Pageant of Murder

“…a vast and expansive, but shallow lake, on the luxuriantly wooded banks and islands of which wild and ferocious creatures of extraordinary size and character fixed their habitation…”

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So what we collected today, including old Kitty’s moronic reconstruction, doesn’t amount to a hill of beans,” said Laura, when she had rejoined her employer.

“The vegetable motif in English metaphors has always intrigued me,” said Dame Beatrice.

“As how?”

“A hill of beans, turnip-headed, sheer mashed potato, a string-bean (as of a man), a bean-pole (as of a woman), spilling the beans, knowing how many beans make five, as like as two peas.”

“Knowing one’s onions, pure apple sauce, ditto (Wodehouse) banana oil,” said Laura. “Likewise, a cauliflower ear, a strawberry nose, playing gooseberry, giving the raspberry, speaking with a plum in one’s mouth, the answer’s a lemon, the girl is a peach, the man is off his onion, and, of course, the outmoded shucks, meaning nonsense. One could go on and on, I daresay. But, to resume: Colonel Batty-Faudrey didn’t kill Falstaff, whatever old Kitty may say. If he killed anybody, it would be his wife, I should think, if she kept ribbing him about that girl Caroline. Well, where do we go from here?”

“To Brayne. I want to identify the private road in which Henry VIII’s body was found, and I want to talk to Mr Perse about his coming pageant.”

“I suppose Henry VIII’s head hasn’t turned up yet?”

“With a broad river, its tributary and a canal all within easy reach, the search for the head is likely to be a long one.”

“And, of course, may be no good at all. I suppose the body is the one we think it is?”

“I do not think there can be much doubt about that. For one thing, it has been identified by three independent witnesses, and, for another, nobody else in the neighbourhood has been reported missing.”

“I wonder how he was killed. If the identity was so easy to establish, it seems as though we were right when we decided that the beheading was to disguise the means used to do him in, and not to cloud the issue of who he was.”

“It is more than likely.”

“But haven’t they discovered any weapons?”

“By which you mean?”

“Well, I thought perhaps something in the nature of either a sharp or a blunt instrument must have finished him off. I’d be inclined to think he was hit over the head, or stabbed in the throat. Then there’s the beheading itself. That would need an axe, and that axe would be blood-stained.”

“Another interesting speculation: I wonder where the murder took place? The police are certain it was not in that private road where the body was found.”

“You mean that if we knew where the deed was done, it might give a pointer towards who did it?”

“Exactly—it might.”

“Cautious, aren’t you? Why do you want to talk to Julian Perse about his beastly pageant?”

“Something might come of it. I am not hopeful, but I think it is worth trying.”

“You know, I think we’re all going into this with our eyes bandaged. We don’t really know what the murderer’s motive was, there don’t seem to be any clues and, to my mind, it still isn’t sufficiently established that the dead Henry VIII was Spey. The fact that he’s missing might mean that he’s the murderer and has hopped it pretty damn‘ quick.”

“I am sure that is a point which did not escape the notice of the police, but they are satisfied that the identity of the corpse has been proved beyond reasonable doubt. At any rate, whatever our speculations, theories and inferences may be, tomorrow we go to Brayne.”

“And spy out the lie of the land and contact Kitty’s nit-wit nephew? Looniness must run in that family.”

“Together with a certain amount of genius.”

“If genius equals a single-track mind, yes, I’d be inclined to agree.”

They set out after an early lunch on the following day and reached Brayne at just after four. What had been a Roman road ran through the borough from the bridge across the Thames (connecting Greater London with Surrey) to another, less pretentious, bridge. This one crossed the canal and bordered Brayne and the riverside village which adjoined it on the west.

The high street was a straight and narrow thoroughfare unredeemed from squalor. Small shops, many of them closed and derelict, bordered it on the north side, and on the side which ran by the river were the gasworks, the fire station, the police station and the hideous Edwardian Town Hall. Odd little scrofulous alleys separated some of the shops, but on the river side only a lane to the ferry and the now notorious Smith Hill led to the Thames.

Half-way between the two bridges a road left the high street at right-angles and, with it, the whole character of the town seemed to change. This road was clean and fairly wide. It led past the Butts, where Kitty’s pageant had been assembled, and then made a wide sweep, following the course of the ancient trackway which had preceded it. At one time it had wound past an Iron-Age camp, the guardian of the only spot for many miles where the Thames could be forded.

It passed on over a railway bridge and then the scene changed again. There were meadows and a farm. Beyond the farm a high brick wall, flanked by enormous elm trees, hid Colonel Batty-Faudrey’s policies from view, but some three hundred yards farther on were the wrought-iron gates through which could be glimpsed the