Ngaio Marsh - Death of a Fool

“I will if she’ll come,” said Dulcie, practically.

“Please, Dame Alice.”

“I want to know what’s up.”

“And so you shall.”

“Who is it?”

“The Guiser. William Andersen.”

“But he wasn’t dancing,” Dulcie said foolishly. “He’s ill.”

“Is he dead?”

“Yes.”

“Wait a bit.”

Dame Alice extended her arm and was at once hauled up by Dulcie. She addressed herself to her guests.

“Sorry,” she said. “Must ’pologize for askin’ you to leave, but as you’ve heard there’s bin trouble. Glad if you’ll just go. Now. Quietly. Thankee. Sam, I don’t want you.”

She turned away and without another word went indoors followed by Dulcie.

The Rector murmured, “But what a shocking thing to happen! And so dreadful for his sons. I’ll just go to them, shall I? I suppose it was his heart, poor old boy.”

“Do you?” Dr. Otterly asked:

The Rector stared at him. “You look dreadfully ill,” he said, and then, “What do you mean? For the love of Heaven, Otterly, what’s happened?”

Dr. Otterly opened his mouth but seemed to have some difficulty in speaking.

He and the Rector stared at each other. Villagers still moved across the courtyard and the dancers were still suspended in immobility. It was as if something they all anticipated had not quite happened.

Then it happened.

The Whiffler was on the Mardian dolmen. He had jumped on the stone and stood there, fantastical against the snow. He paddled his feet in ecstasy. His mouth was redly open and he yelled at the top of his voice:

“What price blood for the stone? What price the Old Man’s ’ead? Swords be out, chaps, and ’eads be off. What price blood for the stone?”

His sword was in his hand. He whiffled it savagely and then pointed it at someone in the crowd.

“Ax ’er,” he shouted. “She knows. She’m the one what done it. Ax ’er.”

The stragglers in the crowd parted and fell back from a solitary figure thickly encased in a multiplicity of hand-woven garments.

It was Mrs. Bünz.

“Has it ever occurred to you,” Alleyn said, “that the progress of a case is rather like a sort of thaw? Look at that landscape.”

He wiped the mist from their carriage window. Sergeants Bailey and Thompson, who had been taking gear from the rack, put on their hats, sat down again and stared out with the air of men to whom all landscapes are alike. Mr. Fox, with slightly raised brows, also contemplated the weakly illuminated and dripping prospect.

“Like icing,” he said, “running off a wedding cake. Not that, I suppose, it ever does.”

“Such are the pitfalls of analogy. All the same, there is an analogy. When you go out on our sort of job everything’s covered with a layer of cagey blamelessness. No sharp outlines anywhere. The job itself sticks up like that partial ruin on the skyline over there, but even the job tends to look different under snow. Blurred.”

Mr. Fox effaced a yawn. “So we wait for the thaw!”

“With luck, Br’er Fox, we produce it. This is our station.”

They alighted on a platform bordered with swept-up heaps of grey slush. The train, which had made an unorthodox halt for them, pulled out at once. They were left with a stillness broken by the drip of melting snow. The outlines of eaves, gutters, rails, leaves, twigs slid copiously into water.

A man in a belted mackintosh, felt hat and gumboots came forward.

“This’ll be the Super,” said Fox.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” said the man.

He was a big chap with a serio-comic face that, when it tried to look grave, only succeeded in achieving an expression of mock solemnity. His name was Yeo Carey and he had a roaring voice.

The ceremonial handshaking completed, Superintendent Carey led the way out of the little station. A car waited, its wheels fitted with a suit of chains.

“Still need them, up to Mardians’,” Carey said when they were all on board. “They’re not thawed out proper thereabouts; though, if she keeps mild this way, they’ll ease off considerably come nightfall.”

“You must have had a nice turn-up with this lot,” Fox said, indicating the job in hand.

“Terrible. Terrible! I was the first to say it was a matter for you gentlemen. We’re not equipped for it and no use pretending we are. First capital crime hereabouts, I do believe, since they burned Betsey Andersen for a witch.”

“What!” Alleyn ejaculated.

“That’s a matter of three hundred years as near as wouldn’t matter and no doubt the woman never deserved it.”

“Did you say ‘Andersen’?”

“Yes, sir, I did. There’ve been Andersens at Copse Forge for quite a spell in South Mardian.”

“I understand,” Fox said sedately, “the old man who was decapitated was called Andersen.”

“So he was, then. He was one of them, was William.”

“I think,” Alleyn said, “we’ll get you to tell us the whole story, Carey. Where are we going?”

“Up to East Mardian, sir. The Chief Constable thought you’d like to be as near as possible to the scene of the crime. They’ve got rooms for you at the Green Man. It’s a case of two rooms for four men, seeing there’s a couple of lodgers there already. But as they might be witnesses, we didn’t reckon to turn them out.”

“Fair enough. Where’s your station, then?”

“Up to Yowford. Matter of two mile. The Chief Constable’s sent you this car with his compliments. I’ve only got a motor-bike at the station. He axed me to say he’d have come hisself but is bedbound with influenza. We’re anxious to help, of course. Every way we can.”

“Everything seems to be laid on like central heating,” Alleyn was careful to observe. He pointed to the building on the skyline that they had seen from the train. “What’s that, up there?”

“Mardian Castle, Mr. Alleyn. Scene of crime.”

“It looks like a ruin.”

“So ’tis, then, in parts. Present residence is on ’tother side of those walls. Now, sir, shall I begin, to the best of my ability, to make my report or shall we wait till we’re stationary in the pub? A matter of a few minutes only and I can then give my full attention to my duty and refer in order to my notes.”

Alleyn agreed that this would be much the best course, particularly as the chains were making a great noise and the driver’s task was evidently an exacting one. They churned along a deep lane, turned a corner and looked down on South Mardian: squat, unpicturesque, unremarkable and as small as a village could be. As they approached, Alleyn saw that, apart from its church and parsonage, it contained only one building that was not a cottage. This was a minute shop. Beggs for Everything was painted vain-gloriously in faded blue letters across the front. They drove past the gateway to Mardian Castle. A police constable with his motor-bicycle nearby stood in front of it.

“Guarding,” explained Carey, “against sight-seers,” and he waved his arm at the barren landscape.

As they approached the group of trees at the far end of the village, Carey pointed it out. “The Copse,” he said, “and a parcel further on behind it, Copse Forge, where the deceased is assembled, Mr. Alleyn, in a lean-to shed, it being his own property.”

“I see.”

“We turn right, however, which I will now do, to the hamlet of East Mardian. There, sir, is your pub, ahead and on the right.”

As they drove up, Alleyn glanced at the sign, a pleasant affair painted with a foliated green face.

“That’s an old one, isn’t it?” he said. “Although it looks as if it’s been rather cleverly touched up.”

“So it has, then. By a lady at present resident in the pub by the name of Buns.”