Death of a Fool

Chapter VIII Question of Fact

When afternoon closing-time came, Trixie pulled down the bar shutters and locked them. Simon Begg went into the Private. There was a telephone in the passage outside the Private and he had put a call through to his bookmaker. He wanted, if he could, to get the results of the 1.30 at Sandown. Teutonic Dancer was a rank outsider. He’d backed it both ways for a great deal more than he could afford to lose and had already begun to feel that, if he did lose, it would in some vague way be Mrs. Bünz’s fault. This was both ungracious and illogical.

For many reasons, Mrs. Bünz was the last person he wanted to see and, for an equal number of contradictory ones, she was the first. And there she was, the picture of uncertainty and alarm, huddled, snuffling, over the parlour fire with her dreadful cold and her eternal notebooks.

She had bought a car from Simon, she might be his inspiration in a smashing win. One way and another, they had done business together. He produced a wan echo of his usual manner.

“Hullo-’llo! And how’s Mrs. B. today?” asked Simon.

“Unwell. I have caught a severe cold in the head. Also, I have received a great shawk. Last night in the pawk was a terrible, terrible shawk.”

“You can say that again,” he agreed glumly, and applied himself to the Sporting News.

Suddenly, they both said together, “As a matter of fact—” and stopped, astonished and disconcerted.

“Ladies first,” said Simon.

“Thank you. I was about to say that, as a matter of fact, I would suggest that our little transaction — Ach! How shall I say it? — should remain, perhaps —”

“Confidential?” he ventured eagerly.

“That is the word for which I sought. Confidential.”

“I’m all for it, Mrs. B. I was going to make the same suggestion myself. Suits me.”

“I am immensely relieved. Immensely. I thank you, Wing-Commander. I trust, at the same time — you do not think — it would be so shawkink — if—”

“Eh?” He looked up from his paper to stare at her. “What’s that? No, no, no, Mrs. B. Not to worry. Not a chance. The idea’s laughable.”

“To me it is not amusink but I am glad you find it so,” Mrs. Bünz said stuffily. “You read something of interest, perhaps, in your newspaper?”

“I’m waiting. Teutonic Dancer. Get me? The one-thirty?”

Mrs. Bünz shuddered.

“Oh, well!” he said. “There you are. I follow the form as a general thing. Don’t go much for gimmicks. Still! Talk about coincidence! You couldn’t go past it, really, could you?” He raised an admonitory finger. The telephone had begun to ring in the passage. “My call,” he said. “This is it. Keep your fingers crossed, Mrs. B.”

He darted out of the room.

Mrs. Bünz, left alone, breathed uncomfortably through her mouth, blew her nose and clocked her tongue against her palate. “Dar,” she breathed.

Fox came down the passage past Simon, who was saying, “Hold the line, please, miss, for Pete’s sake. Hold the line,” and entered the parlour.

“Mrs. Burns?” he asked.

Mrs. Bünz, though she eyed him with evident misgivings, rallied sufficiently to correct him. “Eü, eü, eü,” she demonstrated windily through her cold. “Bünz.”

“Now that’s very interesting,” Fox said beaming at her. “That’s a noise, if you will excuse me referring to it as such, that we don’t make use of in English, do we? Would it be the same, now, as the sound in the French eu?” He arranged his sedate mouth in an agonized pout. “Deux diseuses,” said Mr. Fox by way of illustration. “Not that I get beyond a very rough approximation, I’m afraid.”

“It is not the same at all. Bünz.”

“Bünz,” mouthed Mr. Fox.

“Your accent is not perfect.”

“I know that,” he agreed heavily. “In the meantime, I’m forgetting my job. Mr. Alleyn presents his compliments and wonders if you’d be kind enough to give him a few minutes.”

“Ach! I too am forgetting. You are the police.”

“You wouldn’t think so, the way I’m running on, would you?”

(Alleyn had said, “If she was an anti-Nazi refugee, she’ll think we’re ruthless automatons. Jolly her along a bit.”)

Mrs. Bünz gathered herself together and followed Fox. In the passage, Simon Begg was saying, “Look, old boy, all I’m asking for is the gen on the one-thirty. Look, old boy —”

Fox opened the door of the sitting-room and announced her.

“Mrs. Bünz,” he said quite successfully.

As she advanced into the room Alleyn seemed to see, not so much a middle-aged German, as the generalization of a species. Mrs. Bünz was the lady who sits near the front at lectures and always asks questions. She has an enthusiasm for obscure musicians, stands nearest to guides, keeps handicraft shops of the better class and reads Rabindranath Tagore. She weaves, forms circles, gives talks, hand-throws pots and designs book-plates. She is sometimes a vegetarian, though not always a crank. Occasionally, she is an expert.

She walked slowly into the room and kept her gaze fixed on Alleyn. “She is afraid of me,” he thought.

“This is Mr. Alleyn, Mrs. Bünz,” Dr. Otterly said.

