Pageant of Murder

CHAPTER FOUR

The Day of the Pageant

“We have now reached the period of one of the most important and exciting events recorded in the annals.”

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Laura awoke at just after dawn on the following day with what Mr Wodehouse has called a sense of impending doom. A spiteful swoosh of rain against the window brought her out of bed. There was no mistake. The day of the pageant had begun by being thoroughly wet.

“Oh, Lord!” said Laura, aloud. “Poor old Kitty!” She went back to bed and half-an-hour later a maid came in with early tea.

“What a pity it’s turned out wet, madam,” she said. “Mrs Trevelyan-Twigg will be disappointed. I do feel sorry.”

“Yes, so do I,” said Laura. “Still, it may clear up before the pageant moves off.” She went down to breakfast, fully prepared to offer consolation to a broken-hearted friend, but Kitty was incongruously cheerful.

“With any luck, Dog,” she announced, “we can call the whole thing off until we put on the show at the Town Hall this evening, when everything will be under cover.”

“Do you want to call it off, then?” asked Laura, astonished. “I mean, you must have put in an awful lot of work.”

“Dog,” said Kitty, earnestly, “ever since I took on this beastly pageant, I’ve had a thing about it. That’s one reason why I did want you to come along and support me. As I’ve told you before, the Trevelyans are a very old Cornish family—Celtic, you know—and we sense things. Well, I’ve been sensing things for the past three weeks, and I jolly well know that everything that can go wrong will go wrong. Look at that rehearsal last night! It was a sheer fiasco.”

“Good heavens, you don’t want to worry about last-minute rehearsals! Why, they always go wrong. Look at what used to happen at College. But it was always all right on the night.”

“Oh, that dreary old tripe! But, honestly, Dog, I’ve got a sort of crawling feeling in my bones.”

“With me, the thumbs prick, like in Macbeth.”

“You’re not to laugh, Dog. I’m deadly serious. Well, as soon as we’ve finished breakfast, I’d better ’phone the schools and find out what they think about the weather. I don’t know how to reach anybody else, so they’ll have to take their chance. I shall go to the Brayne Butts, of course, where everybody is supposed to assemble, and test the general feeling of the meeting, but I bet very few turn up.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” said her husband. “If I know anything about it, everybody will turn up. They’re not going to miss their fun for a spot of rain. I’ll telephone the schools. They gave you the numbers, didn’t they? I know they’re not in the book. Now, then, take it easy for a bit. There’s plenty of time, thanks to the God-forsaken hour at which you insisted we should breakfast.”

He reported back some time later with the information that, as the schools had all been granted a day’s holiday, the children would certainly turn up to take their places in the procession, and that the afternoon’s demonstrations and dances would certainly be possible if the weather became no worse.

“Oh, well,” said Kitty, resignedly, “I suppose that’s that, then. These awful, healthy, Welfare State brats! Nobody ever thinks they might catch pneumonia, or fall off the lorry, or something!”

“But you wouldn’t want them to, would you?” enquired Laura.

“Good heavens, Dog! Of course I wouldn’t!” cried Kitty, deeply shocked. “Poor little things! Whatever next!”

“I only wondered,” said Laura. As she made this observation, the telephone rang, and Twigg—Kitty had not been able to persuade him to add her patronymic to his own—went into the adjoining room to answer it. In a short time he came back, grinning.

“That was Colonel Batty-Faudrey,” he said. “The boys’ schools seem to have borrowed groundsheets from the Brayne Scout Troop to put under the trampoline for this afternoon, but have rung up the Colonel to ask permission to make sanded runways up to the portable apparatus, as the rain will have made the turf slippery. He’s told them they are to do nothing of the kind, adding that his lawns are not the blasted Sahara Desert. He wanted an undertaking from you that his orders will be obeyed. I told him that this afternoon’s displays were not your concern, and advised him to contact the two headmasters and hammer home his point.”

