Death of a Fool (29 page)

The second sword-knot was made and exhibited by Dan. Then young Bill leant his mask to one side and mimed the writing of the Will and the offer of the Will to the Sons.

Alleyn quoted again:

“ ‘
Twice for a Testament. Read it and see/If you look at the leavings then so I’ll go free.’ 
”

The Betty drew nearer. The Hobby and the Betty now stood right and left of the dolmen.

The Sons broke the knot and began the third part of the dance.

To the party of three on the steps, to the watching audience and the policemen and to Camilla, who looked on with a rising sensation of nausea, it seemed as if the Five Sons now danced on a crescendo that thudded like a quickening pulse towards its climax.

For the last and the third time their swords were interlaced and Dan held them aloft. The Fool was in his place behind the dolmen, the hermaphrodite and the horse stood like crazy acolytes to left and right of the stone. Dan lowered the knot of swords to the level of the Fool’s head. Each of the Sons laid hold of his own sword-hilt. The fiddling stopped.

“I can’t look,” Camilla thought and then, “But that’s not how it was. They’ve gone wrong again.”

At the same time the gong, the hunting horn and Alleyn’s whistle sounded. Ralph Stayne, Tom Plowman and Trixie all held up their hands and Dr. Otterly raised his bow.

It was the Hobby-Horse again. It should, they said, have been close behind the Fool, who was now leaning across the dolmen towards the sword-lock.

Very slowly the Hobby moved behind the Fool.

“And then,” Alleyn said, “came the last verse. ‘
Here comes the rappers to send me to bed/They’ll rapper my head off and then I’ll be dead
.’ Now.”

Young Bill leant over the dolmen and thrust his head with its rabbit-cap and mask into the lock of swords. There he was, grinning through a steel halter.

The swords flashed and sang. The rabbit head dropped on the dolmen. The Fool slid down behind the stone out of sight.

“Go on,” Alleyn said. He stood beside the Hobby-Horse. The Fool lay at their feet. Alleyn pointed at Ralph Stayne. “It’s your turn,” he said. “Go on.”

Ralph said apologetically, “I can’t very well without any audience.”

“Why not?”

“It was an ad lib. It depended on the audience.”

“Never mind. You’ve got Mr. Plowman and Trixie and a perambulation of police. Imagine the rest.”

“It’s so damn’ silly,” Ralph muttered.

“Oh, get
on
,” Dame Alice ordered. “What’s the matter with the boy!”

From the folds of his crate-like skirt Ralph drew out a sort of ladle that hung on a string from his waist. Rather half-heartedly he made a circuit of the courtyard and mimed the taking up of a collection.

“That’s all,” he said and came to a halt.

Dame Alice tooted, Dulcie banged the gong and Chris Andersen shouted, “No, it bean’t all, neither.”

“I mean it’s all of that bit,” Ralph said to Alleyn.

“What comes next? Keep going.”

With rather bad grace he embarked on his fooling. He flirted his crinoline and ran at two or three of the stolidly observant policemen.

His great-aunt shouted, “Use yer skirt, boy!”

Ralph made a sortie upon a large officer and attempted without success to throw the crinoline over his head.

“
Yah
!” jeered his great-aunt. “Go for a little ’un. Go for the gel.”

This was Trixie.

She smiled broadly at Ralph. “Come on, then, Mr. Ralph. I doan’t mind,” said Trixie.

Camilla turned away quickly. The Andersens stared, bright-eyed, at Ralph.

Alleyn said, “Obviously the skirt business only works if the victim’s very short and slight. Suppose we resurrect the Fool for the moment.”

Young Bill got up from behind the dolmen. Ralph ran at him and popped the crinoline over his head. The crinoline heaved and bulged. It was not difficult, Alleyn thought, to imagine the hammer blows of bucolic wit that this performance must have inspired in the less inhibited days of Merrie England.

“Will
that
do?” Ralph asked ungraciously.

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “Yes, I think it will.”

Young Bill rolled out from under the rim of the crinoline and again lay down between dolmen and “Crack.”

“Go on,” Alleyn said. “Next.”

Ralph set his jaw and prepared grimly for a revival of his Ernie-baiting. Ernie immediately showed signs of resentment and of wishing to anticipate the event.

“Not this time yer won’t,” he said showing his teeth and holding his sword behind him. “Not me. I know a trick worth two nor that.”

This led to a general uproar.

