Death of a Fool

Chapter V Aftermath

“Has it ever occurred to you,” Alleyn said, “that the progress of a case is rather like a sort of thaw? Look at that landscape.”

He wiped the mist from their carriage window. Sergeants Bailey and Thompson, who had been taking gear from the rack, put on their hats, sat down again and stared out with the air of men to whom all landscapes are alike. Mr. Fox, with slightly raised brows, also contemplated the weakly illuminated and dripping prospect.

“Like icing,” he said, “running off a wedding cake. Not that, I suppose, it ever does.”

“Such are the pitfalls of analogy. All the same, there is an analogy. When you go out on our sort of job everything’s covered with a layer of cagey blamelessness. No sharp outlines anywhere. The job itself sticks up like that partial ruin on the skyline over there, but even the job tends to look different under snow. Blurred.”

Mr. Fox effaced a yawn. “So we wait for the thaw!”

“With luck, Br’er Fox, we produce it. This is our station.”

They alighted on a platform bordered with swept-up heaps of grey slush. The train, which had made an unorthodox halt for them, pulled out at once. They were left with a stillness broken by the drip of melting snow. The outlines of eaves, gutters, rails, leaves, twigs slid copiously into water.

A man in a belted mackintosh, felt hat and gumboots came forward.

“This’ll be the Super,” said Fox.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” said the man.

He was a big chap with a serio-comic face that, when it tried to look grave, only succeeded in achieving an expression of mock solemnity. His name was Yeo Carey and he had a roaring voice.

The ceremonial handshaking completed, Superintendent Carey led the way out of the little station. A car waited, its wheels fitted with a suit of chains.

“Still need them, up to Mardians’,” Carey said when they were all on board. “They’re not thawed out proper thereabouts; though, if she keeps mild this way, they’ll ease off considerably come nightfall.”

“You must have had a nice turn-up with this lot,” Fox said, indicating the job in hand.

“Terrible. Terrible! I was the first to say it was a matter for you gentlemen. We’re not equipped for it and no use pretending we are. First capital crime hereabouts, I do believe, since they burned Betsey Andersen for a witch.”

“What!” Alleyn ejaculated.

“That’s a matter of three hundred years as near as wouldn’t matter and no doubt the woman never deserved it.”

“Did you say ‘Andersen’?”

“Yes, sir, I did. There’ve been Andersens at Copse Forge for quite a spell in South Mardian.”

“I understand,” Fox said sedately, “the old man who was decapitated was called Andersen.”

“So he was, then. He was one of them, was William.”

“I think,” Alleyn said, “we’ll get you to tell us the whole story, Carey. Where are we going?”

“Up to East Mardian, sir. The Chief Constable thought you’d like to be as near as possible to the scene of the crime. They’ve got rooms for you at the Green Man. It’s a case of two rooms for four men, seeing there’s a couple of lodgers there already. But as they might be witnesses, we didn’t reckon to turn them out.”

“Fair enough. Where’s your station, then?”

“Up to Yowford. Matter of two mile. The Chief Constable’s sent you this car with his compliments. I’ve only got a motor-bike at the station. He axed me to say he’d have come hisself but is bedbound with influenza. We’re anxious to help, of course. Every way we can.”

“Everything seems to be laid on like central heating,” Alleyn was careful to observe. He pointed to the building on the skyline that they had seen from the train. “What’s that, up there?”

“Mardian Castle, Mr. Alleyn. Scene of crime.”

“It looks like a ruin.”

“So ’tis, then, in parts. Present residence is on ’tother side of those walls. Now, sir, shall I begin, to the best of my ability, to make my report or shall we wait till we’re stationary in the pub? A matter of a few minutes only and I can then give my full attention to my duty and refer in order to my notes.”

Alleyn agreed that this would be much the best course, particularly as the chains were making a great noise and the driver’s task was evidently an exacting one. They churned along a deep lane, turned a corner and looked down on South Mardian: squat, unpicturesque, unremarkable and as small as a village could be. As they approached, Alleyn saw that, apart from its church and parsonage, it contained only one building that was not a cottage. This was a minute shop. Beggs for Everything was painted vain-gloriously in faded blue letters across the front. They drove past the gateway to Mardian Castle. A police constable with his motor-bicycle nearby stood in front of it.

“Guarding,” explained Carey, “against sight-seers,” and he waved his arm at the barren landscape.

As they approached the group of trees at the far end of the village, Carey pointed it out. “The Copse,” he said, “and a parcel further on behind it, Copse Forge, where the deceased is assembled, Mr. Alleyn, in a lean-to shed, it being his own property.”

“I see.”

“We turn right, however, which I will now do, to the hamlet of East Mardian. There, sir, is your pub, ahead and on the right.”

As they drove up, Alleyn glanced at the sign, a pleasant affair painted with a foliated green face.

“That’s an old one, isn’t it?” he said. “Although it looks as if it’s been rather cleverly touched up.”

“So it has, then. By a lady at present resident in the pub by the name of Buns.”

“Mrs. Buns, the baker’s wife,” Alleyn murmured involuntarily.

