An April Shroud

by Reginald Hill

  2

  A Bridge to Nowhere

  The countryside was brimming. The rain had continued all night and he had woken several times to hear its monotonous pizzicato on the tiny metal balcony which some ironical builder had positioned outside his unopenable window. It had taken several medicinal malts to get him a couple of hours of dreamless sleep and he had been packed and ready for breakfast by eight o’clock.

  He collected his bill at reception just as the under-manager passed without speaking. Dalziel, however, was not a man for childish grudges and he addressed the other cheerfully.

  ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Two things I don’t do. I don’t pay VAT on a service-charge and I don’t pay a service-charge on VAT. You get it sorted.’

  It took a little time to get it sorted but he was still on his way shortly after nine-thirty.

  Orburn was a country town of about seven thousand souls and had been neglected by development and history alike. Nothing earth-shaking had ever happened here nor did it now seem likely that it would. Dalziel, in a conscientious rather than enthusiastic attempt to prepare himself for his touring holiday, had read in a Guide to Lincolnshire of the fine broach spire of the small Early English church in which Ellie and Pascoe had been married, but the thing itself hadn’t done much for him. The Guide had found little else to say and the only choice left to Dalziel now was one of direction. The main road (if so it could be called) through the town ran east to west. His car was pointing west so that was the direction he chose. A few miles farther on he hit the north-south trunk road and was faced with another choice. North would take him to Lincoln which he ought to visit. But it was also the direction in which home and work lay and he had the feeling that once he started north he wouldn’t stop till the anguished faces of Inspector George Headingley and his colleagues told him he was home.

  He turned south, spent ten minutes crawling in the blinding wake of a convoy of huge lorries and angrily turned off the main road and began to work his way back east along a network of narrow country lanes. It was only now that he realized how wet it really was. His morning paper had talked of serious flooding in some parts of the country but in print this made as little impact as shooting in Ulster or air disasters in the Andes. Now, however, as more and more frequently he encountered troughs of brown water wherever the road dipped, he began to realize that the weather was likely to be a key factor in his plans. Finally he stopped, partly because the next trough looked suspiciously deep, and partly because a signpost indicated a road coming in from the left; or rather, where the road ought to be. A hump-backed bridge rose over the stream which, running parallel to the road he had been following, was the source of most of the overspill. But now it was a bridge to nowhere. The land must have dropped away on the far side, the stream had completely broken its banks and the bridge descended into water.

  Dalziel got out of the car and looked at the signpost. Another mile in his direction lay High Fold while in better weather the bridge might have led him to Low Fold, two miles away, and (here he laughed humourlessly) Orburn only twelve miles away. He glanced at his watch. It had taken him more than an hour.

  He strolled to the top of the hump and gazed out over the flooded fields. The rain he realized to his surprise had stopped, though the atmosphere was still very humid. It was quite warm and there was even a dirty orange glow behind one threadbare section of the low cloud cover where presumably the sun was self-destructively trying to suck back into the air some of the moisture of the recent downpour. Curls of mist and vapour were beginning to form art nouveau designs in the more regular pattern of trees and hedgerow breaking the surface of the level waters. Patches of high ground too rose serenely from the floods. On one of these about a quarter of a mile away it was possible to make out a house to which design and distance gave the outline of a story-book castle. Someone had been lucky or wise in his choice of site. Farther than this the damp air made it impossible to see, but the floods certainly stretched as far as the visible horizon.

  There is something ineffably depressing about water where it shouldn’t be. Dalziel peered down from the bridge and it seemed as if the brown depths were full of dead things. Leaves and branches drifting on the surface were all he could see. Presumably fish and other aquatic creatures survived below. Presumably also the floods had killed as they invaded the dry land, hopefully not humans, but livestock and wild animals certainly.

  If, thought Dalziel staring down at the turgidly flowing water, if I saw a body floating by, what would I do? Ignore it and go on with my holiday?

