Death of a Fool (24 page)

“Hul-
lo
,” Bailey said under his breath to Thompson. “Here comes the ‘R.A.’ touch.”

Fox, who overheard him, bestowed a pontifical but not altogether disapproving glance upon him. Bailey, aware of it, said, “Is this going to be one of your little surprises, Mr. Alleyn?”

Alleyn said, “Damn’ civil of you to play up. Yes, it is, for what it’s worth. Bring out that chit the Guiser’s supposed to have left on his door, saying he wouldn’t be able to perform.”

Bailey produced it, secured between two sheets of glass and clearly showing a mass of finger prints where he had brought them up.

“The old chap’s prints,” he said, “and Ernie’s. I got their dabs after you left yesterday afternoon. Nobody objected, although I don’t think Chris Andersen liked it much. He’s tougher than his brothers. There’s a left and right thumb of Ernie’s on each side of the tack hole, and all the rest of the gang. Which is what you’d expect, isn’t it, if they handed it round?”

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “And do you remember where Ernie said he found it?”

“Tacked to the door. There’s the tack hole.”

“And where are the Guiser’s characteristic prints? Suppose ho pushed the paper over the head of the existing tack, which the nature of the hole seems to suggest? You’d get a right and left thumb print on each side of the hole, wouldn’t you? And what
do
you get? A right and left thumb print, sure enough. But whose?”

Bailey said, “Ah,
hell
! Ernie’s.”

“Yes. Ernie’s. So Ernie shoved it over the tack. But Ernie says he found it there when he came down to get the Guiser. So what’s Ernie up to?”

“Rigging the old man’s indisposition?” Fox said.

“I think so.”

Fox raised his eyebrows and read the Guiser’s message aloud.

“ ‘Cant mannage it young Ern will have to. W.A.”’

“It’s the old man’s writing, isn’t it, Mr. Alleyn?” Thompson said. “Wasn’t that checked?”

“It’s his writing all right, but, in my opinion, it wasn’t intended for his fellow mummers, it wasn’t originally tacked to the door, it doesn’t refer to the Guiser’s inability to perform and it doesn’t mean young Ern will have to go on in his place.”

There was a short silence.

“Speaking for self,” Fox said, “I am willing to buy it, Mr. Alleyn.” He raised his hand. “Wait a bit, though,” he said. “Wait a bit! I’ve started.”

“Away you go.”

“The gardener’s boy went down on Tuesday afternoon with a note for the Guiser telling him he’d got to sharpen that slasher himself and return it by bearer. The Guiser was in Biddlefast. Ernie took the note. Next morning — wasn’t it? — the boy comes for the slasher. It isn’t ready and he’s told by Ernie that it’ll be brought up later. Any good?”

“You’re away to a pretty start.”

“All right, all right. So Ernie does sharpen the slasher and, on the Wednesday, he does take it up to the castle. Now, Ernie didn’t give the boy a note from the Guiser, but that doesn’t mean the Guiser didn’t write one. How’s that?”

“You’re thundering up the straight.”

“It means Ernie kept it and pushed it over that tack and pulled it off again and, when he was sent down to fetch his dad, he didn’t go near him. He dressed himself up in the Guiser’s rig while the old boy was snoozing on his bed and he lit off for the castle and showed the other chaps this ruddy note. Now, then!”

“You’ve breasted the tape, Br’er Fox, and the trophy is yours.”

“Not,” Alleyn said dubiously, observing his colleagues, “that it gets us all that much farther on. It gets us a length or two nearer, but that’s all.”

“What
does
it do for us?” Fox ruminated.

“It throws a light on Ernie’s frame of mind before the show. He’s told us himself he went hurtling up the hill in their station-waggon dressed in the Guiser’s kit and feeling wonderful. His dearest ambition was about to be realized: he was to act the leading role, literally to ‘play the Fool,’ in the Dance of the Sons. He was exalted. Ernie’s not the village idiot: he’s an epileptic with all the characteristics involved.”

“Exaggerated moods, sort of?”

“That’s it. He gets up there and hands over the note to his brothers. The understudy’s bundled into Ernie’s clothes, the note is sent in to Otterly. It’s all going Ernie’s way like a charm. The zeal of the folk dance sizzles in his nervous ganglions, or wherever fanaticism does sizzle. I wouldn’t mind betting he remembered his sacrifice of our last night’s dinner upon the Mardian Stone and decided it had brought him luck. Or something.”

Alleyn stopped short and then said in a changed voice, “ ‘It will have blood, they say. Blood will have blood.’ I bet Ernie subscribes to that unattractive theory.”

