Off with His Head

by Ngaio Marsh

‘Wonderful,’ Alleyn said abstractedly.

  He listened to Dr Otterly discoursing on the Mardian family and its vanished heyday. ‘Constitutions of oxes and heads of cast-iron, the lot of them,’ Dr Otterly declared. ‘And arrogant!’ He wagged a finger. ‘’Nuff said.’ It occurred to Alleyn that Dr Otterly’s head was not perhaps of the same impregnability as the Mardians’.

  ‘Join the ladies?’ Dr Otterly suggested, and they did so.

  Dame Alice was established in a bucket-shaped armchair that cut her off in some measure from anybody that wasn’t placed directly in front of her. Under her intructions, Alleyn drew up a hideous Edwardian stool to a strategic position. Dulcie placed a newspaper parcel on her grandmother’s knee. Alleyn saw with some excitement a copy of The Times for 1871.

  ‘Time someone got some new wrappin’ for this,’ Dame Alice said and untied the tape with a jerk.

  ‘By heaven,’ Dr Otterly said, waving his cigar, ‘you’re highly favoured, Alleyn. By heaven, you are!’

  ‘There yar,’ said Dame Alice. ‘Take it. Give him a table, Dulcie, it’s fallin’ to bits.’

  Dr Otterly brought up a table and Alleyn laid down the book she had pushed into his hands. It was one of the kind that used to be called ‘commonplace’ and evidently of a considerable age. The leather binding had split down the back. He opened it and found that it was the diary of one ‘Ambrose Hilary Mardian of Mardian Place, nr. Yowford, written in the year 1798.’

  ‘My great-grandfather,’ said Dame Alice. ‘I was born Mardian and married a Mardian. No young. Skip to the Wednesday before Christmas.’

  Alleyn turned over the pages. ‘Here we are,’ he said.

  The entry, like all the others, was written in an elaborate copperplate. The ink had faded to a pale brown.

  ‘Sword Wednesday,’ he read. ‘1798. A note on the Mardian Morris of 5 Sons.’ Alleyn looked up for a second at Dame Alice and then began to read.

  ‘This evening being the occasion of the Mardian Mumming or Sword Dance (which is perhaps the more proper way of describing it than as a Morisco or Morris) I have thought to set down the ceremony as it was performed in my childhood for I have perceived since the death of old Yeo Andersen at Copse Forge there has been an abridgement of the doggerel which I fear either through indifference, forgetfulness or sheepishness on the part of the morris side—if morris or morisco it can be named—may become altogether neglected and lost. This were a pity as the ceremony is curious and I believe in some aspects unique. For in itself it embraces divers others, as the mummers’ play in which the father avoids death from his sons by breaking the glass or knot and then by showing his Will and the third time is in mockery beheaded. Also from this source is derived the Sword Dance itself in three parts and from yet another the quaint device of the rabbit cap. Now, to leave all this, my purpose here is to set down what was always said by Yeo Andersen the smith and his forebears who had enacted the part of the Fool. Doubtless the words have been changed as time goes by but here they are, as given to me by Yeo. These words are not spoken out boldly but rather are they mumbled under the breath. Sorry enough stuff it is, no doubt, but perhaps of interest to those who care for these old simple pastimes of our country people.

  ‘At the end of the first part of the Sword Dance as he breaks the glass, the Fool says:

  “Once for a looker and all must agree If I bashes the looking-glass so I’ll go free.”

  ‘At the end of the second part he shows them his Will and says:

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

  ‘At the end of the third part, he puts his head in the Lock and says:

  “Here comes the rappers to send me to bed They’ll rapper my head off and then I’ll be dead.”

  ‘And after that he says:

  “Betty to lover me Hobby to cover me If you cut off my head I’ll rise from the dead.”

  ‘NB I believe the word “rapper” to be a corruption of “rapier”, though in other parts it is used of wooden swords. Some think it refers to a practice of rapping or hitting with them after the manner of Harlequin in his dancing. Yet in the Mardian dance the swords are of steel pierced for cords at the point.’

  There the entry for Sword Wednesday ended.

  ‘Extraordinarily interesting,’ Alleyn said. ‘Thank you.’ He shut the book and turned to Dr Otterly. ‘Did the Guiser speak any of this verse?’