At last when the blandishments of his brothers, Dame Alice’s fury, Alleyn’s patience and the sweet reasonableness of Dr. Otterly had all proved fruitless, Alleyn fetched Simon from behind the wall.

“Will you,” he said, “get him to stand facing his brothers and holding his sword by the ribbons, which, I gather, is what he did originally?”

“I’ll give it a whirl if you say so, but don’t depend on it. He’s blowing up for trouble, is the Corp.”

“Try.”

“Roger. But he may do
anything
. Hey! Corp!”

He took Ernie by the arm and murmured wooingly in his ear. Ernie listened but, when it came to the point, remained truculent. “No bloody fear,” he said. He pulled away from Simon and turned on Ralph. “You keep off.”

“Sorry,” Simon muttered. “N.b.g.”

“Oh, well,” Alleyn said. “You go back, will you?”

Simon went back.

Alleyn had a word with Ralph, who listened without any great show of enthusiasm but nodded agreement. Alleyn went up to Ernie.

He said, “Is that the sword you were making such a song about? The one you had on Wednesday?”

“Not it,” Ernie said angrily. “This’un’s a proper old blunt ’un. Mine’s a whiffler, mine is. So sharp’s a knife.”

“You must have looked pretty foolish when the Betty took it off you.”

“No, I did not, then.”

“How did he get it? If it’s so sharp why didn’t he cut his hand?”

“You mind your own bloody business.”

“Come on, now. He ordered you to give it to him and you handed it over like a good little boy.”

Ernie’s response to this was furious and unprintable.

Alleyn laughed. “All right. Did he smack your hand or what? Come on.”

“He wouldn’t of took it,” Ernie spluttered, “if I’d seen. He come sneaking up be’ind when I worn’t noticing, like.
Didn’t
you?” he demanded of Ralph. “If I’d held thik proper you wouldn’t ’ave done it.”

“Oh,” Alleyn said offensively. “And how
did
you hold it? Like a lady’s parasol?”

Ernie glared at him. A stillness had fallen over the courtyard.

The bonfire could be heard crackling cheerfully beyond the wall. Very deliberately Ernie reversed his sword and swung it by the scarlet cord that was threaded through the tip.

“
Now
!” Alleyn shouted and Ralph pounced.

“Crack” screamed: a shrill wavering cry. Mrs. Bünz’s voice could be heard within, protesting, apparently, in German, and the Hobby, moving eccentrically and very fast, turned and bolted through the archway at the rear. At the same time Ralph, with the sword in one hand and his crinoline gathered up in the other, fled before the enraged Ernie. Round and round the courtyard they ran. Ralph dodged and feinted, Ernie roared and doubled and stumbled after him.

But Alleyn didn’t wait to see the chase.

He ran after the Hobby. Through the archway he ran and there behind the old wall in the light of the bonfire was “Crack,” the Hobby-Horse, plunging and squealing in the strangest manner. Its great cylinder of a body swung and tilted. Its skirt swept the muddy ground, its canvas top bulged and its head gyrated wildly. Fox and three of his men stood by and watched. There was a final mammoth upheaval. The whole structure tipped and fell over. Mrs. Bünz, terribly dishevelled, bolted out and was caught by Fox.

She left behind her the strangest travesty of the Fool. His clown’s face was awry and his pyjama jacket in rags. His hands were scratched and he was covered in mud. He stepped out of the wreckage of “Crack” and took off his mask.

“Nice work, young Bill,” Alleyn said. “And that, my hearties, is how the Guiser got himself offstage.”

There was no time for Mrs. Bünz or Simon to remark upon this statement. Mrs. Bünz whimpered in the protective custody of Mr. Fox. Simon scratched his head and stared uncomfortably at young Bill.

And young Bill, for his part, as if to clear his head, first shook it, then lowered it and finally dived at Simon and began to pummel his chest with both fists.

Simon shouted, “Hey! What the hell!” and grabbed the boy’s wrists.

Simultaneously Ernie came plunging through the archway from the arena.

“Where is ’e?” Ernie bawled. “Where the hell is the bastard?”

He saw Simon with the Fool’s figure in his grip. A terrible stillness came upon them all.

Then Ernie opened his mouth indecently wide and yelled, “Let ’im have it, then. I’ll finish ’im.”

Simon loosed his hold as if to free himself rather than his captive.

The boy in Fool’s clothing fell to the ground and lay there, mask upwards.

