Death of a Fool

Chapter X Dialogue for a Dancer

The elderly parlour-maid put an exquisite silver dish filled with puckered old apples on the table. Dame Alice, Dulcie, Alleyn and Dr. Otterly removed their mats and finger bowls from their plates. Nobody helped themselves to apples.

The combined aftermath of pallid soup, of the goose that was undoubtedly the victim of Ernie’s spleen and of Queen Pudding lingered in the cold room together with the delicate memory of a superb red wine. The parlour-maid returned, placed a decanter in front of Dame Alice and then withdrew.

“Same as last night,” Dame Alice said. She removed the stopper and pushed the decanter towards Dr. Otterly.

“I can scarcely believe my good fortune,” he replied. He helped himself and leant back in his chair. “We’re greatly honoured, believe me, Alleyn. A noble wine.”

The nobility of the port was discussed for some time. Dame Alice, who was evidently an expert, barked out information about it, no doubt in much the same manner as that of her male forebears. Alleyn changed down (or up, according to the point of view) into the appropriate gear and all the talk was of vintages, body and aroma. Under the beneficent influence of the port even the dreadful memory of wet Brussels sprouts was gradually effaced.

Dulcie, who was dressed in brown velveteen with a lace collar, had recovered her usual air of vague acquiescence, though she occasionally threw Alleyn a glance that seemed to suggest that she knew a trick worth two of his and could look after herself if the need arose.

In the drawing-room, Alleyn had seen an old copy of one of those publications that are dedicated to the profitable enshrinement of family relationships. Evidently, Dame Alice and Dulcie had consulted this work with reference to himself. They now settled down to a gruelling examination of the kind that leaves not a second-cousin unturned nor a collateral unexplored. It was a pastime that he did not particularly care for and it gave him no opportunity to lead the conversation in the direction he had hoped it would take.

Presently, however, when the port had gone round a second time, some execrable coffee had been offered and a maternal great-aunt of Alleyn’s had been tabulated and dismissed, the parlour-maid went out and Dame Alice suddenly shouted:

“Got yer man?”

“Not yet,” Alleyn confessed.

“Know who did it?”

“We have our ideas.”

“Who?”

“It’s a secret.”

“Why?”

“We might be wrong and then what fools we’d look.”

“I’ll tell yer who I’d back for it.”

“Who?” asked Alleyn in his turn.

“Ernest Andersen. He took the head off that goose you’ve just eaten and you may depend upon it he did as much for his father. Over-excited. Gets above himself on Sword Wednesday, always. Was it a full moon last night, Otters?”

“I — yes, I rather think — yes. Though, of course, one couldn’t see it.”

“There yar! All the more reason. They always get worst when the moon’s full. Dulcie does, don’t you, Dulcie?” asked her terrible aunt.

“I’m sorry, Aunt Akky, I wasn’t listening.”

“There yar! I said you always get excited when the moon’s full.”

“Well, I think it’s awfully pretty,” Dulcie said, putting her head on one side.

“How,” Alleyn intervened rather hurriedly, “do you think Ernie managed it, Dame Alice?”

“That’s for you to find out.”

“True.”

“Pass the port. Help yerself.”

Alleyn did so.

“Have you heard about the great hoard of money that’s turned up at Copse Forge?” he asked.

They were much interested in this news. Dame Alice said the Andersens had hoarded money for as long as they’d been at the forge, a matter of four centuries and more, and that Dan would do just the same now that his turn had come.

“I don’t know so much about that, you know,” Dr. Otterly said, squinting at his port. “The boys and Simon Begg have been talking for a long time about converting the forge into a garage and petrol station. Looking forward to when the new road goes through.”

This, as might have been expected, aroused a fury in Dame Alice. Alleyn listened to a long diatribe, during which her teeth began to play up, against new roads, petrol pumps and the decline of proper feeling in the artisan classes.

“William,” she said (she pronounced it Will’m), “would never’ve had it. Never! He told me what his fools of sons were plottin’. Who’s the feller that’s put ’em up to it?”

“Young Begg, Aunt Akky.”

“Begg? Begg? What’s he got to do with it? He’s a grocer.”

“No, Aunt Akky, he left the shop during the war and went into the Air Force and now he’s got a garage. He was here yesterday.”

