Off with His Head

by Ngaio Marsh

  ‘Like icing,’ he said, ‘running off a wedding cake. Not that I suppose it ever does.’

  ‘Such are the pitfalls of analogy. All the same, there is an analogy. When you go out on our sort of job everything’s covered with a layer of cagey blamelessness. No sharp outlines anywhere. The job itself sticks up like that phony ruin on the skyline over there but even the job tends to look different under snow. Blurred.’

  Mr Fox effaced a yawn. ‘So we wait for the thaw!’

  ‘With luck, Brer Fox, we produce it. This is our station.’

  They alighted on a platform bordered with swept-up heaps of grey slush. The train which had made an unorthodox halt for them, pulled out at once. They were left with a stillness broken by the drip of melting snow. The outlines of eaves, gutters, rails, leaves, twigs, slid copiously into water.

  A man in a belted mackintosh, felt hat and gumboots came forward.

  ‘That’ll be the Super,’ said Fox.

  ‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ said the man.

  He was a big chap with a serio-comic face that, when it tried to look grave, only succeeded in achieving an expression of mock-solemnity. His name was Yeo Carey and he had a roaring voice.

  The ceremonial handshaking completed, Superintendent Carey led the way out of the little station. A car waited, its wheels fitted with a suit of chains.

  ‘Still need them, up to Mardians,’ Carey said when they were all on board. ‘They’re not thawed out proper thereabouts, though if she keeps mild this way they’ll ease off considerably come nightfall.’

  ‘You must have had a nice turn-up with this lot,’ Fox said, indicating the job in hand.

  ‘Terrible. Terrible! I was the first to say it was a matter for you gentlemen. We’re not equipped for it and no use pretending we are. First capital crime hereabouts I do believe since they burned Betsey Andersen for a witch.’

  ‘What!’ Alleyn ejaculated.

  ‘That’s a matter of three hundred years as near as wouldn’t matter and no doubt the woman never deserved it.’

  ‘Did you say “Andersen”?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I did. There’ve been Andersens at Copse Forge for quite a spell in South Mardian.’

  ‘I understand,’ Fox said sedately, ‘the old man who was decapitated was called Andersen.’

  ‘So he was then. He was one of them, was William.’

  ‘I think,’ Alleyn said, ‘we’ll get one of you to tell us the whole story, Carey. Where are we going?’

  ‘Up to East Mardian, sir. The Chief Constable thought you’d like to be as near as possible to the scene of the crime. They’ve got rooms for you at the Green Man. It’s a case of two rooms for four men seeing there’s a couple of lodgers there already. But as they might be witnesses, we didn’t reckon to turn them out.’

  ‘Fair enough. Where’s your station, then?’

  ‘Up to Yowford. Matter of two mile. The Chief Constable’s sent you this car with his compliments. I’ve only got a motor-bike at the station. He axed me to say he’d have come hisself but is bedbound with influenza. We’re anxious to help, of course. Every way we can.’

  ‘Everthing seems to be laid on like central heating,’ Alleyn was careful to observe. He pointed to the building on the skyline that they had seen from the train. ‘What’s that, up there?’

  ‘Mardian Castle, Mr Alleyn. Scene of crime.’

  ‘It looks like a ruin.’

  ‘So ’tis in parts. Present residence is on t’other side of those walls. Now, sir, shall I begin, to the best of my ability, to make my report or shall we wait till we’re stationary in the pub? A matter of a few minutes only and I can then give my full attention to my duty and refer in order to my notes.’

  Alleyn agreed that this would be much the best course, particularly as the chains were making a great noise and the driver’s task was evidently an exacting one. They churned along a deep lane, turned a corner and looked down on South Mardian: squat, unpicturesque, unremarkable and as small as a village could be. As they approached, Alleyn saw that, apart from its church and parsonage, it contained only one building that was not a cottage. This was a minute shop. ‘Beggs for Everything,’ was painted vaingloriously in faded blue letters across the front. They drove past the gateway to Mardian Castle. A police constable with his motor-bicycle nearby stood in front of it.

  ‘Guarding,’ explained Carey, ‘against sightseers,’ and he waved his arms at the barren landscape.