Alleyn shook hands with her. Her own short stubby hand was tremulous and the palm was damp. At his invitation, she perched warily on a chair. Fox sat down behind her and palmed his notebook out of his pocket.

“Mrs. Bünz,” Alleyn said, “in a minute or two I’m going to throw myself on your mercy.”

She blinked at him.

“Zo?” said Mrs. Bünz.

“I understand you’re an expert on folklore and, if ever anybody needed an expert, we do.”

“I have gone a certain way.”

“Dr. Otterly tells me,” Alleyn said, to that gentleman’s astonishment, “that you have probably gone as far as anyone in England.”

“Zo,” she said, with a magnificent inclination towards Otterly.

“But, before we talk about that, I suppose I’d better ask you the usual routine questions. Let’s get them over as soon as possible. I’m told that you gave Mr. William Andersen a lift —”

They were off again on the old trail, Alleyn thought dejectedly, and not getting much further along it. Mrs. Bünz’s account of the Guiser’s hitch-hike corresponded with what he had already been told.

“I was so delighted to drive him,” she began nervously. “It was a great pleasure to me. Once or twice I attempted, tactfully, to a little draw him out, but he was, I found, angry, and not inclined for cawnversation.”

“Did he say anything at all, do you remember?”

“To my recollection he spoke only twice. To begin with, he invited me by gesture to stop and, when I did so, he asked me in his splendid, splendid rich dialect, ‘Be you goink up-alongk?’ On the drive, he remarked that when he found Mr. Ernie Andersen he would have the skin off of his body. Those, however, were his only remarks.”

“And when you arrived?”

“He descended and hurried away.”

“And what,” Alleyn asked, “did you do?”

The effect of the question, casually put, upon Mrs. Bünz was extraordinary. She seemed to flinch back into her clothes as a tortoise into its shell.

“When you got there, you know,” Alleyn gently prompted her. “What did you do?”

Mrs. Bünz said in a cold-thickened voice, “I became a spectator. Of course.”

“Where did you stand?”

Her head sank a little further into her shoulders.

“Inside the archway.”

“The archway by the house as you come in?”

“Yes.”

“And, from there, you watched the dance?”

Mrs. Bünz wetted her lips and nodded.

“That must have been an absorbing experience. Had you any idea of what was in store for you?”

“Ach! No! No, I swear it! No!” she almost shouted.

“I meant,” Alleyn said, “in respect of the dance itself.”

“The dance,” Mrs. Bünz said in a strangulated croak, “is unique.”

“Was it all that you expected?”

“But, of course!” She gave a little gasp and appeared to be horror-stricken. “Really,” Alleyn thought, “I seem to be having almost too much success with Mrs. Bünz. Every shy a coconut.”

She had embarked on an elaborate explanation. All folk dance and drama had a common origin. One expected certain elements. The amazing thing about the Five Sons was that it combined so rich an assortment of these elements as well as some remarkable features of its own. “It has everythink. But everythink,” she said and was plagued by a Gargantuan sneeze.

“And did they do it well?”

Mrs. Bünz said they did it wonderfully well. The best performance for sheer execution in England. She rallied from whatever shock she had suffered and began to talk incomprehensibly of galleys, split-jumps and double capers. Not only did she remember every move of the Five Sons and the Fool in their twice-repeated dance, but she had noted the positions of the Betty and Hobby. She remembered how these two pranced round the perimeter and how, later on, the Betty chased the young men and flung his skirts over their heads and the Hobby stood as an image behind the dolmen. She remembered everything.

“This is astonishing,” he said, “for you to retain the whole thing, I mean, after seeing it only once. Extraordinary. How do you do it?”

“I–I — have a very good memory,” said Mrs. Bünz and gave an agonized little laugh. “In such matters my memory is phenomenal.” Her voice died away. She looked remarkably uncomfortable. He asked her if she took notes and she said at once she didn’t, and then seemed in two minds whether to contradict herself.

Her description of the dance tallied in every respect with the accounts he had already been given, with one exception. She seemed to have only the vaguest recollection of the Guiser’s first entrance when, as Alleyn had already been told, he had jogged round the arena and struck the Mardian dolmen with his clown’s bladder. But, from then onwards, Mrs. Bünz knew everything right up to the moment when Ralph stole Ernie’s sword. After that, for a short period, her memory seemed again to be at fault. She remembered that, somewhere about this time, the Hobby-Horse went off, but had apparently forgotten that Ernie gave chase after Ralph and only had the vaguest recollection, if any, of Ralph’s improvised fooling with Ernie’s sword. Moreover, her own uncertainty at this point seemed to embarrass her very much. She blundered about from one fumbled generalization to another.

“The solo was interesting —”

“Wait a bit,” Alleyn said. She gulped and blinked at him. “Now, look here, Mrs. Bünz. I’m going to put it to you that from the time the first dance ended with the mock death of the Fool until the solo began, you didn’t watch the proceedings at all. Now, is that right?”

“I was not interested —”

“How could you know you wouldn’t be interested if you didn’t even look? Did you look, Mrs. Bünz?”