“Of course the schools won’t put sand down if he says they mustn’t,” said Laura. “I say, I don’t want to spoil your day, Kitty, love, but I really believe it’s stopped raining, so, doubtless, the show will go on as planned.”

They arrived in good time at the Butts, an extremely wide thoroughfare bordered by Georgian, Regency and Victorian houses. The floats and lorries were not only drawn up in it, but some were already manned by troops of wildly milling schoolchildren whose teachers stood about in the roadway trying to look as though they were not associated with what was going on.

Toc H had also turned up and were coyly wearing overcoats or rainproofs over their Crusader surcoats. They had stacked their swords and helmets out of sight on their lorry and were standing about in groups, obviously bashful at the thought of making a public appearance in fancy dress.

Suddenly there was the sound, as it were, of trumpets, and the town band came into view. There was wild cheering from the youngsters, which was renewed every time another group arrived and another lorry was loaded up. Kitty waited until the tally appeared to be complete, and then came the business of ensuring that each float was in its rightful place in the line. Kitty had been furnished by her nephew with a boldly printed list showing the chronological order of the historical events which were being demonstrated—a list of which both Twigg and Laura had copies, in case the pageant-master lost or mislaid her own.

The lorries were placarded, but the drivers seemed to think that so long as the right group got on to the right lorry, manoeuvring merely to get the chronological order correct was a work of supererogation and a waste of time, temper and petrol. However, at Kitty’s insistence, they gave in, but, just as everything appeared to be in order, Kitty remembered the pony club and, amid a certain amount of blasphemy, all the lorries behind that of Elizabeth I had to go into reverse to leave sufficient space for the riders.

At last the Mayoral car arrived, followed by the cars of the Councillors. Then came the Civil Defence contingent, with tin hats, gas masks, stirrup-pumps and other war-time equipment salvaged from some obscure and insanitary dump in the cellars of the Town Hall. Other floats contained Girl Guides, Boy Scouts, Rovers, Wolf Cubs, Brownies, Rangers, Girls’ Life Brigade, Church Lads, St John Ambulance (with water-bottles and stretchers) and Red Cross (with a Meals on Wheels van). In all their glory, the Fire-Fighting Services (using all three of the fire-engines allotted to the new borough) brought up the rear. There was no military band.

Kitty, her husband and Laura went along and re-checked the various items, the teachers unwillingly climbed on to lorries and settled themselves among their charges, the Boy Scouts set up a bugle concert in opposition to the town band (which immediately abandoned the contest) and Kitty was about to order the procession to move off as she, her husband and Laura prepared to enter Twigg’s car, which was to follow the procession, when Laura suddenly said,

“I say, didn’t you mention something about Queen Victoria and Prince Albert?”

“Oh, they’ve scratched. It’s all right,” said Kitty. “The vicar’s wife didn’t want to do it, so we’ve turned Prince Albert into one of the burghers of Calais. He’s a bit peeved about it, actually. Hullo!—oh, no, it seems to be all right. Henry VIII, Wolsey and the six wives are in position, thank goodness, and so are Elizabeth I and her courtiers. There’s been a bit of a hoo-ha about that—here, I’d better let the thing start, I suppose. Not much of an audience so far, is there?” She regarded the little knot of onlookers with aversion. “You’d think the townspeople would take a bit more interest.”

She blew three shrill blasts on a police whistle—a proceeding for which her husband had insisted she ask permission of the Brayne inspector—and then, as the band, this time ignoring the Scouts, burst once again into blossom, the procession began to move off.

“Go on,” said Laura to Kitty, when they were settled in their car. “Tell me more.”

“Go on with what?”

“The brouhaha about Elizabeth I.”

