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PAGEANT OF MURDER

Gladys Mitchell

Dame Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley 38

Contents

CHAPTER ONE: The Special Sub-Committee Meets

CHAPTER TWO: So Does an Inner Circle

CHAPTER THREE: Town Hall Rehearsal

CHAPTER FOUR: The Day of the Pageant

CHAPTER FIVE: Doings at Squire’s Acre and the Town Hall

CHAPTER SIX: The Reclamation of Falstaff

CHAPTER SEVEN: Exit a Poor Player

CHAPTER EIGHT: Councillor Perse Takes a Hand

CHAPTER NINE: The Death of Henry VIII

CHAPTER TEN: Mistress Ford and Mistress Page

CHAPTER ELEVEN: The Environs of Brayne

CHAPTER TWELVE: Head Tucked Underneath His Arm

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: The Second Pageant, Part One

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: The Second Pageant, Part Two

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: The Death of Edward III

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Some Questions Answered

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Dame Beatrice Puts In Her Oar

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: The Sunday School Point of View

CHAPTER NINETEEN: Droit de Seigneur

CHAPTER TWENTY: On the Trail of a Youthful Councillor

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: The Batty-Faudrey Angle

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: The Special Sub-Committee Disbands

The dull but important little town of Brayne, situated somewhere between London and Windsor, is celebrating its new status as a borough. Among other festivities, the Council have decided to stage an historical pageant. Along with other celebrities are figured Shakespeare’s Falstaff and two English Kings—Henry VIII and Edward III.

The persons taking these parts are apparently innocent and harmless, and yet, in turn, all three are murdered, not, it seems, so much for their own sins as for the long-ago short-comings of the characters they represent in the pageant.

Dame Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley and her secretary, Laura Gavin, succeed in unravelling the mystery, Laura by making a somewhat gruesome discovery in the little river on which Brayne stands, and Dame Beatrice by applying to the case what the immortal Jeeves would call “the psychology of the individual.”

By the same author

Dead Man’s Morris

Come Away Death

St Peter’s Finger

Printer’s Error

Brazen Tongues

Hangman’s Curfew

When Last I Died

Laurels Are Poison

The Worsted Viper

Sunset Over Soho

My Father Sleeps

The Rising of the Moon

Here Comes a Chopper

Death and the Maiden

The Dancing Druids

Tom Brown’s Body

Groaning Spinney

The Devil’s Elbow

The Echoing Strangers

Merlin’s Furlong

Faintly Speaking

Watson’s Choice

Twelve Horses and the Hangman’s Noose

The Twenty-Third Man

Spotted Hemlock

The Man Who Grew Tomatoes

Say it with Flowers

The Nodding Canaries

My Bones Will Keep

Adders on the Heath

Death of a Delft Blue

LONDON HOUSE & MAXWELL

NEW YORK

FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 1965 BY

LONDON HOUSE & MAXWELL

A DIVISION OF THE BRITISH BOOK CENTRE, INC.

122 EAST 55TH STREET, NEW YORK 22, NEW YORK

Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 65-20725

© 1965 by Gladys Mitchell

Set and printed in Great Britain by Tonbridge Printers Ltd,

Peach Hall Works, Tonbridge, Kent, in Times ten on eleven point, on paper made by Henry Bruce at Currie, Midlothian, and bound by James Burn at Esher, Surrey

To my dear Helen Brace, with love, and with many thanks for giving me the special copy of Fred Turner’s book on Brentford

“Tout passe; l’amitié reste”

Author’s Note

All the quotations which follow the chapter headings in this book are taken from History and Antiquities of Brentford by the late Fred Turner, F.R.Hist.S.

CHAPTER ONE

The Special Sub-Committee Meets

“It may therefore serve a useful purpose, if, at this point, we devote a few moments to the consideration of the subject.”

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It having been signified by the Council,” said Councillor Topson, the chairman, “as how we are going to celebrate being made into a borough, it is our duty, being appointed the special sub-committee for arrangements, to seek ways and means to bring the said borough into public notice. The Chair is open to any suggestions.”

“What about a sports-day for the children?”

“Church parade of the Council, with fully-choral service?”

“Plant a tree in the park?”

“A civic dinner at The Hat With Feather?”

“A tea for the old folks?”

“A competition for the best front garden?”

“Open-air dancing in the park, with flood-lighting and a platform for the band?”

“Historical pageant, indicating the development of the town?”

The last suggestion came from a man named Perse. He was the youngest recruit to the Council, and there were those who wished that he had never been voted in.

“Sports day for the children?” said Councillor Topson. “That will be taken care of, anyway. Nothing takes place in this town—soon to be a borough—without a sports day for the children. Have to see about prizes, that’s all. Church parade? Well, naturally, the Mayor will have to be churched. It’s the understood thing, so both them suggestions are in.”

“What about planting a tree in the park?” persisted the woman Councillor who had suggested this. The chairman beamed at her.

“A ruddy good idea, Councillor Mrs Skifforth,” he said. “We could have a Mayor’s Avenue, as time goes on. I have seen such a memorial before. Very effective and nice, and we’ll certainly propose it. But we need something a little more lively and entertaining as well. Now, Councillor Perse, what was your suggestion?”

“Oh, I withdraw it,” said young Mr Perse airily. “It doesn’t seem necessary, if we are to have all the other things.”

“We are open to all suggestions, Councillor, so, if you would oblige with yours again, I’m sure members of this sub-committee would be honoured to consider of it,” said the chairman, with heavy irony.

“Well, in that case, I thought that, being roughly, so to speak, on the road to Windsor, we might put on an historical pageant, showing the development of the town from a Thames-side village to its new status of borough, if you see what I mean.”

“I like that idea. It’s classy. But wouldn’t it need words and music?”

“We’ve got the town band. As to words, I don’t see those would be necessary. All we’d need would be a printed programme, to be sold beforehand in shops and the market, setting out the order of the pageant and what the various floats were representing.”

“Councillor Band’s brother runs a printing press,” said the member who had proposed the church parade. “He might do the job at reduced rates, if approached official and patriotic-like.”

“And he might not!” said the member who had proposed a tea for the old folks. “If he knows it’s for the Council, it will be the reverse, if I know anything. But I like the idea of a pageant. I vote the chairman puts it to the meeting.”

“If it’s to be historical, then it’s got to be something people have heard about, or had learned ’em at school,” said the chairman thoughtfully.