Pageant of Murder

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Death of Edward III

“From the date of this deplorable event until the middle of the…century, history records little concerning local matters…”

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It had been laid down as a command by Dame Beatrice that Laura was to stay the night in Kitty’s flat. From what she knew of young Mr Perse, Dame Beatrice had added, Kitty might be glad of a girlhood friend with whom she could share her woes.

Twigg was at home when they arrived. He produced bottles and a shaker and informed Laura that dinner would be ready at half-past eight. When the in-coming tide of relaxation had set in, he ventured to enquire whether the pageant had been a success.

“Well, it has, from Laura’s point of view, but I don’t know yet about Julian,” Kitty replied. “Laura made a yob yell, and he dropped his knife, and then she kicked him. After that we skedaddled.”

“Retreated in good order,” amended Laura. Twigg put his head on one side. “We did, you know,” said Laura. “No panic. Just a strategic withdrawal. You see, old Kitty, with her usual omniscience, deduced that police reinforcements were on the way, so, as we didn’t want to get our names in the papers…”

“Let’s have it from the beginning,” suggested Twigg. “One of you at a time, if possible.” He settled down for a cosy twenty minutes or so, having taken the precaution of pouring himself a second cocktail before he left the sideboard. At a nod from Laura, Kitty began the tale. There was not so very much to tell.

“Julian got his elephants all right,” said Kitty. “I made Dog come away before they began to stampede or something. The Roman costumes were good, and he’d made some poor boy learn yards and yards of Latin—cruelty to children, I call it—and there wasn’t a smell of the Mayor from beginning to end of the pageant. At least he didn’t boycott mine.”

“He’d hardly dare to, surely. Didn’t he approve of Julian’s project?”

“I don’t think it was that, because the Mayoress turned up to the Chapter of the Garter, during which Dog…”

“Only during the first scene,” put in Laura.

“During which Dog sneaked away behind the scenes and cowered there until the interval.”

“Doing a spot of detective work. Sneaking and cowering didn’t come into it. Strike those words from the record,” commanded Laura.

“Well, anyway, after the Romans—oh, I forgot to mention Domesday Book. It was terribly dim, but the Batty-Faudreys gave us coffee and then Julian went back to school to round up his boys for the afternoon idiocy—this Garter business and the election stuff in the Butts—and we had some lunch and Laura went along to the Town Hall. The rest of it you know.”

“Be interested to find out how the fracas ended. Why don’t you give Julian a ring?” asked Laura.

“What, worry the poor innocent after the kind of day he must have had?” cried Julian’s kindhearted aunt. “I only hope he isn’t drowning his sorrows too deep. He’s got to go to school again tomorrow.”

“I think you’ll find that, from his point of view, the pageant was a great success,” said Laura.

“With that awful battle at the end, Dog?”

“The usual give-and-take of an eighteenth-century election. I bet he’s delighted the yobs turned up in force and started a brouhaha.”

This view was confirmed by the young man himself. He held a long telephone conversation with Kitty at ten o’clock that evening and, professing himself delighted with the way things had gone, canvassed her opinion upon the proceedings. Kitty replied, without reserve (for she was a generous-hearted woman), that she thought the pageant had been an all-out success. She enquired whether there had been any trouble with the police.

“Not a whisper, after the gangs had scarpered,” Julian replied. “I indicated that the in-fighting had been a put-up job and received official disapproval for provoking a breach of the peace, but everything ended with goodwill on their side and malice towards none on ours. I have received innumerable tributes from my lads to the effect that they hadn’t had such a good time for months. I gather that there will be more than one oik with a nasty headache tonight. I must cultivate this game of rounders, complete with lethal weapons. It has its own attraction.”

“He’d talk himself out of anything,” said Kitty, returning to Laura and Twigg. “No wonder he got himself elected on to the Council.”

Two days later there was a different story, however. Laura had returned to Dame Beatrice’s Kensington house after lunching with Kitty on the morning which followed Julian’s pageant, and was rung up as she was dealing with Dame Beatrice’s correspondence. An agitated Kitty was on the line.

“That you, Dog?”

“Speaking.”

“I say, something terrible has happened.”

“Always something nasty in the woodshed. Say on.”

“While we were milling about in the Butts, that man Gordon—you know the one I mean?”

“He who took Edward III and the second servitor upon him? Spey’s schoolmaster buddy?”

“Oh, Dog, he hanged himself from the Druid’s Oak!”

“Half a minute, while I confer with the Great Panjamdrum.”

Kitty obediently stood by while Laura went to give the news to Dame Beatrice.

“Looks an open-and-shut case,” she observed, when she had given Kitty’s news to the head of the household, “at least, I suppose the police will think so. Falstaff is killed; Spey, who knew how and why, is done in; the murderer of both, either in a fit of remorse or because he has reason to believe that the police are wise to him, jumps out of the vicious circle. I don’t believe a word of it, you know.”

“Do you not?” said Dame Beatrice. “I am inclined to agree with you. Go back to the telephone and comfort Mrs Trevelyan-Twigg, and then we will ask our dear Robert for his reactions. He is not the man to come to hasty decisions, except in one particular.”

Laura grinned.

“Go on with you! Don’t rub it in,” she said. “Even now that I’ve had leisure to repent of marrying him, I don’t really think I do.” She returned to the telephone.

“Oh, thank goodness for that!” said Kitty, when Laura had slipped her the information that Dame Beatrice did not believe in Gordon’s guilt. “No more do I, and as for Julian, selfish little beast as he is as a general rule, I’ve never known him so upset about anything. He says Dame Beatrice must find the murderer.”

“I think she knows who it is, but it’s going to be awfully difficult to prove it,” said Laura soberly.