“You don’t have to tell me that, Dulcie. Of course I know young Begg was here. I’d have given him a piece of my mind if you’d told me what he was up ter.”

“When did you see William Andersen, Dame Alice?”

“What? When? Last week. I sent for ’im. Sensible old feller, Will’m Andersen.”

“Are we allowed to ask why you sent for him?”

“Can if yer like. I told ’im to stop his grand-daughter makin’ sheep’s eyes at my nephew.”

“Goodness!” Dulcie said, “was she? Did Ralph like it? Is that what you meant, Aunt Akky, when you said Ralph was a rake?”

“No.”

“If you don’t mind my cutting in,” Dr. Otterly ventured, “I don’t believe little Miss Camilla made sheep’s eyes at Ralph. She’s a charming child with very nice manners.”

“Will’m ’greed with me. Look what happened when his girl loped with young Campion. That sort of mix-up never answers and he knew it.”

“One can’t be too careful, can one, Aunt Akky,” Dulcie said, “with men?”

“Lor’, Dulcie, what a stoopid gel you are. When,” Dame Alice asked brutally, “have you had to look after yerself, I’d like to know?”

“Ah-ha, Aunt Akky!”

“Fiddlesticks!”

The parlour-maid re-appeared with cigarettes and, surprisingly, a great box of cigars.

“I picked ’em up,” Dame Alice said, “at old Tim Comberdale’s sale. We’ll give you ten minutes. You can bring ’em to the drawin’-room. Come on, Dulcie.”

She held out her arm. Dulcie began to collect herself.

“Let me haul,” Alleyn said, “may I?”

“Thanks. Bit groggy in the fetlocks, these days. Go with the best, once I’m up.”

He opened the door. She toddled rapidly towards it and looked up at him.

“Funny world,” she said. “Ain’t it?”

“Damned odd.”

“Don’t be too long over your wine. I’ve got a book to show you and I go up in half an hour. Don’t keep ’im now, Otters.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Dr. Otterly said. When the door had shut he placed his hand on his diaphragm and muttered, “By Heaven, that was an athletic old gander. But what a cellar, isn’t it?”

“Wonderful,” Alleyn said abstractedly.

He listened to Dr. Otterly discoursing on the Mardian family and its vanished heyday. “Constitutions of oxes and heads of cast-iron, the lot of them,” Dr. Otterly declared. “And arrogant!” He wagged a finger. “ ’Nuff said.” It occurred to Alleyn that Dr. Otterly’s head was not perhaps of the same impregnability as the Mardians’.

“Join the ladies?” Dr. Otterly suggested, and they did so.

Dame Alice was established in a bucket-shaped armchair that cut her off in some measure from anybody that wasn’t placed directly in front of her. Under her instructions, Alleyn drew up a hideous Edwardian stool to a strategic position. Dulcie placed a newspaper parcel on her great-aunt’s knee. Alleyn saw with some excitement a copy of the Times for 1871.

“Time someone got some new wrappin’ for this,” Dame Alice said and untied the tape with a jerk.

“By Heaven,” Dr. Otterly said, waving his cigar, “you’re highly favoured, Alleyn. By Heaven, you are!”

“There yar,” said Dame Alice. “Take it. Give him a table, Dulcie, it’s fallin’ to bits.”

Dr. Otterly brought up a table and Alleyn laid down the book she had pushed into his hands. It was of the kind that used to be called “commonplace” and evidently of a considerable age. The leather binding had split down the back. He opened it and found that it was the diary of one “Ambrose Hilary Mardian of Mardian Place, nr. Yowford, written in the year 1798.”

“My great-grandfather,” said Dame Alice. “I was born Mardian and married a Mardian. No young. Skip to the Wednesday before Christmas.”

Alleyn turned over the pages. “Here we are,” he said.

The entry, like all the others, was written in an elaborate copper-plate. The ink had faded to a pale brown.

“ ‘Sword Wednesday,’ ” he read, “ ‘1798. A note on the Mardian Morris of Five Sons.’ ” Alleyn looked up for a second at Dame Alice and then began to read.

There the entry for Sword Wednesday ended.

“Extraordinarily interesting,” Alleyn said. “Thank you.” He shut the book and turned to Dr. Otterly. “Did the Guiser speak any of this verse?”

