An April Shroud

6

Dinner was served in the room in which they had taken their nourishing broth. The only alteration was the covering of the big kitchen table with a white cloth liberally spotted with the stains of previous meals and with one corner unravelling. Mrs Greave was present to start with, emerging from the back kitchen with a series of covered serving dishes which she deployed over the table with more panache than strategy. Dressed now in a pair of tight-fitting yellow slacks and a flowered blouse, with her red hair piled high in a precarious beehive, she looked less like a flower of the field and more like some exotically gaudy insect. Dalziel made no attempt to make contact with her, but he felt her eyes examining him from time to time as she came in and out.

'You all right now, Mrs Fielding?' she asked finally.

'Yes, thank you, Mrs Greave,' said Bonnie from the head of the table.

'Good night then.'

She left and there was a general uncovering of serving dishes as though no one had cared to delve beneath the china surface while the cook was still in the room.

'I can't believe it,' said Louisa.

'What?'

'Sausages. And some of them look only mildly burnt. First or second degree.'

'It must be because we've got a visitor.' Pleased to be thought the cause of such a treat though unable to comprehend its particular nature, Dalziel seated at Bonnie's right hand in the place of honour piled bangers and mash on to his plate.

'Mr Fielding not coming down?' he asked, glancing round the table.

'No. He's a bit under the weather, I fear. He's well over seventy you know and today's been a great strain,' said Bonnie.

'I hope he doesn't snuff it before Gumbelow's cough up,' said Louisa.

'Would it make any difference? The award has been announced,' mumbled a fast-chewing Bertie whom Dalziel had picked out as his only serious rival in the race for a second dip into the depleted sausage dish.

'Children!' reproved Bonnie. 'This is no way to talk!'

She smiled apologetically at Dalziel. She was wearing a white sleeveless blouse, semi-transparent. Her right bra strap had slipped and was visible at her shoulder. Dalziel concentrated on his plate.

'What's Gumbelow's?' he asked.

'Oh, haven't you heard?' said Tillotson, 'Herrie's got an award.'

'What for?' asked Dalziel, meaning to be polite. But they all laughed.

'That would please him!' said Uniff. 'Where've you been, man? Herrie's a great poet. At least that's what Gumbelow's have decided. Yes, sir. Sixty years, but they get there in the end!'

'It's an American thing called the Gumbelow Foundation,' explained Bonnie seeing Dalziel's puzzlement. 'They have various artistic prizes they dish out every so often. Herrie's will, of course, be for his poetry. He gets a silver plaque, I believe.'

'It should be a silver loo seat for the stuff he writes,' said Bertie viciously. 'Ouch!'

He started to rub his leg, glancing round the table as he did so. Plainly someone had kicked him beneath the table, but it was impossible to tell who. Dalziel put away two sausages and a substantial portion of mash while his rival was recovering and sent grateful vibrations out to the assailant.

'Of course there's the money too,' said Bonnie. 'Fifteen thousand.'

'Pounds?' asked Dalziel, amazed.

'Oh no. Dollars.'

But even dollars, he thought. Fifteen thousand. For poetry.

Uniff was grinning at him, openly amused.

'Are we getting to you now, Mr Dalziel? That old silvery, tinkly sound?'

'I'm a plain, poor man,' responded Dalziel. 'I know nowt about poetry, and I wouldn't recognize fifteen thousand dollars if it got into bed with me.'

'Well, you may have the chance to see it,' said Bonnie. 'These people want to have a little award ceremony. Herrie's too old to go wandering across the Atlantic so he's told them that if they want to give him anything, they have to come here. It's a marvellous bit of cheek really, but, as he says, he didn't ask them to make the award.'

'He also says he doubts he'll live long enough to enjoy the money,' said Uniff.

'What's that mean?' said Bertie, staring across the table at the bearded man.

'It means he's old, and he's sick, and what the hell is there down here you can spend fifteen grand on,' answered Uniff slowly and coldly.

There was a pause of complete silence, even Dalziel stilling his champing jaws for a moment.

'There's the restaurant,' said Louisa brightly.

Uniff roared with laughter.

