An April Shroud

12

'All right, so it's accidental death!' said Cross.

'I didn't say that,' said Dalziel.

'Well, what do you say, sir?'

'You've had as good a look at the scene as I have. Those boards were rotten; there's a mark on his head where he could have banged it against the main support as he fell and there's traces of what might be blood on the edge of the support. You'll just have to wait for the p.m. and the lab reports.'

'I know all that,' said Cross. 'But it's a question of what I do now. I mean, there's all these other features…'

'Such as?'

'Well, the Greave woman for instance. And Mr Fielding's death so recently. Lots of odd things, sir. I'm asking for your advice.'

'My advice,' said Dalziel, 'is to do what you would have done if I hadn't been here. Personally, and this isn't advice, just me thinking out loud, I'd put a tarpaulin over one end of that landing-stage and a copper at the other and bugger off back to my chickens.'

Cross looked at him undecided, then the telephone rang inside the house. A moment later Bonnie appeared at the front door and said, 'Sergeant Cross, it's for you.'

Cross went inside. Dalziel lit a cigarette absently. It was about the twentieth he had lit absently in the past couple of hours. He was becoming quite adept at doing absently those things which he ought not to be doing at all.

‘It's been a hell of a day,' said Bonnie wearily.

'Yes,' he answered.

'We could stop the best bit being spoiled,' she said after a pause.

'Oh. How's that?'

'I don't know, just by not letting it, I suppose. I saw your face earlier, Andy. You seem to think that for some reason I went to bed with you because you're a policeman. I mean, just think about it! What kind of reason would that be?'

'Not much of a reason,' he agreed.

'Well then.'

'Listen, love,' he said brutally. 'You put your husband in the earth yesterday. That's it, yesterday. And you met me yesterday. And you climbed into bed with me today. Now, whether you did it to keep yourself warm or whether you did it to stop me getting warm, I don't know. But I'm old enough, and wise enough, and I'm fat enough to know you didn't do it for my bonny blue eyes and my fascinating conversation.'

He hadn't meant to get angry but by the time he finished he felt anger creeping into his speech.

He threw his unfinished cigarette to the ground and screwed his heel viciously on the red cinder. When he looked at Bonnie again, to his surprise she was regarding him with a half smile on her face.

'I don't know why I did it,' she said. 'But one thing I do know. All my men have started by being able to make me laugh.'

'Mebbe so,' said Dalziel. 'But none of 'em found much to laugh about at the finish, did they?'

The front door opened and Cross reappeared.

'Bugger it!' he said.

'Sergeant,' said Dalziel sternly in his best low church voice.

'Sorry, Mrs Fielding,' apologized Cross to Bonnie whose smile broadened. 'Well, sir. I needn't worry about those chickens any longer. They've gone. The whole bloody lot! Sorry.'

'I'll leave you to swear in peace,' said Bonnie. 'Herrie's gone to bed so if you want to use the sitting-room, you won't be assaulted.'

She went inside.

'Nice woman,' said Cross diffidently. 'Pity about all this.'

'Yes,' said Dalziel. 'Well, what's it to be?'

Cross shrugged.

‘It looks like an accident and I hope it's an accident. Either way, it'll keep till morning.' He yawned prodigiously. 'One thing, with those chickens gone, I might get some sleep this night.'

'I'll fix you up with something to give you sweet dreams,' said Dalziel, ushering Cross into the house. 'I could do with a nightcap myself.'

It wasn't true. He had drunk enough that day and there was nothing more drink could do for him. But anything which put another activity between now and bed was welcome.

It was nearly two hours before Cross managed to drag himself away. After he had gone Dalziel sat alone in the half-lit room and whistled an idiosyncratic version of Sousa's 'Washington Post' as, for the want of anything better to do, he thumbed through the books on Fielding's table. They were the old man's works.

Dalziel ignored the poetry but examined the fly-leaf and the prelims. First editions with autograph, they might be worth a few quid. He was as far from being a bibliophile as a man can get who has received the corrosive imprint of a Western European education, but it was his business to know what was worth stealing, what not. He weighed the books in his broad palm. Little enough for a life's work, he thought. Some uncharacteristic dramatic impulse made him hold out his other palm, empty.