“I believe he did, but he was very cagey about it. He certainly used to mutter something at those points in the dance, but he wouldn’t tell anybody what it was. The boys were near enough to hear, but they don’t like talking about it, either. Damn’ ridiculous when you come to think of it,” Dr. Otterly said, slightly running his words together. “But interesting, all the same.”

“Did he ever see this diary, Dame Alice?”

“I showed it to him. One of the times when he’d come to mend the boiler. He put on a cunnin’ look and said he knew all about it.”

“Would you think these lines, particularly the last four, are used in other places where folk dancing thrives?”

“Definitely not,” Dr. Otterly said, perhaps rather more loudly than he had intended. “They’re not in the Revesby text nor anywhere else in British ritual mumming. Purely local. Take the word ‘lover’ used as a verb. You still heard it hereabouts when I was a boy, but I doubt if it’s ever been found elsewhere in England. Certainly not in that context.”

Alleyn put his hand on the book and turned to his hostess. “Clever of you,” he said, “to think of showing me this. I congratulate you.” He got up and stood looking at her. She turned her Mrs. Noah’s face up to him and blinked like a lizard.

“Not goin’, are yer?”

“Isn’t it your bedtime?”

“Most certainly it is,” said Dr. Otterly, waving his cigar.

“Aunt Akky, it’s after ten.”

“Fiddlededee. Let’s have some brandy. Where’s the grog-tray? Ring the bell, Otters.”

The elderly parlour-maid answered the bell at once, like a servant in a fairy-tale, ready-armed with a tray, brandy-glasses and a bottle of fabulous cognac.

“I ’fer it at this stage,” Dame Alice said, “to havin’ it with the coffee. Papa used to say, ’When dinner’s dead in yer and bed is still remote, ring for the brandy.’ Sound advice in my?pinion.”

It was eleven o’clock when they left Mardian Castle.

Fox, running through his notes with a pint of beer before the fire, looked up over his spectacles when his chief came in. There was an unusual light in Alleyn’s eyes.

“You’re later than I expected, sir,” said Fox. “Shall I order you a pint?”

“Not unless you feel like carrying me up to bed after it. I’ve been carousing with the Dame of Mardian Castle. She may be ninety-four, Fox, but she carries her wine like a two-year-old, does that one.”

“God bless my soul! Sit down, Mr. Alleyn.”

“I’m all right. I must say I wonder how old Otterly’s managing under his own steam. He was singing the ‘Jewel Song’ from Faust in a rousing falsetto when we parted.”

“What did you have for dinner? To eat, I mean.”

“Ernie’s victim and sodden Brussels sprouts. The wine, however, was something out of this world. Laid down by one of the gods in the shape of Dame Alice’s papa. But the pièce de résistance, Br’er Fox, the wonder of the evening, handed to me, as it were, on a plate by Dame Alice herself, was — what do you suppose?”

“I don’t suppose, sir,” Fox said, smiling sedately.

‘The little odd golden morsel of information that clicks down into the pattern and pulls it together. The key to the whole damn’ set-up, my boy. Don’t look scandalized, Br’er Fox, I’m not so tight that I don’t know a crucial bit of evidence when it’s shoved under my nose. Have you heard the weather report?”

Mr. Fox began to look really disturbed. He cleared his throat and said warmer and finer weather had been predicted.

“Good,” Alleyn cried and clapped him on the back. “Excellent. You’re in for a treat.”

“What sort of treat,” Mr. Fox said, “for Heaven’s sake?”

“A touch of the sword and fiddle, Br’er Fox. A bit of hey-nonny-no. A glimpse of Merrie England with bells on. Nine-men’s morris, mud and all. Repeat, nine.”

“Eh?”

“We’re in for a reconstruction, my boy, and I’ll tell you why. Now, listen.”

The mid-winter sun smiled faint as an invalid over South and East Mardian on the Friday after Sword Wednesday. It glinted on the breakfast tables of the Reverend Mr. Samuel Stayne and of his great-aunt, Dame Alice Mardian. It touched up the cruet-stand and the britannia metal in the little dining-room at the Green Man and an emaciated ray even found its way to the rows of bottles in the bar and to the anvil at Copse Forge. A feeble radiance it was, but there was something heartening about it, nevertheless. Up at Yowford, Dr. Otterly surveyed the scene with an uplifting of his spirit that he would have found hard to explain. Also at Yowford, Simon Begg, trundling out Dr. Otterly’s wheel with its mended puncture, remembered his winning bet, assured himself that he stood a fair chance now of mending his fortunes with an interest in a glittering petrol station at Copse Forge, reminded himself it wouldn’t, under the circumstances, look nice to be too obviously pleased about this and broke out, nevertheless, into a sweet and irresponsibly exultant whistling.