She gaped at him with an expression of fear. She was elderly and frightened and he supposed that, in her mind, she associated him with monstrous figures of her past. He was filled with compunction.

Dr. Otterly appeared to share Alleyn’s feeling. He walked over to her and said, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Bünz. Really, there’s nothing to be frightened about, you know. They only want to get at the facts. Cheer up.”

His large doctor’s hand fell gently on her shoulders.

She gave a falsetto scream and shrank away from him.

“Hullo!” he said good-humouredly, “what’s all this? Nerves? Fibrositis?”

“I — yes — yes. The cold weather.”

“In your shoulders?”

“Ja. Both.”

“Mrs. Bünz,” Alleyn said, “will you believe me when I remind you of something I think you must already know? In England the Police Code has been most carefully framed to protect the public from any kind of bullying or overbearing behaviour on the part of investigating officers. Innocent persons have nothing to fear from us. Nothing. Do you believe that?”

It was difficult to hear what she said. She had lowered her head and spoke under her breath.

“… because I am German. It does not matter to you that I was anti-Nazi; that I am naturalized. Because I am German, you will think I am capable. It is different for Germans in England.”

The three men raised a little chorus of protest. She listened without showing any sign of being at all impressed.

“They think I am capable,” she said, “of anything.”

“You say that, don’t you, because of what Ernie Andersen shouted out when he stood last night on the dolmen?”

Mrs. Bünz covered her face with her knotty little hands.

“You remember what that was, don’t you?” Alleyn asked.

Dr. Otterly looked as if he would like to protest but caught Alleyn’s eye and said nothing.

Alleyn went on. “He pointed his sword at you, didn’t he, and said, ‘Ask her. She knows. She’s the one that did it.’ Something like that, wasn’t it?” He waited for a moment, but she only rocked herself a little with her hands still over her face.

“Why do you think he said that, Mrs. Bünz?” Alleyn asked.

In a voice so muffled that they had to strain their ears to hear her, she said something quite unexpected.

“It is because I am a woman,” said Mrs. Bünz.

Try as he might, Alleyn could get no satisfactory explanation from Mrs. Bünz as to what she implied by this statement or why she had made it. He asked her if she was thinking of the exclusion of women from ritual dances and she denied this with such vehemence that it was clear the question had caught her on the raw. She began to talk rapidly, excitedly and, to Mr. Fox at least, embarrassingly about the sex element in ritual dancing.

“The man-woman!” Mrs. Bünz shouted. “An age-old symbol of fertility. And the Hobby, also, without a doubt. There must be the Betty to lover him and the Hobby to —”

She seemed to realize that this was not an acceptable elucidation of her earlier statement and came to a halt. Dr. Utterly, who had heard all about her arrival at Copse Forge, reminded her that she had angered the Guiser in the first instance by effecting an entrance into the smithy. He asked her if she thought Ernie had some confused idea that, in doing this, she had brought ill-luck to the performance.

Mrs. Bünz seized on this suggestion with feverish intensity. “Yes, yes,” she cried. That, no doubt, was what Ernie had meant. Alleyn was unable to share her enthusiasm and felt quite certain it was assumed. She eyed him furtively. He realized, with immense distaste, that any forbearance or consideration that he might show her would probably be taken by Mrs. Bünz for weakness. She had her own ideas about investigating officers.

Furtively, she shifted her shoulders under their layers of woollen clothes. She made a queer little arrested gesture as if she were about to touch them and thought better of it.

Alleyn said, “Your shoulders are painful, aren’t they? Why not let Dr. Otterly have a look at them? I’m sure he would.”

Dr. Otterly made guarded professional noises, and Mrs. Bünz behaved as if Alleyn’s suggestion was tantamount to the Usual Warning. She shook her head violently, became grey-faced and speechless and seemed to contemplate a sudden break-away.

“I won’t keep you much longer,” Alleyn said. “There are only one or two more questions. This is the first: at any stage of the proceedings last night did the Hobby-Horse come near you?”

At this she did get up, but slowly and with the unco-ordinated movements of a much older woman. Fox looked over the top of his spectacles at the door. Alleyn and Dr. Otterly rose and on a common impulse moved a little nearer to her. It occurred to Alleyn that it would really be rather a pleasant change to ask Mrs. Bünz a question that did not throw her into a fever.

“Did you make any contact at all with the Hobby?” he insisted.

“I think. Once. At the beginning, during his chasinks.” Her eyes were streaming, but whether with cold or distress, it was impossible to say. “In his flirtinks he touched me,” she said. “I think.”

“So you have, no doubt, got tar on your clothes?”

“A liddle on my coat. I think.”

“Do the Hobby and Betty rehearse, I wonder?”

Dr. Otterly opened his mouth and shut it again.

“I know nothing of that,” Mrs. Bünz said.

“Do you know where they rehearsed?”

“Nothingk. I know nothingk.”

Fox, who had his eye on Dr. Otterly, gave a stentorian cough and Alleyn hurried on.

