'I can't guarantee it,' he said. 'But it's worth a try.'

'Mr Fielding, sir,' murmured a low, flat, American voice.

One of the Americans had approached with an expression of deferential determination, like an undertaker who is not going to let you buy pine.

'Sir,' he said, 'let me assure you that the Gumbelow Foundation is aware of and wishes to honour the totality of your achievement. My colleague, Mr Flower, mentioned Westminster Bridge merely as a volume of radical interest to the student of your mature work. Volumes such as Victory Again, Indian Summer and A Kiss on the Other Cheek are, of course, equally well known to us and equally admired also. It would be a grave disappointment…'

'Oh come on,' snapped Fielding impatiently. 'Let's get on with it.'

Long-winded the American may have been, but he could move at great speed when the circumstances demanded. Fielding was led to an armchair by a low table on which copies of what Dalziel presumed to be his books were strewn. There were five or six, about the size and thickness of police promotion manuals. The photographer, who answered to Nikki (the spelling formed itself unbidden in Dalziel's mind), took a stream of pictures not seeming to care much who she got in the frame. Her camera appeared to require as little reloading as one of those guns the good cowboys used to have in the pre-psychological westerns. The tape-recorder was switched on and the Negro placed a microphone on the table and invited Fielding to say a few words.

'Must we have this sodding thing cluttering up the place?' he demanded. He referred to the microphone, but each of the visitors looked perturbed for a moment.

'We'd like to get the moment permanently recorded for posterity,' said the second spaghetti man.

'Who are you?'

'I'm Alex Penitent, BBC. I shall be interviewing you after the presentation.'

'Shall you? We'll see.'

'Gentlemen, gentlemen, may we commence?' said the American. 'Mr Flower.'

'Thank you, Mr Bergmann.'

Flower sat on a hard chair opposite Fielding while Bergmann stood alongside his colleague and put one hand inside his jacket. They looked as if they were about to make the old man an offer he couldn't refuse.

'Gentlemen, gentlemen,' said Bergmann. 'Right, Mr Flower.'

Flower began to speak in the deep vibrant tones of the travelogue commentator.

'For fifty years and more the Gumbelow Foundation of America has been seeking out and acknowledging rare examples of merit in the Arts. The Gumbelow Foundation does not make annual awards, for so high is the standard set that in some years no work attains this standard. Past recipients of awards have included…'

Here followed a list which might have been an extract from a telephone directory to Dalziel except that it contained the name of a British artist whose talents had burgeoned during a gaol sentence for armed robbery. Dalziel did not know him through his paintings but through the more personal contact of having kneed him in the crutch when he resisted arrest. As far as he could make out, the Gumbelow Foundation had not given any money to a policeman.

Flower proceeded with his potted history of the Foundation and after a while Dalziel was pleased to note most of the others were beginning to look as impatient as he felt. Someone squeezed his arm. It was Bonnie who smiled at him and mouthed 'Thanks.'

Fielding brought matters to a head by turning away from the table and waving his empty glass at Tillotson who nodded understandingly, came forward with a bottle and tripped over the microphone wire.

When the confusion had been sorted out, Flower looked enquiringly at the tape-recorder man and said, 'Shall I start again?'

'Oh no, oh no,' cried the Negro. 'We can tidy it up. Oh yes.'

Flower seemed to sense the mood of the gathering for the first time and when he resumed his speech, his voice rose half an octave and accelerated by about fifty words a minute.

'In conclusion,' he concluded, 'may I say that few occasions have given me personally greater pleasure than this meeting with you, Hereward Fielding. On behalf of the Gumbelow Foundation of America, I ask you to accept this award for services to literature. It comes with the admiration, awe and sincere respect of lovers of beauty the whole world over.'

He held up his left hand. Bergmann withdrew his right from inside his jacket and slapped a large white envelope into Flower's palm. The envelope was then thrust aggressively towards Fielding and Nikki's camera began clicking like a Geiger-counter in a uranium mine.

'Keep it there, keep it there, good, good, super, super,' she said. Flower held the pose, smiling fixedly at Fielding who, it gradually began to dawn on the spectators, was staring at the outstretched hand as if it were holding a dead rat. Even Nikki eventually became aware that all was not quite right and the clickings became intermittent, finally dying away into a silence which for a moment was complete.

'Oh Herrie!' breathed Bonnie.