Trixie sang and the potboy whistled louder but less sweetly than Simon. Camilla brushed her short hair before her open window and repeated a voice-control exercise. “Bibby bobby bounced a ball against the wall.” She thought how deeply she was in love and, like Simon, told herself it wasn’t appropriate to be so obviously uplifted. Then the memory of her grandfather’s death suddenly flooded her thoughts and her heart was filled with a vast pity and love, not only for him but for all the world. Camilla was eighteen and a darling.

Dame Alice woke from a light doze and felt for a moment quite desperately old. She saw a robin on her windowsill. Sharp as a thorn were its bright eyes and quick as thought the turn of its sun-polished head. Down below, the geese were in full scream. Dulcie would be pottering about in the dining-room. The wave of depression receded. Dame Alice was aware of her release but not, for a moment, of its cause. Then she remembered her dinnerparty. Her visitor had enjoyed himself. It was, she thought, thirty years — more — since she had been listened to like that. He was a pretty fellow, too. By “pretty” Dame Alice meant “dashing.” And what was it he’d said when he left? That with her permission they would revive the Mardian Morris that afternoon. Dame Alice was not moved by the sort of emotions that the death of the Guiser had aroused in younger members of Wednesday’s audience. The knowledge that his decapitated body had been found in her courtyard did not fill her with horror. She was no longer susceptible to horror. She merely recognized in herself an unusual feeling of anticipation and connected it with her visitor of last night. She hadn’t felt so lively for ages.

“Breakfast,” she thought and jerked at the tapestry bell-pull by her bed.

Dulcie in the dining-room heard the bell jangling away in the servant’s hall. She roused herself, took the appropriate dishes off the hot plate and put them on the great silver tray. Porridge. Kedgeree. Toast. Marmalade. Coffee. The elderly parlour-maid came in and took the tray up to Dame Alice.

Dulcie was left to push crumbs about the tablecloth and hope that the police wouldn’t find the murderer too soon. Because, if they did, Mr. Alleyn, to whom she had shown herself as a woman of the world, would go somewhere else.

Ralph Stayne looked down the table at his father, who had, he noticed, eaten no breakfast.

“You’re looking a bit poorly, Pop,” he said. “Anything wrong?”

His father stared at him in pale bewilderment.

“My dear chap,” he said, “no. Not with me. But the — the events of the night before last—”

“Oh!” Ralph said, “that! Yes, of course. As long as it’s only that — I mean,” he went on hurriedly, answering the look in his father’s eye, “as long as it’s not anything actually wrong with you. Yes, I know it was ghastly about the poor Old Guiser. It was quite frightful.”

“I can’t get it out of my head. Forgive me, old boy, but I really don’t know how you contrive to be so — so resilient.”

“I? I expect this sounds revoltingly tough to you — but, you see, Pop, if one’s seen rather a lot of that particular kind of horror — well, it’s a hell of a sight different. I have. On the deck of a battleship, among other places. I’m damn’—blast, I keep swearing! — I couldn’t be sorrier about the Guiser, but the actual look of the thing wasn’t all that much of a horror to me.”

“I suppose not. I suppose not.”

“One’d go mad,” Ralph said, “if one didn’t get tough. When there’s a war on. Simmy-Dick Begg would agree. So would Ernie and Chris. Although it was their father. Any returned chap would agree.”

“I suppose so.”

Ralph got up. He squared his shoulders, looked steadily at his father and said, “Camilla’s the one who really did get an appalling shock.”

“I know. Poor child. I wondered if I should go and see her, Ralph.”

“Yes,” Ralph said. “I wish you would. I’m going now, and I’ll tell her. She’ll be awfully pleased.”

His father, looking extremely disturbed, said, “My dear old man, you’re not —?”

“Yes, Pop,” Ralph said, “I’m afraid I am. I’ve asked Camilla to marry me.”

His father got up and walked to the window. He looked out on the dissolving whiteness of his garden.

