Death of a Fool (27 page)

“Anyone’d think you wanted your father’s murderer to go scot-free.”

Chris sank his head a little between his shoulders and demanded of Alleyn, “Will it be brought up agin’ us if we won’t do it?”

Alleyn said, “Your refusal will be noted. We can’t use threats.”

“Namby-pamby nonsense,” Dame Alice announced.

Chris stood with his head bent. Andy and Nat looked out of the corners of their eyes at Dan. Ernie did a slight kicking step and roused his bells.

Dan said, “As I look at it, there’s no choice, souls. We’ll dance.”

“Good,” Alleyn said. “Very sensible. We begin at the point where the Guiser arrived in Mrs. Bünz’s car. I will ask Mrs. Bünz to go down to the car, drive it up, park it where she parked it before and do exactly what she did the first time. You will find a police constable outside, Mrs. Bünz, and he will accompany you. The performers will wait offstage by the bonfire. Dr. Otterly will come onstage and begin to play. Right, Mrs. Bünz?”

Mrs. Bünz was blowing her nose. She nodded and turned away. She tramped out through the side archway and disappeared.

Dan made a sign to his brothers. They faced about and went tinkling across the courtyard and through the centre archway. Ralph Stayne and Simon followed. The watchers took up their appointed places and Dr. Otterly stepped out into the courtyard and tucked his fiddle under his chin.

The front door burst open and Dulcie staggered out bearing a hunting horn and a hideous gong slung between two tusks. She stumbled and, in recovering, struck the gong smartly with the horn. It gave out a single and extremely strident note that echoed forbiddingly round the courtyard.

As if this were an approved signal, Mrs. Bünz, half-way down the drive, started up the engine of her car and Dr. Otterly gave a scrape on his fiddle.

“Well,” Alleyn thought, “it’s a rum go and no mistake but we’re off.”

Mrs. Bünz’s car, with repeated blasts on the horn, churned in low gear up the drive and turned to the right behind the curved wall. It stopped. There was a final and prolonged hoot. Dr. Otterly lowered his bow.

“This was when I went off to see what was up,” he said.

“Right. Do so, please.”

He did so, a rather lonely figure in the empty courtyard.

Mrs. Bünz, followed by a constable, returned and stood just within the side entrance. She was as white as a sheet and trembling.

“We could hear the Guiser,” Dame Alice informed them, “yellin’.”

Nobody was yelling this time. On the far side of the semi-circular wall, out of sight of their audience and lit by the bonfire, the performers stood and stared at each other. Dr. Otterly faced them. The police hovered anonymously. Mr. Fox, placidly bespectacled, contemplated them all in turn. His notebook lay open on his massive palm.

“This,” he said, “is where the old gentleman arrived and found
you
” — he jabbed a forefinger at Ernie — “dressed up for his part and young Bill dressed up for yours. He grabbed
his
clothes off
you
” — another jab at Ernie — “and got into them himself. And you changed with young Bill. Take all that as read. What was said?”

Simon, Dr. Otterly and Ralph Stayne all spoke together. Mr. Fox pointed his pencil at Dr. Otterly. “Yes, thank you, Doctor?” he prompted.

“When I came out,” Dr. Otterly said, “he was roaring like a bull, but you couldn’t make head or tail of it. He got hold of Ernie and practically lugged the clothes off him.”

Ernie swore comprehensively. “Done it to spite me,” he said. “Old bastard!”

“Was any explanation given,” Fox pursued, “about the note that had been handed round saying Ernie could do it?”

There was no answer. “Nobody,” Fox continued, “spotted that it hadn’t been written about the dance but about that slasher there?”

Ernie, meeting the flabbergasted gaze of his brothers, slapped his knees and roared out, “I foxed the lot of you proper, I did. Not so silly as what I let on to be, me!”

Nat said profoundly, “You
bloody
great fool.”

Ernie burst into his high rocketing laugh.

Fox held up his hand. “Shut up,” he said and nodded to one of his men, who came forward with the swords in a sacking bundle and gave them out to the dancers.

Ernie began to swing and slash with his sword.

“Where’s mine?” he demanded. “This’un’s not mine. Mine’s sharp.”

“That’ll do, you,” Fox said. “You’re not having a sharp one this time. Places, everyone. In the same order as before,
if
you please.”

Dr. Otterly nodded and went out through the archway into the arena.

“Now,” Dulcie said, “they
really
begin, don’t they, Aunt Akky?”

