Death of a Fool

“The solo was interesting —”

“Wait a bit,” Alleyn said. She gulped and blinked at him. “Now, look here, Mrs. Bünz. I’m going to put it to you that from the time the first dance ended with the mock death of the Fool until the solo began, you didn’t watch the proceedings at all. Now, is that right?”

“I was not interested —”

“How could you know you wouldn’t be interested if you didn’t even look? Did you look, Mrs. Bünz?”

She gaped at him with an expression of fear. She was elderly and frightened and he supposed that, in her mind, she associated him with monstrous figures of her past. He was filled with compunction.

Dr. Otterly appeared to share Alleyn’s feeling. He walked over to her and said, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Bünz. Really, there’s nothing to be frightened about, you know. They only want to get at the facts. Cheer up.”

His large doctor’s hand fell gently on her shoulders.

She gave a falsetto scream and shrank away from him.

“Hullo!” he said good-humouredly, “what’s all this? Nerves? Fibrositis?”

“I — yes — yes. The cold weather.”

“In your shoulders?”

“Ja. Both.”

“Mrs. Bünz,” Alleyn said, “will you believe me when I remind you of something I think you must already know? In England the Police Code has been most carefully framed to protect the public from any kind of bullying or overbearing behaviour on the part of investigating officers. I

It was difficult to hear what she said. She had lowered her head and spoke under her breath.

“… because I am German. It does not matter to you that I was anti-Nazi; that I am naturalized. Because I am German, you will think I am capable. It is different for Germans in England.”

The three men raised a little chorus of protest. She listened without showing any sign of being at all impressed.

“They think I am capable,” she said, “of anything.”

“You say that, don’t you, because of what Ernie Andersen shouted out when he stood last night on the dolmen?”

Mrs. Bünz covered her face with her knotty little hands.

“You remember what that was, don’t you?” Alleyn asked.

Dr. Otterly looked as if he would like to protest but caught Alleyn’s eye and said nothing.

Alleyn went on. “He pointed his sword at you, didn’t he, and said, ‘Ask her. She knows. She’s the one that did it.’ Something like that, wasn’t it?” He waited for a moment, but she only rocked herself a little with her hands still over her face.

“Why do you think he said that, Mrs. Bünz?” Alleyn asked.

In a voice so muffled that they had to strain their ears to hear her, she said something quite unexpected.

“It is because I am a woman,” said Mrs. Bünz.

Try as he might, Alleyn could get no satisfactory explanation from Mrs. Bünz as to what she implied by this statement or why she had made it. He asked her if she was thinking of the exclusion of women from ritual dances and she denied this with such vehemence that it was clear the question had caught her on the raw. She began to talk rapidly, excitedly and, to Mr. Fox at least, embarrassingly about the sex element in ritual dancing.

“The man-woman!” Mrs. Bünz shouted. “An age-old symbol of fertility. And the Hobby, also, without a doubt. There must be the Betty to lover him and the Hobby to —”

She seemed to realize that this was not an acceptable elucidation of her earlier statement and came to a halt. Dr. Utterly, who had heard all about her arrival at Copse Forge, reminded her that she had angered the Guiser in the first instance by effecting an entrance into the smithy. He asked her if she thought Ernie had some confused idea that, in doing this, she had brought ill-luck to the performance.

Mrs. Bünz seized on this suggestion with feverish intensity. “Yes, yes,” she cried. That, no doubt, was what Ernie had meant. Alleyn was unable to share her enthusiasm and felt quite certain it was assumed. She eyed him furtively. He realized, with immense distaste, that any forbearance or consideration that he might show her would probably be taken by Mrs. Bünz for weakness. She had her own ideas about investigating officers.

Furtively, she shifted her shoulders under their layers of woollen clothes. She made a queer little arrested gesture as if she were about to touch them and thought better of it.

Alleyn said, “Your shoulders are painful, aren’t they? Why not let Dr. Otterly have a look at them? I’m sure he would.”

Dr. Otterly made guarded professional noises, and Mrs. Bünz behaved as if Alleyn’s suggestion was tantamount to the Usual Warning. She shook her head violently, became grey-faced and speechless and seemed to contemplate a sudden break-away.

“I won’t keep you much longer,” Alleyn said. “There are only one or two more questions. This is the first: at any stage of the proceedings last night did the Hobby-Horse come near you?”

At this she did get up, but slowly and with the unco-ordinated movements of a much older woman. Fox looked over the top of his spectacles at the door. Alleyn and Dr. Otterly rose and on a common impulse moved a little nearer to her. It occurred to Alleyn that it would really be rather a pleasant change to ask Mrs. Bünz a question that did not throw her into a fever.

“Did you make any contact at all with the Hobby?” he insisted.

“I think. Once. At the begi

“So you have, no doubt, got tar on your clothes?”

“A liddle on my coat. I think.”

“Do the Hobby and Betty rehearse, I wonder?”

Dr. Otterly opened his mouth and shut it again.

“I know nothing of that,” Mrs. Bünz said.

“Do you know where they rehearsed?”

“Nothingk. I know nothingk.”

Fox, who had his eye on Dr. Otterly, gave a stentorian cough and Alleyn hurried on.

“One more question, Mrs. Bünz, and I do ask you very seriously to give me a frank answer to it. I beg you to believe that, if you are i

“I am combletely, combletely i

“Good. Then here is the question: did you after the end of the first morris leave the courtyard for some reason and not return to it until the begi

“No,” said Mrs. Bünz very loudly.

“Really?”

“No.”

Alleyn said after a pause, “All right. That’s all. You may be asked later on to sign a statement. I’m afraid I must also ask you to stay in East Mardian until after the inquest.” He went to the door and opened it. “Thank you,” he said.

When she reached the door, she stood and looked at him. She seemed to collect herself and, when she spoke, it was with more composure than she had hitherto shown.

“It is the foolish son who has done it,” she said. “He is epileptic. Ritual dancing has a profound effect upon such beings. They are carried back to their distant origins. They become excited. Had not this son already cut his father’s hand and shed his blood with his sword? It is the son.”

“How do you know he had already cut his father’s hand?” Alleyn asked.

“I have been told,” Mrs. Bünz said, looking as if she would faint.

Without another word and without looking at him again, she went out and down the passage.

Alleyn said to Fox, “Don’t let her talk to Begg. Nip out, Fox, and tell him that, as we’ll be a little time yet, he can go up to his garage and we’ll look in there later. Probably suit him better, anyway.”

Fox went out and Alleyn gri

“You can go ahead now,” he said, “if you want to spontaneously combust.”

“I must say I feel damn’ like it. What’s she up to, lying right and left? Good God, I never heard anything like it! Not know when we rehearsed. Good God! They could hear us all over the pub.”