Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 101, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 610 & 611, March 1993

Snowball by Reginald Hill

Writing under his own name and three pseudonyms, Reginald Hill combines genres with great originality and success. The Patrick Ruell novels, with equal dashes of romance, espionage, and adventure, are practically a genre unto themselves, while the Dalziel and Pascoe detective novels under his own name have a distinguishing philosophical slant. Running through almost all Reginald Hill’s work, however, is a thread of humor and a touch of bawdiness that make him a continual delight to read...

Alice had been baking jam tarts. If there was one thing Alice could do really well, it was bake. If you wanted another thing she could do really well, you were in trouble. But she was certainly a great baker.

I smelt the tarts even before I entered the kitchen after my morning walk. I always took a morning walk when I stayed at Rose Cottage, not because I liked the exercise but because it gave me a chance to get rid of Alice’s breakfast out of my Times. Normally I’m a Mirror man, but a tabloid’s no good for concealing a breakfast. Alice’s jam tarts were superb, but her fried eggs defied description. Or dissolution, as I had discovered after an unhappy half-hour trying to flush one down the loo on my first visit the previous summer. So I had had to seek other methods of disposal and now the countryside round the village of Millthwaite was littered with caches of Alice’s fried eggs.

I could, of course, merely have rejected the breakfasts, but Alice was a very touchy person. She distrusted me on principle, as she distrusted all men who showed an interest in her poor widowed niece, Sally. But if distrust ripened into dislike, I was finished. So I praised the breakfasts and ordered the Times whenever I came to Millthwaite.

I stood and looked at the tarts cooling on the kitchen table. There were two dozen of them, intended, I surmised, for the Women’s Institute Fete that afternoon. I breathed in the rich seductive smell of warm pastry and hot jam. And I was tempted.

Why a man as eager to be liked as I was should have let himself be tempted is hard to explain. All I can say is four-and-twenty looks pretty like an infinity of tarts, and also I was very hungry. After all, I’d had no breakfast.

I picked one up. It made a single delicious mouthful. I had a second in my hand when I realized I was being observed.

Standing outside the window was the monster, Lennie. His wavy jet-black hair curled down over his brow, almost hiding the cold grey eyes which I felt rather than saw staring at me accusingly. At five years old, Lennie gave every promise of becoming as morally unscrupulous as his father.

I smiled reassuringly at him and offered him a tart. He was, after all, Sally’s son and the apple of Alice’s eye and I would do well to keep in his good books. But the little monster shook his head and said, “Fete” — or it might have been “fate.” Either way, it sounded like a threat.

With a sigh, I reached into my pocket and found it was empty, an all too common discovery of late. I had never realized how much our little contracting business depended on my partner, Leonard, until he fell off the scaffolding. I had tried to keep Sally’s share up at the old level, as I didn’t want Alice to get a sniff of my inefficiency, but it left me perpetually short.

Young Lennie didn’t have the mien of a child ready to be fobbed off with promissory notes. Debating what was best, I glanced idly round the kitchen and my eyes fell on a fifty-pence piece in a saucer on the shelf behind the cellar door. I picked it up. Lennie brushed his black locks aside to get a better view, and when I lobbed it through the window he plucked it out of the air like an on-form slip fielder. Then he was gone.

Just like his father, I thought as I went upstairs. You didn’t have to spell things out for him.

I met Sally coming out of the bathroom. She liked rising late when she could, which was useful to me as it meant I could breakfast alone. Sally was almost as sensitive on Alice’s behalf as the ancient beldame herself, and I wouldn’t have cared for her to catch me at my sleight of hand with the Times. I’d never thought of Sally as a particularly “loyal” person; in fact, as far as Leonard went, my experience had pointed quite the other way. But it turned out that she was a scion of one of those old blood-is-thicker-than-water bucolic families and after Leonard’s death she hadn’t hesitated to accept Aunt Alice’s invitation to come and stay till she “got herself sorted.” I had done all I could to help Sally bear her tragic loss and would have done a great deal more, but her sojourn at Millthwaite had somehow reawoken a whole ocean of sleeping Krakens, notably a sense of family and (worse still) a sense of propriety.

