Pageant of Murder

CHAPTER EIGHT

Councillor Perse Takes a Hand

“…and the fourth horse, inscribed Broken Down, represents the position of Mr Roche.”

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Laura returned to Kensington on the following afternoon, there to await her employer, who was not expected in London until the next day. Henri and Celestine, the domestic staff, welcomed Laura. It had been a dull week, they said.

Dame Beatrice returned at the appointed time and she and Laura were kept busy at the London clinic until the second week in June, when most of the patients recovered sufficiently to take their summer holiday, a phenomenon which occurred yearly. Dame Beatrice and Laura, therefore, cruised in a large liner and visited the West Indies, returning to the Stone House in the Hampshire village of Wandles Parva towards the end of July.

Here they were blessed by the society of Laura’s son Hamish and two schoolfellows, named Gibbs and Honeybun, until all three went off on a school outing to Yugoslavia by sea.

“Schools are a big improvement on what they were,” said Laura, when she returned from having seen the children safely into the care of a young master of angelic aspect but commanding eye. “It’s too marvellous to get rid of Hamish so easily and for three glorious, carefree weeks. I’m glad they’re not going to fly, though. I don’t like aeroplanes.”

“It is as well, then, that Hamish shares your passion for the sea,” said Dame Beatrice. “By the way, a letter came for you. I think it must be from our dear Mrs Trevelyan-Twigg, from what I remember of her handwriting.”

The letter was indeed from Kitty, and it struck a protesting and mournful note. Laura read it twice and then passed it to Dame Beatrice.

“Wouldn’t you say that this is an epistle written by a woman wailing for her demon lover?” she enquired. Dame Beatrice handed back the letter as soon as she had read it.

“Mrs Trevelyan-Twigg certainly appears to be somewhat agitated,” she said.

“Yes. Just fancy her wretched nephew wanting to hold another pageant! Thinks it may help to bring something to light! Furthermore, thinks the last one didn’t really do justice to the history of the borough.”

“Well, child, from what I have gathered, it did not do justice to the history of the borough. I became interested and made a few notes. It seems that, apart from the Romans and Saxons in general, the Roman commander Aulus Plautius visited the place with elephants. Later on, it was known to Offa of Mercia and was ravaged by the Danes. A synod of the Church was held there, and there Saint Dunstan was given a bishopric. Two kings, Edmund Ironside and Canute, fought a battle at Brayne, the Norman knight Maurice de Berkeley was connected with the place and, in its later history, it housed a Chapter of the Garter. Shakespeare refers to one of its inns, a battle of the Civil War was fought in its streets and it was well-known, during the eighteenth-century elections, to John Horne Tooke and John Wilkes. Tooke, in fact, was the vicar of Brayne at the time.”

“Golly!” said Laura, awe-stricken. “But what does he mean about a Hock Day? Some sort of local jamboree and get-together, I suppose? But why hock? I should have thought beer would be more in keeping—or, possibly mead.”

“The original Hock Days were festivals held between Easter and Whitsun for the purpose of collecting money. Parts of the town were barred off with ropes and people wishing to enter such streets were mulcted of a small fee before being allowed to go on their way.”

“But you couldn’t do that sort of thing nowadays! It would create chaos. Think of the hold-up of cars! I think Kitty’s nevvy ought to be certified!”

“She will talk him out of the Hocking, I dare say. If she doesn’t, the police will. However, she needs comforting. Invite her to come and stay for a bit. I wonder how soon, if at all, Mr Perse intends to stage this second pageant?”

This question was answered by Kitty herself when she arrived on the following day.

“He’s spending the whole of his summer holiday getting it all taped out,” she said, “and he’s going to begin rehearsing for it at the end of September, because he wants to have the school-children in it again, and they’ll be finished with holidays by then. I don’t grudge him his bit of fun, and he’s done heaps of research and all that, but he’s planning to do things that make my inside go cold every time I think of them.”

“Such as?” Laura enquired.

“Well, there’s this Hocking business.”

“Don’t worry about that. The police will never let him get away with it.”

“Then there’s this dancing round the sacred oak.”

“What sacred oak?”

