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“Have you got a man of your own?” Alleyn asked.

“So I have, then, and a proper man, too.”

“May I know who he is?”

“I don’t see why for not,” she said slowly. “It’s Chris Andersen. Reckon you saw us a while back in the lane.”

“What did the Guiser have to say about that?”

For the first time since he spoke to her, Trixie looked uneasy. An apple-blossom blush spread over her face and faded, Alleyn thought, to an unusual pallor.

“You tell me,” he said, “that the Guiser thought Mr. Stayne should marry you. Did the Guiser know about Chris?”

She hesitated and then said, “Reckon he knew, all right.”

“And objected?”

“He wasn’t all that pleased, no doubt,” she said.

“Did he have an argument about it with Chris?”

She put her hand over her mouth and would say no more.

Alleyn said, “I see you can keep things to yourself and I hope you’ll decide to do so now. There’s something else I want you to do.”

Trixie listened. When he’d finished she said, “I reckon I can but try and try I will.”

He thanked her and opened the door for her to go out.

“A remarkable young woman,” he thought.

Fox, who had enjoyed a substantial high-tea, sat on the edge of the bed, smoked his pipe and watched his chief get ready for his dinner-party.

“The water’s hot,” Alleyn said. “I’ll say that for the Green Man or Trixie or whoever stokes the boilers.”

“What happened, if it’s not indiscreet, of course, with Trixie?”

Alleyn told him.

“Fancy!” Fox commented placidly. “So the old boy asks the young solicitor to make out the Will that’s planned to put the kibosh on the romance. What a notion!”

“I’m afraid the Guiser was not only a bloody old tyrant but a bloody old snob into the bargain.”

“And the young solicitor,” Mr. Fox continued, following his own line of thought, “although he talks to us quite freely about the proposed Will, doesn’t mention this bit of it. Does he?”

“He doesn’t.”

“Ah!” said Fox calmly. “I daresay. And how was Trixie, Mr. Alleyn?”

“From the point of view of sex, Br’er Fox, Trixie’s what nice women call a-moral. That’s what she is.”

“Fancy!”

“She’s a big, capable, good-natured girl with a code of her own and I don’t suppose she’s ever done a mean thing in her life. Moreover, she’s a generous woman.”

“So it seems.”

“In every sense of the word.”

“That’s right, and this morning,” Fox continued, “Ernie let on that there were words between Chris and the old man. On account of Trixie, would you think?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Ah! Before you go up to the castle, Mr. Alleyn, would there be time for a quick survey of this case?”

“It’ll have to be damn’ quick. To put it your way, Fox, the case is going to depend very largely on a general refusal to believe in fairies. We’ve got the Guiser alive up to the time he ducks down behind the dolmen and waves to Ralph Stayne (if, of course, he did wave). About eight minutes later, we’ve got him still behind the dolmen, dead and headless. We’ve got everybody swearing blue murder he didn’t leave the spot and offering to take Bible oaths nobody attacked him. And, remember, the presumably disinterested onlookers, Carey and the sergeant, agree about this. We’ve got to find an answer that will cover their evidence. I can only think of one and it’s going to be a snorter to ring home.”

“You’re telling me.”

“Consider the matter of bloodstains, for instance, and I wish to hell Curtis would get here and confirm what we suppose. It the five brothers, Begg, Otterly and Stayne had blood all over their clothes it wouldn’t get us much nearer because that old ass Carey let them go milling round the corpse. As it it, Bailey tells me they’ve been over the lot and can’t find anything beyond some smears on their trousers and sleeves. Begg, going on his own cloak-and-dagger experience in Germany, points out that the assailant in such cases is well-enough bloodied to satisfy the third murderer in Macbeth. And he’s right, of course.”

“Yes, but we think we know the answer to that one,” said Fox. “Don’t we?”

“So we do. But it doesn’t get us any closer to an arrest.”

“Motive?”

“I despise motive. (Why, by the way, don’t we employ that admirable American usage?) I despise it. The case is lousy with motive. Everybody’s got a sort of motive. We can’t ignore it, of course, but it won’t bring home the bacon, Br’er Fox. Opportunity’s the word, my boy. Opportunity.”

He shrugged himself into his jacket and attacked his head violently with a pair of brushes.

Fox said, “That’s a nice suit, Mr. Alleyn, if I may say so. Nobody’d think you’d travelled all night in it.”

“It ought to be Victorian tails and a red silk handkerchief for the Dame of Mardian Castle. What’ll you do, Fox? Could you bear to go down to the forge and see if the boys have unearthed the Guiser’s wealth? Who’s on duty there, by the way?”

“A fresh P. C. Carey got up by the afternoon bus from Biddlefast. The ambulance is coming from Yowford for the remains at nine. I ought to go down and see that through.”

“Come on, then. I’ll drop you there.”

They went downstairs and, as they did so, heard Trixie calling out to some invisible person that the telephone lines had broken down.

“That’s damn’ useful,” Alleyn grumbled.

They went out to their car, which already had a fresh ledge of snow on it.

“Listen!” Alleyn said and looked up to where a lighted and partially opened window glowed theatrically beyond a light drift of falling snow. Through the opening came a young voice. It declaimed with extraordinary detachment and great attention to consonants:

“ ‘Nine-men’s morris is filled up with mud.’ 

“Camilla,” Alleyn said.

What’s she saying!” Fox asked, startled. Alleyn raised a finger. The voice again announced:

 ‘Nine-men’s morris is filled up with mud.’ 

“It’s a quotation. ‘Nine-men’s morris.’ Is that why I kept thinking it ought to be nine and not eight? Or did I —”

The voice began again, using a new inflexion.

 ‘Nine-men’s morris is filled up with MUD.’ 

“So was ours this morning,” Alleyn muttered.

“I thought, the first time, she said ‘blood,’ Fox ejaculated, greatly scandalized.

“Single-track minds: that’s what’s the matter with us.” He called out cheerfully, “You can’t say, ‘The human mortals want their winter here,’ ” and Camilla stuck her head out of the window.

“Where are you off to?” she said. “Or doesn’t one ask?”

“One doesn’t ask. Good-night, Titania. Or should it be Juliet?”

“Dr. Otterly thinks it ought to be Cordelia.”

“He’s got a thing about her. Stick to your fairy-tales while you can,” Alleyn said. She gave a light laugh and drew back into her room.

They drove cautiously down the lane to the cross-roads. Alleyn said, “We’ve got to get out of Ernie what he meant by his speech from the dolmen, you know. And his remark about Chris and the old man. If a propitious moment presents itself, have a shot.”

“Tricky, a bit, isn’t it?”

“Very. Hullo! Busy night at the smithy.”

Copse Forge was alert in the snowbound landscape. The furnace glowed and lights moved about in the interior: there was a suggestion of encrusted Christmas cards that might open to disclose something more disturbing.