“One more question, Mrs. Bünz, and I do ask you very seriously to give me a frank answer to it. I beg you to believe that, if you are innocent of this crime, you can do yourself nothing but good by speaking openly and without fear. Please believe it.”

“I am combletely, combletely innocent.”

“Good. Then here is the question: did you after the end of the first morris leave the courtyard for some reason and not return to it until the beginning of the solo dance? Did you, Mrs. Bünz?”

“No,” said Mrs. Bünz very loudly.

“Really?”

“No.”

Alleyn said after a pause, “All right. That’s all. You may be asked later on to sign a statement. I’m afraid I must also ask you to stay in East Mardian until after the inquest.” He went to the door and opened it. “Thank you,” he said.

When she reached the door, she stood and looked at him. She seemed to collect herself and, when she spoke, it was with more composure than she had hitherto shown.

“It is the foolish son who has done it,” she said. “He is epileptic. Ritual dancing has a profound effect upon such beings. They are carried back to their distant origins. They become excited. Had not this son already cut his father’s hand and shed his blood with his sword? It is the son.”

“How do you know he had already cut his father’s hand?” Alleyn asked.

“I have been told,” Mrs. Bünz said, looking as if she would faint.

Without another word and without looking at him again, she went out and down the passage.

Alleyn said to Fox, “Don’t let her talk to Begg. Nip out, Fox, and tell him that, as we’ll be a little time yet, he can go up to his garage and we’ll look in there later. Probably suit him better, anyway.”

Fox went out and Alleyn grinned at Dr. Otterly.

“You can go ahead now,” he said, “if you want to spontaneously combust.”

“I must say I feel damn’ like it. What’s she up to, lying right and left? Good God, I never heard anything like it! Not know when we rehearsed. Good God! They could hear us all over the pub.”

“Where did you rehearse?”

“In the old barn at the back, here.”

“Very rum. But I fancy,” Alleyn muttered, “we know why she went away during the show.”

“Are you sure she did?”

“My dear chap, yes. She’s a fanatic. She’s a folklore hound with her nose to the ground. She remembered the first and last parts of your programme with fantastic accuracy. Of course, if she’d been there she’d have watched the earthy antics of the comics. If they are comics. Of course. She’d have been on the look-out for all the fertility fun that you hand out. If she’d been there she’d have looked and she’d have remembered in precise detail. She doesn’t remember because she didn’t look and she didn’t look because she wasn’t there. I’d bet my boots on it and I bet I know why.”

Fox returned, polishing his spectacles, and said, “Do you know what I reckon, Mr. Alleyn? I reckon Mrs. B. leaves the arena, just after the first dance, is away from it all through the collection and the funny business between young Mr. Stayne and daft Ernie and gets back before Dan Andersen does a turn on his own. Is that your idea?”

“Not altogether, Br’er Fox. If my tottering little freak of an idea is any good, she leaves her observation post before the first dance.”

“Hey?” Fox ejaculated. “But it’s the first dance that she remembers so well.

“I must say—” Dr. Otterly agreed and flapped his hands.

“Exactly,” Alleyn said. “I know. Now, let me explain.”

He did so at some length and they listened to him with the raised eyebrows of assailable incredulity.

“Well,” they said, “I suppose it’s possible.” And, “It might be, but how’ll you prove it?” And, “Even so, it doesn’t get us all that much further, does it?” And, “How are you to find out?”

“It gets us a hell of a lot further,” Alleyn said hotly, “as you’d find out pretty quickly if you could take a peep at Mrs. Bünz in the rude nude. However, since that little treat is denied us, let’s visit Mr. Simon Begg and see what he can provide. What was he up to, Fox?”

“He was talking on the telephone about horse-racing,” Fox said. “Something called ‘Teutonic Dancer’ in the one-thirty at Sandown. That’s funny,” Mr. Fox added. “I never thought of it at the time. Funny!”

“Screamingly. You might see if Bailey and Thompson are back, Fox, and if there’s anything. They’ll need a meal, poor devils. Trixie’ll fix that, I daresay. Then we’ll take a walk up the road to Begg’s garage.”

While Fox was away Alleyn asked Dr. Otterly if he could give him a line on Simon Begg.

“He’s a local,” Dr. Otterly said. “Son of the ex-village-shop-keeper. Name’s still up over the shop. He did jolly well in the war with the R.A.F. — bomber-pilot. He was brought down over Germany, tackled a bunch of Huns single-handed and got himself und two of his crew back through Spain. They gave him the D.F.C. for it. He’d been a bit of a problem as a lad but he took to active service like a bird.”

“And since the war?”

“Well — in a way, a bit of a problem again. I feel damn’ sorry for him. As long as he was in uniform with his ribbons up he was quite a person. That’s how it was with those boys, wasn’t it? They lived high, wide and dangerous and they were everybody’s heroes. Then he was demobilized and came back here. You know what country people are like: it takes a flying bomb to put a dent in their class-consciousness, and then it’s only temporary. They began to say how ghastly the R.A.F. slang was and to ask each other if it didn’t rock you a bit when you saw them out of uniform. It’s quite true that Simon bounded sky high and used an incomprehensible and irritating jargon and that some of his waistcoats were positively terrifying. All the same.”

