head,
“Blimey! You know, you’re wasted designing fashions and hair-do’s,” said Laura. “You ought to be writing about Dracula and Frankenstein and Mr Who. You make my flesh creep.”
“Then there comes,” pursued Kitty, “the afternoon of the pageant. The Colonel’s nephew brings the means of the Colonel’s downfall in to tea, and this, mark you, when poor old Batty-Faudrey is grinding his teeth about that donkey. His mind is made up. Luton is for it. People who turn the lights up at inconvenient times deserve their fate, and so do those who let loose donkeys at the wrong time. Round to the left here, Dog, just beyond the next lights. Don’t you think I’ve hit the nail on the head?”
“The sureness of your aim commands my utmost reverence.”
“That means you don’t believe in my reconstruction. You’ll find I’m about right, all the same.”
“So you think Colonel Batty-Faudrey is the murderer? What, then, did you make of Mrs Collis’s remark that none of the Batty-Faudrey lot came to the Town Hall show?”
“That’s an easy one. The Colonel wasn’t in the audience, of course, but what about that side-door which opens on to Smith Hill? I’ve thought a lot about that, since Dame Beatrice inspected the Town Hall.”
“Do you think the Batty-Faudreys knew about that door? I shouldn’t have thought they’d know more than the front (or official) entrance to the Town Hall, with red carpet laid down, so to speak.”
“Still, the side-door is there, Dog, and even a Batty-Faudrey murderer would be a desperate man.”
“Desperate enough to get green slime on his shoes when dumping a body in the Thames?”
“He wouldn’t worry about his shoes.”
“It’s no use, Kay. I simply cannot see Colonel Batty-Faudrey as a murderer.”
“Well, he’s been a soldier, so he must have murdered lots of people in his time.”
“Not by stabbing them through the heart, though.”
“Why not? The Commandos did.”
“Be that as it may, even if the Colonel killed Falstaff for the reason aforesaid, he couldn’t have had any reason for killing Henry VIII.”
“That’s as far as we know, Dog. If Henry VIII had found out about the murder of Falstaff, the Colonel might have killed him to shut his mouth.”
“Those two who carted Falstaff off the stage went straight across the road to the pub, you know. Neither of them could have seen the murder committed, if things are as you say.”
“Oh, I know that’s
“I do. But real life isn’t often like that. How would you reconstruct the crime?”
“That’s easy. Falstaff is lugged off the stage and helped out of the basket. He’s hot and sticky, so he goes into the
“What about his make-up? How do you mean—freshen up?”
“Oh, Dog, don’t quibble. Who’s doing this reconstruction, me or you?”
“I’m only making helpful comments.”
“Well, they’re not. They simply make me lose the thread, that’s all.”
“Sorry. He goes into
“Colonel Batty-Faudrey is lurking.”
“In
“No, I shouldn’t think so. He couldn’t be sure that Falstaff would go in there.”
“Where, then?”
“Oh, Dog, does it matter where? He’s just simply lurking, that’s all. He follows Falstaff into
“Aha!”
“Henry VIII, in the character of one of the menservants, is doing up a shoelace or buttoning his overcoat or searching his pockets for the price of a pint or something.”
“I can see it all!”
“You’re not to sneer at me, Dog. I mean this seriously. The other serving man—the one who took the part of Edward III in the pageant-has gone charging on ahead. Well, the Colonel doesn’t know whether Henry VIII’s suspicions have been aroused or not. He doesn’t think they have. He waits for him to go, then he totes the body and the basket down to the Thames and plants them where he hopes the tide will wash them away.”
“But why the murder of Henry VIII if he didn’t think his deeds had been observed?”
“They
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Environs of Brayne