  He shook his huge head gloomily. He had been wise enough in his life not to bother trying to plumb the depths of his own motivations and make-up, but he knew too well he’d probably risk lumbago, beri-beri and God knows what wading about in this filthy muck to pull the cadaver out, and then he’d hang about to the embarrassment and annoyance of some local jack till he was satisfied of the cause of death. Floods would be a good chance to get rid of some unwanted relative, he thought sagaciously.

  No! Sod it! This wouldn’t do at all. The holiday was the thing. Fresh air, commune with nature, bathe in beauty, pay homage to history. An English holiday, tired policemen, for the revitalization of.

  Any corpse comes floating this way, I’ll say Hello sailor, and goodbye, avowed Dalziel and as an act of both symbol and necessity he descended to the water-lapped limit of the bridge, unzipped his flies and began to pee in the flood.

  He had just finished when a noise made him look up. It was a long, creaking noise followed by a gentle splash. It came again from behind a wedge-shaped copse of beeches rising stoically from the water about fifty yards to his left. The mist seemed particularly thick here and he strained his eyes in an effort to penetrate the grey barrier. Then through the haze appeared a shape. The sound sequence was heard once more. And into full view glided a rowing-boat. Hastily Dalziel began to fasten his flies.

  The boat pulled by him, the oarsman taking long, leisurely strokes. He had the look of an old countryman, weathered and fit, anything between fifty and a hundred but able to row for ever. In the bows, like a reverse figure-head, sat another old man of more determinate age, about seventy, with a profile fit for a Roman coin. But it wasn’t either of the men who held Dalziel’s eye.

  Sitting on the thwart bench was a woman. She was clad all in black, even to a black veil over her face. Her head did not move as she passed, but Dalziel had a feeling that the eyes moved and saw him from behind the veil. So riveting was the tableau in the boat that Dalziel did not instantly take in the most macabre detail of all.

  The rowing-boat was towing something behind it, a small flat-bottomed boat.

  On it was a coffin.

  It was unmistakably a coffin. The brass handles gleamed against the dark mahogany sides and three wreaths splashed white and green along the lid. Even the oarsman’s evident expertise could not keep the tow-rope perfectly taut and this strange piece of freight proceeded jerkily, its momentum almost bringing it up to the stern of the rowing-boat at the end of each stroke, as if it were in pursuit. But the woman never turned and Dalziel stood perfectly still, his attitude compounded of astonishment and the conventional deference of one who meets a cortège in the street.

  But now a new sound came from behind the copse. Splashes again, but not the soft splashes of expertly wielded oars, and commingled with these were voices chattering and the occasional shout.

  Another craft emerged through the mist but if the first could have been created by Lord Tennyson this one owed more to Jerome K. Jerome.

  It was a large punt, the kind once used in duck-shooting with a stove-pipe gun mounted in the bows, rusty through neglect and non-use but still menacing for all that. Did they neglect the licence also? wondered Dalziel.

  There were six people in the punt, which was perilously low in the water. The gunwale had no more than an inch of clearance at best, and water slopped over the sides with each thrust of the pole by the punter whom Dalziel recognized instantly as his
companion in assault the previous evening. The breastless girl was seated in the punt alongside the fat young man, who still wore the same complacent expression. Opposite him was a boy of about sixteen, slim and pensive but with sufficient of the fat youth’s features to look as if he had just got out of him. And by the boy’s side was a young woman whose straight jet black hair and impassive, high-cheekboned face made Dalziel think of an Indian Maid (Pocahontas in the Board School history book rather than Little Red Wing in the rugby ballad, his only source-texts).

  Finally, in the bows, resting nonchalantly against the gun, was a dark, ugly-looking man probably in his twenties, though it was difficult for Dalziel to be certain as the man’s black hair seemed to be in a state of insurrection and only the high ground of his nose and the valley of his eyes were putting up any real show of resistance.