“I know,” Alleyn said.

“I felt rather sorry for him. Neither fish, nor flesh nor stockbroker’s Tudor. That was why I asked him to come into the Sword Wednesday show. Our old Hobby was killed in the raids. He was old Begg from Yowford, a relation of Simon’s. There’ve been Beggs for Hobbies for a very long time.”

“So this Begg has done it — how many times?”

“About nine. Ever since the war.”

“What’s he been up to all that time?”

“He’s led rather a raffish kind of life for the last nine years. Constantly changing his job. Gambling pretty high, I fancy. Hanging round the pubs. Then, about three years ago his father died and he bought a garage up at Yowford. It’s not doing too well, I fancy. He’s said to be very much in the red. The boys would have got good backing from one of the big companies if they could have persuaded the Guiser to let them turn Copse Forge into a filling station. It’s at a cross-roads and they’re putting a main road through before long, more’s the pity. They were very keen on the idea and wanted Simon to go in with them. But the Guiser wouldn’t hear of it.”

“They may get it — now,” Alleyn said without emphasis. “And Simon may climb out of the red.”

“He’s scarcely going to murder William Andersen,” Dr. Otterly pointed out acidly, “on the off-chance of the five sons putting up five petrol pumps. Apart from the undoubted fact that, wherever Begg himself may have got to last night, the Guiser certainly didn’t leave the stage after he walked on to it and I defy you to perform a decapitation when you’re trussed up in ‘Crack’s’ harness. Besides, I like Begg; ghastly as he is, I like him.”

“All right. I know. I didn’t say a thing.”

“You are not, I hope,” Dr. Otterly angrily continued, “putting on that damned superior-sleuth act: ‘you have the facts, my dear — whatever the stooge’s name is.’ ”

“Not I.”

“Well, you’ve got some damned theory up your sleeve, haven’t you?”

“I’m ashamed of it.”

“Ashamed?”

“Utterly, Otterly.”

“Ah, hell!” Dr. Otterly said in disgust.

“Come with us to Begg’s garage. Keep on listening. If anything doesn’t tally with what you remember, don’t say a word unless I tip you the wink. All right? Here we go.”

In spite of the thaw, the afternoon had grown deadly cold. Yowford Lane dripped greyly between its hedgerows and was choked with mud and slush. About a mile along it, they came upon Simmy-Dick’s Service Station in a disheartened-looking shack with Begg’s car standing outside it. Alleyn pulled up at the first pump and sounded his horn.

Simon came out, buttoning up a suit of white overalls with a large monogram on the pocket: witness, Alleyn suspected, to a grandiloquent beginning. When he saw Alleyn, he grinned sourly and raised his eyebrows.

“Hullo,” Alleyn said. “Four, please.”

“Four what? Coals of fire?” Simon said, and moved round to the petrol tank.

It was an unexpected opening and made things a good deal easier for Alleyn. He got out of the car and joined Simon.

“Why coals of fire?” he asked.

“After me being a rude boy this morning.”

“That’s all right.”

“It’s just that I know what a clot Ernie can make of himself,” Simon said, and thrust the nose of the hosepipe into the tank. “Four, you said?”

“Four. And this is a professional call, by the way.”

“I’m not all that dumb,” Simon grunted.

Alleyn waited until the petrol had gone in and then paid for it. Simon tossed the change up and caught it neatly before handing it over. “Why not come inside?” he suggested. “It’s bloody cold out here, isn’t it?”

He led the way into a choked-up cubby-hole that served as his office. Fox and Dr. Otterly followed Alleyn and edged in sideways.

“How’s the Doc?” Simon said. “Doing a Watson?”

“I’m beginning to think so,” said Dr. Otterly. Simon laughed shortly.

“Well,” Alleyn began cheerfully, “how’s the racing-news?”

“Box of birds,” Simon said.

“Teutonic Dancer do any good for herself?”

Simon looked sharply at Fox. “Who’s the genned-up type?” he said. “You?”

“That’s right, Mr. Begg. I heard you on the telephone.”

“I see.” He took out his cigarettes, frowned over lighting one and then looked up with a grin. “I can’t keep it to myself,” he said. “It’s the craziest thing. Came in at twenty-seven to one. Everything else must have fallen down.”

“I hope you had something on.”

“A wee flutter,” Simon said and again the corners of his mouth twitched. “It was a dicey do, but was it worth it! How’s the Doc?” he repeated, again aware of Dr. Otterly.

“Quite well, thank you. How’s the garage proprietor?” Dr. Otterly countered chillily.

“Box of birds.”

As this didn’t seem to be getting them anywhere, Alleyn invited Simon to give them his account of the Five Sons.

