“Golly!” said Laura, awe-stricken. “But what does he mean about a Hock Day? Some sort of local jamboree and get-together, I suppose? But why hock? I should have thought beer would be more in keeping—or, possibly mead.”
“The original Hock Days were festivals held between Easter and Whitsun for the purpose of collecting money. Parts of the town were barred off with ropes and people wishing to enter such streets were mulcted of a small fee before being allowed to go on their way.”
“But you couldn’t do that sort of thing nowadays! It would create chaos. Think of the hold-up of cars! I think Kitty’s nevvy ought to be certified!”
“She will talk him out of the Hocking, I dare say. If she doesn’t, the police will. However, she needs comforting. Invite her to come and stay for a bit. I wonder how soon, if at all, Mr Perse intends to stage this second pageant?”
This question was answered by Kitty herself when she arrived on the following day.
“He’s spending the whole of his summer holiday getting it all taped out,” she said, “and he’s going to begin rehearsing for it at the end of September, because he wants to have the school-children in it again, and they’ll be finished with holidays by then. I don’t grudge him his bit of fun, and he’s done heaps of research and all that, but he’s planning to do things that make my inside go cold every time I think of them.”
“Such as?” Laura enquired.
“Well, there’s this Hocking business.”
“Don’t worry about that. The police will never let him get away with it.”
“Then there’s this dancing round the sacred oak.”
“What sacred oak?”
“Just outside Brayne there’s a sportsground. It’s part of Brayne Common. Well, in the very middle of the sportsground there’s an oak tree, and one story goes that it had to do with the Druids and is sacred. Anyway, he’s going to have dancing round it, with pagan rites and what-have-you. It’s so heathenish of him.”
“Hardly the original tree, do you think?” asked Laura, declining to comment on the religious aspect.
“I’ve no idea, Dog. Wouldn’t you have to cut it down and inspect its vascular bundles or its annual rings, or something, to establish that? Anyway, another theory is that it used to be the hangman’s tree, and the local criminals were strung up on it, and that’s not very nice either—leathery corpses hanging in chains, and all that. I don’t like it. I can’t forget what happened at the last pageant, and I call it flying in the face of Providence to hold another one.”
“Have they discovered any more about those two deaths? I’ve rather lost touch since Mrs Croc. and I went on that cruise. It’s true the purser or someone used to pin up a daily news-bulletin, but it was never about anything but politics and pop-groups. Not a word about anything interesting.”
“Well, there were the inquests, of course. My god-forsaken nephew went to both of them. Death by Misadventure in the case of poor little Luton, and murder, by person or persons unknown, in the case of the school-master Spey.”
“Have they found his head?”
“No, I don’t think so. Gordon, and another master, and one of the doctors at the hospital where he had his appendix out, all identified the body (separately, because I think the police still have their eye on Gordon) and swore to a birthmark on his chest. The doctor had seen it in hospital and the others had been swimming with him. They didn’t bother the wife. She was sufficiently upset as it was.”
“The police have to accept the verdict in Luton’s case, I suppose, but I bet their files are still open. I don’t see how the jury could have come to such a conclusion. It was manslaughter, if nothing worse. Death by Misadventure my foot!”
“Well, it was known that some of the cast went over to the pub both before and during the interval, so the coroner put out the suggestion of beery horseplay and the jury accepted it, I suppose. Of course, the fact of the matter, as I now maintain, is that, beery or not, Gordon did in Luton and then had to finish off Spey because Spey knew all about it.”
“Well, it’s possible, I suppose. By the way, did the real sword come from Squire’s Acre?”
“Oh, yes, it was one of a set of four.”
“Four?”
“Yes, four duelling swords. You know—choice of weapons and all that.”
“Have the Batty-Faudreys been given it back?”
“I have no idea. I suppose so.”
“It wasn’t used after the interval because they didn’t do their second scene, so where did the sword get to? Where was it found?”
“Again, Dog, I simply don’t know.”
“Well, get your nephew to find out.”
“All right, I will. Being on the Council doesn’t necessarily admit him to the counsels of the police, though.”
“Extremely well expressed, if I may so so.”
“Oh, well, in my job I sometimes have to make speeches, so I’ve collected a few useful words such as “necessarily” and “counsels”, and “erratic” and “influential” and “trends”. You’d be surprised how often you can bring them in.”
“No, I shouldn’t. Any more available information?”
“No, but I’ve got a theory.”
“Not another one?”
“It’s about cutting off that head. Could it have been done with one of the Saxon swords? They were long and heavy, weren’t they?”
“The real ones were, yes, but I doubt whether any of them would be any good nowadays. Besides, the Saxons in the pageant were long-haired school-girls who wore swords made from laths, didn’t they?”
“Yes, of course. Could the murderer have been disguised as a girl, do you think?”
“Come, come! Teenage girls would have spotted him a mile off and raised hell, if only with screams of laughter. Be your age, dear, do!”
“You don’t say that any more, Dog. It’s out of date.”
“Maybe, but it wasn’t a bad old slogan, all the same. It said what it meant, which is more than most of the slogans do nowadays.”
“Well, what are we going to do?”
“About what?”
“About stopping Julian from putting on this beastly second-time-of-asking pageant, of course.”
“I don’t see that there’s anything to do.”
“But somebody else may be killed!”
“Most unlikely, Old Sobersides. Don’t be so fanciful, and, above all, don’t worry.”
“I don’t like the way nothing’s come out about those other deaths, and I don’t like playing with fire, Dog.”
“Why not? I bet you went mafficking on Guy Fawkes Night with the rest and the best of us, didn’t you?”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“I know it isn’t, but don’t get all tensed up.”
“I’ve got a feeling.”
“Yes, so have I, but that’s nothing to go by. I’ve often had one, and nothing’s happened at all.”
“You may not have known about it. Something may have happened and you not know it.”
Dame Beatrice, who had listened with interest to the conversation, decided to intervene.
“I should like,” she said, “to be more definitely informed about the deaths which have already taken place. The drama club appears to be involved up to the hilt, and yet, if it was some one or more of them, I should have thought…”
“Yes, I do agree,” said Laura. “The police would have had the edge on him or them by now. But if not the drama club—well, who?”