Ernie stumbled towards him. Alleyn and the three Yard men moved in.

“Leave ’im to me!” Ernie said.

“You clot,” Simon said. “Shut your great trap, you
bloody
clot. Corp!
Do you hear me? Corp
!”

Ernie looked at his own hands.

“I’ve lost my whiffler. Where’s ’tother job?”

He turned to the wall and saw the charred slasher. “Ar!” he said. “There she is.” He grabbed it, turned and swung it up. Alleyn and one of his men held him.

“Lemme go,” he said, struggling. “I got my orders. Lemme go.”

Mrs. Bünz screamed briefly and shockingly.

“What orders?”

“My Wing-Commander’s orders. Will I do it again, sir? Will I do it, like you told me? Again?”

Looking larger than human in the smoke of the bonfire, five men moved forward. They closed in about Simon.

Alleyn stood in front of him.

“Simon Richard Begg,” he said, “I am going to ask you for a statement, but before I do so I must warn you —”

Simon’s hand flashed. Alleyn caught the blow on his forearm instead of on his throat. “Not again,” he said.

It was well that there were five men to tackle Simon. He was experienced in unarmed combat and he was a natural killer.

“He’s a natural killer,” Alleyn said. “This is the first time, as far as we know, that it’s happened since he left off being a professional. If it
is
the first time it’s because until last Wednesday nobody had happened to annoy him in just the way that gingers up his homicidal reflexes.”

“Yes, but
fancy
!” Dulcie said, coming in with a steaming grog tray. “He had
such
a good war record. You know he came down in a parachute and killed
quantities
of Germans with his bare hands all at once and escaped and got decorated.”

“Yes,” Alleyn said drily, “he’s had lots of practice. He told us about that. That was the last time.”

“D’you meantersay,” Dame Alice asked, handing Alleyn a bottle of rum and a corkscrew, “that he killed Will’m Andersen out of temper and nothin’ else?”

“Out of an accumulation of spleen and frustrated ambition and on a snap assessment of the main chance.”

“Draw that cork and begin at the beginnin’.”

“Aunt Akky, shouldn’t you have a rest —”

“No.”

Alleyn drew the cork. Dame Alice poured rum and boiling water into a saucepan and began to grind up nutmeg. “Slice the lemons,” she ordered Fox.

Dr. Otterly said, “Frustrated ambition because of Copse Forge and the filling station?”

“That’s it.”

“Otters, don’t interrupt.”

“I daresay,” Alleyn said, “he’d thought often enough that if he could hand the old type the big chop, and get by, he’d give it a go. The boys were in favour of his scheme, remember, and he wanted money very badly.”

“But he didn’t plan this thing?” Dr. Otterly interjected and added, “Sorry, Dame Alice.”

“No, no. He only planned the substitution of Mrs. Bünz as ‘Crack’ and she gave him, she now tells us, thirty pounds for the job and bought a car from him into the bargain. He’d taken charge of ‘Crack’ and left the thing in the back of her car. She actually crept out when the pub was bedded down for the night and put it on to see if she could support the weight. They planned the whole thing very carefully. What happened was this: at the end of his girl-chase he went offstage and put Mrs. Bünz into ‘Crack’s’ harness. She went on for the triple sword-dance and was meant to come off in time for him to change back before the finale. La Belle Bünz, however, hell-bent on picking up a luscious morsel of folksy dialogue, edged up as close to the dolmen as she could get. She thought she was quite safe. The tar-daubed skirts of the Hobby completely hid her. Or almost completely.”

“Completely. No almost about it,” Dame Alice said. “I couldn’t see her feet.”

“No. But you would have seen them if you’d lain down in a shallow depression in the ground a few inches away from her. As the Guiser did.”

“Hold the pot over the fire for a bit, one of you. Go on.”

“The Guiser, from his worm’s viewpoint, recognized her. There she was, looming over him, with ‘Crack’s’ carcass probably covering the groove where he lay and her rubber overshoes and hairy skirts showing every time she moved. He reached up and grabbed her. She screamed at the top of her voice and you all thought it was Begg trying to neigh. The Guiser was a very small man and a very strong one. He pinioned her arms to her body, kept his head down and ran her off.”

“That was when Ralph pinched Ernie’s sword?” Dr. Otterly ventured.