  ‘I believe he did, but he was very cagey about it. He certainly used to mutter something at those points in the dance but he wouldn’t tell anybody what it was. The boys were near enough to hear but they don’t like talking about it, either. Damn’ ridiculous when you come to think of it,’ Dr Otterly said, slightly running his words together. ‘But interesting all the same.’

  ‘Did he ever see this diary, Dame Alice?’

  ‘I showed it to him. One of the times when he’d come to mend the boiler. He put on a cunnin’ look and said he knew all about it.’

  ‘Would you think these lines, particularly the last four, are used in other places where folk dancing thrives?’

  ‘Definitely not,’ Dr Otterly said, perhaps rather more loudly than he had intended. ‘They’re not in the Revesby text nor anywhere else in British ritual mumming. Purely local. Take the word “lover” used as a verb. You still heard it hereabouts when I was a boy, but I doubt if it’s ever been found elsewhere in England. Certainly not in that context.’

  Alleyn put his hand on the book and turned to his hostess. ‘Clever of you,’ he said ‘to think of showing me this. I congratulate you.’ He got up and stood looking at her. She turned her Mrs Noah’s face up to him and blinked like a lizard.

  ‘Not goin’, are yer?’

  ‘Isn’t it your bedtime?’

  ‘Most certainly it is,’ said Dr Otterly, waving his cigar.

  ‘Aunt Akky, it’s after ten.’

  ‘Fiddlededee. Let’s have some brandy. Where’s the grog-tray? Ring the bell, Otters.’

  The elderly parlourmaid answered the bell at once, like a servant in a fairy tale, ready-armed with a tray, brandy-glasses, and a bottle of fabulous cognac.

  ‘I ’fer it at this stage,’ Dame Alice said, ‘to havin’ it with the coffee. Papa used to say: “When dinner’s dead in yer and bed is still remote, ring for the brandy.” Sound advice in my ’pinion.’

  It was eleven o’clock when they left Mardian Castle.

  Fox, running through his notes with a pint of beer before the fire, looked up over his spectacles when his chief came in. There was an unusual light in Alleyn’s eyes.

  ‘You’re later than I expected, sir,’ said Fox. ‘Shall I order you a pint?’

  ‘Not unless you feel like carrying me up to bed after it. I’ve been carousing with the Dame of Mardian Castle. She may be ninety-four, Fox, but she carries her wine like a two-year-old, does that one.’

  ‘God bless my soul! Sit down, Mr Alleyn.’

  ‘I’m all right. I must say I wonder how old Otterly’s managing under his own steam. He was singing the “Jewel Song” from Faust in a rousing falsetto when we parted.’

  ‘What did you have for dinner? To eat, I mean.’

  ‘Ernie’s victim and sodden Brussels sprouts. The wine, however, was something out of this world. Laid down by one of the gods in the shape of Dame Alice’s papa. But the pièce de résistance, Brer Fox, the wonder of the evening, handed to me, as it were, on a plate by Dame Alice herself, was—what do you suppose?’

  ‘I don’t suppose, sir,’ Fox said, smiling sedately.

  ‘The little odd golden morsel of information that clicks down into the pattern and pulls it together. The key to the whole damn’ set-up, my boy. Don’t look scandalized, Brer Fox, I’m not so tight that I don’t know a crucial bit of evidence when it’s shoved under my nose. Have you heard the weather report?’

  Mr Fox began to look really disturbed. He cleared his throat and said warmer and finer weather had been predicted.

 
‘Good,’ Alleyn cried and clapped him on the back. ‘Excellent. You’re in for a treat.’

  ‘What sort of treat,’ Mr Fox said, ‘for heaven’s sake?’

  ‘A touch of the sword and fiddle, Brer Fox. A bit of hey-nonny-no. A glimpse of Merrie England with bells on. Nine men’s morris, mud and all. Repeat nine.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘We’re in for a reconstruction, my boy, and I’ll tell you why. Now, listen.’

  II

  The mid-winter sun smiled faint as an invalid over South and East Mardian on the Friday after Sword Wednesday. It glinted on the breakfast tables of the Reverend Mr Samuel Stayne and his aunt, Dame Alice Mardian. It touched up the cruet-stand and the Britannia metal in the little dining-room at the Green Man and an emaciated ray even found its way to the rows of bottles in the bar and to the anvil at Copse Forge. A feeble radiance it was but there was something heartening about it nevertheless. Up at Yowford, Dr Otterly surveyed the scene with an uplifting of his spirit that he would have found hard to explain. Also at Yowford, Simon Begg, trundling out Dr Otterly’s wheel with its mended puncture, remembered his winning bet, assured himself that he stood a fair chance now of mending his fortune with an interest in a glittering petrol station at Copse Forge, reminded himself it wouldn’t, under the circumstances, look nice to be too obviously pleased about this, and broke out, nevertheless, into a sweet and irresponsibly exultant whistling.

