Death of a Fool

Chapter XIII The Swords Go In

“He’s a natural killer,” Alleyn said. “This is the first time, as far as we know, that it’s happened since he left off being a professional. If it is the first time it’s because until last Wednesday nobody had happened to annoy him in just the way that gingers up his homicidal reflexes.”

“Yes, but fancy!” Dulcie said, coming in with a steaming grog tray. “He had such a good war record. You know he came down in a parachute and killed quantities of Germans with his bare hands all at once and escaped and got decorated.”

“Yes,” Alleyn said drily, “he’s had lots of practice. He told us about that. That was the last time.”

“D’you meantersay,” Dame Alice asked, handing Alleyn a bottle of rum and a corkscrew, “that he killed Will’m Andersen out of temper and nothin’ else?”

“Out of an accumulation of spleen and frustrated ambition and on a snap assessment of the main chance.”

“Draw that cork and begin at the beginnin’.”

“Aunt Akky, shouldn’t you have a rest —”

“No.”

Alleyn drew the cork. Dame Alice poured rum and boiling water into a saucepan and began to grind up nutmeg. “Slice the lemons,” she ordered Fox.

Dr. Otterly said, “Frustrated ambition because of Copse Forge and the filling station?”

“That’s it.”

“Otters, don’t interrupt.”

“I daresay,” Alleyn said, “he’d thought often enough that if he could hand the old type the big chop, and get by, he’d give it a go. The boys were in favour of his scheme, remember, and he wanted money very badly.”

“But he didn’t plan this thing?” Dr. Otterly interjected and added, “Sorry, Dame Alice.”

“No, no. He only planned the substitution of Mrs. Bünz as ‘Crack’ and she gave him, she now tells us, thirty pounds for the job and bought a car from him into the bargain. He’d taken charge of ‘Crack’ and left the thing in the back of her car. She actually crept out when the pub was bedded down for the night and put it on to see if she could support the weight. They planned the whole thing very carefully. What happened was this: at the end of his girl-chase he went offstage and put Mrs. Bünz into ‘Crack’s’ harness. She went on for the triple sword-dance and was meant to come off in time for him to change back before the finale. La Belle Bünz, however, hell-bent on picking up a luscious morsel of folksy dialogue, edged up as close to the dolmen as she could get. She thought she was quite safe. The tar-daubed skirts of the Hobby completely hid her. Or almost completely.”

“Completely. No almost about it,” Dame Alice said. “I couldn’t see her feet.”

“No. But you would have seen them if you’d lain down in a shallow depression in the ground a few inches away from her. As the Guiser did.”

“Hold the pot over the fire for a bit, one of you. Go on.”

“The Guiser, from his worm’s viewpoint, recognized her. There she was, looming over him, with ‘Crack’s’ carcass probably covering the groove where he lay and her rubber overshoes and hairy skirts showing every time she moved. He reached up and grabbed her. She screamed at the top of her voice and you all thought it was Begg trying to neigh. The Guiser was a very small man and a very strong one. He pinioned her arms to her body, kept his head down and ran her off.”

“That was when Ralph pinched Ernie’s sword?” Dr. Otterly ventured.

“That’s it. Once offstage, while he was still, as it were, tented up with her, the Guiser hauled her out of ‘Crack’s’ harness. He was gibbering with temper. As soon as he was free, a matter of seconds, he turned on Begg, who, of course, was waiting there for her. The Guiser went for Begg like a fury. It was over in a flash. Mrs. Bünz saw Begg hit him across the throat. It’s a well-known blow in unarmed combat, and it’s deadly. She also saw Ernie come charging offstage without his whiffler and in a roaring rage himself. Then she bolted.

“What happened after that, Ernie demonstrated for us to-night. He saw his god fell the Guiser. Ernie was in a typical epileptic’s rage and, as usual, the focal point of his rage was his father — the Old Man, who had killed his dog, frustrated his god’s plans and snatched the role of Fool away from Ernie himself at the last moment. He was additionally inflamed by the loss of his sword.

