Pageant of Murder

“Well, I thought they managed very well. Actually, he’s rather exceptionally thin and light. They picked him because he’d be easy to carry out in the basket, so he told me. He made some sort of joke about being carried out feet first. I wish he hadn’t. I’m terribly superstitious about that sort of thing,” said Kitty.

The interval ended. The school choirs had descended to the ground floor. People were back in their seats. The house lights went out and there was a polite hush, broken occasionally by a boorish laugh from the back rows, as the audience waited for the curtain to rise on Scene Two of The Merry Wives. Nothing of the sort happened. The back rows began a slow handclap. Kitty muttered under her breath and rose from her seat. She soon appeared on stage again and said in loud, clear tones, “Could we have the lights on, please? Ladies and gentlemen, I am sorry to say that one of the cast has been taken ill, so we shall be obliged to leave out the next scene. Les Hirondelles will now dance for us an original ballet entitled, Spring in Squire’s Acre…”

“Jump in Squire’s Pond!” suggested an uncultured voice.

“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen,” said Kitty.

There was the amount of sympathetic applause usually offered by an audience on disappointing occasions at concerts and in the theatre, the lights were lowered again, and, in a creditably short time, the ballet company had taken the stage, which had been hastily cleared of scenery by the workmen. The next performance, as Laura said later, was earnest and painstaking rather than graceful and adept, but the audience received it kindly and the ballet danced off, at the end, looking extremely pleased with themselves.

As soon as they had closed the curtain, Laura began to wonder what had happened to Kitty, who had not returned to her seat. She slipped in beside Laura, however, just as the school choirs began a spirited rendering of Jerusalem. Laura waited until this was over, and then asked,

“Anything happened? Is it serious?”

“Well, I don’t know. Nobody’s ill. I just thought that was the simplest thing to say. The fact is, they’ve lost Falstaff,” Kitty replied.

“Lost him. You don’t mean…?”

“Oh, no, he isn’t dead. At least, I do hope it’s nothing like that! It’s just that he was carted out in the basket of dirty laundry, and it appears that nobody’s seen him since.”

“Must have lost his memory, or remembered a date with his girl-friend,” said Laura. “Or is he still stuck in the pub? There’s one just across the road.”

“They’ve looked there, and, anyway, they say he wasn’t the pub type. Well, I’ll have to leave them to track him down. It’s really no business of mine if they lose their actors, is it? Anyway, I’m not altogether sorry, so long as he’s all right. We’re just as well off without Scene Two.”

CHAPTER SIX

The Reclamation of Falstaff

“On one occasion the fat knight was conveyed from Ford’s house concealed in a “buck-basket”, covered over with dirty linen, and ultimately cast into the Thames.”

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The first intimation which Kitty had that the missing Falstaff had been found came on the following morning in the form of a call from the Brayne police. It did not come by telephone, but in the person of a young, charming and most disarming plain-clothes officer who asked whether he might come in. Kitty’s maid left him in the hall while she went to enquire.

“What have you been up to?” enquired Laura, when the maid had had instructions to show the officer into the drawing-room. “Parking offence, bouncing through the red lights, tossing rubbish into the reservoir, trying to blow up the gasworks?”

“Oh, dry up, Dog,” said Kitty. “It will be something about that wretched little man.”

“What wretched little man?”

“Falstaff. I bet he’s got himself run over in Brayne high street or something. I had the stage-manager on the telephone this morning to say he hadn’t been traced. Well, now I suppose he has finished up in hospital.”

“Why should they worry you about it?”

“Oh, Dog, because they’ve worried everybody else first, I suppose, and got nowhere.”

This was not a bad guess, as matters turned out. The young detective-constable apologised for bothering Kitty—just a routine enquiry, of course—but the police were trying to find out who might have seen the dead man last…”

“Dead man?” cried Kitty. “What dead man? I thought you’d come about Falstaff.”

“Indeed I have, madam. The gentleman who took the part in a pageant which, we understand, you organised, was a certain Mr Luton. He was found dead in the Thames at the foot of Smith Hill this morning. He had been stabbed.”

“Really? Oh, dear! I am sorry. But when you speak of a pageant, well, that was held yesterday morning. This Falstaff business was the concern of the Brayne Dramatic Society. Apart from billing them when they offered to do their stuff, I had very little to do with them at all.”

“Yes, madam, I see. We understand, though, that you proposed to have an unscripted interval midway between the two scenes of the play in which Mr Luton was the leading character.”

“Quite right. It wasn’t on the printed programme, but it seemed a good idea, so I announced it. You might say that it was more than a good idea. It was really necessary.”

“Could you explain that, madam?”