“That’s it. Once offstage, while he was still, as it were, tented up with her, the Guiser hauled her out of ‘Crack’s’ harness. He was gibbering with temper. As soon as he was free, a matter of seconds, he turned on Begg, who, of course, was waiting there for her. The Guiser went for Begg like a fury. It was over in a flash. Mrs. Bünz saw Begg hit him across the throat. It’s a well-known blow in unarmed combat, and it’s deadly. She also saw Ernie come charging offstage without his whiffler and in a roaring rage himself. Then she bolted.

“What happened after that, Ernie demonstrated for us to-night. He saw his god fell the Guiser. Ernie was in a typical epileptic’s rage and, as usual, the focal point of his rage was his father — the Old Man, who had killed his dog, frustrated his god’s plans and snatched the role of Fool away from Ernie himself at the last moment. He was additionally inflamed by the loss of his sword.

“But the slasher was there. He’d sharpened it and brought it up himself and he grabbed it as soon as he saw it.

“He said to-night that he was under orders and I’m sure he was. Begg saw a quick way out. He said something like this: ‘He tried to kill me. Get him, Corp!’ And Ernie, his mind seething with a welter of emotions and superstitions, did what he’d done to the aggressive gander earlier that day.”

“Gracious! Aunt Akky, fancy!
Ernie
!”

“Very nasty,” said Mr. Fox, who was holding the saucepan of punch over the drawing-room fire.

“A few moments later, Ralph Stayne came out with Ernie’s whiffler. He found Ernie and he found ‘Crack,’ squatting there, he says, like a great broody hen. Begg was hiding the decapitated Guiser with the only shield available — ‘Crack.’

“He told Stayne that Ernie was upset and he’d better leave him alone. Stayne returned the whiffler and went on round the wall to the O.P. entrance.

“Begg knew that if the body was found where it lay Stayne would remember how he saw him squatting there. He did the only thing possible. He sent Ernie back to the arena, threw the slasher on the fire and overturned the drum of tar to obliterate any traces of blood. It caught fire. Then he hitched ‘Crack’s’ harness over his own shoulders and returned to the arena. He carried the body in his arms and held the head by the strings of its bag-like mask, both ends of which became bloodstained. All this under cover of the great canvas body.

“At this time the final dance was in progress and the Five Sons were between their audience and the dolmen. ‘Crack’ was therefore masked by the stone and the dancers. Not that he needed any masking. He dropped the body — laid it, like an egg, in the depression behind the dolmen. This accounts for the state it was in when the Andersens found it. Begg leapt with suspicious alacrity at my suggestion that he might have tripped over it or knocked it with the edge of ‘Crack’s’ harness.”

“Oh, dear, Aunt Akky!”

“He was careful to help with the removal of the body, in order to account for any bloodstains on his clothes. When I told him we would search his clothes for bloodstains, he made his only mistake. His vanity tripped him up. He told us the story of his ferocious exploit in Germany and how, if a man was killed as the Guiser was supposed to have been killed, his assailant would be covered in blood. Of course we knew that, but the story told us that Begg had once been involved in unarmed combat with an old peasant and that he had been saved by one of his own men. A hedge-slasher had been involved in that story, too.”

Alleyn glanced at Dame Alice and Dulcie. “Is this altogether too beastly for you?” he asked.

“Absolutely
ghastly
,” Dulcie said. “Still,” she added in a hurry, “I’d rather
know
.”

“Don’t be ’ffected, Dulcie. ’Course you would. So’d I. Go on,” Dame Alice ordered.

“There’s not much more to tell. Begg hadn’t time to deliberate, but he hoped, of course, that with all those swords about it would be concluded that the thing was done while the Guiser lay behind the dolmen. He and Dr. Otterly were the only two performers who would be at once ruled out if this theory were accepted. He’s completely callous. I don’t suppose he minded much who might be accused, though he must have known that the only two who would really look likely would be Ernie, with the sharp sword, and Ralph Stayne, who pinched it and made great play slashing it round.”

“But he stuck up for Ernie,” Dr. Otterly said. “All through. Didn’t he?”

Fox sighed heavily. Dame Alice pointed to a magnificent silver punch bowl that was blackening in the smoke on the hearth. He poured the fragrant contents of the saucepan into it and placed it before her.

