Ngaio Marsh - Off With His Head

Serving in the private bar was the publican’s daughter, Trixie Plowman, a fine ruddy young woman with a magnificent figure and bearing. When Camilla arrived there was nobody else in the Private, but in the Public beyond she again saw her uncle, Ernest Andersen. He grinned and shuffled his feet.

Camilla leant over the bar and looked into the Public. ‘Why don’t you come over here, Uncle Ernie?’ she called.

He muttered something about the Public being good enough for him. His dog, invisible to Camilla, whined.

‘Well, fancy!’ Trixie exclaimed. ‘When it’s your own niece after so long and speaking so nice.’

‘Never mind,’ Camilla said cheerfully. ‘I expect he’s forgotten he ever had a niece.’

Ernie could be heard to say that no doubt she was too upperty for the likes of them-all, anyhow.

‘No I’m not,’ Camilla ejaculated indignantly. ‘That’s just what I’m not. Oh dear!’

‘Never mind,’ Trixie said, and made the kind of face that alluded to weakness of intellect. Ernie smiled and mysteriously raised his eyebrows.

‘Though of course,’ Trixie conceded, ‘I must say it is a long time since we seen you,’ and she added with a countrywoman’s directness: ‘Not since your poor mum was brought back and laid to rest.’

‘Five years,’ said Camilla nodding.

‘That’s right.’

‘Ar,’ Ernie interjected loudly, ‘and no call for that if she’d bided homealong and wed one of her own. Too mighty our Bessie was, and brought so low’s dust as a consequence.’

‘That may be one way of looking at it,’ Trixie said loftily. ‘I must say it’s not mine. That dog of yours stinks,’ she added.

‘Same again,’ Ernie countered morosely.

‘She wasn’t brought as low as dust,’ Camilla objected indignantly. ‘She was happily married to my father who loved her like anything. He’s never really got over her death.’

Camilla, as brilliantly sad as she had been happy, looked at Trixie and said: ‘They were in love. They married for love.’

‘So they did, then, and a wonderful thing it was for her,’ Trixie said comfortably. She drew a half-pint and pointedly left Ernie alone with it.

‘Killed ’er, didn’t it?’ Ernie demanded of his boots. ‘For all ’is great ’ordes of pelf and unearthly pride, ’e showed ’er the path to the grave.’

‘No. Oh, don’t! How can you!’

‘Never you heed,’ Trixie said and beckoned Camilla with a jerk of her head to the far end of the Private bar. ‘He’s queer,’ she said. ‘Not soft, mind, but queer. Don’t let it upset you.’

‘I had a message from Grandfather saying I could come. I thought they wanted to be friendly.’

‘And maybe they do. Ernie’s different. What’ll you take, maid?’

‘Cider, please. Have one yourself, Trixie.’

There was a slight floundering noise on the stairs outside, followed by the entrance of Mrs Bünz. She had removed her cloak and all but one of her scarves and was cosy in Cotswold wool and wooden beads.

‘Good evening,’ she said pleasantly. ‘And what an evening! Snowing again!’

‘Good evening, ma’am,’ Trixie said, and Camilla, brightening up because she thought Mrs Bünz such a wonderful ‘character makeup’, said:

‘I know. Isn’t it too frightful!’

Mrs Bünz had arrived at the bar and Trixie said: ‘Will you take anything just now?’

‘Thank you,’ said Mrs Bünz. ‘A noggin will buck me up. Am I right in thinking that I am in the Mead Country?’

Trixie caught Camilla’s eye and then, showing all her white teeth in the friendliest of grins, said: ‘Us don’t serve mead over the bar, ma’am, though it’s made hereabouts by them that fancies it.’

Mrs Bünz leant her elbow in an easy manner on the counter. ‘By the Old Guiser,’ she suggested, ‘for example?’

She was accustomed to the singular little pauses that followed her remarks. As she looked from one to the other of her hearers she blinked and smiled at them and her rosy cheeks bunched themselves up into shiny knobs. She was like an illustration to a tale by the brothers Grimm.

‘Would that be Mr William Andersen you mean, then?’ Trixie asked.

Mrs Bünz nodded waggishly.

Camilla started to say something and changed her mind. In the Public, Ernie cleared his throat.

‘I can’t serve you with anything then, ma’am?’ asked Trixie.

‘Indeed you can. I will take zider,’ decided Mrs Bünz, carefully regional. Camilla made an involuntary snuffling noise and, to cover it up, said: ‘William Andersen’s my grandfather. Do you know him?’

This was not comfortable for Mrs Bünz, but she smiled and smiled and nodded and, as she did so, she told herself that she would never never master the extraordinary vagaries of class in Great Britain.

‘I have had the pleasure to meet him,’ she said. ‘This evening. On my way. A beautiful old gentleman,’ she added firmly.

Camilla looked at her with astonishment.

‘Beautiful?’

‘Ach, yes. The spirit,’ Mrs Bünz explained, waving her paws, ‘the raciness, the élan!’

‘Oh,’ said Camilla dubiously. ‘I see.’ Mrs Bünz sipped her cider and presently took a letter from her bag and laid it on the bar. ‘I was asked to deliver this,’ she said, ‘to someone staying here. Perhaps you can help me?’

Trixie glanced at it. ‘It’s for you, dear,’ she said to Camilla. Camilla took it. Her cheeks flamed like poppies and she looked with wonder at Mrs Bünz.

‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘but I don’t quite – I mean – are you –?’

‘A chance encounter,’ Mrs Bünz said airily. ‘I was delighted to help.’

Camilla murmured a little politeness, excused herself and sat down in the inglenook to read her letter.

Dear Enchanting Camilla (she read),

Don’t be angry with me for coming home this week. I know you said I mustn’t follow you, but truly I had to because of the Mardian Morris and Christmas. I shan’t come near you at the pub and I won’t ring you up. But please be in church on Sunday. When you sing I shall see your breath going up in little clouds and I shall puff away too like a train so that at least we shall be doing something together. From this you will perceive that I love you.

Ralph

Camilla read this letter about six times in rapid succession and then put it in the pocket of her trousers. She would have liked to slip it under her thick sweater but was afraid it might fall out at the other end.

Her eyes were like stars. She told herself she ought to be miserable because after all she had decided it was no go about Ralph Stayne. But somehow the letter was an antidote to misery, and there went her heart singing like a lunatic.

Mrs Bünz had retired with her cider to the far side of the inglenook where she sat gazing – rather wistfully, Camilla thought – into the fire. The door of the Public opened. There was an abrupt onset of male voices; blurred and leisurely; unformed country voices. Trixie moved round to serve them, and her father, Ron Plowman, the landlord, came in to help. There was a general bumble of conversation. ‘I had forgotten,’ Camilla thought, ‘what they sound like. I’ve never found out about them. Where do I belong?’

She heard Trixie say: ‘So she is, then, and setting in yonder.’

A silence and a clearing of throats. Camilla saw that Mrs Bünz was looking at her. She got up and went to the bar. Through in the Public on the far side of Trixie’s plump shoulder she could see her five uncles: Dan, Andy, Nat, Chris and Ernie, and her grandfather, old William. There was something odd about seeing them like that, as if they were images in a glass and not real persons at all. She found this impression disagreeable and to dispel it called out loudly: