Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 7: Off With His Head, Singing in the Shrouds, False Scent. Ngaio Marsh
said: ‘Ernie seen the message –’
‘Wait a bit,’ Alleyn said. ‘I think we’ll have it from him, if we may. What did you do, Ernie? What happened? You went into the forge, did you – and what?’
‘He’d no call,’ Ernie shouted astonishingly without changing his posture or shifting his gaze, ‘he’d no call to treat me like ’e done. Old sod.’
‘Answer what you’re axed, you damned young fool,’ Chris burst out, ‘and don’t talk silly.’ The brothers all began to tell Alleyn that Ernie didn’t mean what he said.
Alleyn held up his hand and they stopped. ‘Tell me what happened,’ he said to Ernie. ‘You went into the forge and what did you see?’
‘Ar?’ He turned his head and looked briefly at Alleyn. ‘Like Nat says. I seen the message pinned to his door.’
Alleyn drew from his coat pocket the copper-plate billhead with its pencilled message. It had been mounted between two sheets of glass by Bailey. He said: ‘Look at this, will you? Is this the message?’
Ernie took it in his hand and gave a great laugh. Fox took it away from him.
‘What did you do then?’ Alleyn asked.
‘Me? Like what it says. “Young Ern,” that’s me, “will have to.” There was his things hanging up ready: mask, clothes and old rabbity cap. So I puts ’em on; quick.’
‘Were you already dressed as the whiffling son?’
‘Didn’t matter. I put ’em on over. Quiet like. ’Case he heard and changed his mind. Out and away, quick. Into old bus and up the road. Whee-ee-ee!’ Ernie gave a small boy’s illustration of excessive speed. ‘I bet I looked right clever. I was the Fool I was. Driving fast to the dance. Whee-ee-ee!’
Dan suddenly buried his face in his hands. ‘’Tain’t decent,’ he said.
Alleyn took them through the scene after Ernie’s arrival. They said they had passed round the note and then sent it in to Dr Otterly by Dan’s young son, Bill, who was then dressed and black-faced in his role as understudy. Dr Otterly came out. The brothers added some last-minute instructions to the boy. When the clock struck nine, Dr Otterly went into the courtyard with his fiddle. It was at that moment they all heard Mrs Bünz’s car hooting and labouring up the drive. As they waited for their entrance music, the car appeared round the outer curve of the old wall with the Guiser rampant in the passenger’s seat. Dr Otterly heard the subsequent rumpus and went back to see what had happened.
It appeared that, during the late afternoon, the Guiser had fallen deeply asleep and had woken refreshed and fighting fit, only to hear his son driving away without him. Speechless with rage, he had been obliged to accept a hitch-hike from his enemy, Mrs Bünz.
‘He was jibbering when he got to us,’ Otterly said, ‘and pretty well incoherent. He grabbed Ernie and began hauling his Fool’s clothes off him.’
‘And how,’ Alleyn said to Ernie, ‘did you enjoy that?’
Ernie, to the evident perturbation of his brothers, flew into a retrospective rage. As far as Alleyn could make out, he had attempted to defy his father but had been hurriedly quelled by his brothers.
‘Ern didn’t want to whiffle,’ Dan said and they all confirmed this eagerly. Ernie had refused to dance if he couldn’t dance the Fool. Simon Begg had finally prevailed on him.
‘I done it for the Wing-Commander and not for another soul. He axed me and I done it. I went out and whiffled.’
From here, what they had to tell followed without addition the account Alleyn had already heard from Carey. None of the five sons had, at any stage of their performance, gone behind the dolmen to the spot where their father lay hidden. They were all positive the Guiser could neither have left the courtyard nor returned to it, alive or dead. They were equally and mulishly positive that no act of violence could have been done upon him during the period begun by his mock fall and terminated by the discovery of his decapitated body. They stuck to this, loudly repeating their argument and banging down their great palms on the table. It was impossible.
‘I take it,’ said Mr Fox during a pause, ‘that we don’t believe in fairies.’ He looked mildly round the table.
‘Not at the bottom of this garden, anyway,’ Alleyn muttered.
‘My Dad did, then,’ Ernie shouted.
‘Did what?’ Alleyn asked patiently.
‘Believe in fairies.’
Fox sighed heavily and made a note.
‘Did he,’ Alleyn continued, ‘believe in sacrifices too?’
The Guiser’s five sons fidgeted and said nothing.
‘The old idea,’ Alleyn said. ‘I may have got it wrong but in the earliest times, didn’t they sacrifice something – a bird, wasn’t it – on some of these old stones? At certain times of the year?’
After a further and protracted silence, Dr Otterly said: ‘No doubt they did.’
‘I take it that this Morris dance – cum-sword-dance-cum-mumming play – forgive me if I’ve got the terms muddled – is a survival of some such practice?’
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Dr Otterly said impatiently, and yet with the air of a man whose hobby horse is at the mounting-block. ‘Immeasurably the richest survival we have.’
‘Really? The ritual death of the Fool is the old mystery of sacrifice, isn’t it, with the promise of renewal behind it?’
‘Exactly.’
‘And, at one time, there would have been actual bloodshed? Or well might have been?’
To this there was no answer.
‘Who,’ Alleyn asked, ‘killed Dame Alice’s goose yesterday afternoon and put it on the dolmen?’
Through the pipe-smoke that now hung thick over the table he looked round the circle of reddened faces. ‘Ernie,’ he said. ‘Was it you?’
A slow grin stretched Ernie’s mouth until he looked remarkably like a bucolic Fool himself.
‘I whiffled ’un,’ he said.
III
As Ernie was not concerned to extend this statement and returned very foolish answers to any further questions, Alleyn was obliged to listen to his brothers who were eager in explanation.
Throughout yesterday morning, they said, while they erected the torches and prepared the bonfire, they had suffered a number of painful and determined assaults from Dame Alice’s geese. One male, in particular, repeatedly placing himself in the van, had come hissing down upon them. Damaging stabs and sidelong slashes had been administered, particularly upon Ernie, who had greatly resented them. He had been sent up again in the afternoon with the gardener’s slasher which he had himself sharpened, and had been told to cut down the brambles on the dancing area. In the dusk, the gander had made a final assault and an extremely painful one. Irked beyond endurance, Ernie had swiped at him with the slasher. When they arrived in the evening the brothers were confronted with the corpse and taken to task by Miss Mardian. Subsequently, they had got the whole story out of Ernie. He now listened to their recital with a maddening air of complacency.
‘Do you agree that is what happened?’ Alleyn asked him and he clasped his hands behind his head, rocked to and fro and chuckled. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I whiffled ’im proper.’
‘Why did you leave the bird on the dolmen?’
Ernie said conceitedly: ‘You foreign chaps wouldn’t rightly catch on. I know what for I done it.’
‘Was