Pageant of Murder mb-38

by Gladys Mitchell

  “I know the way your mind works.”

  “That’s the worst of living with a psychiatrist. I can’t keep any secrets. What makes you think my hunch is reasonable? I didn’t tell you what it was because I thought you’d hoot with ill-considered mirth, and that would have discouraged me.”

  “These murders have followed a bizarre pattern, therefore no theory about them, however seemingly far-fetched, can be laughed out of court or disregarded. As for discouraging you, I would not dream of it.”

  “Many thanks. So you don’t mind if I go out prospecting on my own?”

  “So far as I am concerned, you have a free hand. When do you propose to return to Brayne?”

  “Tomorrow, starting more or less at the crack of dawn, if you don’t mind. I may need all day for the search, you see. I’ll go in my own car and take sandwiches and a thermos. That way I won’t have to waste time getting a lunch somewhere. Good thing the weather keeps fine.”

  She set off on the following morning not quite at the crack of dawn but by nine o’clock. In the boot of the car were a garden rake, a light spade, a piece of clean sacking, a trowel and a tin of carbolic powder. Laura was not at all certain that she would be able to find a use for any of these, or that she would press them into service even if she did find a use for them, but they seemed to lend interest and colour to the expedition.

  As far as Southampton the road was fairly clear of traffic and, later, she made excellent time on the Winchester bypass, so that it was just before noon when she reached Brayne. She parked the car in front of the roadhouse, went in for a beer, and asked whether she might leave the car for a couple of hours while she attended to important business. The barman said that he couldn’t care less, half-a-crown was passed over the bar counter and Laura, shouldering the rake, crossed the road and took the path which led down to the canalised little river. Careful prospecting was necessary, she decided, before excavation was possible.

  There were schoolchildren on holiday, people exercising dogs, older people resting on the park benches and, when she reached the river, boys bathing. She took the path to the bridge where the river and its canalised stretch joined forces, followed the towing-path and soon came to the steep bridge which carried the towing-path over the canal.

  She kept straight on into Batty-Faudrey country, first alongside the trickling little weir and then by the side of the river. Her plan was to follow the path rapidly to its end and then scrutinise it closely on her return to the weir. To her relief, there were no children either swimming in the river or playing on the bank. The river, shallow and weedy in this stretch, was not attractive to youngsters, she supposed. The bank, however, was luxuriant with tall grasses and rose-bay willow herb. There were hawthorn and wild rose bushes, besides wild clematis, hedge parsley and clumps of stinging-nettles. Farther on, both banks were tree-lined, and, as well as the spears of the yellow iris, by this time long past flowering, knotted figwort was growing beside the water.

  Almost immediately Laura found herself skirting the Batty-Faudrey woods of Squire’s Acre. The trees were elms, lime trees, horse-chestnuts, holly and oaks, and, although not densely congregated, they effectively hid the house, for they grew on a very considerable slope which terminated at the river bank. Laura walked on and, just before she came to the end of the Squire’s Acre estate, the river rejoined the canal.

  She stood for a few moments to look at the confluence and then turned to retrace her steps. The first thing in particular that she noticed was a tall gate set in the iron railings which bordered the estate. It was padlocked, but a little farther on somebody had managed to wrench apart two of the uprights of the iron railings to make an aperture through which a slim, agile body could force its way up into the woods. Boys, thought Laura. She wondered whether the Colonel knew that his estate was open to trespassers; however, it was no business of hers.

  She quartered and raked the ground systematically in search of clues. She was looking for a spot where the soil had been disturbed.

  She spent a full hour and a half in diligent search, but found nothing to arouse her suspicions, so she tied a bit of string to the Batty-Faudrey railings to mark the limit of her progress and then returned to the weir to eat the sandwiches and fruit and to drink the coffee she had brought with her. Then she smoked a cigarette, tossed the stub of it into the water and returned to her self-imposed task.

  She had carefully worked over another few square yards of the riverside when she was aware of voices—very youthful voices.

  “Damn!” muttered Laura. “Hope they’re not coming this way.”

