“We all know your husband wasn’t elected on to it,” said Mrs Collis. “Still, that wasn’t his fault, or yours, I’m sure. And, talking of morons, what about that idiotic Giles Faudrey up at the Hall?”
“Why, what about him?” asked Kitty.
“Don’t you know? I thought it was all over the borough. Oh, but, of course, you don’t live in Brayne, do you? All the same, as you were at the open-air thing in the park at Squire’s Acre, I should have thought you’d have heard rumours about the goings-on. He’s a menace where the local girls are concerned. I wonder the Batty-Faudreys tolerate him.”
“All I know is that Mr Faudrey came in with a girl—one of your members, actually—I remember her in the pageant—half-way through tea, and took her to sit at table with the Batty-Faudreys and the Mayor and Mayoress,” said Kitty.
“So we heard. We also heard that Mrs Batty-Faudrey could have killed him for doing it. I mean, he had no right whatever to have made her and Caroline so conspicuous.”
“Yes, Caroline was a bit conspicuous,” agreed Kitty, “if she’s the girl I’m talking about. Her trousers were so very tight and her curves were so very glamorous! I’m not surprised Mrs Batty-Faudrey took a dim view.”
“She took a dimmer one when Caroline had a shot at seducing the Colonel,” said Mrs Gough, with another outbreak of laughter.
“Good gracious me!” exclaimed Kitty. “Did she really?”
“Yes, indeed. It’s an old story now, I suppose, but it was Teddy Luton’s fault in a way. He did do such idiotic things! Anyway, I shall never forgive him for breaking up our Town Hall show.”
“I should have thought it was his killer who shouldn’t be forgiven,” said Laura, bluntly.
“Oh, well, his killer wasn’t one of our members,” said Mrs Gough.
“Is that certain?” asked Laura, although she had gathered from her husband that he thought it was.
“Well, it must be, mustn’t it? I mean, “the show must go on” is our motto. None of the members would be dirty enough to break up a performance by fooling about with a sword and killing someone,” protested Mrs Collis.
“Well, that means murder, then. Can you tell us why anybody should want to murder Falstaff?”
“That’s where it doesn’t make sense. He was quite harmless,” said Mrs Gough, “except for this genius for putting his foot in things, of course.”
“Nobody is harmless,” said Mrs Collis.
“I agree with you,” said Laura. “I’ve said it before. Every one of us is a menace to somebody. There’s not a soul who wouldn’t deserve to be liquidated, for some good reason or other, so, now, what about this Luton? Exactly how did he offend?”
“Well, there was that time when he loosed off an Army rifle instead of bursting a paper bag in the wings as he’d been told to do. Remember?” said Mrs Gough to Mrs Collis.
“He always denied it about the rifle,” said Mrs Collis. “He said he was scared of firearms.”
“All the same, he couldn’t tell us who had fired it, could he?”
“You mean he wouldn’t, not that he couldn’t.”
“Oh, nonsense! He wasn’t all that Public School!”
“Public schools aren’t the only places where you don’t split on a pal!”
“Oh, I grant you all those delinquent gangs. They don’t split on one another because they daren’t.”
“Is that so different from the public schools, then? They only don’t split because their lives wouldn’t be worth living if they did! And, anyway, what about that donkey at the dressage? I bet that was Luton’s idea of a joke.”
Kitty jumped in where Laura feared to tread.
“This is getting us nowhere,” she declared. “That donkey got out of control, that’s all. Now, then, what were you saying about this Caroline dim-wit seducing the Colonel?”
Mrs Gough giggled.
“It happened when the Batty-Faudreys gave a fancy-dress party to celebrate the silver jubilee of the house.”
“I thought the house was older than that.”
“I mean the silver jubilee of their ownership of it.”
“Oh, yes, of course. And was this Caroline invited to the party?”
“In a sort of way. Mrs Batty-Faudrey wanted a masque-like—Comus, you know—so, of course, the drama club were asked to do one. Well, the whole thing was rather difficult because, except for Comus, nobody knew of any masques, and, somehow, Comus seemed unsuitable unless we could alter it quite a bit, which is what we did, and then we combined it with a bit of Everyman and a bit of Midsummer Night’s Dream, you see.”
