Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 7: Off With His Head, Singing in the Shrouds, False Scent. Ngaio Marsh
the smithy. He asked her if she thought Ernie had some confused idea that, in doing this, she had brought ill-luck to the performance.
Mrs Bünz seized on this suggestion with feverish intensity. ‘Yes, yes,’ she cried. That no doubt was what Ernie had meant. Alleyn was unable to share her enthusiasm and felt quite certain it was assumed. She eyed him furtively. He realized, with immense distaste, that any forbearance or consideration that he might show her would probably be taken by Mrs Bünz for weakness. She had her own ideas about investigating officers.
Furtively, she shifted her shoulders under their layers of woollen clothes. She made a queer little arrested gesture as if she was about to touch them and thought better of it.
Alleyn said: ‘Your shoulders are painful, aren’t they? Why not let Dr Otterly have a look at them? I’m sure he would.’
Dr Otterly made guarded professional noises, and Mrs Bünz behaved as if Alleyn’s suggestion was tantamount to the Usual Warning. She shook her head violently, became grey-faced and speechless and seemed to contemplate a sudden break-away.
‘I won’t keep you much longer,’ Alleyn said. ‘There are only one or two more questions. This is the first. At any stage of the proceedings last night did the Hobby Horse come near you?’
At this she did get up, but slowly and with the uncoordinated movements of a much older woman. Fox looked over the top of his spectacles at the door. Alleyn and Dr Otterly rose and on a common impulse moved a little nearer to her. It occurred to Alleyn that it would really be rather a pleasant change to ask Mrs Bünz a question that did not throw her into a fever.
‘Did you make any contact at all with the Hobby?’ he insisted.
‘I think. Once. At the beginning, during his chasinks.’ Her eyes were streaming, but whether with cold or distress, it was impossible to say. ‘In his flirtinks he touched me,’ she said. ‘I think.’
‘So you have no doubt got tar on your clothes?’
‘A little on my coat. I think.’
‘Do the Hobby and Betty rehearse, I wonder.’
Dr Otterly opened his mouth and shut it again.
‘I know nothing of that,’ Mrs Bünz said.
‘Do you know where they rehearsed?’
‘Nothink. I know nothink.’
Fox, who had his eye on Dr Otterly, gave a stentorian cough, and Alleyn hurried on.
‘One more question, Mrs Bünz, and I do ask you very seriously to give me a frank answer to it. I beg you to believe that, if you are innocent of this crime, you can do yourself nothing but good by speaking openly and without fear. Please believe it.’
‘I am completely, completely innocent.’
‘Good. Then here is the question. Did you after the end of the first Morris leave the courtyard for some reason and not return to it until the beginning of the solo dance? Did you, Mrs Bünz?’
‘No,’ said Mrs Bünz very loudly.
‘Really?’
‘No.’
Alleyn said after a pause: ‘All right. That’s all. You may be asked later on to sign a statement. I’m afraid I must also ask you to stay in East Mardian until after the inquest.’ He went to the door and opened it. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
When she reached the door, she stood and looked at him. She seemed to collect herself and, when she spoke, it was with more composure than she had hitherto shown.
‘It is the foolish son who has done it,’ she said. ‘He is epileptic. Ritual dancing has a profound effect upon such beings. They are carried back to their distant origins. They become excited. Had not this son already cut his father’s hand and shed his blood with his sword? It is the son.’
‘How do you know he had already cut his father’s hand?’ Alleyn asked.
‘I have been told,’ Mrs Bünz said, looking as if she would faint.
Without another word and without looking at him again, she went out and down the passage.
Alleyn said to Fox: ‘Don’t let her talk to Begg. Nip out, Fox, and tell him that, as we’ll be a little time yet, he can go up to his garage and we’ll look in there later. Probably suits him better, anyway.’
Fox went out and Alleyn grinned at Dr Otterly.
‘You can go ahead, now,’ he said, ‘if you want to spontaneously combust.’
‘I must say I feel damn’ like it. What’s she up to, lying right and left? Good God, I never heard anything like it! Not know when we rehearsed. Good God! They could hear us all over the pub.’
‘Where did you rehearse?’
‘In the old barn at the back, here.’
‘Very rum. But I fancy,’ Alleyn muttered, ‘we know why she went away during the show.’
‘Are you sure she did?’
‘My dear chap, yes. She’s a fanatic. She’s a folk-lore hound with her nose to the ground. She remembered the first and last parts of your programme with fantastic accuracy. Of course, if she’d been there she’d have watched the earthy antics of the comics. If they are comics. Of course. She’d have been on the look-out for all the fertility fun that you hand out. If she’d been there she’d have looked and she’d have remembered in precise detail. She doesn’t remember because she didn’t look and she didn’t look because she wasn’t there. I’d bet my boots on it and I bet I know why.’
Fox returned, polishing his spectacles, and said: ‘Do you know what I reckon, Mr Alleyn? I reckon Mrs B. leaves the arena, just after the first dance, is away from it all through the collection and the funny business between young Mr Stayne and daft Ernie and gets back before Dan Andersen does a turn on his own. Is that your idea?’
‘Not altogether, Brer Fox. If my tottering little freak of an idea is any good, she leaves her observation post before the first dance.’
‘Hey?’ Fox ejaculated. ‘But it’s the first dance that she remembers so well.’
‘I must say –’ Dr Otterly agreed and flapped his hands.
‘Exactly,’ Alleyn said. ‘I know. Now. Let me explain.’ He did so at some length and they listened to him with the raised eyebrows of assailable incredulity.
‘Well,’ they said, ‘I suppose it’s possible.’ And: ‘It might be, but how’ll you prove it?’ And: ‘Even so, it doesn’t get us all that much further, does it?’ And: ‘How are you to find out?’
‘It gets us a hell of a lot further,’ Alleyn said hotly, ‘as you’d find out pretty quickly if you could take a peep at Mrs Bünz in the rude nude. However, since that little treat is denied us, let’s visit Mr Simon Begg and see what he can provide. What was he up to, Fox?’
‘He was talking on the telephone about horse-racing,’ Fox said. ‘Something called Teutonic Dancer in the 1.30 at Sandown. That’s funny,’ Mr Fox added, ‘I never thought of it at the time. Funny!’
‘Screamingly. You might see if Bailey and Thompson are back, Fox, and if there’s anything. They’ll need a meal, poor devils. Trixie’ll fix that, I dare say. Then we’ll take a drive up the road to Begg’s garage.’
While Fox was away Alleyn asked Dr Otterly if he could give him a line on Simon Begg.
‘He’s a local,’ Dr Otterly said. ‘Son of the ex-village shopkeeper. Name’s still up over the shop. He did jolly well in the war with the RAF. Bomber pilot. He was brought down over Germany, tackled a bunch of Huns single-handed and got himself and two of his