An April Shroud

by Reginald Hill

  He’s still not telling us everything, thought Pascoe, peering out of the window again. There was someone down there by the landing-stage, he observed, only a shadow moving darkly against the misty grey of the water’s surface. One of the Townswomen’s Guild keeping a lecherous rendezvous? More likely one of the Bowls Club honking his ring.

  ‘Well, it’ll be settled one way or another soon enough,’ he said.

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘They won’t leave Butt to his own devices now, will they? It looks damn suspicious already, having a nice convenient illness just before coming home. He’ll have read about the discovery of the body in the English papers and probably thinks the longer that he takes to come back, the safer he’ll be. No, it’ll be the old bedside interrogation technique. A man on his back soon cracks. I wonder which he’ll go for when the first British copper walks through his door – the sudden relapse or the miraculous recovery.’

  He laughed as he spoke.

  ‘He went for the relapse,’ said Dalziel.

  Pascoe stopped laughing.

  ‘I’m sorry …?’

  ‘Butt’s dead. That’s what the second phone call was about. Heart attack. He never recovered consciousness.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Pascoe, rapidly considering the implications. ‘You’ve got to give it to him. If it was an act, then he really died the part.’

  ‘What’ve you been feeding him on?’ Dalziel asked Ellie. ‘It’s a joke a minute.’

  ‘I suppose we’ll never know now,’ continued Pascoe. ‘One thing’s certain, if anyone up here does know anything about Annie Greave’s death, this must have been a happy bit of news. You’ll have talked to Mrs Fielding?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dalziel.

  ‘Oh,’ said Pascoe, keeping disapproval out of his voice with difficulty. ‘Then all you’ve got to do is arrest anyone with a big smile. Sir.’

  He reverted to peering out of the window and musing on the mutability of things.

  ‘I don’t really see what difference it makes,’ said Ellie, puzzled. ‘Even if Butt had come back and was questioned, surely he was bound to deny killing the woman and you’d be no further forward?’

  ‘That’d be right,’ agreed Dalziel. ‘If it wasn’t for the diary.’

  ‘The what?’ asked Ellie.

  ‘Butt was sober enough when he buried Annie to attempt to lay a bit of a false scent. He helped himself to the contents of her purse to make it look like robbery. But as well as her cash he got hold of a notebook she kept which gave details of her relationship with everyone in this house.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Ellie, nonplussed. ‘I didn’t know that. In fact, come to think of it, how do you know that?’

  ‘She’s got the makings of a jack,’ said Dalziel to Pascoe who had been listening in puzzlement to the conversation. ‘No, of course it’s not true. But it’s not too unlikely a story, is it?’

  ‘It is if you know that Butt’s lying dead on the other side of the world,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘Right,’ said Dalziel. ‘Fortunately that’s not common knowledge in this house. No, I told Bonnie, Mrs Fielding, that Butt was alive and well and waving this notebook under the noses of our interested colleagues at Heathrow.’

  It was at best a compromise, he admitted that. And like most compromises, it was a fusion of small betrayals. Lying to Bonnie was one; holding out on Balderstone another. As a trap it was too feeble; he saw this in Pascoe’s face. But as a way of treating those who trusted him, it was too brutal; he saw this in Ellie’s.

  But it was the best he could do. Having decided that, no bugger was going to get in his way.

  ‘What do you think’s going to happen, sir?’ asked Pascoe in the kindly voice he reserved for lady magistrates and Ellie’s relations.

  ‘Likely nothing,’ said Dalziel. ‘I told Bonnie that the Essex police were pretty satisfied that Butt had nowt to do with the murder and that Balderstone would be coming out here tonight. And I asked her to let everyone know that they should hang around after the bar closes and the customers go home.’

  Pascoe glanced at his watch. It was twenty past ten. The bar closed in ten minutes.

  ‘Ellie,’ he said. ‘Your mum and dad will be wondering where we’ve got to. It would be kind to reassure them.’

  ‘When policemen start being kind to their in-laws, let wives beware,’ said Ellie. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’ll hang on here for a while. Look, if they want to head for home, tell them not to worry. I’ll cadge a lift into Orburn later.’

  Ellie glanced from her husband to the fat man in the floppy hat.

  ‘OK,’ she said.