Carefully he replaced the books. They held no attraction for him, either as objects or vehicles. Pascoe would care for them, he thought. Or Ellie. His new wife. With whom he was now cosily cocooned in some hotel bed. Inspector Peter Pascoe with a new wife by his side and all before him. Pascoe, who was as different from himself as chalk from cheese, who would go further than Dalziel's daftest dreams had even taken him, but who could also come to this, sitting alone in a darkling room full of drink and fear.

'Bugger this!' said Dalziel standing up. 'I'm going weird!'

He switched off the reading lamp which dropped a cone of light on to the table and stood for a moment to let his eyes grow accustomed to the dark. As he opened the door into the hall he heard the noise of a car on the gravel drive outside and froze. A moment later the front door clicked open and someone entered. Dalziel retreated into the sitting-room and waited. The hall light went on and through the still open door Dalziel saw Uniff, wearing a belted suede jacket and carrying a black briefcase. His beard and his manner, controlled but stealthy, added to the overall impression he gave of a Balkan anarchist, up to no good. He closed and bolted the front door, looked round as though to get his bearings, switched off the light and began a careful ascent of the stairs.

Dalziel gave him five minutes, during which time he turned his formidably experienced detective's brain to the puzzles of this household and advanced not a jot. Then he too tiptoed cautiously up the stairs. As he opened his bedroom door with equal care, he suddenly realized that there existed in his mind a hitherto unformulated expectation that Bonnie would be waiting for him. But the room was empty and he was able to smile cynically at his own ambivalence. Quickly he undressed and went into the bathroom. He did not switch on the light but looked in some perplexity at the door to Bonnie's room. Was it open or locked? Which did he want, and either way what would he do?

Nothing was the answer. He would of course do nothing. But still he wondered, and his hand was actually on the door knob when he heard the voices. They were speaking so low that even with an ear pressed hard against the woodwork, there was no chance of picking out words. But he could make out that there were two voices – a man's and a woman's.

As carefully as he had approached he retreated from the door. If he had prayed before sleeping he might have said, 'Thank you, Lord, for changing nothing.' But he didn't. He just climbed into bed and fell into the deepest, soundest sleep he had known for months.

At seven-thirty the following morning he was down at the lakeside examining the scene of Spinx's death by daylight. There had been no rain that night and the water-level had dropped another six inches. Having dispatched the constable left by Cross in search of breakfast, Dalziel peered at the gap left by the broken treads with considerable uninterest. His attitude to physical clues was rather like that of the modern Christian to miracles. They could happen, but probably not just at the moment.

Nevertheless the possibility could not be ignored and he jumped down into the duck punt to get a duck's eye look at the landing-stage.

The three broken treads trailed in the water like old fishbones. Carefully Dalziel poked at them with the blade of an antique penknife whose possession by a long-haired youth at a football match would have got him three months. The outermost two treads were soft but reasonably solid; the third was rotten almost right through. This it must have been that triggered things off. If Spinx had come down on this with his full weight, it could well have snapped, sending him plunging forward so that his head cracked against the timber uprights supporting the end of the stage and his body hit the other two treads with sufficient force to smash through them.

Unconscious from the blow, he would quickly have drowned and floated there, held between the submerged sections of the support baulks, till Dalziel found him.

That's how it could have happened, thought Dalziel, lighting a cigarette and relaxing in the gently jogging punt. If the post mortem showed death to be due to drowning and the head injury to be consistent with a crack against the upright, that would be that. Another Lake House inquest with a verdict of accidental death. And any journalistic interest thus engendered would mean merely so much free advertising for the restaurant. If it opened.

The odds against were now enormous. Dalziel was no businessman but it seemed fairly certain to him that unless they opened on time, the outcry from the disappointed (and uncompensated) customers would be so great that any remaining semblance of creditworthiness would be torn to shreds. His own discovery of the missing drink and the disembowelled ovens had probably been the scheme's death blow. Herrie's dollars might have made a difference but he was so obsessively against the venture that it would need another death to prise the money free. If it had been the old man's face that had peered up through the water the previous night, that would have been quite a different kettle of fish! Not all the rotten wood in the world would have bridged the doubts in Dalziel's mind.

Something clicked close by and he looked up to see Uniff towering above him with a smile on his face and a camera in his hand.

