Deadheads
‘Humour and topicality along a cold enigmatic trail of murder’ ObserverLife is on the up for Patrick Aldermann: his Great Aunt Florence has collapsed into her rose bed leaving him Rosemont House with its splendid gardens.But when his boss, ‘Dandy’ Dick Elgood, suggests to Peter Pascoe that Aldermann is a murderer – then later retracts the accusation – the detective inspector is left with a thorny problem.Not only have the police already dug up some interesting information about Aldermann’s beautiful wife; it also appears that his rapid promotion has been helped by the convenient deaths of some of his colleagues…
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REGINALD HILL
DEADHEADS
A Dalziel and Pascoe novel
Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1983
Copyright © Reginald Hill 1983
Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source: 9780586072523
Ebook Edition © July 2015 ISBN: 9780007370290 Version 2015-06-22
âThere is a splendid kind of indolence, where a man, having taken an aversion to the wearisomeness of a business which properly belongs to him, neglects not, however, to employ his thoughts, when they are vacant from what they ought more chiefly to be about, in other matters not entirely unprofitable to life, the exercise of which he finds he can follow with more abundant ease and satisfaction.â
DEFOE: The Life and Adventures ofMr Duncan Campbell
âI shall never be friends again with roses.â
SWINBURNE: The Triumph of Time
Table of Contents
Or, quick effluvia darting through the brain, Die of a rose in aromatic pain.
POPE: Essay on Man
(Hybrid tea, coral and salmon, sweetly scented, excellent in the garden, susceptible to black spot.)
Mrs Florence Aldermann was distressed by the evidence of neglect all around her. Old Caldicott and his gangling son, Dick, had been surly ever since she had made it clear last autumn that far from being willing to admit the latterâs insolent, nose-picking fifteen-year-old to the payroll, she was contemplating charging his elders for the barrowloads of fruit he had stolen from the orchard. Scrumping, old Caldicott had said. Theft, she had replied, and as she knew from her connections with the Bench that young Brent Caldicott had made several appearances in juvenile court already, she was not to be disputed with.
After that the youth had disappeared, but his father and grandfather had clearly been nursing a grievance ever since. Her recent indisposition had given them their chance.
There would have to be words. More than words. If she could find somebody to take their place, heads would roll. The thought fathered the deed.
Angrily seizing a Mme Louis Laperrière in her gloved hand, grasping it firmly to prevent unsightly spillage, she picked her spot, applied the razor-edged knife expertly, and with a single smooth slice removed the sadly drooping head which she dropped into a plastic bucket.
Only then did she become aware that she was being watched.
Behind the mazy frame of sweet peas which divided the main rose-garden from the long lawn running down to the orchard (and which, she noted angrily, had been allowed to form seed-pods that, unremoved, would pre-empt flower growth) lurked a slight figure completely still.
âPatrick!â called Mrs Aldermann sharply. âCome here!â
Slowly the boy emerged.
Aged about eleven, small still for his age, he had large brown eyes in a pale oval face which was almost oriental in its lack of expression. Mrs Aldermann regarded him with distaste. It wasnât just that he belonged to the same ghastly subspecies as Brent Caldicott, though that would have been enough. But in addition she could never look upon Patrick without thinking of his origins, and then the anger came welling up. It took little to uncap her vast pool of wrath, and in particular any display of human weakness brought it fountaining forth.
She had been angry eleven years earlier when her niece, Penelope, had announced that she was pregnant. She had been angrier when the feckless girl had refused to name the father, and angriest of all when she had calmly announced her intention of bringing up the child single-handed. Even Penelopeâs feckless mother, Florence Aldermannâs younger sister, had had the wit to get a wedding ring from the object of her particular folly, George Highsmith, carpet salesman, though neither this nor the fact that they were both dead prevented Mrs Aldermann from still feeling angry with them. No, death was no barrier to anger; indeed it could be a cause of it. She still felt furious at her own husbandâs display of weakness in dying of a coronary thrombosis, with so much still to do, so much still to expiate, in these very gardens two years before.