  After she had gone the two men kept their silence for a while. Dalziel lit yet another cigarette and Pascoe prowled lightly round the room peering at the old man’s books and examining the furniture.

  ‘None of your antiques here,’ said Dalziel finally. ‘But if yon cupboard’s open, you’ll mebbe find a drink in it.’

  The cupboard was indeed open and Pascoe straightened up with a bottle of Rémy Martin in one hand and Glen Grant in the other. Hereward had not put all his money into the business. The scotch had been purchased in recognition of Dalziel’s personal taste and the fat man had acknowledged this kindness by spending at least an hour each night sitting here with the old poet drinking and exchanging tales of the criminal and the literary underworlds.

  Pascoe poured Dalziel a scotch and helped himself to a generous measure of cognac.

  ‘This man, Balderstone,’ said Pascoe. ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘Not bad.’

  ‘Is he relying much on you? For inside information, I mean?’

  ‘He’d be bloody daft if he was,’ said Dalziel acidly.

  Pascoe sipped his drink thoughtfully. At least there was no self-deception here.

  ‘So what happens tomorrow when nothing happens tonight?’ he asked.

  ‘You’re a detective,’ said Dalziel. ‘They’ve questioned everyone twice, taken statements. What’d you do?’

  ‘Well, normally I’d go and solve some easier crime, and thank God this one was down to Essex, not me!’

  ‘Now suppose you’re the killer. What then?’

  Pascoe considered.

  ‘Unless I was very stupid, I’d laugh myself to sleep at this all-revealing diary story. Then when I discovered that Butt was actually dead, I’d laugh myself awake. If I wanted to be really clever, I might just start recollecting that I caught a glimpse of Butt driving away that night with someone beside him in the car. But that’d be gilding the lily a bit.’

  ‘There you are then,’ said Dalziel. ‘There’s nowt to be done.’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Pascoe. ‘You haven’t asked me what I’d do if I were you.’

  Dalziel reached up one voluminous sleeve and began to scratch under his armpit.

  ‘No, I bloody haven’t,’ he said uninvitingly.

  ‘I’d be worried sick,’ said Pascoe, ‘in case by not telling the investigating officer what I suspected I was impeding the course of justice.’

  ‘What’s suspicion?’ asked Dalziel. ‘Bugger all. It’s what you know that counts.’

  ‘And what makes you think that Balderstone’s told you everything he knows?’ demanded Pascoe. ‘Have you given him cause to take you into his confidence? Put what you suspect and what he knows together and bang! you may have a solution.’

  Dalziel glared at him angrily and Pascoe realized he had gone further than he intended. He sank the rest of his drink quickly in an effort to anaesthetize himself, but before the storm could break, the door burst open and another high-pressure centre flowed in on a wave of distant noise like the honking of a flight of geese.

  ‘Andy,’ cried Bonnie. ‘Have you seen that halfwit Charley anywhere? God Almighty, it’s like Brand’s Hatch out there! Where the hell has he got to?’

  The noise he could hear wasn’t geese, Pascoe realized, but the gabbling of human voices raised in anger commingled with a variety of car
horns.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Dalziel.

  ‘It’s the car park. He got in such a muddle that he told the last people to arrive just to leave their cars on the drive with the keys in and he’d sort them out. Well, they’re still there, blocking the way, but the keys have gone. Some twit tried to go round them across the garden, but it’s so wet with all this rain that he’s got stuck. God, what a mess!’

  ‘And Charley’s gone?’ asked Dalziel, very alert.

  ‘I’ve been telling you, yes! You must have directed traffic sometime, can’t you do anything?’

  They all make cracks about a cop’s job in the end, thought Pascoe. But she was a fine-looking woman. A bit long in the tooth perhaps, but what she’d lost in youthful athleticism she could probably more than make up in expertise. Which was a male chauvinist pig thought he’d do well to keep hidden from Ellie.

  ‘Come on,’ said Dalziel, rising and making for the door. Pascoe realized that he was being addressed, not Bonnie, and rudely pushed past her in the fat detective’s wake.

  ‘This Charley,’ he said. ‘Could he be the one?’

  Dalziel didn’t answer but began to climb the stairs.