“Bringing him in pretty close to the mark, aren’t you, Mr. Alleyn?”

“Well, of course he’s close to the mark, Br’er Fox. He’s as hot as hell, is Ernie. Take a look at him. All dressed up and somewhere to go, with his audience waiting for him. Dr. Otterly, tuning his fiddle. Torches blazing. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Stratford-upon-Avon with all the great ones waiting behind the curtain or the Little Puddleton Mummers quaking in their borrowed buskins; no, by Heaven, nor the Andersen brothers listening for the squeal of a fiddle in the snow: there’s the same kind of nervous excitement let loose. And, when you get a chap like Ernie — well, look at him. At the zero hour, when expectation is ready to topple over into performance, who turns up?”

“The Guiser.”

“The Guiser. Like a revengeful god. Driven up the hill by Mrs. Bünz. The Old Man himself, in what the boys would call a proper masterpiece of a rage. Out he gets, without a word to his driver, and wades in. He didn’t say much. If there was any mention of the hanky-panky with the written message, it didn’t lead to any explanation. He seems merely to have launched himself at Ernie, practically lugged the clothes off him, forced him to change back to his own gear and herded them on for the performance. All right. And how did Ernie feel? Ernie, whose pet dog the old man had put down, Ernie, who’d manoeuvred himself into the major role in this bit of prehistoric pantomime, Ernie, who was on top of the world? How did he feel?”

“Murderous?” Thompson offered.

“I think so. Murderous.”

“Yes,” said Fox and Bailey and Thompson. “Yes. Well. What?”

“He goes on for their show, doesn’t he, with the ritual sword that he’s sharpened until it’s like a razor: the sword that cut the Guiser’s hand in a row they had at their last practice, which was first blood to Ernie, by the way. On he goes and takes it out on the thistles. He slashes their heads off with great sweeps of his sword. Ernie is a thistle whiffler and he whiffles thistles with a thistle whiffler. Diction exercise for Camilla Campion. He prances about and acts the savage. After that he gets warmed up still more effectively by dancing and going through the pantomime of cutting the Fool’s head off. And, remember, he’s in a white-hot rage with the Fool. What happens next to Ernie? Nothing that’s calculated to soothe his nerves or sweeten his mood. When the fun is at its height and he’s looking on with his sword dangling by its red cord from his hand, young Stayne comes creeping up behind and collars it. Ernie loses his temper and gives chase. Stayne hides in view of the audience and Ernie plunges out at the back. He’s dithering with rage. Simon Begg says he was incoherent. Stayne comes out and gives him back the whiffler. Stayne re-enters by another archway. Ernie comes back complete with sword and takes part in the final dance. If you consider Ernie like that, in continuity, divorced for the moment from the trimmings, you get a picture of mounting fury, don’t you? The dog, the Guiser’s cut hand, the decapitated goose, the failure of the great plan, the Guiser’s rage, the stolen sword. A sort of crescendo.”

“Ending,” Fox mused, “in what?”

“Ending, in my opinion, with him performing, in deadly reality, the climax of their play.”

“
Hey
?” Bailey ejaculated.

“Ending in him taking his Old Man’s head off.”

“
Ernie
?”

“Ernie.”

“Then — well, cripes,” Thompson said, “so Ernie’s our chap, after all?”

“No.”

“Look — Mr. Alleyn—”

“He’s not our chap, because when he took his Old Man’s head off, his Old Man was already dead.”

Mr. Fox, as was his custom, glanced complacently at his subordinates. He had the air of drawing their attention to their chief’s virtuosity.

“Not enough blood,” he explained, “on anybody.”

“Yes, but if it was done from the rear,” Bailey objected.

“Which it wasn’t.”

“The character of the wound gives us that,” Alleyn said. “Utterly agrees and I’m sure Curtis will. It was done from the front. You’ll see when you look. Of course, the P.M. will tell us definitely. If decapitation was the cause of death, I imagine there will be a considerable amount of internal bleeding. I feel certain, though, that Curtis will find there is none.”

“Any other reasons, Mr. Alleyn? Apart from nobody being bloody enough?” Thompson asked.

“If it had happened where he was lying and he’d been alive, there’d have been much more blood on the ground.”

Bailey suddenly said, “Hey!”

Mr. Fox frowned at him.

“What’s wrong, Bailey?” Alleyn asked.

“Look, sir, are you telling us it’s not homicide at all? That the old chap died of heart failure or something and Ernie had the fancy to do what he did? After? Or what?”

“I think that may be the defence that will be raised. I don’t think it’s the truth.”

“You think he was murdered?”

“Yes.”

