Pageant of Murder

CHAPTER TEN

Mistress Ford and Mistress Page

“The Butts Common was frequently used for sports of this description.”

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So that’s it, Dog, is it?” asked Kitty earnestly. They were just finishing lunch at Kitty’s Knightsbridge flat.

“So that’s it,” Laura agreed. “And now, old school friend and college chum, what about it?”

“What about what?”

“Who did in those two blighters, and why?”

“You shouldn’t call them blighters, Dog.”

“Oh, yes, I should. I’ve just been reading a book* about all this. The victim almost always contributes to his own death. It’s all rot to think that the victim is always innocent. Unless the killer is a madman, the victim is as guilty as the chap who killed him. Look at Neary and Howard.”

* A Calendar of Murder-Criminal Homicide in England since 1957 — Terence Morris and Louis Blom-Cooper.

“How can I, Dog? I didn’t know either of them.”

“Be yourself,” said Laura, sternly. “What was it about this Falstaff and this Henry VIII that should have made some person or persons (unknown) decide to murder them?”

“But, Dog, how on earth should I know?”

“Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood. You must have seen something, or heard something… Think! Bend the brain!”

“Look, Dog, I didn’t see or hear a thing. I grant you there was the usual give and take in that drama club, but there was nothing that could possibly lead to murder. You’ve got a bee in your bonnet, as usual.”

“I never have a bee in my bonnet. I see things steadily and I see them whole.”

“But you don’t, Dog. You’re too imaginative. Now I,” said Kitty smugly, “am a practical working woman.”

“Granted. Now tell me what you suspect. I shan’t do anything about it. I shall simply refer it to Mrs Croc., so be of good cheer, brave heart.”

“That’s all very well, Dog, but you can’t just count on a hunch.”

“Why not? I always do. What hunch did you have?”

“Well, I’m not exaggerating, Dog, when I tell you that I always had a feeling.”

“What sort of feeling?”

“I’ve told you before. I never have liked the idea of this pageant. I don’t really know why I took it on. I was talked into it by Julian. He said it was my bounden duty. Well, you know how it is, Dog. You’re sitting pretty, minding your own business, and raking in a certain amount of well-earned cash, and then comes along some persuasive nephew and tells you there are people worse off than yourself, which of course, you readily agree that there are—most of them their own fault, but some of them not—and he talks you into doing something about it, which you don’t want to do, and can’t do, anyway, not to your own satisfaction, and where does it get you?”

“Into producing a pageant, but where’s this leading us?”

“Into these murders, of course. Where did you think I was leading you?”

“I don’t know. Carry on, then. Let’s have it all.”

“Don’t rush me, Dog. My mills grind slowly…”

“Well, but do they have to grind so exceedingly small?”

“You wouldn’t know it, Dog, but that remark is blasphemous.”

“And this from the woman who thought Saint Lawrence was a former parish priest of Brayne?”

“Well, I still don’t see why he shouldn’t have been,” said Kitty, sturdily. “Anyway, back to what I was saying.”

“And that was?”

“These rows, Dog. Oh, nothing that could possibly lead to murder, as I’ve already said, but, well, there were difficulties.”

“How, exactly? And what kind of difficulties? Be specific, dear heart.”

“Well, there was this row about Falstaff.”

“Oh, there was, was there? What was the trouble? Everybody wanted the part?”

“No, that’s just it. Nobody wanted the part. They all saw themselves as Romeo, or Henry V, or something. Nobody wanted to be a fat old knight in a basket of stinking washing. Not that the drama club let it stink, of course.”

“Why on earth did they fix on The Merry Wives, if nobody wanted to play Falstaff?—not that I believe it!”

“It seems there were wheels within wheels.”

“There always are, in these local affairs. Be explicit.”

“But I am, Dog. I’m telling you as fast as I can. It was only at secondhand I got it, of course. It was all signed, sealed and settled by the time I came on the scene, so there was nothing on earth I could do about it. So far as I can make out, Mistress Ford and Mistress Page were the trouble. You see, they knew the parts they wanted, so they were at the back of this Merry Wives business. There doesn’t seem much doubt about that.”

“They were responsible for the choice of play, were they?”

“Well, I imagine so. You see, they were much too old to play Juliet—and that would only be one of them, anyway. And it takes someone like Dame Edith Evans to get away with the part of Juliet’s nurse. So Romeo and Juliet was out of it. As for Henry V, well, there again, you see, things sprang a leak.”

“As how?”