No, she hadn’t gone off me, she explained, as I tried to arrange a tryst in her bedroom on my first visit, but it wasn’t right, not here, in Aunt Alice’s house. And when I suggested what Aunt Alice might care to do, our relationship almost came to a close there and then. Left to herself, I had no doubt that in the end she would marry me. But Leonard’s death hadn’t left her to herself. It had left her to Lennie and to Alice and I wasn’t about to get my share without their express approval.

There was, besides, a more comfortably mercenary motive. Alice’s small fortune (“in the funds,” would you believe?) was going to come Lennie’s way, via his mother — but not if she rushed into a foolish second marriage. And even after three visits to Millthwaite, my suitability was still very much under scrutiny — and (though it hurt to admit it) not only by Alice!

Sally looked very fetching in her nightie and I couldn’t resist giving her a passionate embrace, which she permitted only because we could hear Alice in the hall below trying to make contact with the idiot girl who looked after the village’s tiny telephone exchange. My own recognition of the need for caution couldn’t survive such close contact with that soft flesh and I was trying to maneuver Sally back into the bathroom when Alice’s voice rose sufficiently to penetrate even the drumbeat of hot blood in my ears.

“Constable Jarvis!” she bellowed. “That’s who I want! No reply? What if I was being assaulted? — No, I’m not! I’ll try later!”

She slammed the phone down as I descended the stairs, having abruptly abandoned my assault on Sally much to her surprise and, I hope, disappointment.

“Anything wrong, Alice?” I asked casually.

She regarded me with distaste. She was a big-boned, grey-haired countrywoman in her late fifties and anger turned her face a greyish-purple and drew the sides of her mouth down till they almost touched her chin.

“You didn’t eat any of my tarts, did you?” she demanded.

No one in his right mind would have admitted it at that moment.

“No!” I said emphatically. “Are some missing?”

“Four,” she said.

Four! I’d only taken two! The monster, Lennie, must have returned and taken the others. How like his father, to add theft to blackmail!

Without compunction I suggested, “Perhaps Lennie helped himself?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “The milkman’s money’s gone from the shelf, too. He’d not do that.”

But you still asked me! I thought indignantly. What a world it was where children received more trust than their elders. Especially a child whose criminal inheritance stood out like a love-bite on a nun.

“No, I know who it’d be,” she continued grimly. My blood chilled. “I saw that tramp, the one they call Old Tommy, hanging around earlier. He kept going when he saw me, he knows there’s nothing for the likes of him at my house. He must have come back through the kitchen garden later. I’ll get Jarvis after him as soon as he bothers to answer his phone.”

So saying, she picked up the telephone once more.

I went through the kitchen, avoided the temptation of the depleted but still heavily loaded tray of tarts, and strolled out into the morning sunshine. It seemed like a good time for a walk. If I could have spotted young Lennie, I’d have invited him along, not because of his sparkling conversation but merely to have him out of the way when P.C. Jarvis arrived. But he was nowhere in sight, so I had to be content with making myself scarce.

Not that there was much to bother about. I’d seen this tramp, Old Tommy, pretty frequently on my egg-disposal expeditions along the country byways and he looked a natural suspect for all petty crime in the district. So I strolled along enjoying the warm sunshine, the lush green fields gilded with buttercups, and the warbling of innumerable birds. Even the distant pop of a shotgun as some unsentimental farmer tried to cut down on the warbling seemed to blend in with the overall rich sensuous pattern of Nature.

The pattern became a little threadbare round the next corner. There, sitting in the hedgerow like a pile of household rubbish dumped by a passing vandal, was Old Tommy. Some tramps are picturesque at a distance. Close or far, Tommy was revolting. Such skin as could be seen through the layers of rags and the tangles of lank gingery hair was a mottled grey, like moldy bread. He was stuffing some sort of food he held wrapped in an old newspaper into the mouth which doubtless lay beneath the beard and he didn’t even look up as I passed. I would have ignored him also if it hadn’t been for a sudden shock of recognition.

