Off with His Head

  ‘I have gone a certain way.’

  ‘Dr Otterly tells me,’ Alleyn said, to that gentleman’s astonishment, ‘that you have probably gone as far as anyone in England.’

  ‘Zo,’ she said, with a magnificent inclination towards Otterly.

  ‘But, before we talk about that, I suppose I’d better ask you the usual routine questions. Let’s get them over as soon as possible. I’m told that you gave Mr William Andersen a lift—‘

  They were off again on the old trail, Alleyn thought dejectedly, and not getting much farther along it. Mrs Bünz’s account of the Guiser’s hitch-hike corresponded with what he had already been told.

  ‘I was so delighted to drive him,’ she began nervously. ‘It was a great pleasure to me. Once or twice I attempted, tactfully, to a little draw him out but he was, I found, angry, and not inclined for cawnversation.’

  ‘Did he say anything at all, do you remember?’

  ‘To my recollection he spoke only twice. To begin with, he invited me by gesture to stop and, when I did so, he asked me in his splendid, splendid rich dialect, “Be you goink up-alongk?” On the drive, he remarked that, when he found Mr Ernie Andersen he would have the skin off of his body. Those, however, were his only remarks.’

  ‘And when you arrived?’

  ‘He descended and hurried away.’

  ‘And what,’ Alleyn asked, ‘did you do?’

  The effect of the question, casually put, upon Mrs Bünz was extraordinary. She seemed to flinch back into her clothes as a tortoise into its shell.

  ‘When you got there, you know,’ Alleyn gently prompted her, ‘what did you do?’

  Mrs Bünz said in a cold-thickened voice: ‘I became a spectator. Of course.’

  ‘Where did you stand?’

  Her head sank a little further into her shoulders.

  ‘Inside the archway.’

  ‘The archway by the house as you come in?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And from there you watched the dance?’

  Mrs Bünz wetted her lips and nodded.

  ‘That must have been an absorbing experience. Had you any idea of what was in store for you?’

  ‘Ach! No! No, I swear it! No!’ She almost shouted.

  ‘I meant,’ Alleyn said, ‘in respect of the dance itself.’

  ‘The dance,’ Mrs Bünz said in a strangulated croak, ‘is unique.’

  ‘Was it all that you expected?’

  ‘But of course!’ She gave a little gasp and appeared to be horror stricken. ‘Really,’ Alleyn thought, ‘I seem to be having almost too much success with Mrs Bünz. Every shy a coconut.’

  She had embarked on an elaborate explanation. All folk dance and drama had a common origin. One expected certain elements. The amazing thing about the Five Sons was that it combined so rich an assortment of these elements as well as some remarkable features of its own. ‘It has everythink. But everythink,’ she said and was plagued by a gargantuan sneeze.

  ‘And did they do it well?’

  Mrs Bünz said they did it wonderfully well. The best performance for sheer execution in England. She rallied from whatever shock she had suffered and began to talk incomprehensibly of galleys, split-jumps and double capers. Not only did she remember every move of the Five Sons and the Fool in their twice-repeated dance, but she had noted the positions of the Betty and Hobby. She remembered how these two pranced round the perimeter and how, later on, the Betty chased the young men and flung his skirts over their heads and the Hobby stood as an image behind the dolmen. She remembered everything.

  ‘This is astonishing,’ he said, ‘for you to retain the whole thing, I mean, after seeing it only once. Extraordinary. How do you do it?’

  ‘I—I—have a very good memory,’ said Mrs Bünz, and gave an agonized little laugh. ‘In such matters my memory is phenomenal.’ Her voice died away. She looked remarkably uncomfortable. He asked her if she took notes and she said at once she didn’t, and then seemed in two minds whether to contradict herself.

  Her description of the dance tallied in every respect with the accounts he had already been given, with one exception. She seemed to have only the vaguest recollection of the Guiser’s first entrance when, as Alleyn had already been told, he had jogged round the arena and struck the Mardian Dolmen with his clown’s bladder. But, from then onwards, Mrs Bünz knew everything right up to the moment when Ralph stole Ernie’s sword. After that, for a short period, her memory seemed again to be at fault. She remembered that, somewhere about this time, the Hobby Horse went off, but had apparently forgotten that Ernie gave chase after Ralph and only had the vaguest recollection, if any, of Ralph’s improvised fooling with Ernie’s sword. Moreover, her own uncertainty at this point seemed to embarrass her very much. She blundered about from one fumbled generalization to another.

  ‘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 shoulder.

  She gave a falsetto scream and shrank away from him.

  ‘Hallo!’ 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. Innocent persons have nothing to fear from us. Nothing. Do you believe that?’

  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.

  II

  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 h
ad 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 Otterly, 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 was 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 uncoordinated 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 beginning, during his chasinks.’ Her eyes were streaming, but whether with cold or distress, it was impossible to say. ‘In his flirtinks he touched me,’ she said. ‘I think.’

  ‘So you have no doubt got tar on your clothes?’

  ‘A little 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?’

  ‘Nothink. I know nothink.’

  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 innocent of this crime, you can do yourself nothing but good by speaking openly and without fear. Please believe it.’

  ‘I am completely, completely innocent.’

  ‘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 beginning of the solo dance? Did you, Mrs Bünz?’

  ‘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 suits him better, anyway.’

  Fox went out and Alleyn grinned at Dr Otterly.

  ‘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.’

  ‘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 folk-lore 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 funny business between young Mr Stayne and daft Ernie and gets back before Dan Andersen does a turn on his own. Is that your idea?’

  ‘Not altogether, Brer 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 1.30 at Sandown. That’s funny,’ Mr Fox added, ‘I never thought of it at the time. Funny!’

  ‘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 dare say. Then we’ll take a drive 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 shopkeeper. Name’s still up over the shop. He did jolly well in the war with the RAF. Bomber pilot. He was brought down over Germany, tackled a bunch of Huns single-handed and got himself and two of his crew back through Spain. They gave him the DFC 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 county 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 RAF 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 stock-broker’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.’