He started off in a very business-like way, much, Alleyn thought, as he must have given his reports in his bomber-pilot days. The delayed entrance, the arrival of the Guiser, “steamed-up” and roaring at them all. The rapid change of clothes and the entrance. He described how he began the show with his pursuit of the girls.

“Funny! Some of them just about give you the go-ahead signal. I could see them through the hole in the neck. All giggles and girlishness. Half-windy, too. They reckon it’s lucky or something.”

“Did Miss Campion react like that?”

“The fair Camilla? I wouldn’t have minded if she had. I made a very determined attempt, but not a chance. She crash-landed in the arms of another bod. Ralphy Stayne. Lucky type!”

He grinned cheerfully round. “But, still!” he said. It was a sort of summing up. One could imagine him saying it under almost any circumstances.

Alleyn asked him what he did after he’d finished his act and before the first morris began. He said he had gone up to the back archway and had a bit of a breather.

“And during the morris?”

“I just sort of bummed around on my own.”

“With the Betty?”

“I think so. I don’t remember exactly. I’m not sort of officially ‘on’ in that scene.”

“But you didn’t go right off?”

“No, I’m meant to hang round. I’m the animal-man. God knows what it’s all in aid of, but I just sort of trot round on the outskirts.”

“And you did that last night?”

“That’s the story.”

“You didn’t go near the dancers?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Nor the dolmen?”

“No,” he said sharply.

“You couldn’t tell me, for instance, exactly what the Guiser did when he slipped down to hide?”

“Disappeared as usual behind the stone, I suppose, and lay doggo.”

“Where were you at that precise moment?”

“I don’t remember exactly.”

“Nowhere near the dolmen?”

“Absolutely. Nowhere near.”

“I see,” Alleyn said, and was careful not to look at Dr. Otterly. “And then? After that? What did you do?”

“I just hung round for a bit and then wandered up to the back.”

“What was happening in the arena?”

“The Betty did an act and after that Dan did his solo.”

“What was the Betty’s act?”

“Kind of ad lib. In the old days, they tell me, ‘she’ used to hunt down some bod in the crowd and tuck him under her petticoats. Or she’d come on screeching and, presently, there’d be a great commotion under the crinoline and out would pop some poor type. You can imagine, a high old time was had by all.”

“Mr. Stayne didn’t go in for that particular kind of clowning?”

“Who — Ralphy? Only very mildly. He’s much too much the gentleman, if you know what I mean.”

“What did he do?” Alleyn persisted.

“Honest, I’ve forgotten. I didn’t really watch. Matter of fact, I oozed off to the back and had a smoke.”

“When did you begin to watch again?”

“After Dan’s solo. When the last dance began. I came back for that.”

“And then?”

After that, Simon’s account followed the rest. Alleyn let him finish without interruption and was then silent for so long that the others began to fidget and Simon Begg stood up.

“Well,” he said, “if that’s all—”

“I’m afraid it’s nothing like all.”

“Hell!”

“Let us consider,” Alleyn said, “your story of your own movements during and immediately after the first dance — this dance that was twice repeated and ended with the mock decapitation. Why do you suppose that your account of it differs radically from all the other accounts we have had?”

Simon glanced at Dr. Otterly and assumed a tough and mulish expression.

“Your guess,” he said, “is as good as mine.”

“We don’t want to guess. We’d like to know. We’d like to know, for instance, why you say you trotted round on the outskirts of the dance and that you didn’t go near the dancers or the dolmen. Dr. Otterly here and all the other observers we have consulted say that, as a matter of fact, you went up to the dolmen at the moment of climax and stood motionless behind it.”

“Do they?” he said. “I don’t remember everything I did. Perhaps they don’t either. P’r’aps you’ve been handed a lot of duff gen.”

“If that means,” Dr. Otterly said, “that I may have laid false information, I won’t let you get away with it. I am absolutely certain that you stood close behind the dolmen and therefore so close to where the Guiser lay that you couldn’t fail to notice him. Sorry, Alleyn. I’ve butted in.”

‘That’s all right. You see, Begg, that’s what they all say. Their accounts agree.”

“Too bad,” Simon said.

“If, in fact, you did stand behind the dolmen when he hid behind it you must have seen exactly what the Guiser did.”

“I didn’t see what the Guiser did. I don’t remember being behind the stone. I don’t think I was near enough to see.”

“Would you make a statement, on oath, to that effect?”

“Why not?”

“And that you don’t remember exactly what the clowning act was between the Betty and Ernest Andersen?”

“Didn’t he and Ralphy have a row about his whiffler? Come to think of it, I believe I oozed off before they got going.”

“No, you didn’t. Sorry, Alleyn,” said Dr. Otterly.

“We are told that ‘Crack,’ who was watching them, gave a sort of neighing sound before he went off by the rear archway. Did you do that?”

“I might have. Daresay. Why the heck should I remember?”

“Because, up to the point when you finished tarring the village maidens and the dance-proper began, you remember everything very clearly. Then we get this period when you’re overtaken by a sort of mental miasma, a period that covers the ritual of the Father and the Five Sons culminating in the mock death. Everybody else agrees about where you were at the moment of the climax: behind the dolmen, they tell us, standing stock still. You insist that you don’t remember going near the dolmen.”

