An April Shroud

by Reginald Hill

  ‘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.

  7

  A Fried Egg Sandwich

  Dalziel woke up early the following morning and lay in the darkness knowing it was full of menace. He forced himself to relax, and gradually the menace faded as the shapes and angles of the unfamiliar room began to emerge in gradations of grey, bringing with them something worse than fear, a sense of the grey hours, days, weeks, stretching ahead like a desert landscape of unrelieved, grinding, unsharable monotony.

  Depression was a sickness, they told him. The previous year he had been worried enough by symptoms of physical illness to visit his doctor and had come away with a series of warnings and prohibitions concerning diet, alcohol, tobacco – the usual nonsense. But paradoxically his efforts to comply had led him inexorably to ask himself why he was bothering; what was so bloody marvellous about this life he was trying to preserve. Such metaphysical speculations were entirely foreign to his make-up and their formulation now was light years from being precise and intellectual. It was just a feeling of hollowness at the centre, a reluctance to awaken from the safe blackness of sleep, a sense of life like a hair floating on dirty bath water, sinking imperceptibly, moment by moment, till a final, spinning gurgling rush carried it away.

  So he had taken a holiday. He had never cared much for holidays, but they were better than the happy-pills he knew many people took to preserve their truce with life. He was not one of those nuts who had to keep taking the tablets. A holiday would set him right. And this was it.

  He forced himself to start thinking about this odd household he had fallen into. These people interested him. Professionally it might be a mistake to get involved, personally it might be a mistake not to. The previous evening had ended with no proposition of any kind from Bonnie. Most likely he had been entirely mistaken to expect one, but it had been a slight disappointment. Christ almighty, what did he expect? The bathroom door opening in the night and the shadowy figure in the diaphanous nightie stealing to his bedside? Kids’ fantasies. No, he told himself grimly, if he had any attraction for the Fieldings it was what Mavis had hinted, as a potential investor, and they weren’t going to start carving their roast beef for him till they knew what he was worth.

  Not that he disapproved of this way of thinking, he told himself as he got out of bed. He liked people who trod carefully. And he liked people who took money seriously. That was what his job was about, mainly. The thought made him smile as he went into the bathroom and suddenly he realized that on this occasion at least his self-prescribed therapy was being successful.

  He washed and shaved, making as little noise as possible, conscious of the sleeping woman behind the farther door. He wondered if it were locked, but did not feel able to try it.

  He glanced at his watch as he got dressed and saw that it was six-thirty, later than he thought. The gloomy, overcast skies explained his error. Sunrise had been a secret ceremony that morning.

  Guests should lie abed till they were certain the household was awake. This was a maxim he had learned long ago, but if he’d obeyed all the rules of polite behaviour he had ever known, he would still be a well-mannered constable. In any case, six-thirty was quite late enough.

  He was not the only one stirring, he discovered. His nose told him there was someone in the kitchen making coffee. Uniff, he guessed. He looked a restless sod.

  It was Mrs Greave.

  ‘Morning,’ he said.

  She was wearing her green dressing-gown again and had obviously gone to bed without making any special provision for adjustment to her hair. The beehive now hung askew, giving her head a curious bent appearance as though seen through a funfair mirror.

  She didn’t reply. Dalziel helped himself to a mug (Bertie’s again, he suspected) and poured coffee from the jug she had placed on a tray.

  ‘You’re an early bird,’ he said after a scalding mouthful. ‘And it’s a long walk. What’s wrong with them shiny new kitchens down there?’

  ‘They’re for cooking chickens, hunks of meat, a hundred portions at a time,’ she said. ‘Want a piece of toast?’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, interested by this sudden thawing. Her dressing-gown was loosely belted and as she bent forward to butter the toast for him, he saw she was wearing nothing underneath.

  He took another more careful sip of coffee and said, ‘Careful you don’t spill something.’

  ‘You needn’t look,’ she said indifferently, passing him the toast.

  ‘Why not? There’s no charge, is there?’ he said.

  ‘What the hell do you mean?’ she snapped angrily.

  ‘Nothing. Nothing. How long have you been here with your father, Mrs Greave?’

  She sat down opposite and watched him chew on his toast.

  ‘Six months, maybe seven,’ she said.

  ‘Six, maybe seven. I see. This marmalade’s good. Do you make it yourself, Mrs Greave?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Pity. I like home-made stuff. But you’ve done a bit of cooking in your time. Those sausages last night. Grand! I bet you kept Mr Greave happy.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Mr Greave. Your husband,’ said Dalziel. ‘What happened? Died, did he?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry. Poor fellow. What was it? Road accident? Coronary? Now Mrs Fielding did mention it last night, but I can’t quite recall.’