“But the slasher was there. He’d sharpened it and brought it up himself and he grabbed it as soon as he saw it.

“He said to-night that he was under orders and I’m sure he was. Begg saw a quick way out. He said something like this: ‘He tried to kill me. Get him, Corp!’ And Ernie, his mind seething with a welter of emotions and superstitions, did what he’d done to the aggressive gander earlier that day.”

“Gracious! Aunt Akky, fancy! Ernie!”

“Very nasty,” said Mr. Fox, who was holding the saucepan of punch over the drawing-room fire.

“A few moments later, Ralph Stayne came out with Ernie’s whiffler. He found Ernie and he found ‘Crack,’ squatting there, he says, like a great broody hen. Begg was hiding the decapitated Guiser with the only shield available — ‘Crack.’

“He told Stayne that Ernie was upset and he’d better leave him alone. Stayne returned the whiffler and went on round the wall to the O.P. entrance.

“Begg knew that if the body was found where it lay Stayne would remember how he saw him squatting there. He did the only thing possible. He sent Ernie back to the arena, threw the slasher on the fire and overturned the drum of tar to obliterate any traces of blood. It caught fire. Then he hitched ‘Crack’s’ harness over his own shoulders and returned to the arena. He carried the body in his arms and held the head by the strings of its bag-like mask, both ends of which became bloodstained. All this under cover of the great canvas body.

“At this time the final dance was in progress and the Five Sons were between their audience and the dolmen. ‘Crack’ was therefore masked by the stone and the dancers. Not that he needed any masking. He dropped the body — laid it, like an egg, in the depression behind the dolmen. This accounts for the state it was in when the Andersens found it. Begg leapt with suspicious alacrity at my suggestion that he might have tripped over it or knocked it with the edge of ‘Crack’s’ harness.”

“Oh, dear, Aunt Akky!”

“He was careful to help with the removal of the body, in order to account for any bloodstains on his clothes. When I told him we would search his clothes for bloodstains, he made his only mistake. His vanity tripped him up. He told us the story of his ferocious exploit in Germany and how, if a man was killed as the Guiser was supposed to have been killed, his assailant would be covered in blood. Of course we knew that, but the story told us that Begg had once been involved in unarmed combat with an old peasant and that he had been saved by one of his own men. A hedge-slasher had been involved in that story, too.”

Alleyn glanced at Dame Alice and Dulcie. “Is this altogether too beastly for you?” he asked.

“Absolutely ghastly,” Dulcie said. “Still,” she added in a hurry, “I’d rather know.”

“Don’t be ’ffected, Dulcie. ’Course you would. So’d I. Go on,” Dame Alice ordered.

“There’s not much more to tell. Begg hadn’t time to deliberate, but he hoped, of course, that with all those swords about it would be concluded that the thing was done while the Guiser lay behind the dolmen. He and Dr. Otterly were the only two performers who would be at once ruled out if this theory were accepted. He’s completely callous. I don’t suppose he minded much who might be accused, though he must have known that the only two who would really look likely would be Ernie, with the sharp sword, and Ralph Stayne, who pinched it and made great play slashing it round.”

“But he stuck up for Ernie,” Dr. Otterly said. “All through. Didn’t he?”

Fox sighed heavily. Dame Alice pointed to a magnificent silver punch bowl that was blackening in the smoke on the hearth. He poured the fragrant contents of the saucepan into it and placed it before her.

Alleyn said, “Begg wanted above all things to prevent us finding out about Ernie and the slasher. Once we had an inkling that the Guiser was killed offstage his improvised plan would go to pot. We would know that he was offstage and must have been present. He would be able, of course, to say that Ernie killed the Guiser and that he himself, wearing ‘Crack’s’ harness, was powerless to stop him. But there was no knowing how Ernie would behave: Ernie filled with zeal and believing he had saved his god and wiped out that father-figure who so persistently reappeared, always to Begg’s and Ernie’s undoing. Moreover, there was Mrs. Bünz, who had seen Begg strike his blow, though she didn’t realize he had struck to kill. He fixed Mrs. Bünz by telling her that we suspected her and that there was a lot of feeling against her as a German. Now he’s been arrested, she’s come across with a full statement and will give evidence.”

