Reginald Hill - An April Shroud

'And second, he was off to Brazil in the morning. A big job, lots of prestige. Now, you and me, we know a hundred reporters who'd just love to get so close to a murder enquiry. But not Butt. At best, if he rang the police it'd mean cancelling his Brazil trip. At worst, it could mean a lot more. For all we know he was so stoned that he couldn't positively remember that he hadn't given this woman a lift and perhaps even killed her! Remember, he hadn't seen Annie Greave up here, so he had no direct link in his mind with Lake House.

'So the stupid sod, half pissed still, does the obvious stupid thing. Drives to Epping, scrapes a bit of a hole, drops Annie in it, covers her up, and goes home. Next morning he flies off to Brazil.'

'Well, it's a theory,' said Pascoe dubiously. 'It is only a theory, isn't it, sir?'

Dalziel ignored him.

'There was another person died here last night,' he said. 'Spinx, an insurance claims investigator. It looks like an accident. It looks to me less like an accident if Annie died here at the same time.'

'The old police text,' observed Ellie. 'Wherever two or three die together, there shall Old Bill be also.'

'What's the connection, sir?' asked Pascoe with a warning glance at his wife.

'Spinx came to the house for some reason,' said Dalziel. 'Suppose Annie rang him? She'd decided to take off, not liking the look of me. But Annie's kind like to make a bit of money wherever they can. So she rings Spinx telling him she's got a bit of information to sell him. She fixes for him to come out to the house. That'll mean she'll get a lift as well, very useful. He turns up, parks his car at the agreed spot by the lake. But she doesn't come. He waits an hour, then goes looking. He's been to the house before, of course, so he knows his way around. When he gets to her room, there's someone in the bed, so he gives them a shake.'

'How do you know this?' demanded Pascoe.

'I've talked to the guy in the bed,' said Dalziel. 'He can't identify Spinx, of course, but it fits. You see, everybody else in the house knew Annie had gone by then.'

'So why should anyone kill Spinx?'

Dalziel lit another cigarette. He's back up to forty a day, assessed Pascoe.

'He ran into the killer perhaps. Said he was looking for Annie. That made him dangerous. What had Annie said to him on the phone? Perhaps he hinted at more knowledge than he had. He was an absurd little git. Bang, he gets hit on the head with a lump of wood. And drowned.'

'Out there, on that landing-stage?' asked Pascoe incredulously. He had risen and was peering out of the bay window which overlooked the lake.

'It's pretty black tonight, but I think I'd still notice any funny goings-on,' he said. 'And this would be earlier than now, I take it?'

'Yes,' said Dalziel. 'I think it probably happened by his car. I think that someone then took the punt along the shore to those trees where the car was parked, loaded the body in it and brought it back to the landing-stage to fake the accident. I noticed that the water where I found the body was pretty oily. His suit was badly stained with oil. So was mine. I got it from sitting in the punt.'

'Why did you take a quiet look, sir?' asked Pascoe.

'Because,' said Dalziel slowly, 'because this is all guess work. Because I don't want to stir things up for the people in this house if I don't have to.'

'Mrs Fielding in particular?' asked Ellie.

'Have you seen owt else here I'm likely to fancy?' snapped Dalziel. 'Any road that's my business.'

'You said,' interrupted Pascoe in a thoughtful voice, ‘that Annie might have had some info to sell Spinx. Would that have been about the fire insurance? Or the theft?'

'What's it matter?'

'Well, the allegedly stolen stuff wasn't insured, Cross said. And there was no fire claim pending, was there? I mean, even the fraud scheme had gone into abeyance because (a) Fielding had died and (b) you had come to life.'

Dalziel looked at Pascoe with a faint smile.

'I taught that lad,' he said. 'Well, that's my business too.'

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.'