A preliminary scrape or two and then the jiggling reiterative tune. Out through the archway came Ernie, white-faced this time instead of black but wearing his black cap and gloves. His movements at first were less flamboyant than they had been on Wednesday, but perhaps he gathered inspiration from the fiddle, for they soon became more lively. He pranced and curvetted and began to slash out with his sword.

“This, I take it, is whiffling,” Alleyn said. “A kind of purification, isn’t it, Rector?”

“I believe so. Yes.”

Ernie completed his round and stood to one side. His brothers came out at a run, their bells jerking. Ernie joined them and they performed the Mardian Morris together, wearing their bells and leaving their swords in a heap near Dr. Otterly. This done they removed their bells and took up their swords. Ernie threaded his red ribbon. They stared at each other and, furtively, at Alleyn.

Now followed the entry of the hermaphrodite and the Hobby-Horse. Ralph Stayne’s extinguisher of a skirt, suspended from his armpits, swung and bounced. His man’s jacket spread over it. His hat, half topper, half floral toque, was jammed down over his forehead. The face beneath was incongruously grave.

“Crack’s” iron head poked and gangled monstrously on the top of its long canvas neck. The cheese-shaped body swung rhythmically and its skirt trailed on the ground. “Crack’s” jaws snapped and its ridiculous rudiment of a tail twitched busily. Together these two came prancing in.

Dulcie again said, “Here comes ‘Crack,’ ” and her great-aunt looked irritably at her as if she too were bent on a complete pastiche.

“Crack” finished his entry dead centre, facing the steps. A voice that seemed to have no point of origin but to be merely
there
asked anxiously:

“I say, sorry, but do you want
all
the fun and games?”

“Crack’s” neck opened a little, rather horridly, and Simon’s face could be seen behind the orifice.

“Everything,” Alleyn said.

“Oh, righty-ho. Look out, ladies, here I come,” the voice said. The neck closed. “Crack” swung from side to side as if the monster ogled its audience and made up its mind where to hunt. Camilla moved closer to Trixie and looked apprehensively from Alleyn to Ralph Stayne. Ralph signalled to her, putting his thumb up as if to reassure her of his presence.

“Crack’s” jaws snapped. It began to make pretended forays upon an imaginary audience. Dr. Otterly, still fiddling, moved nearer to Camilla and nodded to her encouragingly. “Crack” darted suddenly at Camilla. She ran like a hare before it, across the courtyard and into Ralph’s arms. “Crack” went off at the rear archway.

“Just what they did before,” Dulcie ejaculated. “Isn’t it, Aunt Akky? Isn’t it, Sam?”

The Rector murmured unhappily and Dame Alice said, “I do wish to goodness you’d shut up, Dulcie.”

“Well, I’m sorry, Aunt Akky, but —
ow
!” Dulcie ejaculated.

Alleyn had blown his whistle.

Dr. Otterly stopped playing. The Andersen brothers turned their faces toward Alleyn.

“One moment,” Alleyn said.

He moved to the bottom step and turned a little to take in both the party of three above him and the scattered groups in the courtyard.

“I want a general check, here,” he said. “Mrs. Bünz, are you satisfied that so far this was exactly what happened?”

Bailey had turned his torchlight on Mrs. Bünz. Her mouth was open. Her lips began to move.

“I’m afraid I can’t hear you,” Alleyn said. “Will you come a little nearer?”

She came very slowly towards him.

“Now,” he said.

“
]a
. It is what was done.”

“And what happened next?”

She moistened her lips. “There was the entry of the Fool,” she said.

“What did he do, exactly?”

She made an odd and very ineloquent gesture.

“He goes round,” she said. “Round and round.”

“And what else does he do?”

“Aunt Akky—”

“No,” Alleyn said so strongly that Dulcie gave another little yelp. “I want Mrs. Bünz to show us what he did.”

Mrs. Bünz was, as usual, much enveloped. As she moved forward, most reluctantly, a stiffish breeze sprang up. She was involved in a little storm of billowing handicraft.

In an uncomfortable silence she jogged miserably round the outside of the courtyard, gave two or three dejected skips and came to a halt in front of the steps. Dame Alice stared at her implacably and Dulcie gaped. The Rector looked at his boots.

“That is all,” said Mrs. Bünz.

“You have left something out,” said Alleyn.

“I do not remember everything,” Mrs. Bünz said in a strangulated voice.

“And I’ll tell you why,” Alleyn rejoined. “It is because you have never seen what he did. Not even when you looked through the window of the barn.”