  As they approached the group of trees at the far end of the village, Carey pointed it out. ‘The Copse,’ he said, ‘and a parcel farther on behind it, Copse Forge, where the deceased is assembled, Mr Alleyn, in a lean-to shed, it being his own property.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘We turn right, however, which I will now do, to the hamlet of East Mardian. There, sir, is your pub, ahead and on the right.’

  As they drove up, Alleyn glanced at the sign, a pleasant affair painted with a foliated green face.

  ‘That’s an old one, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Although it looks as if it’s been rather cleverly touched up.’

  ‘So it has, then. By a lady at present resident in the pub by the name of Bünz.’

  ‘Mrs Buns, the baker’s wife,’ Alleyn murmured involuntarily.

  ‘No, sir. Foreign. And requiring, by all ’counts, to be looked into.’

  ‘Dear me!’ said Alleyn mildly.

  They went into the pub, leaving Bailey and Thompson to deal with their luggage. Superintendent Carey had arranged for a small room behind the private bar to be put at their disposal. ‘Used to be the Missus’s parlour,’ he explained, ‘but she’s no further use for it.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Dead these five years.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Alleyn.

  Trixie was there. She had lit a roaring fire and now put a dish of bacon and eggs, a plate of bread-and-cheese and a bottle of pickled onions on the table.

  ‘Hour and a half till dinner,’ she said, ‘and you’m no doubt starved for a bite after travelling all night. Will you take something?’

  They took three pints, which were increased to five on the arrival of Bailey and Thompson. They helped themselves to the hunks of food and settled down, finally, to Superintendent Carey’s report.

  It was admirably succinct.

  Carey, it appeared, had been present at the Dance of the Five Sons. He had walked over from Yowford, more out of habit than enthusiasm and not uninfluenced, Alleyn gathered, by the promise of Dame Alice’s Sword Wednesday punch.

  Like everybody else, he had heard rumours of the Guiser’s indisposition and he had supposed that the Fool was played by Ernie. When he heard Dr Otterly’s announcement, he concluded that the Guiser had, after all, performed his part and that on his mock decapitation, which Mr Carey described vividly, he had died of a heart attack.

  When, however, the Whiffler (now clearly recognizable as Ernie) had made his appalling announcement from the Mardian Dolmen, Carey had gone forward and spoken to Dr Otterly and the Rector. At the same time, Ernie’s brothers had hauled him off the stone. He then, without warning, collapsed into a fit from which he was recovered by Dr Otterly and, from then onwards, refused to speak to anybody.

  After a word with the doctor, Carey had ordered the stragglers off the place and had then, and not till then, walked round the dolmen and seen what lay on the ground beyond it.

  At this point Carey, quite obviously, had to take a grip of himself. He finished his pint and squared his shoulders.

  ‘I’ve seen things, mind,’ he said. ‘I had five years of it on active service and I didn’t reckon to be flustered. But this flustered me, proper. Partly, no doubt, it was the way he was got up. Like a clown with the tunic thing pulled up. It’d have been over his head if—well, never mind. He didn’t paint his face but he had one of these masks. It ties on like a bag and it hadn’t fallen off. So he looked, if you can follow me, gentlemen, like a kind of doll that the head had come off of. There was the body,
sort of doubled up, and there was the head two feet away, grinning, which was right nasty, until Rector took the bag off, which he did, saying it wasn’t decent. And there was old Guiser’s face. And Rector put, as you may say, the pieces together, and said a prayer over them. I beg your pardon, Mr Alleyn?’

  ‘Nothing. Go on.’

  ‘Now, Ernie Andersen had made this statement, which I have repeated to the best of my memory, about the German lady having “done it”. I came out from behind where the remains was and there, to my surprise, the German lady stood. Kind of bewildered, if you can understand, she seemed to be, and axing me what had happened. “What is it? What has happened? Is he ill?” she said.

  ‘Now, Mr Alleyn, this chap, Ernie Andersen, is not what you’d call right smart. He’s a bit touched. Not simple exactly but not right. Takes funny turns. He was in a terrible state, kind of half frightened and half pleased with himself. Why he said what he did about Mrs Bünz, I can’t make out, but how a lady of, say, fifty-seven or so, could step out of the crowd and cut the head off a chap at one blow in full view of everybody and step back again without being noticed takes a bit of explaining. Still, there it was. I took a statement from her. She was very much put about.’

