Death of a Fool ra-19

by Ngaio Marsh

  “I don’t think we shall be long now,” he said. “And when you’re ready, Dame Alice —?”

  “I’m ready. Haul me up, will yer? Dulcie! Bundle!”

  As this ceremony would evidently take some considerable time, Alleyn excused himself. He and Dr. Otterly went out to the courtyard.

  Dr. Otterly joined his colleagues and they all took up their positions offstage behind the old wall. Alleyne paused on the house steps and surveyed the scene.

  The sky was clear now and had not yet completely darkened: to the west it was still faintly green. Stars exploded into a wintry glitter. There was frost in the air.

  The little party of onlookers stood in their appointed places at the side of the courtyard and would have almost melted into darkness if it had not been for the torchlight. The Andersens had evidently strapped their pads of bells on their thick legs. Peremptory jangles could be heard offstage.

  Alleyn’s men were at their stations and Fox now came forward to meet him.

  “We’re all ready, Mr. Alleyn, when you are.”

  “All right. What was biting Ernie?”

  “Same old trouble. Wanting to play the Fool.”

  “Thought as much.”

  Carey moved out from behind the dolmen.

  “I suppose it’s all right,” he murmured uneasily. “You know. Safe.”

  “Safe?” Fox repeated and put his head on one side as if Carey had advanced a quaintly original theory.

  “Well, I dunno, Mr. Fox,” Carey muttered. “It seems a bit uncanny-like and with young Ern such a queer excitable chap — he’s been saying he wants to sharpen up that damned old sword affair of his. ’Course we won’t let him have it, but how’s he going to act when we don’t! Take one of his fits, like as not.”

  “We’ll have to keep a nice sharp observation over him, Mr. Carey,” Fox said.

  “Over all of them,” Alleyn demanded.

  “Well,” Carey conceded, “I daresay I’m fussy.”

  “Not a bit,” Alleyn said. “You’re perfectly right to look upon this show as a chancy business. But they’ve sent us five very good men who all know what to look for. And with you,” Alleyn pointed out wickedly, “in a key position I don’t personally think we’re taking too big a risk.”

  “Ar, no-no-no,” Carey said quickly and airily. “No, I wasn’t suggesting we were, you know. I wasn’t suggesting that.”

  “We’ll just have a final look round, shall we?” Alleyn proposed.

  He walked over to the dolmen, glanced behind it and then moved on through the central arch at the back.

  Gathered together in a close-knit group, rather like a bunch of carol singers, with lanthorns in their hands, were the five Andersens. As they changed their positions in order to eye the new arrivals, their bells clinked. Alleyn was reminded unexpectedly of horses that stamped and shifted in their harness. Behind them, near the unlit bonfire, stood Dr. Otterly and Ralph, who was again dressed in his great hooped skirt. Simon stood by the cylindrical cheese-shaped body of the Hobby-Horse. “Crack’s” head grinned under his arm. Beyond these again, were three of the extra police officers. The hedge-slasher, with its half-burnt handle and heat-distempered blade, leant against the wall with the drum of tar nearby. There was a strong tang of bitumen on the frosty air.

  “We’ll light the bonfire,” Alleyn said, “and then I’ll ask you all to come into the courtyard while I explain what we’re up to.”

  One of the Yard men put a match to the paper. It flared up. There was a crackle of brushwood and a pungent smell rose sweetly with smoke from the bonfire.

  They followed Alleyn back, through the archway, past the dolmen and the flaring torches and across the arena.

  Dame Alice was enthroned at the top of the steps, flanked, as before, by Dulcie and the Rector. Rugged and shawled into a quadrel with a knob on top, she resembled some primitive totem and appeared to be perfectly immovable.

  Alleyn stood on a step below and a little to one side of this group. His considerable height was exaggerated by the shadow that leapt up behind him. The torchlight lent emphasis to the sharply defined planes of his face and gave it a fantastic appearance. Below him stood the five Sons with Simon, Ralph and Dr. Otterly.

  Alleyn looked across to the little group on his right.

  “Will you come nearer?” he said. “What I have to say concerns all of you.”

  They moved out of the shadows, keeping apart, as if each was anxious to establish a kind of disassociation from the others: Trixie, the landlord, Camilla and, lagging behind, Mrs. Bünz. Ralph crossed over to Camilla and stood beside her. His conical skirt looked like a giant extinguisher and Camilla in her flame-coloured coat like a small candle flame beside him.

  Fox, Carey and their subordinates waited attentively in the rear.

  “I expect,” Alleyn said, “that most of you wonder just why the police have decided upon this reconstruction. I don’t suppose any of you enjoy the prospect and I’m sorry if it causes you anxiety or distress.”

