Pageant of Murder

“No, but I’ve got a theory.”

“Not another one?”

“It’s about cutting off that head. Could it have been done with one of the Saxon swords? They were long and heavy, weren’t they?”

“The real ones were, yes, but I doubt whether any of them would be any good nowadays. Besides, the Saxons in the pageant were long-haired school-girls who wore swords made from laths, didn’t they?”

“Yes, of course. Could the murderer have been disguised as a girl, do you think?”

“Come, come! Teenage girls would have spotted him a mile off and raised hell, if only with screams of laughter. Be your age, dear, do!”

“You don’t say that any more, Dog. It’s out of date.”

“Maybe, but it wasn’t a bad old slogan, all the same. It said what it meant, which is more than most of the slogans do nowadays.”

“Well, what are we going to do?”

“About what?”

“About stopping Julian from putting on this beastly second-time-of-asking pageant, of course.”

“I don’t see that there’s anything to do.”

“But somebody else may be killed!”

“Most unlikely, Old Sobersides. Don’t be so fanciful, and, above all, don’t worry.”

“I don’t like the way nothing’s come out about those other deaths, and I don’t like playing with fire, Dog.”

“Why not? I bet you went mafficking on Guy Fawkes Night with the rest and the best of us, didn’t you?”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

“I know it isn’t, but don’t get all tensed up.”

“I’ve got a feeling.”

“Yes, so have I, but that’s nothing to go by. I’ve often had one, and nothing’s happened at all.”

“You may not have known about it. Something may have happened and you not know it.”

Dame Beatrice, who had listened with interest to the conversation, decided to intervene.

“I should like,” she said, “to be more definitely informed about the deaths which have already taken place. The drama club appears to be involved up to the hilt, and yet, if it was some one or more of them, I should have thought…”

“Yes, I do agree,” said Laura. “The police would have had the edge on him or them by now. But if not the drama club—well, who?”

“That’s just it, Dog,” agreed Kitty. “I know there were arguments and jealousies and general eye-scratching and back-biting, but nothing that would justify murder, unless the murderer was mad.”

“Any signs of anybody actually trying to bite holes in the carpet?”

“No, there aren’t, so far as I know. Of course, I don’t know what blood-feuds may have been going on before the actual rehearsals for the pageant, but I do know there was pretty bad feeling then.”

“I wonder whether anything definite touched it off? It might be very interesting to know.”

“All I know is,” said Kitty, forcefully, “that I’ve shaken the dust of Brayne well and truly off my non-stiletto heels and nothing will induce me to go there again, plead my nephew never so pathetically.”

“A pity,” said Dame Beatrice. “I was hoping to persuade you and Laura to accompany me there and show me round.”

Kitty looked horrified . Then, as Laura laughed, her expression changed.

“You mean you intend to look into these murders?” she asked.

“Say rather that I intend to look into the environment in which these murders took place,” replied Dame Beatrice.

“I know what that means,” said Kitty. “All right, then. I’ll be led to the slaughter, if that’s what you want.”

“There is something else, if you can arrange it. Would it be possible, do you think, for me to meet your nephew before we go?”

“You think you may be able to pump some information out of him? I doubt whether he knows very much, but you could try. Will you and Laura come to dinner at my flat one evening? I can easily put you up for the night, now that the children are with my sister in Cornwall.”

There were six people in all at the dinner. Kitty’s husband had invited a colleague who devoted himself to Kitty during the meal and talked fly-fishing with her husband for the remainder of the evening. Kitty’s husband talked mostly to Laura during the meal, and Kitty and Laura talked jobs, children and old times when it was over. Councillor Perse attached himself inexorably to Dame Beatrice both during the dinner and until he left for his lodgings in Brayne at just after eleven p.m., and talked almost incessantly to her, pausing only when she asked an occasional question.

“Did you find out anything useful?” Laura enquired, when he and the other man had gone, and Kitty and her husband were organising sandwiches and drinks.

“I think I must have found out all that Mr Perse knows and everything that he suspects. He was extremely