"Undisciplined, you mean?"
"No, they were disciplined all right. Just like the others. They keep together in their regiments, as they call them. And they charge each other in their regiments too, I can tell you."
"Like a rugger scrum?" Audley tried without success to envisage a rugger scrum in seventeenth-century battledress, with three hundred a side. "But they're carrying pikes, aren't dummy5
they . . . ?"
"And swords. And there are musketeers." Weston nodded.
"They charge each other with pikes . . . Christ! I can see that would be dangerous. It's a wonder there aren't more hurt!"
"Yes . . . but at the last moment they port their pikes—hold them up diagonally across their bodies—and then smack into each other."
Weston slapped his open hands together graphically. "And then they push like buggery until one side gives up. Or their officers break it off." Weston stopped suddenly. "But you say you don't want to hear this sort of detail yet?"
"Oh, I don't mind the technicalities." Audley glanced at Weston, unwilling to probe too obviously. What he wanted must be given freely or not at all, that was the essence of it.
"But what I still don't quite understand is why all this interested you. . . . That is, after you'd seen it. . . . I mean, so they were playing soldiers— maybe a little roughly. But that's all it amounts to: playing soldiers. The Americans have been playing their Civil War for years. And now they're busy playing the War of Independence. If you don't force people to wear uniforms they'll put them on of their own accord. At least, some people will. And so long as it's historical —so long as it isn't para-military. . . . You're not suggesting the Double R Society is para-military in seventeenth-century drag, are you?"
Weston stared at him in silence for a moment. "No, not dummy5
exactly para-military."
"What then?"
Again Weston said nothing for a few seconds. Then he shook his head doubtfully. "If I tell you I'll be helping you to jump to conclusions, that's for sure."
Audley shook his head. "I'm rather afraid I've already been helped to this one, so the damage is already done. But I'd be interested to find out whether it's the same one—and I'll make allowances for your prejudices, Superintendent." He smiled the sting out of the words. "So you went on the lookout for—ah—yobbos having a licensed punch-up. And you found . . . something more interesting, maybe?"
Weston pursed his lips. "To be honest, Dr. Audley, I'm not at all sure what I found—not yet, anyway." He paused, as though unwilling to commit himself. "Just let's say as a policeman I'm prejudiced against . . . politics."
So there it was, thought Audley: the confirmation of what Paul Mitchell and Frances Fitzgibbon had encountered, passed on with all the caution and non-partisanship of the man in the middle, the good copper. There was an irony there which neither of the extremes could stomach, and against which they therefore blinkered themselves: to the far left Weston was a Fascist pig marked for the lamp-post, and to the far right a potential tool to be flattered and used; whereas in reality Weston's breed regarded both sides with equal contempt as it protected each from the excesses of the other.
dummy5
"Just so," he agreed sympathetically. "Not para-military so much as parapolitical. And what was it brought you to that conclusion?"
"They sang the wrong tune."
"I beg your pardon?" Audley frowned. "They sang—?"
"The wrong tune, aye." Weston gave him a grim little smile.
"Funny thing was, I almost missed it. Because, you see, I didn't really go on the look-out for yobbos. Or shall we say—I didn't expect to see any of my yobbos, not at that sort of gathering. Not quite their style, if you see what I mean."
True. Yobbos might, or might not, know a great deal about football, but it was unlikely that any of them would be able to satisfy the Double R Society's membership committees.
"Of course. I was forgetting—it was the casualties you were interested in. You wanted to see how they'd got themselves organised."
"That's right. And after I'd seen them fight their battle I was in two minds about packing it in and going home. I'd seen what I came to see. But then I thought . . ." he shrugged "... I was there, so I might as well see the whole thing out. See how they behaved off the battlefield when they'd had a few beers, talk to them and see what made them tick, and so on."
Thoroughness. The mark of the good copper.
"So I waited." Weston continued simply. "And as they marched off the field I heard them singing. One lot of Cavaliers were singing a dirty song, and some of the dummy5
Roundheads were singing hymns. But then there was this regiment at the rear, pikemen, all in red coats and steel helmets. Charlie Ratcliffe's regiment, it was."
"Yes?"
"They were singing The Red Flag, Dr. Audley."
5
THE police house at Standingham was a solid, red-brick dwelling, with a well-regimented garden which looked as though it was inspected twice a week by a superior officer who regarded weeds as law-breakers.
After dropping Digby outside it, Audley took the car forward a couple of hundred yards to the forecourt of the Steyning Arms, where it mingled unobtrusively with those of the pub's early evening drinkers.
He would dearly have liked a pint now himself, but that would have to wait. It was bad enough to allow the mere indulgence of his curiosity to rule his judgement, though if pressed he could argue that now, if ever, was the time to look the place over, before Ratcliffe could possibly be aware of his presence; but whatever the argument, it would be pointless to expose his presence to the public gaze without good cause.
And there was the rub, though: there was really no point in coming to Standingham now, if ever, and he was only doing it because Nayler's smug references to his "little television dummy5
programme" had galled him—the idea of Stephen Nayler squatting on any secret that interested David Audley was like an itch on the sole of his foot; he couldn't go on until he'd taken off his shoe and scratched it properly.
The sudden movement of the white picket gate of the Police House, for which he'd kept one eye cocked on the rural scene reflected in the car mirror, caught him by surprise. Sergeant Digby had transacted his business with remarkable despatch.
But then the Sergeant Digbys of this world would transact all their business smartly in their accelerated progress to the top, he decided, watching the young man's light infantry advance. The Good Fairy at the Digby christening had endowed that infant with every virtue necessary for success in the police service, except perhaps an extra portion of imagination. And even that, when one thought about it, might have proved more of a hindrance than a help in his superiors' eyes, if it had been granted.
"You've been quick," said Audley encouragingly.
"Had a bit of luck," said Digby breathlessly, jerking his head back towards the Police House as he spoke. "PC Cotton—I worked with him before he was posted here, when I was a DC, so I didn't have to mess around explaining things. And he knows this patch like the back of his hand."
"Including the castle?"
"You bet. Only two men there now. Caretaker-handyman—
name of Simmonds —for the inside, and old Burton the dummy5
gardener for the outside. Caretaker'll be there now, but Burton'll most likely be in there—" Digby nodded towards the Steyning Arms.
"Charlie Ratcliffe not in residence, then?"
Digby shook his head. "Doesn't fancy the place at all, apparently. He didn't even stay there when he was treasure-hunting— stayed at the pub most of the time. At least, stayed until the last two or three days before he found the gold—