Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 7: Off With His Head, Singing in the Shrouds, False Scent. Ngaio Marsh
had a more robust motor car I could travel with greater security. Perhaps, for example, I should be able to ascend in frost with ease to Mardian Castle –’
‘Piece of cake,’ Simon Begg interjected.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘This job I was telling you about laughs at a stretch like that. Laughs at it.’
‘– I was going to say, to Mardian Castle on Wednesday evening. That is, if onlookers are permitted.’
‘It’s open to the whole village,’ Begg said uncomfortably. ‘Open house.’
‘Unhappily – most unhappily – I have antagonized your Guiser. Also, alas, Dame Alice.’
‘Not to worry,’ he muttered and added hurriedly, ‘it’s only a bit of fun, anyway.’
‘Fun? Yes. It is also,’ Mrs Bünz added, ‘an antiquarian jewel, a precious survival. For example, five swords instead of six, have I never before seen. Unique! I am persuaded of this.’
‘Really?’ he said politely. ‘Now, Mrs Bünz, about this car –’
Each of them hoped to placate the other. Mrs Bünz did not, therefore, correct his pronunciation.
‘I am interested,’ she said genially, ‘in your description of this auto.’
‘I’ll run it up here tomorrow and you can look it over.’
They eyed each other speculatively.
‘Tell me,’ Mrs Bünz pursued, ‘in this dance you are, I believe, the Hobby Horse?’
‘That’s right. It’s a wizard little number, you know, this job –’
‘You are a scholar of folklore, perhaps?’
‘Me? Not likely.’
‘But you perform?’ she wailed.
‘Just one of those things. The Guiser’s as keen as mustard and so’s Dame Alice. Pity, in a way, I suppose, to let it fold up.’
‘Indeed, indeed. It would be a tragedy. Ach! A sin! I am, I must tell you, Mr Begg, an expert. I wish so much to ask you –’ Here, in spite of an obvious effort at self-control, Mrs Bünz became slightly tremulous. She leant forward, her rather prominent blue eyes misted with anxiety, her voice unconvincingly casual. ‘Tell me,’ she quavered, ‘at the moment of sacrifice, the moment when the Fool beseeches the Sons to spare him: something is spoken, is it not?’
‘I say!’ he ejaculated, staring at her, ‘you do know a lot about it, don’t you?’
She began in a terrific hurry to explain that all European mumming had a common origin: that it was only reasonable to expect a little dialogue.
‘We’re not meant to talk out of school,’ Simon muttered. ‘I think it’s all pretty corny, mind. Well, childish, really. After all, what the heck’s it matter?’
‘I assure you, I beg you to rest assured of my discretion. There is dialogue, no?’
‘The Guiser sort of natters at the others.’
Mrs Bünz, clutching frantically at straws of intelligence on a high wind of slang, flung out her fat little hands at him.
‘Ach, my good, kind young motor salesman,’ she pleaded, reminding him of her potential as a customer, ‘of your great generosity, tell me what are the words he natters to the ozzers?’
‘Honest, Mrs Bünz,’ he said with evident regret, ‘I don’t know. Honest! It’s what he’s always said. Seems all round the bend to me. I doubt if the boys themselves know. P’raps it’s foreign or something.’
Mrs Bünz looked like a cover-picture for a magazine called ‘Frustration’. ‘If it is foreign I would understand. I speak six European languages. Gott im Himmel, Mr Begg – what is it?’
His attention had wandered to the racing edition on the table before him. His face lit up and he jabbed at the paper with his finger.
‘Look at this!’ he said. ‘Here’s a turn-up! Could you beat it?’
‘I have not on my glasses.’
‘Running next Thursday,’ he read aloud, ‘in the three-fifteen. “Teutonic Dancer by Subsidize out of Substiteuton!” Laugh that off.’
‘I do not understand you.’
‘It’s a horse,’ he explained. ‘A race-horse. Talk about coincidence! Talk about omens!’
‘An omen?’ she asked, catching at a familiar word.
‘Good enough for me, anyway. You’re Teutonic, aren’t you, Mrs Bünz?’
‘Yes,’ she said patiently. ‘I am Teuton, yes.’
‘And we’ve been talking about Dancers, haven’t we? And I’ve suggested you Substitute another car for the one you’ve got? And if you have the little job I’ve been telling you about, well, I’ll be sort of Subsidized, won’t I? Look, it’s uncanny.’
Mrs Bünz rummaged in her pockets and produced her spectacles.
‘Ach, I understand. You will bet upon this horse?’
‘You can say that again.’
‘“Teutonic Dancer by Subsidize out of Sustiteuton!”’ she read slowly, and an odd look came over her face. ‘You are right, Mr Begg, it is strange. It may, as you say, be an omen.’
II
On the Sunday before Sword Wednesday, Camilla went after church to call upon her grandfather at Copse Forge. As she trudged through the snow she sang until the cold in her throat made her cough and then whistled until the frost on her lips made them too stiff. All through the week she had worked steadily at a part she was to play in next term’s showing and had done all her exercises every day. She had seen Ralph in church. They had smiled at each other, after which the organist, who was also the village postman, might have been the progeny of Orpheus and Saint Cecilia, so heavenly sweet did his piping sound to Camilla. Ralph had kept his promise not to come near her but she hurried away from church because she had the feeling that he might wait for her if he left before she did. And until she got her emotions properly sorted out, thought Camilla, that would never do.
The sun came out. She met a robin redbreast, two sparrows and a magpie. From somewhere beyond the woods came the distant unalarming plop of a shot-gun. As she plodded down the lane she saw the spiral of smoke that even on Sundays wavered up over the copse from the hidden forge.
Her grandfather and his two unmarried sons would be home from chapel-going in the nearby village of Yowford.
There was a footpath through the copse making a short cut from the road to the smithy. Camilla decided to take it, and had gone only a little way into the trees when she heard a sound that is always most deeply disturbing. Somewhere, hidden in the wood, a grown man was crying.
He cried boisterously without making any attempt to restrain his distress and Camilla guessed at once who he must be. She hesitated for a moment and then went forward. The path turned a corner by a thicket of evergreens and on the other side Camilla found her uncle, Ernie Andersen, lamenting over the body of his mongrel dog.
The dog was covered with sacking but its tail, horridly dead, stuck out at one end. Ernie crouched beside it, squatting on his heels with his great hands dangling, splay-fingered, between his knees. His face was beslobbered and blotched with tears. When he saw Camilla he cried, like a small boy, all the louder.
‘Why, Ernie!’ Camilla said, ‘you poor old thing.’
He broke into an angry torrent of speech,