That was no ordinary food he was eating! That was one of Alice’s solid fried eggs!

Surely a man could get no lower than this? I stopped and shared the horror of his degradation.

Now he looked up and acknowledged my presence.

“I would appreciate a little more salt,” he said. “If you could manage that one morning.”

Now my shock was doubled, or even trebled. He knew who I was! No wonder I’d seen him so frequently on my post-breakfast trips. Whenever I was at Millthwaite, it must have been like room service to him!

But worse still was his voice. This was no mumbling, half-witted derelict, but an educated man. The Times wasn’t just a container — he was holding it the right way up and reading the grease-stained news.

“Watch it, mate!” I blistered. “I’ll have the law on you.”

I daresay he looked surprised beneath the hair.

“What for?” he said. “Stealing your breakfast? You shouldn’t leave it lying around in ditches, should you? Now push off, will you, I want to get on with my paper.”

So saying, he opened it wide and I observed the words “Rose Cottage” scribbled plainly on the front page. If Jarvis questioned him about the money and the tarts, not only did he have the articulacy to defend himself, he had the evidence to support a counterattack. If this got back to Alice, her fury would be formidable.

I could see that there was little profit to be gained from arguing with Old Tommy. Threats weren’t going to work and I lacked the wherewithal to bribe him. In any case, as I’d found with young Lennie, bribery only got you in deeper. So with an affection of indifference, I began to retrace my steps.

The countryside round Millthwaite is thickly wooded and it was easy to step off the road round the first bend and find a vantage point among the trees from which I could observe what Old Tommy did next. The ground sloped sharply here. Far above me I could still hear the farmer stuffing pigeons full of buckshot. Behind me, in a small field carved out among the beechwoods, a couple of dozen sheep grazed, baa-ing contentedly as they chewed the lush grass. Bees buzzed, birds chirruped, leaves rustled. And over all the sun shone hotter and hotter.

God, how I hate the bloody countryside!

My fear was that Old Tommy might succumb to the general somnolence but, after only a minute or two, I saw him rise. If I read him aright, he was very willing to argue the toss with impotent civilians, but, empty though he believed my threat of the law to be, he preferred not to run the risk of an encounter with P.C. Jarvis. Or perhaps it was my connection with Rose Cottage and the ultimate deterrent of Aunt Alice which inspired him. Whatever the case, he began to walk with unwonted briskness along the lane in a direction which would ultimately bring him to the arterial road about two miles distant, and once over that he was off Jarvis’s patch.

I watched him out of sight with a lightening heart and whistled merrily as I. strolled through the sheep in the little field and out of the gate back onto the road.

But it seemed to be the fate of my bubbles of joy that summer morning to be rapidly burst.

As I came in sight of Rose Cottage again, I saw the lean and hungry figure of Constable Jarvis leaning on the gate in deep conversation with Alice. But it wasn’t just the sight of the constable that bothered me, it was what accompanied him.

On all my previous visits, Jarvis had moved majestically around the countryside on a very old, very upright, and very slow bicycle. The young and the hale could leave him far behind, and many of the old and the halt could give him a good run for his money.

But now a profligate state had seen fit to provide him with a shiny new motor scooter! Since Leonard’s death, I had frequently come into close and unpleasant contact with the Inland Revenue, and this blatant waste of taxpayers’ money filled me with rage.

It also filled me with apprehension. If Jarvis set off in the right direction, he could easily overtake Old Tommy before the tramp was safely over the arterial. I hadn’t been seen by the pair at the gate, so I quickly retreated. It was my simple intention, if Jarvis came this way, to flag him down and engage him in conversation as long as I possibly could. But when I came in view once more of the little field nestling among the wooded hills, I saw that not all the sheep were safely grazing inside anymore. Some fool had left the gate ajar. It was probably me. I was never very hot on the country code, I’m afraid. Anyway, two or three sheep were already out on the road and the others were queuing up to follow. Guiltily I set about trying to shoo the escapees back in. Then it struck me that here was the perfect excuse for delaying Jarvis if he came. Not that a couple of sheep would cause a country policeman much trouble. Was that the distant putt-putt of a motor scooter I could hear?

