“Did you ask her if she knew why Ernie Andersen said she’d done it?”

“I did, then. She says she reckons he’s turned crazy-headed with shock, which is what seems to be the general view.”

“Why was the Guiser so late starting?”

“Ah! Now! He’d been sick, had the Guiser. He had a bad heart and during the day he hadn’t felt too clever. Seems Dr. Otterly, who played the fiddle for them, was against the old chap doing it at all. The boys (I call them boys but Daniel’s sixty if he’s a day) say their father went and lay down during the day and left word not to be disturbed. They’d fixed it up that Ernie would come back and drive his dad up in an old station-waggon they’ve got there, leaving it till the last so’s not to get him too tired.”

“Ernie again,” Alleyn muttered.

“Well, axackly so, Mr. Alleyn. And when Ernie returns it’s with a note from his dad which he found pinned to his door, that being the Old Guiser’s habit, to say he can’t do it and Ernie had better. So they send the note in to Dr. Utterly, who is having dinner with the Dame.”

“What?” Alleyn said, momentarily startled by this apparent touch of transatlantic realism. “Oh, I see, yes. Dame Alice Mardian?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you got the note?”

“The Doctor put it in his pocket, luckily, and I have.”

“Good.”

Carey produced the old-fashioned billhead with its pencilled message:

“It’s his writing all right,” he said. “No doubt of it.”

“And are we to suppose he felt better, and decided to play his part after all and hitch-hiked with the lady?”

“That’s what his sons reckon. It’s what they say he told them when he turned up.”

“Do they, now!”

“Pointing out that there wasn’t much time to say anything. Ernie was dressed up for his dad’s part — it’s what they call the Fool — so he had to get out of his clothes quick and dress up for his own part, and Daniel’s boy, who was going to do Ernie’s part, was left looking silly. So he went round and joined the onlookers. And he confirms the story. He says that’s right, that’s what happened when the old chap turned up.”

“And it’s certain the old man did dance throughout the show?”

“Must be, Mr. Alleyn, mustn’t it? Certain sure. There they were, five Sons, a Fiddler, a Betty, a Hoss and a Fool. The Sons were the real sons all right. They wiped the muck off their faces while I was taking over. The Betty was the Dame’s great-nephew: young Mr. Stayne. He’s a lawyer from Biddlefast and staying with Parson, who’s his father. The Hoss, they call it ‘Crack,’ was Simmy-Dick Begg, who has the garage up to Yowford. They all took off their silly truck there and then in my presence as soon’s they had the wit to do so. So the Fool must have been the Guiser all the time, Mr. Alleyn. There’s nobody left but him to be it. We’ve eight chaps ready to swear he dressed himself up for it and went out with the rest.”

“And stayed there in full view until —”

Mr. Carey took a long pull at his tankard, set it down, wiped his mouth and clapped his palm on the table.

“There you are!” he declaimed. “Until they made out in their dance, or play, or whatever you like to call it, that they were cutting his head off. Cripes!” Mr. Carey added in a changed voice, “I can see him as if it was now. Silly clown’s mask sticking through the knot of swords and then — k-r-r-ring — they’ve drawn their swords. Down drops the rabbit’s head and down goes Guiser, out of sight behind the stone. You wouldn’t credit it, would you? In full view of up to sixty persons.”

“Are you suggesting —? No,” Alleyn said, “you can’t be.”

“I was going to ask you, Super,” Fox said. “You don’t mean to say you think they may actually have beheaded the old chap then and there!”

“How could they!” Carey demanded angrily, as if Fox and Alleyn had themselves advanced this theory. “Ask yourself, Mr. Fox. The idea’s comical. Of course they didn’t. The thing is: when did they? If they did.”

“They?” Alleyn asked.

“Well, now, no. No. It was done, so the Doctor says, and so a chap can see for himself if he’s got the stomach to look, by one weapon with one stroke by one man.”

“What about their swords? I’ll see them, of course, but what are they like?”