“Well, these two women, as you could see for yourself, are all of forty summers, and, even if they weren’t, only one of them could play Katherine.”

“There’s the Queen of France.”

“If you think one of those two would agree to play the part of the other one’s mother…!”

“What about Mistress Quickly?”

“Really, Dog!”

“Well, she gets a marvellous speech anent the death of Falstaff. Anyway, go on about the casting. Did those two pick the men? You seem to think they did.”

“You’d have to ask them. Their names are Brenda Gough and Dorothy Collis. The husband Gough doesn’t belong to the drama club. The husband Collis had the part of Page.”

“I’d better ring them up. What are the Collis initials?”

“P.E.”

“Right. Thanks. I’ll do both the women before I tackle anything else. I wonder what’s the best excuse for trying to get in touch?”

“Ask about joining the club. After all, you live in Kensington some of the time, and that isn’t such a long way from Brayne. Oh, and you can spread yourself on how much you admired their acting.”

“The recording angel wouldn’t like that very much, and, anyway, I don’t think I’ll suggest that I’d like to join the club. I know these enthusiastic amateurs. Before you know where you are, you find you’ve paid the subscription and signed on the dotted line, and are let in for shifting the scenery. Never mind, I’ll think up some way of obtaining speech with them. Which shall I tackle first?”

“Well, Brenda Gough giggles and Dorothy Collis moans.”

“So you pays your money and you takes your choice. I’ll have a shot at Mrs Collis. You get on to her and introduce me.”

“As what?”

“A serious student of the drama, of course. Ask her when she will be at liberty, and tell her I’ve got a wonderful idea for a five-act tragedy in blank verse.”

“Oh, Dog! You haven’t, have you?”

“No, but I can easily get hold of one, if necessary. Any respectable literary agent must get dozens of the things sent in. Hope springs eternal in a playwright’s breast. In any case, I can think out a basic plot while I’m on my way to see her—that’s if she’ll have me. What does she moan about?”

“You’ll know when you get there, Dog. The difficulty would be to tell you what she doesn’t moan about. Oh, well, if you’re set on it, here goes.”

Laura listened respectfully to Kitty’s professional “telephone voice”, and, having heard it, she was not in the least surprised when Kitty replaced the receiver and announced, with a sunny smile, that Mrs Collis would be delighted to entertain Mrs Gavin and Mrs Trevelyan-Twigg to afternoon tea at four o’clock, if that would be convenient.

It proved that Mrs Collis lived in a pleasant little cul-de-sac not very far from Squire’s Acre. She greeted her visitors with enthusiasm, led them into a well-furnished drawing-room and introduced to them her friend Mrs Gough. Laura was both surprised and delighted. “Two birds with one stone,” she signalled to Kitty, in the (except to initiates) almost indecipherable code of Cartaret Training College for Teachers. Kitty raised iconoclastic eyebrows, but this gesture merely increased Laura’s determination (as she expressed it later) of batting on a far from sticky wicket.

Tea was brought in by an expansive and semi-capable Mrs Mopp, and, over the teacups, buttered scones, thin bread-and-butter, jam, fish paste, layer cake, Dundee cake and chocolate biscuits, conversation flourished. There was no need of Laura’s well-planned schemes for introducing the object of her visit, for Mrs Gough, passing her cup for a second installment of tea, remarked, “Didn’t I see you in front with Mrs Trevelyan-Twigg when we did our scene from Shakespeare?”

“Yes, you did,” Laura replied. “Personally, when I’m on the stage (which isn’t often), I can’t distinguish anybody in the audience at all. How do you manage it?”

“Oh, it’s quite easy, especially in the Town Hall. The stage lighting is thoroughly weak, so that it doesn’t blind you, and, in any case, I always look out for my husband.”

“Oh, yes. Your husband is not a member of the drama club, I believe?”

Mrs Gough laughed happily. It would be unfair to class it as giggling, Laura thought.

“Trevor? He lives to play golf and to work in the garden. The Muses are not for him, poor man. He has no feeling whatever for the arts. I took him once to a Picasso exhibition, but I had to warn him that I didn’t want any funny remarks. He did point out what he insisted on calling Pop-Eye the Sailor, and, of course, the Fish Hat, but we got out of the place without being lynched, which was something, I suppose.”

Laura’s heart began to warm towards Mrs Gough. Kitty, she felt, had misrepresented her.

“Talking of lynching,” she said, “is there any known reason why the poor little chap who played Falstaff was done in on the night of the pageant?—apart from the alleged horseplay, I mean.”