  ‘Well she might be.’

  ‘Just so. Denied knowing anything about it, of course. It seems she was latish getting to the castle. She’s bought a new car from Simmy-Dick Begg up to Yowford and couldn’t start it at first. Over-choked would be my bet. Everybody in the pub had gone early, Trixie, the barmaid, and the pot-boy having to help the Dame’s maids. Well, Mrs Bünz started her car at last and, when she gets to the corner, who should she see but the old Guiser himself.’

  ‘Old Guiser?’

  ‘That’s what we called William Andersen hereabouts. There he was, seemingly, standing in the middle of the lane shaking his fist and swearing something ghastly. Mrs Bünz stops and offers a lift. He accepts, but with a bad grace, because, as everybody knows, he’s taken a great unliking for Mrs Bünz.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘On account of her axing questions about Sword Wednesday. The man was in mortal dread of it getting made kind of public and fretted accordingly.’

  ‘A purist, was he?’

  ‘That may be the word for it. He doan’t pass a remark of any kind going up to the castle and, when she gets there, he bolts out of the car and goes round behind the ruins to where the others was getting ready to begin. She says she just walked in and stood in the crowd which, to my mind, is no doubt what the woman did. I noticed her there myself, I remember, during the performance!’

  ‘Did you ask her if she knew why Ernie Andersen said she’d done it?’

  ‘I did, then. She says she reckons he’s turned crazy-headed with shock, which is what seems to be the general view.’

  ‘Why was the Guiser so late starting?’

  ‘Ah! Now! He’d been sick, had the Guiser. He had a bad heart and during the day he hadn’t felt too clever. Seems Dr Otterly, who played the fiddle for them, was against the old chap doing it at all. The boys (I call them boys but Daniel’s sixty if he’s a day) say their father went and lay down during the day and left word not to be disturbed. They’d fixed it up that Ernie would come back and drive his dad up in an old station-wagon they’ve got there, leaving it till the last so’s not to get him too tired.’

  ‘Ernie again,’ Alleyn muttered.

  ‘Well, axacly so, Mr Alleyn, and when Ernie returns it’s with a note from his dad which he found pinned to his door, that being the old Guiser’s habit, to say he can’t do it and Ernie had better. So they send the note in to Dr Otterly, who is having dinner with the Dame.’

  ‘What?’ Alleyn said, momentarily startled by this apparent touch of transatlantic realism. ‘Oh, I see, yes. Dame Alice Mardian?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Have you got the note?’

  ‘The doctor put it in his pocket, luckily, and I have.’

  ‘Good.’

  Carey produced the old-fashioned billhead with its pencilled message: ‘Cant mannage it young Ern will have to. W. A.’

  ‘It’s his writing all right,’ he said. ‘No doubt of it.’

  ‘And are we to suppose he felt better, and decided to play his part after all and hitch-hiked with the lady?’

  ‘That’s what his sons reckon. It’s what they say he told them when he turned up.’

  ‘Do they, now!’

  ‘Pointing out that there wasn’t much time to say anything. Ernie was dressed up for his dad’s part…It’s what they call the Fool. So he had to get out of his clothes quick and dress up for his own part and Daniel’s boy, who was going to do Ernie’s part, was left looking silly. So he went round and joined the onlookers. And he confirms the story. He says that’s right, that’s what happened when the old chap turned up.’

  ‘And it’s certain that the old man did dance throughout the show?’

  ‘Must be, Mr Alleyn, mustn’t it? Certain sure. There they were, five Sons, a Fiddler, a Betty, a Horse and a Fool. The Sons were the real sons all right. They wiped the muck off their faces while I was taking over. The Betty was the Dame’s great-nephew, young Mr Stayne. He’s a lawyer from Biddlefast and staying with the parson, who’s his father. The Hoss, they call it “Crack”, was Simmy-Dick Begg, who has the garage up to Yowford. They all took off their silly truck there and then in my presence as soon’s they had the wit to do so. So the Fool must have been the Guiser all the time, Mr Alleyn. There’s nobody left but him to be it. We’ve eight chaps ready to swear he dressed himself up for it and went out with the rest.’

  ‘And stayed there in full view until—’

  Mr Carey took a long pull at his tankard, set it down, wiped his mouth and clapped his palm on the table.

