Death of a Fool (25 page)

“That’s right,” his brothers counselled, “that’s how ’tis.”

They were so much alike, they might indeed have been a sort of rural chorus. Anxiety looked in the same way out of all their faces; they had similar mannerisms; their shared emotion ran a simple course through Dan’s elderly persistence, Andy’s softness, Nat’s despair and Chris’s anger. Even Ernie himself, half defiant, half scared, reflected something of his brothers’ emotion.

And when Dan spoke again, it was as if he gave expression to this general resemblance.

“Us Andersens,” he said, “stick close. Always have and always will, I reckon. So long as we stay that fashion, all together, we’re right, souls. The day any of us cuts loose and sets out to act on his own, agin the better judgment of the others, will be the day of disaster. Mind that.”

Andy and Nat made sounds of profound agreement.

“All right!” Ernie said. “All right. I never said nothing.”

“Keep that way,” Dan said, “and you’ll do no harm. Mind that. And stick together, souls.”

There was a sudden metallic clang. Sergeant Obby leapt to his feet. Chris, moved by some impulse of violence, had swung his great hammer and struck the cold anvil.

It was as if the smithy had spoken with its own voice in support of Dan Andersen.

Mrs. Bünz made a long entry in her journal. For this purpose she employed her native language and it calmed her a little to form the words and see them, old familiars, stand in their orderly ranks across her pages. Mrs. Bünz had an instinctive respect for regimentation — a respect and a fear. She laid down her pen, locked away her journal and began to think about policemen: not about any specific officer but about the genus
Policeman
as she saw it and believed it to be. She remembered all the things that had happened to her husband and herself in Germany before the war and the formalities that had attended their arrival in England. She remembered the anxieties and discomforts of the first months of the war when they had continually to satisfy the police of their innocuous attitude, and she remembered their temporary incarceration while this was going on.

Mrs. Bünz did not put her trust in policemen.

She thought of Trixie’s inexplicable entrance into her room that morning at a moment when Mrs. Bünz had every reason not to desire a visit. Was Trixie, perhaps, a police agent? A most disturbing thought.

She went downstairs and ate what was, for her, a poor breakfast. She tried to read but was unable to concentrate. Presently, she went out to the shed where she kept the car she had bought from Simon Begg and, after a bit of a struggle, started up the engine. If she had intended to use the car she now changed her mind and, instead, took a short walk to Copse Forge. But the Andersen brothers were gathered in the doorway and responded very churlishly to the forced bonhomie of her greeting. She went to the village shop, purchased two faded postcards and was looked at sideways by the shopkeeper.

Next, Mrs. Bünz visited the church but, being a rationalist, received and indeed sought no spiritual solace there. It was old but, from her point of view, not at all interesting. A bas-relief of a fourteenth-century Mardian merely reminded her unpleasingly of Dame Alice.

As she was leaving, she met Sam Stayne coming up the path in his cassock. He greeted her very kindly. Encouraged by this manifestation, Mrs. Bünz pulled herself together and began to question him about the antiquities of South Mardian. She adopted a lomewhat patronizing tone that seemed to suggest a kind of intellectual unbending on her part. Her cold was still very heavy and lent to her manner a fortuitous air of complacency.

“I have been lookink at your little church,” she said.

“I’m glad you came in.”

“Of course, for me it is not, you will excuse me, as interestink as, for instance, the Copse Forge.”

“Isn’t it? It’s nothing of an archaeological ‘find,’ of course.”

“Perhaps you do not interest yourself in ritual dancing?” Mrs. Bünz suggested with apparent irrelevance but following up her own line of thought.

“Indeed I do,” Sam Stayne said warmly. “It’s of great interest to a priest, as are all such instinctive gestures.”

“But it is pagan.”

“Of course it is,” he said and began to look distressed. “As I see it,” he went on, choosing his words very carefully, “the Dance of the Sons is a kind of child’s view of a great truth. The Church, more or less, took the ceremony under her wing, you know, many years ago.”

“How! Ach! Because, no doubt, there had been a liddle license? A liddle too much freedom?”

“Well,” he said, “I daresay. Goings-on, of sorts. Anyway, somewhere back in the nineties, a predecessor of mine took possession of ‘Crack’s’ trappings and the Guiser’s and the Betty’s dresses and ‘props,’ as I think they call them in the theatre. He locked them up in the vestry. Ever since then, the parson has handed them out a week or so before the winter solstice to be looked over and repaired and used for the final practices and performance.”