  But that, it appeared, was exactly what they were doing. They soon hove in sight, three little boys aged about eight or nine, armed with jam-jars and fishing nets and intent upon minnows and sticklebacks. They pulled up when they saw Laura. She smiled at them. If they were going to fish for tiddlers, she surmised, they were not likely to concern themselves with her own activities. They did not return the smile, but passed her in single file and were lost to sight among the bushes which bordered the river bank.

  She waited for a minute or so, and then resumed her careful, plodding and rather tiring work. She could hear the shrill chattering and wrangling of the children, but could not distinguish what they said. She was not particularly interested, in any case, but concentrated upon the job in hand until there was an interruption. Running along the rough path came two of the small boys. They pulled up about three yards away from her.

  “I say, missus,” gasped one of them, “give us a lend of your rake”.

  Laura suspended operations.

  “What for?” she asked.

  “We found some treasure, missus. It’s in the water in the weeds and us can’t get it up.”

  “It’s ever so ’eavy,” said the second child. “It might be money.”

  “I’d better come along and help,” said Laura, “but I shouldn’t think it’s money. More likely to be some old iron. Where’s the other boy?”

  “He’s watching the spot, so we won’t lose the place. He’s in the water, standin’ up.”

  “Can he swim?” asked Laura, relieved to know that the Third Musketeer was still vertical.

  “No, none of us can’t swim, not yet.”

  “All right. Come on, then.” The boys trotted before her, and she followed with long strides. When they reached the spot where the third child was standing up to his thighs in the water, she said again, “I shouldn’t think it’s money, you know.”

  “Might be gold cups and a crown and that,” said the boy who had asked for the rake. “Our teacher told us as how a king watched a battle from here. He might have chucked a lot of stuff in the river, thinking to get it later on, when the battle was finished and the enemy was all lying dead.”

  “Like pirates,” suggested the second boy.

  “Or there was King John in the Wash,” put in the first boy, who seemed to have been an attentive pupil.

  “Where is it, exactly?” called Laura to the guardian of the treasure.

  “Here!” called back the third child, drawing a small foot out of the ooze and splashing himself as he vigorously lowered it again. “I’m nearly standin’ on it.”

  Laura sat down on the bank, removed shoes and socks and took off her skirt. Under it, as she had foreseen that she might have to paddle, she had taken the precaution of wearing a tennis dress whose top had acted also as a shirt. Rake in hand, she stepped down into the water, doing no good to the tennis dress, for the bank was fairly steep and she slid down it rather than walked.

  The bottom of the river was slimy and her feet sank several inches into the ooze. She joined the small boy.

  “O.K.,” she said. “Move over. I don’t want to get your toes with this rake.”

  There was certainly some foreign body in the water near where the child had been standing. He was so wet and so muddy that she concluded he had been trying to obtain possession of the object (whatever it was) by bending down and struggling to lift it. Poking ab
out with the rake, Laura soon decided that the “treasure” was certainly neither a chunk of old iron nor (another guess of hers) an old tin can weighted with stones. She handed the rake to the child and stooped down. She could see nothing except the muddy water, for her feet had stirred up the ooze, so she plunged a sleeveless arm into the slime and made contact with, and jerked to the surface, a heavy, foul-looking bag roughly made from what seemed to be sailcloth.

  “Got it!” she thought; and wondered how to square the excited children. She took the rake from the third boy and splashed her way to the bank. The other boys, who had been watching and cheering, clutched eagerly at the treasure. Laura let them have it, confident that their small fingers would never be able to deal with the tarry twine and the length of fine wire with which the top of the bag was very securely fastened.

  She was not mistaken. The third child scrambled up the bank to join the others, and in turn the three tried valiantly to cope with the recalcitrant fastenings. In the end they handed the heavy bundle over to Laura.

  “Can you undo it for us, missus?”

  “No, I’m not going to tear my fingers to bits,” replied Laura. “Besides, anything found like this has to go to the police.”

  “Cor! What, the ruddy coppers?”

  “Why, you’re not afraid of them, are you?”