“No, sir. Foreign. And requiring, by all ’counts, to be looked into.”

“Dear me!” said Alleyn mildly.

They went into the pub leaving Bailey and Thompson to deal with their luggage. Superintendent Carey had arranged for a small room behind the private bar to be put at their disposal. “Used to be the missus’s parlour,” he explained, “but she’s no further use for it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Dead these five years.”

“Fair enough,” said Alleyn.

Trixie was there. She had lit a roaring fire and now put a dish of bacon and eggs, a plate of bread and cheese and a bottle of pickled onions on the table.

“Hour and a half till dinner,” she said, “and you’m no doubt starved for a bite after travelling all night. Will you take something?”

They took three pints, which were increased to five on the arrival of Bailey and Thompson. They helped themselves to the hunks of food and settled down, finally, to Superintendent Carey’s report.

It was admirably succinct.

Carey, it appeared, had been present at the Dance of the Five Sons. He had walked over from Yowford, more out of habit than enthusiasm and not uninfluenced, Alleyn gathered, by the promise of Dame Alice’s Sword Wednesday Punch.

Like everybody else, he had heard rumours of the Guiser’s indisposition and had supposed that the Fool was played by Ernie. When he heard Dr. Otterly’s announcement, he concluded that the Guiser had, after all, performed his part and that on his mock decapitation, which Mr. Carey described vividly, he had died of a heart attack.

When, however, the Whiffler (now clearly recognizable as Ernie) had made his appalling announcement from the Mardian dolmen, Carey had gone forward and spoken to Dr. Otterly and the Rector. At the same time, Ernie’s brothers had hauled him off the stone. He then, without warning, collapsed into a fit from which he was recovered by Dr. Otterly and, from then onwards, refused to speak to anybody.

After a word with the Doctor, Carey had ordered the stragglers off the place and had then, and not till then, walked round the dolmen and seen what lay on the ground beyond it.

At this point Carey, quite obviously, had to take a grip of himself. He finished his pint and squared his shoulders.

“I’ve seen things, mind,” he said. “I had five years of it on active service and I didn’t reckon to be flustered. But this flustered me, proper. Partly, no doubt, it was the way he was got up. Like a clown with the tunic thing pulled up. It’d have been over his head if — well, never mind. He didn’t paint his face but he had one of these masks. It ties on like a bag and it hadn’t fallen off. So he looked, if you can follow me, gentlemen, like a kind of doll that the head had come off of. There was the body, sort of doubled up, and there was the head two feet away, grinning, which was right nasty, until Rector took the bag off, which he did, saying it wasn’t decent. And there was Old Guiser’s face. And Rector put, as you may say, the pieces together, and said a prayer over them. I beg pardon, Mr. Alleyn?”

“Nothing. Go on.”

“Now, Ernie Andersen had made this statement, which I have repeated to the best of my memory, about the German lady having ‘done it.’ I came out from behind where the remains was and there, to my surprise, the German lady stood. Kind of bewildered, if you can understand, she seemed to be, and axing me what had happened. ‘What is it? What has happened? Is he ill?’ she said.

“Now, Mr. Alleyn, this chap, Ernie Andersen, is not what you’d call right smart. He’s a bit touched. Not simple exactly but not right. Takes funny turns. He was in a terrible state, kind of half frightened and half pleased with himself. Why he said what he did about Mrs. Buns, I can’t make out, but how a lady of, say, fifty-seven or so could step out of the crowd and cut the head off a chap at one blow in full view of everybody and step back again without being noticed takes a bit of explaining. Still, there it was. I took a statement from her. She was very much put about.”

“Well she might be.”

“Just so. Denied knowing anything about it, of course. It seems she was latish getting to the castle. She’s bought a new car from Simmy-Dick Begg up to Yowford and couldn’t start it at first. Over-choked would be my bet. Everybody in the pub had gone early, Trixie, the barmaid, and the potboy having offered to help the Dame’s maids. Well, Mrs. Buns started her car at last and, when she gets to the corner, who should she see but Old Guiser himself.”

“Old Guiser?”

“That’s what we called William Andersen hereabouts. There he was, seemingly, standing in the middle of the lane shaking his fist and swearing something ghastly. Mrs. Buns stops and offers a lift. He accepts, but with a bad grace, because, as everybody knows, he’s taken a great unliking for Mrs. Buns.”

“Why?”

“On account of her axing questions about Sword Wednesday. The man was in mortal dread of it getting made kind of public and fretted accordingly.”

“A purist, was he?”

“That may be the word for it. He doan’t pass a remark of any kind going up to the castle and, when she gets there, he bolts out of the car and goes round behind the ruins to where the others was getting ready to begin. She says she just walked in and stood in the crowd, which, to my mind, is no doubt what the woman did. I noticed her there myself, I remember, during the performance!”

“Did you ask her if she knew why Ernie Andersen said she’d done it?”

“I did, then. She says she reckons he’s turned crazy-headed with shock, which is what seems to be the general view.”

“Why was the Guiser so late starting?”