“Just outside Brayne there’s a sportsground. It’s part of Brayne Common. Well, in the very middle of the sportsground there’s an oak tree, and one story goes that it had to do with the Druids and is sacred. Anyway, he’s going to have dancing round it, with pagan rites and what-have-you. It’s so heathenish of him.”

“Hardly the original tree, do you think?” asked Laura, declining to comment on the religious aspect.

“I’ve no idea, Dog. Wouldn’t you have to cut it down and inspect its vascular bundles or its annual rings, or something, to establish that? Anyway, another theory is that it used to be the hangman’s tree, and the local criminals were strung up on it, and that’s not very nice either—leathery corpses hanging in chains, and all that. I don’t like it. I can’t forget what happened at the last pageant, and I call it flying in the face of Providence to hold another one.”

“Have they discovered any more about those two deaths? I’ve rather lost touch since Mrs Croc. and I went on that cruise. It’s true the purser or someone used to pin up a daily news-bulletin, but it was never about anything but politics and pop-groups. Not a word about anything interesting.”

“Well, there were the inquests, of course. My god-forsaken nephew went to both of them. Death by Misadventure in the case of poor little Luton, and murder, by person or persons unknown, in the case of the school-master Spey.”

“Have they found his head?”

“No, I don’t think so. Gordon, and another master, and one of the doctors at the hospital where he had his appendix out, all identified the body (separately, because I think the police still have their eye on Gordon) and swore to a birthmark on his chest. The doctor had seen it in hospital and the others had been swimming with him. They didn’t bother the wife. She was sufficiently upset as it was.”

“The police have to accept the verdict in Luton’s case, I suppose, but I bet their files are still open. I don’t see how the jury could have come to such a conclusion. It was manslaughter, if nothing worse. Death by Misadventure my foot!”

“Well, it was known that some of the cast went over to the pub both before and during the interval, so the coroner put out the suggestion of beery horseplay and the jury accepted it, I suppose. Of course, the fact of the matter, as I now maintain, is that, beery or not, Gordon did in Luton and then had to finish off Spey because Spey knew all about it.”

“Well, it’s possible, I suppose. By the way, did the real sword come from Squire’s Acre?”

“Oh, yes, it was one of a set of four.”

“Four?”

“Yes, four duelling swords. You know—choice of weapons and all that.”

“Have the Batty-Faudreys been given it back?”

“I have no idea. I suppose so.”

“It wasn’t used after the interval because they didn’t do their second scene, so where did the sword get to? Where was it found?”

“Again, Dog, I simply don’t know.”

“Well, get your nephew to find out.”

“All right, I will. Being on the Council doesn’t necessarily admit him to the counsels of the police, though.”

“Extremely well expressed, if I may so so.”

“Oh, well, in my job I sometimes have to make speeches, so I’ve collected a few useful words such as “necessarily” and “counsels”, and “erratic” and “influential” and “trends”. You’d be surprised how often you can bring them in.”

“No, I shouldn’t. Any more available information?”

“No, but I’ve got a theory.”

“Not another one?”

“It’s about cutting off that head. Could it have been done with one of the Saxon swords? They were long and heavy, weren’t they?”

“The real ones were, yes, but I doubt whether any of them would be any good nowadays. Besides, the Saxons in the pageant were long-haired school-girls who wore swords made from laths, didn’t they?”

“Yes, of course. Could the murderer have been disguised as a girl, do you think?”

“Come, come! Teenage girls would have spotted him a mile off and raised hell, if only with screams of laughter. Be your age, dear, do!”

“You don’t say that any more, Dog. It’s out of date.”

“Maybe, but it wasn’t a bad old slogan, all the same. It said what it meant, which is more than most of the slogans do nowadays.”

“Well, what are we going to do?”

“About what?”

“About stopping Julian from putting on this beastly second-time-of-asking pageant, of course.”

“I don’t see that there’s anything to do.”

“But somebody else may be killed!”

“Most unlikely, Old Sobersides. Don’t be so fanciful, and, above all, don’t worry.”

“I don’t like the way nothing’s come out about those other deaths, and I don’t like playing with fire, Dog.”