'What a shot!' he said. 'The great detective at work! What were you thinking of, man? A single-handed trip round the world?'

'I thought you were short of film,' said Dalziel, stepping up on to the landing-stage.

'There are some things too good to miss,' said Uniff. 'Say, that could be dangerous.'

He pointed to the broken treads and Dalziel recalled his late return the previous night. Presumably he had not yet met, anyone who had told him about Spinx.

‘It was,' said Dalziel. 'Oh shit!' He was looking at the sleeve of his jacket which was smeared with oil. He traced its source very quickly to the punt. Someone had been trying to clean up the duck gun.

'Tillotson!' he groaned. 'I'll kill him!'

‘If he tries to fire that antique, he'll kill himself,' observed Uniff. 'What were you doing down there, anyway, man?'

As they walked back to the house, Dalziel filled him in on the discovery of Spinx's body.

Uniff was incredulous.

'That little creep? I can't believe it! His kind live for ever.'

'You didn't like him?' said Dalziel.

'What? No, I didn't say that. Some of my best friends are insurance creeps. Anyway, I wasn't around last night, not after nine. So it's no use grilling me.'

His Americanisms were sometimes venerably antique and in his initial surprise at Dalziel's news, he had sounded very like his sister. But the fat detective's mind had seized upon points of other than linguistic interest.

'I'm not grilling you, Mr Uniff,' he said. 'But I'd be interested to know why you think I might be.'

'Well, hell, sudden death, the fuzz start asking questions all round. I know, we've had some, remember?'

'I remember,' said Dalziel. 'Point two, why should nine strike you as being a significant time? There's nothing yet that says Spinx didn't take his bath earlier.'

'It wasn't meant to be significant,' said Uniff. ‘It was just the time I left, that's all.'

The uniformed constable came out of the front door as they reached it. He had a half-eaten bacon sandwich in his saluting hand and treated Dalziel to a distant and fatty wave.

'Which brings us to where you went last night, Mr Uniff,' said Dalziel heavily.

Uniff laughed as he ushered Dalziel into the house ahead of him.

'Now you are grilling me,' said Uniff.

The door which led to the kitchen opened at the other end of the hallway and Mavis appeared.

'OK,' said Uniff. if that's how it's gotta be, come on up to my pad. I got the equipment there.'

He steered Dalziel up the stairs at a speed which left him short of breath by the time they reached the first landing. Looking back, he saw Mavis standing at the foot of the stairs watching their ascent with the impassive intensity of a totem mask.

The room Uniff led him to was huge. The design of the faded and torn wallpaper suggested it had once been a nursery, though no other evidence survived. There were no broken rocking-horses, no disfigured Teddy-bears, just a huge table littered with paper and film equipment, and at the farthermost end of the room surrounded by spot lamps a rostrum camera set-up.

'Here we are,' said Uniff proudly. 'What do you think, man?'

'They must have had bloody huge families in them days,' said Dalziel.

'What? Oh, yeah. It was probably those long winter nights when the magic lantern broke down.'

Uniff wandered across to the camera, turned one of the lamps so that it pointed full in his face and switched it on.

'OK, captain. But I tell you again, I don't know nothing.'

'This your film then?' asked Dalziel peering without comprehension at a huge sheet of card pinned to the wall. On it were pasted a series of drawings, about fifty in all, like a strip cartoon except that the sequence of events escaped Dalziel.

'I thought you'd never ask,' said Uniff, switching off his light. 'Yeah, that's my story board. I've got some rushes here. You want to see them?'

Like all obsessives, he could not doubt the answer but quickly drew down the black-out blinds and set the projector rolling. On the screen appeared the letter O. It turned into a man's head. A stone age club appeared and hammered down on the skull. The mouth opened and out came a strip cartoon balloon containing the letter O which in its turn became a breast. A hand caressed it. The response again was O; and in sequence every part of the human body was represented by the letter, then assaulted or stimulated in some fashion more or less appropriate, always with the same response. The animation was clever, often wittily obscene, though Dalziel doubted if in these blatant days it was actionable.

‘It's about language,' explained Uniff. 'Mave does the animations. Not bad, eh? No sound yet. That's a problem. What do you think? Do we need those O's vocalized?'