“Ah! Now! He’d been sick, had the Guiser. He had a bad heart and during the day he hadn’t felt too clever. Seems Dr. Otterly, who played the fiddle for them, was against the old chap doing it at all. The boys (I call them boys but Daniel’s sixty if he’s a day) say their father went and lay down during the day and left word not to be disturbed. They’d fixed it up that Ernie would come back and drive his dad up in an old station-waggon they’ve got there, leaving it till the last so’s not to get him too tired.”

“Ernie again,” Alleyn muttered.

“Well, axackly so, Mr. Alleyn. And when Ernie returns it’s with a note from his dad which he found pinned to his door, that being the Old Guiser’s habit, to say he can’t do it and Ernie had better. So they send the note in to Dr. Utterly, who is having dinner with the Dame.”

“What?” Alleyn said, momentarily startled by this apparent touch of transatlantic realism. “Oh, I see, yes. Dame Alice Mardian?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you got the note?”

“The Doctor put it in his pocket, luckily, and I have.”

“Good.”

Carey produced the old-fashioned billhead with its pencilled message:

“It’s his writing all right,” he said. “No doubt of it.”

“And are we to suppose he felt better, and decided to play his part after all and hitch-hiked with the lady?”

“That’s what his sons reckon. It’s what they say he told them when he turned up.”

“Do they, now!”

“Pointing out that there wasn’t much time to say anything. Ernie was dressed up for his dad’s part — it’s what they call the Fool — so he had to get out of his clothes quick and dress up for his own part, and Daniel’s boy, who was going to do Ernie’s part, was left looking silly. So he went round and joined the onlookers. And he confirms the story. He says that’s right, that’s what happened when the old chap turned up.”

“And it’s certain the old man did dance throughout the show?”

“Must be, Mr. Alleyn, mustn’t it? Certain sure. There they were, five Sons, a Fiddler, a Betty, a Hoss and a Fool. The Sons were the real sons all right. They wiped the muck off their faces while I was taking over. The Betty was the Dame’s great-nephew: young Mr. Stayne. He’s a lawyer from Biddlefast and staying with Parson, who’s his father. The Hoss, they call it ‘Crack,’ was Simmy-Dick Begg, who has the garage up to Yowford. They all took off their silly truck there and then in my presence as soon’s they had the wit to do so. So the Fool must have been the Guiser all the time, Mr. Alleyn. There’s nobody left but him to be it. We’ve eight chaps ready to swear he dressed himself up for it and went out with the rest.”

“And stayed there in full view until —”

Mr. Carey took a long pull at his tankard, set it down, wiped his mouth and clapped his palm on the table.

“There you are!” he declaimed. “Until they made out in their dance, or play, or whatever you like to call it, that they were cutting his head off. Cripes!” Mr. Carey added in a changed voice, “I can see him as if it was now. Silly clown’s mask sticking through the knot of swords and then — k-r-r-ring — they’ve drawn their swords. Down drops the rabbit’s head and down goes Guiser, out of sight behind the stone. You wouldn’t credit it, would you? In full view of up to sixty persons.”

“Are you suggesting —? No,” Alleyn said, “you can’t be.”

“I was going to ask you, Super,” Fox said. “You don’t mean to say you think they may actually have beheaded the old chap then and there!”

“How could they!” Carey demanded angrily, as if Fox and Alleyn had themselves advanced this theory. “Ask yourself, Mr. Fox. The idea’s comical. Of course they didn’t. The thing is: when did they? If they did.”

“They?” Alleyn asked.

“Well, now, no. No. It was done, so the Doctor says, and so a chap can see for himself if he’s got the stomach to look, by one weapon with one stroke by one man.”

“What about their swords? I’ll see them, of course, but what are they like?”

“Straight. About two foot long. Wooden handle one end and a hole ’tother through which they stick a silly-looking bit of red cord.”

“Sharp?”

“Blunt as a backside, all but one.”

“Which one?” asked Fox.

“Ernie’s,” Alleyn said. “I’ll bet.”

“And you’re dead right, sir. Ernie’s it is and so sharp’s a razor still, never mind how he whiffled down the thistles.”

“So we are forced to ask ourselves if Ernie could have whiffled his old man’s head off?”

“And we answer ourselves, no, he danged well couldn’t of. For why? For because, after his old man dropped behind the stone, there was Ernie doing a comic act with the Betty: that is, Mr. Ralph Stayne, as I was telling you. Mr. Ralph, having taken up a collection, snatched Ernie’s sword and they had a sort of chase round the courtyard and in and out through the gaps in the back wall. Ernie didn’t get his sword back till Mr. Ralph give it him. After that, Dan Andersen did a turn on his own. He always does. You could tell it was Dan anyway on account of him being bowlegged. Then the Five Sons did another dance and that was when the Old Man should have risen up and didn’t and there we are.”

“What was the Hobby-Horse doing all this time?”

“Cavorting round chasing the maids. Off and on.”

“And this affair,” Fox said, “this man-woman-what-have-you-Betty, who was the clergyman’s son, he’d collared the sharp sword, had he?”

“Yes, Mr. Fox, he had. And was swiping it round and playing the goat with it.”

“Did he go near the stone?” Alleyn asked.