“That’s right,” Simon said very coolly and puckered his lips in a soundless whistle. “To the best of my remembrance, you know.”

“I think I’d better tell you that, in my opinion, this period, from the end of your improvisation until your return (and, incidentally, the return of your memory) covers the murder of William Andersen.”

“I didn’t hand him the big chop,” Simon said. “Poor old bastard.”

“Have you any notion who did?”

“No.”

“I do wish,” Alleyn said vexedly, “you wouldn’t be such an ass — if you are being an ass, of course.”

“Will that be all, Teacher?”

“No. How well do you know Mrs. Bünz?”

“I never met her till she came down here.”

“You’ve sold her a car, haven’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“Any other transactions?”

“What the hell do you mean?” Simon asked very quietly.

“Did you come to any understanding about Teutonic Dancer?”

Simon shifted his shoulders with a movement that reminded Alleyn of Mrs. Bünz herself. “Oh,” he said. “That.” He seemed to expand and the look of irrepressible satisfaction appeared again. “You might say the old dear brought me that bit of luck. I mean to say: could you beat it? Teutonic Dancer by Subsidize out of Substitution? Piece of cake!”

“Subsidize?”

“Yes. Great old sire, of course, but the dam isn’t so hot.”

“Did they give you any other ideas?”

“Who?”

“Subsidize and Substitution?”

“I don’t,” Simon said coolly, “know what you mean.”

“Let it go, then. What clothes did you wear last night?”

“Clothes? Oldest I’ve got. By the time the party was over, I looked pretty much like the original tar-baby myself.”

“What were they?”

“A heavy R.A.F. sweater and a pair of old cream slacks.”

“Good,” Alleyn said. “May we borrow them?”

“Look here, I don’t much like this. Why?”

“Why do you think? To see if there’s any blood on them.”

“Thanks,” said Simon turning pale, “very much!”

“We’ll be asking for everybody’s.”

“Safety in numbers?” He hesitated and then looked again at Dr. Otterly. “Not my job,” he muttered, “to try and teach the experts. I know that. All the same—”

“Come on,” Alleyn said. “All the same, what?”

“I just happen to know. Anybody buys his bundle that way, there isn’t just a little blood.”

“I see. How do you happen to know?”

“Show I was in. Over Germany.”

“Can you elaborate a bit?”

“It’s not all that interesting. We got clobbered and I hit the silk the same time as she exploded.”

“His bomber blew up and they parachuted down,” Dr. Otterly translated drily.

“That’s the story,” Simon agreed.

“Touch and go?” Alleyn hazarded.

“You can say that again.” Simon drew his brows together. His voice was unemphatic and without dramatic values, yet had the authentic colour of vivid recollection.

“I could see the Jerries before I hit the deck. Soon as I did they bounced me. Three of them. Two went the hard way. But the third, a little old tough-looking type he was, with a hedge-cutter, came up behind while I was still busy with his cobs. I turned and saw him. Too late to cope. I’d have bought it if one of my own crew hadn’t come up and got operational. He used his knife.”

Simon made an all too graphic gesture. “That’s how I know,” he said. “O.K., isn’t it, Doc? Buckets of blood?”

“Yes,” Dr. Otterly agreed. “There would be.”

“Yes. Which ought to make it a simple story,” Simon said and turned to Alleyn. “Oughtn’t it?”

“The story,” Alleyn said, “would be a good deal simpler if everyone didn’t try to elaborate it. Now, keep still. I haven’t finished with you yet. Tell me this: as far as I can piece it out, you were either up at the back exit or just outside it when Ernie Andersen came backstage.”

“Just outside it’s right.”

“What happened?”

“I told you. After the morris, I left Ralphy to it. I could hear him squeaking away and the mob laughing. I had a drag at a gasper and took the weight off the boots. Then the old Corp — that’s Ernie, he was my batman in the war — came charging out in one of his tantrums. I couldn’t make out what was biting him. After a bit, Ralphy turned up and gave Ernie his whiffler. Ralphy started to say, ‘I’m sorry,’ or something like that, but I told him to beat it. So he did.”

“And then?”

“Well, then it was just about time for me to go back. So I did. Ernie went back, too.”

“Who threw tar on the bonfire?”

“Nobody. I knocked the drum over with the edge of ‘Crack’s’ body. It’s a dirty big clumsy thing. Swings round. I jolly nearly went on fire myself,” Simon reflected with feeling. “By God, I did.”

“So you went back to the arena? You and Ernie?”

“That’s the story.”

“Where exactly did you go?”

“I don’t know where Ernie got to. Far as I remember, I went straight in.” He half shut his eyes and peered back through the intervening hours. “The boys had started their last dance. I think I went fairly close to the dolmen that time because I seem to remember it between them and me. Then I sheered off to the right and took up my position there.”

“Did you notice the Guiser lying behind the dolmen?”

