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“That’ll be Dan,” said Dulcie Mardian.
“He cuts a very pretty caper,” said the Rector. From behind the battlemented wall at the back a great flare suddenly burst upwards with a roar and a crackle.
“They’re throwin’ turpentine on the fire,” Dame Alice said. “Or somethin’.”
“Very naughty,” said the Rector.
Ralph, who had slipped out by the back entrance, now returned through an archway near the house, having evidently run round behind the battlements. Presently, the Whiffler, again carrying his sword, re-appeared through the back entrance and joined his brothers. The solo completed, the Five Sons then performed their final dance. “Crack” and the Betty circled in the background, now approaching and now retreating from the Mardian dolmen.
“This,” said Dulcie, “is where the Old Man rises from the dead. Isn’t it, Sam?”
“Ah — yes. Yes. Very strange,” said the Rector, broad-mindedly.
“Exciting.”
“Well —” he said uneasily.
The Five Sons ended their dance with a decisive stamp. They stood with their backs to their audience pointing their swords at the Mardian dolmen. The audience clapped vociferously.
“He rises up from behind the stone, doesn’t he, Aunt Akky?”
But nobody rose up from behind the Mardian dolmen. Instead, there was an interminable pause. The swords wavered, the dancers shuffled awkwardly and at last lowered their weapons. The jigging tune had petered out.
“Look, Aunt Akky. Something’s gone wrong.”
“Dulcie, for God’s sake, hold your tongue.”
“My dear Aunt Akky.”
“Be quiet, Sam.”
One of the Sons, the soloist, moved away from his fellows. He walked alone to the Mardian dolmen and round it. He stood quite still and looked down. Then he jerked his head. His brothers moved in. They formed a semicircle and they too looked down: five glistening and contemplative blackamoors. At last their faces lifted and turned, their eyeballs showed white and they stared at Dr. Otterly.
His footfall was loud and solitary in the quietude that had come upon the courtyard.
The Sons made way for him. He stooped, knelt, and in so doing disappeared behind the stone. Thus, when he spoke, his voice seemed disembodied, like that of an echo.
“Get back! All of you. Stand away!”
The Five Sons shuffled back. The Hobby-Horse and the Betty, a monstrous couple, were motionless.
Dr. Otterly rose from behind the stone and walked forward. He looked at Dame Alice where she sat enthroned. He was like an actor coming out to bow to the Royal Box, but he trembled and his face was livid. When he had advanced almost to the steps he said loudly: “Everyone must go. At once. There has been an accident.” The crowd behind him stirred and murmured.
“What’s up?” Dame Alice demanded. “What accident? Where’s the Guiser?”
“Miss Mardian, will you take your aunt indoors? I’ll follow as soon as I can.”
“I will if she’ll come,” said Dulcie, practically.
“Please, Dame Alice.”
“I want to know what’s up.”
“And so you shall.”
“Who is it?”
“The Guiser. William Andersen.”
“But he wasn’t dancing,” Dulcie said foolishly. “He’s ill.”
“Is he dead?”
“Yes.”
“Wait a bit.”
Dame Alice extended her arm and was at once hauled up by Dulcie. She addressed herself to her guests.
“Sorry,” she said. “Must ’pologize for askin’ you to leave, but as you’ve heard there’s bin trouble. Glad if you’ll just go. Now. Quietly. Thankee. Sam, I don’t want you.”
She turned away and without another word went indoors followed by Dulcie.
The Rector murmured, “But what a shocking thing to happen! And so dreadful for his sons. I’ll just go to them, shall I? I suppose it was his heart, poor old boy.”
“Do you?” Dr. Otterly asked:
The Rector stared at him. “You look dreadfully ill,” he said, and then, “What do you mean? For the love of Heaven, Otterly, what’s happened?”
Dr. Otterly opened his mouth but seemed to have some difficulty in speaking.
He and the Rector stared at each other. Villagers still moved across the courtyard and the dancers were still suspended in immobility. It was as if something they all anticipated had not quite happened.
Then it happened.
The Whiffler was on the Mardian dolmen. He had jumped on the stone and stood there, fantastical against the snow. He paddled his feet in ecstasy. His mouth was redly open and he yelled at the top of his voice:
“What price blood for the stone? What price the Old Man’s ’ead? Swords be out, chaps, and ’eads be off. What price blood for the stone?”
His sword was in his hand. He whiffled it savagely and then pointed it at someone in the crowd.
“Ax ’er,” he shouted. “She knows. She’m the one what done it. Ax ’er.”
The stragglers in the crowd parted and fell back from a solitary figure thickly encased in a multiplicity of hand-woven garments.
It was Mrs. Bünz.
Chapter V
Aftermath
“Has it ever occurred to you,” Alleyn said, “that the progress of a case is rather like a sort of thaw? Look at that landscape.”
He wiped the mist from their carriage window. Sergeants Bailey and Thompson, who had been taking gear from the rack, put on their hats, sat down again and stared out with the air of men to whom all landscapes are alike. Mr. Fox, with slightly raised brows, also contemplated the weakly illuminated and dripping prospect.
“Like icing,” he said, “ru
“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 partial 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, Br’er 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.
“This’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 you to tell us the whole story, Carey. Where are we going?”