“Well — yes, I reckon he did. When Ernie was chasing him. No doubt of it. But further than that — well, it’s just not believable,” said Carey and added, “He must have given the sword back to Ernie because, later on, Ernie had got it again. There’s nothing at all on the sword but smears of sap from the plants Ernie swiped off. Which seems to show it hadn’t been wiped on anything.”

“Certainly,” said Alleyn. “Jolly well observed, Carey.”

Mr. Carey gave a faint simper.

“Did any of them look behind the stone after the old man had fallen down?” Alleyn asked.

“Mr. Ralph — that’s the Betty — was standing close up when he fell behind it and reckons he just slid down and lay. There’s a kind of hollow there, as you’ll see, and it was no doubt in shadow. Two of them came prancing back to the stone during the last dance — first Simmy-Dick and then Mr. Ralph — and they both think he was laying there then. Simmy-Dick couldn’t see very clear because his face is in the neck of the horse and the body of the thing hides any object that’s nearby on the ground. But he saw the whiteness of the Fool’s clothing in the hollow, he says. Mr. Ralph says he did too, without sort of paying much attention.”

“The head —?”

“They never noticed. They never noticed another thing till he was meant to resurrect and didn’t. Then Dan went to see what was wrong and called up his brothers. He says — it’s a funny sort of thing to say, but — he says he thought, at first, it was some kind of joke and someone had put a dummy there and the head had come off. But, of course,” Carey said, opening his extremely blue eyes very wide, “it was no such matter.”

There was a long silence. The fire crackled; in a distant part of the pub somebody turned up the volume of a wireless set and turned it down again.

“Well,” Alleyn said, “there’s the story and very neatly reported if I may say so, Carey. Let’s have a look at the place.”

The courtyard at Mardian Castle looked dismal in the thaw. The swept-up snow, running away into dirty water, was much trampled, the courtyard itself was greasy and the Mardian dolmen a lump of wet rock standing on two other lumps. Stone and mud glistened alike in sunlight that merely lent a kind of pallor to the day and an additional emphasis to the north wind. The latter whistled through the slits in the old walls with all the venom of the arrows they had originally been designed to accommodate. Eight burnt-out torches on stakes stood in a semi-circle roughly following that of the wall but set some twelve feet inside it. In the middle of this scene stood a police sergeant with his mackintosh collar turned up and his shoulders hunched. He was presented by Carey—“Sergeant Obby.”

Taking in the scene, Alleyn turned from the semi-circle of old wall to the hideous façade of the Victorian house. He found himself being stared at by a squarish wooden old lady behind a ground-floor window. A second lady, sandy and middle-aged, stood behind her.

“Who’s that?” he asked.

“The Dame,” said Carey. “And Miss Mardian.”

“I suppose I ought to make a polite noise.”

“She’s not,” Carey muttered, “in a wonderful good mood today.”

“Never mind.”

“And Miss Mardian’s — well — er — well, she’s just not right smart, Mr. Alleyn.”

“Like Ernie?”

“No, sir. Not exactly. It may be,” Carey ventured, “on account of in-breeding, which is what’s been going on hot and strong in the Mardian family for a great time. Not that there’s anything like that about the Dame, mind. She’s ninety-four and a proper masterpiece.”

“I’d better try my luck. Here goes.”

He walked past the window, separated from the basilisk glare by two feet of air and a pane of glass. As he mounted the steps between dead braziers half full of wet ash, the door was opened by Dulcie.

Alleyn said, “Miss Mardian? I wonder if I may have two words with Dame Alice Mardian?”

“Oh, dear!” Dulcie said. “I don’t honestly know if you can. I expect I ought to remember who you are, oughtn’t I, but with so many new people in the county these days it’s a bit muddly. Ordinarily I’m sure Aunt Akky would love to see you. She adores visitors. But this morning she’s awfully upset and says she won’t talk to anybody but policemen.”

“I am a policeman.”

“Really? How very peculiar. You are sure,” Dulcie added, “that you are not just pretending to be one in order to find out about the Mardian Morris and all that?”

“Quite sure. Here’s my card.”

“Goodness! Well, I’ll ask Aunt Akky.”

As she forgot to shut the door Alleyn heard the conversation. “It’s a man who says he’s a policeman, Aunt Akky, and here’s his card. He’s a gent.”

“I won’t stomach these filthy ’breviations.”

“Sorry, Aunt Akky.”

“ ’Any case you’re talkin’ rot. Show him in.”

So Alleyn was admitted and found her staring at his card.

“ ’Mornin’ to yer,” said Dame Alice. “Sit down.”

He did so.

“This is a pretty kettle-of-fish,” she said. “Ain’t it?”

“Awful.”

“What are you, may I ask? ’Tective?”

It wouldn’t have surprised him much if she’d asked if he were a Bow Street Runner.

“Yes,” he said. “A plain-clothes detective from Scotland Yard.”

“Superintendent?” she read, squinting at the card.

“That’s it.”

“Ha! Are you goin’ to be quick about this? Catch the feller?”

“I expect we shall.”

“What’d yer want to see me for?”