“Pardon me,” Thompson said politely, “but any idea
how
?”

“An idea, but it’s only a guess. The post mortem will settle it.”

“Laid out cold somehow and then beheaded,” Bailey said, and added most uncharacteristically, “Fancy.”

“It couldn’t have been the whiffler,” Thompson sighed. “Not that it seems to matter.”

“It wasn’t the whiffler,” Alleyn said. “It was the slasher.”

“Oh! But he was dead?”

“Dead.”

“Oh.”

Camilla sat behind her window. When Ralph Stayne came into the inn yard, he stood there with his hands in his pockets and looked up at her. The sky had cleared and the sun shone quite brightly, making a dazzle on the window-pane. She seemed to be reading.

He scooped up a handful of fast-melting snow and threw it at the glass. It splayed out in a wet star. Camilla peered down through it and then pushed open the window.

“ ‘Romeo, Romeo,’ ” she said, “ ‘wherefore art thou Romeo?’ ”

“I can’t remember any of it to quote,” Ralph rejoined. “Come for a walk, Camilla. I want to talk to you.”

“O.K. Wait a bit.”

He waited. Bailey and Thompson came out of the side door of the pub, gave him good morning and walked down the brick path in the direction of the barn. Trixie appeared and shook a duster. When she saw Ralph she smiled and dimpled at him. He pulled self-consciously at the peak of his cap. She jerked her head at him. “Come over, Mr. Ralph,” she said.

He walked across the yard to her, not very readily.

“Cheer up, then,” Trixie said. “Doan’t look at me as if I was going to bite you. There’s no bones broke, Mr. Ralph. I’ll never say a word to her, you may depend, if you ax me not. My advice, though, is to tell the maid yourself and then there’s nothing hid betwixt you.”

“She’s only eighteen,” Ralph muttered.

“That doan’t mean she’s silly, however. Thanks to Ernie and his dad, everybody hereabouts knows us had our bit of fun. The detective gentleman axed me about it and I told him yes.”

“Good God, Trixie!”

“Better the truth from me than a great blowed-up fairy-tale from elsewhere and likewise better for Camilla if she gets the truth from you. Here she comes.”

Trixie gave a definite flap with her duster and returned indoors. Ralph heard her greet Camilla, who now appeared with the freshness of morning in her cheeks and eyes and a scarlet cap on her head.

Alleyn, coming out to fetch the car, saw them walk off down the lane together.

“And I fancy,” he muttered, “he’s made up his mind to tell her about his one wild oat.”

“Camilla,” Ralph said, “I’ve got something to tell you. I’ve been going to tell you before and then — well, I suppose I’ve funked it. I don’t know what you feel about this sort of thing and — I — well — I—”

“You’re not going to say you’ve suddenly found it’s all been a mistake and you’re not in love with me after all?”

“Of course I’m not, Camilla. What a preposterous notion to get into your head! I love you more every minute of the day: I adore you, Camilla.”

“I’m
delighted
to hear it, darling. Go ahead with your story.”

“It may rock you a bit.”

“Nothing can rock me really badly unless — you’re
not
secretly married, I
hope
!” Camilla suddenly ejaculated.

“Indeed I’m not. The things you think of!”

“And, of course (forgive me for mentioning it) you didn’t murder my grandfather, did you?”

“Camilla!”

“Well, I know you didn’t.”

“If you’d just let me —”

“Darling Ralph, you can see by this time that I’ve given in about not meeting you. You can see I’ve come over to your opinion: my objections were immoderate.”

“Thank God, darling. But—”

“All the same, darling,
darling
Ralph, you must understand that although I go to sleep thinking of you and wake in a kind of pink paradise because of you, I am still determined to keep my head. People may say,” Camilla went on, waving a knitted paw, “that class is
vieux jeu
, but they’re only people who haven’t visited South Mardian. So what I propose—”

“Sweetheart, it is I who propose. I do so now, Camilla. Will you marry me?”

“Yes, thank you, I will indeed. Subject to the unequivocal consent of your papa and your great-aunt and, of course, my papa, who, I expect, would prefer an R.C., although I’m not one. Otherwise, I can guarantee he would be delighted. He fears I might contract an alliance with a drama student,” Camilla explained and turned upon Ralph a face eloquent with delight at her own absurdities. She was in that particular state of intoxication that attends the young woman who knows she is beloved and is therefore moved to show off for the unstinted applause of an audience of one.

“I adore you,” Ralph repeated unsteadily and punctually. “But, sweetest, darling Camilla, I’ve got, I repeat, something that I ought to tell you about.”

“Yes, of course you have. You began by saying so. Is it,” Camilla hazarded suddenly, “that you’ve had an affair?”

