An April Shroud

Any corpse comes floating this way, I’ll say Hello sailor, and goodbye, avowed Dalziel and as an act of both symbol and necessity he descended to the water-lapped limit of the bridge, unzipped his flies and began to pee in the flood.

He had just finished when a noise made him look up. It was a long, creaking noise followed by a gentle splash. It came again from behind a wedge-shaped copse of beeches rising stoically from the water about fifty yards to his left. The mist seemed particularly thick here and he strained his eyes in an effort to penetrate the grey barrier. Then through the haze appeared a shape. The sound sequence was heard once more. And into full view glided a rowing-boat. Hastily Dalziel began to fasten his flies.

The boat pulled by him, the oarsman taking long, leisurely strokes. He had the look of an old countryman, weathered and fit, anything between fifty and a hundred but able to row for ever. In the bows, like a reverse figure-head, sat another old man of more determinate age, about seventy, with a profile fit for a Roman coin. But it wasn’t either of the men who held Dalziel’s eye.

Sitting on the thwart bench was a woman. She was clad all in black, even to a black veil over her face. Her head did not move as she passed, but Dalziel had a feeling that the eyes moved and saw him from behind the veil. So riveting was the tableau in the boat that Dalziel did not instantly take in the most macabre detail of all.

The rowing-boat was towing something behind it, a small flat-bottomed boat.

On it was a coffin.

It was unmistakably a coffin. The brass handles gleamed against the dark mahogany sides and three wreaths splashed white and green along the lid. Even the oarsman’s evident expertise could not keep the tow-rope perfectly taut and this strange piece of freight proceeded jerkily, its momentum almost bringing it up to the stern of the rowing-boat at the end of each stroke, as if it were in pursuit. But the woman never turned and Dalziel stood perfectly still, his attitude compounded of astonishment and the conventional deference of one who meets a cortège in the street.

But now a new sound came from behind the copse. Splashes again, but not the soft splashes of expertly wielded oars, and commingled with these were voices chattering and the occasional shout.

Another craft emerged through the mist but if the first could have been created by Lord Tennyson this one owed more to Jerome K. Jerome.

It was a large punt, the kind once used in duck-shooting with a stove-pipe gun mounted in the bows, rusty through neglect and non-use but still menacing for all that. Did they neglect the licence also? wondered Dalziel.

There were six people in the punt, which was perilously low in the water. The gunwale had no more than an inch of clearance at best, and water slopped over the sides with each thrust of the pole by the punter whom Dalziel recognized instantly as his companion in assault the previous evening. The breastless girl was seated in the punt alongside the fat young man, who still wore the same complacent expression. Opposite him was a boy of about sixteen, slim and pensive but with sufficient of the fat youth’s features to look as if he had just got out of him. And by the boy’s side was a young woman whose straight jet black hair and impassive, high-cheekboned face made Dalziel think of an Indian Maid (Pocahontas in the Board School history book rather than Little Red Wing in the rugby ballad, his only source-texts).

Finally, in the bows, resting nonchalantly against the gun, was a dark, ugly-looking man probably in his twenties, though it was difficult for Dalziel to be certain as the man’s black hair seemed to be in a state of insurrection and only the high ground of his nose and the valley of his eyes were putting up any real show of resistance.

Despite the impious exchange of views taking place between the girl and the youth with the pole, it was clear that this vessel was in convoy with the rowing-boat. The nearest any of them got to full mourning was the black turtle-neck sweater worn by the boy, but they had all made an effort. The fat youth wore a black armband around the sleeve of his tweed jacket, the hairy man had a black rosette pinned to his University of Love shirt, the Indian Maid wore a white blouse and slacks but looked as if she had been specially carved for a funeral, and the breastless girl had tied a length of black crape round her straw 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?’