“To apologize for making a nuisance of myself, to say I hope you’ll put up with us and to ask you, at the most, six questions.”

She looked at him steadily over the top of her glasses.

“Blaze away,” she said at last.

“You sat on the steps there, last night during the performance.”

“Certainly.”

“What step exactly?”

“Top. Why?”

“The top. So you had a pretty good view. Dame Alice, could William Andersen, after the mock killing, have left the courtyard without being seen?”

“No.”

“Not under cover of the last dance of the Five Sons?”

“No.”

“Not if he crawled out?”

“No.”

“As he lay there could he have been struck without your noticing?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Could his body have been brought in and put behind the stone without the manoeuvre attracting your attention?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

He looked at Dulcie, who hovered uncertainly near the door. “You were with Dame Alice, Miss Mardian. Do you agree with what she says?”

“Oh, yes,” Dulcie said a little vaguely and added, “Rather!” with a misplaced show of enthusiasm.

“Was anyone else with you?”

“Sam,” Dulcie said in a hurry.

“Fat lot of good that is, Dulcie. She means the Rector, Sam Stayne, who’s my great-nephew-in-law. Bit of a milksop.”

“Right. Thank you so much. We’ll bother you as little as possible. It was kind of you to see me.”

Alleyn got up and made her a little bow. She held out her hand. “Hope you find,” she said as he shook it.

Dulcie, astonished, showed him out.

There were three chairs in the hall that looked as if they didn’t belong there. They had rugs safety-pinned over them. Alleyn asked Dulcie if these were the chairs they had sat on and, learning that they were, got her startled permission to take one of them out again.

He put it on the top step, sat in it and surveyed the courtyard. He was conscious that Dame Alice, at the drawing-room window, surveyed him.

From here, he could see over the top of the dolmen to within about two feet of its base and between its standing legs. An upturned box stood on the horizontal stone and three others, which he could just see, on the ground beyond and behind it. The distance from the dolmen to the rear archway in the old semi-circular wall — the archway that had served as an entrance and exit for the performers — was perhaps twenty-five feet. The other openings into the courtyard were provided at the extremities of the old wall by two further archways that joined it to the house. Each of these was about twenty feet distant from the dolmen.

There was, on the air, a tang of dead fire and, through the central archway at the back, Alleyn could see a patch of seared earth, damp now, but bearing the scar of heat.

Fox, who with Carey, Thompson, Bailey and the policeman was looking at the dolmen, glanced up at his chief.

“You have to come early,” he remarked, “to get the good seats.”

Alleyn grinned, replaced his chair in the hall and picked up a crumpled piece of damp paper. It was one of last night’s programmes. He read it through with interest, put it in his pocket and went down into the courtyard.

“It rained in the night, didn’t it, Carey?”

“Mortal hard. Started soon after the fatality. I covered up the stone and the place where he lay, but that was the best we could do.”

“And with a team of morris-men, if that’s what you call them, galumphing like baby elephants over the terrain there wouldn’t be much hope anyway. Let’s have a look, shall we, Obby?”

The sergeant removed the inverted box from the top of the dolmen. Alleyn examined the surface of the stone.

“Visible prints where Ernie stood on it,” he said. “Rubber soles. It had a thin coat of rime, I should think, at the time. Hullo! What’s this, Carey?”

He pointed a long finger at a small darkness in the grain of the stone. “Notice it? What is it?”

Before Carey could answer there was a vigorous tapping on the drawing-room window. Alleyn turned in time to see it being opened by Dulcie evidently under orders from her great-aunt, who, from within, leant forward in her chair, shouted, “If you want to know what that is, it’s blood,” and leant back again.

“How do you know?” Alleyn shouted in return. He had decided that his only hope with Dame Alice was to meet her on her own ground. “What blood?”

“Goose’s. One of mine. Head cut off yesterday afternoon and left on the stone.”

“Good Lord!”

“You may well say so. Guess who did it.”

“Ernie?” Alleyn asked involuntarily.

“How yer know?”

“I guessed. Dame Alice, where’s the body?”

“In the pot.”

“Damn!”

“Why?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Shut the window, Dulcie.”

Before Dulcie had succeeded in doing so, they heard Dame Alice say, “Ask that man to dinner. He’s got brains.”

“You’ve made a hit, Mr. Alleyn,” said Fox.

Carey said, “My oath!”

“Did you know about this decapitated bird?”

“First I heard of it. It’ll be one of that gang up on the hill there.”

“Near the bulls?” Fox asked sombrely.

“That’s right. You want to watch them geese, Mr. Fox,” the sergeant said, “they so savage as lions and tricksy as snakes. I’ve been minded myself, off and on this morning, to slaughter one and all.”

“I wonder,” Alleyn said, “if it was Ernie. Get a shot of the whole dolmen, will you, Thompson, and some details of the top surface.”

Sergeant Thompson moved in with his camera and Alleyn walked round to the far side of the dolmen.

“What,” he asked, “are these black stains all over the place? Tar?”

“That’s right, sir,” Obby said, “off of old ‘Crack’s’ skirts.”