She put her woolly hand to her mouth and stepped backwards.

“I’ll be bloody well danged!” Tom Plowman loudly ejaculated and was silenced by Trixie.

Mrs. Bünz said something that sounded like “— interests of scientific research —”

“Nor, I suggest, will you have seen what the Guiser did on his first entrance on Wednesday night. Because on Wednesday night you left the arena at the point we have now reached. Didn’t you, Mrs. Bünz?”

She only moved her head from side to side as if to assure herself that it was on properly.

“Do you say that’s wrong?”

She flapped her woollen paws and nodded.

“Yes, but you know, Aunt Akky, she
did
.”

“Hold your tongue, Dulcie, do,” begged her great-aunt.

“No,” Alleyn said. “Not at all. I want to hear from Miss Mardian.”

“Have it your own way. It’s odds on she don’t know what she’s talkin’ about.”

“Oh,” Dulcie cried, “but I
do
. I
said
so to
you
, Aunt Akky. I said, ‘Aunt Akky, do look at the German woman going away.” I said so to Sam. Didn’t I, Sam?”

The Rector, looking startled and rather guilty, said to Alleyn, “I believe she did.”

“And what
was
Mrs. Bünz doing, Rector?”

“She — actually — I really had quite forgotten — she
was
going out.”

“Well, Mrs. Bünz?”

Mrs. Bünz now spoke with the air of a woman who has had time to make up her mind.

“I had unexpected occasion,” she said, choosing her words, “to absent myself. Delicacy,” she added, “excuses me from further cobbent.”

“Rot,” said Dame Alice.

Alleyn said, “And when did you come back?”

She answered quickly, “During the first part of the sword-dance.”

“Why didn’t you tell me all this yesterday when we had such difficulty over the point?”

To that she had nothing to say.

Alleyn made a signal with his hand and Fox, who stood in the rear archway, turned to “Crack” and said something inaudible. They came forward together.

“Mr. Begg,” Alleyn called out, “will you take your harness off, if you please?”

“What say? Oh, righty-ho,” said Simon’s voice. There was a strange and uncanny upheaval. “Crack’s” neck collapsed and the iron head retreated after it into the cylindrical body. The whole frame tilted on its rim and presently Simon appeared.

“Good. Now, I suggest that on Wednesday evening, while you waited behind the wall at the back, you took off your harness as you have just done here.”

Simon began to look resigned. “And I suggest,” Alleyn went on, “that when you, Mrs. Bünz, left the arena by the side arch, you went round behind the walls and met Mr. Begg at the back.”

Mrs. Bünz flung up her thick arms in a gesture of defeat.

Simon said clumsily, “Not to worry, Mrs. B.,” and dropped his hands on her shoulders.

She screamed out, “Don’t touch me!”

Alleyn said, “Your shoulders
are
sore, aren’t they? But then ‘Crack’s’ harness is very heavy, of course.”

After that, Mrs. Bünz had nothing to say.

A babble of astonishment had broken out on the steps and a kind of suppressed hullabaloo among the Andersens.

Ernie shouted, “What did I tell you, then, chaps? I said it was a wumman what done it, didn’t I? No good comes of it when a wumman mixes ’erself up in this gear. Not it. Same as curing hams,” he astonishingly added. “Keep ’em out when it’s men’s gear, same as the old bastard said.”

“Ah, shut up, Corp. Shut your trap, will you?” Simon said wearily.

“Very good, sir,” Ernie shouted and flung himself into a salute.

Alleyn said, “Steady now, and attend to me. I imagine that you, Begg, accepted a sum of money from Mrs. Bünz in consideration of her being allowed to stand-in as ‘Crack’ during the triple sword-dance. You came off after your tearing act and she met you behind the wall near the bonfire and you put your harness on her and away she went. I think that, struck by the happy coincidence of names, you probably planked whatever money she gave you, and I daresay a whole lot more, on Teutonic Dancer by Subsidize out of Substitution. The gods of chance are notoriously unscrupulous and, without deserving in the least to do so, you won a packet.”

Simon grinned and then looked as if he wished he hadn’t. He said, “How can you be so sure you haven’t been handed a plateful of duff gen?”

“I can be perfectly sure. Do you know what the Guiser’s bits of dialogue were in the performance?”

“No,” Simon said. “I don’t. He always mumbled whatever it was. Mrs. B. asked me, as a matter of fact, and I told her I didn’t know.”

Alleyn turned to the company at large.