  He looked at her expectantly, his expression sympathetic but hopeful like a person’s at a funeral.

  ‘I’d rather not talk about it.’

  ‘Of course not. Then after the unhappy event, Mr Papworth, your dad, found you a place here.’

  ‘T
hey needed a cook-housekeeper. And they’ll need help when the restaurant opens.’

  ‘True,’ said Dalziel. ‘Then you’ll be able to use all that lovely shiny equipment. Mind you, things look a bit dicey just now.’

  ‘I don’t know anything of that,’ she said, rising. ‘I’m just the paid help. Excuse me. I’d better go and get dressed.’

  She made for the door.

  ‘Don’t forget your tray,’ called Dalziel.

  She stopped, then slowly returned, picked up the tray and left. Someone spoke to her outside the door and a second later Louisa came into the room. She was wearing a short flowered tunic from which her thin white legs forked with, for Dalziel, all the provocative power of a couple of pipe-cleaners. But tastes differed, he was willing to concede, and he suspected she thought she was the sexiest thing since co-education.

  ‘That was pretty nosy,’ she said as she headed for the stove.

  ‘You were listening,’ he accused.

  ‘I didn’t like to butt in,’ she said. ‘All that about the way she was widowed. It was embarrassing.’

  Dalziel laughed derisively.

  ‘What’s that mean?’ she asked.

  ‘It means I don’t think either of you were embarrassed,’ he answered.

  She left the stove, came to the other side of the table, put her hands on it and leaned towards him.

  She’d have to stand on her head and waggle her legs in the air to be interesting, thought Dalziel.

  ‘Who the hell do you think you are to talk to me like that?’ she demanded.

  ‘I’m a man you punched on the nose without explanation or apology,’ he retorted. ‘That gives me rights.’

  She decided to postpone confrontation and grinned.

  ‘You want me to say I’m sorry? Well, I suppose I was later. Hitting a stranger’s not like hitting someone you know. But since I’ve met you again, I’m not certain whether I’m sorry or not. And if you talk to me like you talked to Mrs Greave, I might just punch you again.’

  ‘Mrs Greave didn’t punch me,’ said Dalziel. ‘And your kettle’s boiling.’

  ‘It’s easy to intimidate servants,’ she called from the back kitchen. ‘If she tells Pappy, you watch out. He’s no respecter of persons.’

  ‘Aye. I doubt if he respects Mrs Greave’s person much,’ grunted Dalziel.

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Louisa, returning with a mug of coffee.

  ‘Come on, love,’ said Dalziel. ‘You’re not all blind innocents here, are you? There were two cups on that tray. And a couple of doughnuts as well as toast.’

  ‘So she’s got a sweet tooth and she’s giving her old dad his breakfast in bed. I like that,’ said Louisa.

  ‘It’s not all she’s giving him,’ said Dalziel. ‘It’s plain as the nose on your face. I know a scrubber when I see one.’

  ‘Clearly I haven’t had your educational advantages,’ said the girl. ‘But if what you say is right, and she’s Pappy’s fancy bit, what’s it matter? He’s old enough and conventional enough to feel he needs a cover story, that’s all. Your generation’s made quite an art of hypocrisy.’

  ‘What are you, Miss Fielding?’ asked Dalziel suddenly. She was taken aback and looked at him in puzzlement.

  ‘I mean, all the others seem to be something, to have done something. You, though. How old are you? Eighteen? Nineteen? Twenty? What do you do?’

  ‘Haven’t you heard?’ she said, recovered. ‘I’ve missed it before. got shares in a restaurant. You might say, I own it. Or will do.’

  ‘What? Oh, the house. You’re hoping to live off your inheritance, are you? It’s always the way. What one generation makes, the next spends.’

  ‘No one asks to be born, Mr Dalziel,’ she said.

  ‘Not many return the gift,’ Dalziel said. He was trying to remember what it was like when he was nineteen. The girls he knew hadn’t been like this but was that just a difference of class rather than of time? A bit of both. Time marched on, but you could always make allowances. The class thing was different. Dalziel liked a fairly rigid class structure. A sense of social level made people easier to deal with – to manipulate, if you spelled it out. That was also what his job was about. But more importantly it gave a man a sense of what he was, whereas these young sods didn’t seem to worry about being anything in particular. And it was catching if you weren’t careful. You could wake up and feel the numbness of self-doubt spreading to the heart.

  He rose and went into the back kitchen to boil the kettle once more.

  The girl sat still, inhaling the steam from her cup. She might have been twelve or thirteen, he thought, glancing at her narrow shoulders from behind.

  Suddenly something about her age struck him, something so obvious he couldn’t understand how he’d missed it before.

  ‘How old’s Bertie?’ he asked, putting a spoonful of instant coffee into his mug.

