Death of a Fool

“Where did you rehearse?”

“In the old barn at the back, here.”

“Very rum. But I fancy,” Alleyn muttered, “we know why she went away during the show.”

“Are you sure she did?”

“My dear chap, yes. She’s a fanatic. She’s a folklore hound with her nose to the ground. She remembered the first and last parts of your programme with fantastic accuracy. Of course, if she’d been there she’d have watched the earthy antics of the comics. If they are comics. Of course. She’d have been on the look-out for all the fertility fun that you hand out. If she’d been there she’d have looked and she’d have remembered in precise detail. She doesn’t remember because she didn’t look and she didn’t look because she wasn’t there. I’d bet my boots on it and I bet I know why.”

Fox returned, polishing his spectacles, and said, “Do you know what I reckon, Mr. Alleyn? I reckon Mrs. B. leaves the arena, just after the first dance, is away from it all through the collection and the fu

“Not altogether, Br’er Fox. If my tottering little freak of an idea is any good, she leaves her observation post before the first dance.”

“Hey?” Fox ejaculated. “But it’s the first dance that she remembers so well.

“I must say—” Dr. Otterly agreed and flapped his hands.

“Exactly,” Alleyn said. “I know. Now, let me explain.”

He did so at some length and they listened to him with the raised eyebrows of assailable incredulity.

“Well,” they said, “I suppose it’s possible.” And, “It might be, but how’ll you prove it?” And, “Even so, it doesn’t get us all that much further, does it?” And, “How are you to find out?”

“It gets us a hell of a lot further,” Alleyn said hotly, “as you’d find out pretty quickly if you could take a peep at Mrs. Bünz in the rude nude. However, since that little treat is denied us, let’s visit Mr. Simon Begg and see what he can provide. What was he up to, Fox?”

“He was talking on the telephone about horse-racing,” Fox said. “Something called ‘Teutonic Dancer’ in the one-thirty at Sandown. That’s fu

“Screamingly. You might see if Bailey and Thompson are back, Fox, and if there’s anything. They’ll need a meal, poor devils. Trixie’ll fix that, I daresay. Then we’ll take a walk up the road to Begg’s garage.”

While Fox was away Alleyn asked Dr. Otterly if he could give him a line on Simon Begg.

“He’s a local,” Dr. Otterly said. “Son of the ex-village-shop-keeper. Name’s still up over the shop. He did jolly well in the war with the R.A.F. — bomber-pilot. He was brought down over Germany, tackled a bunch of Huns single-handed and got himself und two of his crew back through Spain. They gave him the D.F.C. for it. He’d been a bit of a problem as a lad but he took to active service like a bird.”

“And since the war?”

“Well — in a way, a bit of a problem again. I feel damn’ sorry for him. As long as he was in uniform with his ribbons up he was quite a person. That’s how it was with those boys, wasn’t it? They lived high, wide and dangerous and they were everybody’s heroes. Then he was demobilized and came back here. You know what country people are like: it takes a flying bomb to put a dent in their class-consciousness, and then it’s only temporary. They began to say how ghastly the R.A.F. slang was and to ask each other if it didn’t rock you a bit when you saw them out of uniform. It’s quite true that Simon bounded sky high and used an incomprehensible and irritating jargon and that some of his waistcoats were positively terrifying. All the same.”

“I know,” Alleyn said.

“I felt rather sorry for him. Neither fish, nor flesh nor stockbroker’s Tudor. That was why I asked him to come into the Sword Wednesday show. Our old Hobby was killed in the raids. He was old Begg from Yowford, a relation of Simon’s. There’ve been Beggs for Hobbies for a very long time.”

“So this Begg has done it — how many times?”

“About nine. Ever since the war.”

“What’s he been up to all that time?”

“He’s led rather a raffish kind of life for the last nine years. Constantly changing his job. Gambling pretty high, I fancy. Hanging round the pubs. Then, about three years ago his father died and he bought a garage up at Yowford. It’s not doing too well, I fancy. He’s said to be very much in the red. The boys would have got good backing from one of the big companies if they could have persuaded the Guiser to let them turn Copse Forge into a filling station. It’s at a cross-roads and they’re putting a main road through before long, more’s the pity. They were very keen on the idea and wanted Simon to go in with them. But the Guiser wouldn’t hear of it.”

“They may get it — now,” Alleyn said without emphasis. “And Simon may climb out of the red.”

“He’s scarcely going to murder William Andersen,” Dr. Otterly pointed out acidly, “on the off-chance of the five sons putting up five petrol pumps. Apart from the undoubted fact that, wherever Begg himself may have got to last night, the Guiser certainly didn’t leave the stage after he walked on to it and I defy you to perform a decapitation when you’re trussed up in ‘Crack’s’ harness. Besides, I like Begg; ghastly as he is, I like him.”

“All right. I know. I didn’t say a thing.”

“You are not, I hope,” Dr. Otterly angrily continued, “putting on that damned superior-sleuth act: ‘you have the facts, my dear — whatever the stooge’s name is.’ ”

“Not I.”

“Well, you’ve got some damned theory up your sleeve, haven’t you?”

“I’m ashamed of it.”

“Ashamed?”

“Utterly, Otterly.”

“Ah, hell!” Dr. Otterly said in disgust.

“Come with us to Begg’s garage. Keep on listening. If anything doesn’t tally with what you remember, don’t say a word unless I tip you the wink. All right? Here we go.”

In spite of the thaw, the afternoon had grown deadly cold. Yowford Lane dripped greyly between its hedgerows and was choked with mud and slush. About a mile along it, they came upon Simmy-Dick’s Service Station in a disheartened-looking shack with Begg’s car standing outside it. Alleyn pulled up at the first pump and sounded his horn.

Simon came out, buttoning up a suit of white overalls with a large monogram on the pocket: witness, Alleyn suspected, to a grandiloquent begi

“Hullo,” Alleyn said. “Four, please.”

“Four what? Coals of fire?” Simon said, and moved round to the petrol tank.

It was an unexpected opening and made things a good deal easier for Alleyn. He got out of the car and joined Simon.

“Why coals of fire?” he asked.

“After me being a rude boy this morning.”

“That’s all right.”

“It’s just that I know what a clot Ernie can make of himself,” Simon said, and thrust the nose of the hosepipe into the tank. “Four, you said?”

“Four. And this is a professional call, by the way.”

“I’m not all that dumb,” Simon grunted.

Alleyn waited until the petrol had gone in and then paid for it. Simon tossed the change up and caught it neatly before handing it over. “Why not come inside?” he suggested. “It’s bloody cold out here, isn’t it?”

He led the way into a choked-up cubby-hole that served as his office. Fox and Dr. Otterly followed Alleyn and edged in sideways.

“How’s the Doc?” Simon said. “Doing a Watson?”

“I’m begi

“Well,” Alleyn began cheerfully, “how’s the racing-news?”

“Box of birds,” Simon said.

“Teutonic Dancer do any good for herself?”

Simon looked sharply at Fox. “Who’s the ge

“That’s right, Mr. Begg. I heard you on the telephone.”