  If so, he’s probably long gone, thought Pascoe. All those cars to choose from. Unless …

  He caught Dalziel’s green velveteen sleeve.

  ‘Those keys,’ he said. ‘You’ve got ’em!’

  ‘Right,’ said Dalziel. ‘No bugger drives out of here till I’m done.’

  He flung open the door of a room which was in darkness. Neither of them needed the light to know it was empty.

  ‘It doesn’t look as if he’s taken anything,’ said Dalziel, puzzled. ‘He won’t go far in his fancy dress surely.’

  ‘Where’d he go anyway?’ asked Pascoe. ‘I mean he’d hardly set off walking to Orburn if he thinks Balderstone’s coming driving along that road any moment. Hang on, though. Downstairs when I was looking out of the window, there was someone by the lake.’

  ‘Oh no!’ groaned Dalziel.

  They turned, met Bonnie looking bewildered half-way up the stairs, pushed by her once more and ran out of the front door.

  The night was warm and almost windless. The mist on the lake surface had crept a little further up the garden in the last fifteen minutes and the rail of the landing-stage was barely visible, an indistinct line of faded runes scratched on a limestone wall. Though the noise of the car park chaos was more clearly audible here, its effect was to increase the feeling of isolation, like traffic heard beyond a prison wall.

  ‘Andy!’ called Bonnie from the doorway. But Dalziel did not pause.

  ‘Careful!’ he said to Pascoe as he ventured out on the landing-stage. ‘This stuff’s rotten.’

  With sixteen stone going before me, what have I got to worry about, thought Pascoe.

  Dalziel stopped short of the broken and still-unmended section beneath which he had discovered Spinx. The duck punt had gone.

  Pascoe began to speak but Dalziel gestured impatiently and peered out across the lake, his head cocked to one side. Like a St Bernard on an Alpine rescue mission, imaged Pascoe.

  ‘Do you hear anything?’ asked Dalziel.

  ‘Only the waters wappe and the waves wanne.’

  ‘Come on.’

  Grasping Pascoe’s arm for support, the fat man clambered down into the rowing-boat which rocked dangerously under his weight.

  ‘You want me to come in that?’ asked Pascoe incredulously.

  ‘Someone’s got to row,’ said Dalziel.

  ‘But what’s the point?’ protested Pascoe as he stepped down. ‘If you think he’s out there, just get the locals to start a search. I mean, what’s at the far side?’

  ‘America,’ said Dalziel. ‘Just row.’

  Grumbling, Pascoe unshipped the oars and began to pull away from the shore while Dalziel sat in the stern with the tiller in his hand. It took only a few strokes to put the house and garden out of view and the sense of being alone on a limitless expanse of water grew rapidly.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but what are we doing?’ demanded Pascoe for the sake of hearing his own voice rather than in hope of an answer. But to his surprise, Dalziel laughed, a short bark reminding him once more of his St Bernard image.

  ‘We’re on the track of a very dangerous man.’

  ‘Dangerous?’ said Pascoe in some alarm. ‘The car park man?’

  ‘You’d be surprised. Look there!’

  Dalziel put the tiller hard over so the boat came round as sharply as a shallow-bottomed leaky rowing-boat could. Pascoe glanced round in alarm as he felt his left oar strike something. He would not have been too surprised to see an arm reaching out of the water and brandishing a sword. Instead he saw a punt pole, its top pointing drunkenly at the sky and its other end presumably buried in the sludge at the bottom of the lake.

  ‘I told you he was dangerous,’ said Dalziel. ‘Listen.’

  They listened. After a while, out of the other small water noises, Pascoe picked an intermittent slapping noise, as though some aquatic creature were beating the lake with its flippers.

  Dalziel nodded imperiously and Pascoe began once more to strain at the oars. This form of exercise was not one he was accustomed to and his arms and shoulders were already beginning to ache.

  ‘Who’s there?’ a voice suddenly called out of the darkness. ‘Is there anyone there?’

  ‘Aye, is there,’ answered Dalziel.

  ‘Is that you, Mr Dalziel? Could you give us a tow? I’m afraid I’ve lost the pole.’

