Ngaio Marsh - Death of a Fool

Mrs. Bünz was blowing her nose. She nodded and turned away. She tramped out through the side archway and disappeared.

Dan made a sign to his brothers. They faced about and went tinkling across the courtyard and through the centre archway. Ralph Stayne and Simon followed. The watchers took up their appointed places and Dr. Otterly stepped out into the courtyard and tucked his fiddle under his chin.

The front door burst open and Dulcie staggered out bearing a hunting horn and a hideous gong slung between two tusks. She stumbled and, in recovering, struck the gong smartly with the horn. It gave out a single and extremely strident note that echoed forbiddingly round the courtyard.

As if this were an approved signal, Mrs. Bünz, half-way down the drive, started up the engine of her car and Dr. Otterly gave a scrape on his fiddle.

“Well,” Alleyn thought, “it’s a rum go and no mistake but we’re off.”

Mrs. Bünz’s car, with repeated blasts on the horn, churned in low gear up the drive and turned to the right behind the curved wall. It stopped. There was a final and prolonged hoot. Dr. Otterly lowered his bow.

“This was when I went off to see what was up,” he said.

“Right. Do so, please.”

He did so, a rather lonely figure in the empty courtyard.

Mrs. Bünz, followed by a constable, returned and stood just within the side entrance. She was as white as a sheet and trembling.

“We could hear the Guiser,” Dame Alice informed them, “yellin’.”

Nobody was yelling this time. On the far side of the semi-circular wall, out of sight of their audience and lit by the bonfire, the performers stood and stared at each other. Dr. Otterly faced them. The police hovered anonymously. Mr. Fox, placidly bespectacled, contemplated them all in turn. His notebook lay open on his massive palm.

“This,” he said, “is where the old gentleman arrived and found you ” — he jabbed a forefinger at Ernie — “dressed up for his part and young Bill dressed up for yours. He grabbed his clothes off you ” — another jab at Ernie — “and got into them himself. And you changed with young Bill. Take all that as read. What was said?”

Simon, Dr. Otterly and Ralph Stayne all spoke together. Mr. Fox pointed his pencil at Dr. Otterly. “Yes, thank you, Doctor?” he prompted.

“When I came out,” Dr. Otterly said, “he was roaring like a bull, but you couldn’t make head or tail of it. He got hold of Ernie and practically lugged the clothes off him.”

Ernie swore comprehensively. “Done it to spite me,” he said. “Old bastard!”

“Was any explanation given,” Fox pursued, “about the note that had been handed round saying Ernie could do it?”

There was no answer. “Nobody,” Fox continued, “spotted that it hadn’t been written about the dance but about that slasher there?”

Ernie, meeting the flabbergasted gaze of his brothers, slapped his knees and roared out, “I foxed the lot of you proper, I did. Not so silly as what I let on to be, me!”

Nat said profoundly, “You bloody great fool.”

Ernie burst into his high rocketing laugh.

Fox held up his hand. “Shut up,” he said and nodded to one of his men, who came forward with the swords in a sacking bundle and gave them out to the dancers.

Ernie began to swing and slash with his sword.

“Where’s mine?” he demanded. “This’un’s not mine. Mine’s sharp.”

“That’ll do, you,” Fox said. “You’re not having a sharp one this time. Places, everyone. In the same order as before, if you please.”

Dr. Otterly nodded and went out through the archway into the arena.

“Now,” Dulcie said, “they really begin, don’t they, Aunt Akky?”

A preliminary scrape or two and then the jiggling reiterative tune. Out through the archway came Ernie, white-faced this time instead of black but wearing his black cap and gloves. His movements at first were less flamboyant than they had been on Wednesday, but perhaps he gathered inspiration from the fiddle, for they soon became more lively. He pranced and curvetted and began to slash out with his sword.

“This, I take it, is whiffling,” Alleyn said. “A kind of purification, isn’t it, Rector?”

“I believe so. Yes.”

Ernie completed his round and stood to one side. His brothers came out at a run, their bells jerking. Ernie joined them and they performed the Mardian Morris together, wearing their bells and leaving their swords in a heap near Dr. Otterly. This done they removed their bells and took up their swords. Ernie threaded his red ribbon. They stared at each other and, furtively, at Alleyn.

Now followed the entry of the hermaphrodite and the Hobby-Horse. Ralph Stayne’s extinguisher of a skirt, suspended from his armpits, swung and bounced. His man’s jacket spread over it. His hat, half topper, half floral toque, was jammed down over his forehead. The face beneath was incongruously grave.

“Crack’s” iron head poked and gangled monstrously on the top of its long canvas neck. The cheese-shaped body swung rhythmically and its skirt trailed on the ground. “Crack’s” jaws snapped and its ridiculous rudiment of a tail twitched busily. Together these two came prancing in.

Dulcie again said, “Here comes ‘Crack,’ ” and her great-aunt looked irritably at her as if she too were bent on a complete pastiche.

“Crack” finished his entry dead centre, facing the steps. A voice that seemed to have no point of origin but to be merely there asked anxiously:

“I say, sorry, but do you want all the fun and games?”

“Crack’s” neck opened a little, rather horridly, and Simon’s face could be seen behind the orifice.

“Everything,” Alleyn said.

“Oh, righty-ho. Look out, ladies, here I come,” the voice said. The neck closed. “Crack” swung from side to side as if the monster ogled its audience and made up its mind where to hunt. Camilla moved closer to Trixie and looked apprehensively from Alleyn to Ralph Stayne. Ralph signalled to her, putting his thumb up as if to reassure her of his presence.

“Crack’s” jaws snapped. It began to make pretended forays upon an imaginary audience. Dr. Otterly, still fiddling, moved nearer to Camilla and nodded to her encouragingly. “Crack” darted suddenly at Camilla. She ran like a hare before it, across the courtyard and into Ralph’s arms. “Crack” went off at the rear archway.

“Just what they did before,” Dulcie ejaculated. “Isn’t it, Aunt Akky? Isn’t it, Sam?”

The Rector murmured unhappily and Dame Alice said, “I do wish to goodness you’d shut up, Dulcie.”

“Well, I’m sorry, Aunt Akky, but — ow !” Dulcie ejaculated.

Alleyn had blown his whistle.

Dr. Otterly stopped playing. The Andersen brothers turned their faces toward Alleyn.

“One moment,” Alleyn said.

He moved to the bottom step and turned a little to take in both the party of three above him and the scattered groups in the courtyard.

“I want a general check, here,” he said. “Mrs. Bünz, are you satisfied that so far this was exactly what happened?”

Bailey had turned his torchlight on Mrs. Bünz. Her mouth was open. Her lips began to move.

“I’m afraid I can’t hear you,” Alleyn said. “Will you come a little nearer?”

She came very slowly towards him.

“Now,” he said.

“ ]a . It is what was done.”

“And what happened next?”

She moistened her lips. “There was the entry of the Fool,” she said.

“What did he do, exactly?”

She made an odd and very ineloquent gesture.

“He goes round,” she said. “Round and round.”