“Good God!” said Laura.
“It wasn’t at all bad,” said Mrs Gough, complacently. “Considering that we were only given three weeks’ notice, I think the club came up to scratch quite marvellously. Of course, being under-rehearsed, we had to improvise a bit, but as we gave it in the dark, except for a few candles, and to an audience who’d mostly had plenty to drink…”
“Where was it performed, then?” asked Laura. “In the house?”
“Yes, in the hall of Squire’s Acre. It’s Elizabethan, so there was plenty of room. Well, when the lights went up—which they did rather unexpectedly, owing to Teddy Luton mistaking—or some of us thought perhaps it was done deliberately—mistaking the cue to switch them on—Caroline was found to be sitting on the Colonel’s knee. Of course, it was quite suitable, in a way, as the Colonel (we heard afterwards) tried to point out to his wife, because he was dressed as Charles II, but, naturally, Mrs Batty-Faudrey wasn’t having any of that, although she glossed matters over at the time.”
“Yes, but we’ve never been asked to perform there again,” said Mrs Collis. “In fact, until the pageant, none of our members has even been inside the gates and none of the Batty-Faudreys came to the Town Hall Merry Wives, I noticed, not even Giles.”
“So when Giles Faudrey came bounding in with Caroline and sat with his uncle and aunt and the Mayor and Mayoress—yes!” said Kitty thoughtfully. “Do you know,” she added to Laura, as they left the cul-de-sac and made for the side-street where they had left the car, “I don’t believe you need look any further for a motive.”
“Why?”
“Why? Well, Dog, it’s plain enough. You can see what happened.”
“Oh? And what did happen?”
“Delayed revenge!”
“Eh?”
“Well, it stands to reason, Dog. The Colonel gets into his wife’s bad books because of this Caroline creature, and Giles presenting her at tea-time on the day of the pageant like that—fuel to the fire, as you might say—and then that silly business of the donkey which spoiled the dressage—well, you can see how it all affected the Colonel. He frets and fumes. She-meaning Mrs Batty-Faudrey—a hard case, Dog, if ever there was one—she spends the long winter evenings brooding upon his little escapade and then reminding him of it. His anger smoulders—and against whom?”
“Don’t keep me in suspense! Against whom?”
“Not against his wife. He is honest and he can’t help seeing her point of view. Not against Caroline. He is a fair-minded man and he is prepared to admit that she would not have been the party of the second part if he had not been the party of the first part. I refer to the knee-sitting. So now, with whom are we left?”
“You tell me.”
“Oh, Dog, you can’t be trying! We’re left, of course, with the wretched Luton, who gave the game away by turning the lights up at the wrong time. Let us go further.”
“I can’t wait to do so,” said Laura. They reached the car. “I’ll drive, shall I?”
Kitty settled herself comfortably, Laura took the wheel and they drove off towards Brayne high street and the London Road.
“Well, going further,” continued Kitty, “this is how I see it. At the time of that masque, Luton is in love with this girl Caroline. He is of a jealous temperament. He feels there is hanky-panky in the air. He knows she is not on-stage, and as, in that hall where the masque was performe
d, there wouldn’t have been any wings, he knows she is not in the wings. Where, therefore, he wonders, has she got to?”
“To the Colonel’s armchair and lap?” suggested Laura.
“Quite right, Dog. How he senses this, we do not know, but, his feelings bursting suddenly out at the top of his head, he turns up the lights and exposes the guilty couple to the gaze of the many-headed.”
“Blimey! You know, you’re wasted designing fashions and hair-do’s,” said Laura. “You ought to be writing about Dracula and Frankenstein and Mr Who. You make my flesh creep.”
“Then there comes,” pursued Kitty, “the afternoon of the pageant. The Colonel’s nephew brings the means of the Colonel’s downfall in to tea, and this, mark you, when poor old Batty-Faudrey is grinding his teeth about that donkey. His mind is made up. Luton is for it. People who turn the lights up at inconvenient times deserve their fate, and so do those who let loose donkeys at the wrong time. Round to the left here, Dog, just beyond the next lights. Don’t you think I’ve hit the nail on the head?”