  ‘There you are!’ he declaimed. ‘Until they made out in their dance or play or whatever you like to call it, that they were cutting his head off. Cripes!’ Mr Carey added in a changed voice, ‘I can see him as if it was now. Silly clown’s mask sticking through the knot of swords and then—k-r-r-ring—they’ve drawn their swords. Down drops the rabbit’s head and down goes Guiser, out of sight behind the stone. You wouldn’t credit it, would you? In full view of up to sixty persons.’

  ‘Are you suggesting—? No,’ Alleyn said, ‘you can’t be.’

  ‘I was going to ask you, Super,’ Fox said. ‘You don’t mean to say you think they may actually have beheaded the old chap then and there!’

  ‘How could they!’ Carey demanded angrily, as if Fox and Alleyn themselves advanced this theory. ‘Ask yourself, Mr Fox. The idea’s comical, of course they didn’t. The thing is: when did they? If they did.’

  ‘They?’ Alleyn asked.

  ‘Well now, no. No. It was done, so the doctor says, and so a chap can see for himself if he’s got the stomach to look, by one weapon with one stroke by one man.’

  ‘What about their swords? I’ll see them, of course, but what are they like?’

  ‘Straight. About two foot long. Wooden handle one end and a hole t’other through which they stick a silly-looking bit of red cord.’

  ‘Sharp?’

  ‘Blunt as a backside, all but one.’

  ‘Which one?’ asked Fox.

  ‘Ernie’s,’ Alleyn said. ‘I’ll bet.’

  ‘And you’re dead right, sir. Ernie’s it is and so sharp’s a razor still, never mind how he whiffled down the thistles.’

  ‘So are we forced to ask ourselves if Ernie could have whiffled his old man’s head off?’

  ‘And we answer ourselves, no, he danged well couldn’t of. For why? For because, after his old man dropped behind the stone, there was Ernie doing a comic act with the Betty: that is, Mr Ralph Stayne, as I was telling you. Mr Ralph having taken up a collection, snatched Ernie’s sword and they had a sort of chase round the courtyard and in and out through the gaps in the back of the wall. Ernie didn’t get his sword back till Mr Ralph give it him. After that, Dan Andersen did a turn on his own. He always does. You
could tell it was Dan anyway on account of him being bow-legged. Then the five Sons did another dance and that was when the Old Man should have risen up and didn’t and there we are.’

  ‘What was the Hobby Horse doing all this time?’

  ‘Cavorting round chasing the maids. Off and on.’

  ‘And this affair,’ Fox said, ‘this man-woman-what-have-you-Betty, who was the clergyman’s son: he’d collared the sharp sword, had he?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Fox, he had. And was swiping it round and playing the goat with it.’

  ‘Did he go near the stone?’ Alleyn asked.

  ‘Well—yes, I reckon he did. When Ernie was chasing him. No doubt of it. But further than that—well, it’s just not believable,’ said Carey and added: ‘He must have given the sword back to Ernie because, later on, Ernie had got it again. There’s nothing at all on the sword but smears of sap from the plants Ernie swiped off. Which seems to show it hadn’t been wiped on anything.’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Alleyn. ‘Jolly well observed.’

  Mr Carey gave a faint simper.

  ‘Did any of them look behind the stone after the old man had fallen down?’ Alleyn asked.

  ‘Mr Ralph—that’s the Betty—was standing close up when he fell behind it and reckons he just slid down and lay. There’s a kind of hollow there as you’ll see and it was no doubt in shadow. Two of them came prancing back to the stone during the last dance; first Simmy-Dick and then Mr Ralph, and they both think he was laying there then. Simmy-Dick couldn’t see very clear because his face is in the neck of the horse and the body of the thing hides any object that’s nearby on the ground. But he saw the whiteness of the Fool’s clothing in the hollow, he says. Mr Ralph says he did, too, without sort of paying much attention.’

  ‘The head—’

  ‘They never noticed. They never noticed another thing till he was meant to resurrect and didn’t. Then Dan went to see what was wrong and called up his brothers. He says—it’s a funny sort of thing to say—but he says he thought, at first, it was some kind of joke and someone had put a dummy there and the head had come off. But, of course,’ Carey said, opening his extremely blue eyes very wide, ‘it was no such matter.’