Ngaio Marsh - Off With His Head

‘It seems to be about old Lord Rekkage, Aunt Akky.’

‘Lor’! Loony Rekkage. Hunted with the Quorn till he fell on his head. Like you, Dulcie. Went as straight as the best, but mad. Don’t you ’gree?’ she asked Mrs Bünz, looking at her for the first time.

Mrs Bünz began to speak with desperate rapidity. ‘When he died,’ she gabbled, shutting her eyes, ‘Lord Rekkage assigned to me, as vice-president of the Friends of British Folklore, the task of examining certain papers.’

‘Have you telephoned about the boilers, Dulcie?’

‘Aunt Akky, the lines are down.’

‘Well, order a hack and ride.’

‘Aunt Akky, we haven’t any horses now.’

‘I keep forgettin’.’

‘But allow me,’ cried Mrs Bünz, ‘allow me to take a message on my return. I shall be so delighted.’

‘Are you ridin’?’

‘I have a little car.’

‘Motorin’? Very civil of you, I must say. Just tell William Andersen at the Copse that our boiler’s burst, if you will. Much obliged. Me niece’ll see you out. Ask you to ’scuse me.’

She held out her short arm and Miss Mardian began to haul at it.

‘No, no! Ach, please. I implore you!’ shouted Mrs Bünz, wringing her hands. ‘Dame Alice! Before you go! I have driven for two days. If you will listen for one minute. On my knees –’

‘If you’re beggin’,’ said Dame Alice, ‘it’s no good. Nothin’ to give away these days. Dulcie.’

‘But, no, no, no! I am not begging. Or only,’ urged Mrs Bünz, ‘for a moment’s attention. Only for von liddle vord.’

‘Dulcie, I’m goin’.’

‘Yes, Aunt Akky.’

‘Guided as I have been –’

‘I don’t like fancy religions,’ said Dame Alice, who with the help of her niece had arrived at the door and opened it.

‘Does the Winter Solstice mean nothing to you? Does the Mardian Mawris Dance of the Five Sons mean nothing? Does –’ Something in the two faces that confronted her caused Mrs Bünz to come to a stop. Dame Alice’s upper denture noisily capsized on its opposite number. In the silence that followed this mishap there was an outbreak from the geese. A man’s voice shouted and a door slammed.

‘I don’t know,’ said Dame Alice with difficulty and passion, ‘I don’t know who yar or what chupter. But you’ll oblige me by takin’ yerself off.’ She turned on her great-niece. ‘You,’ she said, ‘are a blitherin’ idiot. I’m angry. I’m goin’.’

She turned and toddled rapidly into the hall.

‘Good evening, Aunt Akky. Good evening, Dulcie,’ said a man’s voice in the hall. ‘I wondered if I –’

‘I’m angry with you, too. I’m goin’ upshtairs. I don’t want to shee anyone. Bad for me to get fusshed. Get rid of that woman.’

‘Yes, Aunt Akky.’

‘And you behave yershelf, Ralph.’

‘Yes, Aunt Akky.’

‘Bring me a whishky and shoda to my room, girl.’

‘Yes, Aunt Akky.’

‘Damn theshe teeth.’

Mrs Bünz listened distractedly to the sound of two pairs of retreating feet. All by herself in that monstrous room she made a wide gesture of frustration and despair. A large young man came in.

‘Oh, sorry,’ he said. ‘Good evening. I’m afraid something’s happened. I’m afraid Aunt Akky’s in a rage.’

‘Alas! Alas!’

‘My name’s Ralph Stayne. I’m her nephew. She’s a bit tricky, is Aunt Akky. I suppose being ninety-four, she’s got a sort of right to it.’

‘Alas! Alas!’

‘I’m most frightfully sorry. If there’s anything one could do?’ offered the young man. ‘Only I might as well tell you I’m pretty heavily in the red myself.’

‘You are her nephew?’

