'No, no. Pertinent. Words are his scene. You should learn to give credit, Bertie boy. Bend a little.'
'You're making a film, Mr Uniff?' said Dalziel.
'That's right. Don't be surprised. I mean, do I look like a tycoon? I mean, do any of us look like tycoons? Bertie there, perhaps. Yeah, Bertie's got some of the distinguishing marks of your lesser duck-billed tycoon. No, we've all been sweet-talked into this business in the hope and expectation of much bread, by which, verily, man might not live alone, but without which, verily, he surely can't live with anyone else.'
'We agreed, no shop,' said Bonnie warningly.
'Did we? You need to watch yourself in this house, Mr Dalziel. You can be lying in bed minding your own business and wham! you find you've made an agreement!'
He subsided behind his apple crumble and the rest of the meal passed in meteorological chitter-chatter, though Dalziel had to field a couple of invitations to reveal his own line of business. Never before could he recall himself concealing his profession – except for professional reasons. There were none that he could formulate, so why was he doing something which, when admitted by his colleagues, had always filled him with contempt?
After dinner they drank coffee whose bitterness resisted the addition of four teaspoons of sugar. The dinner dishes were then piled on a trolley to be wheeled down to the new kitchen where a huge dishwasher was the one positive benefit so far derived from the restaurant scheme.
'You know, it's stopped raining, for the moment at least,' said Bonnie, looking out of the window. 'I think I'll stroll out and post some letters. Anyone fancy a walk?'
'I'd like some fresh air,' said Tillotson, but Bonnie shook her head.
'Sorry, but I told Herrie you'd go up and read to him. There's nothing wrong with his eyesight,' she explained to Dalziel, 'but there are many things he prefers to hear read aloud. And Charley's got the best voice for it.'
'It's those upper class vowels,' said Bertie. 'Basically the old man's a simple snob.'
'Hush. So you run along, Charley, Mr Dalziel what about you?'
'It'd be a pleasure,' said Dalziel. He thought he saw an ironic smile flicker across Mavis's face, but it was hard to be sure.
'Right. Gum-boots and wet kit, I think. Your stuff should all be dry now. I'll see you outside in five minutes.'
The rain had indeed stopped, but the atmosphere was damp to the point of saturation. What light there was seemed to glint dully from the surface of the water rather than come from above. There was at first an illusory silence which after a while fragmented into a myriad soft lapping, splashing, dripping noises and the gentle night wind was like a damp breath on Dalziel's face.
They walked without speaking along what he took to be the main drive of the house. It ran downhill but only reached the level of the floods at the gateway to the road and the light from Bonnie's torch showed that the water though extensive was easily fordable here. They splashed through it, turned away from the lake, and were soon back on dry tarmac as the road began to climb.
'It's a pity the drive didn't dip lower,' said Bonnie. 'It would have been rather nice to be quite cut off.'
'Why's that?' asked Dalziel.
'I don't know. Isolation. An interlude before the outside pressures started up again. As it is, well, everything's been going on at the same time. Business troubles, legalities, funeral arrangements.'
'It can't have been easy,' said Dalziel.
'No. You've heard how my husband died, have you, Mr Dalziel?'
Dalziel's professional instinct was to say no and get it from her own lips, but he had no difficulty in subjugating it.
'Yes,' he answered. 'Terrible.'
'Yes. And it couldn't have happened at a worse time.'
'Money?' asked Dalziel.
'That's right.' For a moment she sounded like Uniff in her inflection. 'We were scraping the bottom of the barrel. Conrad – my husband – was more enthusiastic than expert in business matters. He spent ten years in the Army – REME, nothing heroic – and came out convinced his gratuity was going to be the basis of a financial empire.
Well, I always added fifty per cent on to his estimate of the cost of anything, but I think he must have started taking that into account! Anyway, we were well short and the contractor stopped work. That's why Conrad was trying the do-it-yourself thing.'
'Tragic,' said Dalziel. He felt he was doing well. Single words, the odd phrase here and there, a man could make quite a good impression if he watched his tongue. But when you hadn't cared to watch it for twenty years, it needed maximum alertness.
'Yes, it was tragic, I suppose. The inquest helped in an odd way. It made things official, gave us a bit of red tape to get tangled up with. In the end we were glad to get Conrad out of the house. Well, you saw yourself what a fetch we got up to. But I'm sorry. I must be boring you to tears. Your holiday's gone wrong enough without having other people's woes to contend with!'
'No, I'm interested,' said Dalziel. 'Well, you'll be all right now, are you? There must be some insurance.'
Everyone had insurance in Yorkshire. Even Dalziel had insurance though he did not know why as there was no sod living he particularly wanted to benefit from his death.
'Conrad wasn't a very provident man,' said Bonnie. 'The only insurance he had was the cover the finance company insisted he should take out when he got the loan to start the business moving. Naturally it would be fine to have that paid off, it's a lot of money. But the insurance company doesn't seem to be in a hurry to settle up.'
'Oh?' said Dalziel. His use of the monosyllable filled him with pride.
'Yes. I don't know what the trouble is. It's straight-forward enough, I should have thought. But they sent this man round. He asked a lot of questions. The police asked a lot of questions. Everyone asked a lot of questions. And the only question I wanted to ask was, how the hell are we going to be able to open a week on Saturday?'
You'll be bloody lucky! was the brutal answer that rose in Dalziel's mind but he held it back and said instead, 'You'll have to postpone, that's all.'
'Not quite,' said the woman. They had reached a railway bridge the arch of which curved so sharply it was almost a humpback. Bonnie stopped and leaned on the parapet staring down the line which, as far as the darkness permitted Dalziel to see, ran arrow-straight through a deep cutting. Dalziel presumed that there must have been a natural valley there, perhaps containing a stream diverted by the engineers, for even his untutored eye could tell that the stone work they leaned against predated the railway age. Bonnie spoke into the dark hollow.
'Conrad at his high moments was pretty much of an optimist. We decided on a provisional opening date when we started the scheme, just something to aim at. When I went through his desk after the accident, I discovered what I might have guessed. Nothing was provisional to Conrad. He'd been taking advance bookings for the opening night!'
'Had he? How many?'
'One hundred and twenty. Our full capacity.'
'Jesus wept!' said Dalziel. 'But you must have known he was doing it! I mean, advertising, that kind of thing?'
'Oh, that I would have noticed, but Conrad didn't work that way. No, he told all his cronies in the local pubs and down at the Conservative Club in Orburn. People approached him, I suppose. I don't mean for a couple of tickets for a quiet anniversary dinner. Oh no. This is a togetherness thing, haunch to haunch on a hard bench. These are group bookings. A dozen from the Bowls Club, twenty Young Wives looking for Fellowship, forty Rotarians, six Pigeon Fanciers, the Townswomen's Guild. That's the way it went. None of them bodies that any of the rest of us were likely to have dealings with. I think Conrad realized he'd gone too far when the contractor refused to go on with the work. Hence his eagerness to do it himself. He just didn't dare tell us about the bookings.'
'It's a bad way to start,' agreed Dalziel. 'But not disastrous. Nice apology, a bit of creeping, special circumstances and all that, money back, first refusal next time.'
She turned round, leaned backwards against the parapet, and laughed. It was a good laugh, very infectious, so that Dalziel found himself beginning to smile even though his detective's mind had hopped ahead to the cause of the laughter.
'There's no money to give back,' he said.