'You know what your grandfather thinks of the restaurant, Lou,' said Bonnie reprovingly. 'We've been through all this before.'

'Now that'd be the place out back,' said Dalziel. 'The one that's being done up.'

'You've seen it?' said Bonnie, surprised.

'Mr Dalziel gets around quite a lot,' said Uniff with a malicious inflection Dalziel found it hard to understand.

'Your father-in-law took me in there this afternoon,' explained Dalziel. 'Looking for Papworth.'

'Ah. And what did you think?'

'It looked – ' he searched for a word which would combine admiration and reservation – 'all right.'

Uniff and the young Fieldings laughed. Dalziel glared at them. They didn't know how lucky they were that he chose to pick his words carefully. Their amusement stung him to go on.

'Me,' he said, 'I don't much care where I eat. If the food's good and there's lots of it, the surroundings don't matter.'

He dug out a spoonful of sausages from under Bertie's questing hand.

'You're missing the point, Mr Dalziel, baby,' said Uniff.

'Oh aye?' grunted Dalziel.

'The thing with this medieval banquet kick is the food doesn't matter. Serve up this – ' he held an impaled sausage – 'and call it King Henry's Banger and they'll shovel them down. What we're talking about is the cafeteria system with five-star prices. You dig?'

'I know nowt about the catering trade,' said Dalziel heavily, 'but that sounds fraudulent to me.'

'Hank's exaggerating as usual,' said Bonnie quickly. 'This is a simple business enterprise, Mr Dalziel. We've all got money in it. ‘Though whether we'll get anything out of it's a different matter,' said Louisa.

Tillotson spoke for the first time, with a reproving look at Louisa.

'I'm sure we'll all get a good return on our investment. The Hall's nearly finished and the kitchens are ready. With a bit of luck we could still open on time.'

He looked defiantly round the table.

Bertie shook his head.

'You don't listen, Charley. You were at the meeting, weren't you? Confucius he say, no pay, no play.'

'Everyone done? Right pass your plates,' said Bonnie firmly. 'Mr Dalziel, how do you feel about apple crumble and custard?'

'Keen,' said Dalziel.

'You look like a crispy edge man to me,' said Bonnie, piling a substantial portion on to his plate. 'That do you for now? Good. Now, no more shop till we've finished. Understood? Hank, how's your film coming on?'

'Fine, man, fine. I showed Herrie some clips yesterday and he made a couple of suggestions.'

'Painful, no doubt,' said Bertie.

'No, no. Pertinent. Words are his scene. You should learn to give credit, Bertie boy. Bend a little.'

'You're making a film, Mr Uniff?' said Dalziel.

'That's right. Don't be surprised. I mean, do I look like a tycoon? I mean, do any of us look like tycoons? Bertie there, perhaps. Yeah, Bertie's got some of the distinguishing marks of your lesser duck-billed tycoon. No, we've all been sweet-talked into this business in the hope and expectation of much bread, by which, verily, man might not live alone, but without which, verily, he surely can't live with anyone else.'

'We agreed, no shop,' said Bonnie warningly.

'Did we? You need to watch yourself in this house, Mr Dalziel. You can be lying in bed minding your own business and wham! you find you've made an agreement!'

He subsided behind his apple crumble and the rest of the meal passed in meteorological chitter-chatter, though Dalziel had to field a couple of invitations to reveal his own line of business. Never before could he recall himself concealing his profession – except for professional reasons. There were none that he could formulate, so why was he doing something which, when admitted by his colleagues, had always filled him with contempt?

After dinner they drank coffee whose bitterness resisted the addition of four teaspoons of sugar. The dinner dishes were then piled on a trolley to be wheeled down to the new kitchen where a huge dishwasher was the one positive benefit so far derived from the restaurant scheme.

'You know, it's stopped raining, for the moment at least,' said Bonnie, looking out of the window. 'I think I'll stroll out and post some letters. Anyone fancy a walk?'

'I'd like some fresh air,' said Tillotson, but Bonnie shook her head.

'Sorry, but I told Herrie you'd go up and read to him. There's nothing wrong with his eyesight,' she explained to Dalziel, 'but there are many things he prefers to hear read aloud. And Charley's got the best voice for it.'