“The sureness of your aim commands my utmost reverence.”
“That means you don’t believe in my reconstruction. You’ll find I’m about right, all the same.”
“So you think Colonel Batty-Faudrey is the murderer? What, then, did you make of Mrs Collis’s remark that none of the Batty-Faudrey lot came to the Town Hall show?”
“That’s an easy one. The Colonel wasn’t in the audience, of course, but what about that side-door which opens on to Smith Hill? I’ve thought a lot about that, since Dame Beatrice inspected the Town Hall.”
“Do you think the Batty-Faudreys knew about that door? I shouldn’t have thought they’d know more than the front (or official) entrance to the Town Hall, with red carpet laid down, so to speak.”
“Still, the side-door is there, Dog, and even a Batty-Faudrey murderer would be a desperate man.”
“Desperate enough to get green slime on his shoes when dumping a body in the Thames?”
“He wouldn’t worry about his shoes.”
“It’s no use, Kay. I simply cannot see Colonel Batty-Faudrey as a murderer.”
“Well, he’s been a soldier, so he must have murdered lots of people in his time.”
“Not by stabbing them through the heart, though.”
“Why not? The Commandos did.”
“Be that as it may, even if the Colonel killed Falstaff for the reason aforesaid, he couldn’t have had any reason for killing Henry VIII.”
“That’s as far as we know, Dog. If Henry VIII had found out about the murder of Falstaff, the Colonel might have killed him to shut his mouth.”
“Those two who carted Falstaff off the stage went straight across the road to the pub, you know. Neither of them could have seen the murder committed, if things are as you say.”
“Oh, I know that’s supposed to be their alibi, but alibis are there to be busted. Read any good detective story, and judge for yourself.”
“I do. But real life isn’t often like that. How would you reconstruct the crime?”
“That’s easy. Falstaff is lugged off the stage and helped out of the basket. He’s hot and sticky, so he goes into the Bouquets room to freshen up.”
“What about his make-up? How do you mean—freshen up?”
“Oh, Dog, don’t quibble. Who’s doing this reconstruction, me or you?”
“I’m only making helpful comments.”
“Well, they’re not. They simply make me lose the thread, that’s all.”
“Sorry. He goes into Bouquets to freshen up.”
“Colonel Batty-Faudrey is lurking.”
“In Bouquets?”
“No, I shouldn’t think so. He couldn’t be sure that Falstaff would go in there.”
“Where, then?”
“Oh, Dog, does it matter where? He’s just simply lurking, that’s all. He follows Falstaff into Bouquets and stabs him—an easy job for an old soldier. That’s just plain common-sense. He leaves the body where it is, and sneaks to the door to make sure the coast is clear. Well, it isn’t clear.”
“Aha!”
“Henry VIII, in the character of one of the menservants, is doing up a shoelace or buttoning his overcoat or searching his pockets for the price of a pint or something.”
“I can see it all!”
“You’re not to sneer at me, Dog. I mean this seriously. The other serving man—the one who took the part of Edward III in the pageant-has gone charging on ahead. Well, the Colonel doesn’t know whether Henry VIII’s suspicions have been aroused or not. He doesn’t think they have. He waits for him to go, then he totes the body and the basket down to the Thames and plants them where he hopes the tide will wash them away.”
“But why the murder of Henry VIII if he didn’t think his deeds had been observed?”
“They had been observed, so Henry VIII began to blackmail him, and needed to be got rid of. That’s the way I see it, anyhow.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Environs of Brayne
“…a vast and expansive, but shallow lake, on the luxuriantly wooded banks and islands of which wild and ferocious creatures of extraordinary size and character fixed their habitation…”
« ^ »
So what we collected today, including old Kitty’s moronic reconstruction, doesn’t amount to a hill of beans,” said Laura, when she had rejoined her employer.
“The vegetable motif in English metaphors has always intrigued me,” said Dame Beatrice.
“As how?”
“A hill of beans, turnip-headed, sheer mashed potato, a string-bean (as of a man), a bean-pole (as of a woman), spilling the beans, knowing how many beans make five, as like as two peas.”