Carey explained. “Good Lord!” Alleyn said mildly and turned to the area behind the dolmen.

The upturned boxes that they had used to cover the ground here were bigger. Alleyn and Fox lifted them carefully and stood away from the exposed area. It was a shallow depression into which had collected a certain amount of the fine gravel that had originally been spread over the courtyard. The depression lay at right angles to the dolmen. It was six feet long and shelved up to the level of the surrounding area. At the end farthest from the dolmen there was a dark viscous patch, about four inches in diameter, overlying a little drift of gravel. A further patch, larger, lay about a foot from it, nearer the dolmen and still in the hollow.

“You know, Carey,” Alleyn said under his breath and out of the sergeant’s hearing, “he should never have been moved: never.”

Carey, scarlet-faced, said loudly, “I know’s well as the next man, sir, the remains didn’t ought to have been shifted. But shifted they were before us chaps could raise a finger to stop it. Parson comes in and says, ‘It’s not decent as it is,’ and, with ’is own ’ands, takes off mask and lays out the pieces tidy-like while Obby, ’ere, and I were still ordering back the crowd.”

“You were here too, Sergeant?”

“Oh, ya-as, Mr. Alleyn. All through.”

“And seeing, in a manner of speaking, the damage was done and rain setting in, we put the remains into his own car, which is an old station-waggon. Simmy-Dick and Mr. Stayne gave us a hand. We took them back to the forge. They’re in his lean-to coach-house, Mr. Alleyn, locked up proper with a police seal on the door and the only other constable in five mile on duty beside it.”

“Yes, yes,” Alleyn said. “All right. Now, tell me, Carey, you did actually see how it was before the parson tidied things up, didn’t you?”

“I did, then, and not likely to forget it.”

“Good. How was it?”

Carey drew the back of his hand across his mouth and looked hard at the shallow depression. “I reckon,” he said, “those two patches show pretty clear. One’s blood from head and ’tother’s blood from trunk.”

Fox was squatting above them with a rule in his hands. “Twenty-three inches apart,” he said.

“How was the body lying?” Alleyn asked. “Exactly.”

“Kind of cramped up and on its left side, sir. Huddled. Knees to chin.”

“And the head?”

“That was what was so ghassly,” Carey burst out. “Tother way round.”

“Do you mean the crown of the head and not the neck was towards the trunk?”

“Just so, Mr. Alleyn. Still tied up in that there bag thing with the face on it.”

“I reckoned,” Sergeant Obby ventured, “that it must of been kind of disarranged in the course of the proceedings.”

“By the dancers?”

“I reckoned so, sir. Must of been.”

“In the final dance, after the mock beheading, did the Five Sons go behind the stone?”

There was a silence. The superintendent and the sergeant eyed each other.

“I don’t believe they did, you know, Sarge,” Carey said.

“Put it that way, no more don’t I, then.”

“But the other two. The man-woman and the hobbyhorse?”

“They were every which-way,” Carey said.

Alleyn muttered, “If they’d come round here they could hardly fail to see what was lying there. What colour were his clothes?”

“Whitish, mostly.”

“There you are,” Fox said.

“Well, Thompson, get on with it. Cover the area again. When he’s finished we’ll take specimens of the stains, Fox. In the meantime, what’s outside the wall there?”

Carey took him through the rear archway. “They waited out here before the performance started,” he said.

It was a bleak enough spot now: an open field that ran up to a ragged spinney and the crest of the hill. On the higher slopes the snow still lay pretty thick, but down near the wall it had melted and, to one side of the archway, there was the great scar left by the bonfire. It ran out from the circular trace of the fire itself in a blackened streak about fourteen feet long.

“And here,” Alleyn said pointing his stick at a partially burnt-out drum, lying on its side in the fire-scar, “we have the tar barrel?”

“That’s so, Mr. Alleyn. For ‘Crack.’ ”

“Looks as if it caught fire.”

“Reckon it might have got overturned when all the skylarking was going on between Mr. Ralph and Ernie. They ran through here. There was a mighty great blaze sprung up about then. The fire might have spread to it.”

“Wouldn’t the idea be to keep the fire as an extra attraction, though?”

“Maybe they lit it early for warmth. One of them may have got excited-like and poured tar on it.”

“Ernie, for instance,” Alleyn said patiently, and Carey replied that it was very likely.

“And this?” Alleyn went on. “Look at this, Carey.”

Round the burnt-out scar left by the bonfire lay a fringe of green brushwood that had escaped complete destruction. A little inside it, discoloured and deadened by the heat, its wooden handle a mere blackened stump, was a steel blade about eighteen inches long.

“That’s a slasher,” Alleyn said.

“That’s Copse Forge,” Carey said. “Stood there a matter of four hundred year and the smith’s been an Andersen for as long as can be reckoned.”

“Not so profitable,” Fox suggested, “nowadays, would it be?”

“Nothing like. Although he gets all the shoeing for the Mardian and adjacent hunts and any other smith’s jobs for miles around. Chris has got a mechanic’s ticket and does a bit with cars. A big oil company’s offered to back them if they convert to a service station. I believe Simmy-Dick Begg’s very anxious to run it. The boys like the idea but the Guiser wouldn’t have it at any price. There’s a main road to be put through, too.”

