Death of a Fool (17 page)

Mrs. Bünz seized on this suggestion with feverish intensity. “Yes, yes,” she cried. That, no doubt, was what Ernie had meant. Alleyn was unable to share her enthusiasm and felt quite certain it was assumed. She eyed him furtively. He realized, with immense distaste, that any forbearance or consideration that he might show her would probably be taken by Mrs. Bünz for weakness. She had her own ideas about investigating officers.

Furtively, she shifted her shoulders under their layers of woollen clothes. She made a queer little arrested gesture as if she were about to touch them and thought better of it.

Alleyn said, “Your shoulders
are
painful, aren’t they? Why not let Dr. Otterly have a look at them? I’m sure he would.”

Dr. Otterly made guarded professional noises, and Mrs. Bünz behaved as if Alleyn’s suggestion was tantamount to the Usual Warning. She shook her head violently, became grey-faced and speechless and seemed to contemplate a sudden break-away.

“I won’t keep you much longer,” Alleyn said. “There are only one or two more questions. This is the first: at any stage of the proceedings last night did the Hobby-Horse come near you?”

At this she did get up, but slowly and with the unco-ordinated movements of a much older woman. Fox looked over the top of his spectacles at the door. Alleyn and Dr. Otterly rose and on a common impulse moved a little nearer to her. It occurred to Alleyn that it would really be rather a pleasant change to ask Mrs. Bünz a question that did
not
throw her into a fever.

“
Did
you make any contact at all with the Hobby?” he insisted.

“I think. Once. At the beginning, during his chasinks.” Her eyes were streaming, but whether with cold or distress, it was impossible to say. “In his flirtinks he touched me,” she said. “I think.”

“So you have, no doubt, got tar on your clothes?”

“A liddle on my coat. I think.”

“Do the Hobby and Betty rehearse, I wonder?”

Dr. Otterly opened his mouth and shut it again.

“I know nothing of that,” Mrs. Bünz said.

“Do you know where they rehearsed?”

“Nothingk. I know nothingk.”

Fox, who had his eye on Dr. Otterly, gave a stentorian cough and Alleyn hurried on.

“One more question, Mrs. Bünz, and I do ask you very seriously to give me a frank answer to it. I beg you to believe that, if you are innocent of this crime, you can do yourself nothing but good by speaking openly and without fear. Please believe it.”

“I am combletely,
combletely
innocent.”

“Good. Then here is the question: did you after the end of the first morris leave the courtyard for some reason and not return to it until the beginning of the solo dance?
Did you
, Mrs. Bünz?”

“No,” said Mrs. Bünz very loudly.

“Really?”

“No.”

Alleyn said after a pause, “All right. That’s all. You may be asked later on to sign a statement. I’m afraid I must also ask you to stay in East Mardian until after the inquest.” He went to the door and opened it. “Thank you,” he said.

When she reached the door, she stood and looked at him. She seemed to collect herself and, when she spoke, it was with more composure than she had hitherto shown.

“It is the foolish son who has done it,” she said. “He is epileptic. Ritual dancing has a profound effect upon such beings. They are carried back to their distant origins. They become excited. Had not this son already cut his father’s hand and shed his blood with his sword? It is the son.”

“How do you know he had already cut his father’s hand?” Alleyn asked.

“I have been told,” Mrs. Bünz said, looking as if she would faint.

Without another word and without looking at him again, she went out and down the passage.

Alleyn said to Fox, “Don’t let her talk to Begg. Nip out, Fox, and tell him that, as we’ll be a little time yet, he can go up to his garage and we’ll look in there later. Probably suit him better, anyway.”

Fox went out and Alleyn grinned at Dr. Otterly.

“You can go ahead now,” he said, “if you want to spontaneously combust.”

“I must say I feel damn’ like it. What’s she up to, lying right and left? Good God, I never heard anything like it! Not know when we rehearsed. Good God! They could hear us all over the pub.”

“Where did you rehearse?”

“In the old barn at the back, here.”

“Very rum. But I fancy,” Alleyn muttered, “we know why she went away during the show.”

“Are you sure she did?”

“My dear chap, yes. She’s a fanatic. She’s a folklore hound with her nose to the ground. She remembered the first and last parts of your programme with fantastic accuracy.
Of course
, if she’d been there she’d have watched the earthy antics of the comics. If they are comics. Of course. She’d have been on the look-out for all the fertility fun that you hand out. If she’d been there she’d have looked and she’d have remembered in precise detail. She doesn’t remember because she didn’t look and she didn’t look because she wasn’t there. I’d bet my boots on it and I bet I know why.”

