“Extraordinary people, the Americans,” Mr Chubb interjected, shaking his head. “That constitution of theirs was never properly thought out, you know. All sorts of scamps can take advantage of it.”
Purbright looked at his watch. “I don’t know what time that affair at Hatch’s club winds up—the girl on his switchboard thought about half-past ten or eleven—but obviously Burke will need some backing before then. He must be sticking pretty closely to Tudor; he hasn’t telephoned in yet.”
“We have no choice but to arrest this character, of course,” said Mr Chubb. “Our own people must be protected. But is it enough simply to label him undesirable? One has to be so careful with foreigners nowadays.”
“He is the head of a criminal organisation,” Purbright observed. “I’m sure the Home Office would back you up, sir.”
The chief constable looked doubtful.
Love, who had passed the time since his arrival by surreptitiously transcribing Mr Turidu’s upside-down record, offered a suggestion.
“You could do him for passport misrepresentation, sir. He was born in Syracuse, Sicily. Burke says that it’s Syracuse, New York, on his passport.”
Mr Chubb’s brows rose with relief. “That is most astute of you, sergeant. Thank you.” He turned to the inspector. “I think I’ll go along to my club for an hour now, Mr Purbright, if you think you can manage.”
By the time that Mr Padstowe’s car had drawn close enough to the fugitive taxi for the silhouette of Tudor’s head (or his hat, at least) to be discernible, the two vehicles were entering Flaxborough town centre. Burke instructed Padstowe to maintain distance until the taxi stopped.
But the taxi did not stop. After going down Fen Street, past the police station, it turned right into East Street, crossed the Market Place and made another right turn over the bridge into Northgate.
Within ten minutes, the houses thinned out into occasional bungalows and farm buildings. They were in the country. Steadily the taxi rolled on through the twilight.
Mr Padstowe, whose enthusiasm for the chase declined as his hunger increased, wanted to know if he should overtake in order that Burke might command the cab driver to halt in the name of the law; but Burke, rendered solemnly uncommunicative by a secret fear that he had ballsed something up, shook his head.
And so the procession of two continued on its way, along the road that led through Gosby and Hambourne to Chalmsbury, and thence to the coastal resort of Brocklestone-upon-Sea.
Near Strawbridge, it passed a pair of vehicles bound for Flaxborough, bound, in fact, for the Floradora: a bus followed closely by a car.
In the car was Councillor Crispin, from the yard of whose splendid Brocklestone hotel, The Neptune, the expedition had set out.
In the bus sat three dozen men.
Because the interior lights of the bus were not switched on, neither Constable Burke nor anyone else on the road was likely to notice that the men were dressed in beast-skins and nursed in their hairy laps an assortment of helmets—somewhat in the manner of a planeful of paratroopers, save that these helmets were horned.
All the bus passengers were bearded, some by nature, the others by the same theatrical agency that had supplied, on Councillor Crispin’s requisition “for a charity concert”, the skins and headgear.
On the luggage racks had been stowed clubs and swords. Shields, much more flimsy than they looked, were propped like briefcases, under seats.
The party was in high, but not riotous, spirits. If most of the members showed signs of a preliminary liquoring-up, it was clear also that they would have undergone such preparation with a full sense of professional responsibility. They remembered, and approved, Crispin’s assertion that “I wouldn’t pick just any old bums for this job.”
• • •
Festivities at the banquet were beginning to flag a fraction. The capons had been disposed of by various means, as had the bread, and the sack ration was finished. Bowls of a sweet substance described in the prospectus as “possets and syllabubs” had been distributed and diagnosed by the critical as nothing more exotic than Sucro-wip’s Insta-Creme. Other malcontents were taking advantage of the minstrels’ refreshment interval to broadcast complaints that they had expected roast swan and a boar’s head or two, not a cafeteria snack.
The less fastidious majority, though, was happy enough, if slightly restive. It was felt that some new impetus to the proceedings was needed. Even the first-class customers at the Baronial Board (who had been joined, a little late, by Mr Tudor in a Cardinal Wolsey set) seemed to be running low on jocosity. Some of the ladies had thankfully taken off their wimples.
The jester was perhaps the biggest disappointment of the evening. He was morose and hostile and had only one rejoinder to witty sallies—a gutteral expletive that sounded vaguely Russian. “He’s not as good as the fat one they had last week,” explained the quantity surveyor’s wife defensively to her neighbour. “I suppose they have to take what they can get these days.”
“Okfukov!” muttered the jester yet again.
In the minstrels’ gallery, Roy and his Rockadours were getting back into harness and adjusting microphones. The Nellies, plying to and from the bar with trays of tankards, patiently explained rules. “It’s not beer, it’s ale, see? And if you call ‘Miss’ I won’t serve you—you’ve got to shout out ‘Ho Wench!’ Right?” One of the electronic lutes gave forth a sample note like a chimney stack falling through a corrugated iron roof. Maid Marion looked aloft and waved cheerily to her husband.
Suddenly her movements froze. Her smile faded and became a stare of incredulity.
Roy, still clutching his lute, was being lifted above the head of a whiskered giant clad in what looked like a hearth rug. Thongs of hide criss-crossed the giant’s legs, which were thick and knotted like blackthorn trunks. On his head and jammed low over wild, red-rimmed eyes was a helmet flanked by cow horns.
The giant bellowed. The whole assembly turned and stared upward. Maid Marion, convinced that her husband was about to be hurled out of the minstrels’ gallery, screeched. Other people applauded. They assumed the act to be part of the entertainment.
When Roy was lowered, not precipitately into the hall, but more gently if not much less spectacularly into the Rockadours’ drum kit, the plaudits doubled.
“Oh, yes,” explained Mrs Goshawk to the members of the Hambourne Women’s Institute, “this sort of thing often happened in the Middle Ages. Vikings, you know.”
The ladies murmured appreciation.
“Very cleverly got up,” said Mrs Goshawk.
There was a dreadful yell a few feet behind her. She and her companions jumped in unison, then turned in time to see another hairy athlete leap upon the next table and begin to swing a double-edged axe around.
“It’s to symbolise our being put to the sword,” Mrs Goshawk confided to those nearest to her. One or two clutched their handbags and pushed back their seats a little.