Pageant of Murder (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “But their costumes, Dog!”

  “What are over-coats for? Think of the coy members of Toc H when we were waiting for the procession to move off! Besides, everybody in the borough knew about the pageant and about the show at the Town Hall. Apart from a beery jest or two—possibly not even that—I don’t suppose anybody in the pub bothered about what they looked like. Perhaps some sportsman even stood them a drink.”

  “What worries me is the thought of that sword—the real one, you know. I ought to have stopped them using it, I suppose, but I simply didn’t notice it was real.” There was silence until Kitty added, “The murder could have been committed during the interval, I suppose. Do you think they all rushed over to the pub?”

  “Probably not the women, anyway, and probably not the stage-manager. He’d have had to be on hand to direct the Council workmen who were to put up the scenery for the second scene,” said Laura. “But what I do think is that Page and Ford would have put off their swords during the interval. Cussed things, swords. Get between your legs and trip you up if you’re not jolly careful. Besides, the real sword would have been heavy.”

  “So anybody could have committed the murder, then, and you’ve changed your mind. You mean it was done during the interval. Oh, but, Dog…”

  “Yes, that’s the snag, isn’t it?”

  “How did you guess what I meant?”

  “Because I’d just thought the same thing myself. The murderer, unless he was one of the cast, couldn’t have known he’d find a weapon all ready to hand, and even the cast couldn’t have known that Ford and Page would put off their swords during the interval.”

  “Whoever did it may have intended to use some other method, Dog, and then spotted the sword and decided it was a better idea.”

  “Came armed with his own weapon, you mean?”

  “You know, the more I think of it, Dog, the more certain I am that your first idea was right, and that it must have been done before the interval, and it must have been done by an outsider. Nobody in the cast would have murdered the chief character before the play was over. It’s dead against human nature. But how would a stranger get in?”

  “By the same way as those comedians went out, of course. You didn’t have anybody on duty at the side door, did you?”

  “The door that opens on to Smith Hill? No, I didn’t. I didn’t think it was necessary. I had warned everybody beforehand, and when I let those awful comedians out I knew they were tight, so I impressed on them about walking uphill to the high street and not downhill into the Thames. I wouldn’t have gone backstage at all, except that I was afraid one of them might have hurt himself when he fell.”

  “You didn’t bother about gate-crashers?”

  “The house was full. A gate-crasher wouldn’t have been able to get a seat, even if he’d known about the side door. And, of course, Dog, you’ve got to remember that there were plenty of people who had a perfect right to be behind the scenes, apart from the cast and the workmen.”

  “You mean the mob who were also contributing items to the show? Yes, I appreciate that, and so do the police, I imagine. Well, the two comedians are in the clear, unless they oiled back after you’d seen them off, and I don’t suppose they did that.”

  “I ought to tell the police they were drunk, Dog. They may have been intending a drunken jape and it went too far. Alcohol clouds the judgment, and they were steeped to the hair-parting in it.”

  That’s quite a thought. Assing about with the swords—yes, it’s more than possible. That is, of course, if they sneaked back. But why should they? I wouldn’t mind betting they stayed in the pub until closing time—that is, if they’d got enough money.”

  “Oh, they’d got enough money. I’d paid them.”

  “In coin of the realm?”

  “Yes, they had two guineas each. I didn’t think they’d take a cheque, you see.”

  “That should have seen them through the evening. Two guineas will buy a lot of beer.”

  “Yes, but, Dog, would the barman have gone on serving them that long, considering they were plastered already?”

  “Hm! I don’t really know. But, if he didn’t, and they got grouchy, nothing is more likely than that they did oil back to the Town Hall and get into mischief.”

  “Unless they crawled to another pub or two.”

  “Yes, that’s more likely still, I suppose. Oh, well! What about anybody else?”

  “The Tots—little nuisances!—stayed in the wings to see and hear the comedians. The formation team cleared them out of the way, I expect, but I bet they were still getting dressed while the interval was on, because the formation team’s effort only took about ten minutes, if you remember, and the first scene of The Merry Wives was played so fast that that didn’t take long, either, once their bally scenery was up.”