Acting with sudden resolution, I opened the gate wide, went into the field, and began waving my arms and shouting. For a few seconds, the stupid animals merely regarded me indifferently. Then, as if someone had pressed a panic button, suddenly they turned as one and stampeded out of the gate and down the road.

At exactly that moment, P.C. Jarvis came sailing round the corner. They must have used more of the taxpayers’ money to give him a first-class training, for he displayed a high degree of skill, gently colliding with no more than four or five of the leading animals before his machine came to rest in the hedgerow as, shortly afterwards, he did himself.

It was no time to come forward and pretend I had been trying to restore the sheep to their field, I decided. A quiet withdrawal was best. Jarvis was on his feet. He was bleeding slightly and looked rather dazed, but in the best traditions of the great force to which he belonged, he was applying himself instantly to the immediate task, which seemed to involve viciously kicking every sheep that was foolish enough to remain within range.

It would be a long time before he was ready to resume the chase after Old Tommy. Well satisfied, I climbed out of the field into the surrounding wood and began to make my way back towards the cottage across country.

I smiled as I walked at the thought of all those sheep running wildly in all directions. They would take hours to round up. Foolish animals! Unlike the rational part of creation, their only reaction to danger was flight. Had I been a sheep and not a man, I would doubtless have been running madly towards the railway station by now (I smiled at the thought), instead of which I was going to stay on at Rose Cottage, conquer Alice’s suspicions, win Sally’s hand, and live happily ever after.

Another bubble! Townie though I am, I had a sharp enough ear for danger to catch a discordant note in the great symphony of nature. And now I paused and listened.

I was right. Something was approaching fast — some large, heavy beast galloping down the slope towards me, paying scant attention to the undergrowth or any other obstacle. A wild boar? I wondered, ready to believe anything of a landscape which could house Aunt Alice.

Then I saw a figure and heard a distant voice. It was almost incomprehensible with anger and the thick local accent, but I heard enough to catch his general drift.

“—ing bugger! My — ing sheep! — ing shoot! — ing police!”

This might have been the not totally unattractive program of some new anarchist party, but I guessed not. No, it seemed more likely this was that same pigeon-shooter I had heard earlier, probably one of the local farmers, a fearsome tribe of primitives, fit consort for the likes of Alice. And I guessed from his broken speech that the sheep were his, and from some vantage point on the hill he’d observed my apparent attempt to rustle them!

I could only hope he’d been too distant for identification. From the time he’d taken to appear on the scene, it seemed likely. Without further ado, I took to my heels, scrambling madly through the undergrowth which, innocuous a moment earlier, now seemed to coil thorny tentacles around my calves and thighs at every step.

Behind me, the voice ceased its abusive babble and a single more terrible sound filled its place — the soft explosion of a shotgun cartridge. The leaves above my head hissed as though drilled by jets of boiling rain, frightened birds rose noisily into the air, and I fell to the ground with all the speed I could muster.

“Come on out, you varmint!” roared the awful voice. (He may or may not have said “you varmint,” but this was the kind of thing these local farmers were able to say with no self-consciousness whatsoever.)

I had no intention of coming out. I knew enough about country matters to recognize that he had let loose only one barrel of his shotgun and I felt sure that the other was anxiously seeking the slightest sign of movement on my part. My best bet was to lie low. The undergrowth around me was so thick and rustly that I should be able to keep close track of his movements if he began to approach.

Why this should have seemed a comfort I don’t know! When next he moved, I certainly heard him, but he was so near that he must just as certainly hear me if I attempted to retreat. Now he’d stopped again. I pictured him standing close by, beady eyes gleaming, ears and gun cocked for my slightest movement.