“Oh, that! Yes, well, you see, the drama club wanted to do Elizabeth I and her courtiers, and they wanted the art club to do Edward III and the burghers. Well, the art club said they were jolly well dashed if they were going to be fobbed off with just being in their shirts and all that, considering that the drama club had got Henry VIII and Wolsey and all six wives, and also this show of theirs in the Town Hall this evening. Well, I couldn’t help seeing the art club point of view, so I said to the drama club, “You can’t hog all the fat, you know. Must give somebody else a look in some of the time. Either do Edward III and like it, or I can easily give it to another gang”—although who, Dog, I really couldn’t think!—“and you won’t get Elizabeth I, anyway”, I said. You don’t blame me, Dog, do you? I mean, there are times when you’ve got to be tough, or go to the wall, like they do at Eton.”

“For Pyramus and Thisbe, says the story, did talk through the chink of a wall,” Laura observed.

“Oh, dry up, Dog! You know perfectly well what I mean. Oh, thank goodness, we’re moving at last! I began to think there was a hold-up. You know, Dog, I suppose mathematics or dynamics or economics, or something, could explain it, but I’ve never been able to understand why a line of vehicles, given a yard or so between them, can’t make a synchronised start. I mean, why can’t A and B and C and D, and so on, all get going at the same time? If everybody compared watches so they could all let in the clutch at the same instant, I can’t see—Oh, Lord! Now where do the band think they’re leading us? This isn’t on our route at all!”

“I expect they’ve promised their girl-friends, standing at the front windows or, possibly, at the garden gate, an uninterrupted view of the pageant. I shouldn’t worry. We shall get there in the morning just the same,” said Laura consolingly. Kitty sank back.

“Well,” she said, “there’s nothing for me to stampede about, after all, until that Town Hall do this evening.”

Such proved to be the case. The procession, although wrongly routed by the town band, contrived to get to Squire’s Acre at only a little after the appointed time. It was then addressed by the Mayor and was dismissed in good order and at an hour when the pubs were opening their hospitable doors. The schoolchildren were warned not to be late for the afternoon’s displays, and the rest of the morning passed off without incident.

Colonel and Mrs Batty-Faudrey had elected not to take part in the procession, but would don their costumes for the display of dressage they were to give in the afternoon. Their nephew, Mr Giles Faudrey, did turn up at the Butts, however, and was with difficulty constrained to take his rightful place in the procession. He evinced a strong inclination to ride alongside the lorry which held Henry VIII, the six wives and Cardinal Wolsey, and Kitty had to exercise a nice blend of persuasion and bullying to get him into line. The attraction, she deduced, was the girl who was taking the part of Catherine Howard.

Lunch at The Hat With Feather was unattended by Laura and Twigg, the former because she had not been invited, the latter because he conceived it his duty to look after her and entertain her, although this was not the reason he gave.

“Can’t stand official lunches,” he explained. “Kay’s got to go, and young Julian is also bound to be there, so, between them, they can do all that’s necessary. Let’s go to Richmond. I know a pub where they give you a very respectable meal.”

They got back to Squire’s Acre at three, in time to witness an unrehearsed but popular item. An involuntary contributor to the display of dressage by Colonel Batty-Faudrey, his lady and his nephew, was a small boy on a donkey, with the donkey literally making all the running. As an example of dignity and impudence, the spectacle had a quite delightful side, but the Colonel was not particularly pleased to have his group’s activities, including the donkey, photographed by the local press and recorded by some privately-owned cameras as well, this amid cheering and laugher.

Where the donkey had come from, nobody seemed to know, but there could be no doubt of its popularity with the people of Brayne. Mrs Batty-Faudrey was even more incensed than her husband, and commanded her nephew to “get that ridiculous animal out of the way.” Giles Faudrey dismounted and attempted to haul the donkey out of the roped enclosure in which the gymkhana had been held, but the donkey, true to the tradition of its race, dug in its dainty forefeet and refused to budge. Giles gave up the contest and remounted, amid renewed cheering, and, led by Mrs Batty-Faudrey, the dressage abruptly dismissed itself and cantered out of the ring.

“That kid on the donkey is the one who takes the part of Falstaff’s page in The Merry Wives,” Laura remarked to Kitty, as they separated to go their different ways for tea.