An April Shroud. Reginald HillЧитать онлайн книгу.
boater. Their only protection against the probable resumption of the rain consisted of two umbrellas and a parasol, carried at the slope by the men, except for the punter whose contribution to the solemnity of the occasion and his own dryness was a black plastic mackintosh under which he seemed to be dressed for cricket. Swimming would have been a sport more suitable, thought Dalziel, watching his efforts at propulsion. Basically, he had a not inelegant style, tossing the pole high and sliding it into the water with a casual flick of strong, supple wrists. The trouble was, deduced Dalziel, that the pole was then plunged two or three feet into sodden earth and his efforts to drag it out acted as a brake, so that the punt moved even more jerkily than the coffin.
The Indian Maid spotted Dalziel first and drew the attention of the others to him. The fat youth said something and they all laughed except the young boy. Dalziel was ready to admit that the sight of a portly gent apparently about to walk in to four feet of water was faintly comic, but none the less laughter in these circumstances struck him as a breach of decorum.
The rowing-boat was now out of sight and Dalziel watched the punt till it too disappeared. Then he walked back over the bridge and tested the depth of the water on the road. It was just within the limits of safety and he edged the car through it with great caution.
The road now rose again, following the skirts of the relatively high ground to his right which acted as a block to the flooded stream. From the crest of this small slope he could see for quite a way. The road dipped once more and about a hundred yards ahead it was flooded for a distance of thirty or forty feet. But presumably thereafter it rose steadily away from flood level, for just on the other side of the water stood a hearse and two funeral cars. The oarsman was in the water, pushing the coffin ashore where the top-hatted undertaker and his assistants were trying to grapple with it without getting their feet wet.
Dalziel halted and once more settled down to watch. Finally all was finished, the punt party reached shore safely, dividing themselves among the two cars, in the first of which the woman and the old man had presumably been seated all along, and the sad procession drove slowly away, leaving only the oarsman seated on the bows of his boat rolling a well-earned cigarette.
When the cortège was out of sight, Dalziel started his car once more and rolled gently down to the trough below, humming ‘One More River To Cross’. There was nothing like the sight of someone else’s funeral for making life look a little brighter.
Half-way through the trough, he suddenly realized this was much deeper than he had anticipated. At the same moment the engine coughed once and died. Dalziel tried one turn of the starter, then switched off.
Opening the window, he addressed the uninterested oarsman with all the charm and diplomacy he could muster.
‘Hey, you!’ he shouted. ‘Come and give us a push.’
The old boatman looked at him impassively for a moment before he slowly rose and approached. He was wearing gum-boots which came up to his knees but even so the water lapped perilously close to their tops.
When he reached the open window he stopped and looked at Dalziel enquiringly.
‘Yes?’ he said.
‘Don’t just stand there,’ said Dalziel. ‘Give us a push.’
‘I hadn’t come to push,’ said the man. ‘I’ve come to negotiate.’
He proved a hard bargainer, totally uninterested in payment by results. It wasn’t till he had folded the pound note Dalziel gave him into a one-inch square and thrust it deep into some safe apparently subcutaneous place that he began to push. The effort was in vain. Finally Dalziel dragged his own scene-of-crime gum-boots out of the chaos in the back of the car and joined him in the water. Slowly the car edged forward but once it reached the upslope its weight combined with the water resistance proved too much.
‘Sod it,’ said Dalziel.
They sat together on the rowing-boat and smoked. Dalziel had already had the one post-breakfast cigarette he allowed himself nowadays, but he felt the situation was special.
‘They’ll be coming back soon?’ he asked between puffs.
‘Half an hour,’ said the boatman. ‘Not long to put a man in the earth.’
‘Good,’ said Dalziel. ‘I’ll beg a lift from the undertaker. Who’re they burying?’
‘Mr Fielding,’ said the boatman.
‘Who’s he?’
‘Mrs Fielding’s husband,’ was the unhelpful reply.
‘Mrs Fielding was in the boat with you?’
Dalziel reached into his pocket, produced the emergency half-bottle he always carried with him in the car, took a long draught and offered it to his companion.
‘Ta,’ he said, and drank.
‘You didn’t make that in your garden shed,’ he added when he’d finished.
‘No. Are you Mrs Fielding’s …?’
He let the question hang.
‘I work up at the house. Most things that need done and can’t be done by lying around talking, I do.’
‘I see. Not a bad job if you play your cards right,’ said Dalziel with a knowing smirk. ‘Have another drink. That was Mrs Fielding’s family, was it?’
Why he should have been interested in anything but getting his car out of the flood and back into working order, he did not know. But time had to be passed and the habit of professional curiosity was as hard to change as the habits of smoking or drinking or taking three helpings of potatoes and steamed pudding.
‘Most on ’em. The old man’s her dad-in-law. Then there’s the three children.’
‘Which were they?’ interrupted Dalziel.
‘The two lads, Bertie, that’s the older one, him with the gut. Then there’s Nigel, the boy. And their sister, Louisa.’
‘The thin girl?’
‘You’ve got bloody good eyes, mister,’ said the man, taking another drink. ‘Must be this stuff.’
‘What about the others?’
‘Friends. Visitors,’ he grunted.
‘For the funeral?’
‘Oh no. They were here when he snuffed it. Not that it made much difference to ’em, mark you. Not to any on ’em. No. They just carried on.’
‘Oh, aye?’ said Dalziel, thinking that the trio he had observed in the Lady Hamilton the previous night had hardly comported themselves like grief-stricken mourners.
‘What made you take to the water?’ he asked. ‘Couldn’t the funeral cars get round to the house?’
‘It’d be a long way round. They checked first thing this morning after last night’s rain. Couldn’t afford the time. They’ve a lot of work on in this wet weather. So it was either the boats or wait. And they wanted shot of the coffin quick, you see.’
‘Well, I suppose it’s a bit deadly having it lying around the house,’ said Dalziel charitably.
‘Oh yes. Specially when it’s on the billiard table,’ said the other.
There was no answer to this and they finished their cigarettes in silence.
‘What did he die of, anyway?’ asked Dalziel, growing tired of the unrelenting lap of water.
‘Some say his heart stopped,’ said the boatman. ‘And some say he was short of breath.’
With difficulty Dalziel restrained himself from bellowing don’t you get funny with me!
‘What do you say?’ he asked instead.
‘Me? What should I know about it?’
He relapsed