Off with His Head Read online

  ‘I’d say so, Mr Alleyn,’ Fox agreed cheerfully.

  Dr Otterly said: ‘Am I to be informed?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. Hallo, who’s this?’

  In the hollow of the lane, pressed into the bank to make way for the oncoming car, were a man and a woman. She wore a shawl pulled over her head and he a woollen cap and there was a kind of intensity in their stillness. As the car passed the woman looked up. It was Trixie Plowman.

  ‘Chris hasn’t lost much time,’ Dr Otterly muttered.

  ‘Are they engaged?’

  ‘They were courting,’ Dr Otterly said shortly. ‘I understood it was all off.’

  ‘Because of the Guiser?’

  ‘I didn’t say so.’

  ‘You said Chris hadn’t lost much time, though. Did the Guiser disapprove?’

  ‘Something of the sort. Village gossip.’

  ‘I’ll swap Simon’s goings-on for your bit of gossip.’

  Dr Otterly shifted in his seat. ‘I don’t know so much about that,’ he said uneasily. ‘I’ll think it over.’

  They returned to the fug and shadows of their room in the pub. Alleyn was silent for some minutes and Fox busied himself with his notes. Dr Otterly eyed them both and seemed to be in two minds whether or not to speak. Presently, Alleyn walked over to the window. ‘The weather’s hardening. I think it may freeze tonight,’ he said.

  Fox looked over the top of his spectacles at Dr Otterly, completed his notes and joined Alleyn at the window.

  ‘Woman,’ he observed. ‘In the lane. Looks familiar. Dogs.’

  ‘It’s Miss Dulcie Mardian.’

  ‘Funny how they will do it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Go for walks with dogs.’

  ‘She’s coming into the pub.’

  ‘All that fatuous tarradiddle,’ Dr Otterly suddenly fulminated, ‘about where he was during the triple sword dance! Saying he didn’t go behind the dolmen. Sink me, he stood there and squealed like a colt when he saw Ralph grab the sword. I don’t understand it and I don’t like it. Lies.’

  Alleyn said: ‘I don’t think Simon lied.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘He says that during the first dance, the triple sword dance, he was nowhere near the dolmen. I believe that to be perfectly true.’

  ‘But rot my soul, Alleyn—I swear—’

  ‘Equally, I believe that he didn’t see Ralph Stayne grab Ernest Andersen’s sword.’

  ‘Now, look here—’

  Alleyn turned to Dr Otterly. ‘Of course, he didn’t. He was well away from the scene of action. He’d gone off-stage to keep a date with a lady friend.’

  ‘A date? What lady friend for pity’s sake?’

  Trixie came in.

  ‘Miss Dulcie Mardian,’ she said, ‘to see Mr Alleyn, if you please.’

  CHAPTER 9

  Question of Fancy

  Alleyn found it a little hard to decide quite how addle-pated Dulcie Mardian was. She had a strange vague smile and a terribly inconsequent manner. Obviously, she was one of those people who listen to less than half of what is said to them. Yet, could the strangeness of some of her replies be attributed only to this?

  She waited for him in the tiny entrance hall of the Green Man. She wore a hat that had been mercilessly sat upon, an old hacking waterproof and a pair of down-at-heel Newmarket boots. She carried a stick. Her dogs, a bull-terrier and a spaniel, were on leashes and had wound them round her to such an extent that she was tied up like a parcel.

  ‘How do you do,’ she said, ‘I won’t come in. Aunt Akky asked me to say she’d be delighted if you’d dine tonight. Quarter past eight for half past and don’t dress if it’s a bother. Oh, yes, I nearly forgot. She’s sorry it’s such short notice. I hope you’ll come because she gets awfully cross if people don’t, when they’re asked. Goodbye.’

  She plunged a little but was held firmly pinioned by her dogs and Alleyn was able to say: ‘Thank you very much,’ collect his thoughts and accept.