“Why not? I bet you went mafficking on Guy Fawkes Night with the rest and the best of us, didn’t you?”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

“I know it isn’t, but don’t get all tensed up.”

“I’ve got a feeling.”

“Yes, so have I, but that’s nothing to go by. I’ve often had one, and nothing’s happened at all.”

“You may not have known about it. Something may have happened and you not know it.”

Dame Beatrice, who had listened with interest to the conversation, decided to intervene.

“I should like,” she said, “to be more definitely informed about the deaths which have already taken place. The drama club appears to be involved up to the hilt, and yet, if it was some one or more of them, I should have thought…”

“Yes, I do agree,” said Laura. “The police would have had the edge on him or them by now. But if not the drama club—well, who?”

“That’s just it, Dog,” agreed Kitty. “I know there were arguments and jealousies and general eye-scratching and back-biting, but nothing that would justify murder, unless the murderer was mad.”

“Any signs of anybody actually trying to bite holes in the carpet?”

“No, there aren’t, so far as I know. Of course, I don’t know what blood-feuds may have been going on before the actual rehearsals for the pageant, but I do know there was pretty bad feeling then.”

“I wonder whether anything definite touched it off? It might be very interesting to know.”

“All I know is,” said Kitty, forcefully, “that I’ve shaken the dust of Brayne well and truly off my non-stiletto heels and nothing will induce me to go there again, plead my nephew never so pathetically.”

“A pity,” said Dame Beatrice. “I was hoping to persuade you and Laura to accompany me there and show me round.”

Kitty looked horrified . Then, as Laura laughed, her expression changed.

“You mean you intend to look into these murders?” she asked.

“Say rather that I intend to look into the environment in which these murders took place,” replied Dame Beatrice.

“I know what that means,” said Kitty. “All right, then. I’ll be led to the slaughter, if that’s what you want.”

“There is something else, if you can arrange it. Would it be possible, do you think, for me to meet your nephew before we go?”

“You think you may be able to pump some information out of him? I doubt whether he knows very much, but you could try. Will you and Laura come to dinner at my flat one evening? I can easily put you up for the night, now that the children are with my sister in Cornwall.”

There were six people in all at the dinner. Kitty’s husband had invited a colleague who devoted himself to Kitty during the meal and talked fly-fishing with her husband for the remainder of the evening. Kitty’s husband talked mostly to Laura during the meal, and Kitty and Laura talked jobs, children and old times when it was over. Councillor Perse attached himself inexorably to Dame Beatrice both during the dinner and until he left for his lodgings in Brayne at just after eleven p.m., and talked almost incessantly to her, pausing only when she asked an occasional question.

“Did you find out anything useful?” Laura enquired, when he and the other man had gone, and Kitty and her husband were organising sandwiches and drinks.

“I think I must have found out all that Mr Perse knows and everything that he suspects. He was extremely expansive.”

“Yes, I noticed that.”

“Whether what he was able to tell me will be useful, is more than I can say at present. However, he was good enough to promise that he will have a word with the Town Hall staff, so that I shall be allowed every facility to study the stage, the dressing-rooms, and the door which opens on to Smith Hill.”

“Oh, well, that’s definitely something.”

In company with Kitty, they visited Brayne on the following evening between afternoon tea and dinner, to find that young Mr Perse had been as good as his word, and that they were indeed to have “every facility”. The caretaker recognised Kitty at once, saluted the party courteously and asked where they would like to go. He conducted them ceremoniously to the auditorium, told them that the dressing-rooms were unlocked and that there was nothing to do to the outside door except to turn the handle, and then, with another salute, added that it was all theirs.

Upon this, he left them, and Kitty led the way through swing doors to a corridor which led to the dressing-rooms and the back of the stage.

“Of course,” she said, “these rooms are used for different purposes at different times. Sometimes they’re used for meetings of sub-committees, because there aren’t always shows on, although the place is pretty well booked up by amateurs for most evenings, so I’m told. Anyway, I can tell you how the rooms were allotted for my evening.” She opened the doors and left Dame Beatrice to look round. “This was the room the men had. The women, there being only two of them, were given this small room next door. And that’s all they actually needed for the play. The Tots had this room, the ballet this one, and the formation team were in here.”