The old man spoke. His voice was light, meditative.

'It is interesting to me that you only make your awards in those years which see the production of work of rare merit, particularly as I have published nothing for more than five years now. Still, better late than never, they say. Though I am not sure I agree with that either. I have been writing for over fifty years now and half a century is very late indeed. I am, of course – I have to be I suppose – grateful for your offer. But fifty years…!'

He shook his head and sighed.

'If you'd given me this when I was twenty, I might have bought myself a big meal, a floppy hat like Roy Campbell's and one of those delicious little tarts who used to hang around the Cafe Royal.

'If you'd given it to me when I was thirty, I might have bought my kids some new clothes and my wife a sunnier disposition.

'Even if you had given it to me when I was forty or fifty. I'd have found a use for it. A more comfortable car, for instance. Or a cruise round the Greek islands to see the cradle of civilization.

'But now I am old and I am ill. I have little appetite for food or women. My children have grown up and gone their ways. Or died. I no longer care to travel by car. And civilization is dying where it began.

'So you might say that in a fashion not untypically American you have come too bloody late.'

He paused. No one spoke. The envelope remained in Flower's outstretched hand. The American's expression never deviated from respectful admiration, and the expressions of the others varied from amusement via distaste and indifference to Bonnie's evident anxiety.

'Bravo.'

It was Bertie who broke the silence, uttering the word with overstressed irony.

'Shut it, Bertie,' said Mavis warningly.

Bergmann shrugged, a massive Central European bewildered shrug which crumbled his streamlined New York facade as an earth tremor might destroy a sky-scraper. Flower seemed to take a cue and relaxed in his chair dropping his hand to the table. The old man's arm shot out as the envelope moved and he pulled it rudely from Flower's grasp.

'However,' he said, very Churchillian, 'I will not refuse your gift, late though it is. For I recall that I never did get a hat like Roy Campbell's. But now I shall. And I shall wear it slightly askew as I walk through the village in the hope that the tedious inmates will shun me as a man unbalanced and in the even vainer hope that this reputation might somehow distress my neglectful friends and ungrateful descendants. Bonnie, my glass is empty.'

After that somehow a party began. The BBC man tried for a while to get his intimate interview but in the end recognized that his efforts were losing him ground in the drinks race and set about catching up. The feature writer, aptly named Butt, was well in the lead, though Bergmann would have been neck and neck if his new flamboyancy of gesture had not been joined by a matching volubility of speech. Flower on the other hand was a recidivist and his speech got lower and slower and more and more slurred till he sounded like a second-rate English mimic doing James Stewart. Nikki had stopped clicking and was gurgling merrily through glass after nauseating glass of port and brandy. Even Arkwright, the tape-recorder man, found time from his task of preventing others resting their glasses and persons on his equipment to down mouthfuls from a half-pint glass of gin.

Nor were the residents of Lake House far behind and Dalziel, ever a pragmatist, put all care for the past or the future out of his mind and set to with a will.

After a while for a relatively small gathering the noise became deafening. He found himself next to Fielding who was still holding the envelope tight to his chest as though fearing it would be taken from him. His words to Dalziel seemed to confirm this impression.

'It will be all right, you assure me of that?' he cried in what was relatively a whisper.

Dalziel nodded wisely, winked and turned away in search of Bonnie. Behind him the conversation between Fielding and the Americans resumed.

'I don't care for Updike. Overwrought, overblown and overpraised,' cried Bergmann.

'Yeah,' drawled Flower. 'Updike's a shit.'

Bonnie was in the window bay being leaned over confidentially by Butt who seemed to fancy himself as the great poke as well as the great soak, but Dalziel's rescue mission was hindered by Penitent who grasped him by the arm, peered closely into his face and said something like, 'What are you doing after the show?'

'What?' bellowed Dalziel.

'Haven't we met somewhere before?'

His voice had the controlled flatness with which ambitious public school men in the BBC attempted to conceal their origins.

'I doubt it,' said Dalziel.

Someone grasped his other arm and he felt a surge of panic as if at any moment blows might be hurled at his unprotected gut.

It was Bertie. There was no physical danger but he was bent on being nasty.

'Enjoying yourself, Dalziel?' he asked. 'Enjoying your free booze, are you? And your bed and breakfast? Pity you'll have to be leaving us.'

