Ngaio Marsh - Death of a Fool

“If one of us ’uns misses the strings and catches hold be the blade,” old Andersen shouted, “as a chap well might in the heat of his exertions, he’d be cut to the bloody bone. Wouldn’t he, Doctor?”

“And I’m the chap to do it,” Chris roared out. “I come next, Ern. I might get me fingers sliced off.”

“Not to mention my yed,” his father added.

“Here,” Dr. Otterly said quietly, “let’s have a squint at it.”

He examined the sword and looked thoughtfully at its owner. “Why,” he asked, “did you make it so sharp, boy?”

Ernie wouldn’t answer. He held out his hand for the sword. Dr. Otterly hesitated and then gave it to him. Ernie folded his arms over it and backed away cuddling it. He glowered at his father and muttered and shuffled.

“You damned dunderhead,” old William burst out, “hand over thik rapper. Come on. Us’ll take the edge off of it afore you gets loose on it again. Hand it over.”

“I won’t, then.”

“You will!”

“Keep off of me.”

Simon Begg said, “Steady, Ern. Easy does it.”

“Tell him not to touch me, then.”

“Naow, naow, naow!” chanted his brothers.

“I think I’d leave it for the moment, Guiser,” Dr. Otterly said.

“Leave it! Who’s boss hereabouts! I’ll not leave it, neither.”

He advanced upon his son. Mrs. Bünz, peering and wiping away her breath, wondered, momentarily, if what followed could be yet another piece of histrionic folklore. The Guiser and his son were in the middle of her peep show, the other Andersens out of sight. In the background, only partially visible, their faces alternately hidden and revealed by the leading players, were Dr. Otterly, Ralph and Simon Begg. She heard Simon shout, “Don’t be a fool!” and saw rather than heard Ralph admonishing the Guiser.

Then, with a kind of darting movement, the old man launched himself at his son. The picture was masked out for some seconds by the great bulk of Dan Andersen. Then arms and hands appeared, inexplicably busy. For a moment or two, all was confusion. She heard a voice and recognized it, high-pitched though it was, for Ernie Andersen’s.

“Never blame me if you’re bloody-handed. Bloody-handed by nature you are. What shows, same as what’s hid. Bloody murderer, both ways, heart and hand.”

Then Mrs. Bünz’s peep show re-opened to reveal the Guiser, alone.

His head was sunk between his shoulders, his chest heaved as if it had a tormented life of its own. His right arm was extended in exposition. Across the upturned palm there was a dark gash. Blood slid round the edge of the hand and, as she stared at it, began to drip.

Mrs. Bünz left her peep show and returned faster than usual to her backstairs in the pub.

That night, Camilla slept uneasily. Her shallow dreams were beset with dead dogs that stood watchfully between herself and Ralph or horridly danced with bells strapped to their rigid legs. The Five Sons of the photograph behind the bar-parlour door also appeared to her, with Mrs. Bünz mysteriously nodding, and the hermaphrodite, who slyly offered to pop his great skirt over Camilla and carry her off. Then “Crack,” the Hobby-Horse, came hugely to the fore. His bird-like head enlarged itself and snapped at Camilla. He charged out of her dream, straight at her. She woke with a thumping heart.

The Mardian church clock was striking twelve. A blob of light danced on the window curtain. Down in the yard somebody must be walking about with a lanthorn. She heard the squeak of trampled snow accompanied by a drag and a shuffle. Camilla, now wide awake, listened uneasily. They kept early hours at the Green Man. Squeak, squelch, drag, shuffle and still the light dodged on the curtain. Cold as it was, she sat up in bed, pulled aside the curtain and looked down.

The sound she made resembled the parched and noiseless scream of a sleeper. As well it might: for there below by the light of a hurricane lanthorn her dream repeated itself. “Crack,” the Hobby-Horse, was abroad in the night.

On Sword Wednesday, early in the morning, there was another heavy fall of snow. But it stopped before noon and the sun appeared, thickly observable, like a live coal in the western sky.

There had been a row about the slasher. Nobody seemed to know quite what had happened. The gardener, MacGlashan, had sent his boy down to the forge to demand it. The boy had returned with a message from Ernie Andersen to say the Guiser wasn’t working but the slasher would be ready in time and that, in any case, he and his brothers would come up and clear a place in the courtyard. The gardener, although he had objected bitterly and loudly to doing the job himself, instantly took offence at this announcement and retired to his noisomely stuffy cottage down in the village, where he began a long fetid sulk.

In the morning Nat and Chris arrived at Mardian Castle to clear the snow. MacGlashan had locked his toolshed, but, encouraged by Dame Alice, who had come down heavily on their side, they very quickly picked the lock and helped themselves to whatever they needed. Simon Begg arrived in his breakdown van with the other three Andersen brothers and a load of brushwood which they built up into a bonfire outside the old battlemented wall. Here it would be partially seen through a broken-down archway and would provide an extra attraction for the village when the Dance of the Sons was over.

Torches, made at the forge from some ancient receipt involving pitch, resin and tow, were set up round the actual dancing area.

Later in the morning the Andersens and Simon Begg were entertained in the servants’ hall with a generous foretaste of the celebrated Sword Wednesday Punch, served out by Dame Alice herself, assisted by Dulcie and the elderly maids.

In that company there was nobody of pronounced sensibility. Such an observer might have found something disturbing in Simon Begg’s attempts to detach himself from his companions, to show an ease of manner that would compel an answering signal from their hostesses. It was such a hopeless business. To Dame Alice (who if she could be assigned to any genre derived from that of Surtees) class was unremarkable and existed in the way that continents and races exist. Its distinctions were not a matter of preference but of fact. To play at being of one class when you were actually of another was as pointless as it would be for a Chinese to try to pass himself off as a Zulu. Dame Alice possessed a certain animal shrewdness but she was fantastically insensitive and not given to thinking of abstract matters. She was ninety-four and thought as little as possible. She remembered that Simon Begg’s grandfather and father had supplied her with groceries for some fifty years and that he therefore was a local boy who went away to serve in the war and had, presumably, returned to do so in his father’s shop. So she said something vaguely seigniorial and unconsciously cruel to him and paid no attention to his answer except to notice that he called her Dame Alice instead of Madam.

To Dulcie, who was aware that he kept a garage and had held a commission in the Air Force, he spoke a language that was incomprehensible. She supposed vaguely that he preferred petrol to dry goods and knew she ought to feel grateful to him because of the Battle of Britain. She tried to think of remarks to make to him but was embarrassed by Ernie, who stood at his elbow and laughed very loudly at everything he said.

Simon gave Dulcie a meaning smile and patted Ernie’s arm.

“We’re a bit above ourselves, Miss Mardian,” he said. “We take ourselves very seriously over this little show tonight.”

Ernie laughed and Dulcie said, “Do you?” not understanding Simon’s playful use of the first person plural. He lowered his voice and said, “Poor old Ernie! Ernie was my batman in the old days, Miss Mardian. Weren’t you, Corp? How about seeing if you can help those girls, Ernie?”