Mrs. Bünz stared at him and sneezed violently. She said in her cold-stricken voice, “Id is
bost
peculiar. I believe you because I have evidence of other cases. But for these joyous, pagan and, indeed, albost purely phallig objects to be lodged in an Aglicud church is, to say the least of it, adobalous.” She blew her nose with Teutonic thoroughness. “Rebarkable!” said Mrs. Bünz.

“Well, there it is,” he said, “and now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go about my job.”

“You are about to hold a service?”

“No,” he said, “I’ve come to say my prayers.”

She blinked at him. “Ach, so! Tell me, Mr. Stayne, in your church you do not, I believe, pray for the dead? That is dot your customb?”

“
I
do,” Sam said. “That’s what I’m here for now: to say a prayer or two for old William’s soul.” He looked mildly at her. Something prompted him to add, “And for another and unhappier soul.”

Mrs. Bünz blew her nose again and eyed him over the top of her handkerchief. “Beaningk?” she asked.

“Meaning his murderer, you know,” the Rector said.

Mrs. Bünz seemed to be so much struck by this remark that she forgot to lower her handkerchief. She nodded her head two or three times, however, and said something that sounded like “No doubt.” She wished the Rector good morning and returned to the Green Man.

There she ran into Simon Begg. Alleyn and Fox witnessed their encounter from behind the window curtain. Simon contemplated Mrs. Bünz with, apparently, some misgiving. His very blue eyes stared out of his pink face and he climbed hurriedly from his car. Mrs. Bünz hastened towards him. He stood with his hands in his pockets and looked down at her. Alleyn saw her speak evidently with some urgency. Simon pulled at his flamboyant moustaches and listened with his head on one side. Mrs. Bünz glanced hastily at the pub as if she would have preferred not to be seen. She turned her back towards it and her head moved emphatically. Simon answered her with equal emphasis and presently with a reassuring gesture clapped his great hand down on her shoulder.

Even through the window, which was shut, they heard her yelp of pain. It was clearly to be seen that Simon was making awkward apologies. Presently he took Mrs. Bünz by the elbow — he was the sort of man who habitually takes women by the elbow — and piloted her away towards the car she had bought from him. He lifted the bonnet and soon they had their heads together talking eagerly over the engine.

Fox said dubiously to Alleyn, “Is
that
what it was all about?”

“Don’t you believe it, Br’er Fox. Those two are cooking up a little plot, the burden of which may well be, ‘For, O, for, O, the hobby-horse is forgot.’ ”

“Shakespeare,” Fox said, “I suppose.”

“And why not? This case smacks of the Elizabethan. And I don’t altogether mean
Hamlet
or
Lear
. Or nine-men’s morris, though there’s a flavour of all of them, to be sure. But those earlier plays of violence when people kill each other in a sort of quintessence of spleen and other people cheer each other up by saying things like, ‘And now, my lord, to leave these doleful dumps.’ Shall you be glad to leave these doleful dumps, Fox?”

“So, so,” Fox said. “It’s always nice to get a case cleared up. There’s not all that much variety in murder.”

“You’ve become an epicure of violence, which is as much as to say a ‘bloody snob.’ ”

Fox chuckled obligingly.

Mrs. Bünz had drawn away from the car. She now approached the pub. They stood back in the room and they watched her. So did Simon Begg. Simon looked extremely worried and more than a little dubious. He scowled after Mrs. Bünz and scratched his head. Then, with the sort of shrug that suggests the relinquishment of an insoluble problem, he slammed down the bonnet of her car. Alleyn grinned. He could imagine Simon saying out loud, “
But
, still,” and giving it up.

Mrs. Bünz approached the pub and, as if she felt that she was observed, glanced up at the windows. Her weathered face was patchy and her lips were set in a determined line.

“It’s a very odd temperament,” Alleyn muttered. “Her particular kind of Teutonic female temperament, I mean. At her sort of age and with her sort of background. Conditioned, if that’s the beastly word, by violence and fear and full of curiosity and persistence.”

“Persistence?” Fox repeated, savouring the idea.

“Yes. She’s a very thorough sort of woman, is Mrs. Bünz. Look what she did on Wednesday night.”

“That’s right.”

“Rubbed her fat shoulders raw, prancing round the dolmen in ‘Crack’s’ harness. Yes,” Alleyn repeated, more to himself than to Fox, “she’s a thorough sort of woman, is Mrs. Bünz.”