“I wish this hadn’t happened,” he said. “Something was suggested last night by Dulcie that seemed to hint at it. I — as a churchman, I hope I’m not influenced by — by — well, my dear boy, by any kind of snob’s argument. I’m sure I’m not. Camilla is a dear child and, other things being equal, I should be really delighted.” He rubbed up his thin hair and said ruefully, “It’ll worry Aunt Akky most awfully.”

“Aunt Akky’ll have to lump it, I’m afraid,” Ralph said and his voice hardened. “She evidently heard that I’ve been seeing a good deal of Camilla in London. She’s already tried to bulldoze me about it. But, honestly, Pop, what, after all, has it got to do with Aunt Akky? I know Aunt Akky’s marvellous. I adore her. But I refuse to accept her as a sort of animated tribal totem, though I admit she looks very much like one.”

“It’s not only that,” his father said miserably. “There’s — forgive me, Ralph, I really detest having to ask you this, but isn’t there — someone —”

Mr. Stayne stopped and looked helplessly at his son. “You see,” he said, “I’ve listened to gossip. I tried not to, but I listened.”

Ralph said, “You’re talking about Trixie Plowman, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Who gossiped? Please tell me.”

“It was old William Andersen.”

Ralph drew in his breath. “I was afraid of that,” he said.

“He was genuinely worried. He thought it his duty to talk to me. You know how adamant his views were. Apparently Ernie had seen you and Trixie Plowman together. Old William was the more troubled because, on last Sunday morning —”

“It appears to be my fate,” Ralph said furiously, “to be what the Restoration dramatists call ‘discovered’ by the Andersens. It’s no good trying to explain, Pop. It’d only hurt you. I know, you would look on this Trixie thing as — well —”

“As a sin? I do, indeed.”

“But — it was so brief and so much outside the general stream of my life. And hers — Trixie’s. It was just a sort of natural thing; a little kindness of hers.”

“You can’t expect me to take that view of it.”

“No,” Ralph said. “I’ll only sound shallow or something.”

“It’s not a question of how you sound. It’s a question of wrongdoing, Ralph. There’s the girl — Trixie herself.”

“She’s all right. Honestly. She’s going to be tokened to Chris Andersen.”

The Rector momentarily shut his eyes. “Oh, Ralph!” he said and then, “William Andersen forbade it. He spoke to Chris on Sunday.”

“Well, anyway, now they can,” Ralph said, and then looked rather ashamed of himself. “I’m sorry, Pop. I shouldn’t have put it like that, I suppose. Look: it’s all over, that thing. It was before I knew Camilla. I did regret it very much, after I loved Camilla. Does that help?”

The Rector made a most unhappy gesture. “I am talking to a stranger,” he said. “I have failed you, dreadfully, Ralph. It’s quite dreadful.”

A bell rang distantly.

“They’ve fixed the telephone up,” the Rector said.

“I’ll go.”

Ralph went out and returned looking bewildered.

“It was Alleyn,” he said. “The man from the Yard. They want us to go up to the castle this afternoon.”

“To the castle?”

“To do the Five Sons again. They want you too, Pop.”

“Me? But why?”

“You were an observer.”

“Oh, dear!”

“Apparently, they’re calling everybody up: Mrs. Bünz included.”

Ralph joined his father in a kind of half-companionable dissonance and looked across the rectory tree-tops towards East Mardian, where a column of smoke rose gracefully from the pub.

Trixie had done her early chores and seen that the fires were burning brightly.

She had also taken Mrs. Bünz’s breakfast up to her.

At this moment, Trixie was behaving oddly. She stood with a can of hot water outside Mrs. Bünz’s bedroom door, intently listening. The expression on her face was not at all sly, rather it was grave and attentive. On the other side of the door, Mrs. Bünz clicked her knife against her plate and her cup on its saucer. Presently, there was a more complicated clatter as she put her tray down on the floor beside her bed. This was followed by the creak of a wire mattress, a heavy thud and the pad of bare feet. Trixie held her breath, listened feverishly and, then, without knocking, quickly pushed open the door and walked in.

“I’m sure I do ax your pardon, ma-am,” Trixie said. “Axcuse, me, please.” She crossed the room to the washstand, set down her can of water, returned past Mrs. Bünz and went out again. She shut the door gently behind her and descended to the back parlour, where Alleyn, Fox, Thompson and Bailey had finished their breakfasts and were setting their course for the day.