'What's up, sonny?' snarled Dalziel. 'You putting me out?'

'No, no. It's just that once your car's ready, you'll be on your way, won't you? Well, I rang the garage after lunch and they say they've got it and it'll be ready for you in the morning. At a pinch, you could go tonight. Not that we want to lose you, of course.'

'Mensa!' said Penitent.

'What?'

'That's where we met, I think. Mensa.'

Ensa, thought Dalziel. He thinks I'm a sort of performer. Which I am.

'Not likely,' he bellowed. 'Nearest I got was seeing Tommy Handley at Catterick when I was in the MPs.'

'I'll say cheerio now in case we miss each other in the morning,' said Bertie. Dalziel shook his arm free and succeeded in slopping some of his drink over the youth's shirt which was some consolation for not being able to punch his fat, smiling mouth.

'MPs,' said Penitent, puzzled. 'Did Handley have something in the Eden administration?'

Dalziel smiled at him uncomprehendingly.

'You work at it, lad,' he said in a sympathetic voice. 'You can end up having as many "O" levels as Jimmy Young.'

'Charley!' He heard Bonnie's voice cut clearly through the din. 'We need some more booze. Pop along to the store and bring up a couple of bottles of everything, there's a love. Oh, and while you're down there, tell Mrs Greave I'd like a word. I suppose everyone will want to be fed eventually.'

She seemed quite unperturbed by the prospect. Dalziel recalled that his own wife had required five days' notice if he was bringing a mate round for a glass of beer.

There was a click in his ear and he thought that Nikki must have started up again but when he looked it was Uniff.

'One not enough?' he asked, nodding towards the green tunic which he now spotted alongside Louisa by the door.

'Her?' said Uniff scornfully. 'She's one of the creative accident mob. You shoot enough film, something's bound to be OK.'

'While you use your genius?'

'Right,' grinned Uniff. 'Besides I'm not so rich. Like big John Wayne says, you gotta make every shot count.'

'How's your picture going?' asked Dalziel.

'Up and down, you know how it is, man. You want to see it sometime?'

'If you want to show it,' said Dalziel.

'Why not? Hell, there's got to come a time for every artist when he exposes himself to the average bum in the street.'

'You try exposing yourself to me,' said Dalziel, 'you'll make a pretty picture yourself.'

Uniff laughed heartily.

'I like you, Andy baby,' he said. 'Christ, man, how do you stick it in here with this load of phoneys?'

His gesture seemed pretty well all-inclusive.

'Are they phoneys?' asked Dalziel.

'Can't you tell?'

'I don't know what the real thing looks like, so it's a bit hard,' said Dalziel.

Nor could he see any reason why anyone should want to pretend to be what he saw around him. In particular, you'd have to be bloody revolting to make it worthwhile pretending to be a conceited, blubber-lipped, purple- cheeked, perfumed ponce in a corrugated suit.

'Andrew,' said Bonnie. 'Have you met Eric Butt?'

His pleasure at hearing her use his Christian name almost overcame his distaste for Butt. The journalist smiled briefly at him and returned his attention to Bonnie.

'Next time you're in town,' he said, 'give me a ring. We can lunch together. Fellow I know has just taken over a little French place in Hampstead. Not for the hoi polloi, you know, but you'd love it.'

'How sweet,' said Bonnie. 'I was thinking of taking all the children up next week. Perhaps we could meet there. Would Tuesday suit you?'

Butt emptied his glass and came up smiling.

'Sorry,' he said. 'Better to ring. I'm off to Brazil tomorrow and I'll be there over a week. It's a great thing, did you read about it? There was a bit in the Observer supplement last week. I'm doing a piece on the Brazilian football team and they've agreed for me to stay and train with them. It's a bit unique, actually. The Brazilian Ambassador fixed it, likes my stuff, felt I would do a good job. I wouldn't miss it for worlds. Ever been to Brazil, darling?'

'No,' said Bonnie. 'Andrew though has been around a lot, perhaps he could give you a few traveller's tips.'

She turned away to greet Tillotson who had returned with an armful of bottles.

Dalziel moved close to Butt and sniffed.

'The trouble with corduroy,' he said, 'is that it doesn't half smell if you piss on it.'

'Oh damn the woman,' said Bonnie crossly. 'It's not her night off. I'd better go and look in the larder myself. Andrew, see that everyone's got plenty to drink, will you?'