  “No, course not. But they always finks you’re up to somefink. My big brother told me.”

  “They won’t think you’re up to something if you go with me. I know the Inspector. He’s a friend of my husband’s. Look here, I’ve got my car back there at the pub. Why not let me run you down to the police station?”

  “My mum said not to go in strange cars,” said the first boy.

  “Mine never,” said he who had been in the river. “Besides, there’s free of us. I bet she only meant if you was on your own.”

  “Well, p’raps she did.” He hesitated, looked longingly at the foul and dirty bundle which had been dredged up, and then capitulated. “All right, then, seein’ there’s free of us. I reckon,” he added to Laura, “as free of us could settle your ’ash, missus, if you tried any funny stuff, couldn’t we?”

  “I’m sure you could,” said the Amazonian Laura gravely. “Come on, then. Let’s go.”

  “If it is treasure, will the coppers let us keep it?” asked the second boy, as he trotted to keep pace with Laura’s long strides.

  “We shall have to see,” she replied. “But it may not be treasure, you know. We can’t tell until we get the bag open.”

  “My dad could open it, easy.”

  “Yes, but if he did—well, you wouldn’t get into trouble with the police, but he might.”

  This seemed to dispose of the matter. When they reached the public house, Laura slung her rake and haversack into the boot of the car, lowered the bundle on to the floor and went into the bar. She returned with soft drinks for the boys, whose taste in these matters she had ascertained, and a glass of beer for herself. They sat on the bench outside and refreshed themselves, then Laura reclaimed her car and drove to Brayne high street and the police station. The boys declined to go inside, so she took the malodorous bundle and asked to see the Inspector. He came out, greeted her with polite astonishment, and invited her into his office.

  Laura took the chair he offered and told her story, giving her reason for searching the bank of the little river.

  “Oh, well, we’ll soon see whether you’re right, Mrs Gavin,” he said, when she had finished. He left her and went into an inner room with the bundle. It was some time before he returned. When he did, he nodded to her and said briefly,

  “Well, it’s a head, all right, well weighted down with lumps of stone. We’ll have to get it identified, but, personally, I don’t think there can be any doubt.”

  “What can I tell the small boys?” Laura demanded.

  “Well, not the truth, of course.”

  “Suppose I said it’s a bit of statuary stolen at some time from Squire’s Acre and dumped by the thief because it was too heavy for him to cart away?”

  “Fine. That ought to satisfy ’em. Anyway, much obliged, Mrs Gavin. I’ll ask your husband to let you know how we get on. I’m in hopes that if the thing turns out to be what we think it is, the doctors will be able to tell us the cause of death, which was not, I’m dead certain, by beheading.”

  Laura returned to the small boys, who were seated hopefully on the steps of the police station. She looked solemn, and shook her head sadly.

  “Ain’t it treasure, then, missus?”

  “Not the kind you thought.”

  “What kind, then? Ain’t it valuable at all?”

  “That remains to be seen.” She repeated the fiction she had outlined to the Inspector. Then she added, “Anyway, the police are pleased to have it, and I am to give you half-a-crown each for finding it. The Inspector says you’re three very smart lads.”

  “If it belongs to Old Batsy, will ’e give the coppers anythink for giving it back to ’im?” asked one child.

  “I don’t think so. It’s their duty to return stolen property,” said Laura, deducing, from the use of his nickname, that Colonel Batty-Faudrey was not the most popular landowner in the district. She drove the boys back to the recreation ground, where she parted from them on excellent terms, and then returned to Dame Beatrice, who professed herself enthralled by the tale of (in Laura’s words) the hunch that had paid dividends.

  “The police don’t think there’s any doubt about whose head it is,” Laura added. “I’m thankful I didn’t have to see it, though. The Inspector has gentlemanly instincts and dealt with the bundle out of my sight.”

  “I am glad of that. Horrid sights have a way of remaining in the mind’s eye. I wonder how Mr Perse is getting on with the preparations for his pageant?”