  “Yes, kids do take an age to get changed and do up their shoes and all that. But I can’t say I can see that vinegar-faced old pussy of theirs running a sword through anybody. What happened to the formation mob when their turn was over?”

  “I’ve no idea. They came in a motor-coach, and were all togged up ready for the fray, so I suppose they just filtered out. They didn’t have to be paid, you see.”

  “Refreshments?”

  “They had those while they were waiting to go on, I expect. The Town Hall laid on coffee, bridge-roll sandwiches, and some cakes, I believe. Anyway, there were sixteen dancers and I suppose they can all alibi one another for the time of the murder.”

  “Of course, we still don’t know the time of the murder, do we?”

  “Except that I’m quite convinced it must have been before the interval.”

  “Not necessarily, you know. I’ve just had another bright thought.”

  “But, Dog, there were all those schoolchildren about during the interval. Nobody could possibly have got away with murder with them around.”

  “He could if the murder took place outside the Town Hall and not inside it, you know. Let’s suppose that the murderer gets Falstaff, on some pretence or other, out on to Smith Hill. He inveigles him down to the water’s edge, we’ll say, and pinks him through the heart. He dumps the body in the mud and trusts that the ebb tide—the river’s tidal as far as Teddington—will carry it away. If it doesn’t, well, it doesn’t matter all that much. If it happened like that, you see, it wouldn’t matter how many people were milling about during the interval.”

  * * *

  The pageant and its aftermath had taken place on a Thursday. The detective had called on Kitty on the Friday morning, therefore, and the evening paper that day headed its meagre account of Falstaff’s death with the caption, Horseplay Has Tragic Sequel.

  “So that’s the way the cat jumps,” said Laura. “The police have put up a smokescreen.”

  The paragraph under the heading was unrewarding. A mock duel, it was suggested, had been fought, and one of the contestants fatally wounded. Those responsible had evidently panicked and had removed the body to the river. The dead man was clad in period costume, and a clothes-basket—one of the properties used in the play—had also been found bogged down in the riverside mud. The dead man, a popular member of the Brayne Dramatic and Operatic Society, was Sidney Matravers Luton. He was unmarried and (the sub-editor had slipped up for once) had left no children.

  Laura and Kitty absorbed this information.

  “I always did say there was a jinx on the wretched pageant,” said Kitty, on the Sunday morning. “I wish to goodness I’d never got myself mixed up in it. I ought to have known better, and I did know better, really, but when a nephew comes touting around for assistance, you do rather find yourself letting yourself in for things. Oh, Lord! The telephone! Now what?”

  The call came from the nephew in question. Young Mr. Perse was ringing up his aunt to find out whether she had heard the news. Kitty informed him that she had, whereupon he invited himself round for afternoon tea and offered to place all his inside knowledge at her disposal.

  He arrived at
four, dressed in a dark lounge suit and wearing a buttonhole.

  “Why the foliage?” enquired Kitty, resentfully.

  “I sent for thee upon a sad occasion,” said Laura. Young Mr. Perse kissed both of them.

  “I don’t take an evening paper,” he said, “but I knew something must have happened to Luton. He didn’t show up at Sunday School this morning.”

  “Sunday School?” queried Laura.

  “He was the Sunday School superintendent at the League of Young Hearts chapel. It was left to the secretary-treasurer to conduct the revels. This he did (amid acclaim) by purporting to be a sunbeam.”

  “A sunbeam?” said Kitty. “But…”

  “Yes, I know (although, until this moment, you didn’t) he’s fat and wears a beard,” said her nephew, “but the chosen hymn was about sunbeams and he became one, cavorting about the platform with his thumbs in his waistcoat armholes and his plump little legs twinkling in time to a rather wheezy harmonium.”

  “But you couldn’t have been to Sunday School!” cried Kitty.