'What's up?' asked Dalziel.

'I couldn't find Mrs Greave anywhere,' said Tillotson. 'Her door was locked.'

'Did you look in Pappy's room?'

'No. Why should I?' said Tillotson.

Dalziel smiled and plucked a couple of spirit bottles out of the box. The smile died on his face and was replaced by an exasperated grimace. One of the bottles was quite empty. Was there nothing Charley could do without making a balls-up? He checked through the box and found three other empties. That still left eight which was plenty to be going on with, even for this lot.

He looked around the room. Arkwright was asleep on his tape-recorder. Nikki was trying to take a self-portrait with her camera, at the same time as, unawares, she was being photographed by Uniff. Bertie and Mavis were in close confabulation in a corner. They looked at him as he stared towards them, then hastily looked away. Penitent was talking to Louisa, probably offering to make her a star on The Archers. And the trio of Hereward and the two Americans still held the centre of the stage. Bergmann was gabbling away at a pace just short of incomprehensibility while Flower nodded his head sagely and drawled, 'Melville's a shit. Mailer's a shit. Hawthorne's a shit. Longfellow… well, Longfellow… well, Longfellow's a shit also.'

Seizing one of the full bottles of scotch, Dalziel went to help Bonnie.

He found her in the kitchen looking in disgust at a table covered with sausages.

'That's all there is,' she said. 'I thought we ate enough sausages last night to deplete local stocks for fifty miles around.'

'Perhaps she got them in a sale,' said Dalziel. 'Have a drink.'

He poured a tumblerful which she sipped like cold tea.

'What shall I do?' she asked.

It was a comfort to be consulted. A woman could be too competent.

'Stick 'em between two slices of bread and call 'em frankfurters,' said Dalziel. 'These Americans eat nothing else.'

'Fine,' said Bonnie. 'What about cooking them? It'll take hours.'

'Not,' said Dalziel, 'if you use one of those nice new ovens you've got out back.'

'You're a genius,' said Bonnie seriously. 'And we might even unearth Mrs Greave while we're out there.'

They had another large scotch apiece to celebrate the decision. Then the sausages were swept off the table into a large round basket and they set off for the Banqueting Hall kitchens like Red Riding Hood and the Wolf. The image put Dalziel in mind of Butt.

'That fellow Butt,' he said. 'You handled him nicely.'

'Thank you kindly,' she said. 'Though I reckon I lacked your finesse.'

'What? Oh you heard that,' said Dalziel sheepishly. She laughed.

'You don't exactly whisper, Andy. May I call you Andy? No, I've met your Butts before. Always off to Brazil, meeting exciting people, but usually ready to fit you in for a quick roll between jets.'

'I hope he gets a football up his… nose,' said Dalziel.

'Poor man! How's he harmed you?' she asked, then added thoughtfully, 'But if he really trains with them, it could be chancy. He looked a bit hearty to me.'

Dalziel mused upon this as they reached the kitchens where the ovens proved a complete failure. Dalziel seated on an old wooden chair watched with amusement as Bonnie, festooned with sausages, moved around trying to get them to work.

'Useless things!' she exploded.

'Is the power switched through?' asked Dalziel.

'Yes. I think so. At least, Bertie said it was. The dishwasher certainly works.'

'Shall I take a look?' asked Dalziel, heaving himself upright.

'No. Never bother. I'll tell Bertie. He's the only one who understands these things. God, I'm whacked!'

She slumped into the chair vacated by Dalziel who turned from his examination of the first oven with a comment on his lips which died when he saw her. Her head was bowed forward and her arms rested slackly over her knees as though they had been carelessly deposited there for collection later. One leg was crooked under the chair, the other stretched straight out. The whole composition was ugly, awkward, a study in defeat. When Dalziel approached and she looked up, the pores of her face seemed to have opened; the fine Edwardian strength he had admired before was eroded by an admission of age and weariness into a puffy substanceless outline. She was, Dalziel realized, more his contemporary than he had imagined.

And at the same time he realized she was letting him see her like this out of choice. There was strength enough there still to have taken her back to the party and set wildly coursing whatever passes for blood beneath a corduroy suit.

'I don't think these sausages are going to get cooked,' he said.

'No, I don't think they are,' she said.