“Knowing one’s onions, pure apple sauce, ditto (Wodehouse) banana oil,” said Laura. “Likewise, a cauliflower ear, a strawberry nose, playing gooseberry, giving the raspberry, speaking with a plum in one’s mouth, the answer’s a lemon, the girl is a peach, the man is off his onion, and, of course, the outmoded shucks, meaning nonsense. One could go on and on, I daresay. But, to resume: Colonel Batty-Faudrey didn’t kill Falstaff, whatever old Kitty may say. If he killed anybody, it would be his wife, I should think, if she kept ribbing him about that girl Caroline. Well, where do we go from here?”
“To Brayne. I want to identify the private road in which Henry VIII’s body was found, and I want to talk to Mr Perse about his coming pageant.”
“I suppose Henry VIII’s head hasn’t turned up yet?”
“With a broad river, its tributary and a canal all within easy reach, the search for the head is likely to be a long one.”
“And, of course, may be no good at all. I suppose the body is the one we think it is?”
“I do not think there can be much doubt about that. For one thing, it has been identified by three independent witnesses, and, for another, nobody else in the neighbourhood has been reported missing.”
“I wonder how he was killed. If the identity was so easy to establish, it seems as though we were right when we decided that the beheading was to disguise the means used to do him in, and not to cloud the issue of who he was.”
“It is more than likely.”
“But haven’t they discovered any weapons?”
“By which you mean?”
“Well, I thought perhaps something in the nature of either a sharp or a blunt instrument must have finished him off. I’d be inclined to think he was hit over the head, or stabbed in the throat. Then there’s the beheading itself. That would need an axe, and that axe would be blood-stained.”
“Another interesting speculation: I wonder where the murder took place? The police are certain it was not in that private road where the body was found.”
“You mean that if we knew where the deed was done, it might give a pointer towards who did it?”
“Exactly—it might.”
“Cautious, aren’t you? Why do you want to talk to Julian Perse about his beastly pageant?”
&nb
sp; “Something might come of it. I am not hopeful, but I think it is worth trying.”
“You know, I think we’re all going into this with our eyes bandaged. We don’t really know what the murderer’s motive was, there don’t seem to be any clues and, to my mind, it still isn’t sufficiently established that the dead Henry VIII was Spey. The fact that he’s missing might mean that he’s the murderer and has hopped it pretty damn‘ quick.”
“I am sure that is a point which did not escape the notice of the police, but they are satisfied that the identity of the corpse has been proved beyond reasonable doubt. At any rate, whatever our speculations, theories and inferences may be, tomorrow we go to Brayne.”
“And spy out the lie of the land and contact Kitty’s nit-wit nephew? Looniness must run in that family.”
“Together with a certain amount of genius.”
“If genius equals a single-track mind, yes, I’d be inclined to agree.”
They set out after an early lunch on the following day and reached Brayne at just after four. What had been a Roman road ran through the borough from the bridge across the Thames (connecting Greater London with Surrey) to another, less pretentious, bridge. This one crossed the canal and bordered Brayne and the riverside village which adjoined it on the west.
The high street was a straight and narrow thoroughfare unredeemed from squalor. Small shops, many of them closed and derelict, bordered it on the north side, and on the side which ran by the river were the gasworks, the fire station, the police station and the hideous Edwardian Town Hall. Odd little scrofulous alleys separated some of the shops, but on the river side only a lane to the ferry and the now notorious Smith Hill led to the Thames.
Half-way between the two bridges a road left the high street at right-angles and, with it, the whole character of the town seemed to change. This road was clean and fairly wide. It led past the Butts, where Kitty’s pageant had been assembled, and then made a wide sweep, following the course of the ancient trackway which had preceded it. At one time it had wound past an Iron-Age camp, the guardian of the only spot for many miles where the Thames could be forded.
It passed on over a railway bridge and then the scene changed again. There were meadows and a farm. Beyond the farm a high brick wall, flanked by enormous elm trees, hid Colonel Batty-Faudrey’s policies from view, but some three hundred yards farther on were the wrought-iron gates through which could be glimpsed the Elizabethan mansion Squire’s Acre.
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