Pageant of Murder

allowance from the Batty-Faudreys to live on, has not the slightest intention of keeping the promise. He probably wouldn’t want to, anyway, but, in any case, he knows he can’t, for the simple reason that he isn’t in a position to fork out ready cash. Are you still with me?”

“You re-state my own arguments in their entirety.”

“Then I’m dashed if I can see your difficulty. It’s copybook stuff, this.”

“Pray continue your exposition. If you go on long enough, I have a feeling that you will begin to share my doubts.”

“I don’t think I shall. The story hangs together far too well. Giles watches while Falstaff selects a sword from the armoury in the long gallery. It seems to me that he guides Falstaff’s choice, so that he is certain to take one of a matching set. When Falstaff has gone, Faudrey earmarks a similar sword and, early on the following evening, enters the Town Hall and hides away in Bouquets until Falstaff is carried off the stage in the washing-basket. Then he inveigles him into Bouquets on the pretence of discussing the regrettable affair about the girl, pinks him through the heart with the duplicate sword, locks the body in Bouquets to keep it hidden until the show is over, wipes the sword on the dirty washing and brings the basket into Bouquets with the corpse. He probably stays in Bouquets himself until he knows the coast is clear and he can dump body and basket in the mud. Anything wrong with that?”

“Nothing whatever. It all hangs together most beautifully.”

“Well, then, where’s the snag?”

“Go on with your story, for the death of Mr Luton was only the beginning of the business.”

“Yes, I admit that. Well, Giles thinks that he’s sewn up the parcel very neatly when he’s disposed of Falstaff, and, naturally, he’s horribly alarmed and extremely despondent when he discovers that Spey is wise to the whole business and has to be silenced.”

“Quite so. Well?”

“Perfectly simple. He offers to take Spey’s photograph in the Henry VIII outfit, gets him to Squire’s Acre, clumps him over the head, cuts his head off to disguise the method of murder, sinks the head in the river which runs past the woods at the bottom of Squire’s Acre park, plants the body in the ducal by-road, and once again thinks Bob’s Your Uncle until Gordon pops into the picture. I still can’t see where I stub my toe.”

“Neither can I, in the sense you mean.”

“Of course, we know that Luton was killed at the Town Hall, and we’re pretty certain that Spey was killed at Squire’s Acre. What we don’t know yet is where Gordon was killed. Is that what you mean? Is that the snag?”

“I cannot think so. What kind of man do you take Giles Faudrey to be?”

“Oh, the gay Lothario type, and entirely selfish and irresponsible, I would say.”

“Yes, selfish and irresponsible. And his motive for committing three murders?”

“To save himself from being kicked out of Squire’s Acre for getting girls into trouble.”

“Why should we suppose that he would have been turned out? There is no evidence in support of such a contention.”

“Mrs Batty-Faudrey strikes me as one who wouldn’t exactly view with equanimity a nephew who ran amok among the local girls.”

“Maybe not, but I have little doubt that this was a situation which she and the Colonel had been called upon to face before.”

“I see what you mean, but this Sunday School teacher affair may have been the last straw that broke the camel’s back, you know—or, anyway, Giles Faudrey thought it might be.”

“That is possible, of course. My difficulty is to reconcile Giles’ behaviour in public, with all its reckless disregard of the conventions—you will remember Mrs Trevelyan-Twigg’s description of the bold and insolent way in which he brought that rather indiscreetly-clad young woman to the tea-table at which his aunt and uncle were entertaining the Mayor and Mayoress—with these extremely odd, bizarre, sick-minded, extraordinary murders.”

“Just another way of showing off—the murders were, I mean. Well, of course, the actual murders were straightforward enough—a stabbing, a coshing and a strangling. It’s what was done with the bodies after death that seems so odd.”

“Yes, the compensation-phobia of a warped, distorted, essentially introspective mind. From what we know of Giles Faudrey, would you suppose that that is a reasonably accurate picture of his mentality?”

“You agree he’s irresponsible?”

“And egoistic—I do.”

“Well, he may have thought it was a kind of joke—a nasty kind of joke, I admit—to put Falstaff and basket in the Thames, and cut off Henry VIII’s head, and hang Edward III as Edward had intended to hang the burghers of Calais.”

“Yes, a young man’s idea of what constitutes a joke often leads to a great deal of thoughtlessness and cruelty, I admit, but surely the treatment of these particular bodies after death—or, in the case of Mr Spey, probably just before death—must have been the work of a mind diseased? Telephone Robert and inform him that I am going to Squire’s Acre to make a few enquiries. If he is not there, leave a message.”

“I thought you were going to have a talk with him before you did anything more, and were going to take his advice and rely on his police experience and his bump of caution.”

“They will be of more use to me, I think, when I have had a little chat with Mrs Batty-Faudrey.”

“You’re not going to Squire’s Acre unless Gavin and I go with you. It isn’t safe!”

“In that case—not that I share your fears for my safety—Mrs Trevelyan-Twigg, bless her heart, must give a little hentail party to which she will invite Mrs Batty-Faudrey, the Mayoress, Mrs Gough and Mrs Collis, the mistress