“Ho, there, wench!” called out a wholesale seedsman, wearing a surcoat over his lounge suit and determined to enter into the spirit of things. His companions made a few short, experimental noises of jocularity, then waited for further encouragement.
Maid Marion speared a capon from the trolley and slapped it on the seed merchant’s platter. “Pick ye bones out of that one, sirrah!” she cried.
Applause all round.
A senior clerk from the council highways department, gowned and capped in Chaucerian style, proposed that they “fall to right heartily, gentles all!” His furiously blushing wife dragged at his sleeve and muttered “Bert!” but it was clear that the infection had gained hold and would not now easily yield.
“To the dungeons with yonder varlet!” cried a quantity surveyor from North Gosby, whose intake of sack was beginning to react curiously with the five Martinis he had downed in the bar a little earlier in the evening. He pointed at a man in Richard III costume whose wife was patiently trying to pin his hump straight.
Several of the women were laughing uncontrollably. They had discovered that the capons were undercooked and, in consequence, virtually dagger-proof. One bird had skidded away from a slightly off-centre attack and its owner was now three tables distant, searching on hands and knees.
Richard III tried hard to think of a medieval insult to shout back to the quantity surveyor, but the general level of noise in the hall had been rising gradually until only the most raucous contributions now had any separate significance.
The band having launched into “Greensleeves Rock”, Roy turned the amplifier up a notch. Richard III shrugged his hump and took a swig of sack. A bowl of bread hunks was slammed on the table. Here and there, a guest laid hold of his capon and made show of medieval voraciousness. Emboldened by example, others attacked their food. The stronger one achieved actual dismemberment. Chicken legs were waved in triumph.
There was no doubt about it: the banquet was going well. Peter nodded in time with the pulsations of minstrelsy and allowed phrases of his preliminary report to assemble themselves in his mind. Viability of low-profile catering situation geared up by broad-based euphoria elements... He, too, was enjoying himself in his way.
Bernard, happy with his stopwatch, had moved from the Nellies’ dressing-room to the kitchen. There, Arnold Hatch found him. There was some exchange of small talk. Then Hatch left to continue his tour of inspection.
At nine o’clock, Hatch was joined by Edmund Amis, who had been helping Margaret Shooter with some accounts relating to casual overnight accommodation in the motel extension. They ascended part of the staircase leading to the minstrels’ gallery and looked together through a window that commanded a view of the Wassail Hall.
“Capacity house,” remarked Amis.
“Aye,” Hatch agreed, flatly.
There was a pause. Hatch’s gaze moved slowly, systematically, across the scene below, like a mechanical scanner.
“What they want, obviously,” Amis said.
Hatch spotted Peter, decorously nibbling a chicken leg while he wrote something. A momentary feeling of doubt, of mistrust, Hatch dismissed irritably. Of course Eddie would pour cold water on anything like the Mackintosh-Brooke set-up. He’d feel his nose had been put out of joint.
“One thing about those consultant blokes—they certainly put in some hours,” Hatch said, a shade provocatively.
Amis seemed not to hear. He was chuckling. Hatch felt his arm nudged. “Look,” said Amis. “Down there, in the first gangway.”
Hatch looked and understood.
“It’s Joxy,” he said. “Todd had to go off early tonight.”
Joxy attired in Todd’s jester outfit presented the appearance of a collapsed red and yellow tent with a frantic dwarf inside it. For a little while, Hatch and Amis watched its slow and erratic progress towards the top table. They saw, but could not hear, one of the Nellies deliver her prescribed oration: “Pray silence for the court jester, my lords and ladies.” They did not wait to judge of Joxy’s effectiveness as a substitute target for the wit of the Baronial Board, but descended the stairs and made their way to Hatch’s office, where Julian still toiled blissfully and with a growing sense of wonder.
Chapter Sixteen
Inspector Purbright had gone home when a brief, but officially authenticated, biography of Mr Joseph Fortescue Tudor arrived by wire at Flaxborough police headquarters. A patrol car was dispatched at once to the inspector’s house, whence it brought him back to Fen Street.
From his office, he telephoned Sergeant Love’s lodgings, the Floradora Club and the home of the chief constable, in that order and in rapid succession. The station duty sergeant meanwhile carried out his instruction to put two or three men on stand-by and to have transport instantly available.
Mr Chubb arrived in less than five minutes. Purbright received the impression that he was glad of an excuse to be out and about, but the chief constable was too loyal a dog breeder to admit that seven fractious Yorkshire terriers could be something of a trial at the day’s end.
“No, no, Mr Purbright—not at all,” he declared in response to the inspector’s apologies. “Your call was fortuitous. This is Mrs Chubb’s combing night.”
Purbright stared at him for a second, then, recovering himself, picked up the message that had been forwarded by London and handed it to Mr Chubb.
After reading a few lines, the chief constable raised his eyes. “This is the fellow who arrived here the other day? Staying at the Roebuck.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hmm.” Mr Chubb’s eyes returned to the telegram. He read it through to the end slowly, then handed it back to Purbright.
“Incredible,” said Mr Chubb, gravely.
Purbright had been pondering. “He must be a fair age,” he said. “Capone went out of circulation in the very early ’thirties. So this Turidu can scarcely be less than sixty-five now.”
“Giuseppe Fortunino Turidu...” Mr Chubb recited the names carefully and with patent disapproval.
There was a knock. Love entered.
“Ah, sergeant...” Purbright always observed formalities in the presence of the chief constable.
“Sir?” So did Love.
“The man whom Detective Constable Burke is following has been identified. He is a criminal of considerable standing in the United States. A former lieutenant of Alphonse Capone, no less.”
Love looked impressed, but not alarmed; as might a tourist, shown a Roman catapult.
“His name,” Purbright went on, “is Joe Turidu. In the old Chicago days, he was known by his intimates as The Tuner—a comical reference, apparently, to a certain dexterity with piano wire that he had cultivated. Neither at that time nor since has Mr Turidu been convicted on any criminal charge.”