“As a sin? I do, indeed.”
“But — it was so brief and so much outside the general stream of my life. And hers — Trixie’s. It was just a sort of natural thing; a little kindness of hers.”
“You can’t expect me to take that view of it.”
“No,” Ralph said. “I’ll only sound shallow or something.”
“It’s not a question of how you sound. It’s a question of wrongdoing, Ralph. There’s the girl — Trixie herself.”
“She’s all right. Honestly. She’s going to be tokened to Chris Andersen.”
The Rector momentarily shut his eyes. “Oh, Ralph!” he said and then, “William Andersen forbade it. He spoke to Chris on Sunday.”
“Well, anyway, now they can,” Ralph said, and then looked rather ashamed of himself. “I’m sorry, Pop. I shouldn’t have put it like that, I suppose. Look: it’s all over, that thing. It was before I knew Camilla. I did regret it very much, after I loved Camilla. Does that help?”
The Rector made a most unhappy gesture. “I am talking to a stranger,” he said. “I have failed you, dreadfully, Ralph. It’s quite dreadful.”
A bell rang distantly.
“They’ve fixed the telephone up,” the Rector said.
“I’ll go.”
Ralph went out and returned looking bewildered.
“It was Alleyn,” he said. “The man from the Yard. They want us to go up to the castle this afternoon.”
“To the castle?”
“To do the Five Sons again. They want you too, Pop.”
“Me? But why?”
“You were an observer.”
“Oh, dear!”
“Apparently, they’re calling everybody up: Mrs. Bünz included.”
Ralph joined his father in a kind of half-companionable dissonance and looked across the rectory tree-tops towards East Mardian, where a column of smoke rose gracefully from the pub.
Trixie had done her early chores and seen that the fires were burning brightly.
She had also taken Mrs. Bünz’s breakfast up to her.
At this moment, Trixie was behaving oddly. She stood with a can of hot water outside Mrs. Bünz’s bedroom door, intently listening. The expression on her face was not at all sly, rather it was grave and attentive. On the other side of the door, Mrs. Bünz clicked her knife against her plate and her cup on its saucer. Presently, there was a more complicated clatter as she put her tray down on the floor beside her bed. This was followed by the creak of a wire mattress, a heavy thud and the pad of bare feet. Trixie held her breath, listened feverishly and, then, without knocking, quickly pushed open the door and walked in.
“I’m sure I do ax your pardon, ma-am,” Trixie said. “Axcuse, me, please.” She crossed the room to the washstand, set down her can of water, returned past Mrs. Bünz and went out again. She shut the door gently behind her and descended to the back parlour, where Alleyn, Fox, Thompson and Bailey had finished their breakfasts and were setting their course for the day.
“Axcuse me, sir,” Trixie said composedly.
“All right, Trixie. Have you any news for us?”
“So I have, then.” She crossed her plump arms and laid three fingers of each hand on the opposite shoulder. “So broad’s that,” she said, “and proper masterpieces for a colour: blue and red and yaller and all puffed up angry-like, either side.”
“You’re a clever girl. Thank you very much.”
“Have you in the force yet, Miss Plowman,” Fox said, beaming at her.
Trixie gave them a tidy smile, cleared the breakfast things away, asked if that would be all and left the room.
“Pity,” Thompson said to Bailey, “there isn’t the time.”
Bailey, who was a married man, grinned sourly.
“Have we got through to everybody, Fox?” Alleyn asked.
“Yes, Mr. Alleyn. All set for four o’clock at the castle. The weather report’s still favourable, the telephone’s working again and Dr. Curtis has rung up to say he hopes to get to us by this evening.”
“Good. Before we go any further, I think we’d better have a look at the general set-up. It’ll take a bit of time, but I’ll be glad of a chance to try and get a bit of shape out of it.”
“It’d be a nice change to come up against something unexpected, Mr. Alleyn,” Thompson grumbled. “We haven’t struck a thing so far.”
“We’ll see if we can surprise you. Come on.”
Alleyn put his file on the table, walked over to the fireplace and began to fill his pipe. Fox polished his spectacles. Bailey and Thompson drew chairs up and produced their notebooks. They had the air of men who had worked together for a long time and who understood each other’s ways.
“You know,” Alleyn said, “if this case had turned up three hundred years ago, nobody would have had any difficulty in solving it. It’d have been regarded by the villagers, at any rate, as an open-and-shut affair.”
“Would it, now?” Fox said placidly. “How?”
“Magic.”
“Hell!” Bailey said, and looked faintly disgusted.
“Ask yourselves. Look how the general case echoes the pattern of the performance. Old Man. Five Sons. Money. A Will. Decapitation. The only thing that doesn’t tally is the poor old boy’s failure to come to life again.”
“You reckon, do you, sir,” Thompson asked, “that, in the olden days, they’d have taken a superstitious view of the death?”
“I do. The initiates would have thought that the god was dissatisfied, or that the gimmick had misfired, or that Ernie’s offering of the goose had roused the blood lust of the god, or that the rites had been profaned and the Guiser punished for sacrilege. Which again tallies, by the way.”
“Does it?” Bailey asked, and added, “Oh, yes. What you said, Mr. Alleyn. That’s right.”
“The authorities, on the other hand,” Alleyn went on, “would have plumped at once for witchcraft and the whole infamous machinery of seventeenth-century investigation would have begun to tick over.”
“Do you reckon,” Thompson said, “that any of these chaps take the superstitious view? Seems hardly credible but — well?”
“Ernie?” Fox suggested rather wearily.
“He’s dopey enough, isn’t he, Mr. Fox?”
“He’s not so dopey,” Alleyn said strongly, “that he can’t plan an extremely cunning leg-pull on his papa, his four brothers, Simon Begg, Dr. Otterly and Ralph Stayne. And jolly nearly bring it off, what’s more.”
“Hul-lo,” Bailey said under his breath to Thompson. “Here comes the ‘R.A.’ touch.”
Fox, who overheard him, bestowed a pontifical but not altogether disapproving glance upon him. Bailey, aware of it, said, “Is this going to be one of your little surprises, Mr. Alleyn?”
Alleyn said, “Damn’ civil of you to play up. Yes, it is, for what it’s worth. Bring out that chit the Guiser’s supposed to have left on his door, saying he wouldn’t be able to perform.”
Bailey produced it, secured between two sheets of glass and clearly showing a mass of finger prints where he had brought them up.
“The old chap’s prints,” he said, “and Ernie’s. I got their dabs after you left yesterday afternoon. Nobody objected, although I don’t think Chris Andersen liked it much. He’s tougher than his brothers. There’s a left and right thumb of Ernie’s on each side of the tack hole, and all the rest of the gang. Which is what you’d expect, isn’t it, if they handed it round?”
“Yes,” Alleyn said. “And do you remember where Ernie said he found it?”
“Tacked to the door. There’s the tack hole.”
“And where are the Guiser’s characteristic prints? Suppose ho pushed the paper over the head of the existing tack, which the nature of the hole seems to suggest? You’d get a right and left thumb print on each side of the hole, wouldn’t you? And what do you get? A right and left thumb print, sure enough. But whose?”