  ‘And I’m afraid I can’t change,’ he added.

  ‘I’ll tell her. Don’t, dogs.’

  ‘May I—?’

  ‘It’s all right, thank you. I’ll kick them a little.’

  She kicked the bull-terrier, who rather half-heartedly snapped back at her.

  ‘I suppose,’ Dulcie said, ‘you ran away to be a policeman when you were a boy.’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Isn’t it awful about old William? Aunt Akky’s furious. She was in a bad mood anyway because of Ralph, and this has put her out more than ever.’

  Trixie came through the passage and went into the Public Bar.

  ‘Which reminds me,’ Dulcie said, but didn’t elucidate what reminded her of what. It was much too public a place for Alleyn to pursue the conversation to any professional advantage, if there was any to be had. He asked her if she’d come into their improvised office for a few minutes, and she treated the suggestion as if it was an improper advance.

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said, attempting to draw herself up but greatly hampered by her dogs. ‘Quite impossible, I’m afraid.’

  Alleyn said: ‘There are one or two points about this case that we’d like to discuss with you. Perhaps, if I came a little early tonight? Or if Dame Alice goes to bed early, I might—’

  ‘I go up at the same time as my aunt. We shall be an early party, I’m afraid,’ Dulcie said stiffly. ‘Aunt Akky is sure you’ll understand.’

  ‘Of course, yes. But if I might have a word or two with you in private—’

  He stopped, noticing her agitation.

  Perhaps her involuntary bondage to the bull-terrier and the spaniel had put into Dulcie’s head some strange fantasy of jeopardized maidenhood. A look of terrified bravado appeared on her face. There was even a trace of gratification.

  ‘You don’t,’ Dulcie astoundingly informed him, ‘follow with the South Mardian and Adjacent Hunts without learning how to look after yourself. No, by Jove!’

  The bull-terrier and the spaniel had begun to fight each other. Dulcie beat them impartially and was forced to accept Alleyn’s help in extricating herself from a now quite untenable position.

  ‘Hands off,’ she ordered him brusquely as soon as it was remotely possible for him to leave her to her own devices. ‘Behave yourself,’ she advised him, and was suddenly jerked from his presence by the dogs.

  Alleyn was left rubbing his nose.

  When he rejoined the others, he asked Dr Otterly how irresponsible he considered Miss Mardian to be.

  ‘Dulcie?’ Dr Otterly said. ‘Well—’

  ‘In confidence.’

  ‘Not certifiable. No. Eccentric, yes. Lots of in-breeding there. She took a bad toss in the hunting-field about twenty years ago. Kicked on the head. Never ridden since. She’s odd, certainly.’

  ‘She talked as if she rode to hounds every day of the week.’

  ‘Did she? Odd, yes. Did she behave as if you were going to make improper proposals?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She does that occasionally. Typical spinster’s hallucination. Dame Alice thinks she waxes and wanes emotionally with the moon. I’d give it a more clinical classification but you can take your choice. And now, if you don’t mind, Alleyn, I really am running terribly late.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘I won’t ask you for an explanation of your extraordinary pronouncement just now. Um?’

  ‘Won’t you? That’s jolly big of you.’

  ‘You go to hell,’ Dr Otterly said without much rancour and took himself off.

  Fox said: ‘Bailey and Thompson have rigged up a workroom somewhere in the barn and got cracking on dabs. Carey saw the gardener’s boy from the castle. He went down yesterday with the note from the gardener himself about the slasher. He didn’t see the Guiser. Ernie took the note in to him and came back and said the Guiser would do the job if he could.’

  ‘I thought as much.’

  ‘Carey’s talked to the lad who
was to stand in for Ernie: Dan’s boy, he is. He says his granddad arrived on the scene at the last moment. Ernie was dressed up in the Guiser’s clothes and this boy was wearing Ernie’s. The Guiser didn’t say much. He grabbed Ernie and tried to drag the clothes off him. Nobody explained anything. They just changed over and did the show.’