'It's those upper class vowels,' said Bertie. 'Basically the old man's a simple snob.'

'Hush. So you run along, Charley, Mr Dalziel what about you?'

'It'd be a pleasure,' said Dalziel. He thought he saw an ironic smile flicker across Mavis's face, but it was hard to be sure.

'Right. Gum-boots and wet kit, I think. Your stuff should all be dry now. I'll see you outside in five minutes.'

The rain had indeed stopped, but the atmosphere was damp to the point of saturation. What light there was seemed to glint dully from the surface of the water rather than come from above. There was at first an illusory silence which after a while fragmented into a myriad soft lapping, splashing, dripping noises and the gentle night wind was like a damp breath on Dalziel's face.

They walked without speaking along what he took to be the main drive of the house. It ran downhill but only reached the level of the floods at the gateway to the road and the light from Bonnie's torch showed that the water though extensive was easily fordable here. They splashed through it, turned away from the lake, and were soon back on dry tarmac as the road began to climb.

'It's a pity the drive didn't dip lower,' said Bonnie. 'It would have been rather nice to be quite cut off.'

'Why's that?' asked Dalziel.

'I don't know. Isolation. An interlude before the outside pressures started up again. As it is, well, everything's been going on at the same time. Business troubles, legalities, funeral arrangements.'

'It can't have been easy,' said Dalziel.

'No. You've heard how my husband died, have you, Mr Dalziel?'

Dalziel's professional instinct was to say no and get it from her own lips, but he had no difficulty in subjugating it.

'Yes,' he answered. 'Terrible.'

'Yes. And it couldn't have happened at a worse time.'

'Money?' asked Dalziel.

'That's right.' For a moment she sounded like Uniff in her inflection. 'We were scraping the bottom of the barrel. Conrad – my husband – was more enthusiastic than expert in business matters. He spent ten years in the Army – REME, nothing heroic – and came out convinced his gratuity was going to be the basis of a financial empire.

Well, I always added fifty per cent on to his estimate of the cost of anything, but I think he must have started taking that into account! Anyway, we were well short and the contractor stopped work. That's why Conrad was trying the do-it-yourself thing.'

'Tragic,' said Dalziel. He felt he was doing well. Single words, the odd phrase here and there, a man could make quite a good impression if he watched his tongue. But when you hadn't cared to watch it for twenty years, it needed maximum alertness.

'Yes, it was tragic, I suppose. The inquest helped in an odd way. It made things official, gave us a bit of red tape to get tangled up with. In the end we were glad to get Conrad out of the house. Well, you saw yourself what a fetch we got up to. But I'm sorry. I must be boring you to tears. Your holiday's gone wrong enough without having other people's woes to contend with!'

'No, I'm interested,' said Dalziel. 'Well, you'll be all right now, are you? There must be some insurance.'

Everyone had insurance in Yorkshire. Even Dalziel had insurance though he did not know why as there was no sod living he particularly wanted to benefit from his death.

'Conrad wasn't a very provident man,' said Bonnie. 'The only insurance he had was the cover the finance company insisted he should take out when he got the loan to start the business moving. Naturally it would be fine to have that paid off, it's a lot of money. But the insurance company doesn't seem to be in a hurry to settle up.'

'Oh?' said Dalziel. His use of the monosyllable filled him with pride.

'Yes. I don't know what the trouble is. It's straight-forward enough, I should have thought. But they sent this man round. He asked a lot of questions. The police asked a lot of questions. Everyone asked a lot of questions. And the only question I wanted to ask was, how the hell are we going to be able to open a week on Saturday?'

You'll be bloody lucky! was the brutal answer that rose in Dalziel's mind but he held it back and said instead, 'You'll have to postpone, that's all.'

'Not quite,' said the woman. They had reached a railway bridge the arch of which curved so sharply it was almost a humpback. Bonnie stopped and leaned on the parapet staring down the line which, as far as the darkness permitted Dalziel to see, ran arrow-straight through a deep cutting. Dalziel presumed that there must have been a natural valley there, perhaps containing a stream diverted by the engineers, for even his untutored eye could tell that the stone work they leaned against predated the railway age. Bonnie spoke into the dark hollow.