  Trixie sang and the potboy whistled louder but less sweetly than Simon. Camilla brushed her short hair before her open window and repeated a voice-control exercise. ‘Bibby bobby bounced a ball against the wall.’ She thought how deeply she was in love, and, like Simon, told herself it wasn’t appropriate to be so obviously uplifted. Then the memory of her grandfather’s death suddenly flooded her thoughts and her heart was filled with a vast pity and love, not only for him but for all the world. Camilla was eighteen and a darling.

  Dame Alice woke from a light doze and felt for a moment quite desperately old. She saw a robin on her window-sill. Sharp as a thorn were its bright eyes and quick as thought the turn of its sun-polished head. Down below, the geese were in full scream. Dulcie would be pottering about in the dining-room. The wave of depression receded. Dame Alice was aware of her release but not, for a moment, of its cause. Then she remembered her dinner-party. Her visitor had enjoyed himself. It was, she thought, thirty years—more—since she had been listened to like that. He was a pretty fellow, too. By ‘pretty’ Dame Alice meant ‘dashing’. And what was it he’d said when he left? That with her permission they would revive the Mardian Morris that afternoon. Dame Alice was not moved by the sort of emotions that the death of the Guiser had aroused in younger members of Wednesday’s audience. The knowledge that his decapitated body had been found in her courtyard did not fill her with horror. She was no longer susceptible to horror. She merely recognized in herelf an unusual feeling of anticipation and connected it with her visitor of last night. She hadn’t felt so lively for ages.

  ‘Breakfast,’ she thought, and jerked at the tapestry bell-pull by her bed.

  Dulcie in the dining-room heard the bell jangling away in the servants’ hall. She roused herself, took the appropriate dishes off the hot plate and put them on the great silver tray. Porridge. Kedgeree. Toast. Marmalade. Coffee. The elderly parlourmaid came in and took the tray up to Dame Alice.

  Dulcie was left to push crumbs about the tablecloth and hope that the police wouldn’t find the murderer too soon. Because if they did, Mr Alleyn, to whom she had shown herself as a woman of the world, would go somewhere else.

  III

  Ralph Stayne looked down the table at his father, who had, he noticed, eaten no breakfast.

  ‘You’re looking a bit poorly, Pop,’ he said. ‘Anything wrong?’

  His father stared at him in pale bewilderment.

  ‘My dear chap,’ he said, ‘no. Not with me. But the—the events of the night before last—’

  ‘Oh!’ Ralph said, ‘that! Yes, of course. As long as it’s only that—I mean,’ he went on hurriedly, answering the look in his father’s eye, ‘as long as it’s not anything actually wrong with you. Yes, I know it was ghastly about the poor old Guiser. It was. Quite frightful.’

  ‘I can’t get it out of my head. Forgive me, old boy, but I really don’t know how you contrive to be so—so resilient.’

  ‘I? I expect this sounds revoltingly tough to you—but, you see, Pop, if one’s seen rather a lot of that particular kind of horror—well, it’s a hell of a sight different. I have. On the deck of a battleship among other places. I’m damn’—blast, I keep swearing!—I couldn’t be sorrier about the Guiser but the actual look of the thing wasn’t all that much of a horror to me.’

  ‘I suppose not. I suppose not.’

  ‘One’d go mad,’ Ralph said, ‘if one didn’t get tough. When there’s a war on. Simmy-Dick Begg would agree. So would Ernie and Chris. Although it was their father. Any returned chap would agree.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  Ralph got up. He squared his shoulders, looked steadily at his father and said: ‘Camilla’s the one who really did get an appalling shock.’

  ‘I know. Poor child. I wondered if I should go and see her, Ralph.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ralph said. ‘I wish you would. I’m going, now, and I’ll tell her. She’ll be awfully pleased.’

  His father, looking extremely disturbed, said: ‘My dear old man, you’re not—?’

  ‘Yes, Pop,’ Ralph said, ‘I’m afraid I am. I’ve asked Camilla to marry me.’