“What’ll happen?” Dame Alice asked, beginning to ladle out her punch.

“Oh,” Alleyn said, “we’ve a very groggy case, you know. We’ve only got the undeniable fact, based on medical evidence, that he was dead before Ernie struck. Moreover, in spite of Ernie, there may, with luck, be evidence of the actual injury.”

“Larynx,” Dr. Otterly said.

“Exactly.”

“What,” Dr. Otterly asked, “will he plead?

“His counsel may plump for self-defence: the Guiser went for him and his old unarmed-combat training took over. He defended himself instinctively.”

“Mightn’t it be true?”

“The Guiser,” Alleyn said, “was a very small and very old man. But, as far as that goes, I think Begg’s training did re-assert itself. Tickle a dog’s ribs and it scratches itself. There’s Begg’s temperament, make-up and experience. There are his present financial doldrums; there are his prospects if he can start his petrol station. There’s the Guiser, standing in his path. The Guiser comes at him like an old fury. Up goes the arm, in goes the edge of the hand. It was unpremeditated, but in my opinion he hit to kill.”

“Will he get off?” Dr. Otterly asked.

“How the bloody hell should I know!” Alleyn said with some violence. “Sorry, Dame Alice.”

“Have some punch,” said Dame Alice. She looked up at him out of her watery old eyes. “You’re an odd sort of feller,” she remarked. “Anybody’d think you were squeamish.”

Ralph took Camilla to call on his great-aunt.

“We’ll have to face it sooner or later,” he said, “and so will she.”

“I can’t pretend I’m looking forward to it.”

“Darling, she’ll adore you. In two minutes she’ll adore you.”

“Come off it, my sweet.”

Ralph beamed upon his love and untied the string that lecured the wrought-iron gates.

“Those geese!” Camilla said.

They were waiting in a solid phalanx.

“I’ll protect you. They know me.”

“And the two bulls on the skyline. The not very distant skyline.”

“Dear old boys, I assure you. Come on.”

“Up the Campions!” Camilla said. “If not the Andersens.”

“Up, emphatically, the Andersens,” Ralph said and held out his hand.

She went through the gates.

The geese did menacing things with their necks. Ralph shook his stick and they hissed back at him.

“Perhaps, darling, if you hurried and I held them at bay —”

Camilla panted up the drive. Ralph fought a rearguard action. The bulls watched with interest.

Ralph and Camilla stumbled breathless and handfast through the archway and across the courtyard. They mounted the steps. Ralph tugged at the phoney bell. It set up a clangour that caused the geese to scream, wheel and waddle indignantly away.

“That’s done it,” Ralph said and put his arm round Camilla.

They stood with their backs to the door and looked across the courtyard. The snow had gone. Grey and wet were the walls and wet the ground. Beyond the rear archway stood a wintry hill, naked trees and a windy sky.

And in the middle of the courtyard was the dolmen, very black, one heavy stone supported by two others. It looked expectant.

“ ‘Nine-men’s morris is filled up with mud,’ ” Camilla murmured.

“There were nine,” Ralph said. “Counting Mrs. Bünz.”

“Well,” she said under her breath, “that’s the last of the Mardian Morris of the Five Sons, isn’t it? Ralph! No one, not the boys or you or Dr. Otterly can ever want to do it again: ever, ever, ever. Can you? Can you?”

Ralph was saved from answering by Dulcie, who opened the great door behind them.

“How do you do?” Dulcie said to Camilla. “Do come in. Aunt Akky’ll be delighted. She’s been feeling rather flat after all the excitement.” Ralph gently propelled Camilla into the hall. Dulcie shut the door.

“Aunt Akky,” she said, “does so like things to happen. She’s been saying what a long time it seems to next Sword Wednesday.”

The End