It had been the beginning of an explanation but he let it rest as the oblique comment she obviously took it for.

'Why don't you lie down?' he said.

'I should like that,' she answered. 'Will you lie down with me?'

'Aye, will I,' he said.

They lay together fully dressed for nearly an hour while Bonnie dozed and Dalziel counted the chrysanthemums on her William Morris wallpaper, wondering if this was going to be one of those queer Platonic relationships he heartily disbelieved in. Finally he gave her a bit of a shake and set about confirming his disbelief.

Bonnie was agreeable enough, her body and mind soft and yielding in a half sleep. But Dalziel was no subtle wooer with diplomas in the arts of pleasure. The only prelude to penetration he had ever bothered with in his married life was four or five pints of bitter and now the brutal directness of his approach shocked Bonnie wide awake.

'Why not take a run to get up a bit of speed?' she demanded.

'What's the matter?' asked Dalziel.

'Well, for a start, get your clothes off. All your clothes.'

Grimly he undressed at one side of the bed while Bonnie stripped at the other.

'Now let's begin at the beginning,' said Bonnie.

Five minutes later she pinched his flabby left buttock viciously and said 'For God's sake, don't be so impatient. There's two of us to consider.'

'We'll have to take turn about,' gasped Dalziel.

Bonnie shook with laughter and the movement removed any chance of restraint on Dalziel's part. When he'd done and recognized that there was no mockery in her laughter he joined in.

'I've never laughed on the job before,' he said finally.

'Why not? It's a funny business,' said Bonnie. 'What was that you said about turn about?'

Evening was well advanced when they rose and the house was quiet.

'Perhaps they've all gone,' said Dalziel.

'They're more likely to be too drunk to speak,' said Bonnie. 'Or they're in the kitchen guzzling sausages.'

Dalziel felt guilty. After the welter of confused emotion which had immersed him during the past couple of hours, it was almost a relief to isolate and recognize a simple reaction. It was a conditioned reflex rather than an emotion; policemen were bred to put the investigation of crime before their personal pleasure and he had been false to his breeding.

'I doubt they'll have cooked those sausages,' he said.

'Why's that?' she asked, tugging a comb through her thick brown hair which, unfastened, had tumbled in surprising profusion over her shoulders.

'Come downstairs and I'll show you,' he said grimly.

Puzzled Bonnie finished her tidying up and let herself be led to the kitchens once more. They met no one en route and the basket of sausages remained untouched where they had left it.

'It's a bit like the Mary Celeste said Bonnie.

'No mystery,' grunted Dalziel. 'They'll all be stoned out of their minds.'

He took a coin from his pocket and rapidly unscrewed the control panel of one of the ovens.

'Take a look in here,' he invited. 'What do you see?'

Bonnie peered in cautiously.

'Nothing much,' she admitted.

'Right,' said Dalziel. 'Now what should you see is what makes these things work. Magnetrons, they're called. Don't ask me how I know.'

'Where are they?' wondered Bonnie making her way round the kitchen inspecting every oven. 'What a stupid thing! You'd think Bertie would have checked when they installed them.'

'He probably did,' said Dalziel. 'I think you've been robbed.'

'Robbed?' She laughed. 'Don't be silly. Why should anyone steal whatever you said?'

'Some people'd steal owt for a bob or two,' said Dalziel. 'Don't mistake. Everything's sellable. But I'm feared this is just an extra.'

'Extra?'

'Aye. Where's the drink store?'

'Oh Jesus!' she cried, catching his drift now. 'There's a cellar. .. we've got all our opening stock in there. Conrad got it in just before our credit gave up the ghost completely.'

They clattered down a narrow flight of stairs which led to an open door.

'Damn Charley!' snapped the woman. 'He had strict instructions to lock up behind him.'

'Don't blame the lad,' said Dalziel. 'I doubt if it's worth locking.'

At first glance all looked well. The crates of spirits, aperitifs, wine and liqueurs were all stacked in militarily neat array. But a few moments' investigation revealed the worst. Only the nearest bottles were full. Behind the front rank, all the liquor had been decanted, and in the nether crates there were no bottles at all.

'Charley got some of the empties in his mixed dozen,' said Dalziel. 'I thought it was just another bit of daftness then.'

Bonnie who after an explosion of blasphemous obscenity had got hold of herself very well demanded, 'What made you think differently. The ovens?'

