Reginald Hill: An April Shroud

'Yes,' repeated Tillotson, 'it was rather like a burial at sea. Full fathom five, Tom Bowling, all that. Did you get some good pictures, Hank?'

'I shot off a whole roll,' replied Uniff. 'But did I get the light right? It wasn't easy to judge and that creepy preacher man didn't help by complaining.'

He cradled his camera protectively as if an attempt were being made to wrest it from his hands.

'Didn't Mrs Fielding object?' queried Dalziel.

'Bonnie? Hell, no. I mean, why, man?'

'Hank's an artist,' explained Tillotson, passing them again at a smart trot. His new technique was certainly moving the punt along much faster, but at the expense of direction if one assumed that the rowing-boat was taking the shortest route home. It was now almost out of sight and several points to the nor'-east.

Dalziel pulled his coat collar more tightly round his neck and resisted the temptation to take charge of the vessel. He was the super-cargo, not the captain. But something of his feelings must have shown to Uniff who grinned maliciously at his discomfiture and began to whistle 'The Skye Boat Song'.

'What kind of artist are you, Mr Uniff?' asked Dalziel.

'What kinds of artist are there, man?' replied Uniff.

'Well,' replied Dalziel, irritated, 'there's con-artists, and there's shit-artists, and there's…'

But his catalogue of abuse was interrupted by the forecast disaster. Tillotson drove the punt forward into a half-submerged hedge, the bows rose in the air, Tillotson screamed and went over the side, Uniff and Dalziel fell together in a tangled heap from which Dalziel recovered just in time to see his suitcase slowly toppling into the water.

Furious, he rose and put his huge hand into the face of Tillotson who was trying to clamber back on board.

'My case!' he yelled. 'Get my bloody case!'

Recognizing that this was an essential condition of readmittance, Tillotson pursued the case which had floated only a few feet but was sinking fast. Dalziel took it out of his hands and tried to drain it as, unassisted, the blond youth dragged himself on board, his exertions freeing the punt from the hedge. Uniff all the while took pictures, including one of the pole which for once had not become embedded in the mud but was floating away at a distance of some twenty feet.

Dalziel banged his case down with a force that nearly brought on a new disaster.

'Mr Dalziel, sir,' said Uniff, still photographing. 'By the ancient laws of the sea, I elect you captain. What now, man? Are you going to run a tight ship?'

Dalziel swallowed the anger which he realized would not be particularly productive at the present time.

'I might just marry you to this goon,' he said, 'and see if you could fuck some sense into him.'

Instead he swung his wellingtoned foot at the narrow planks which formed the cross seat and his fierce onslaught quickly loosened one sufficiently for it to be torn free. Then, using this as a paddle, he sent the punt in pursuit of the pole.

Uniff now put away his camera and rescued the pole from the water. Tillotson with the natural gallantry of the aristocrat offered to resume his post, but Dalziel with the equally natural bluntness of the peasant told him to keep his hands on his knees and his bum on the floor and not to move on peril of his manhood.

Uniff stepped to the back of the punt and with a vigorous driving stroke which more than made up in efficiency what it lost to Tillotson's in style, he sent the punt scudding over the surface at such a rate that they were only fifty yards behind the rowing-boat as it reached the farther boundary of the water.

There was a lake here, Dalziel surmised, which had overflowed its banks and joined its waters with those of the stream running parallel to the road more than a quarter of a mile behind them. A small landing-stage, waterlogged by the rise in the level of the lake, led to some steps set into a steep sloping garden which rose to a substantial nineteenth-century house in a state of dilapidation not wholly explained even by three days of incessant rain. It was the house he had noticed earlier from the bridge to nowhere and, though close to it lost most of its fairy-tale-castle quality, it still had a solid, fortified look about it.

The other party had disappeared into the house by the time the punt reached the landing-stage and Dalziel did not stand upon ceremony but, using Tillotson's head as a support, he stepped ashore, strode grimly up the garden steps and entered the house without waiting for an invitation. Now he paused, not because of any late revivings of social courtesy but because it was far from clear to him where everyone had disappeared to.

A large entrance hall stretched before him. What might have been elegant wood-panelling had been ruined by the application everywhere of dark brown paint. It was to Dalziel like a nightmarish blow-up of the narrow lobby of his grandmother's house which family loyalties had required must be visited every Sunday although the Presbyterian conscience forbade that anyone should gain pleasure from such a visit. Momentarily he felt like Alice, reduced in scale to a position of total vulnerability.

A door opened. Instead of a monstrous grandmother, Mrs Fielding emerged and made for the staircase.

Dalziel coughed and she stopped.

'Yes?' she said. 'Oh, it's you. There's the telephone. Help yourself.'

She turned to go but Dalziel detained her with another thunderous cough.

'I'd like to dry my things,' he said. 'Get changed. A hot bath would be welcome too.'

She looked at him with puzzled, rather disdainful eyes.

'Look, we're all wet, but this isn't a hotel,' she said. 'You might find a towel in the kitchen.'

Again she turned.

'Hold on,' said Dalziel.

She ignored him and started climbing the stairs.

'Look!' he bellowed after her, losing his patience. 'I've been punched on the nose by your daughter, I've been stranded by your boatman, and I've had my case dumped in the water by that long streak of nowt you left in charge of the punt!'

She stopped four stairs up. He couldn't see her face in the shadows, but he got the impression that she was smiling.

'It was your choice to accept the lift,' she said reasonably.

'Lady,' he answered, 'I didn't know what I was doing. But you did. You must have known I'd have had more chance of getting here safely if I'd set out to walk across the blasted water.'

Now she laughed out loud.

'We're warned about turning away angels unawares,' she said. 'I see how easy it could be. Come along, Mr…?'

'Dalziel,' said Dalziel and followed her upstairs, his case leaving a trail of drips which ran parallel to that cast by his sodden coat.

On the landing she paused uncertainly.

'We're a bit crowded at the moment,' she explained. 'It's a big house, but half the bedrooms haven't been used for years. I wonder.. .'

She opened a door and went in. The room was in darkness but a couple of moments later she opened wide the curtains and beckoned Dalziel in from the threshold.

'You're not superstitious, are you?' she asked. 'This was my husband's room. Well, it's got to be used again, I suppose. You don't mind?'

The last question might have been ironical as Dalziel had already opened his suitcase and begun to empty its damp contents on to the bed.

'Not at all,' he said. 'Very kind.'

'There's a bathroom through that door. It communicates with my room, so if it's locked, it'll be because I'm in there.'

'Thanks,' he said, starting to remove his coat. But she did not leave immediately.

'You said something about being punched on the nose,' she prompted.

'It was nothing,' he said generously. 'A misunderstanding.'

'I see. Well, our children seem determined to be misunderstood, and usually it's someone else who gets hurt. Don't you agree, Mr Dalziel?'