“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Ah! Before you go up to the castle, Mr. Alleyn, would there be time for a quick survey of this case?”
“It’ll have to be damn’ quick. To put it your way, Fox, the case is going to depend very largely on a general refusal to believe in fairies. We’ve got the Guiser alive up to the time he ducks down behind the dolmen and waves to Ralph Stayne (if, of course, he did wave). About eight minutes later, we’ve got him still behind the dolmen, dead and headless. We’ve got everybody swearing blue murder he didn’t leave the spot and offering to take Bible oaths nobody attacked him. And, remember, the presumably disinterested onlookers, Carey and the sergeant, agree about this. We’ve got to find an answer that will cover their evidence. I can only think of one and it’s going to be a snorter to ring home.”
“You’re telling me.”
“Consider the matter of bloodstains, for instance, and I wish to hell Curtis would get here and confirm what we suppose. It the five brothers, Begg, Otterly and Stayne had blood all over their clothes it wouldn’t get us much nearer because that old ass Carey let them go milling round the corpse. As it it, Bailey tells me they’ve been over the lot and can’t find anything beyond some smears on their trousers and sleeves. Begg, going on his own cloak-and-dagger experience in Germany, points out that the assailant in such cases is well-enough bloodied to satisfy the third murderer in Macbeth. And he’s right, of course.”
“Yes, but we think we know the answer to that one,” said Fox. “Don’t we?”
“So we do. But it doesn’t get us any closer to an arrest.”
“Motive?”
“I despise motive. (Why, by the way, don’t we employ that admirable American usage?) I despise it. The case is lousy with motive. Everybody’s got a sort of motive. We can’t ignore it, of course, but it won’t bring home the bacon, Br’er Fox. Opportunity’s the word, my boy. Opportunity.”
He shrugged himself into his jacket and attacked his head violently with a pair of brushes.
Fox said, “That’s a nice suit, Mr. Alleyn, if I may say so. Nobody’d think you’d travelled all night in it.”
“It ought to be Victorian tails and a red silk handkerchief for the Dame of Mardian Castle. What’ll you do, Fox? Could you bear to go down to the forge and see if the boys have unearthed the Guiser’s wealth? Who’s on duty there, by the way?”
“A fresh P. C. Carey got up by the afternoon bus from Biddlefast. The ambulance is coming from Yowford for the remains at nine. I ought to go down and see that through.”
“Come on, then. I’ll drop you there.”
They went downstairs and, as they did so, heard Trixie calling out to some invisible person that the telephone lines had broken down.
“That’s damn’ useful,” Alleyn grumbled.
They went out to their car, which already had a fresh ledge of snow on it.
“Listen!” Alleyn said and looked up to where a lighted and partially opened window glowed theatrically beyond a light drift of falling snow. Through the opening came a young voice. It declaimed with extraordinary detachment and great attention to consonants:
“ ‘Nine-men’s morris is filled up with mud.’ ”
“Camilla,” Alleyn said.
“What’s she saying!” Fox asked, startled. Alleyn raised a finger. The voice again announced:
“ ‘Nine-men’s morris is filled up with mud.’ ”
“It’s a quotation. ‘Nine-men’s morris.’ Is that why I kept thinking it ought to be nine and not eight? Or did I —”
The voice began again, using a new inflexion.
“ ‘Nine-men’s morris is filled up with MUD.’ ”
“So was ours this morning,” Alleyn muttered.
“I thought, the first time, she said ‘blood,’ Fox ejaculated, greatly scandalized.
“Single-track minds: that’s what’s the matter with us.” He called out cheerfully, “You can’t say, ‘The human mortals want their winter here,’ ” and Camilla stuck her head out of the window.
“Where are you off to?” she said. “Or doesn’t one ask?”
“One doesn’t ask. Good-night, Titania. Or should it be Juliet?”
“Dr. Otterly thinks it ought to be Cordelia.”
“He’s got a thing about her. Stick to your fairy-tales while you can,” Alleyn said. She gave a light laugh and drew back into her room.
They drove cautiously down the lane to the cross-roads. Alleyn said, “We’ve got to get out of Ernie what he meant by his speech from the dolmen, you know. And his remark about Chris and the old man. If a propitious moment presents itself, have a shot.”
“Tricky, a bit, isn’t it?”
“Very. Hullo! Busy night at the smithy.”
Copse Forge was alert in the snowbound landscape. The furnace glowed and lights moved about in the interior: there was a suggestion of encrusted Christmas cards that might open to disclose something more disturbing.
When Alleyn and Fox arrived, however, it was to discover Simon Begg’s car outside and a scene of semi-jubilant fantasy within. The five Andersen brothers had been exceedingly busy. Lanthorns, lighted candles and electric torches were all in play. A trestle-table had been rigged up in the middle of the smithy and, on it, as if they bore witness to some successful parish fete, were many little heaps of money. Copper, silver, paper: all were there; and, at the very moment of arrival, Alleyn and Fox found Dan Andersen with his brothers clustered round him shining their torches on a neat golden pile at one end of the table.
“Sovereigns,” Dan was saying. “Eleven golden sovereigns. There they be! Can you believe your eyes, chaps?”
“Gold,” Ernie said loudly, “ain’t it? Gold.”
“It’ll’ve been the Grand-dad’s, surely,” Andy said solemnly. “He were a great saver and hoarder and the Dad after him: so like’s two cherry stones. As has always been recognized.”
A little worshipful chorus mounted above the totem brightness of the sovereigns. A large policeman moved nearer the table, and out of the shadows behind the forge came Simon Begg, wearing the broad and awkward smile of an onlooker at other people’s good fortune.
They heard Alleyn and Fox and they all looked up, preoccupied and perhaps a little wary.
Dan said, “Look at this, sir. This is what we’ve found and never thought to see. My father’s savings and his dad’s before him and no doubt his’n before that. There’s crown pieces here with a king’s head on them and sovereigns and bank notes so old and dirty it’s hard to say what they’re worth. We’re flabbergasted.”
“I’m not surprised,” Alleyn said. “It’s a fabulous sight. Where did you find it all?”
Dan made a comprehensive sweep of his arm.
“Everywhere. Iron boxes under his bed. Mouldy old tins and pots along the top shelves. Here it’s been, as you might say, laughing at us, I dun know how many years. We’ve not touched on the half of it yet, however. No doubt there’ll be lashings more to come.”
“I can’t credit it!” Andy said. “It’s unnatural.”
“We’re made men, chaps,” Nat said doubtfully. “Bean’t we?”
“Have you found a Will?” Alleyn asked.
“So we have, then,” they chanted. They were so much alike in appearance and in manner that, again, Alleyn couldn’t help thinking of them as chorus to the action.
“May I see it?”
Dan produced it quite readily. It had been found in a locked iron box under the bed and was twenty years old.
Andy, who was gradually emerging as the least rugged and most sentimental of the Andersens, embarked, with some relish, on a little narrative.
“April the second, 1936. That was the day our Bess ran away to marry. Powerful angered he was that night. Wouldn’t go to bed. Us could hear him tramping about in yur, all hours.”
“Stoked up the fire, he did,” Dan chipped in and he also adopted the story-teller’s drone, “and burnt all her bits of finery and anything else she left behind. Ah-huh!”
Ernie laughed uproariously and hit his knees.
Chris said, “He must of wrote it that night. Next day when two chaps come in with a welding job, he axed ’em into his room and when they come out I yurd ’em laughing and telling each other they didn’t reckon what the old chap left would make a millionaire of nobody. There’s their names put to it in witness.”