Alleyn said, “Begg wanted above all things to prevent us finding out about Ernie and the slasher. Once we had an inkling that the Guiser was killed offstage his improvised plan would go to pot. We would know that
he
was offstage and must have been present. He would be able, of course, to say that Ernie killed the Guiser and that he himself, wearing ‘Crack’s’ harness, was powerless to stop him. But there was no knowing how Ernie would behave: Ernie filled with zeal and believing he had saved his god and wiped out that father-figure who so persistently reappeared, always to Begg’s and Ernie’s undoing. Moreover, there was Mrs. Bünz, who had seen Begg strike his blow, though she didn’t realize he had struck to kill. He fixed Mrs. Bünz by telling her that we suspected her and that there was a lot of feeling against her as a German. Now he’s been arrested, she’s come across with a full statement and will give evidence.”

“What’ll happen?” Dame Alice asked, beginning to ladle out her punch.

“Oh,” Alleyn said, “we’ve a very groggy case, you know. We’ve only got the undeniable fact, based on medical evidence, that he was dead before Ernie struck. Moreover, in spite of Ernie, there may, with luck, be evidence of the actual injury.”

“Larynx,” Dr. Otterly said.

“Exactly.”

“What,” Dr. Otterly asked, “will he plead?

“His counsel may plump for self-defence: the Guiser went for him and his old unarmed-combat training took over. He defended himself instinctively.”

“Mightn’t it be true?”

“The Guiser,” Alleyn said, “was a very small and very old man. But, as far as that goes, I think Begg’s training
did
re-assert itself. Tickle a dog’s ribs and it scratches itself. There’s Begg’s temperament, make-up and experience. There are his present financial doldrums; there are his prospects if he can start his petrol station. There’s the Guiser, standing in his path. The Guiser comes at him like an old fury. Up goes the arm, in goes the edge of the hand. It was unpremeditated, but in my opinion he hit to kill.”

“Will he get off?” Dr. Otterly asked.

“How the bloody hell should I know!” Alleyn said with some violence. “Sorry, Dame Alice.”

“Have some punch,” said Dame Alice. She looked up at him out of her watery old eyes. “You’re an odd sort of feller,” she remarked. “Anybody’d think you were squeamish.”

Ralph took Camilla to call on his great-aunt.

“We’ll have to face it sooner or later,” he said, “and so will she.”

“I can’t pretend I’m looking forward to it.”

“Darling, she’ll adore you. In two minutes she’ll adore you.”

“Come off it, my sweet.”

Ralph beamed upon his love and untied the string that lecured the wrought-iron gates.

“Those geese!” Camilla said.

They were waiting in a solid phalanx.

“I’ll protect you. They know me.”

“And the two bulls on the skyline. The not very distant skyline.”

“Dear old boys, I assure you. Come on.”

“Up the Campions!” Camilla said. “If not the Andersens.”

“Up, emphatically, the Andersens,” Ralph said and held out his hand.

She went through the gates.

The geese did menacing things with their necks. Ralph shook his stick and they hissed back at him.

“Perhaps, darling, if you hurried and I held them at bay —”

Camilla panted up the drive. Ralph fought a rearguard action. The bulls watched with interest.

Ralph and Camilla stumbled breathless and handfast through the archway and across the courtyard. They mounted the steps. Ralph tugged at the phoney bell. It set up a clangour that caused the geese to scream, wheel and waddle indignantly away.

“That’s done it,” Ralph said and put his arm round Camilla.

They stood with their backs to the door and looked across the courtyard. The snow had gone. Grey and wet were the walls and wet the ground. Beyond the rear archway stood a wintry hill, naked trees and a windy sky.

And in the middle of the courtyard was the dolmen, very black, one heavy stone supported by two others. It looked expectant.

“ ‘
Nine-men’s morris is filled up with mud
,’ ” Camilla murmured.

“There
were
nine,” Ralph said. “Counting Mrs. Bünz.”

“Well,” she said under her breath, “that’s the last of the Mardian Morris of the Five Sons, isn’t it?
Ralph
! No one, not the boys or you or Dr. Otterly can ever want to do it again: ever, ever, ever. Can you?
Can
you?”

Ralph was saved from answering by Dulcie, who opened the great door behind them.

“How do you do?” Dulcie said to Camilla. “Do come in. Aunt Akky’ll be delighted. She’s been feeling rather flat after all the excitement.” Ralph gently propelled Camilla into the hall. Dulcie shut the door.

“Aunt Akky,” she said, “does so like things to happen. She’s been saying what a long time it seems to next Sword Wednesday.”

The End