Off with His Head

by Ngaio Marsh

  After the practice they would all return to the pub. Once, Mrs Bünz denied herself the pleasures of her peepshow in order to linger as unobtrusively as possible in the bar-parlour. She hoped that, pleasantly flushed with exercise, the dancers would talk of their craft. But this ruse was a dead failure. The men at first did indeed talk, loudly and freely at the far end of the Public, but they all spoke together and Mrs Bünz found the Andersens’ dialect exceedingly difficult. She thought that Trixie must have indicated her presence because they were all suddenly quiet. Then Trixie, always pleasant, came through and asked her if she wanted anything further that evening in such a definite sort of way that somehow even Mrs Bünz felt impelled to get up and go.

  Then Mrs Bünz had what she hoped at the time might be a stroke of luck.

  One evening at half past five she came into the bar parlour in order to complete a little piece she was writing for an American publication on ‘The Hermaphrodite in European Folklore.’ She found Simon Begg already there, lost in gloomy contemplation of a small notebook and the racing page of an evening paper.

  She had entered into negotiations with Begg about repairing her car. She had also, of course, had her secret glimpses of him in the character of ‘Crack’. She greeted him with her particularly Teutonic air of camaraderie. ‘So!’ she said, ‘you are early this evening, Wing Commander.’

  He made a sort of token movement, shifting a little in his chair and eyeing Trixie. Mrs Bünz ordered cider. ‘The snow,’ she said cosily, ‘continues, does it not?’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said, and then seemed to pull himself together. ‘Too bad we still can’t get round to fixing that little bus of yours, Mrs—er—er—Bünz, but there you are! Unless we get a tow—’

  ‘There is no hurry. I shall not attempt the return journey before the weather improves. My baby does not enjoy the snow.’

  ‘You’d be better off, if you don’t mind my saying so, with something that packs a bit more punch.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  He repeated his remark in less idiomatic English. The merits of a more powerful car were discussed: it seemed that Begg had a car of the very sort he had indicated which he was to sell for an old lady who had scarcely used it. Mrs Bünz was by no means poor. Perhaps she weighed up the cost of changing cars with the potential result in terms of inside information on ritual dancing. In any case, she encouraged Begg, who became nimble in sales talk.

  ‘It is true,’ Mrs Bünz meditated presently, ‘that if I 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, but so confusedly and in such a thickened dialect that she had much ado to understand him. He was raging against his father. His father, it seemed, had been saying all the week that the dog was unhealthy and ought to be put down. Ernie had savagely defied him and had kept clear of the forge, taking the dog with him up and down the frozen lanes. This morning, however, the dog had slipped away and gone back to the forge. The Guiser, finding it lying behind the smithy, had shot it there and then. Ernie had heard the shot. Camilla pictured him, blundering through the trees, whimpering with anxiety. His father met him with his gun in his hand and told him to take the carcass away and bury it. At this point, Ernie’s narrative became unintelligible. Camilla could only guess at the scene that followed. Evidently, Chris had supported his father, pointing out that the dog was indeed in a wretched condition and that it had been from motives of kindness that the Guiser had put it out of its misery. She supposed that Ernie, beside himself with rage and grief, had thereupon carried the body to the wood.

  ‘It’s God’s truth,’ Ernie was saying, as he rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and became more coherent. ‘I tell ’ee, it’s God’s truth I’ll be quits with ’im for this job. Bad ’e is: rotten bad and so grasping and cruel’s a blasted li’l old snake. Done me down at every turn: a murdering thief if ever I see one. Cut down in all the deathly pride of his sins, ’e’ll be, if doctor knows what he’m talking about.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’ cried Camilla.

  ‘I be a better guiser nor him. I do it betterer nor him: neat as pin on my feet and every step a masterpiece. Doctor reckons he’ll kill hisself. By God, I hope ’e does.’

  ‘Ernie! Be quiet. You don’t know what you’re saying. Why do you want to do the Fool’s act? It’s an Old Man’s act. You’re a Son.’

  Ernie reached out his hand. With a finicky gesture of his flat red thumb and forefinger, he lifted the tip of his dead dog’s tail. ‘I got the fancy,’ he said, looking at Camilla out of the corners of his eyes, ‘to die and be rose up agin. That’s why.’

  Camilla thought: ‘No, honestly, this is too mummerset.’ She said: ‘But that’s just an act. It’s just an old dance-play. It’s like having mistletoe and plum pudding. Nothing else happens, Ernie. Nobody dies.’

  Ernie twitched the sacking off the body of his dog. Camilla gave a protesting cry and shrank away.

  ‘What’s thik, then?’ Ernie demanded. ‘Be thik a real dead corpse or bean’t it?’

  ‘Bury it!’ Camilla cried out. ‘Cover it up, Ernie, and forget it. It’s horrible.’

  She felt she could stand no more of Ernie and his dog. She said: ‘I’m sorry. I can’t help you,’ and walked on past him and along the path to the smithy. With great difficulty she restrained herself from breaking into a run. She felt sick.

  The path came out at a clearing near the lane and a little above the smithy.

  A man was waiting there. She saw him at first through the trees and then, as she drew nearer, more clearly.

  He came to meet her. His face was white and he looked, she couldn’t help feeling, wonderfully determined and romantic.