  “Why couldn’t I? You don’t realise how thoroughly and to what extent we Councillors go about our duties. We visit schools, Sunday Schools, Church parades, supermarkets, recreation grounds, the Girls’ Friendly Society, hospitals, Old People’s Homes, orphanages…”

  “And the Old Bull and Bush, I suppose,” said Laura, deeply interested. Perse bowed.

  “So it fell to my lot to attend this Sunday School session at ten o’clock this morning, and it was then I decided that something had happened to Luton. The sunbeam act surprised me, you see, and, knowing that Luton usually conducted the revels, I couldn’t forbear asking after him, only to be told that the poor chap had been killed.”

  “What’s a Sunday School superintendent doing in a drama club, anyway?” demanded Kitty.

  “My dear aunt! I should point out that we live in modern times.”

  “And then to go and get himself killed in this utterly nefarious (right, Dog?) way!” continued Kitty. “Dog and I have talked it over until my head spins. What do you know that we don’t—or have you come to tea under false pretences?”

  “I’m afraid it’s under false pretences, dear Aunt Kitty. I was hoping you could tell me something. I wish now that I hadn’t opted out of being present at the Town Hall.”

  “I’m pretty sure this story of a mock duel with fatal ending is pure boloney,” said Laura. “But, actually, we don’t know a thing. The police have been here, of course, because of Kitty’s tie-up with the show, and I’m sure they think it was murder.”

  “Do they, by Jove! But a more harmless citizen than Luton couldn’t be found! Who on earth could have had it in for him sufficiently to go to the length of doing him in? I don’t see why accident should be ruled out. The police would be bound to make enquiries, just as much in a case of accidental death as in a case of suicide or murder.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” said Laura. “And, of course, if it was an accident, the person who caused it might well be chary of owning up, in case murder was suspected. You mentioned suicide. Was he a suicidal type?”

  “I wouldn’t have thought so. He had strong religious convictions, but he wasn’t morbid and he wasn’t fanatical.”

  “Did you think it odd that the Sunday School secretary-treasurer was playing sunbeams when all the time he knew that Luton was dead?”

  “I didn’t think about it in that way, but I suppose it was a bit odd of him, wasn’t it?”

  “He could bear a bit of watching if it was murder,” said Kitty. “I never heard of anything so heartless!”

  “Well, the world must keep turning,” said Perse.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Exit a Poor Player

  “One is compelled to admit that there is some suspicion attaching to Eadmund’s death.”

  Laura was to return to her duties on the Wednesday, and did not anticipate further mystery and excitement, but on the Tuesday evening, at just after half-past six, young Mr. Perse turned up again at his aunt’s flat.

  “Oh, no!” exclaimed Kitty, when the maid showed him in.

  “If it’s chops or cutlets or anything else that has to be counted, I haven’t come to dinner,” her nephew assured her, “so there’s no need for dismay. I just looked in to bring you a bit more news.”

  “They haven’t arrested anybody?”

  “Not so far as I know. The police are still busy grilling people.”

  “How do you mean? They haven’t been here again, anyhow.”

  “Well, of course they haven’t,” put in Laura. “There’s nothing you can tell them that’s of any use, and they know it.”

  “They’re still keeping up this fiction of an accident while people were skylarking about with those swords,” went on Perse, “but they’re making honest citizens jump through hoops, all the same.”

  “I don’t believe you know anything about it,” said Kitty. “Anyway, as it’s chicken, you can stay to dinner if you like.”

  “Coo, ta, dear (as my landlady’s daughter says). I won’t say no. Chicken, eh? Free-ranging and country bred, I trust.”

  “Yes, from Froggett’s farm. What’s this news with which you’ve baited your hook?”

  “Only that the chap who took the part of Henry VIII in your pageant seems to have disappeared.”

  “Disappeared? There’s been nothing about it in the papers.”

  “They don’t usually put mere disappearances in the papers, unless it’s a kid or a Ward of Court, or something. I only happen to know about it by what you might call accident.”

