Camilla rose and walked beautifully to the door.
“Don’t you want to discover Ralph’s major preoccupation?” she asked and fluttered her eyelashes.
“It declares itself abundantly. Run along and render love’s awakening. Or don’t you have that one at your drama school?”
“How did you know I went to drama school?”
“I can’t imagine. Star-quality, or something.”
“What a heavenly remark!” she said.
He looked at Camilla. There she was: loving, beloved, full of the positivism of youth, immensely vulnerable, immensely resilient. “Get along with you,” he said. No more than a passing awareness of something beyond her field of observation seemed to visit Camilla. For a moment she looked puzzled. “Stick to your own preoccupation,” Alleyn advised her, and gently propelled her out of the room.
Fox and Dr. Otterly appeared at the far end of the passage. They stood aside for Camilla, who, with great charm, said, “Please, I was to say you’re wanted.”
She passed them. Dr. Otterly gave her an amiable buffet. “All right, Cordelia?” he asked. She smiled brilliantly at him. “As well as can be expected, thank you,” said Camilla.
When they had rejoined Alleyn, Dr. Otterly said, “An infallible sign of old age is a growing inability to understand the toughness of the young. I mean toughness in the nicest sense,” he added, catching sight of Ralph.
“Camilla,” Ralph said, “is quite fantastically sensitive.”
“My dear chap, no doubt. She is a perfectly enchanting girl in every possible respect. What I’m talking about is a purely physiological matter. Her perfectly enchanting little inside mechanisms react youthfully to shock. My old machine is in a different case. That’s all, I assure you.”
Ralph thought to himself how unamusing old people were when they generalized about youth. “Do you still want me, sir?” he asked Alleyn.
“Please. I want your second-to-second account of the Dance of the Five Sons. Fox will take notes and Dr. Otterly will tell us afterwards whether your account tallies with his own impressions.”
“I see,” Ralph said, and looked sharply at Dr. Otterly.
Alleyn led him along the now-familiar train of events and at no point did his account differ from the others. He was able to elaborate a little. When the Guiser ducked down after the mock beheading, Ralph was quite close to him. He saw the old man stoop, squat and then ease himself cautiously down into the depression. “There was nothing wrong with him,” Ralph said. “He saw me and made a signal with his hand and I made an answering one, and then went off to take up the collection. He’d planned to lie in the hollow because he thought he would be out of sight there.”
“Was anybody else as close to him as you were?”
“Yes, ‘Crack’ — Begg, you know. He was my opposite number just before the breaking of the knot. And after that, he stood behind the dolmen for a bit and —” Ralph stopped.
“Yes?”
“It’s just that — no, really, it’s nothing.”
“May I butt in?” Dr. Otterly said quickly from the fireside. “I think perhaps I know what Ralph is thinking. When we rehearsed, ‘Crack’ and the Betty — Ralph — stood one on each side of the dolmen and then, while Ralph took up the collection, ‘Crack’ was meant to cavort round the edge of the crowd repeating his girl-scaring act. He didn’t do that last night. Did he, Ralph?”
“I don’t think so,” Ralph said and looked very disturbed. “I don’t, of course, know which way your mind’s working, but the best thing we can do is to say that, wearing the harness he does, it’d be quite impossible for Begg to do — well, to do what must have been done. Wouldn’t it, Dr. Otterly?”
“Utterly impossible. He can’t so much as see his own hands. They’re under the canvas body of the horse. Moreover, I was watching him and he stood quite still.”
“When did he move?”
“When Ralph stole Ernie Andersen’s sword. Begg squeaked like a neighing filly and jogged out by the rear exit.”
“Was it in order for him to go off then?”
“Could be,” Ralph said. “The whole of that part of the show’s an improvisation. Begg probably thought Ernie’s and my bit of fooling would do well enough for him to take time off. That harness is damned uncomfortable. Mine’s bad enough.”
“You, yourself, went out through the back exit a little later, didn’t you?”
“That’s right,” Ralph agreed very readily. “Ernie chased me, you know, and I hid. In full view of the audience. He went charging off by the back exit, hunting me. I thought to myself, Ernie being Ernie, that the joke had probably gone far enough, so I went out too, to find him.”
“What did you find, out there? Behind the wall?”
“What you’d expect. ‘Crack’ squatting there like a great clucky hen. Ernie looking absolutely furious. I gave him back his sword and he said —” Ralph scratched his head.
“What did he say?”
“I think he said something about it being too late to be any use. He was pretty bloody-minded. I suppose it was rather a mistake to bait him, but it went down well with the audience.”
“Did Begg say anything?”
“Yes. From inside ‘Crack.’ He said Ernie was a bit rattled and it’d be a good idea if I left him alone. I could see that for myself, so I went off round the outside wall and came through the archway by the house. Dan finished his solo. The Sons began their last dance. Ernie came back with his sword and ‘Crack’ followed him.”
“Where to?”
“Just up at the back somewhere, I fancy. Behind the dancers.”
“And you, yourself? Did you go anywhere near the dolmen on your return?”
Ralph looked again at Dr. Otterly and seemed to be undecided. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I don’t really remember.”
“Do you remember, Dr. Otterly?”
“I think,” Otterly said quietly, “that Ralph did make a round trip during the dance. I suppose that would bring him fairly close to the stone.”
“Behind it?”
“Yes. Behind it.”
Ralph said, “I remember now. Damn’ silly of me. Yes, I did a trip round.”
“Did you notice the Guiser lying in the hollow?”
Ralph lit himself a cigarette and looked at the tip. He said, “I don’t remember.”
“That’s a pity.”
“Actually, at the time, I was thinking of something quite different.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. I’d caught sight of Camilla,” said Ralph simply.
“Where was she?”.
“At the side and towards the back. The left side, as you faced the dancing arena. O.P., she calls it.”
“By herself?”
“Yes. Then.”
“But not earlier? Before she ran away from ‘Crack’?”
“No.” Ralph’s face slowly flooded to a deep crimson. “At least, I don’t think so.”
“Of course she wasn’t,” Dr. Otterly said in some surprise. “She came up with the party from this pub. I remember thinking what a picture the two girls made, standing there together in the torch light.”
“The two girls?”
“Camilla was there with Trixie and her father.”
“Was she?” Alleyn asked Ralph.
“I — ah — I — yes, I believe she was.”
“Mr. Stayne,” Alleyn said, “you will think my next question impertinent and you may refuse to answer it. Miss Campion has been very frank about your friendship. She has told me that you are fond of each other but that, because of her mother’s marriage and her own background, in its relation to yours, she feels an engagement would be a mistake.”
“Which is most utter and besotted bilge,” Ralph said hotly. “Good God, what age does she think she’s living in! Who the hell cares if her mum was a blacksmith’s daughter?”
“Perhaps she does.”
“I never heard such a farrago of unbridled snobbism.”