Ngaio Marsh - Death of a Fool

Mrs. Bünz’s spying window was partly sheltered by overhanging thatch. She had managed to clean it a little. Here, shuddering with cold and excitement, she stood, night after night, making voluminous notes with frozen fingers.

From this exercise she derived only modified rapture. Peering through the glass which was continually misted over by her breath, she looked through the storeroom and its inner doorway into the barn proper. Her view of the dancing was thus maddeningly limited. The Andersen brothers would appear in flashes. Now they would be out of her range, now momentarily within it. Sometimes the Guiser, or Dr. Utterly or the Hobby-Horse would stand in the doorway and obstruct her view. It was extremely frustrating.

She gradually discovered that there was more than one dance. There was a Morris, for which the men wore bells that jangled most provocatively, and there was also sword-dancing, which was part of a mime or play. And there was one passage of this dance-play which was always to be seen. This was when the Guiser, in his role of Fool, or Old Man, put his head in the knot of swords. The Five Sons were grouped about him, the Betty and the Hobby-Horse were close behind. At this juncture, it was clear that the Old Man spoke. There was some fragment of dialogue, miraculously preserved, perhaps, from Heaven knew what ancient source. Mrs. Bünz saw his lips move, always at the same point and always, she was certain, to the same effect. Really, she would have given anything in her power to hear what he said.

She learnt quite a lot about the dance-play. She found that, after the Guiser had acted out his mock decapitation, the Sons danced again and the Betty and Hobby-Horse improvised. Sometimes the Hobby-Horse would come prancing and shuffling into the storeroom quite close to her. It was strange to see the iron beak-like mouth snap and bite the air on the other side of the window. Sometimes the Betty would come in, and the great barrel-like dress would brush up clouds of dust from the storeroom floor. But always the Sons danced again and, at a fixed point, the Guiser rose up as if resurrected. It was on this “act,” evidently, that the whole thing ended.

After the practice they would all return to the pub. Once, Mrs. Bünz denied herself the pleasures of her peep show in order to linger as unobtrusively as possible in the bar-parlour. She hoped that, pleasantly flushed with exercise, the dancers would talk of their craft. But this ruse was a dead failure. The men at first did indeed talk, loudly and freely at the far end of the Public, but they all spoke together and Mrs. Bünz found the Andersens’ dialect exceedingly difficult. She thought that Trixie must have indicated her presence because they were all suddenly quiet. Then Trixie, always pleasant, came through and asked her if she wanted anything further that evening in such a definite sort of way that somehow even Mrs. Bünz felt impelled to get up and go. Then Mrs. Bünz had what she hoped at the time might be a stroke of luck.

One evening at half past five, she came into the bar-parlour in order to complete a little piece she was writing for an American publication on “The Hermaphrodite in European Folklore.” She found Simon Begg already there, lost in gloomy contemplation of a small notebook and the racing page of an evening paper.

She had entered into negotiations with Begg about repairing her car. She had also, of course, had her secret glimpses of him in the character of “Crack.” She greeted him with her particularly Teutonic air of camaraderie. “So!” she said, “you are early this evening, Wing-Commander.”

He made a sort of token movement, shifting a little in his chair and eying Trixie. Mrs. Bünz ordered cider. “The snow,” she said cozily, “continues, does it not?”

“That’s right,” he said, and then seemed to pull himself together. “Too bad we still can’t get round to fixing that little bus of yours, Mrs. — er — er — Buns, but there you are! Unless we get a tow —”

“There is no hurry. I shall not attempt the return journey before the weather improves. My baby does not enjoy the snow.”

“You’d be better off, if you don’t mind my saying so, with something that packs a bit more punch.”

“I beg your pardon?”

He repeated his remark in less idiomatic English. The merits of a more powerful car were discussed: it seemed that Begg had a car of the very sort he had indicated which he was to sell for an old lady who scarcely used it. Mrs. Bünz was by no means poor. Perhaps she weighed up the cost of changing cars with the potential result in terms of inside information on ritual dancing. In any case, she encouraged Begg, who became nimble in sales talk.

“It is true,” Mrs. Bünz meditated presently, “that if I had a more robust motor-car I could travel with greater security. Perhaps, for example, I should be able to ascend in frost with ease to Mardian Castle —”

“Piece-of-cake,” Simon Begg interjected.

“I beg your pardon?”

“This job I was telling you about laughs at a little stretch like that. Laughs at it.”

“—I was going to say, to Mardian Castle on Wednesday evening. That is, if onlookers are permitted.”

“It’s open to the whole village,” Begg said uncomfortably. “Open house.”

“Unhappily — most unhappily — I have antagonized your Guiser. Also, alas, Dame Alice.”

“Not to worry,” he muttered and added hurriedly, “It’s only a bit of fun, anyway.”

“Fun? Yes. It is also,” Mrs. Bünz added, “an antiquarian jewel, a precious survival. For example, five swords instead of six have I never before seen. Unique! I am persuaded of this.”

“Really?” he said politely. “Now, Mrs. Buns, about this car—”

Each of them hoped to placate the other. Mrs. Bünz did not, therefore, correct his pronunciation.

“I am interested,” she said genially, “in your description of this auto.”

“I’ll run it up here to-morrow and you can look it over.”

They eyed each other speculatively.

“Tell me,” Mrs. Bünz pursued, “in this dance you are, I believe, the Hobby-Horse?”

“That’s right. It’s a wizard little number, you know, this job —”

“You are a scholar of folklore, perhaps?”

“Me? Not likely.”

“But you perform?” she wailed.

“Just one of those things. The Guiser’s as keen as mustard and so’s Dame Alice. Pity, in a way, I suppose, to let it fold up.”

“ Indeed, indeed . It would be a tragedy. Ach! A sin! I am, I must tell you, Mr. Begg, an expert. I wish, so much to ask you —” Here, in spite of an obvious effort at self-control, Mrs. Bünz became slightly tremulous. She leant forward, her rather prominent blue eyes misted with anxiety, her voice unconvincingly casual. “Tell me,” she quavered, “at the moment of sacrifice, the moment when the Fool beseeches the Sons to spare him, something is spoken, is it not?”

“I say!” he ejaculated, staring at her, “you do know a lot about it, don’t you?”

She began in a terrific hurry to explain that all European mumming had a common origin: that it was only reasonable to expect a little dialogue.

“We’re not meant to talk out of school,” Simon muttered. “I think it’s all pretty corny, mind. Well, childish, really. After all, what the heck’s it matter?”

“I assure you, I beg you to rest assured of my discretion. There is dialogue, no?”

“The Guiser sort of natters at the others.”

Mrs. Bünz, clutching frantically at straws of intelligence on a high wind of slang, flung out her fat little hands at him.

“Ach, my good, kind young motor-salesman,” she pleaded, reminding him of her potential as a customer, “of your great generosity, tell me what are the words he natters to the ozzers?”