“Axcuse me, sir,” Trixie said composedly.

“All right, Trixie. Have you any news for us?”

“So I have, then.” She crossed her plump arms and laid three fingers of each hand on the opposite shoulder. “So broad’s that,” she said, “and proper masterpieces for a colour: blue and red and yaller and all puffed up angry-like, either side.”

“You’re a clever girl. Thank you very much.”

“Have you in the force yet, Miss Plowman,” Fox said, beaming at her.

Trixie gave them a tidy smile, cleared the breakfast things away, asked if that would be all and left the room.

“Pity,” Thompson said to Bailey, “there isn’t the time.”

Bailey, who was a married man, grinned sourly.

“Have we got through to everybody, Fox?” Alleyn asked.

“Yes, Mr. Alleyn. All set for four o’clock at the castle. The weather report’s still favourable, the telephone’s working again and Dr. Curtis has rung up to say he hopes to get to us by this evening.”

“Good. Before we go any further, I think we’d better have a look at the general set-up. It’ll take a bit of time, but I’ll be glad of a chance to try and get a bit of shape out of it.”

“It’d be a nice change to come up against something unexpected, Mr. Alleyn,” Thompson grumbled. “We haven’t struck a thing so far.”

“We’ll see if we can surprise you. Come on.”

Alleyn put his file on the table, walked over to the fireplace and began to fill his pipe. Fox polished his spectacles. Bailey and Thompson drew chairs up and produced their notebooks. They had the air of men who had worked together for a long time and who understood each other’s ways.

“You know,” Alleyn said, “if this case had turned up three hundred years ago, nobody would have had any difficulty in solving it. It’d have been regarded by the villagers, at any rate, as an open-and-shut affair.”

“Would it, now?” Fox said placidly. “How?”

“Magic.”

“Hell!” Bailey said, and looked faintly disgusted.

“Ask yourselves. Look how the general case echoes the pattern of the performance. Old Man. Five Sons. Money. A Will. Decapitation. The only thing that doesn’t tally is the poor old boy’s failure to come to life again.”

“You reckon, do you, sir,” Thompson asked, “that, in the olden days, they’d have taken a superstitious view of the death?”

“I do. The initiates would have thought that the god was dissatisfied, or that the gimmick had misfired, or that Ernie’s offering of the goose had roused the blood lust of the god, or that the rites had been profaned and the Guiser punished for sacrilege. Which again tallies, by the way.”

“Does it?” Bailey asked, and added, “Oh, yes. What you said, Mr. Alleyn. That’s right.”

“The authorities, on the other hand,” Alleyn went on, “would have plumped at once for witchcraft and the whole infamous machinery of seventeenth-century investigation would have begun to tick over.”

“Do you reckon,” Thompson said, “that any of these chaps take the superstitious view? Seems hardly credible but — well?”

“Ernie?” Fox suggested rather wearily.

“He’s dopey enough, isn’t he, Mr. Fox?”

“He’s not so dopey,” Alleyn said strongly, “that he can’t plan an extremely cunning leg-pull on his papa, his four brothers, Simon Begg, Dr. Otterly and Ralph Stayne. And jolly nearly bring it off, what’s more.”

“Hul-lo,” Bailey said under his breath to Thompson. “Here comes the ‘R.A.’ touch.”

Fox, who overheard him, bestowed a pontifical but not altogether disapproving glance upon him. Bailey, aware of it, said, “Is this going to be one of your little surprises, Mr. Alleyn?”

Alleyn said, “Damn’ civil of you to play up. Yes, it is, for what it’s worth. Bring out that chit the Guiser’s supposed to have left on his door, saying he wouldn’t be able to perform.”

Bailey produced it, secured between two sheets of glass and clearly showing a mass of finger prints where he had brought them up.

“The old chap’s prints,” he said, “and Ernie’s. I got their dabs after you left yesterday afternoon. Nobody objected, although I don’t think Chris Andersen liked it much. He’s tougher than his brothers. There’s a left and right thumb of Ernie’s on each side of the tack hole, and all the rest of the gang. Which is what you’d expect, isn’t it, if they handed it round?”

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “And do you remember where Ernie said he found it?”