The film ran on. Eventually a stone age doctor presented his stone age patient with a bill. The mouth rounded to an O, the eyes to two more, then they all expanded and exploded into a torrent of letters.

'How'd you like that?' asked Uniff as the film ran to an end. 'Commerce is the mother of language. Not love, hate, religion, sex. But money.'

'Well,' said Dalziel. ‘It's not very long is it?'

'Hell, man, that's just the opening sequence. Next we go on to a historical survey. The letters and words are the characters, you dig? All languages, all literatures. It's very funny, Mave's done marvels. All the time there's a struggle between the different functions of language. Finally figures start coming in until at the end we get nuclear physics formulae dominating, then the whole thing goes bang and we're back to O.'

'Interesting,' said Dalziel. 'I like a good cartoon. Cheaper to make than a real film, I suppose?'

He was just fishing for some indication of where the finance for the project came from, but Uniff pulled up the blinds angrily, seized a large envelope from a shelf and spilled a dozen or more glossy half-plate prints into Dalziel's lap.

'Those more in your line, Superintendent?'

Dalziel studied them gravely. He was not one of those who found the vagina in close-up a particularly appealing sight, not even when its owner appeared to have a traffic no entry sign tattooed on the inner thigh.

'In a way,' he said. 'Professionally speaking.'

Uniff retrieved the photographs hastily and returned them to their envelope. His anger had quickly vanished.

'They're harmless,' he said. 'I was just showing them to you, not asking you to buy them.'

'No need to get legalistic, Mr Uniff,' said Dalziel. 'Though you ought to know that under the Obscene Publication Acts, publication (that is, simply showing someone your dirty pictures) is an offence, whether done for gain or not. But you're in luck. I doubt if anything you've got here is liable to deprave or corrupt me. So let's forget I ever saw them, shall we, and try to remember where you went last night.'

According to Uniff he had simply gone into Orburn for a drink and stayed on after hours as a guest of the landlord. He coyly refused to give the name of the pub on the grounds that he didn't want to risk spoiling a good drinking place. Dalziel found this quite reasonable and, in any case, he had no real authority for, or purpose in, questioning the man, so he didn't press matters.

He went downstairs again and as he reached the hallway, the door to the servants' quarters opened and Arkwright emerged. Dalziel had never seen a pale Negro before and the sight touched him.

'Morning, Mr Arkwright,' said Dalziel with the jovial sympathy of one hard-drinking man for another. 'How are you feeling?'

'Terrible,' said Arkwright. 'Listen. I'm very sorry about all this, I don't know what happened.'

'Something you ate I should think,' said Dalziel, but observing that the man seemed genuinely distressed at what had passed he put on his avuncular air and added, 'Think nowt of it. They're all silly buggers here, you wouldn't be noticed.'

A little comforted by this, Arkwright let himself be led to coffee which comforted him even more.

'Penitent left, I suppose?'

'Yes, I think so.'

'Shithead,' said Arkwright. 'I hate that bloody man. He always wants me on a job with him. I'm his liberal credential.'

'I think he'll be after a divorce this morning,' said Dalziel.

Arkwright laughed, regretted it, suddenly sat upright as though at a memory returned and said, 'You put me to bed? Whose bed was I in?'

'Why?' asked Dalziel. 'Have you spewed or something?'

'No. It's just, I remember now, some time in the night, I was woken up. Some guy was pulling at the blankets and saying, "Annie, Annie." So I sat up and said, "Sir, you are mistaken," and this guy shrieked like he was wetting his pants and ran.'

Dalziel thought about it for a moment, then as the image of Arkwright's coal black face emerging from the blankets sharpened in his mind he began to laugh. After a while with great care, Arkwright began to laugh too.

'This man,' said Dalziel finally, wiping his eyes with the khaki awning he used as a handkerchief. 'Did you recognize him? Was he one of the men you met yesterday afternoon?'

'I can't say,' said Arkwright. 'Might be. But it was dark and I was still very drunk. It must have been pretty early. He sounded urgent. I suppose I was lucky he didn't just climb in and get on with it.'

Dalziel smiled and nodded. The obvious interpretation of the intrusion would do for Arkwright, but he was by no means sure that the intruder's purpose had been sexual.

But the more interesting question was, who in this house had not heard last night of the discovered theft and Annie Greave's disappearance?