  ‘Yes, I see. Let’s take another gollop of fresh air, Fox, and then I think I’ll have a word with the child of nature.’

  ‘Who? Trixie?’

  ‘That, as Mr Begg would say, is the little number. A fine cheerful job straight out of the romps of Milk Wood. Where’s the side door?’

  They found it and walked out into the backyard.

  ‘And there,’ Alleyn said, ‘is the barn. They rehearsed in here. Let’s have a look, shall we?’

  They walked down the brick path and found themselves by a little window in the rear of the barn. A raincoat had been hung over it on the inside. ‘Bailey’s,’ Alleyn said. ‘They’ll be hard at it.’

  He stood there, filling his pipe and looking absently at the small window. ‘Somebody’s cleaned a peep-hole on the outside,’ he said. ‘Or it looks like a peep-hole.’

  He stooped down while Fox watched him indulgently. Between the brick path and the wall of the barn there was a strip of unmelted snow.

  ‘Look,’ Alleyn said and pointed.

  Mrs Bünz had worn rubber overboots with heels. Night after night she had stood there and, on the last night, the impressions she made had frozen into the fresh fall of snow. It was a bitterly cold, sheltered spot and the thaw had not yet reached it. There they were, pointing to the wall, under the window: two neat footprints over the ghosts of many others.

  ‘Size six. Not Camilla Campion and Trixie’s got smallish feet, too. I bet it was the Teutonic folklorist having a sly peep at rehearsals. Look here, now. Here’s a nice little morsel of textbook stuff for you.’

  A naked and ragged thorn bush grew by the window. Caught up in one of its twigs was a tuft of grey-blue woollen material.

  ‘Handspun,’ Alleyn said, ‘I bet you.’

  ‘Keen!’ Fox said, turning his back to a razor-like draught.

  ‘If you mean the lady,’ Alleyn rejoined, ‘you couldn’t be more right, Brer Fox. As keen as a knife. A fanatic, in fact. Come on.’

  They moved round to the front of the barn and went in. The deserted interior was both cold and stuffy. There was a smell of sacking, cobwebs and perhaps the stale sweat of the dancers. Cigarettes had been trodden out along the sides. The dust raised by the great down-striking capers had settled again over everything. At the far end, double doors led into an inner room and had evidently been dragged together by Bailey and Thompson, whose voices could be heard on the other side.

  ‘We won’t disturb them,’ Alleyn said, ‘but, if those doors were open as I should say they normally are, there’d be a view into this part of the barn from the little window.’

  ‘It’d be a restricted view, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘It’d be continually interrupted by figures coming between the observer and the performers and limited by the size of the opening. I tell you what, Foxkin,’ Alleyn said, ‘unless we can “find” as the Mardian ladies would say, pretty damn’ quickly, we’ll have a hell of a lot of deadwood to clear away in this case.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Such as the Andersen boys’ business instincts, for one thing. And tracking down Master Ralph’s peccadillos for another. And the Bünz for a third. And just what Ernie got up to before the show. And Chris’s love pangs. All that and more and quite likely none of it of any account in the long run.’

  ‘None?’

  ‘Well—there’s one item that I think may ring the bell.’

  Bailey, hearing their voices, wrenched open one of the double doors and stuck his head out.

  ‘No dabs anywhere that you wouldn’t expect, Mr Alleyn,’ he reported. ‘A few stains that look like blood on the Andersens’ dancing pants and sleeves. Nothing on their swords. They handled the body, of course. The slasher’s too much burnt for anything to show, and the harness on the horse affair’s all mucked up with tar.’

  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.’

  II

  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 geture 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 will 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-naturedly 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 has 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.’

&n
bsp; ‘Does he spend much time at home, here?’

  ‘During the week he’s up to Biddlefast lawyering, but most weekends 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 weekends. 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?’