'Aye. And one other thing.'

They went back up the stairs, Dalziel leading now. He strode belligerently to Mrs Greave's room and without knocking, kicked the door open so that it rattled against the wall and went inside. When Bonnie caught up, he had opened every cupboard door and drawer in the place. They were uniformly empty.

'You mean you think that Mrs Greave…' said Bonnie incredulously. 'But why? She's Pappy's daughter.'

Dalziel laughed, a short humourless bark very different from the deep guffaws he had emitted in the intimacy of the bedroom.

'If you believe that, you'll believe anything.'

'But how do you know? How can you be sure it's her?'

'I know a slag when I see one,' said Dalziel brutally. 'When her type and your property go missing at the same time, then don't waste your time praying for guidance.'

'If you worked this out before, you haven't exactly struck while the iron was hot,' said Bonnie reprovingly.

'No. Well, something got in the way,' muttered Dalziel. 'I'm sorry.'

'Don't be,' she said, smiling. 'Well, what now? I suppose I'd better phone the police.'

Dalziel scratched the back of his neck and looked at her assessingly. The thought had already occurred to him that she might know he was a policeman. If so, she was playing it very cool for reasons which were far from clear (and, his constabulary mind whispered to him, perhaps just as far from virtuous). Those same reasons, the brutal whisper continued, may have got him into her bed. He'd been a detective too long to be surprised by what some women would do in the cause of injustice. No, it wouldn't surprise him. But what was surprising him was the realization of just how much it would hurt him.

'That'd be best,' he said. 'Though I doubt you've had your booze. It's probably been long gone.'

And someone had thought it worthwhile postponing the moment of discovery by first of all ringing the builders and telling them that Fielding was near on bankrupt, then ringing Spinx and telling him not to pay out the insurance money. And, he recalled, the anonymous caller had known there was a policeman in the house. That put it even more firmly at Mrs Greave's door. This kind of sixth sense was two-way traffic.

By the time they re-entered the main entrance hall, he'd decided that it was worth trying to remain anonymous for as long as possible.

'I'll ring the cops,' he said. 'You go and see if you can find Papworth and see what light he can throw.'

But his ruse to get a quiet word with Sergeant Cross was unsuccessful. A door opened and Bertie appeared, flushed violet with drink. Surprisingly this seemed to have made him more affable.

'Dalziel!' he said. 'Come in and have a drink. On me. You mustn't take my words to heart, mustn't sulk. You're too big for sulking. Your hulk has too much bulk for you to sulk. How's that? Herrie'd get fifty dollars for that and you know how much the old sod would give us? Bugger all. That's all. What's your poison?'

'I shouldn't bother,' said Bonnie sharply. 'There's likely to be quite a drink shortage round here shortly.'

'What do you mean?' demanded her son, swaying.

'I mean we've been robbed. Mrs Greave, it appears, has been steadily removing all our drink stock and anything else she could lay her hands on. Including the working parts of your precious ovens. And now she's taken off.'

Bertie stood amazed. His colour remained the same, perhaps deepened slightly, but affability drained visibly from his face.

'Oh, the cow, the stupid cow! I'll kill the bitch!'

He smashed the fist of his right hand into his left palm. Dalziel caught Bonnie's eye and raised his eyebrows. She did not respond but looked away.

'All right, Dalziel,' said Bertie. 'What now?'

'There's only one thing to do,' interrupted his mother firmly. 'We must ring the police.'

'We must ring the police,' echoed Bertie mockingly. ‘What’s the matter, Mother dear? Have his hidden charms enthralled you? I'll ring the police, never fear.'

He approached close enough for Dalziel to smell the gin on his breath.

'Dring dring,' he said. 'Dring dring. Is anyone there? I'd like to speak to a big, fat, ugly Detective Superintendent, please. You recognize the description? Good. Well, what happens next, please sir, Mr Dalziel?'

Dalziel looked from the youth to his mother. She made no effort to look surprised but shrugged her shoulders minutely. He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, carefully, like a man decanting a rare wine against the light of a candle.

'What happens next?' he repeated stepping forward so that Bertie had to move back quickly to avoid being knocked over. 'Well, first of all, sonny, you start talking polite to me or I might just level off your spotty ugly face so that it'd take emulsion. Then next after that, we'll start really digging into just what makes this place tick, shall we?'