‘Her great-great-nephew actually. I’m the local parson’s son. Dulcie’s my aunt.’

‘My poor young man,’ said Mrs Bünz, but she said it absentmindedly: there was speculation in her eye. ‘You could indeed help me,’ she said. ‘Indeed, indeed, you could. Listen. I will be brief. I have driven here from Bapple-under-Baccomb in Warwickshire. Owing partly to the weather, I must admit, it has taken me two days. I don’t grudge them, no, no, no. But I digress. Mr Stayne, I am a student of the folk dance, both central European and – particularly – English. My little monographs on the Abram Circle Bush and the symbolic tea-pawt have been praised. I am a student, I say, and a performer. I can still cut a pretty caper, Mr Stayne. Ach yes, godamercy.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Godamercy. It is one of your vivid sixteenth century English ejaculations. My little circle has revived it. For fun,’ Mrs Bünz explained.

‘I’m afraid I –’

‘This is merely to satisfy you that I may in all humility claim to be something of an expert. My status, Mr Stayne, was indeed of such a degree as to encourage the late Lord Rekkage –’

‘Do you mean Loony Rekkage?’

‘– to entrust no less than three Saratoga trunkfuls of precious precious family documents to my care. It was one of these documents, examined by myself for the first time the day before yesterday, that has led me to Mardian Castle. I have it with me. You shall see it.’

Ralph Stayne had begun to look extremely uncomfortable.

‘Yes, well now, look here, Mrs –’

‘Bünz.’

‘Mrs Burns, I’m most awfully sorry but if you’re heading the way I think you are then I’m terribly afraid it’s no go.’

Mrs Bünz suddenly made a magnificent gesture towards the windows.

‘Tell me this,’ she said. ‘Tell me. Out there in the courtyard, mantled in snow and surrounded at the moment by poultry, I can perceive, and with emotion I perceive it, a slighly inclined and rectangular shape. Mr Stayne, is that object the Mardian Stone? The dolmen of the Mardians?’

‘Yes,’ said Ralph. ‘That’s right. It is.’

‘The document to which I have referred concerns itself with the Mardian Stone. And with the Dance of the Five Sons.’

‘Does it, indeed?’

‘It suggests, Mr Stayne, that unknown to research, to experts, to folk dancers and to the societies, the so-called Mardian Mawris (the richest immeasurably of all English ritual dance-plays) was being performed annually at the Mardian Stone during the Winter Solstice up to as recently as fifteen years ago.’

‘Oh,’ said Ralph.

‘And not only that,’ Mrs Bünz whispered excitedly, advancing her face to within twelve inches of his, ‘there seems to be no reason why it should not have survived to this very year, this Winter Solstice, Mr Stayne – this very week. Now, do you answer me? Do you tell me if this is so?’

Ralph said: ‘I honestly think it would be better if you forgot all about it. Honestly.’

‘But you don’t deny?’

He hesitated, began to speak and checked himself.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I certainly don’t deny that a very short, very simple and not, I’m sure, at all important sort of dance-play is kept up once a year in Mardian. It is. We just happen to have gone on doing it.’

‘Ach, blessed Saint Use and Wont.’

‘Er – yes. But we have been rather careful not to sort of let it be known because everyone agrees it’d be too ghastly if the artsy-craftsy boys – I’m sure,’ Ralph said, turning scarlet, ‘I don’t mean to be offensive but you know what can happen. Ye olde goings-on all over the village. Charabancs even. My family have all felt awfully strongly about it and so does the Old Guiser.’

Mrs Bünz pressed her gloved hands to her lips. ‘Did you, did you say “Old Guiser”?’

‘Sorry. It’s a sort of nickname. He’s William Andersen, really. The local smith. A perfectly marvellous old boy,’ Ralph said and inexplicably again turned scarlet. ‘They’ve been at the Copse Smithy for centuries, the Andersens,’ he added. ‘As long as we’ve been at Mardian if it comes to that. He feels jolly strongly about it.’