'Conrad at his high moments was pretty much of an optimist. We decided on a provisional opening date when we started the scheme, just something to aim at. When I went through his desk after the accident, I discovered what I might have guessed. Nothing was provisional to Conrad. He'd been taking advance bookings for the opening night!'

'Had he? How many?'

'One hundred and twenty. Our full capacity.'

'Jesus wept!' said Dalziel. 'But you must have known he was doing it! I mean, advertising, that kind of thing?'

'Oh, that I would have noticed, but Conrad didn't work that way. No, he told all his cronies in the local pubs and down at the Conservative Club in Orburn. People approached him, I suppose. I don't mean for a couple of tickets for a quiet anniversary dinner. Oh no. This is a togetherness thing, haunch to haunch on a hard bench. These are group bookings. A dozen from the Bowls Club, twenty Young Wives looking for Fellowship, forty Rotarians, six Pigeon Fanciers, the Townswomen's Guild. That's the way it went. None of them bodies that any of the rest of us were likely to have dealings with. I think Conrad realized he'd gone too far when the contractor refused to go on with the work. Hence his eagerness to do it himself. He just didn't dare tell us about the bookings.'

'It's a bad way to start,' agreed Dalziel. 'But not disastrous. Nice apology, a bit of creeping, special circumstances and all that, money back, first refusal next time.'

She turned round, leaned backwards against the parapet, and laughed. It was a good laugh, very infectious, so that Dalziel found himself beginning to smile even though his detective's mind had hopped ahead to the cause of the laughter.

'There's no money to give back,' he said.

'You're very sharp, Mr Dalziel. Conrad had no machinery for retaining money. I used to tell him to get his suits made without pockets. What did he need them for? I kept quiet about it till today, hoping that the insurance people might cough up enough to pay off the Young Wives at least. But they're still dragging their feet. My business partners were far from pleased when I told them.'

'I heard something,' said Dalziel. 'It sounded like Bertie, mainly.'

'Yes. The others are less committed,' she said. 'Or rather, he's the only one who understands enough about finance to know just how close to bankruptcy we really are. If Conrad had let Bertie look after the business side… but you know what fathers are like with their sons.'

'No,' said Dalziel. 'You're an odd lot though.'

'What?'

'For a board of directors, I mean.'

She laughed again.

'I suppose we are. We just happened, really. Bertie started it. He did a business studies course at Liverpool, then got a job up there with a big combine, Provincial Traders. They have a lot of interests and he sampled them all, including catering. But he didn't like company politics and wanted his own business. The house is mine, or rather mine and Lou's. It belonged to her father, my first husband. The boys are just her step-brothers, you must have spotted that, of course. When he died he left it to me, but entailed so that it couldn't be sold and would become hers when I died. Well, as you've seen, it's a white elephant. We tried letting it, but for what? We couldn't get anyone to pay enough to keep us somewhere else. There's no fish worth speaking of in the lake and the big marshes to the east where there used to be some good duck-shooting were drained over ten years ago. Now we've got to stop Charley Tillotson going out and blowing up the few poor survivors!

'Anyway Bertie suggested a restaurant, one of these medieval junket places. A licence to mint your own money, he said it was. The catering was done on a production line, no skill needed. And the discomforts were part of what the customer was paying for. So, the innocents abroad, we launched ourselves into it. It was either that or board up the house and apply for a council flat somewhere.'

'What about money?' asked Dalziel.

'Money?'

'You need cash. Nowt gets done without some cash.'

'You're right there,' Bonnie said. She turned once more and peered down at the railway line. Her movement brought her within a few inches of Dalziel who contemplated a brotherly arm around her shoulders but dismissed the idea on the grounds of indecency. A fraternal gesture would make what was happening beneath his mackintosh incestuous.