  Pascoe glanced over his shoulder and saw the silhouette of a punt. In the stern a lanky figure was pushing himself upright, his hands dripping. The halfwit must have been paddling with them since he lost his pole, thought Pascoe. His feeling of superiority was almost immediately dissipated as he caught a double crab and fell backwards over his bench. From this undignified position, he heard another voice.

  ‘No closer please, Andy. Just pass over your oars and we’ll be on our way.’

  Pascoe struggled upright. The punt had now swung round or perhaps the boat had moved as a result of his mishap. In any event, they were now broadside on to the bow of the punt and in it, sitting behind a formidable-looking gun, was a second man.

  ‘Evening, Herrie,’ said Dalziel.

  ‘Just the oars, Andy.’

  The old man’s voice was steady but not quite right, thought Pascoe. Strain showed through it. It was like Gielgud playing Little Caesar.

  ‘Come on, Herrie,’ said Dalziel jovially. ‘What’s all this about?’

  ‘I couldn’t get the car down the drive,’ said the old man. ‘Charley said he’d shift some of the visitors’ but the keys had gone. That’d be you, I suppose, Andy. So I rang up a taxi, arranged to be picked up on the road at the far side of the lake. I’d have been there by now if my Charon had not proved more than usually incompetent.’

  The two craft had moved almost to the point of touching and Pascoe, upright once more, was able to view the strange tableau in all its absurd detail. The fact that he was the only one present in normal twentieth-century garb accentuated his sense of being an audience. The old man was the centre of the tableau. His finely sculpted patrician head was perhaps more suited to a toga than a black doublet, but he made a good Duke Vincentio or even a Hamlet played by some English actor who had left it too late. Dalziel, standing now looking down at the punt, was an imposing figure in his long green gown, but his was not a head for philosophy and suffering; beneath the absurd cap flopping down over his brow, his eyes were calculating and shrewd: Ulysses assessing a tricky situation, or even an overweight Prospero, feeling a bit regretful that he’d drowned his book.

  As for the third figure whom Pascoe had already seen at work in the car park, he too was one from the magic island. Ariel and Caliban combined, grace and awkwardness. Look at him now as he began to advance down the punt; his first couple of steps movements of ease and elegance, he looked as if he had been wearing thin silks and pink hos
e all his life. He spoke.

  ‘I say, I don’t know what’s going on …’

  Hereward Fielding turned his head, Dalziel saw his chance and stepped from the rowing-boat into the punt, Ariel took another step and became Caliban, stumbling over a loose cushion and falling heavily to the deck. The punt rocked violently; Dalziel, standing precariously on the gunwale, swayed like a clipper’s mast in a gale, Hereward rose from his gun and reached out a saving hand but it was too late. Like the undermined statue of some deposed dictator, the massive bulk of the man toppled slowly sideways and entered the water with a mighty splash. Tillotson and Fielding knelt anxiously at the side of the punt, eager with apologies and assistance. And Pascoe, feeling it was time the twentieth century asserted itself, stepped calmly into the bows and took possession of the gun.

  It struck Pascoe as odd that a man who had recently been threatening to blow a hole in his boss should now be so solicitous about his health, but Tillotson’s words as he helped drag the waterlogged Dalziel aboard seemed to explain this.

  ‘I’m so sorry, but really all I was going to say was there’s no need for any fuss. I mean the gun’s not loaded, you don’t think I’d leave the thing loaded do you? I told Herrie, he knew it wasn’t loaded; please, what’s going on? Oh gosh, you are wet, aren’t you?’

  Pascoe, squatting by the duck gun, began to chuckle quietly. The unloaded gun doubled the comic dimensions of the thing by removing altogether the heroic element. Of course, if there had been a risk … idly he pressed the trigger.

  The resulting blast tore the mist apart for about five yards in all directions. More devastatingly, the rowing-boat, which was in the direct line of fire at very close range, had a hole nine inches across punched in its side close enough to water-level for each rocking motion to ship some water. Very quickly the craft began to settle and the lake poured in.

  ‘Not loaded,’ said Dalziel to a dumbfounded Tillotson. ‘Jesus Christ. Pascoe, grab those oars!’

  Pascoe obeyed just in time. As he began awkwardly to paddle the punt back towards the shore, the rowing-boat sank with a quiet burp, leaving only a few bubbles and Dalziel’s floppy hat to show where it had foundered.