  He waited for a moment. The faces upturned to his were misted by their own breath. Nobody spoke or moved.

  “The fact is,” he went on, “that we’re taking an unusual line with a very unusual set of circumstances. The deceased man was in full sight of you all for as long as he took an active part in this dance-play of yours and he was still within sight of some of you after he lay down behind that stone. Now, Mr. Carey has questioned every man, woman and child who was in the audience on Wednesday night. They are agreed that the Guiser did not leave the arena or move from his hiding place and that nobody offered him any violence as he lay behind the stone. Yet, a few minutes after he lay down there came the appalling discovery of his decapitated body.

  “We’ve made exhaustive inquiries, but each of them has led us slap up against this apparent contradiction. We want therefore to see for ourselves exactly what did happen.”

  Dr. Otterly looked up at Alleyn as if he were about to interrupt but seemed to change his mind and said nothing.

  “For one reason or another,” Alleyn went on, “some of you may feel disinclined to repeat some incident or occurrence. I can’t urge you too strongly to leave nothing out and to stick absolutely to fact. ‘Nothing extenuate,’ ” he found himself saying, “ ‘nor set down aught in malice.’ That’s as sound a bit of advice on evidence as one can find anywhere and what we’re asking you to do is, in effect, to provide visual evidence. To show us the truth. And by sticking to the whole truth and nothing but the truth, each one of you will establish the innocent. You will show us who couldn’t have done it. But don’t fiddle with the facts. Please don’t do that. Don’t leave out anything because you’re afraid we may think it looks a bit fishy. We won’t think so if it’s not. And what’s more,” he added and raised an eyebrow, “I must remind you that any rearrangement would probably be spotted by your fellow performers or your audience.”

  He paused. Ernie broke into aimless laughter and his brothers shifted uneasily and jangled their bells.

  “Which brings me,” Alleyn went on, “to my second point. If at any stage of this performance any one of you notices anything at all, however slight, that is different from what you remember, you will please say so. There and then. There’ll be a certain amount of noise, I suppose, so you’ll have to give a clear signal. Hold up your hand. If you’re a fiddler,” Alleyn said and nodded at Dr. Utterly, “stop fiddling and hold up your bow. If you’re the Hobby-Horse” — he glanced at Simon — “you can’t hold up your hand, but you can let out a yell, can’t you?”

  “Fair enough,” Simon said. “Yip-ee!”

  The Andersens and the audience looked scandalized.

  “And similarly,” Alleyn said, “I want any member of this very small audience who notices any discrepancy to make it clear, at once, that he does so. Sing out or hold up your hand. Do it there and then.”

  “Dulcie.”

  “Yes, Aunt Akky?”

  “Get the gong.”

  “
The gong, Aunt Akky?”

  “Yes. The one I bought at that jumble-sale. And the hunting horn from the gun-room.”

  “Very well, Aunt Akky.”

  Dulcie got up and went indoors.

  “You,” Dame Alice told Alleyn, “can bang if you want them to stop. I’ll have the horn.”

  Alleyn said apologetically, “Thank you very much, but, as it happens, I’ve got a whistle.”

  “Sam can bang, then, if he notices anything.”

  The Rector cleared his throat and said he didn’t think he’d want to.

  Alleyn, fighting hard against this rising element of semi-comic activity, addressed himself again to the performers.

  “If you hear my whistle,” he said, “you will at once stop whatever you may be doing. Now, is all this perfectly clear? Are there any questions?”

  Chris Andersen said loudly, “What say us chaps won’t?”

  “You mean, won’t perform at all?”

  “Right. What say we won’t?”

  “That’ll be that,” Alleyn said coolly.

  “Here!” Dame Alice shouted, peering into the little group of men. “Who was that? Who’s talkin’ about will and won’t?”

  They shuffled and jangled.

  “Come on,” she commanded. “Daniel! Who was it?”

  Dan looked extremely uncomfortable. Ernie laughed again and jerked his thumb at Chris. “Good old Chrissie,” he guffawed.

  Big Chris came tinkling forward. He stood at the foot of the steps and looked full at Dame Alice.

  “It was me, then,” he said. “Axcuse me, ma’am, it’s our business whether this affair goes on or don’t. Seeing who it was that was murdered. We’re his sons.”

  “Pity you haven’t got his brains!” she rejoined. “You’re a hotheaded, blunderin’ sort of donkey, Chris Andersen, and always have been. Be a sensible feller, now, and don’t go puttin’ yourself in the wrong.”

  “What’s the sense of it?” Chris demanded. “How can we do what was done before when there’s no Fool? What’s the good of it?”

  “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.