“As a matter of fact, in a sort of way, it is, but—”

Camilla began to look owlish. “I’m not much surprised by that,” she said. “After all,
you
are thirty and I’m eighteen. Even people of my vintage have affairs, you know, although, personally, I don’t care for the idea at all. But I’ve been given to understand it’s different for the gentlemen.”

“Camilla, stop doing an act and listen to me.”

Camilla looked at him and the impulse to show off for him suddenly left her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Well, go on.”

He went on. They walked up the road to Yowford and for Camilla, as she listened, some of the brightness of the morning fell from the sky and was gone. When he had finished she could find nothing to say to him.

“Well,” Ralph said presently, “I see it has made a difference.”

“No, not at all,” Camilla rejoined politely. “I mean, not really. It couldn’t, could it? It’s just that somehow it’s strange because — well, I suppose because it’s here and someone I know.”

“I’m sorry,” Ralph said.

“I’ve been sort of buddies with Trixie. It seems impossible. Does she mind? Poor Trixie.”

“No, she doesn’t. Really, she doesn’t. I’m not trying to explain anything away or to excuse myself, but they’ve got quite a different point of view in the villages. They think on entirely different lines about that sort of thing.”

“ They‘? Different from whom?”

“Well — from us,” Ralph said and saw his mistake. “It’s hard to understand,” he mumbled unhappily.

“I ought to understand, oughtn’t I? Seeing I’m half ‘them.’ ”

“Camilla,
darling
—”

“You seem to have a sort of predilection for ‘them,’ don’t you? Trixie. Then me.”

“That
did
hurt,” Ralph said after a pause.

“I don’t want to be beastly about it.”

“There was no question of anything serious — it was just — it just happened. Trixie was — kind. It didn’t mean a thing to either of us.”

They walked on and stared blankly at dripping trees and dappled hillsides.

“Isn’t it funny,” Camilla said, “how this seems to have sort of thrown me over on ‘their’ side? On Trixie’s side?”

“Are you banging away about class again?”

“But
you
see it in terms of class yourself. ‘They’ are different about that sort of thing, you say.”

He made a helpless gesture.

“Do other people know?” Camilla asked.

“I’m afraid so. There’s been gossip. You know what—” He pulled himself up.

“What
they
are?”

Ralph swore violently.

Camilla burst into tears.

“I’m so sorry,” Ralph kept repeating. “I’m so terribly sorry you mind.”

“Well,” Camilla sobbed, “it’s not much good going on like this and I daresay I’m being very silly.”

“Do you think you’ll get over it?” he asked anxiously.

“One can but try.”

“Please try very hard,” Ralph said.

“I expect it all comes of being an only child. My papa is extremely old-fashioned.”

“Is he a roaring inverted snob like you?”

“Certainly not.”

“Here comes the egregious Simmy-Dick. You’d better not be crying, darling, if you can manage not to.”

“I’ll pretend it’s the cold air,” Camilla said, taking the handkerchief he offered her.

Simon Begg came down the lane in a raffish red sports car. When he saw them he skidded to a standstill.

“Hullo-ullo!” he shouted. “Fancy meeting you two. And how are we?”

He looked at them both with such a knowing air, compounded half of surprise and half of a rather debased sort of comradeship, that Camilla found herself blushing.

“I didn’t realize you two knew each other,” Simon went on. “No good offering you a lift, I suppose. I can just do three if we’re cozy.”

“This is meant to be a hearty walk,” Ralph explained.

“Quite, quite,” Simon said, beaming. “Hey, what’s the gen on this show this afternoon? Do you get it?”

“I imagine it’s a reconstruction, isn’t it?”

“We’re all meant to do what we all did on Wednesday?”

“I should think so, wouldn’t you?”

“Are the onlookers invited?”

“I believe so. Some of them.”

“The whole works?” Simon looked at Camilla, raised his eyebrows and grinned. “Including the ad libs?”

Camilla pretended not to understand him.

“Better put my running shoes on this time,” he said.

“It’s not going to be such a very amusing party, after all,” Ralph pointed out stiffly, and Simon agreed, very cheerfully, that it was not. “I’m damn’ sorry about the poor Old Guiser,” he declared. “And I can’t exactly see what they hope to get out of it. Can you?”

Ralph said coldly that he supposed they hoped to get the truth out of it. Simon was eying Camilla with unbridled enthusiasm.

“In a moment,” she thought, “he will twiddle those awful moustaches.”

“I reckon it’s a lot of bull,” Simon confided. “Suppose somebody did do something — well, is he going to turn it all on again like a good-boy for the police? Like hell, he is!”