  Despite the impious exchange of views taking place between the girl and the youth with the pole, it was clear that this vessel was in convoy with the rowing-boat. The nearest any of them got to full mourning was the black turtle-neck sweater worn by the boy, but they had all made an effort. The fat youth wore a black armband around the sleeve of his tweed jacket, the hairy man had a black rosette pinned to his University of Love shirt, the Indian Maid wore a white blouse and slacks but looked as if she had been specially carved for a funeral, and the breastless girl had tied a length of black crape round her straw boater. Their only protection against the probable resumption of the rain consisted of two umbrellas and a parasol, carried at the slope by the men, except for the punter whose contribution to the solemnity of the occasion and his own dryness was a black plastic mackintosh under which he seemed to be dressed for cricket. Swimming would have been a sport more suitable, thought Dalziel, watching his efforts at propulsion. Basically, he had a not inelegant style, tossing the pole high and sliding it into the water with a casual flick of strong, supple wrists. The trouble was, deduced Dalziel, that the pole was then plunged two or three feet into sodden earth and his efforts to drag it out acted as a brake, so that the punt moved even more jerkily than the coffin.

  The Indian Maid spotted Dalziel first and drew the attention of the others to him. The fat youth said something and they all laughed except the young boy. Dalziel was ready to admit that the sight of a portly gent apparently about to walk in to four feet of water was faintly comic, but none the less laughter in these circumstances struck him as a breach of decorum.

  The rowing-boat was now out of sight and Dalziel watched the punt till it too disappeared. Then he walked back over the bridge and tested the depth of the water on the road. It was just within the limits of safety and he edged the car through it with great caution.

  The road now rose again, following the skirts of the relatively high ground to his right which acted as a block to the flooded stream. From the crest of this small slope he could see for quite a way. The road dipped once more and about a hundred yards ahead it was flooded for a distance of thirty or forty feet. But presumably thereafter it rose steadily away from flood level, for just on the other side of the water stood a hearse and two funeral cars. The oarsman was in the water, pushing the coffin ashore where the top-hatted undertaker and his assistants were trying to grapple with it without getting their feet wet.

  Dalziel halted and once more settled down to watch. Finally all was finished, the punt party reached shore safely, dividing themselves among the two cars, in the first of which the woman and the old man had presumably been seated all along, and the sad procession drove slowly away, leaving only the oarsman seated on the bows of his boat rolling a well-earned cigarette.

  When the cortège was out of sight, Dalziel started his car once more and rolled gently down to the trough below, humming ‘One More River To Cross’. There was nothing like the sight of someone else’s funeral for making life look a little brighter.

  Half-way through the trough, he suddenly realized this was much deeper than he had anticipated. At the same moment the engine coughed once and died. Dalziel tried one turn of the starter, then switched off.

  Opening the window, he addressed the uninterested oarsman with all the charm and diplomacy he could muster.

  ‘Hey, you!’ he shouted. ‘Come and give us a push.’

  The old boatman looked at him impassively for a moment before he slowly rose and approached. He was wearing gum-boots which came up to his knees but even so the water lapped perilously close to their tops.

  When he reached the open window he stopped and looked at Dalziel enquiringly.

  ‘Yes?’ he said.

  ‘Don’t just stand there,’ said Dalziel. ‘Give us a push.’

  ‘I hadn’t come to push,’ said the man. ‘I’ve come to negotiate.’

  He proved a hard bargainer, totally uninterested in payment by results. It wasn’t till he had folded the pound note Dalziel gave him into a one-inch square and thrust it deep into some safe apparently subcutaneous place that he began to push. The effort was in vain. Finally Dalziel dragged his own scene-of-crime gum-boots out of the chaos in the back of the car and joined him in the water. Slowly the car edged forward but once it reached the upslope its weight combined with the water resistance proved too much.

  ‘Sod it,’ said Dalziel.

  They sat together on the rowing-boat and smoked. Dalziel had already had the one post-breakfast cigarette he allowed himself nowadays, but he felt the situation was special.

  ‘They’ll be coming back soon?’ he asked between puffs.

  ‘Half an hour,’ said the boatman. ‘Not long to put a man in the earth.’