  His father got up and walked to the windows. He looked out on the dissolving whiteness of his garden.

  ‘I wish this hadn’t happened,’ he said. ‘Something was suggested last night by Dulcie that seemed to hint at it. I—as a churchman, I hope I’m not influenced by—by—well, my dear boy, by any kind of snob’s argument. I’m sure I’m not. Camilla is a dear child and, other things being equal, I should be really delighted.’ He rubbed up his thin hair and said ruefully: ‘It’ll worry Aunt Akky most awfully.’

  ‘Aunt Akky’ll have to lump it, I’m afraid,’ Ralph said, and his voice hardened. ‘She evidently heard that I’ve been seeing a good deal of Camilla in London. She’s already tried to bulldoze me about it. But honestly, Pop, what, after all, has it got to do with Aunt Akky? I know Aunt Akky’s marvellous. I adore her. But I refuse to accept her as a sort of animated tribal totem though I admit she looks very much like one.’

  ‘It’s not only that,’ his father said miserably. ‘There’s—forgive me, Ralph, I really detest having to ask you this, but isn’t there—someone—’

  Mr Stayne stopped and looked helplessly at his son. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘I’ve listened to gossip. I tried not to, but I listened.’

  Ralph said: ‘You’re talking about Trixie Plowman, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who gossiped? Please tell me.’

  ‘It was old William Andersen.’

  Ralph drew in his breath. ‘I was afraid of that,’ he said.

  ‘He was genuinely worried. He thought it his duty to talk to me. You know how adamant his views were. Apparently Ernie had seen you and Trixie Plowman together. Old William was the more troubled because, on last Sunday morning—’

  ‘It appears to be my fate,’ Ralph said furiously, ‘to be what the Restoration dramatists call “discovered” by the Andersens. It’s no good trying to explain, Pop. It’d only hurt you. I know you would look on this Trixie thing as—well—’

  ‘As a sin? I do, indeed.’

  ‘But—it was so brief and so much outside the general stream of my life. And hers—Trixie’s. It was just a sort of natural thing; a little kindness of hers.’

  ‘You can’t expect me to take that view of it.’

  ‘No,’ Ralph said. ‘I’ll only sound shallow or something.’

  ‘It’s not a question of how you sound. It’s a question of wrongdoing, Ralph. There’s the girl—Trixie herself.’

>   ‘She’s all right. Honestly. She’s going to be tokened to Chris Andersen.’

  The Rector momentarily shut his eyes. ‘Oh, Ralph!’ he said and then: ‘William Andersen forbade it. He spoke to Chris on Sunday.’

  ‘Well, anyway, now they can,’ Ralph said, and then looked rather ashamed of himself. ‘I’m sorry, Pop. I shouldn’t have put it like that, I suppose. Look: it’s all over, that thing. It was before I knew Camilla. I did regret it very much, after I loved Camilla. Does that help?’

  The Rector made a most unhappy gesture. ‘I am talking to a stranger,’ he said. ‘I have failed you, dreadfully, Ralph. It’s quite dreadful.’

  A bell rang distantly.

  ‘They’ve fixed the telephone up,’ the Rector said miserably.

  ‘I’ll go.’

  Ralph went out and returned looking bewildered.

  ‘It was Alleyn,’ he said. ‘The man from the Yard. They want us to go up to the castle this afternoon.’

  ‘To the castle?’

  ‘To do the Five Sons again. They want you, too, Pop.’

  ‘Me. But why?’

  ‘You were an observer.’

  ‘Oh dear!’

  ‘Apparently they’re calling everybody up: Mrs Bünz included.’

  Ralph joined his father in a kind of half companionable dissonance and looked across the rectory tree-tops towards East Mardian, where a column of smoke rose gracefully from the pub.

  Trixie had done her early chores and seen that the fires were burning brightly.

  She had also taken Mrs Bünz’s breakfast up to her.

  At this moment, Trixie was behaving oddly. She stood with a can of hot water outside Mrs Bünz’s bedroom door, intently listening. The expression of her face was not at all sly, rather it was grave and attentive. On the other side of the door, Mrs Bünz clicked her knife against her plate and her cup on its saucer. Presently there was a more complicated clatter as she put her tray down on the floor beside her bed. This was followed by the creak of a wire mattress, a heavy thud and the pad of bare feet. Trixie held her breath, listened feverishly and, then, without knocking, quickly pushed open the door and walked in.