Ngaio Marsh - Death of a Fool

“Honest, Mrs. Buns,” he said with evident regret, “I don’t know. Honest! It’s what he’s always said. Seems all round the bend to me. I doubt if the boys themselves know. P’raps it’s foreign or something.”

Mrs. Bünz looked like a cover-picture for a magazine called Frustration . “If it is foreign I would understand. I speak six European languages. Gott in Himmel , Mr. Begg — What is it ?”

His attention had wandered to the racing edition on the table before him. His face lit up and he jabbed at the paper with his finger.

“Look at this!” he said. “Here’s a turn-up! Could you beat it?”

“I have not on my glasses.”

“Running next Thursday,” he read aloud, “in the one-thirty. ‘Teutonic Dancer by Subsidize out of Substitution’! Laugh that off.”

“I do not understand you.”

“It’s a horse,” he explained. “A race horse. Talk about coincidence! Talk about omens!”

“An omen?” she asked, catching at a familiar word.

“Good enough for me anyway. You’re Teutonic, aren’t you, Mrs. Buns?”

“Yes,” she said patiently. “I am Teuton, yes.”

“And we’ve been talking about dancers , haven’t we? And I’ve suggested you substitute another car for the one you’ve got? And if you have the little job I’ve been telling you about, well, I’ll be sort of subsidized , won’t I? Look, it’s uncanny.”

Mrs. Bünz rummaged in her pockets and produced her spectacles.

“Ach, I understand. You will bet upon this horse?”

“You can say that again.”

“ ‘Teutonic Dancer by Subsidize out of Substitution,’ ” she read slowly and an odd look came over her face. “You are right, Mr. Begg, it is strange. It may, as you say, be an omen.”

On the Sunday before Sword Wednesday, Camilla went after church to call upon her grandfather at Copse Forge. As she trudged through the snow she sang until the cold in her throat made her cough and then whistled until the frost on her lips made them too stiff. All through the week she had worked steadily at a part she was to play in next term’s showing and had done all her exercises every day. She had seen Ralph in church. They had smiled at each other, after which the organist, who was also the village postman, might have been the progeny of Orpheus and Saint Cecilia, so heavenly sweet did his piping sound to Camilla. Ralph had kept his promise not to come near her, but she hurried away from church because she had the feeling that he might wait for her if he left before she did. And until she got her emotions properly sorted out, thought Camilla, that would never do.

The sun came out. She met a robin redbreast, two sparrows and a magpie. From somewhere beyond the woods came the distant unalarming plop of a shot-gun. As she plodded down the lane she saw the spiral of smoke that even on Sundays wavered up over the copse from the hidden forge.

Her grandfather and his two unmarried sons would be home from chapel-going in the nearby village of Yowford.

There was a footpath through the copse making a short cut from the road to the smithy. Camilla decided to take it, and had gone only a little way into the trees when she heard a sound that is always most deeply disturbing. Somewhere, hidden in the wood, a grown man was crying.

He cried boisterously without making any attempt to restrain his distress and Camilla guessed at once who he must be. She hesitated for a moment and then went forward. The path turned a corner by a thicket of evergreens and, on the other side, Camilla found her uncle, Ernie Andersen, lamenting over the body of his mongrel dog.

The dog was covered with sacking, but its tail, horridly dead, stuck out at one end. Ernie crouched beside it, squatting on his heels with his great hands dangling, splay-fingered, between his knees. His face was beslobbered and blotched with tears. When he saw Camilla he cried, like a small boy, all the louder.

“Why, Ernie!” Camilla said, “you poor old thing.”

He broke into an angry torrent of speech, but so confusedly and in such a thickened dialect that she had much ado to understand him. He was raging against his father. His father, it seemed, had been saying all the week that the dog was unhealthy and ought to be put down. Ernie had savagely defied him and had kept clear of the forge, taking the dog with him up and down the frozen lanes. This morning, however, the dog had slipped away and gone back to the forge. The Guiser, finding it lying behind the smithy, had shot it there and then. Ernie had heard the shot. Camilla pictured him, blundering through the trees, whimpering with anxiety. His father met him with his gun in his hand and told him to take the carcass away and bury it. At this point, Ernie’s narrative became unintelligible. Camilla could only guess at the scene that followed. Evidently, Chris had supported his father, pointing out that the dog was indeed in a wretched condition and that it had been from motives of kindness that the Guiser had put it out of its misery. She supposed that Ernie, beside himself with rage and grief, had thereupon carried the body to the wood.

“It’s God’s truth,” Ernie was saying, as he rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and became more coherent, “I tell ’e, it’s God’s truth I’ll be quits with ’im for this job. Bad ’e is: rotten bad and so grasping and cruel’s a blasted li’l old snake. Done me down at every turn: a murdering thief if ever I see one. Cut down in all the deathly pride of his sins, ’e’ll be, if Doctor knows what he’m talking about.”

“What on earth do you mean?” cried Camilla.

“I be a betterer guiser nor him. I do it betterer nor him: neat as pin on my feet and every step a masterpiece. Doctor reckons he’ll kill hisself. By God, I hope ’e does.”

“Ernie! Be quiet. You don’t know what you’re saying. Why do you want to do the Fool’s act? It’s an Old Man’s act. You’re a Son.”

Ernie reached out his hand. With a finnicky gesture of his flat red thumb and forefinger, he lifted the tip of his dead dog’s tail. “I got the fancy,” he said, looking at Camilla out of the corners of his eyes, “to die and be rose up agin. That’s why.”

Camilla thought, “No, honestly, this is too mummerset.” She said, “But that’s just an act. It’s just an old dance-play. It’s like having mistletoe and plum-pudding. Nothing else happens, Ernie. Nobody dies.”

Ernie twitched the sacking off the body of his dog. Camilla gave a protesting cry and shrank away.

“What’s thik, then?” Ernie demanded. “Be thik a real dead corpse or bean’t it?”

“Bury it!” Camilla cried out. “Cover it up, Ernie, and forget it. It’s horrible.”

She felt she could stand no more of Ernie and his dog. She said, “I’m sorry. I can’t help you,” and walked on past him and along the path to the smithy. With great difficulty she restrained herself from breaking into a run. She felt sick.

The path came out at a clearing near the lane and a little above the smithy.

A man was waiting there. She saw him at first through the trees and then, as she drew nearer, more clearly.

He came to meet her. His face was white and he looked, she couldn’t help feeling, wonderfully determined and romantic.

“Ralph!” she said, “you mustn’t! You promised. Go away, quickly.”

“I won’t. I can’t, Camilla. I saw you go into the copse, so I hurried up and came round the other way to meet you. I’m sorry, Camilla. I just couldn’t help myself, and, anyway, I’ve decided it’s too damn silly not to. What’s more, there’s something I’ve got to say.”

His expression changed. “Hi!” he said. “Darling, what’s up? I haven’t frightened you, have I? You look frightened.”