Death of a Fool

Chapter VII

The Green Man

Before they set off for the Green Man, Alleyn asked Dr. Otterly if he could arrange for the Guiser’s accommodation in a suitable mortuary.

“Curtis, the Home Office man, will do the P.M.,” Alleyn said, “but he’s two hundred-odd miles away across country, and the last time I heard of him he was held up on a tricky case. I don’t know how or when he’ll contrive to get here.”

“Biddlefast would offer the best facilities. It’s twenty miles away. We’ve a cottage hospital at Yowford where we could fix him up straightaway — after a fashion.”

“Do, will you? Things are very unsatisfactory as they are. Can we get a mortuary van or an ambulance?”

“The latter. I’ll fix it up.”

“Look,” Alleyn said, “I want you to do something else, if you will. I’m going now to talk to Simon Begg, young Stayne, the German lady and the Guiser’s grand-daughter, who, I hear, is staying at the pub. Will you sit in on the interviews? Will you tell me if you think anything they may say is contrary to the facts as you observed them? Will you do that, Otterly?”

Dr. Otterly stared at the dripping landscape and whistled softly through his teeth. “I don’t know,” he said at last.

“Don’t you? Tell me, if this is deliberate homicide, do you want the man run in?”

“I suppose so.” He pulled out his pipe and opened the door to knock it out on the ru

“And you look upon Ernie Andersen as such a case.”

“I do. He’s an epileptic. Petit mal. Very rare attacks, but he had one, last night, after he saw what had happened to his father. I won’t fence with you, but I tell you that, if I thought Ernie Andersen stood any chance of being hanged for the murder of his father, I wouldn’t utter a syllable that might lead to his arrest.”

“What would you do?”

“Bully a couple of brother-medicos into certifying him and have him put away.”

Alleyn said, “Why don’t you chaps get together and make a solid medical front against the McNaughton Rules? But never mind that now. Perhaps if I tell you exactly what I’m looking for in this case, you’ll feel more inclined to sit in. Mind you, I may be looking for something that doesn’t exist. The theory, if it can be graced with the title, is based on such slender evidence that it comes jolly close to being guesswork and, when you find a cop guessing, you kick him in the pants. Still, here, for what it’s worth, is the line of country.”

Dr. Otterly stuffed his pipe, lit it, threw his head back and listened. When Alleyn had finished, he said, “By God, I wonder!” and then, “All right. I’ll sit in.”

“Good. Shall we about it?”

It was half past twelve when they reached the pub. Simon and Ralph were eating a snack at the bar. Mrs. Bünz and Camilla sat at a table before the parlour fire, faced with a meal that Camilla, for her part, had been quite unable to contemplate with equanimity. Alleyn and Fox went to their private room, where they found that cold meat and hot vegetables awaited them. Dr. Otterly returned from the telephone to say he had arranged for the ambulance to go to Copse Forge and for his partner to take surgery alone during the early part of the afternoon.

While they ate their meal, Alleyn asked Dr. Otterly to tell him something of the history of the Dance of the Five Sons.

“Like most people who aren’t actively interested in folklore, I’m afraid I’m inclined to associate it with flushed ladies imperfectly braced for violent exercise and bearded gentlemen dressed like the glorious Fourth of June gone elfin. A Philistine’s conception, I’m sure.”

“Yes,” Dr. Otterly said, “it is. You’re confusing the ‘sports’ with the true generic strain. If you’re really interested, ask the German lady. Even if you don’t ask, she’ll probably tell you.”

“Couldn’t you give me a succinct résumé? Just about this particular dance?”

“Of course I could. I don’t want any encouragement, I assure you, to mount on my hobby-horse. And there, by the way, you are! Have you thought how many everyday phrases derive from the folk drama? Mounting one’s hobby-horse! Horseplay! Playing the fool! Cutting capers! Midsummer madness! Very possibly ‘horn mad,’ though I recognize the more generally known application. This pub, the Green Man, gets its name from a variant of the Fool, the Robin Hood, the Jack-in-the-Green.”

“What does the whole concept of the ritual dance go back to? Frazer’s King of the Sacred Grove?”

“Certainly. And the Dionysian play about the Titans who killed their old man.”

“Fertility rite-cum-sacrifice-death and resurrection?”

“That’s it. It’s the oldest manifestation of the urge to survive and the belief in redemption through sacrifice and resurrection. It’s as full of disjointed symbolism as a surrealist’s dream.”

“Maypoles, corn-babies, ladles — all that?”

“Exactly. And, being a folk manifestation, the whole thing changes all the time. It’s full of cross-references. The images overlap and the characters swap roles. In the few places in England where it survives in its traditional form, you get, as it were, different bits of the kaleidoscopic pattern. The lock of the swords here, the rabbit-cap there, the blackened faces somewhere else. Horns at Abbots Bromely, Old Hoss in Kent and Old Tup in Yorkshire. But always, however much debased and fragmentary, the central idea of the death and resurrection of the Fool, who is also the Father, Initiate, Medicine Man, Scapegoat and King. At its lowest, a few scraps of half-remembered jargon. At its highest —”

“Not — by any chance—Lear?”

“My dear fellow,” Dr. Otterly cried, and actually seized Alleyn by the hand, “you don’t mean to say you’ve spotted that! My dear fellow, I really am delighted with you. You must let me bore you again and at greater length. I realize, now is not the time for it. No. No, we must confine ourselves for the moment to the Five Sons.”

“You’re far from boring me, but I’m afraid we must. Surely,” Alleyn said, “this particular dance-drama is unusually rich? Doesn’t it present a remarkable number of elements?”

“I should damn’ well say it does. Much the richest example we have left in England and, luckily for us, right off the beaten track. Generally speaking, traditional dancing and mumming (such of it as survives) follows the line of the original Danish occupation, but here we’re miles off it.”

“The spelling of the Andersen name, though?”

“Ah! There you are! In my opinion, they’re a Danish family who, for some reason, drifted across to this part of the world and brought their winter-solstice ritual with them. Of course, the trade of smith has always been particularly closely associated with folklore.”

“And, originally, there was an actual sacrifice?”

“Of some sort, I have no doubt.”

“Human?”

Dr. Otterly said, “Possibly.”

“This lock, or knot, of swords, now. Five swords — you’d expect it to be six.”

“So it is everywhere else that I know of. Another element that makes the Five Sons unique.”

“How do they form it?”

“While they dance. They’ve got two methods. The combination of a cross interwoven with an A and a sort of monogram of an X and an H. It takes quite a bit of doing.”

“And Ernie’s was as sharp as hell.”

“Absolutely illicit, but it was.”

“I wonder,” Alleyn said, “if Ernie expected his particular Old Man to resurrect.”

Dr. Otterly laid down his knife and fork. “After what happened?” He gave a half-laugh. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“What’s their attitude to the dance? All of them? Why do they go on with it, year after year?”