Fox returned, polishing his spectacles, and said, “Do you know what I reckon, Mr. Alleyn? I reckon Mrs. B. leaves the arena, just after the first dance, is away from it all through the collection and the funny business between young Mr. Stayne and daft Ernie and gets back before Dan Andersen does a turn on his own. Is that your idea?”

“Not altogether, Br’er Fox. If my tottering little freak of an idea is any good, she leaves her observation post
before
the first dance.”

“Hey?” Fox ejaculated. “But it’s the first dance that she remembers so well.

“I must say—” Dr. Otterly agreed and flapped his hands.

“Exactly,” Alleyn said. “I know. Now, let me explain.”

He did so at some length and they listened to him with the raised eyebrows of assailable incredulity.

“Well,” they said, “I suppose it’s possible.” And, “It might be, but how’ll you prove it?” And, “Even so, it doesn’t get us all that much further, does it?” And, “How are you to find out?”

“It gets us a hell of a lot further,” Alleyn said hotly, “as you’d find out pretty quickly if you could take a peep at Mrs. Bünz in the rude nude. However, since that little treat is denied us, let’s visit Mr. Simon Begg and see what he can provide. What was he up to, Fox?”

“He was talking on the telephone about horse-racing,” Fox said. “Something called ‘Teutonic Dancer’ in the one-thirty at Sandown. That’s funny,” Mr. Fox added. “I never thought of it at the time. Funny!”

“Screamingly. You might see if Bailey and Thompson are back, Fox, and if there’s anything. They’ll need a meal, poor devils. Trixie’ll fix that, I daresay. Then we’ll take a walk up the road to Begg’s garage.”

While Fox was away Alleyn asked Dr. Otterly if he could give him a line on Simon Begg.

“He’s a local,” Dr. Otterly said. “Son of the ex-village-shop-keeper. Name’s still up over the shop. He did jolly well in the war with the R.A.F. — bomber-pilot. He was brought down over Germany, tackled a bunch of Huns single-handed and got himself und two of his crew back through Spain. They gave him the D.F.C. for it. He’d been a bit of a problem as a lad but he took to active service like a bird.”

“And since the war?”

“Well — in a way, a bit of a problem again. I feel damn’ sorry for him. As long as he was in uniform with his ribbons up he was quite a person. That’s how it was with those boys, wasn’t it? They lived high, wide and dangerous and they were everybody’s heroes. Then he was demobilized and came back here. You know what country people are like: it takes a flying bomb to put a dent in their class-consciousness, and then it’s only temporary. They began to say how ghastly the R.A.F. slang was and to ask each other if it didn’t rock you a bit when you saw them out of uniform. It’s quite true that Simon bounded sky high and used an incomprehensible and irritating jargon and that some of his waistcoats were positively terrifying. All the same.”

“I know,” Alleyn said.

“I felt rather sorry for him. Neither fish, nor flesh nor stockbroker’s Tudor. That was why I asked him to come into the Sword Wednesday show. Our old Hobby was killed in the raids. He was old Begg from Yowford, a relation of Simon’s. There’ve been Beggs for Hobbies for a very long time.”

“So this Begg has done it — how many times?”

“About nine. Ever since the war.”

“What’s he been up to all that time?”

“He’s led rather a raffish kind of life for the last nine years. Constantly changing his job. Gambling pretty high, I fancy. Hanging round the pubs. Then, about three years ago his father died and he bought a garage up at Yowford. It’s not doing too well, I fancy. He’s said to be very much in the red. The boys would have got good backing from one of the big companies if they could have persuaded the Guiser to let them turn Copse Forge into a filling station. It’s at a cross-roads and they’re putting a main road through before long, more’s the pity. They were very keen on the idea and wanted Simon to go in with them. But the Guiser wouldn’t hear of it.”

“They may get it — now,” Alleyn said without emphasis. “And Simon may climb out of the red.”

“He’s scarcely going to murder William Andersen,” Dr. Otterly pointed out acidly, “on the off-chance of the five sons putting up five petrol pumps. Apart from the undoubted fact that, wherever Begg himself may have got to last night, the Guiser certainly didn’t leave the stage after he walked on to it and I defy you to perform a decapitation when you’re trussed up in ‘Crack’s’ harness. Besides, I
like
Begg; ghastly as he is, I like him.”