“We’ve worried and worried about it,” said Mrs Collis. “We’ve all been given a most horrible time. The police, you know. They now seem to think that, because two of our members have been murdered, the guilty person must be one of us, but, Henry VIII or no Henry VIII, I don’t concede that for one moment. As for the horseplay, that’s nonsense. Nobody in the club would be such a fool.”

“I suppose you can’t think of anybody from outside who doesn’t like the club very much, and who would be glad to know that your members were having a bad time?”

“Yes, there’s your husband, Brenda, isn’t there?” said Mrs Collis nastily. “He hates you to come to rehearsals and to hear you your part. You’ve often told me about it.”

Brenda Gough laughed, but not in her former pleasant fashion.

“Poor old boy!” she said. “Yes, he does kick up a shindy sometimes, but I can’t imagine him killing poor little Luton. Besides, if he had, he would have told me long before now. Anyhow, what about your own husband? Didn’t he want to do the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, or something else utterly unsuited to his age and appearance?” At the end of this question came the giggle prophesied by Kitty.

“He wanted to do Henry V before Agincourt, but, anyway, he couldn’t, or where would you have come in? Of course, as I pointed out to him, it wouldn’t have been fair to choose Henry V when we have more women than men in the club. All I can say is that I do so wish my advice had been taken and we’d never had anything to do with the wretched pageant. Oh , I’m sorry, Mrs Trevelyan-Twigg! I’d forgotten for the moment that the thing was your idea.”

“Oh, no, it wasn’t, you know,” protested Kitty. “I mean, it was really wished on me by that daft nephew of mine.” (Anything to keep the peace, she signalled to Laura.)

“What daft nephew?” asked Laura, backing her up.

“Councillor Julian Perse. You’ve met him, so you must know what a moron he is.”

“All the Council are morons,” said Mrs Gough, giggling.

“We all know your husband wasn’t elected on to it,” said Mrs Collis. “Still, that wasn’t his fault, or yours, I’m sure. And, talking of morons, what about that idiotic Giles Faudrey up at the Hall?”

“Why, what about him?” asked Kitty.

“Don’t you know? I thought it was all over the borough. Oh, but, of course, you don’t live in Brayne, do you? All the same, as you were at the open-air thing in the park at Squire’s Acre, I should have thought you’d have heard rumours about the goings-on. He’s a menace where the local girls are concerned. I wonder the Batty-Faudreys tolerate him.”

“All I know is that Mr Faudrey came in with a girl—one of your members, actually—I remember her in the pageant—half-way through tea, and took her to sit at table with the Batty-Faudreys and the Mayor and Mayoress,” said Kitty.

“So we heard. We also heard that Mrs Batty-Faudrey could have killed him for doing it. I mean, he had no right whatever to have made her and Caroline so conspicuous.”

“Yes, Caroline was a bit conspicuous,” agreed Kitty, “if she’s the girl I’m talking about. Her trousers were so very tight and her curves were so very glamorous! I’m not surprised Mrs Batty-Faudrey took a dim view.”

“She took a dimmer one when Caroline had a shot at seducing the Colonel,” said Mrs Gough, with another outbreak of laughter.

“Good gracious me!” exclaimed Kitty. “Did she really?”

“Yes, indeed. It’s an old story now, I suppose, but it was Teddy Luton’s fault in a way. He did do such idiotic things! Anyway, I shall never forgive him for breaking up our Town Hall show.”

“I should have thought it was his killer who shouldn’t be forgiven,” said Laura, bluntly.

“Oh, well, his killer wasn’t one of our members,” said Mrs Gough.

“Is that certain?” asked Laura, although she had gathered from her husband that he thought it was.

“Well, it must be, mustn’t it? I mean, “the show must go on” is our motto. None of the members would be dirty enough to break up a performance by fooling about with a sword and killing someone,” protested Mrs Collis.

“Well, that means murder, then. Can you tell us why anybody should want to murder Falstaff?”

“That’s where it doesn’t make sense. He was quite harmless,” said Mrs Gough, “except for this genius for putting his foot in things, of course.”

“Nobody is harmless,” said Mrs Collis.

“I agree with you,” said Laura. “I’ve said it before. Every one of us is a menace to somebody. There’s not a soul who wouldn’t deserve to be liquidated, for some good reason or other, so, now, what about this Luton? Exactly how did he offend?”

“Well, there was that time when he loosed off an Army rifle instead of bursting a paper bag in the wings as he’d been told to do. Remember?” said Mrs Gough to Mrs Collis.

“He always denied it about the rifle,” said Mrs Collis. “He said he was scared of firearms.”

