Ngaio Marsh - Death of a Fool

Bailey was a man of rather morose habit, but when he had this sort of report to make he usually grinned. He did so now. “Will I get Mr. Begg’s clothes off him?” he asked.

“Yes. I’ve told him we want them. You may have the car for the next hour.”

Bailey said, “The local sergeant looked in. Obby. Pretty well asleep in his boots. He says when you left this morning the Andersens had a bit of a set-to. Seems Ernie reckons there was something about Chris Andersen. He kept saying, ‘What about Chris and the Guiser and you-know-who?’ Obby wrote it all down and left his notes. It doesn’t sound anything much.”

“I’ll look at it,” Alleyn said and, when Bailey produced the notebook, read it carefully.

“All right,” he said. “Carry on finding out nothing you wouldn’t expect. Glad you’re enjoying yourself.”

Bailey looked doubtful and withdrew his head.

“I’m going to see Trixie,” Alleyn announced.

“If you get frightened,” Mr. Fox said, “scream.”

“I’ll do that, Fox. Thank you.”

Trixie was behind the shutter tidying the public bar. Tucked away behind the shelves of bottles, she had a snuggery with a couple of chairs and an electric fire. Into this retreat she invited Alleyn, performed the classic gesture of dusting a chair and herself sat down almost knee-to-knee with him, calmly attentive to whatever he might choose to say.

“Trixie,” Alleyn began, “I’m going to ask you one or two very personal questions and you’re going to think I’ve got a hell of a cheek. If your answers are no help to us, then I shall forget all about them. If they are of help, we shall have to make use of them, but, as far as possible, we’ll treat them as confidential. All right?”

“I reckon so,” Trixie said readily.

“Good. Before we tackle the personalities, I want you to tell me what you saw last night, up at the castle.”

Her description of the dance tallied with Dr. Otterly’s except at moments when her attention had obviously strayed. Such a moment had occurred soon after the entry of the Guiser. She had watched “Crack’s” antics and had herself been tarred by him. “It’s lucky to get touched,” Trixie said with her usual broad smile. She had wonderfully strong white teeth and her fair skin had a kind of bloom over it. She remembered in detail how “Crack” had chased Camilla and how Camilla had run into the Betty’s arms. But, at the moment when the Guiser came in, it seemed, Trixie’s attention had been diverted. She had happened to catch sight of Mrs. Bünz.

“Were you standing anywhere near her?” Alleyn asked.

“So I was, then, but she was powerful eager to see and get tar-touched and crept in close.”

“Yes?”

“But after Guiser come in I see her move back in the crowd and, when I looked again, she wasn’t there.”

“Not anywhere in the crowd?”

“Seemingly.”

Knowing how madly keen Mrs. Bünz was to see the dance, Trixie was good-naturally concerned and looked round for her quite persistently. But there was no sign of her. Then Trixie herself became interested in the performance and forgot all about Mrs. Bünz. Later on, when Dan was already embarked on his solo, Trixie looked round again and, lo and behold, there was Mrs. Bünz after all, standing inside the archway and looking, Trixie said, terribly put-about. After that, the account followed Dr. Otterly’s in every respect.

Alleyn said, “This has been a help. Thank you, Trixie. And now, I’m afraid, for the personalities. This afternoon when you came into our room and Mr. Ralph Stayne was there, I thought from your manner and from his that there had been something — some understanding — between you. Is that right?”

Trixie’s smile widened into quite a broad grin. A dimple appeared in her cheek and her eyes brightened.

“He’s a proper lad,” she said, “is Mr. Ralph.”

“Does he spend much time at home, here?”

“During the week he’s up to Biddlefast lawyering, but most week-ends he’s to home.” She chuckled. “It’s kind of slow most times hereabouts,” said Trixie. “Up to rectory it’s so quiet’s a grave. No place for a high-mettled chap.”

“Does he get on well with his father?”

“Well enough. I reckon Passon’s no notion what fancies lay hold on a young fellow or how powerful strong and masterful they be.”

“Very likely not.”

Trixie smoothed her apron and, catching sight of her reflection in a wall-glass, tidied her hair. She did this without coquetry and yet, Alleyn thought, with a perfect awareness of her own devastating femininity.

“And so —?” he said.

“It was a bit of fun. No harm come of it. Or didn’t ought to of. He’s a proper good chap.”

“Did something come of it?”

She giggled. “Sure enough. Ernie seen us. Last spring ’twas, one evening up to Copse Forge.” She looked again at the wall-glass but abstractedly, as if she saw in it not herself as she was now but as she had been on the evening she evoked. “Twasn’t nothing for him to fret hisself over, but he’s a bit daft-like, is Ern.”

“What did he do about it?”

Nothing, it seemed, for a long time. He had gaped at them and then turned away. They had heard him stumble down the path through the copse. It was Trixie’s particular talent not so much to leave the precise character of the interrupted idyll undefined as to suggest by this omission that it was of no particular importance. Ernie had gone, Ralph Stayne had become uneasy and embarrassed. He and Trixie parted company and that was the last time they had met, Alleyn gathered, for dalliance. Ralph had not returned to South Mardian for several week-ends. When summer came, she believed him to have gone abroad during the long vacation. She answered all Alleyn’s questions very readily and apparently with precision.

“In the end,” Alleyn suggested, “did Ernie make mischief, or what?”

“So he did, then. After Camilla came back, ’twas.”

“Why then, particularly?”

“Reckon he knew what was in the wind. He’s not so silly but what he doesn’t notice. Easy for all to see Mr. Ralph’s struck down powerful strong by her.”

“But were they ever seen together?”

“No, not they.”

“Well, then —”

“He’d been courting her in London. Maids up to castle heard his great-auntie giving him a terrible rough-tonguing and him saying if Camilla would have him he’d marry her come-fine-or-foul.”

“But where,” Alleyn asked patiently, “does Ernie come in?”

Ernie, it appeared, was linked up with the maids at the castle. He was in the habit of drifting up there on Sunday afternoon, when, on their good-natured sufferance, he would stand inside the door of the servants’ hall, listening to their talk and, occasionally, contributing an item himself. Thus he had heard all about Dame Alice’s strictures upon her great-nephew’s attachment to Camilla. Ernie had been able, as it were, to pay his way by describing his own encounter with Ralph and Trixie in the copse. The elderly parlour-maid, a gossip of Trixie’s, lost no time in acquainting her of the whole conversation. Thus the age-old mechanics of village intercommunication were neatly demonstrated to Alleyn.

“Did you mind,” he asked, “about this tittle-tattle?”

“Lor’, no,” she said. “All they get out of life, I reckon, them old maidens.”

“Did anyone else hear of these matters?”

She looked at him with astonishment.

“Certain-sure. Why wouldn’t they?”

“Did the Guiser know, do you think?”

“He did, then. And was so full of silly notions as a baby, him being Chapel and terrible narrow in his views.”

“Who told him?”

“Why,” she said, “Ernie, for sure. He told, and his dad went raging and preachifying to Dame Alice and to Mr. Ralph saying he’d tell Passon. Mr. Ralph come and had a tell with me, axing me what he ought to do. And I told him, ‘Pay no ’tention: hard words break no bones and no business of Guiser’s, when all’s said.’ Course,” Trixie added, “Mr. Ralph was upset for fear his young lady might get to hear of it.”