I could bear it no longer. I had to get out of there!

Slowly I rose, using a Walt Disney beech tree for cover. I had a strong sense that he was directly on the other side of it, but it didn’t matter. Nothing could be worse than this terror of waiting!

Then from under my feet a rabbit started! The poor beast must have been crouching only a couple of feet away from me, petrified by an equal terror. Now it was off in a noisy panic-stricken dash through the dark brush. I leaned against the tree startled half out of my mind, and suddenly the farmer, attracted by the noise of the rabbit’s flight, jumped out from behind the beech.

He looked exactly as I’d imagined him. I held my breath. He peered after the rabbit, gun leveled. I thought I was going to die. He hadn’t seen me yet, but he was only a yard away. I felt myself choking. Any moment he must turn!

I did the only thing possible.

Raising both my arms, I leapt forward and brought my clenched fists crashing down on the base of his thick red neck.

For the next few seconds, I staggered around in complete agony, certain I must have broken my wrists. When the pain eased slightly and the tears cleared from my eyes, I discovered the unfortunate farmer was lying flat on his face in a tangle of whin and briar. I must have unknowingly struck some particularly susceptible point of the body. It was the kind of thing I had frequently viewed with blasé disbelief in the cinema. I still do. They never show you the hero nursing his sprained wrists.

To my relief, he began to make groaning noises and even essayed a movement of the arms to push himself upright. It was unsuccessful, but the next one might not be. His shotgun lay at my feet. I did not feel he was going to be a safe person, either physically or mentally, to bear arms for a few hours, so I picked it up and set off at a brisk trot.

The trees thinned out after a while and I could make almost as rapid progress as I would have done in the open. Eventually the wood became a mere meadow and this ran all the way to the hedge which marked the farthest boundary of Alice’s kitchen garden.

Flitting from tree to tree, I crossed the meadow with a mixture of speed and circumspection, my mind very much concerned with the twin necessities of getting under cover as quickly as possible and of getting into the house without being spotted. It was the monster, Lennie, I feared most of all. Discovery by Alice would be more completely devastating, I knew, but in terms of sheer probability Lennie was the real danger. Alice was a large woman, slow moving, easily spottable, while Lennie wandered hither and thither like an infant poltergeist, perceptible only by the trail of damage he left. He could be sitting behind the hedge at this very moment watching my progress with that cold curiosity of his, wondering what profit was in it for him.

I stopped and regarded the hedge uneasily, victim of my own imaginings. But my luck was holding. As I watched, I heard the noise of a car and out of the old lean-to garage at the far side of the house pulled Sally’s Mini. I caught a clear glimpse of two heads, one topped by Sally’s dear long blond hair, the other by Lennie’s raven-black tangle, before the car turned into the road and set off for Millthwaite village, which fortunately lay in the opposite direction to the angry policeman, the assaulted farmer, the educated tramp, and the rustled sheep.

This left only Alice, and a glance at my watch told me that it was more than likely she, too, would be out. About this time most mornings she took a short walk over the fields to practice good works on Widow Tyler, who was too old to resist or too imbecile to resent the dreadful condescension with which Alice’s gifts of caramel custards, nourishing broths, or homemade wine (all on a par with her fried eggs) were given.

Saying a little prayer of anticipatory thanks, I dashed across the few remaining yards of the meadow, clambered over the hedge, trod with fearful care between the rows of Alice’s vegetables (how hard do our old terrors die!), and entered the kitchen.

It was empty. The twenty tarts still lay on the table. The empty saucer still stood on the shelf by the cellar door.

I realized I was still holding my borrowed shotgun and I put it down on the table. It took only a couple of moments to assure myself that there was no one in the living room or upstairs. Now all I had to do was clean off the traces of my passage through the woods and change my clothing to make identification more difficult. But first I returned to the kitchen to retrieve the telltale shotgun. It looked quite domestic lying there on that rustic table amid a squad of jam tarts. I picked it up, turned to go, then for the second time that day temptation assailed me.

