An April Shroud
Superintendent Dalziel falls for the recently bereaved Mrs Fielding’s ample charms, and has to be rescued from a litter of fresh corpses by Inspector Pascoe.Superintendent Andy Dalziel’s holiday runs into trouble when he gets marooned by flood water. Rescued and taken to nearby Lake House, he discovers all is not well: the owner has just died tragically and the family fortunes are in decline. He also finds himself drawn to attractive widow, Bonnie Fielding.But several more deaths are to follow. And by the time Pascoe gets involved, it looks like the normally hard-headed Dalziel might have compromised himself beyond redemption.
Читать An April Shroud онлайн беплатно
REGINALD HILL
AN APRIL SHROUD
A Dalziel and Pascoe novel
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authorâs imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF
Previously published in paperback by HarperCollinsPublishers in 1993 and by Grafton in 1987
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1975
Copyright © Reginald Hill 1975
Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
Source ISBN 9780586072615
Ebook Edition © July 2015 ISBN 9780007370276 Version 2015-06-18
Contents
⦠the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all
And hides the green hill in an April shroud
JOHN KEATS
Deâil and Dalziel begin with ane letter
The deâilâs nae guid and Dalzielâs nae better.
Old Galloway Saying
No one knew how it came about that Dalziel was making a speech. Pascoe had with great reluctance let himself be persuaded into a church wedding, partly by the argument sentimental (Mumâs looking forward to it), partly by the argument economic (Dadâs paying for it), but mainly by the suspicion, hotly denied but well supported by circumstantial evidence, that Ellie herself wanted it.
But they had been agreed about the reception. A pint and a pie, insisted Pascoe. A glass of sherry and a sausage on a stick, Ellie translated to her mother. In the event, they were drinking champagne and eating creamed chicken canapés, but at least they were on their feet, able to mingle freely, and no one was going to start reading telegrams and making speeches. Especially not Detective Superintendent Andrew Dalziel.
âI reckon I know Sergeant Pascoe, Inspector Pascoe, Peter, as well as anybody,â proclaimed Dalziel.
âIt canât be the drink,â murmured Pascoe. âHe never gets drunk. Not so youâd notice.â
âThatâs on scotch. Dad says heâs sunk two bottles of Champagne so far,â said Ellie.
âHeâs counting, is he?â
âNo! He just noticed, mainly because merry Andrew there keeps calling it perry. Which hurts when youâve paid for genuine non-vintage Champers.â
They giggled together and drew some reproving glances from a group of elderly relations who clearly believed that Dalzielâs speech was the first reassuringly normal thing at a wedding where the bride had not worn white and there was no sit-down meal at the reception. If you do it standing up, it doesnât count was a maxim which could carry a decent body through nearly all of lifeâs tribulations.
âHeâs a good policeman,â Dalziel assured the elderly relatives. âHeâll go far. Deserves every success. Iâve encouraged him from the start. And I donât flatter myself when I say Iâve managed to give him a bit of a leg-up â¦â
He paused and mopped his brow with a huge khaki handkerchief. The bald patch, uncompromisingly visible through the grey stubble of his hair, shone with sweat. He smiled now as he lumbered towards a dirty wedding joke, and with his shining face, broad smile, broader paunch, and the Champagne glass held perpetually at the ready a foot from his lips, he should have been a figure of Pickwickian jollity. Instead, he looked as if he had just kicked the door down and was demanding that no one moved as he had the place surrounded.
â⦠a bit of a leg-up in his career,â he resumed. âBut heâll have to manage by himself tonight.â
âOh Jesus,â breathed Pascoe.