“Straight. About two foot long. Wooden handle one end and a hole ’tother through which they stick a silly-looking bit of red cord.”

“Sharp?”

“Blunt as a backside, all but one.”

“Which one?” asked Fox.

“Ernie’s,” Alleyn said. “I’ll bet.”

“And you’re dead right, sir. Ernie’s it is and so sharp’s a razor still, never mind how he whiffled down the thistles.”

“So we are forced to ask ourselves if Ernie could have whiffled his old man’s head off?”

“And we answer ourselves, no, he danged well couldn’t of. For why? For because, after his old man dropped behind the stone, there was Ernie doing a comic act with the Betty: that is, Mr. Ralph Stayne, as I was telling you. Mr. Ralph, having taken up a collection, snatched Ernie’s sword and they had a sort of chase round the courtyard and in and out through the gaps in the back wall. Ernie didn’t get his sword back till Mr. Ralph give it him. After that, Dan Andersen did a turn on his own. He always does. You could tell it was Dan anyway on account of him being bowlegged. Then the Five Sons did another dance and that was when the Old Man should have risen up and didn’t and there we are.”

“What was the Hobby-Horse doing all this time?”

“Cavorting round chasing the maids. Off and on.”

“And this affair,” Fox said, “this man-woman-what-have-you-Betty, who was the clergyman’s son, he’d collared the sharp sword, had he?”

“Yes, Mr. Fox, he had. And was swiping it round and playing the goat with it.”

“Did he go near the stone?” Alleyn asked.

“Well — yes, I reckon he did. When Ernie was chasing him. No doubt of it. But further than that — well, it’s just not believable,” said Carey and added, “He must have given the sword back to Ernie because, later on, Ernie had got it again. There’s nothing at all on the sword but smears of sap from the plants Ernie swiped off. Which seems to show it hadn’t been wiped on anything.”

“Certainly,” said Alleyn. “Jolly well observed, Carey.”

Mr. Carey gave a faint simper.

“Did any of them look behind the stone after the old man had fallen down?” Alleyn asked.

“Mr. Ralph — that’s the Betty — was standing close up when he fell behind it and reckons he just slid down and lay. There’s a kind of hollow there, as you’ll see, and it was no doubt in shadow. Two of them came prancing back to the stone during the last dance — first Simmy-Dick and then Mr. Ralph — and they both think he was laying there then. Simmy-Dick couldn’t see very clear because his face is in the neck of the horse and the body of the thing hides any object that’s nearby on the ground. But he saw the whiteness of the Fool’s clothing in the hollow, he says. Mr. Ralph says he did too, without sort of paying much attention.”

“The head —?”

“They never noticed. They never noticed another thing till he was meant to resurrect and didn’t. Then Dan went to see what was wrong and called up his brothers. He says — it’s a funny sort of thing to say, but — he says he thought, at first, it was some kind of joke and someone had put a dummy there and the head had come off. But, of course,” Carey said, opening his extremely blue eyes very wide, “it was no such matter.”

There was a long silence. The fire crackled; in a distant part of the pub somebody turned up the volume of a wireless set and turned it down again.

“Well,” Alleyn said, “there’s the story and very neatly reported if I may say so, Carey. Let’s have a look at the place.”

The courtyard at Mardian Castle looked dismal in the thaw. The swept-up snow, running away into dirty water, was much trampled, the courtyard itself was greasy and the Mardian dolmen a lump of wet rock standing on two other lumps. Stone and mud glistened alike in sunlight that merely lent a kind of pallor to the day and an additional emphasis to the north wind. The latter whistled through the slits in the old walls with all the venom of the arrows they had originally been designed to accommodate. Eight burnt-out torches on stakes stood in a semi-circle roughly following that of the wall but set some twelve feet inside it. In the middle of this scene stood a police sergeant with his mackintosh collar turned up and his shoulders hunched. He was presented by Carey—“Sergeant Obby.”