“All the same, he couldn’t tell us who had fired it, could he?”

“You mean he wouldn’t, not that he couldn’t.”

“Oh, nonsense! He wasn’t all that Public School!”

“Public schools aren’t the only places where you don’t split on a pal!”

“Oh, I grant you all those delinquent gangs. They don’t split on one another because they daren’t.”

“Is that so different from the public schools, then? They only don’t split because their lives wouldn’t be worth living if they did! And, anyway, what about that donkey at the dressage? I bet that was Luton’s idea of a joke.”

Kitty jumped in where Laura feared to tread.

“This is getting us nowhere,” she declared. “That donkey got out of control, that’s all. Now, then, what were you saying about this Caroline dim-wit seducing the Colonel?”

Mrs Gough giggled.

“It happened when the Batty-Faudreys gave a fancy-dress party to celebrate the silver jubilee of the house.”

“I thought the house was older than that.”

“I mean the silver jubilee of their ownership of it.”

“Oh, yes, of course. And was this Caroline invited to the party?”

“In a sort of way. Mrs Batty-Faudrey wanted a masque-like—Comus, you know—so, of course, the drama club were asked to do one. Well, the whole thing was rather difficult because, except for Comus, nobody knew of any masques, and, somehow, Comus seemed unsuitable unless we could alter it quite a bit, which is what we did, and then we combined it with a bit of Everyman and a bit of Midsummer Night’s Dream, you see.”

“Good God!” said Laura.

“It wasn’t at all bad,” said Mrs Gough, complacently. “Considering that we were only given three weeks’ notice, I think the club came up to scratch quite marvellously. Of course, being under-rehearsed, we had to improvise a bit, but as we gave it in the dark, except for a few candles, and to an audience who’d mostly had plenty to drink…”

“Where was it performed, then?” asked Laura. “In the house?”

“Yes, in the hall of Squire’s Acre. It’s Elizabethan, so there was plenty of room. Well, when the lights went up—which they did rather unexpectedly, owing to Teddy Luton mistaking—or some of us thought perhaps it was done deliberately—mistaking the cue to switch them on—Caroline was found to be sitting on the Colonel’s knee. Of course, it was quite suitable, in a way, as the Colonel (we heard afterwards) tried to point out to his wife, because he was dressed as Charles II, but, naturally, Mrs Batty-Faudrey wasn’t having any of that, although she glossed matters over at the time.”

“Yes, but we’ve never been asked to perform there again,” said Mrs Collis. “In fact, until the pageant, none of our members has even been inside the gates and none of the Batty-Faudreys came to the Town Hall Merry Wives, I noticed, not even Giles.”

“So when Giles Faudrey came bounding in with Caroline and sat with his uncle and aunt and the Mayor and Mayoress—yes!” said Kitty thoughtfully. “Do you know,” she added to Laura, as they left the cul-de-sac and made for the side-street where they had left the car, “I don’t believe you need look any further for a motive.”

“Why?”

“Why? Well, Dog, it’s plain enough. You can see what happened.”

“Oh? And what did happen?”

“Delayed revenge!”

“Eh?”

“Well, it stands to reason, Dog. The Colonel gets into his wife’s bad books because of this Caroline creature, and Giles presenting her at tea-time on the day of the pageant like that—fuel to the fire, as you might say—and then that silly business of the donkey which spoiled the dressage—well, you can see how it all affected the Colonel. He frets and fumes. She-meaning Mrs Batty-Faudrey—a hard case, Dog, if ever there was one—she spends the long winter evenings brooding upon his little escapade and then reminding him of it. His anger smoulders—and against whom?”

“Don’t keep me in suspense! Against whom?”

“Not against his wife. He is honest and he can’t help seeing her point of view. Not against Caroline. He is a fair-minded man and he is prepared to admit that she would not have been the party of the second part if he had not been the party of the first part. I refer to the knee-sitting. So now, with whom are we left?”

“You tell me.”

“Oh, Dog, you can’t be trying! We’re left, of course, with the wretched Luton, who gave the game away by turning the lights up at the wrong time. Let us go further.”

“I can’t wait to do so,” said Laura. They reached the car. “I’ll drive, shall I?”

Kitty settled herself comfortably, Laura took the wheel and they drove off towards Brayne high street and the London Road.

“Well, going further,” continued Kitty, “this is how I see it. At the time of that masque, Luton is in love with this girl Caroline. He is of a jealous temperament. He feels there is hanky-panky in the air. He knows she is not on-stage, and as, in that hall where the masque was performed, there wouldn’t have been any wings, he knows she is not in the wings. Where, therefore, he wonders, has she got to?”