“Tacked to the door. There’s the tack hole.”

“And where are the Guiser’s characteristic prints? Suppose ho pushed the paper over the head of the existing tack, which the nature of the hole seems to suggest? You’d get a right and left thumb print on each side of the hole, wouldn’t you? And what do you get? A right and left thumb print, sure enough. But whose?”

Bailey said, “Ah, hell! Ernie’s.”

“Yes. Ernie’s. So Ernie shoved it over the tack. But Ernie says he found it there when he came down to get the Guiser. So what’s Ernie up to?”

“Rigging the old man’s indisposition?” Fox said.

“I think so.”

Fox raised his eyebrows and read the Guiser’s message aloud.

“ ‘Cant mannage it young Ern will have to. W.A.”’

“It’s the old man’s writing, isn’t it, Mr. Alleyn?” Thompson said. “Wasn’t that checked?”

“It’s his writing all right, but, in my opinion, it wasn’t intended for his fellow mummers, it wasn’t originally tacked to the door, it doesn’t refer to the Guiser’s inability to perform and it doesn’t mean young Ern will have to go on in his place.”

There was a short silence.

“Speaking for self,” Fox said, “I am willing to buy it, Mr. Alleyn.” He raised his hand. “Wait a bit, though,” he said. “Wait a bit! I’ve started.”

“Away you go.”

“The gardener’s boy went down on Tuesday afternoon with a note for the Guiser telling him he’d got to sharpen that slasher himself and return it by bearer. The Guiser was in Biddlefast. Ernie took the note. Next morning — wasn’t it? — the boy comes for the slasher. It isn’t ready and he’s told by Ernie that it’ll be brought up later. Any good?”

“You’re away to a pretty start.”

“All right, all right. So Ernie does sharpen the slasher and, on the Wednesday, he does take it up to the castle. Now, Ernie didn’t give the boy a note from the Guiser, but that doesn’t mean the Guiser didn’t write one. How’s that?”

“You’re thundering up the straight.”

“It means Ernie kept it and pushed it over that tack and pulled it off again and, when he was sent down to fetch his dad, he didn’t go near him. He dressed himself up in the Guiser’s rig while the old boy was snoozing on his bed and he lit off for the castle and showed the other chaps this ruddy note. Now, then!”

“You’ve breasted the tape, Br’er Fox, and the trophy is yours.”

“Not,” Alleyn said dubiously, observing his colleagues, “that it gets us all that much farther on. It gets us a length or two nearer, but that’s all.”

“What does it do for us?” Fox ruminated.

“It throws a light on Ernie’s frame of mind before the show. He’s told us himself he went hurtling up the hill in their station-waggon dressed in the Guiser’s kit and feeling wonderful. His dearest ambition was about to be realized: he was to act the leading role, literally to ‘play the Fool,’ in the Dance of the Sons. He was exalted. Ernie’s not the village idiot: he’s an epileptic with all the characteristics involved.”

“Exaggerated moods, sort of?”

“That’s it. He gets up there and hands over the note to his brothers. The understudy’s bundled into Ernie’s clothes, the note is sent in to Otterly. It’s all going Ernie’s way like a charm. The zeal of the folk dance sizzles in his nervous ganglions, or wherever fanaticism does sizzle. I wouldn’t mind betting he remembered his sacrifice of our last night’s dinner upon the Mardian Stone and decided it had brought him luck. Or something.”

Alleyn stopped short and then said in a changed voice, “ ‘It will have blood, they say. Blood will have blood.’ I bet Ernie subscribes to that unattractive theory.”

“Bringing him in pretty close to the mark, aren’t you, Mr. Alleyn?”

“Well, of course he’s close to the mark, Br’er Fox. He’s as hot as hell, is Ernie. Take a look at him. All dressed up and somewhere to go, with his audience waiting for him. Dr. Otterly, tuning his fiddle. Torches blazing. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Stratford-upon-Avon with all the great ones waiting behind the curtain or the Little Puddleton Mummers quaking in their borrowed buskins; no, by Heaven, nor the Andersen brothers listening for the squeal of a fiddle in the snow: there’s the same kind of nervous excitement let loose. And, when you get a chap like Ernie — well, look at him. At the zero hour, when expectation is ready to topple over into performance, who turns up?”

“The Guiser.”