The sun continued to shine upon South Mardian and upon the surrounding countryside. The temperature rose unseasonably. Bigger and bigger patches emerged, dark and glistening, from the dismantled landscape. Dr. Curtis, driving himself across country, slithered and skidded but made good time. At noon he rang through to say he expected to be with them before three. Alleyn directed him to Yowford, where the Guiser waited for him in the cottage-hospital mortuary.

At half past one a police car arrived with five reinforcements.

Alleyn held a sort of meeting in the back parlour and briefed his men for the afternoon performance. Carey, who had been down at Copse Forge, came in and was consulted with fitting regard for his rank and local importance.

“We haven’t the faintest notion if we’ll make an arrest,” Alleyn said. “With luck, we might. I’d feel much happier about it if the results of the P.M. were laid on, but I’ve decided not to wait for them. The chances of success in a reconstruction of this sort rest on the accuracy of the observers’ memories. With every hour they grow less dependable. We’re taking pretty considerable risks and may look damn’ silly for damn’ all at the end of it. However, I think it’s worth trying and Mr. Fox agrees with me. Now, this is what happens.”

He laid out his plan of action, illustrating what he said with a rough sketch of the courtyard at Mardian Castle.

Dame Alice, Dulcie Mardian and the Rector would again sit on the steps. The rest of the audience would consist of Trixie, her father, Camilla, Carey, Sergeant Obby and Mrs. Bünz. The events of Wednesday night would be re-enacted in their order. At this point it became clear that Superintendent Carey was troubled in his mind. Seeing this, Alleyn asked him if he had any suggestions to make.

“Well! Naow!” Carey said. “I was just asking myself, Mr. Alleyn. If everybody, in a manner of speaking, is going to act their own parts over again, who would — er — who would —”

“Act the principal part?”

“That’s right. The original,” Mr. Carey said reasonably, “not being available.”

“I wanted to consult you about that. What sort of age is the boy — Andy’s son, isn’t it? — who was the understudy?”

“Young Bill? Thirteen — fourteen or thereabouts. He’s Andrew’s youngest.”

“Bright boy?”

“Smart enough little lad, far’s I know.”

“About the same height as his grandfather?”

“Just, I reckon.”

“Could we get hold of him?”

“Reckon so. Andrew Andersen’s farm’s up to Yowford. Matter of a mile.”

“Is Andy himself still down at the forge?”

“Went home for his dinner, no doubt, at noon. There’s been a great family conference all morning at the smithy,” Carey said. “My sergeant was on duty there. Obby. I don’t say he was as alert as we might prefer: not used to late hours and a bit short of sleep. As a matter of fact, the silly danged fool dozed off and had to admit it.”

The Yard men were at pains not to catch each other’s eyes.

“He came forward, however, with the information that a great quantity of money was found and locked away and that all the boys seem very worried about what Ern may say or do. Specially Chris. He’s a hot-tempered chap, is Chris Andersen, and not above using his hands, which he knows how to, having been a commando in the war.”

“Hardly suitable as a mild corrective technique,” Alleyn said drily.

“Well, no. Will I see if I can lay hold of young Bill, Mr. Alleyn? Now?”

“Would you, Carey? Thank you so much. Without anything being noticed. You’ll handle it better than we would, knowing them.”

Carey, gratified, set about this business.

They heard him start up his motor-bicycle and churn off along Yowford Lane.

“He’s all right,” Alleyn said to the Yard men. “Sound man, but he’s feeling shy about his sergeant going to sleep on duty.”

“So he should,” Fox said, greatly scandalized. “I never heard such a thing. Very bad. Carey ought to have stayed there himself if he can’t trust his chaps.”

“I don’t think it’s likely to have made all that difference, Br’er Fox.”

“It’s the principle.”

“Of course it is. Now, about this show — here’s where I want everyone to stand. Mr. Fox up, at the back by the archway through which they made their exits and entrances. Bailey and Thompson are coming off their specialists’ perches and keeping observation again: there” — he pointed on his sketch—“by the entrance to the castle, that is to say, the first archway that links the semicircular ruined wall to the new building, and here, by its opposite number at the other end of the wall. That’s the way Ralph Stayne came back to the arena. The bonfire was outside the wall and to the right of the central archway. I want three men there. The remaining two will stand among the onlookers, bearing in mind what I’ve said we expect to find. We may be involved with more than one customer if the pot comes to the boil. Carey will be there, with his sergeant and his P.C., of course, and if the sergeant dozes off at
this
show it’ll be because he’s got sleeping sickness.”