Pageant of Murder

“Is it known why the fancy dress?”

“No, but the other chap, Gordon, put out a plausible theory. He said that Spey fancied himself in the get-up and had probably kept it on hire to be photographed in it. But even if he did, I can’t see that it helps much. It couldn’t supply any clues to motive or opportunity.”

“What about the means?”

“We don’t know until we find the head. There were no marks of violence on the body and there was no trace of poison.”

“How long had he been dead?”

“For several days. The road is very little used, especially in the early morning, and a fellow who had a job to do in the park found the body on the Tuesday at eight o’clock or thereabouts. He reported it up at the house—the family are not in residence—and the factotum there immediately telephoned the police. The police doctor examined the body at about nine o’clock and in his report he stated that rigor had completely passed off.”

“Meaning?”

“Well, the onset is about five or six hours after death, and rigor isn’t complete, under ordinary circumstances, until twelve to eighteen hours have elapsed. It lasts about another twelve hours and then takes about the same time to pass off. Of course, rigor is only a rough guide. It depends upon all sorts of factors, including the previous health of the deceased, his age, the degree of fatigue or shock, the temperature of the place where the body was found—all very important and misleading.”

“Yes, I see. Anything more to tell?”

“I don’t think so. Except for the usual give and take among the members of the drama club, he doesn’t seem to have made any enemies. You probably know as much about him as the police do. He didn’t owe money, or go off with somebody else’s wife, or belong to the Mafia or…”

“But he must have been a menace to somebody. He must have had the goods on whoever murdered Falstaff.”

“Such is the theory of the police, who, whatever the verdict at the inquest may have been, still think Luton met with foul play and are keeping their files open with that supposition in mind. I wonder whether Spey himself hired the Henry VIII costume in which he was found dead, or whether the drama club did? Not that it makes any difference, I suppose.”

“I can answer that one,” said Laura. She described her visit to the costumiers.

“Wouldn’t the drama club have had photographs taken? These amateurs usually do,” said Gavin.

“Those would be taken in groups, I imagine. This, if Mr Spey had decided to be photographed separately, would have been a private venture,” said Dame Beatrice.

“Old Kitty certainly had what you might call official photographs taken of the pageant, so did the local paper. There was one of each lorry-load,” said Laura, “but no individual Vanity Fairs were allowed, so far as the actual pageant was concerned.”

“I wonder whether you have noticed that these bizarre affairs have a common denominator?” said Dame Beatrice. Gavin looked interested.

“Bizarre?” he said. “Oh, yes, we’re agreed on that, all right, but what’s this common denominator?”

“It may be an imaginary one. It probably is. All the same, Falstaff, in The Merry Wives of Windsor, was attempting to seduce two married women. Henry VIII was, to put it vulgarly…”

“A womaniser, the lecherous old pest. Yes, I grant you that, but it seems a pretty slender connection to me.”

“It is, indeed. I don’t know why it came into my mind.”

Laura remained silent, allowing her own mind to dwell on the idea. Then she said:

“If you’re right—and you always are right—we ought to track down Edward III and give him a broad hint.”

“Give him a broad hint?”

“Yes. Alice Perrers, you know.”

“I don’t think I have heard of Alice Perrers.”

“To be perfectly honest, neither had I, until old Kitty wised me up on the subject. It seems that this Alice Perrers was Edward III’s—how shall I put it?”

“Paramour?” suggested Gavin.

“That’s it. On his deathbed she tried—may have succeeded, for all I know—anyway, she was after his rings. Of course, Queen Philippa was dead by then.”

“Surely Mrs Trevelyan-Twigg did not wish to feature Alice Perrers in the pageant?” demanded Dame Beatrice.

Laura chuckled.

“You’d be surprised at what she wished to do,” she said. “Her idea was to have the scene enacted on the stage at the Town Hall with herself in the star role, a part written for herself by herself.”

“Really?”

“Well, you know what a lunatic she can be when she puts her mind (so-called) to it. Anyway, the drama club didn’t see eye to eye with her, so the project was scotched, together with a chunk of the early boyhood of Shelley. She’d got a kid all lined up for the part and she was going to dress him in a Fauntleroy suit. She was prepared to babble for hours about his golden hair and his large grey eyes and his hoarse riverside voice and his one and only