Pageant of Murder

“I expect they’ve promised their girl-friends, standing at the front windows or, possibly, at the garden gate, an uninterrupted view of the pageant. I shouldn’t worry. We shall get there in the morning just the same,” said Laura consolingly. Kitty sank back.

“Well,” she said, “there’s nothing for me to stampede about, after all, until that Town Hall do this evening.”

Such proved to be the case. The procession, although wrongly routed by the town band, contrived to get to Squire’s Acre at only a little after the appointed time. It was then addressed by the Mayor and was dismissed in good order and at an hour when the pubs were opening their hospitable doors. The schoolchildren were warned not to be late for the afternoon’s displays, and the rest of the morning passed off without incident.

Colonel and Mrs Batty-Faudrey had elected not to take part in the procession, but would don their costumes for the display of dressage they were to give in the afternoon. Their nephew, Mr Giles Faudrey, did turn up at the Butts, however, and was with difficulty constrained to take his rightful place in the procession. He evinced a strong inclination to ride alongside the lorry which held Henry VIII, the six wives and Cardinal Wolsey, and Kitty had to exercise a nice blend of persuasion and bullying to get him into line. The attraction, she deduced, was the girl who was taking the part of Catherine Howard.

Lunch at The Hat With Feather was unattended by Laura and Twigg, the former because she had not been invited, the latter because he conceived it his duty to look after her and entertain her, although this was not the reason he gave.

“Can’t stand official lunches,” he explained. “Kay’s got to go, and young Julian is also bound to be there, so, between them, they can do all that’s necessary. Let’s go to Richmond. I know a pub where they give you a very respectable meal.”

They got back to Squire’s Acre at three, in time to witness an unrehearsed but popular item. An involuntary contributor to the display of dressage by Colonel Batty-Faudrey, his lady and his nephew, was a small boy on a donkey, with the donkey literally making all the running. As an example of dignity and impudence, the spectacle had a quite delightful side, but the Colonel was not particularly pleased to have his group’s activities, including the donkey, photographed by the local press and recorded by some privately-owned cameras as well, this amid cheering and laugher.

Where the donkey had come from, nobody seemed to know, but there could be no doubt of its popularity with the people of Brayne. Mrs Batty-Faudrey was even more incensed than her husband, and commanded her nephew to “get that ridiculous animal out of the way.” Giles Faudrey dismounted and attempted to haul the donkey out of the roped enclosure in which the gymkhana had been held, but the donkey, true to the tradition of its race, dug in its dainty forefeet and refused to budge. Giles gave up the contest and remounted, amid renewed cheering, and, led by Mrs Batty-Faudrey, the dressage abruptly dismissed itself and cantered out of the ring.

“That kid on the donkey is the one who takes the part of Falstaff’s page in The Merry Wives,” Laura remarked to Kitty, as they separated to go their different ways for tea.

CHAPTER FIVE

Doings at Squire’s Acre and the Town Hall

“…with all its tenements, meadows, pasture land, woods, rents, and service.”

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Colonel Batty-Faudrey (retired) was not a very happy man. To begin with, the house and estate had been purchased with his wife’s money, and, to go on with, one of her stipulations had been that her nephew was to live with them. Colonel Batty (he had added his wife’s name to that of his own at her instigation when they married) did not like his wife’s nephew, and men, in his opinion, are better judges of other men than are women. In this, he was, no doubt, correct, for, in Kitty’s terms, young Mr Faudrey was a mess, and, in her nephew’s idiom, a pullulating little wen.

However, on the afternoon of the pageant, young Mr Faudrey did not betray these characteristics. He was, in fact, the life and soul of the party. He supervised the setting up of the maypoles, helped to get the schoolboys’ portable apparatus into place, tested the trampoline by performing a most creditable couple of somersaults—“look, boys, no hands!”—on it, and finished up by putting his horse over some four-foot railings—all this, it seemed, to impress a young lady, one of the lesser lights of the drama club, but a nubile wench for all that, albeit she had not been given a part in The Merry Wives. The afternoon remained fine. There were moments of tension, it was true, as when some of the maypole dancers went wrong in reverse, but their teachers, wading waist-deep into the holocaust, soon pushed and prodded the thing to rights, and the primary schools trotted off, amid applause, to be regaled with lemonade and buns in a large marquee which had been set up in the paddock. The bigger boys and girls performed adequately and were similarly rewarded, the town band gave of its best, the Boy Scouts put on an unexpected sing-song, and Colonel Batty-Faudrey went up to his room, when the display of dressage was over, with the purpose of changing out of his Charles II costume. While he was doing so, he happened to look out of the window. Hurriedly he donned white trousers, a black alpaca jacket, his regimental tie and his cricketing boots, and hastened downstairs to his wife who, fancying herself more than a little in Joan of Arc’s cardboard armour and long surcoat, had elected not to change until after tea.

She was seated on the open-air dais from which the notables—including the Mayor, the Mayoress, the Borough Councillors and Kitty—had watched most of the proceedings, so, under cover of a spirited rendering by the Boy Scouts of What Shall We Do With the Drunken Sailor, the Colonel addressed his wife thus:

“What do you know about Giles?”

“Giles?” repeated Mrs Batty-Faudrey. “What should I know about him? Does it matter, anyway?”

“He’s just gone into the woods.”

“Well, no harm in that. He’s probably feeling the heat. It absolutely poured down on the paddock. I gave that little idiot on the donkey a piece of my mind.”

“He has a girl with him.”

“Who has?”

“Giles.”