“No,” Alleyn said. “Not at all. I want to hear from Miss Mardian.”
“Have it your own way. It’s odds on she don’t know what she’s talkin’ about.”
“Oh,” Dulcie cried, “but I do. I said so to you, Aunt Akky. I said, ‘Aunt Akky, do look at the German woman going away.” I said so to Sam. Didn’t I, Sam?”
The Rector, looking startled and rather guilty, said to Alleyn, “I believe she did.”
“And what was Mrs. Bünz doing, Rector?”
“She — actually — I really had quite forgotten — she was going out.”
“Well, Mrs. Bünz?”
Mrs. Bünz now spoke with the air of a woman who has had time to make up her mind.
“I had unexpected occasion,” she said, choosing her words, “to absent myself. Delicacy,” she added, “excuses me from further cobbent.”
“Rot,” said Dame Alice.
Alleyn said, “And when did you come back?”
She answered quickly, “During the first part of the sword-dance.”
“Why didn’t you tell me all this yesterday when we had such difficulty over the point?”
To that she had nothing to say.
Alleyn made a signal with his hand and Fox, who stood in the rear archway, turned to “Crack” and said something inaudible. They came forward together.
“Mr. Begg,” Alleyn called out, “will you take your harness off, if you please?”
“What say? Oh, righty-ho,” said Simon’s voice. There was a strange and uncanny upheaval. “Crack’s” neck collapsed and the iron head retreated after it into the cylindrical body. The whole frame tilted on its rim and presently Simon appeared.
“Good. Now, I suggest that on Wednesday evening, while you waited behind the wall at the back, you took off your harness as you have just done here.”
Simon began to look resigned. “And I suggest,” Alleyn went on, “that when you, Mrs. Bünz, left the arena by the side arch, you went round behind the walls and met Mr. Begg at the back.”
Mrs. Bünz flung up her thick arms in a gesture of defeat.
Simon said clumsily, “Not to worry, Mrs. B.,” and dropped his hands on her shoulders.
She screamed out, “Don’t touch me!”
Alleyn said, “Your shoulders are sore, aren’t they? But then ‘Crack’s’ harness is very heavy, of course.”
After that, Mrs. Bünz had nothing to say.
A babble of astonishment had broken out on the steps and a kind of suppressed hullabaloo among the Andersens.
Ernie shouted, “What did I tell you, then, chaps? I said it was a wumman what done it, didn’t I? No good comes of it when a wumman mixes ’erself up in this gear. Not it. Same as curing hams,” he astonishingly added. “Keep ’em out when it’s men’s gear, same as the old bastard said.”
“Ah, shut up, Corp. Shut your trap, will you?” Simon said wearily.
“Very good, sir,” Ernie shouted and flung himself into a salute.
Alleyn said, “Steady now, and attend to me. I imagine that you, Begg, accepted a sum of money from Mrs. Bünz in consideration of her being allowed to stand-in as ‘Crack’ during the triple sword-dance. You came off after your tearing act and she met you behind the wall near the bonfire and you put your harness on her and away she went. I think that, struck by the happy coincidence of names, you probably planked whatever money she gave you, and I daresay a whole lot more, on Teutonic Dancer by Subsidize out of Substitution. The gods of chance are notoriously unscrupulous and, without deserving in the least to do so, you won a packet.”
Simon grinned and then looked as if he wished he hadn’t. He said, “How can you be so sure you haven’t been handed a plateful of duff gen?”
“I can be perfectly sure. Do you know what the Guiser’s bits of dialogue were in the performance?”
“No,” Simon said. “I don’t. He always mumbled whatever it was. Mrs. B. asked me, as a matter of fact, and I told her I didn’t know.”
Alleyn turned to the company at large.
“Did any of you ever tell Mrs. Bünz anything about what was said?”
Chris said angrily, “Not bloody likely.”
“Very well. Mrs. Bünz repeated a phrase of the dialogue in conversation with me. A phrase that I’m sure she heard with immense satisfaction for the first time on Wednesday night. That’s why you bribed Mr. Begg to let you take his part, wasn’t it, Mrs. Bünz? You were on the track of a particularly sumptuous fragment of folklore. You didn’t dance, as you were meant to do, round the edge of the arena. Disguised as ‘Crack,’ you got as close as you could to the Guiser and you listened in.”
Alleyn hesitated for a moment and then quoted, “ ‘Betty to lover me.’ Do you remember how it goes on?”
“I answer nothing.”
“Then I’m afraid I must ask you to act.” He fished in his pockets and pulled out the bandages and two handfuls of linen. “These will do to pad your shoulders. We’ll get Dr. Otterly to fix them.”
“What will you make me do?”
“Only what you did on Wednesday.”
Chris shouted violently, “Doan’t let ’er. Keep the woman out of it. Doan’t let ’er.”
Dan said, “And so I say. If that’s what happened ’twasn’t right and never will be. Once was too many, let alone her doing it again deliberate.”
“Hold hard, chaps,” Andy said, with much less than his usual modesty. “This makes a bit of differ, all the same. None of us knew about this, did we?” He jerked his head at Ernie. “Only young Ern seemingly. He knew the woman done this on us? Didn’t you, Ern?”
“Keep your trap shut, Corp,” Simon advised him.
“Very good, sir.”
Chris suddenly roared at Simon, “You leave Ern alone, you, Simmy-Dick. You lay off of him, will you? Reckon you’re no better nor a damned traitor, letting a woman in on the Five Sons.”
“So he is, then,” Nat said. “A bloody traitor. Don’t you heed him, Ern.”
“Ah, put a sock in it, you silly clots,” Simon said disgustedly. “Leave the poor sod alone. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Silly bastards!”
Dan, using a prim voice, said, “Naow! Naow! Language!”
They all glanced self-consciously at Dame Alice.
It had been obvious to Alleyn that behind him Dame Alice was getting up steam. She now let it off by means literally of an attenuated hiss. The Andersens stared at her apprehensively.
She went for them with a mixture of arrogance and essential understanding that must derive, Alleyn thought, from a line of coarse, aristocratic, overbearing landlords. She was the Old Englishwoman not only of Surtees but of Fielding and Wycherley and Johnson: a bully and a harridan, but one who spoke with authority. The Andersens listened to her, without any show of servility but rather with the air of men who recognize a familiar voice among foreigners. She had only one thing to say to them and it was to the effect that if they didn’t perform she, the police and everyone else would naturally conclude they had united to make away with their father. She ended abruptly with an order to get on with it before she lost patience. Chris still refused to go on, but his brothers, after a brief consultation, over-ruled him.
Fox, who had been writing busily, exchanged satisfied glances with his chief.
Alleyn said, “Now, Mrs. Bünz, are you ready?”
Dr. Otterly had been busy with the bandages and the pads of linen, which now rested on Mrs. Bünz’s shoulders like a pair of unwieldy epaulets.
“You’re prepared, I see,” Alleyn said, “to help us.”
“I have not said.”
Ernie suddenly bawled out, “Don’t bloody well let ’er. There’ll be trouble.”
“That’ll do,” Alleyn said, and Ernie was silent. “Well, Mrs. Bünz?”