  ‘Good,’ said Dalziel. ‘I’ll beg a lift from the undertaker. Who’re they burying?’

  ‘Mr Fielding,’ said the boatman.

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘Mrs Fielding’s husband,’ was the unhelpful reply.

  ‘Mrs Fielding was in the boat with you?’

  Dalziel reached into his pocket, produced the emergency half-bottle he always carried with him in the car, took a long draught and offered it to his companion.

  ‘Ta,’ he said, and drank.

  ‘You didn’t make that in your garden shed,’ he added when he’d finished.

  ‘No. Are you Mrs Fielding’s …?’

  He let the question hang.

  ‘I work up at the house. Most things that need done and can’t be done by lying around talking, I do.’

  ‘I see. Not a bad job if you play your cards right,’ said Dalziel with a knowing smirk. ‘Have another drink. That was Mrs Fielding’s family, was it?’

  Why he should have been interested in anything but getting his car out of the flood and back into working order, he did not know. But time had to be passed and the habit of professional curiosity was as hard to change as the habits of smoking or drinking or taking three helpings of potatoes and steamed pudding.

  ‘Most on ’em. The old man’s her dad-in-law. Then there’s the three children.’

  ‘Which were they?’ interrupted Dalziel.

  ‘The two lads, Bertie, that’s the older one, him with the gut. Then there’s Nigel, the boy. And their sister, Louisa.’

  ‘The thin girl?’

  ‘You’ve got bloody good eyes, mister,’ said the man, taking another drink. ‘Must be this stuff.’

  ‘What about the others?’

  ‘Friends. Visitors,’ he grunted.

  ‘For the funeral?’

  ‘Oh no. They were here when he snuffed it. Not that it made much difference to ’em, mark you. Not to any on ’em. No. They just carried on.’

  ‘Oh, aye?’ said Dalziel, thinking that the trio he had observed in the Lady Hamilton the previous night had hardly comported themselves like grief-stricken mourners.

  ‘What made you take to the water?’ he asked. ‘Couldn’t the funeral cars get round to the house?’

  ‘It’d be a long way round. They checked first thing this morning after last night’s rain. Couldn’t afford the time. They’ve a lot of work on in this wet weather. So it was either the bo
ats or wait. And they wanted shot of the coffin quick, you see.’

  ‘Well, I suppose it’s a bit deadly having it lying around the house,’ said Dalziel charitably.

  ‘Oh yes. Specially when it’s on the billiard table,’ said the other.

  There was no answer to this and they finished their cigarettes in silence.

  ‘What did he die of, anyway?’ asked Dalziel, growing tired of the unrelenting lap of water.

  ‘Some say his heart stopped,’ said the boatman. ‘And some say he was short of breath.’

  With difficulty Dalziel restrained himself from bellowing don’t you get funny with me!

  ‘What do you say?’ he asked instead.

  ‘Me? What should I know about it?’

  He relapsed into a silence which plainly rejected breaking by any conventional social means. Dalziel walked along the water’s edge a short way and stood inspecting the punt gun. It had been a formidable weapon, but looked very long disused. While the metal had probably never been bright (why give the poor bloody ducks even a chance of a chance?), now it was rusty and dirty and a spider had spun a few hopeful strands across the muzzle.

  It began to rain and after a few moments he returned to the shelter of the car. The boatman ignored his invitation to join him and remained where he was, even his cigarette appearing impervious to the downpour.

  Nearly half an hour later the first of the funeral party returned. It was the blond youth, alone and on foot.

  ‘Shit!’ said Dalziel and clambered out of the car once more.

  ‘Hello,’ said the youth as he approached. ‘You’re stuck in the water?’

  Dalziel smiled his congratulations.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Where’s the funeral cars?’

  ‘I was just telling Pappy, there’s a lot more water on the road about a quarter of a mile round the bend. They weren’t very happy about taking their shiny limousines through it on our way to the church and now they reckon it’s even deeper, so I was sent on to bring the boats a bit farther along.’