There were three rooms which needed no introduction from Kitty. They were clearly marked, in black paint on a primrose yellow surface, Toilets, Bouquets, Refreshments.

“Bouquets?” commented Laura, amused. Kitty opened the door, disclosing long wooden tables of the old-fashioned, well-scrubbed, kitchen variety, a sink with a water-tap, two nylon overalls on pegs and a collection of enamel jugs of all sizes on the floor.

“Well,” said Kitty, “I suppose it’s a good idea to have a special room fitted up for flowers. If the amateur shows I’ve been to are anything to go by, not only do all the women who actually have a speaking part or sing solos get a floral tribute, but so do most of the chorus. Those who don’t expect to be given one, buy it for themselves, so it’s a jolly good idea to have somewhere to put the stuff until it’s wanted at the end of the show.”

“Was this particular room needed on your night?” Dame Beatrice enquired.

“No, they didn’t use it, so far as I know. It was agreed no flowers, being Shakespeare, you see.”

“I don’t see,” said Laura. “What’s Shakespeare got to do with it?”

“I didn’t think it would be reverent to let them have bouquets, Dog, after they’d had the privilege of speaking his words, so I put an advertisement on all the posters and in the local paper, saying, No floral tributes will be handed on to the stage. I knew that would mean there wouldn’t be any.”

“Yes, I see. Floral tributes must not only be given, they must be seen to be given. Quite so. But didn’t your Mrs Page and Mrs Ford kick?”

“Oh, no, far from it. They were afraid their bouquets (if we’d had any) might be different from each other in number, size and price. You’ve no idea, Dog, of what goes on in people’s minds once they set foot on a real stage in front of a real audience.”

“What about the other acts? As I remember it, didn’t you have a ballet and so forth?”

“Oh, but they’re serious people, Dog! They wouldn’t dream of accepting bouquets from their friends. Anyway, their ballet mistress wouldn’t let them. She charges them the earth for their lessons and rules them with a sort of jack-boot fearfulness which is absolutely petrifying. I don’t know how on earth they stick it. My theory, having seen and heard the old dragon in action, is that, having joined, they simply don’t dare to leave.”

“There is that, of course. What happens if she chucks them out?”

“Oh, she never chucks anybody out, Dog. She’s got her living to earn. Just tells them they’re not ready to perform in public. Anyway, as I’ve just pointed out, this is the room the ballet had, and next door we put the Tots.”

“Weren’t they too noisy to be put next-door to anything cultural?”

“Oh, well, the signora screeches at her company all the time, without ever letting up, so I didn’t think an extra bit of yelling would matter. This, again as I said, and sorry to repeat myself but I do want Dame Beatrice to get it clear, is the room we gave the formation team. They came ready dressed, but we had to give them somewhere to hang about until it was their turn to go on, and this room has a little annexe where the girls could restore their make-up, so we didn’t need to separate them from their partners. They spend the whole time practising steps, you know. Formation dancing is…what’s the word I want?”

“Obsessional?”

“Yes, that’s it. It’s a sort of bug.”

“You mean it’s a sort of dedication.”

“Do I? Oh, well, anyway, we didn’t give the school choirs a room because we’d had them in the gallery until the interval, so we just showed them the toilets and lined them up in the corridor where they got biscuits and soft drinks to keep them happy until we wanted them.”

“Yes, I see,” said Dame Beatrice. “And now may we go on to the stage?”

“One thing,” said Laura, as Kitty showed the way to the stairs which led up to the wings on the O.P. side. “What about your two comedians? Didn’t they need a dressing-room?”

“Not one of their own. We pushed them in with the drama club. There was plenty of space, and theirs was the second act, so they left the building as soon as they had finished their turn. And was I glad to see the back of them!”

“Are you sure they left the building?” asked Dame Beatrice.

“Oh, yes. They packed their traps and went across the road for beer. I saw them off and warned them about Smith Hill and the river.”

“They could not have come in again by the front entrance?”

“Not without a ticket. Why, you don’t suspect them of killing Falstaff, do you?—although we did wonder, their being tight, you know.”

“No, most emphatically I do not, but it is as well to eliminate as many people as possible as soon as possible.”