  ‘Ralph!’ she said, ‘you mustn’t! You promised. Go away, quickly.’

  ‘I won’t. I can’t, Camilla. I saw you go into the copse, so I hurried up and came round the other way to meet you. I’m sorry, Camilla. I just couldn’t help myself, and, anyway, I’ve decided it’s too damn silly not to. What’s more, there’s something I’ve got to say.’

  His expression changed. ‘Hi!’ he said, ‘Darling, what’s up? I haven’t frightened you, have I? You look frightened.’

  Camilla said with a little wavering laugh: ‘I know it sounds the purest corn but I’ve just seen something beastly in the copse and it’s made me feel sick.’

  He took her hands in his. She would have dearly liked to put her head on his chest. ‘What did you see, my poorest?’ asked Ralph.

  ‘Ernie,’ she said, ‘with a dead dog and talking about death.’

  She looked up at him and helplessly began to cry. He gave an inarticulate cry and gathered her into his arms.

  A figure clad in decent blacks came out of the smithy and stood transfixed with astonishment and rage. It was the Guiser.

  III

  On the day before Sword Wednesday, Dame Alice ordered her septuagenarian gardener to take his slasher and cut down a forest of dead thistles and briar that poked up through the snow where the Dance of the Five Sons was to be performed. The gardener, a fearless Scot with a will of iron and a sour disposition, at once informed her that the slasher had been ruined by unorthodox usage.

  ‘Dame,’ he said, for this was the way he chose to address his mistress, ‘It canna be. I’ll no’ soil ma hands nor scald ma temper nor lay waste ma bodily health wi’ any such matter.’

  ‘You can sharpen your slasher, man.’

  ‘It should fetch the blush of shame to your countenance to ask it.’

  ‘Send it down to William Andersen.’

  ‘And get insultit for ma pains? Yon godless old devil’s altogether sunkit in heathen clamjamphries.’

  ‘If you’re talkin’ about Sword Wednesday, McGlashan, you’re talkin’ bosh. Send down your slasher to the forge. If William’s too busy one of the sons will do it.’

  ‘I’ll hae nane but the smith lay hands on ma slasher. They’d ruin it. Moreover, they are as deep sunk in depravity as their auld mon.’

  ‘Don’t you have sword dances in North Britain?’

  ‘I didna come oot here in the cauld at the risk o’ ma ain demise to be insultit.’

  ‘Send the slasher to the forge and get the courtyard cleared. That will do, McGlashan.’

  In the end, the slasher was taken down by Dulcie Mardian, who came back with the news that the Guiser was away for the day. She had given the slasher to Ernie with strict instructions that his father, and nobody else, was to sharpen it.

  ‘Fancy, Aunt Akky, it’s the first time for twenty years that William has been to Biddlefast. He got Dan Andersen to drive him to the bus. Everyone in the village is talking about it and wondering if he’s gone to see Stayne and Stayne about his will. I suppose Ralph would know.’

  ‘He’s lucky to have somethin’ to leave. I haven’t and you might as well know it, Dulcie.’

  ‘Of course, Aunt Akky. But everybody says old William is really as rich as possible. He hides it away, they say, like a miser. Fancy!’r />
  ‘I call it shockin’ low form, Dulcie, listenin’ to village gossip.’

  ‘And, Aunt Akky, that German woman is still at the Green Man. She tries to pump everybody about the Five Sons.’

  ‘She’ll be nosin’ up here to see it. Next thing she’ll be startin’ some beastly guild. She’s one of those stoopid women who turn odd and all that in their fifties. She’ll make a noosance of herself.’

  ‘That’s what the Old Guiser says, according to Chris.’

  ‘He’s perfectly right. William Andersen is a sensible fellow.’

  ‘Could you turn her away, Aunt Akky, if she comes?’

  Dame Alice merely gave an angry snap of her false teeth.

  ‘Is that young woman still at the Green Man?’ she demanded.

  ‘Do you mean William Andersen’s granddaughter?’

  ‘Who the deuce else should I mean?’

  ‘Yes she is. Everyone says she’s awfully nice and—well—you know—’

  ‘If you mean she’s a ladylike kind of creeter, why not say so?’

  ‘One doesn’t say that somehow, nowadays, Aunt Akky.’

  ‘More fool you.’

  ‘One says she’s a “lidy”.’

  ‘Nimby-pimby shilly-shallyin’ and beastly vulgar into the bargain. Is the gel more of a Campion than an Andersen?’

  ‘She’s got quite a look of her mother, but of course, Ned Campion brought her up as a Campion. Good schools and all that. She went to that awfully smart finishing school in Paris.’

  ‘And learnt a lot more than they bargained for, I dare say. Is she keepin’ up with the smithy?’

  ‘She’s quite cultivating them, it seems, and everybody says old William, although he pretends to disapprove, has really taken a great fancy to her. They say that she seems to like being with them. I suppose it’s the common side coming out.’

  ‘Lor’, what a howlin’ snob you are, Dulcie. All the more credit to the gel. But I won’t have Ralph gettin’ entangled.’

  ‘What makes you think—?’

  Dame Alice looked at her niece with contempt. ‘His father told me. Sam.’