Pageant of Murder

nearly nine o’clock, though, so he has no alibi for the time of the murder, but there, again, like his uncle, he had no motive for it, either.”

“He’s the one for my money, all the same,” said Laura. “A nasty, mean little bit of work if ever I saw one. Look at the way he thought he could pull his rank with old Kitty, and ride beside the float with that frightful girl on it! Look at the way he showed off on the schoolboys’ trampoline in front of the whole of Brayne! Look at the way he flaunted that same beastly girl in front of his aunt and uncle and the Mayor and Mayoress! Kitty told me all about that. It was disgusting behaviour. He’s a rotten little cad. Moreover, although he pretended to treat the donkey episode as a joke, he was just as livid about it as his aunt and uncle were.”

“All this doesn’t add up to murder,” said Gavin patiently. “In fact, what it does add up to is that it is far more likely somebody would have murdered him, rather than the other way about.”

“I suppose the police have returned the borrowed sword to the Colonel by this time?” said Dame Beatrice.

“Oh, yes. They had no option, once it was established that that particular sword could not possibly have been the weapon. There’s one interesting point about that, though. There were traces of blood on some of the rags that constituted the dirty linen in the clothes-basket. The rags, it seems almost certain, had been used to wipe the blood off a knife-blade of some sort.”

“Mrs Croc. thought that had been done before the basket was dumped in the Thames,” observed Laura. “I’d wondered why the murderer bothered to do that. I suppose he thought the tide would come up and wash off the bloodstains. At first I thought he wanted the river to float the basket away.”

“Has anything more come out about the other two deaths?” asked Dame Beatrice.

“Nothing more than you already know. Spey’s wife has been interviewed, of course, poor woman, but she’s firm that her husband had no enemies. There doesn’t seem any doubt but that he was killed because he knew too much about Luton’s death—or somebody thought he did.”

“Well, doesn’t that absolutely prove that Luton was murdered?” enquired Laura.

“Not absolutely, no. Even if that death was by misadventure—not, as I say, that we think it was—it’s amazing the things people will do to avoid being blamed. Look at hit-and-run motorists. The majority of people, if you ask my opinion, will go to almost any lengths to avoid facing the music.”

“So the instrument which must have been used to decapitate Spey hasn’t turned up, then?”

“No, it hasn’t.”

“You should jolly well turn Squire’s Acre Hall inside out. Somebody there—and I plump for Giles—is the nigger in the woodpile, you know.”

“My dear girl, without the hell of a lot more evidence than the slight amount we’ve got, we’re not in a position to do anything of the sort.”

“What about my having found Spey’s head bang opposite the end of Squire’s Acre park?”

“Ask yourself! You found it easy enough to go along that path when you left the canal. What was to prevent the murderer finding it just as simple?”

“Well, he’d got the head in a bag. I hadn’t.”

“He’d have gone by night, of course. There wouldn’t be a soul along the towing-path after dark.”

“It would have been much safer, and ever so much easier, to have strolled down through the park with it. Don’t forget you wouldn’t even need to have a key to the gate in the railings.”

“I know. I’ve been along and had a look for myself. The fact that two of the railings have been wrenched apart doesn’t mean a thing. Boys are always up to that kind of lark.”

“You don’t convince me,” said Laura obstinately. “Added to the Batty-Faudrey sword, it seems to me that the thing’s in the bag.”

“Like the head,” said her husband. “Still, I hand it to you over that. It wouldn’t have occurred to me in a hundred years to connect the name Squire’s Acre Arm with the head tucked underneath same. I said a while ago that Colonel Batty-Faudrey isn’t mad. I take it that the same goes for Giles. And it’s a madman we’re looking for. I’m absolutely certain about that. What do you say, Dame B.?”

“I am not in agreement with you, except in so far as that all murderers are mad.”

“But this horrible historical pottiness!”

“I know. Shakespearian pottiness, too, if one thinks of Falstaff.”

“I suppose,” said Gavin, looking at his wife in an apologetic manner, “this young nephew of Kitty Trevelyan- Twigg’s couldn’t be involved in any way? Forgive me, Laura, but we may as well look at the thing from all angles.”

“I have never refused to turn over stones and explore avenues,” said his wife, with dignity, “and I’d say you’ve got something there. It was he who mooted the idea of Kitty’s beastly pageant in the first place, and it was he who insisted upon staging the second one, too—and that was entirely wrong-headed and unnecessary of him. Come to think of it, it was he who took us by way of the canal to that private road where Spey’s body was found, whereas we could have got there far more quickly by car. Besides, he’s a graduate, which means, presumably, that he’s well up in Shakespeare and so forth. Moreover, he’s a Councillor, and has the history of the borough at his fingertips. I do hope and trust it isn’t Julian, though. Break old Kitty’s heart, if it is. But I do think his bona fides should be subjected to scrutiny, and I can’t say fairer than that. After all, who else thought of dancing round Hangman’s Oak, of all the potty ideas!”

“That’s the one thing which gives me pause,” said Gavin. “Would he really have wanted his boys to do a ritual dance round a hanged man?”

“Well, of course, I’m as certain as can be that Julian isn’t the murderer. All the same, you ought to check up, if only to put him definitely in the clear. But before we begin tailing him, I must put old Kitty wise.”

“Not kind of you.”

“I’m not prepared to go behind her back. If we’re putting Julian under suspicion, she’s got to know. Don’t