Dr. Otterly looked up at Alleyn as if he were about to interrupt but seemed to change his mind and said nothing.
“For one reason or another,” Alleyn went on, “some of you may feel disinclined to repeat some incident or occurrence. I can’t urge you too strongly to leave nothing out and to stick absolutely to fact. ‘Nothing extenuate,’ ” he found himself saying, “ ‘nor set down aught in malice.’ That’s as sound a bit of advice on evidence as one can find anywhere and what we’re asking you to do is, in effect, to provide visual evidence. To show us the truth. And by sticking to the whole truth and nothing but the truth, each one of you will establish the innocent. You will show us who couldn’t have done it. But don’t fiddle with the facts. Please don’t do that. Don’t leave out anything because you’re afraid we may think it looks a bit fishy. We won’t think so if it’s not. And what’s more,” he added and raised an eyebrow, “I must remind you that any rearrangement would probably be spotted by your fellow performers or your audience.”
He paused. Ernie broke into aimless laughter and his brothers shifted uneasily and jangled their bells.
“Which brings me,” Alleyn went on, “to my second point. If at any stage of this performance any one of you notices anything at all, however slight, that is different from what you remember, you will please say so. There and then. There’ll be a certain amount of noise, I suppose, so you’ll have to give a clear signal. Hold up your hand. If you’re a fiddler,” Alleyn said and nodded at Dr. Utterly, “stop fiddling and hold up your bow. If you’re the Hobby-Horse” — he glanced at Simon — “you can’t hold up your hand, but you can let out a yell, can’t you?”
“Fair enough,” Simon said. “Yip-ee!”
The Andersens and the audience looked scandalized.
“And similarly,” Alleyn said, “I want any member of this very small audience who notices any discrepancy to make it clear, at once, that he does so. Sing out or hold up your hand. Do it there and then.”
“Dulcie.”
“Yes, Aunt Akky?”
“Get the gong.”
“The gong, Aunt Akky?”
“Yes. The one I bought at that jumble-sale. And the hunting horn from the gun-room.”
“Very well, Aunt Akky.”
Dulcie got up and went indoors.
“You,” Dame Alice told Alleyn, “can bang if you want them to stop. I’ll have the horn.”
Alleyn said apologetically, “Thank you very much, but, as it happens, I’ve got a whistle.”
“Sam can bang, then, if he notices anything.”
The Rector cleared his throat and said he didn’t think he’d want to.
Alleyn, fighting hard against this rising element of semi-comic activity, addressed himself again to the performers.
“If you hear my whistle,” he said, “you will at once stop whatever you may be doing. Now, is all this perfectly clear? Are there any questions?”
Chris Andersen said loudly, “What say us chaps won’t?”
“You mean, won’t perform at all?”
“Right. What say we won’t?”
“That’ll be that,” Alleyn said coolly.
“Here!” Dame Alice shouted, peering into the little group of men. “Who was that? Who’s talkin’ about will and won’t?”
They shuffled and jangled.
“Come on,” she commanded. “Daniel! Who was it?”
Dan looked extremely uncomfortable. Ernie laughed again and jerked his thumb at Chris. “Good old Chrissie,” he guffawed.
Big Chris came tinkling forward. He stood at the foot of the steps and looked full at Dame Alice.
“It was me, then,” he said. “Axcuse me, ma’am, it’s our business whether this affair goes on or don’t. Seeing who it was that was murdered. We’re his sons.”
“Pity you haven’t got his brains!” she rejoined. “You’re a hotheaded, blunderin’ sort of donkey, Chris Andersen, and always have been. Be a sensible feller, now, and don’t go puttin’ yourself in the wrong.”
“What’s the sense of it?” Chris demanded. “How can we do what was done before when there’s no Fool? What’s the good of it?”
“Anyone’d think you wanted your father’s murderer to go scot-free.”
Chris sank his head a little between his shoulders and demanded of Alleyn, “Will it be brought up agin’ us if we won’t do it?”
Alleyn said, “Your refusal will be noted. We can’t use threats.”
“Namby-pamby nonsense,” Dame Alice announced.
Chris stood with his head bent. Andy and Nat looked out of the corners of their eyes at Dan. Ernie did a slight kicking step and roused his bells.
Dan said, “As I look at it, there’s no choice, souls. We’ll dance.”
“Good,” Alleyn said. “Very sensible. We begin at the point where the Guiser arrived in Mrs. Bünz’s car. I will ask Mrs. Bünz to go down to the car, drive it up, park it where she parked it before and do exactly what she did the first time. You will find a police constable outside, Mrs. Bünz, and he will accompany you. The performers will wait offstage by the bonfire. Dr. Otterly will come onstage and begin to play. Right, Mrs. Bünz?”
Mrs. Bünz was blowing her nose. She nodded and turned away. She tramped out through the side archway and disappeared.
Dan made a sign to his brothers. They faced about and went tinkling across the courtyard and through the centre archway. Ralph Stayne and Simon followed. The watchers took up their appointed places and Dr. Otterly stepped out into the courtyard and tucked his fiddle under his chin.
The front door burst open and Dulcie staggered out bearing a hunting horn and a hideous gong slung between two tusks. She stumbled and, in recovering, struck the gong smartly with the horn. It gave out a single and extremely strident note that echoed forbiddingly round the courtyard.
As if this were an approved signal, Mrs. Bünz, half-way down the drive, started up the engine of her car and Dr. Otterly gave a scrape on his fiddle.
“Well,” Alleyn thought, “it’s a rum go and no mistake but we’re off.”
Mrs. Bünz’s car, with repeated blasts on the horn, churned in low gear up the drive and turned to the right behind the curved wall. It stopped. There was a final and prolonged hoot. Dr. Otterly lowered his bow.
“This was when I went off to see what was up,” he said.
“Right. Do so, please.”
He did so, a rather lonely figure in the empty courtyard.
Mrs. Bünz, followed by a constable, returned and stood just within the side entrance. She was as white as a sheet and trembling.
“We could hear the Guiser,” Dame Alice informed them, “yellin’.”
Nobody was yelling this time. On the far side of the semi-circular wall, out of sight of their audience and lit by the bonfire, the performers stood and stared at each other. Dr. Otterly faced them. The police hovered anonymously. Mr. Fox, placidly bespectacled, contemplated them all in turn. His notebook lay open on his massive palm.
“This,” he said, “is where the old gentleman arrived and found you” — he jabbed a forefinger at Ernie — “dressed up for his part and young Bill dressed up for yours. He grabbed his clothes off you” — another jab at Ernie — “and got into them himself. And you changed with young Bill. Take all that as read. What was said?”
Simon, Dr. Otterly and Ralph Stayne all spoke together. Mr. Fox pointed his pencil at Dr. Otterly. “Yes, thank you, Doctor?” he prompted.
“When I came out,” Dr. Otterly said, “he was roaring like a bull, but you couldn’t make head or tail of it. He got hold of Ernie and practically lugged the clothes off him.”
Ernie swore comprehensively. “Done it to spite me,” he said. “Old bastard!”
“Was any explanation given,” Fox pursued, “about the note that had been handed round saying Ernie could do it?”
There was no answer. “Nobody,” Fox continued, “spotted that it hadn’t been written about the dance but about that slasher there?”
Ernie, meeting the flabbergasted gaze of his brothers, slapped his knees and roared out, “I foxed the lot of you proper, I did. Not so silly as what I let on to be, me!”