“We ought to move on, Camilla, if we’re to get back for lunch.”

“Yes,” Camilla said. “Let’s.”

Simon said earnestly, “Look, I’m sorry. I keep forgetting the relationship. It’s — well, it’s not all that easy to remember, is it? Look, Cam, hell, I
am
sorry.”

Camilla, who had never before been called Cam, stared at him in bewilderment. His cheeks were rosy, his eyes were impertinent and blue and his moustache rampant. A half-smile hovered on his lips. “I
am
a goon,” said Simon, ruefully. “
But
, still —”

Camilla, to her surprise, found she was not angry with him. “Never mind,” she said. “No bones broken.”

“Honest? You
are
a pal. Well, be good, children,” said Simon and started up his engine. It responded with deafening alacrity. He waved his hand and shot off down the lane.

“He is,” Ralph said, looking after him, “the definite and absolute rock bottom.”

“Yes. But I find him rather touching,” said Camilla.

The five Andersen boys were in the smithy. The four younger brothers sat on upturned boxes and stools. A large tin trunk stood on a cleared bench at the far end of the smithy. Dan turned the key in the padlock that secured it. Sergeant Obby, who was on duty, had slipped into a light doze in a dark corner. He was keen on his job but unused to late hours.

“Wonderful queer to think of, hearts,” Dan said. “The Guiser’s savings. All these years.” He looked at Chris. “And you’d no notion of it?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Chris said. “I knew he put it by, like. Same as grand-dad and his’n, before him.”

“I knew,” Ernie volunteered. “He was a proper old miser, he was. Never let me have any, not for a wireless nor a telly nor nothing, he wouldn’t. I knew where he put it by, I did, but he kept watch over it like a bloody mastiff, so’s I dussn’t let on. Old tyrant, he was. Cruel hard and crankytankerous.”

Andy passed his great hand across his mouth and sighed. “Doan’t talk that way,” he said, lowering his voice and glancing towards Sergeant Obby, who had returned to duty. “What did we tell you?”

Dan agreed strongly. “Doan’t talk that way, you, Ern. You was a burden to him with your foolishness.”

“And a burden to us,” Nat added, “as it turns out. Heavy and anxious.”

“Get it into your thick head,” Chris advised Ernie, “that you’re born foolish and not up to our level when it comes to great affairs. Leave everything to us chaps. Doan’t say nothing and doan’t do nothing but what you was meant to do in the beginning.”

“Huh!” Ernie shouted. “I’ll larn ’em! Whang!” He made a wild swiping gesture.

“What’ll we do?” Andy asked, appealing to the others. “Listen to him!”

Ernie surveyed his horrified brothers with the greatest complacency. “You doan’t need to fret yourselves, chaps,” he said. “I’m not so silly as what you all think I am. I can keep my tongue behind my teeth, fair enough. I be one too many for the coppers. Got ’em proper baffled, I ’ave.”

“Shut up,” Chris whispered savagely.

“No, I won’t, then.”

“You will, if I have to lay you out first,” Chris muttered. He rose and walked across to his youngest brother. Chris was the biggest of the Andersens, a broad powerful man. He held his clenched fist in front of Ernie’s face as if it were an object of virtue. “You know me, Ern,” he said softly. “I’ve give you a hiding before this and never promised you one but what I’ve kept my word and laid it on solid. You got a taste last night. If you talk about — you know what — or open your silly damn’ mouth on any matter at all when we’re up-along, I’ll give you a masterpiece. Won’t I?
Won’t I
?”

Ernie wiped his still-smiling mouth and nodded.

“You’ll whiffle and you’ll dance and you’ll go where you went and you’ll hold your tongue and you’ll do no more nor that. Right?”

Ernie nodded and backed away.

“It’s for the best, Ernie-boy,” the gentle Andy said. “Us knows what’s for the best.”

Ernie pointed at Chris and continued to back away from him.

“You tell him to lay off of me,” he said. “I know
him
. Keep him off of me.”

Chris made a disgusted gesture. He turned away and began to examine the tools near the anvil.

“You keep your hands off of me,” Ernie shouted after him. Sergeant Obby woke with a little snort.

“Don’t talk daft. There you go, see!” Nat ejaculated. “Talking proper daft.”

Dan said, “Now, listen, Ern. Us chaps doan’t want to know nothing but what was according to plan. What you done, Wednesday, was what you was meant to do: whiffle, dance, bit of larking with Mr. Ralph, wait your turn and dance again. Which you done. And that’s
all
you done. Nothing else. Doan’t act as if there was anything else. There
wasn’t
.”