The snowball had started rolling here. Alice’s tarts, Lennie’s blackmail, the milkman’s money; the accused tramp, the escaped sheep, the crashed constable; the assaulted farmer and the stolen gun. And all for the sake of a couple of jam tarts.

Surely I deserved another?

Of course I did.

I took it and raised it to my mouth. Behind me I heard a noise. My nerves had gone beyond rapid reaction. Slowly I turned.

Standing in the cellar doorway with a bottle of elderberry wine in her hand and an expression of self-righteous triumph on her face was Alice.

“I knew it were you!” she cried. “I knew it!”

This was nonsense, of course, and mere wish-fulfillment. I opened my mouth to say as much, when I observed the triumph fading to be replaced by another less positive expression. For a second I was puzzled, till I realized that as I had turned the shotgun had turned with me and the barrel was pointed straight at Alice’s ample bosom. Flushed with effort, gashed by briars, and grim with guilt, I must have looked quite a frightening sight.

I savored the moment, knowing that I could scarcely hope twice in a lifetime to have the ascendancy over Alice.

Popping the tart in my mouth, I brought both hands to bear on the gun and curled my finger around the forward trigger. Her eyes bulged. I smiled and squeezed.

“Boom!” I said through a mouthful of pastry.

She shrieked and stepped backwards, then disappeared from view as though she’d dropped into a hole. I heard Widow Tyler’s bottle of elderberry smash to pieces on the cellar floor. And I heard no more.

After a moment, I moved slowly forward and peered down the steep flight of worn stairs.

It was a very lucky escape for Alice, I realized. If I’d squeezed the other trigger, she’d have got the loaded barrel right through her whalebone corset. As it was, I thought as I carefully closed the cellar door, her parting from this world was tragic rather than scandalous. That would have been the way she wanted it — Alice would have hated being relegated to the status of mere victim.

When Sally and Lennie returned, I was clean, immaculate, and relaxed, standing by the kitchen window eating jam tarts. Lennie looked at the tray with uncharacteristic bewilderment. There were only ten left.

Sally made no comment but put the kettle on. Her face wore that characteristic half smile which few of the world’s upsets could remove for long. She was a dear girl, able to take everything in her stride, neither asking for, nor attending to, explanations.

“I’ll make a pot of tea,” she said. “We’ll have it in the garden. Or would you prefer a bottle of Aunt Alice’s potato wine?”

I considered the option.

“No,” I said. “Tea will be fine.”

I had another jam tart. Lennie’s eyes never left me. I thought of cause and effect; small causes, large effects; single steps and journeys of a thousand miles. I had not known what I was doing when I took the tarts that morning any more than I could have foreseen the consequences that other morning (so long ago it now seemed) when I helped myself to a couple of quid from the petty-cash box. Such a fuss Leonard had made! Poor, soft, amiable, hard-working Leonard, to make such a fuss about a few pounds when for years I had been milking every penny I could out of the business! He’d been very upset. I’d told the coroner so, though I naturally did not particularize the cause. Pressure of work was mentioned. Pressure of heel as he clung to the outer scaffolding was not. The heart has its laws which the law might misunderstand.

Lennie was breathing heavily over the remaining tarts.

“Help yourself,” I said magnanimously. He considered this for a moment, the deep grey eyes under the shock of black hair inward-looking as he weighed up the situation. Then he arrived at his decision, smiled broadly, and grabbed two.

I, too, smiled, feeling almost fond of the little monster. Perhaps, I thought, preening myself slightly as I regarded my reflection in the kitchen window, perhaps he had inherited some of his father’s good qualities, too.

My reflection nodded agreement and a lock of my jet-black hair flopped down over my deep-set grey eyes. I pushed it back and thought that perhaps it was as well Leonard had not lived to see the way young Lennie developed.

“We are all children of fate,” I mused as we went out into the garden.

“Fete?” said Sally. “This afternoon’s, you mean?”

Lennie, bringing up the rear with the last of the jam tarts on a plate, said nothing.

But I felt that he understood.