Ngaio Marsh - Death of a Fool

“You know, Carey,” Alleyn said under his breath and out of the sergeant’s hearing, “he should never have been moved: never.”

Carey, scarlet-faced, said loudly, “I know’s well as the next man, sir, the remains didn’t ought to have been shifted. But shifted they were before us chaps could raise a finger to stop it. Parson comes in and says, ‘It’s not decent as it is,’ and, with ’is own ’ands, takes off mask and lays out the pieces tidy-like while Obby, ’ere, and I were still ordering back the crowd.”

“You were here too, Sergeant?”

“Oh, ya-as, Mr. Alleyn. All through.”

“And seeing, in a manner of speaking, the damage was done and rain setting in, we put the remains into his own car, which is an old station-waggon. Simmy-Dick and Mr. Stayne gave us a hand. We took them back to the forge. They’re in his lean-to coach-house, Mr. Alleyn, locked up proper with a police seal on the door and the only other constable in five mile on duty beside it.”

“Yes, yes,” Alleyn said. “All right. Now, tell me, Carey, you did actually see how it was before the parson tidied things up, didn’t you?”

“I did, then, and not likely to forget it.”

“Good. How was it?”

Carey drew the back of his hand across his mouth and looked hard at the shallow depression. “I reckon,” he said, “those two patches show pretty clear. One’s blood from head and ’tother’s blood from trunk.”

Fox was squatting above them with a rule in his hands. “Twenty-three inches apart,” he said.

“How was the body lying?” Alleyn asked. “Exactly.”

“Kind of cramped up and on its left side, sir. Huddled. Knees to chin.”

“And the head?”

“That was what was so ghassly,” Carey burst out. “Tother way round.”

“Do you mean the crown of the head and not the neck was towards the trunk?”

“Just so, Mr. Alleyn. Still tied up in that there bag thing with the face on it.”

“I reckoned,” Sergeant Obby ventured, “that it must of been kind of disarranged in the course of the proceedings.”

“By the dancers?”

“I reckoned so, sir. Must of been.”

“In the final dance, after the mock beheading, did the Five Sons go behind the stone?”

There was a silence. The superintendent and the sergeant eyed each other.

“I don’t believe they did, you know, Sarge,” Carey said.

“Put it that way, no more don’t I, then.”

“But the other two. The man-woman and the hobbyhorse?”

“They were every which-way,” Carey said.

Alleyn muttered, “If they’d come round here they could hardly fail to see what was lying there. What colour were his clothes?”

“Whitish, mostly.”

“There you are,” Fox said.

“Well, Thompson, get on with it. Cover the area again. When he’s finished we’ll take specimens of the stains, Fox. In the meantime, what’s outside the wall there?”

Carey took him through the rear archway. “They waited out here before the performance started,” he said.

It was a bleak enough spot now: an open field that ran up to a ragged spinney and the crest of the hill. On the higher slopes the snow still lay pretty thick, but down near the wall it had melted and, to one side of the archway, there was the great scar left by the bonfire. It ran out from the circular trace of the fire itself in a blackened streak about fourteen feet long.

“And here,” Alleyn said pointing his stick at a partially burnt-out drum, lying on its side in the fire-scar, “we have the tar barrel?”

“That’s so, Mr. Alleyn. For ‘Crack.’ ”

“Looks as if it caught fire.”

“Reckon it might have got overturned when all the skylarking was going on between Mr. Ralph and Ernie. They ran through here. There was a mighty great blaze sprung up about then. The fire might have spread to it.”

“Wouldn’t the idea be to keep the fire as an extra attraction, though?”

“Maybe they lit it early for warmth. One of them may have got excited-like and poured tar on it.”

“Ernie, for instance,” Alleyn said patiently, and Carey replied that it was very likely.

“And this?” Alleyn went on. “Look at this, Carey.”

Round the burnt-out scar left by the bonfire lay a fringe of green brushwood that had escaped complete destruction. A little inside it, discoloured and deadened by the heat, its wooden handle a mere blackened stump, was a steel blade about eighteen inches long.

“That’s a slasher,” Alleyn said.

“That’s Copse Forge,” Carey said. “Stood there a matter of four hundred year and the smith’s been an Andersen for as long as can be reckoned.”

“Not so profitable,” Fox suggested, “nowadays, would it be?”

“Nothing like. Although he gets all the shoeing for the Mardian and adjacent hunts and any other smith’s jobs for miles around. Chris has got a mechanic’s ticket and does a bit with cars. A big oil company’s offered to back them if they convert to a service station. I believe Simmy-Dick Begg’s very anxious to run it. The boys like the idea but the Guiser wouldn’t have it at any price. There’s a main road to be put through, too.”

“Do they all work here?” Alleyn asked. “Surely not?”

“No, no. Dan, the eldest, and the twins, Andy and Nat, are on their own. Farming. Chris and Ernie work at the forge. Hullo, that’s Dr. Otterly’s car. I axed him to be here and the five boys beside. Mr. Ralph and Simmy-Dick Begg are coming up to the pub at two. If that suits, of course.”

Alleyn said it did. As they drew up, Dr. Otterly got out of his car and waited for them. His tweed hat was pulled down over his nose and his hands were thrust deep in the pockets of his covert-coat.

He didn’t wait to be introduced but came up and looked in at the window of their car.

“ ’Morning,” he said. “Glad you’ve managed to get here. ’Morning, Carey. Expect you are, too.”

“We’re damn’ pleased to see you ,” Alleyn rejoined. “It’s not every day you get police-officers and a medical man to give what almost amounts to eyewitnesses’ evidence of a capital crime.”

“There’s great virtue in that ‘almost,’ however,” Dr. Otterly said and added, “I suppose you want to have a look at him.”

“Please.”

“Want me to come?”

“I think so. Don’t you, Carey?”

They went through the smithy. There was no fire that morning and no heart in the place. It smelt of cold iron and stale horse-sweat. Carey led the way out by a back door into a yard. Here stood a small ramshackle cottage and, alongside it, the lean-to coach-house.

“He lived in the cottage, did he?” Alleyn asked.

“Chris and Ern keep there. The old chap slept in a little room off the smithy. They all ate in the cottage, however.”

“They’re in there now,” Dr. Otterly said. “Waiting.”

“Good,” Alleyn said. “They won’t have to wait much longer. Will you open up, Carey?”

With some evidence of gratification, Carey broke the seal he had put on the double-doors of the coach-house and opened them wide enough to make an entry.

It was a dark place filled with every imaginable kind of junk, but a space had been cleared in the middle and an improvised bier made up from boxes and an old door covered by a horsecloth.

A clean sheet had been laid over the Guiser. When Dr. Otterly turned this down it was a shock, after the conventional decency of the arrangements, to see an old dead man in the dirty dress of a clown. For collar, there was a ragged bloodstained and slashed frill and this had been pulled up to hide the neck. The face was smudged with black on the nose, forehead, cheek bones and chin.

“That’s burnt cork,” Dr. Otterly said. “From inside his mask, you know. Ernie had put it on over his black make-up when he thought he was going to dance the Fool.”