“Do they all work here?” Alleyn asked. “Surely not?”

“No, no. Dan, the eldest, and the twins, Andy and Nat, are on their own. Farming. Chris and Ernie work at the forge. Hullo, that’s Dr. Otterly’s car. I axed him to be here and the five boys beside. Mr. Ralph and Simmy-Dick Begg are coming up to the pub at two. If that suits, of course.”

Alleyn said it did. As they drew up, Dr. Otterly got out of his car and waited for them. His tweed hat was pulled down over his nose and his hands were thrust deep in the pockets of his covert-coat.

He didn’t wait to be introduced but came up and looked in at the window of their car.

“ ’Morning,” he said. “Glad you’ve managed to get here. ’Morning, Carey. Expect you are, too.”

“We’re damn’ pleased to see you,” Alleyn rejoined. “It’s not every day you get police-officers and a medical man to give what almost amounts to eyewitnesses’ evidence of a capital crime.”

“There’s great virtue in that ‘almost,’ however,” Dr. Otterly said and added, “I suppose you want to have a look at him.”

“Please.”

“Want me to come?”

“I think so. Don’t you, Carey?”

They went through the smithy. There was no fire that morning and no heart in the place. It smelt of cold iron and stale horse-sweat. Carey led the way out by a back door into a yard. Here stood a small ramshackle cottage and, alongside it, the lean-to coach-house.

“He lived in the cottage, did he?” Alleyn asked.

“Chris and Ern keep there. The old chap slept in a little room off the smithy. They all ate in the cottage, however.”

“They’re in there now,” Dr. Otterly said. “Waiting.”

“Good,” Alleyn said. “They won’t have to wait much longer. Will you open up, Carey?”

With some evidence of gratification, Carey broke the seal he had put on the double-doors of the coach-house and opened them wide enough to make an entry.

It was a dark place filled with every imaginable kind of junk, but a space had been cleared in the middle and an improvised bier made up from boxes and an old door covered by a horsecloth.

A clean sheet had been laid over the Guiser. When Dr. Otterly turned this down it was a shock, after the conventional decency of the arrangements, to see an old dead man in the dirty dress of a clown. For collar, there was a ragged bloodstained and slashed frill and this had been pulled up to hide the neck. The face was smudged with black on the nose, forehead, cheek bones and chin.

“That’s burnt cork,” Dr. Otterly said. “From inside his mask, you know. Ernie had put it on over his black make-up when he thought he was going to dance the Fool.”

The Guiser’s face under these disfigurements was void of expression. The eyes had been closed, but the mouth gaped. The old hands, chapped and furrowed, were crossed heavily over the breastbone. The tunic was patched with bloodstains. And above the Guiser, slung on wooden pins, were the shells of his fellow mummers. “Crack,” the Hobby-Horse, was there. Its hinged jaw had dropped as if in burlesque of the head below it. The harness dangled over its flat drum-shaped carcass, which was propped against the wall. Nearby hung the enormous crinoline of the Betty and, above it, as if they belonged to each other, the Guiser’s bag-like and dolorous mask, hanging upside down by its strings. It was stained darkly round the strings and also at the other end, at the apex of the scalp. This interested Alleyn immensely. Lower down, caught up on a nail, was the rabbit-cap. Further away hung the clothes and sets of bells belonging to the Five Sons.

From the doorway, where he had elected to remain, Carey said, “We thought best to lock all their gear in here, Mr. Alleyn. The swords are in that sacking there, on the bench.”

“Good,” Alleyn said.

He glanced up at Fox. “All right,” he said, and Fox, using his great hands very delicately, turned down the rag of frilling from the severed neck.

“One swipe,” Dr. Otterly’s voice said.

“From slightly to the right of front centre to slightly left of back centre, would you say?” Alleyn asked.

“I would.” Dr. Otterly sounded surprised. “I suppose you chaps get to know about things.”

“I’m glad to say that this sort of thing doesn’t come even our way very often. The blow must have fallen above the frill on his tunic and below the strings that tied the bag-mask. Would you say he’d been upright or prone when it happened?”

“Your Home Office man will know better than I about that. If it was done standing I’d say it was by somebody who was just slightly taller than the poor Old Guiser.”

“Yes. Was there anybody like that in the team?”

“No. They’re all much taller.”

“And there you are. Let’s have a look at that whiffler, Fox.”

Fox went over to the bench. “The whiffler,” Carey said from the door, “is rolled up separate. He didn’t want to part with it, didn’t Ernie.”

Fox came back with Ernie’s sword, holding it by the red cord that was threaded through the tip. “You can see the stains left by all that green-stuff,” he said. “And sharp! You’d be astounded.”

“We’d better put Bailey on it for dabs, though I don’t fancy there’s much future there. What do you think, Dr. Otterly? Could this be the weapon?”

“Without a closer examination of the wound, I wouldn’t like to say. It would depend — but, no,” Dr. Otterly said, “I can’t give an opinion.”