“Sort of. Poor visibility through the hole in that canvas neck. And the body sticks out like a great shelf just under your chin. It hides the ground for about three feet all round you.”

“Yes, I see. Do you think you could have kicked anything without realizing you’d done it?”

Simon stared, blinked and looked sick. “Nice idea I must say,” he said with some violence.

“Do you remember doing so?”

He stared at his hands for a moment, frowning.

“God, I don’t know. I don’t know. I hadn’t remembered.”

“Why did you stop Ernie Andersen answering me when I asked if he’d done this job?”

“Because,” Simon said at once, “I know what Ernie’s like. He’s not more than nine-and-fivepence in the pound. He’s queer. I sort of kept an eye on him in the old days. He takes fits. I knew. I fiddled him in as a batman.” Simon began to mumble. “You know, same as the way he felt about his ghastly dog, I felt about him, poor old bastard. I know him. What happened last night got him all worked up. He took a fit after it happened, didn’t he, Doc? He’d be just as liable to say he’d done it as not. He’s queer about blood and he’s got some weird ideas about this dance and the stone and what-have-you. He’s the type that rushes in and confesses to a murder he hasn’t done just for the hell of it.”

“Do you think he did it?” Alleyn said.

“I do not. How could he? Only time he might have had a go, Ralphy had pinched his whiffler. I certainly do not.”

“All right. Go away and think over what you’ve said. We’ll be asking you for a statement and you’ll be subpoenaed for the inquest. If you’d like, on consideration, to amend what you’ve told us, we’ll be glad to listen.”

“I don’t want to amend anything.”

“Well, if your memory improves.”

“Ah, hell!” Simon said disgustedly and dropped into his chair.

“You never do any good,” Alleyn remarked, “by fiddling with the facts.”

“Don’t you just,” Simon rejoined with heartfelt emphasis and added, “You lay off old Ern. He hasn’t got it in him: he’s the mild one in that family.”

“Is he? Who’s the savage one?”

“They’re all mild,” Simon said, grinning. “As mild as milk.”

And on that note they left him.

When they were in the car, Dr. Otterly boiled up again.

“What the devil does that young bounder think he’s up to! I never heard such a damned farrago of lies. By God, Alleyn, I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”

“Don’t you?” Alleyn said absently.

“Well, damn it, do you?”

“Oh,” Alleyn grunted. “It sticks out a mile what Master Simon’s up to. Doesn’t it, Fox?”

“I’d say so, Mr. Alleyn,” Fox agreed cheerfully.

Dr. Otterly said, “Am I to be informed?”

“Yes, yes, of course. Hullo, who’s this?”

In the hollow of the lane, pressed into the bank to make way for the oncoming car, were a man and a woman. She wore a shawl pulled over her head and he a woollen cap and there was a kind of intensity in their stillness. As the car passed, the woman looked up. It was Trixie Plowman.

“Chris hasn’t lost much time,” Dr. Otterly muttered.

“Are they engaged?”

“They were courting,” Dr. Otterly said shortly. “I understood it was all off.”

“Because of the Guiser?”

“I didn’t say so.”

“You said Chris hadn’t lost much time, though. Did the Guiser disapprove?”

“Something of the sort. Village gossip.”

“I’ll swap Simon’s goings-on for your bit of gossip.”

Dr. Otterly shifted in his seat. “I don’t know so much about that,” he said uneasily. “I’ll think it over.”

They returned to the fug and shadows of their room in the pub. Alleyn was silent for some minutes and Fox busied himself with his notes. Dr. Otterly eyed them both and seemed to be in two minds whether or not to speak. Presently, Alleyn walked over to the window. “The weather’s hardening. I think it may freeze tonight,” he said.

Fox looked over the top of his spectacles at Dr. Otterly, completed his notes and joined Alleyn at the window.

“Woman,” he observed. “In the lane. Looks familiar. Dogs.”

“It’s Miss Dulcie Mardian.”

“Funny how they will do it.”

“What?”

“Go for walks with dogs.”

“She’s coming into the pub.”

“All that fatuous tarradiddle,” Dr. Otterly suddenly fulminated, “about where he was during the triple sword-dance! Saying he didn’t go behind the dolmen. Sink me, he stood there and squealed like a colt when he saw Ralph grab the sword. I don’t understand it and I don’t like it. Lies.”

Alleyn said, “I don’t think Simon lied.”

“What!”

“He says that during the first dance, the triple sword-dance, he was nowhere near the dolmen. I believe that to be perfectly true.”

“But, rot my soul, Alleyn — I swear —”

“Equally, I believe that he didn’t see Ralph Stayne grab Ernest Andersen’s sword.”

“Now, look here—”

Alleyn turned to Dr. Otterly. “Of course he wasn’t. He was well away from the scene of action. He’d gone offstage to keep a date with a lady-friend.”

“A date? What lady-friend, for pity’s sake?”

Trixie came in.

“Miss Dulcie Mardian,” she said, “to see Mr. Alleyn, if you please.”