  “Sit down, and in a minute you can have a drink. I hear your uncle in the hall. When he comes in you can tell us all about it.”

  “Well,” said Perse, when the company was settled down, “it may hardly surprise you to be told that the school meals at our place are so lousy that some of us have formed a sandwich and drinks club. We go twice a week to the local. There are six of us altogether—myself, Bob Lyttleton, Corney Thomas, Teddy Granger, and a couple of chaps from the local Primary School.”

  “I thought Grammar School masters didn’t mingle with the canaille,” said Laura.

  “That point of view, if it ever existed, is outmoded, Auntie Laura. Anyway, we began by passing the time of day with them in the pub and then we gradually teamed up. It must be rotten for these chaps, the only fellows on an otherwise all-women Staff, and with a woman boss into the bargain. Anyway, we fixed up to meet them on Tuesdays and Fridays, when neither they nor we are on dinner duty, and they’ve proved to be very nice people. Their names are Gordon and Spey. You know them, Aunt Kay, I believe.”

  “Gordon and Spey?” said Kitty. “Yes, I do seem to know those names. Oh, yes, I remember. Weren’t they the two menservants in The Merry Wives? Those were the names on the programme.”

  “They were.”

  “But you mentioned Henry VIII.”

  “Yes, Spey was that in your pageant. Gordon was Edward III.”

  “Oh, I see. I never knew any of the pageantry by name. I suppose those two looked different on the float from what they did in the play. They would have to, of course.”

  “Yes. Spey wore a beard, of course, as Henry VIII and I suppose he was clean-shaven on the stage. Gordon had an even bigger beard for Edward III, and I imagine he also was clean-shaven on the stage.”

  “Yes, I see. Well, do go on.”

  “Right. Well, today being Tuesday, we had our usual get-together at the boozer, but found ourselves one short. We made a civil enquiry and were told that Spey hadn’t shown up at school either yesterday or this morning. The Old Cat—Gordon’s name for his headmistress—her actual name is Cattrick, so it’s not really as rude as it sounds and, actually, he quite likes her—had cut up rough on the Monday, (that’s yesterday), because Spey hadn’t sent a message, or anything, to say he couldn’t be at school, but today, as, again, she’d heard nothing, she seemed a bit worried, Gordon said. She couldn’t ring Spey because he isn’t on the ’phone,
so she asked Gordon to call round and find out whether Spey had been taken ill and was too bad to get a message to school, or didn’t have anybody to send.” He paused to sip his drink.

  “What did Gordon think about that?” asked Kitty’s husband.

  “He was so little keen on the job that I offered to go with him. ‘It’s that awful business of poor Luton,’ he said. ‘The police keep all on to me until I’m hanged if I know whether I’m coming or going. And now Spey! I tell you that if I go to that house and anything’s happened to him, I’ll be for it.’ Well, of course I told him nothing would have happened to Spey except a dose of ’flu, or a broken leg, or something else quite simple, but he jumped at the idea of my going with him, so we met after school and got some tea in the town, and—we went.”

  He finished his drink. Twigg poured him another.

  “Get on with the tale,” he said, “or your aunt will explode.”

  “Spey is married,” proceeded Perse, “but Gordon told me that Mrs. Spey is down in Devonshire nursing an ailing mother, so he’s been alone in the house except for a char who comes in once a week to square up. Friday is her day.

  “Well, we knocked and rang, but there was no answer, so we concluded that Spey must be pretty seedy and we’d better get inside somehow and see what was what. So we knocked up the neighbours—it’s a semidetached house—and told them our troubles and informed them that we intended to break in. They were dubious about this, and advised us to contact the police, but Gordon, who, as he said, has had a bucketful of the police over Luton’s death, said that wasn’t necessary. He gave them the school number and invited them to ring up and get him identified. Evidently they took this offer as a guarantee of good faith, because they said it didn’t matter and shut their front door on us. We went round to the back and, before deciding to force a window, we tried the back door. It wasn’t locked or bolted, so we went in.