  ‘Twenty-four. Why?’

  ‘And Nigel’s fifteen. And they’re your step-brothers?’

  He made a business of pouring out the water and looking for the milk. From the outer room came a laugh.

  ‘Oh, I see. You’ve just noticed. Yes, Bonnie had Bertie shortly after meeting Conrad for the first time. I think she fell for his Army uniform. She likes men in uniform, you know. She was bringing Bertie up herself when she met my father. They got married. Later I appeared. Then Daddy died and who should turn up again but Conrad. This time she was wise enough, or stupid enough, to get him to the altar. And after fifteen years of intermittent marriage, here we all are. Happy Family.’

  ‘I see,’ said Dalziel.

  ‘It took you long enough,’ she said, raising her voice. ‘I thought everyone could see at a glance that Bertie was a bastard.’

  When he rejoined her, he saw the reason for the change in tone. Bertie was standing in the doorway. Dalziel looked at his watch. It was still only seven o’clock. They really were early risers here; Bertie was fully clothed and, from the look of his shoes, he had been outside.

  ‘Don’t let me interrupt,’ said the fat youth, walking through the kitchen. He shot a malignant glance at Dalziel’s mug as he passed but said nothing.

  ‘Morning,’ said Dalziel. ‘What’s it like out? Cold?’

  ‘Why don’t you try it?’ said Bertie from the other room.

  ‘Later. This restaurant was your idea, your mam says.’

  Bertie returned with some coffee and looked insolently at Dalziel.

  ‘What’s it to you?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing much,’ said Dalziel. ‘I was just hearing about your financial troubles. Wondering if it was worth pouring good money after bad, that’s all.’

  He was quite proud of that. The statement went no further than a general comment but obviously from the glance the other two exchanged it was the particular application that had been made.

  Bertie’s voice was definitely politer when he replied.

  ‘I don’t know what my mother’s been saying, Mr Dalziel, but you mustn’t get hold of the wrong end of the stick. The work’s nearly finished as you can see. A token payment of a couple of thousand would get the contractors back in twenty-four hours. There’s no question of long-term difficulty. Any finance house would be keen to advance money once they saw the state of the project. It’s just a matter of time.’

  ‘Oh. If that’s all … well, I’m glad to hear it,’ said Dalziel. ‘I must have mistaken Mrs Fielding. Would anyone mind if I fried myself an egg?’

  He didn’t wait for an answer but set about the business with the expertise of a man long used to living alone. There was some bacon in the fridge, nice thick-cut rashers which looked as if the pig had seen the light of day in the recent past. He kept his mind off the contents of the foil-wrapped package which he had found here yesterday.

  ‘Anyone else?’ he called.

  ‘I’ll try one,’ Louisa said, joining him at the stove. ‘I can’t cook for toffee.’

  ‘I bet your mam can,’ said Dalziel.

&
nbsp; ‘When she wants,’ said the girl. She lowered her voice. ‘Don’t take any notice of Bertie. He thinks all big businessmen talk like that.’

  ‘Tell lies, you mean?’ said Dalziel, cracking another egg one-handed and draining it through his fingers into the pan.

  ‘Don’t worry, love,’ he went on. ‘I know you can’t even refund the Bowls Club their money. God knows what else I don’t know about! No. If I was a finance house, I wouldn’t lend you your bus-fare home.’

  ‘Up you, then,’ said Louisa angrily.

  ‘But I am not a finance house. You know what? I’m going to have mine in a sandwich. It can be messy, but what’s life without risks?’

  There was no need for him to be talking like this. The first hint that he might be interested in the project had been justifiable. Even then you had to pretend there was some kind of case and he was investigating it. But this was just economic prick-teasing. He tried to retrieve his position.

  ‘If a couple of thousand’s all that’s needed, I can’t see your problem,’ he said, carefully organizing his montage of egg and bacon on a slice of thick-cut bread. ‘Your grandfather’s got this Gum-boot thing coming; how much? Fifteen thousand dollars? Won’t he chip in?’

  ‘Not bloody likely,’ said Louisa, eating her egg more conventionally, albeit straight from the pan. ‘He’s been against the project right from the start. He’s got a little bit of money from his writing, enough to pay his way in the house, and there’s not much he can do with the Gumbelow money at his age. But he’d rather flush it down the loo than let Bertie get his hands on it. That’s how he sees the business, you see. Always has. Bertie’s balls-up. They don’t get on, you may have noticed. And now Herrie thinks Conrad would still be alive if it weren’t for the business.’

  ‘Is that right?’ said Dalziel.

  ‘So any knight in shining armour willing to take a small risk for a short time would be gratefully received and bounteously recompensed.’