The three went on to the stage and Kitty pointed out that there were three entrances—from the Prompt Side, from the O.P. side and, in addition, a cunningly concealed one in the middle of the back-drop.

“Just in case you want to have the Demon King burst in with a clap of thunder, or the ballet suddenly erupt from somewhere unexpected,” she explained.

“And which of the entrances or exits was used for carrying Falstaff off the stage?” Dame Beatrice enquired.

“Oh, they dragged him off on the Prompt Side. It was nearest to the dressing-room, you see. And as the two men-servants had to come on again in Scene Two—not that we had it, of course—they wanted as much time in the pub as they could get, I suppose. Oh, and that’s another thing. I suppose they could swear—and probably did—to the comedians having been in the pub.”

“That can be established, I suppose,” said Laura, “unless the comedians had left the pub by then.”

“Not they,” said Kitty, in a confident tone. “If ever I saw a couple of men who intended to make a night of it, they were the ones. We’ve talked about this already.”

“Yes, we agreed they might have done a pub-crawl. Where now, Mrs Croc., dear?”

“Now for the door which opens on to Smith Hill,” said Dame Beatrice. Smith Hill proved to be a short, steep, cobbled slipway which began at the High Street and ended at the muddy borders of the Thames opposite a small, willow-fringed eyot. There was a street-lamp at the High Street end and a yard or so of green and slippery stones at the edge of the river. The slime showed the high-tide limits.

“I wonder what the state of the tide was that night,” said Laura, studying the uncompromising and unbeautiful little passage.

“I’ve no idea,” said Kitty. “As I said, we warned people leaving by the side door to be sure to walk uphill, that’s all I know.”

“Well, they’d naturally aim for the street-lamp, wouldn’t they?”

“I should have thought so. Anyway, the water affected nobody but poor Falstaff, and he, presumably, didn’t choose the way he went.”

“Did you get anything important from our tour of the Town Hall?” asked Laura, when dinner was over and she and Dame Beatrice were travelling back to Wandles Parva and the Stone House.

“Well, I noted one possibility,” Dame Beatrice admitted. “I can’t, of course, tell who the murderer was, but I have an idea that I know where the deed was done.”

“Yes, something to do with that room labelled Bouquets. That struck me, too. I deduce three nylon overalls, one of which has either been destroyed by the murderer or impounded by the police. I expect the murderer wiped the sword on it, you know, and then probably washed the blood off the floor with it, too. He’d have access to plenty of water in that particular room.”

“I think you have made a reasonable deduction.”

“Well, there’s no doubt in my own mind that Bouquets is where the deed was done, and, if so, it throws the thing wide open again. You remember old Kitty’s telling us she’d placarded the town? Anybody—but simply anybody—could have known that the room would be empty.”

“There is still the vexed question as to whose hand wielded the sword. It does not seem possible, if the sword was the weapon used, that the killing took place before the interval, because the sword would still have been on the stage, and yet it seems highly unlikely that the killer would have been undetected if the interval itself was the time when the deed was done. It is extremely puzzling.” She looked expectantly at Laura.

“Well,” said Laura, “I can’t get any further. We’re not even officially concerned, and that means we can’t question the Town Hall staff with any hope of getting them to tell us anything they may know. Anyway, I’m sure that, from the very beginning, the police knew it was murder. You could tell they did, from the way the detective questioned old Kitty.”

“That is not proof in itself. The verdict was Death by Misadventure. It seems to me that the police would attempt to find out how that misadventure was caused.”

“Like deaths in motoring accidents, you mean? I suppose there is that, of course.”

“And now for Henry VIII,” said Dame Beatrice. “Here there seems no possible reason for doubt.”

“Murder most foul,” agreed Laura.

“Of course,” said Dame Beatrice, “the sword used to kill Mr Luton was wiped on the linen in the clothes basket. There would be no other reason for putting the basket into the Thames.”

“Oh, in the hope that the blood would be washed away. Yes, I see.”

“The door on to Smith Hill has a Yale lock,” said Dame Beatrice thoughtfully. Laura looked expectantly at her, but Dame Beatrice added nothing to this statement.