Reginald Hill - An April Shroud

Nothing was the answer. He would of course do nothing. But still he wondered, and his hand was actually on the door knob when he heard the voices. They were speaking so low that even with an ear pressed hard against the woodwork, there was no chance of picking out words. But he could make out that there were two voices – a man's and a woman's.

As carefully as he had approached he retreated from the door. If he had prayed before sleeping he might have said, 'Thank you, Lord, for changing nothing.' But he didn't. He just climbed into bed and fell into the deepest, soundest sleep he had known for months.

At seven-thirty the following morning he was down at the lakeside examining the scene of Spinx's death by daylight. There had been no rain that night and the water-level had dropped another six inches. Having dispatched the constable left by Cross in search of breakfast, Dalziel peered at the gap left by the broken treads with considerable uninterest. His attitude to physical clues was rather like that of the modern Christian to miracles. They could happen, but probably not just at the moment.

Nevertheless the possibility could not be ignored and he jumped down into the duck punt to get a duck's eye look at the landing-stage.

The three broken treads trailed in the water like old fishbones. Carefully Dalziel poked at them with the blade of an antique penknife whose possession by a long-haired youth at a football match would have got him three months. The outermost two treads were soft but reasonably solid; the third was rotten almost right through. This it must have been that triggered things off. If Spinx had come down on this with his full weight, it could well have snapped, sending him plunging forward so that his head cracked against the timber uprights supporting the end of the stage and his body hit the other two treads with sufficient force to smash through them.

Unconscious from the blow, he would quickly have drowned and floated there, held between the submerged sections of the support baulks, till Dalziel found him.

That's how it could have happened, thought Dalziel, lighting a cigarette and relaxing in the gently jogging punt. If the post mortem showed death to be due to drowning and the head injury to be consistent with a crack against the upright, that would be that. Another Lake House inquest with a verdict of accidental death. And any journalistic interest thus engendered would mean merely so much free advertising for the restaurant. If it opened.

The odds against were now enormous. Dalziel was no businessman but it seemed fairly certain to him that unless they opened on time, the outcry from the disappointed (and uncompensated) customers would be so great that any remaining semblance of creditworthiness would be torn to shreds. His own discovery of the missing drink and the disembowelled ovens had probably been the scheme's death blow. Herrie's dollars might have made a difference but he was so obsessively against the venture that it would need another death to prise the money free. If it had been the old man's face that had peered up through the water the previous night, that would have been quite a different kettle of fish! Not all the rotten wood in the world would have bridged the doubts in Dalziel's mind.

Something clicked close by and he looked up to see Uniff towering above him with a smile on his face and a camera in his hand.

'What a shot!' he said. 'The great detective at work! What were you thinking of, man? A single-handed trip round the world?'

'I thought you were short of film,' said Dalziel, stepping up on to the landing-stage.

'There are some things too good to miss,' said Uniff. 'Say, that could be dangerous.'

He pointed to the broken treads and Dalziel recalled his late return the previous night. Presumably he had not yet met, anyone who had told him about Spinx.

‘It was,' said Dalziel. 'Oh shit!' He was looking at the sleeve of his jacket which was smeared with oil. He traced its source very quickly to the punt. Someone had been trying to clean up the duck gun.

'Tillotson!' he groaned. 'I'll kill him!'

‘If he tries to fire that antique, he'll kill himself,' observed Uniff. 'What were you doing down there, anyway, man?'

As they walked back to the house, Dalziel filled him in on the discovery of Spinx's body.

Uniff was incredulous.

'That little creep? I can't believe it! His kind live for ever.'

'You didn't like him?' said Dalziel.

'What? No, I didn't say that. Some of my best friends are insurance creeps. Anyway, I wasn't around last night, not after nine. So it's no use grilling me.'

His Americanisms were sometimes venerably antique and in his initial surprise at Dalziel's news, he had sounded very like his sister. But the fat detective's mind had seized upon points of other than linguistic interest.

'I'm not grilling you, Mr Uniff,' he said. 'But I'd be interested to know why you think I might be.'

'Well, hell, sudden death, the fuzz start asking questions all round. I know, we've had some, remember?'

'I remember,' said Dalziel. 'Point two, why should nine strike you as being a significant time? There's nothing yet that says Spinx didn't take his bath earlier.'

'It wasn't meant to be significant,' said Uniff. ‘It was just the time I left, that's all.'

The uniformed constable came out of the front door as they reached it. He had a half-eaten bacon sandwich in his saluting hand and treated Dalziel to a distant and fatty wave.

'Which brings us to where you went last night, Mr Uniff,' said Dalziel heavily.

Uniff laughed as he ushered Dalziel into the house ahead of him.

'Now you are grilling me,' said Uniff.

The door which led to the kitchen opened at the other end of the hallway and Mavis appeared.

'OK,' said Uniff. if that's how it's gotta be, come on up to my pad. I got the equipment there.'

He steered Dalziel up the stairs at a speed which left him short of breath by the time they reached the first landing. Looking back, he saw Mavis standing at the foot of the stairs watching their ascent with the impassive intensity of a totem mask.

The room Uniff led him to was huge. The design of the faded and torn wallpaper suggested it had once been a nursery, though no other evidence survived. There were no broken rocking-horses, no disfigured Teddy-bears, just a huge table littered with paper and film equipment, and at the farthermost end of the room surrounded by spot lamps a rostrum camera set-up.

'Here we are,' said Uniff proudly. 'What do you think, man?'

'They must have had bloody huge families in them days,' said Dalziel.

'What? Oh, yeah. It was probably those long winter nights when the magic lantern broke down.'

Uniff wandered across to the camera, turned one of the lamps so that it pointed full in his face and switched it on.

'OK, captain. But I tell you again, I don't know nothing.'

'This your film then?' asked Dalziel peering without comprehension at a huge sheet of card pinned to the wall. On it were pasted a series of drawings, about fifty in all, like a strip cartoon except that the sequence of events escaped Dalziel.

'I thought you'd never ask,' said Uniff, switching off his light. 'Yeah, that's my story board. I've got some rushes here. You want to see them?'

Like all obsessives, he could not doubt the answer but quickly drew down the black-out blinds and set the projector rolling. On the screen appeared the letter O. It turned into a man's head. A stone age club appeared and hammered down on the skull. The mouth opened and out came a strip cartoon balloon containing the letter O which in its turn became a breast. A hand caressed it. The response again was O; and in sequence every part of the human body was represented by the letter, then assaulted or stimulated in some fashion more or less appropriate, always with the same response. The animation was clever, often wittily obscene, though Dalziel doubted if in these blatant days it was actionable.