“All right. I know. I didn’t say a thing.”

“You are not, I hope,” Dr. Otterly angrily continued, “putting on that damned superior-sleuth act: ‘you have the facts, my dear — whatever the stooge’s name is.’ ”

“Not I.”

“Well, you’ve got some damned theory up your sleeve, haven’t you?”

“I’m ashamed of it.”

“
Ashamed
?”

“Utterly, Otterly.”

“Ah, hell!” Dr. Otterly said in disgust.

“Come with us to Begg’s garage. Keep on listening. If anything doesn’t tally with what you remember, don’t say a word unless I tip you the wink. All right? Here we go.”

In spite of the thaw, the afternoon had grown deadly cold. Yowford Lane dripped greyly between its hedgerows and was choked with mud and slush. About a mile along it, they came upon Simmy-Dick’s Service Station in a disheartened-looking shack with Begg’s car standing outside it. Alleyn pulled up at the first pump and sounded his horn.

Simon came out, buttoning up a suit of white overalls with a large monogram on the pocket: witness, Alleyn suspected, to a grandiloquent beginning. When he saw Alleyn, he grinned sourly and raised his eyebrows.

“Hullo,” Alleyn said. “Four, please.”

“Four what? Coals of fire?” Simon said, and moved round to the petrol tank.

It was an unexpected opening and made things a good deal easier for Alleyn. He got out of the car and joined Simon.

“Why coals of fire?” he asked.

“After me being a rude boy this morning.”

“That’s all right.”

“It’s just that I know what a clot Ernie can make of himself,” Simon said, and thrust the nose of the hosepipe into the tank. “Four, you said?”

“Four. And this is a professional call, by the way.”

“I’m not all that dumb,” Simon grunted.

Alleyn waited until the petrol had gone in and then paid for it. Simon tossed the change up and caught it neatly before handing it over. “Why not come inside?” he suggested. “It’s bloody cold out here, isn’t it?”

He led the way into a choked-up cubby-hole that served as his office. Fox and Dr. Otterly followed Alleyn and edged in sideways.

“How’s the Doc?” Simon said. “Doing a Watson?”

“I’m beginning to think so,” said Dr. Otterly. Simon laughed shortly.

“Well,” Alleyn began cheerfully, “how’s the racing-news?”

“Box of birds,” Simon said.

“Teutonic Dancer do any good for herself?”

Simon looked sharply at Fox. “Who’s the genned-up type?” he said. “You?”

“That’s right, Mr. Begg. I heard you on the telephone.”

“I see.” He took out his cigarettes, frowned over lighting one and then looked up with a grin. “I can’t keep it to myself,” he said. “It’s the craziest thing. Came in at twenty-seven to one. Everything else must have fallen down.”

“I hope you had something on.”

“A wee flutter,” Simon said and again the corners of his mouth twitched. “It was a dicey do, but was it worth it! How’s the Doc?” he repeated, again aware of Dr. Otterly.

“Quite well, thank you. How’s the garage proprietor?” Dr. Otterly countered chillily.

“Box of birds.”

As this didn’t seem to be getting them anywhere, Alleyn invited Simon to give them his account of the Five Sons.

He started off in a very business-like way, much, Alleyn thought, as he must have given his reports in his bomber-pilot days. The delayed entrance, the arrival of the Guiser, “steamed-up” and roaring at them all. The rapid change of clothes and the entrance. He described how he began the show with his pursuit of the girls.

“Funny! Some of them just about give you the go-ahead signal. I could see them through the hole in the neck. All giggles and girlishness. Half-windy, too. They reckon it’s lucky or something.”

“Did Miss Campion react like that?”

“The fair Camilla? I wouldn’t have minded if she
had
. I made a very determined attempt, but not a chance. She crash-landed in the arms of another bod. Ralphy Stayne. Lucky type!”

He grinned cheerfully round. “
But
, still!” he said. It was a sort of summing up. One could imagine him saying it under almost any circumstances.

Alleyn asked him what he did after he’d finished his act and before the first morris began. He said he had gone up to the back archway and had a bit of a breather.

“And during the morris?”

“I just sort of bummed around on my own.”

“With the Betty?”

“I think so. I don’t remember exactly. I’m not sort of officially ‘on’ in that scene.”

“But you didn’t go right off?”