Alleyn had turned away and was looking at the garments hanging on the wall. “Tar over everything. On the Betty’s skirt, the Sons’ trousers and, I suppose, on a good many village maidens’ stockings and shoes, to say nothing of their coats.”

“It’s a cult,” Dr. Otterly said.

“Fertility rite?”

“Of course.”

“See old Uncle Frazer and all,” Alleyn muttered. He turned to the rabbit. “Recently killed and gutted with head left on. Strings on it. What for?”

“He wore it on his head.”

“How very undelicious. Why?”

“Helped the decapitation effect. He put his head through the lock of swords, untied the strings and, as the Sons drew the swords, he let the rabbit’s head drop. They do it in the Grenoside sword-dance too, I believe. It’s quite startling — the effect.”

“I daresay. In this case, rather over-shadowed by the subsequent event,” Alleyn said drily.

“All right!” Dr. Otterly ejaculated with some violence. “I know it’s beastly. All right.”

Alleyn glanced at him and then turned to look at “Crack’s” harness. “This must weigh a tidy lump. How does he wear it?”

“The head is on a sort of rod. His own head is inside the canvas neck. It was made in the smithy.”

“The century before last?”

“Or before that. The body too. It hangs from the yoke. His head goes through a hole into the canvas tube, which has got a sort of window in it. ‘Crack’s’ head is on top again and joined to the yoke by the flexible rod inside the neck. By torchlight it looks quite a thing.”

“I believe you,” Alleyn said absently. He examined the harness and then turned to the Betty’s crinoline. “How does this go on? It’s a mountain of a garment.”

“It hangs from a kind of yoke too. But, in his case, the arms are free. The frame, as you see, is made of withies, like basket-work. In the old days, there used to be quite a lot of fairly robust fun with the Betty. The chap who was acting her would chase some smaller fellow round the ring and pop the crinoline thing right over him and go prancing off with the little chap hidden under his petticoats, as it were. Sometimes he collared a girl. You can imagine the sort of barracking that went on.”

“Heaps of broad bucolic fun,” Alleyn said, “was doubtless had by all. It’s got a touch of the tar brush too, but not much.”

“I expect Ralph kept clear of ‘Crack’ as well as he could.”

“And the Guiser?” Alleyn returned to the bier and removed the sheet completely.

“A little tar on the front of the tunic and” — he stopped — “quite a lot on the hands,” he said. “Did he handle the tar barrel do you know?”

“Earlier in the day perhaps. But no. He was out of action, earlier. Does it matter?”

“It might,” Alleyn said. “It might matter very much indeed. Then again, not. Have you noticed this fairly recent gash across the palm of his right hand?”

“I saw it done.” Dr. Otterly’s gaze travelled to the whiffler, which Fox still held by the ribbons. He looked away quickly.

“With that thing,” Alleyn asked, “by any chance?”

“Actually, yes.”

“How did it happen?”

“It was nothing, really. A bit of a dust-up about it being too sharp. He — ah — he tried to grab it away from — well, from —”

“Don’t tell me,” Alleyn said. “Ernie.”

The shutters were down over the private bar and the room was deserted. Camilla went in and sat by the fire. Since last night she had felt the cold. It was as if some of her own natural warmth had deserted her. When the landlord had driven her and Trixie back to the pub from Mardian Castle, Camilla had shivered so violently that they had given her a scalding toddy and two aspirins and Trixie had put three stone hot-jugs in her bed. Eventually, she had dropped into a doze and was running away again from “Crack.” He was the big drum in a band. Somebody beat him with two swords making a sound like a fiddle. His jaws snapped, dreadfully close. She experienced the dream of frustrated escape. His breath was hot on her neck and her feet were leaden. Then there was Ralph, with his arms strapped close about her, saying, “It’s all right. I’ll take care of you.” That was Heaven at first, but even that wasn’t quite satisfactory because Ralph was trying to stop her looking at something. In the over-distinct voice of nightmare, he said, “You don’t want to watch ernie because it’s not most awfully nice.” But Ernie jumped up on the dolmen and shouted at the top of his voice, “What price blood for the stone?” Then all the morris bells began to jingle like an alarm clock and she woke.

Awake, she remembered how Ralph had, in fact, run to where she and Trixie stood and had told them to go to the car at once. That was after Ernie had fainted and Dame Alice had made her announcement. The landlord, Tom Plowman, had gone up to the stone and had been ordered away by Dr. Otterly and Carey. He drove the girls back to the pub and, on the way, told them in great detail what he had seen. He was very excited and pleased with himself for having looked behind the stone. In one of her dreams during the night, Camilla thought he made her look too.

Now she sat by the fire and tried to get a little order into her thoughts. It was her grandfather who had been murdered, dreadfully and mysteriously, and it was her uncle who had exulted and collapsed. She herself, therefore, must be said to be involved. She felt as if she were marooned and deserted. For the first time since the event she was inclined to cry.

The door opened and she turned, her hand over her mouth. “Ralph!” she said.

He came to her quickly and dragged up a chair so that he could sit and hold both her hands.

“You want me now, Camilla,” he said, “don’t you?”