  They soon knew. On the following morning Laura received a letter. Might Julian send along his ideas for the pageant to Aunt Laura? His aunt had told him that she—might he go on calling her simply Laura?—that she was an authority on Eng. Lit., and therefore he would be eternally grateful if she would not mind just glancing over the beastly thing and giving it her O.K. (or not, as the case might be) and if she thought it foul beyond words, could she—would she—offer some constructive criticisms? Julian was sorry if he was being a nuisance, but, etc., etc.

  “Oh, Lord!” said Laura, dismayed. She handed the epistle to Dame Beatrice. “He doesn’t really want criticism, constructive or otherwise; he wants me to tell him how wonderfully clever he is, and I suppose I’ll have to do it. I can’t throw the poor youth down, whatever his stuff is like—and I don’t mind betting it’s gosh-awful.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Second Pageant, Part One

  ‘We must now turn to the records of more recent events and devote a little space to the remarkable proceedings…in the town.”

  « ^ »

  When Laura read Mr Perse’s manuscript—or, rather, typescript—she was constrained to admit that his ideas were anything but gosh-awful. The young man, in fact, had made a lively and intelligent plan for his projected pageant, and Laura was considerably impressed by it and rang up Kitty to say so.

  There was only one fly in her nephew’s ointment, Kitty replied. All the parts were to be taken by schoolboys. The girls’ school, mindful of the recent feud, had declined to allow itself to be involved.

  “He’ll be much better off with a complete cast of boys,” said Laura to Dame Beatrice, reporting the telephone conversation. “For one thing, there won’t be any nonsense of the wrong sort, and, for another, there is no doubt that, called on to impersonate girls, apart from a mad determination to pad their chests until they look like double-fronted pouter pigeons, boys make up better as girls than girls do as boys. Don’t you agree?”

  Dame Beatrice, who had always thought growing boys, apart from an unfortunate tendency towards spottiness, were infinitely more attractive than growing girls, agreed wholeheartedly and wondered aloud how soon Mr Perse would be a
ble to stage his pageant. This proved to be during the week of the school’s half-term holiday at the end of October.

  “Hope it keeps fine for him,” said Laura, when she was given the date. “Personally, I’d think twice about putting on an open-air show at that time of year.”

  “Not all of it is to be given out-of-doors, though, is it?” Dame Beatrice enquired.

  “Well, quite enough of it to make a fiasco if the weather turns really wet. There’s a good deal of actual ground to be covered,” Laura explained. “He’s doing the Roman bit—Aulus Plautius and company—at the end of Ferry Lane. They’re supposed to have landed there, having crossed the river with elephants on board.”

  “Surely Mr Perse is not proposing to introduce elephants?”

  “Well, if he isn’t, it’s not for want of trying. Kitty tells me that he got in touch with a circus, but I expect they would want a lot more money than he’d be prepared to pay. He’s leaving out Offa of Mercia—which is a pity—and also the Danes, the first because he doesn’t think Offa’s activities in Brayne were sufficiently dramatic to interest his boys, and the Danes because he thinks the said boys might be a bit too enthusiastic in ravaging the town.”

  “It sounds as though he has given up the thought of having the boys to dance round the sacred oak. That would have to come before the Romans, I think.”

  “Yes, it would, and he has. The school captain led a deputation.”

  “Really? To object to the revels?”

  “Well, honestly, I can’t say I blame the boys. It’s different if you belong to the Folk Song and Dance Society, but, if you don’t, to dance Sellenger’s Round or Mage on a Cree round an oak tree for the benefit of the local yobs is something quite other, so he’s starting at the ferry and then the whole procession, on foot, is going to Squire’s Acre to enact a chunk of Domesday Book.”

  “It is very good of the Colonel to lend his grounds once more.”

  “He didn’t really want to, so Kitty tells me, but he’s not very popular in Brayne and he didn’t want any adverse comment in the school magazine or the local paper, and I understand that Julian Perse, who never seems averse to sticking his neck out, rather threatened him with both if he wouldn’t play ball. Squire’s Acre was part of the original Manor of Brayne, you see, so Julian felt strongly that the Batty-Faudreys must lend it.”