“The Guiser. Like a revengeful god. Driven up the hill by Mrs. Bünz. The Old Man himself, in what the boys would call a proper masterpiece of a rage. Out he gets, without a word to his driver, and wades in. He didn’t say much. If there was any mention of the hanky-panky with the written message, it didn’t lead to any explanation. He seems merely to have launched himself at Ernie, practically lugged the clothes off him, forced him to change back to his own gear and herded them on for the performance. All right. And how did Ernie feel? Ernie, whose pet dog the old man had put down, Ernie, who’d manoeuvred himself into the major role in this bit of prehistoric pantomime, Ernie, who was on top of the world? How did he feel?”

“Murderous?” Thompson offered.

“I think so. Murderous.”

“Yes,” said Fox and Bailey and Thompson. “Yes. Well. What?”

“He goes on for their show, doesn’t he, with the ritual sword that he’s sharpened until it’s like a razor: the sword that cut the Guiser’s hand in a row they had at their last practice, which was first blood to Ernie, by the way. On he goes and takes it out on the thistles. He slashes their heads off with great sweeps of his sword. Ernie is a thistle whiffler and he whiffles thistles with a thistle whiffler. Diction exercise for Camilla Campion. He prances about and acts the savage. After that he gets warmed up still more effectively by dancing and going through the pantomime of cutting the Fool’s head off. And, remember, he’s in a white-hot rage with the Fool. What happens next to Ernie? Nothing that’s calculated to soothe his nerves or sweeten his mood. When the fun is at its height and he’s looking on with his sword dangling by its red cord from his hand, young Stayne comes creeping up behind and collars it. Ernie loses his temper and gives chase. Stayne hides in view of the audience and Ernie plunges out at the back. He’s dithering with rage. Simon Begg says he was incoherent. Stayne comes out and gives him back the whiffler. Stayne re-enters by another archway. Ernie comes back complete with sword and takes part in the final dance. If you consider Ernie like that, in continuity, divorced for the moment from the trimmings, you get a picture of mounting fury, don’t you? The dog, the Guiser’s cut hand, the decapitated goose, the failure of the great plan, the Guiser’s rage, the stolen sword. A sort of crescendo.”

“Ending,” Fox mused, “in what?”

“Ending, in my opinion, with him performing, in deadly reality, the climax of their play.”

“Hey?” Bailey ejaculated.

“Ending in him taking his Old Man’s head off.”

“Ernie?”

“Ernie.”

“Then — well, cripes,” Thompson said, “so Ernie’s our chap, after all?”

“No.”

“Look — Mr. Alleyn—”

“He’s not our chap, because when he took his Old Man’s head off, his Old Man was already dead.”

Mr. Fox, as was his custom, glanced complacently at his subordinates. He had the air of drawing their attention to their chief’s virtuosity.

“Not enough blood,” he explained, “on anybody.”

“Yes, but if it was done from the rear,” Bailey objected.

“Which it wasn’t.”

“The character of the wound gives us that,” Alleyn said. “Utterly agrees and I’m sure Curtis will. It was done from the front. You’ll see when you look. Of course, the P.M. will tell us definitely. If decapitation was the cause of death, I imagine there will be a considerable amount of internal bleeding. I feel certain, though, that Curtis will find there is none.”

“Any other reasons, Mr. Alleyn? Apart from nobody being bloody enough?” Thompson asked.

“If it had happened where he was lying and he’d been alive, there’d have been much more blood on the ground.”

Bailey suddenly said, “Hey!”

Mr. Fox frowned at him.

“What’s wrong, Bailey?” Alleyn asked.

“Look, sir, are you telling us it’s not homicide at all? That the old chap died of heart failure or something and Ernie had the fancy to do what he did? After? Or what?”

“I think that may be the defence that will be raised. I don’t think it’s the truth.”

“You think he was murdered?”

“Yes.”

“Pardon me,” Thompson said politely, “but any idea how?”

“An idea, but it’s only a guess. The post mortem will settle it.”

“Laid out cold somehow and then beheaded,” Bailey said, and added most uncharacteristically, “Fancy.”

“It couldn’t have been the whiffler,” Thompson sighed. “Not that it seems to matter.”

“It wasn’t the whiffler,” Alleyn said. “It was the slasher.”

“Oh! But he was dead?”

“Dead.”

“Oh.”