“To the Colonel’s armchair and lap?” suggested Laura.

“Quite right, Dog. How he senses this, we do not know, but, his feelings bursting suddenly out at the top of his head, he turns up the lights and exposes the guilty couple to the gaze of the many-headed.”

“Blimey! You know, you’re wasted designing fashions and hair-do’s,” said Laura. “You ought to be writing about Dracula and Frankenstein and Mr Who. You make my flesh creep.”

“Then there comes,” pursued Kitty, “the afternoon of the pageant. The Colonel’s nephew brings the means of the Colonel’s downfall in to tea, and this, mark you, when poor old Batty-Faudrey is grinding his teeth about that donkey. His mind is made up. Luton is for it. People who turn the lights up at inconvenient times deserve their fate, and so do those who let loose donkeys at the wrong time. Round to the left here, Dog, just beyond the next lights. Don’t you think I’ve hit the nail on the head?”

“The sureness of your aim commands my utmost reverence.”

“That means you don’t believe in my reconstruction. You’ll find I’m about right, all the same.”

“So you think Colonel Batty-Faudrey is the murderer? What, then, did you make of Mrs Collis’s remark that none of the Batty-Faudrey lot came to the Town Hall show?”

“That’s an easy one. The Colonel wasn’t in the audience, of course, but what about that side-door which opens on to Smith Hill? I’ve thought a lot about that, since Dame Beatrice inspected the Town Hall.”

“Do you think the Batty-Faudreys knew about that door? I shouldn’t have thought they’d know more than the front (or official) entrance to the Town Hall, with red carpet laid down, so to speak.”

“Still, the side-door is there, Dog, and even a Batty-Faudrey murderer would be a desperate man.”

“Desperate enough to get green slime on his shoes when dumping a body in the Thames?”

“He wouldn’t worry about his shoes.”

“It’s no use, Kay. I simply cannot see Colonel Batty-Faudrey as a murderer.”

“Well, he’s been a soldier, so he must have murdered lots of people in his time.”

“Not by stabbing them through the heart, though.”

“Why not? The Commandos did.”

“Be that as it may, even if the Colonel killed Falstaff for the reason aforesaid, he couldn’t have had any reason for killing Henry VIII.”

“That’s as far as we know, Dog. If Henry VIII had found out about the murder of Falstaff, the Colonel might have killed him to shut his mouth.”

“Those two who carted Falstaff off the stage went straight across the road to the pub, you know. Neither of them could have seen the murder committed, if things are as you say.”

“Oh, I know that’s supposed to be their alibi, but alibis are there to be busted. Read any good detective story, and judge for yourself.”

“I do. But real life isn’t often like that. How would you reconstruct the crime?”

“That’s easy. Falstaff is lugged off the stage and helped out of the basket. He’s hot and sticky, so he goes into the Bouquets room to freshen up.”

“What about his make-up? How do you mean—freshen up?”

“Oh, Dog, don’t quibble. Who’s doing this reconstruction, me or you?”

“I’m only making helpful comments.”

“Well, they’re not. They simply make me lose the thread, that’s all.”

“Sorry. He goes into Bouquets to freshen up.”

“Colonel Batty-Faudrey is lurking.”

“In Bouquets?”

“No, I shouldn’t think so. He couldn’t be sure that Falstaff would go in there.”

“Where, then?”

“Oh, Dog, does it matter where? He’s just simply lurking, that’s all. He follows Falstaff into Bouquets and stabs him—an easy job for an old soldier. That’s just plain common-sense. He leaves the body where it is, and sneaks to the door to make sure the coast is clear. Well, it isn’t clear.”

“Aha!”

“Henry VIII, in the character of one of the menservants, is doing up a shoelace or buttoning his overcoat or searching his pockets for the price of a pint or something.”

“I can see it all!”

“You’re not to sneer at me, Dog. I mean this seriously. The other serving man—the one who took the part of Edward III in the pageant-has gone charging on ahead. Well, the Colonel doesn’t know whether Henry VIII’s suspicions have been aroused or not. He doesn’t think they have. He waits for him to go, then he totes the body and the basket down to the Thames and plants them where he hopes the tide will wash them away.”

“But why the murder of Henry VIII if he didn’t think his deeds had been observed?”

“They had been observed, so Henry VIII began to blackmail him, and needed to be got rid of. That’s the way I see it, anyhow.”