'We borrowed, mainly. Lou and myself raised a small mortgage on the house. They don't like lending money to women. Conrad was more successful. He didn't have much to offer as security, but he did have the gift of the gab. Bertie had no cash, but it was his idea and he knew something about the catering trade. Also he brought along Hank Uniff and his sister from Liverpool. Hank had just had a bit of a disaster. His studio had just been gutted by a fire, so he was desperate for somewhere to work. He's making a film and was delighted at the chance of being somewhere nice and quiet while the fire-insurance money worked for him in the business. He says he despises cash, really. Well, when we go bankrupt it'll be a test of his principles! His sister, Mave's, very artistic too, terrific with clothes. She's in charge of costumes.'

'What costumes?' interrupted Dalziel.

'Your retainers, court jesters, minstrels, serving wenches. Don't ask me what serving wenches. We're all serving wenches. Lou sings a lovely "Greensleeves". I can manage anything that stays within a four-note range. Hank plays the guitar – don't they all, these days? We were planning to hire some help, of course, but all of us in the business were going to be very actively involved.'

'You haven't mentioned Tillotson,' commented Dalziel.

'You notice everything, don't you?'

He glanced at her sharply. She was grinning slyly – there was no other word for it. It did not diminish her attractiveness one jot.

'Charley; well, Charley came along with Lou one weekend and he seems to have been around more or less ever since. He had a few hundred which he poured in almost uninvited and he'll make a lovely Sir Philip Sidneyor someone to direct traffic. So, there it is. Not a bad set-up. Money to be made. But we'll probably have to sell up to pay off our debts. We'll be lucky if we break even.'

There it was, thought Dalziel. If Mavis had been right, this was the gentle flick of the fly over the trout stream. No. Wrong picture. He was no trout. Carp, perhaps. Or shark. But even sharks could flounder in unfamiliar waters.

'What kind of money were you looking to make, Mrs Fielding?' he asked.

'I can't really say. Finance isn't my line. I wouldn't know which way up to hold the Financial Times. But the gross income's easy enough to work out. Five pounds a head; well that includes VAT, so we get four-fifty. Five hundred and forty from a full night. Bertie says other places like this in the north get six full nights a week and booked up for months ahead. So, six times five-forty.'

'Three thousand two hundred and forty a week,' Dalziel said, unimpressed. Income was nowt without expenditure. He didn't read Dickens but he'd heard of Mr Micawber.

'What do they get for a fiver?' he asked.

'Soup,' she said. 'Half a chicken. Spare rib. Cold pudding. Rye bread. Salad. Half a litre of red wine. Coffee. And a night's entertainment.'

'Uniff on guitar. Tillotson tripping over his codpiece,' he said. He didn't mean to be sarcastic nor did she take offence.

'You can pay more and get less,' she answered. 'Try to walk out of the Lady Hamilton's restaurant with a full belly and change from a fiver. And that's without any drink or floor show. We've got a bar too, of course.'

'Have you?' he said. That could double the profits. People come in groups, in a minibus, taxi, coach; someone else driving; one night when you could afford to let go without risking bother from the sodding police.

'Sounds a good proposition,' he said.

'It was,' she answered. 'Conrad will be sorry to have missed it, wherever he is.'

Dalziel glanced at her again. She was staring out into the night with a faintly puzzled look on her face.

'Or perhaps not,' she went on. 'You know, this is one of the straightest bits of track in the country. Look.'

She pointed. Dalziel stared into the blackness for a few seconds before spotting the light.

'Train,' she said. 'One of our rare expresses. Conrad and I often used to stop on this bridge if we'd been up to the village. Just about this time it must have been, because we'd watch this train coming nearer.'

The light was growing and now the sound of the wheels on the track was quite audible.

'It must touch a hundred or whatever it is that trains can travel at,' Bonnie continued. 'Conrad would stand here and watch it getting nearer. As if he couldn't take his eyes off it. And you know what he once said to me, one hard, frosty midwinter's night? "Bonnie," he said, "Bonnie, you realize it's just a step into summer".'

The diesel seemed to cover the last few hundred yards in a single leap, the horn blasted its three-note clarion call over the quiet countryside, and the upward blast of air as the train punched through the bridge made Dalziel take an involuntary pace backwards. Bonnie did not move.

'Some fucking step,' said Dalziel.