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“I see.” He took out his cigarettes, frowned over lighting one and then looked up with a grin. “I can’t keep it to myself,” he said. “It’s the craziest thing. Came in at twenty-seven to one. Everything else must have fallen down.”
“I hope you had something on.”
“A wee flutter,” Simon said and again the corners of his mouth twitched. “It was a dicey do, but was it worth it! How’s the Doc?” he repeated, again aware of Dr. Otterly.
“Quite well, thank you. How’s the garage proprietor?” Dr. Otterly countered chillily.
“Box of birds.”
As this didn’t seem to be getting them anywhere, Alleyn invited Simon to give them his account of the Five Sons.
He started off in a very business-like way, much, Alleyn thought, as he must have given his reports in his bomber-pilot days. The delayed entrance, the arrival of the Guiser, “steamed-up” and roaring at them all. The rapid change of clothes and the entrance. He described how he began the show with his pursuit of the girls.
“Fu
“Did Miss Campion react like that?”
“The fair Camilla? I wouldn’t have minded if she had. I made a very determined attempt, but not a chance. She crash-landed in the arms of another bod. Ralphy Stayne. Lucky type!”
He gri
Alleyn asked him what he did after he’d finished his act and before the first morris began. He said he had gone up to the back archway and had a bit of a breather.
“And during the morris?”
“I just sort of bummed around on my own.”
“With the Betty?”
“I think so. I don’t remember exactly. I’m not sort of officially ‘on’ in that scene.”
“But you didn’t go right off?”
“No, I’m meant to hang round. I’m the animal-man. God knows what it’s all in aid of, but I just sort of trot round on the outskirts.”
“And you did that last night?”
“That’s the story.”
“You didn’t go near the dancers?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Nor the dolmen?”
“No,” he said sharply.
“You couldn’t tell me, for instance, exactly what the Guiser did when he slipped down to hide?”
“Disappeared as usual behind the stone, I suppose, and lay doggo.”
“Where were you at that precise moment?”
“I don’t remember exactly.”
“Nowhere near the dolmen?”
“Absolutely. Nowhere near.”
“I see,” Alleyn said, and was careful not to look at Dr. Otterly. “And then? After that? What did you do?”
“I just hung round for a bit and then wandered up to the back.”
“What was happening in the arena?”
“The Betty did an act and after that Dan did his solo.”
“What was the Betty’s act?”
“Kind of ad lib. In the old days, they tell me, ‘she’ used to hunt down some bod in the crowd and tuck him under her petticoats. Or she’d come on screeching and, presently, there’d be a great commotion under the crinoline and out would pop some poor type. You can imagine, a high old time was had by all.”
“Mr. Stayne didn’t go in for that particular kind of clowning?”
“Who — Ralphy? Only very mildly. He’s much too much the gentleman, if you know what I mean.”
“What did he do?” Alleyn persisted.
“Honest, I’ve forgotten. I didn’t really watch. Matter of fact, I oozed off to the back and had a smoke.”
“When did you begin to watch again?”
“After Dan’s solo. When the last dance began. I came back for that.”
“And then?”
After that, Simon’s account followed the rest. Alleyn let him finish without interruption and was then silent for so long that the others began to fidget and Simon Begg stood up.
“Well,” he said, “if that’s all—”
“I’m afraid it’s nothing like all.”
“Hell!”
“Let us consider,” Alleyn said, “your story of your own movements during and immediately after the first dance — this dance that was twice repeated and ended with the mock decapitation. Why do you suppose that your account of it differs radically from all the other accounts we have had?”
Simon glanced at Dr. Otterly and assumed a tough and mulish expression.
“Your guess,” he said, “is as good as mine.”
“We don’t want to guess. We’d like to know. We’d like to know, for instance, why you say you trotted round on the outskirts of the dance and that you didn’t go near the dancers or the dolmen. Dr. Otterly here and all the other observers we have consulted say that, as a matter of fact, you went up to the dolmen at the moment of climax and stood motionless behind it.”
“Do they?” he said. “I don’t remember everything I did. Perhaps they don’t either. P’r’aps you’ve been handed a lot of duff gen.”
“If that means,” Dr. Otterly said, “that I may have laid false information, I won’t let you get away with it. I am absolutely certain that you stood close behind the dolmen and therefore so close to where the Guiser lay that you couldn’t fail to notice him. Sorry, Alleyn. I’ve butted in.”
‘That’s all right. You see, Begg, that’s what they all say. Their accounts agree.”
“Too bad,” Simon said.
“If, in fact, you did stand behind the dolmen when he hid behind it you must have seen exactly what the Guiser did.”
“I didn’t see what the Guiser did. I don’t remember being behind the stone. I don’t think I was near enough to see.”
“Would you make a statement, on oath, to that effect?”
“Why not?”
“And that you don’t remember exactly what the clowning act was between the Betty and Ernest Andersen?”
“Didn’t he and Ralphy have a row about his whiffler? Come to think of it, I believe I oozed off before they got going.”
“No, you didn’t. Sorry, Alleyn,” said Dr. Otterly.
“We are told that ‘Crack,’ who was watching them, gave a sort of neighing sound before he went off by the rear archway. Did you do that?”
“I might have. Daresay. Why the heck should I remember?”
“Because, up to the point when you finished tarring the village maidens and the dance-proper began, you remember everything very clearly. Then we get this period when you’re overtaken by a sort of mental miasma, a period that covers the ritual of the Father and the Five Sons culminating in the mock death. Everybody else agrees about where you were at the moment of the climax: behind the dolmen, they tell us, standing stock still. You insist that you don’t remember going near the dolmen.”
“That’s right,” Simon said very coolly and puckered his lips in a soundless whistle. “To the best of my remembrance, you know.”
“I think I’d better tell you that, in my opinion, this period, from the end of your improvisation until your return (and, incidentally, the return of your memory) covers the murder of William Andersen.”
“I didn’t hand him the big chop,” Simon said. “Poor old bastard.”
“Have you any notion who did?”
“No.”
“I do wish,” Alleyn said vexedly, “you wouldn’t be such an ass — if you are being an ass, of course.”
“Will that be all, Teacher?”
“No. How well do you know Mrs. Bünz?”
“I never met her till she came down here.”
“You’ve sold her a car, haven’t you?”
“That’s right.”
“Any other transactions?”
“What the hell do you mean?” Simon asked very quietly.
“Did you come to any understanding about Teutonic Dancer?”
Simon shifted his shoulders with a movement that reminded Alleyn of Mrs. Bünz herself. “Oh,” he said. “That.” He seemed to expand and the look of irrepressible satisfaction appeared again. “You might say the old dear brought me that bit of luck. I mean to say: could you beat it? Teutonic Dancer by Subsidize out of Substitution? Piece of cake!”
“Subsidize?”