‘Killed in an air-crash in the Andes. I was a mere youth when I knew him, and in my first term as a schoolmaster at Saint Crispin’s. He got to know that I was interested in folklore and suggested first of all that we should form a team of Morris men. I pointed out that there was no village tradition here of any such thing, but I said I was willing to introduce the idea to the boys, if he liked, and see whether there was any response. Modern public schools are always quite keen to embark on new out-of-school activities, you see, and this one could have been good fun and valuable exercise. He remarked, bellowing with laughter, that it would lead to excessive beer-drinking as, in his opinion, the exercises had the effect of producing an inordinate thirst, so I pointed out that the boys would only be permitted to perform on the school premises, and that didn’t suit him at all. The whole point of Morris dancing, he alleged, was that the team should tour the neighbourhood.
‘Well, I knew the headmaster wouldn’t agree to that, and I didn’t see myself, either, cavorting around the village and its environment with a team of lively boys, so we abandoned the project and then he came up with this other suggestion, which, of course, was what he’d really been thinking about all the time. I turned it down flat, telling him that it wasn’t a folk thing at all, only a way for people who cast horoscopes to make money, and I wanted no part of it.
‘Anyway, he went ahead with the idea and started it off at the vicarage fête, of all places. People were invited to write down their birthdays on a card with the promise that the lucky ones would receive a prize. There was a warning that the results would be checked against the vicarage register of births, so that nobody could win who had not given truthful information. As a packet of cigarettes or a bag of sweets was promised and, later – to do the old boy justice – awarded, to every bona fide competitor, he got a pretty good number of cards sent in and was able to choose his founder members from it. He wanted, of course, twelve people whose birthdays were at the right time of year.’
‘What was his object in forming the society?’
‘He wanted to have a sort of council of elders who, with him at their head, could more or less rule the village, I think. The members were to snoop around and report upon drunks and ne’er-do-wells, men who ill-treated their wives or their children or their domestic pets, those who were in debt or had committed adultery or were suspected of communistic leanings – oh, so on and so forth. They were to be a sort of combination of vigilantes and secret police, in fact.’
‘Dear me! And what was the result?’
‘What one would expect. A spate of anonymous letters, some beatings-up of his members, scurrilous letters put through his door, his car tyres slashed – you know what it’s like nowadays. Even village people won’t stand for that sort of tyranny. After all, they read the newspapers and listen to the radio and some of them have television sets. Besides, most of them don’t even work on the estate, so he had no power over them there.’
‘Did he abandon his scheme, then, when he found that it did not work?’
‘Well, he couldn’t have done, if the members still hold meetings, could he? – and Fenella is a witness to the fact that they do. But now, apparently they deal with nothing but the skeletons, and nobody minds that. Anyway, I’d forgotten all about him and his dotty feudal ideas. He died only a year and two months after the scheme was inaugurated, and then Sir Bathy inherited.’
‘Was there anything suspicious about the death?’
‘Of the previous old boy? Sir Gerard Bitton-Bittadon, you mean? Oh, no. There was no question of sabotage or a hijacking of the plane. It was perfectly straightforward and accidental. There was nobody to blame.’
‘And the late squire, Sir Bathy. Did he carry on the society?’
‘He made it into a drinking club if he did. From all that I ever heard, he was a perfectly harmless man, but greatly addicted to the bottle and to fairly low company.’
‘Why was he murdered?’
‘How should I know. It looks as though it was to get the mausoleum opened so that the zodiacs could get hold of some more skeletons, doesn’t it?’
‘You speak flippantly, I fear, but I have known of stranger reasons for murder. But, talking of the skeletons, were these ritual interments on the hill-fort also introduced by Sir Bathy’s brother?’
‘According to the vicar, who’s got some old records, the ritual buryings must have been going on for hundreds of years. The zodiac gang took them over from the reluctant Guardians of the Well, that’s all. The present holders of the office of Guardian were either superstitious or scared when they were elected, and turned all the old records over to the incumbent who held office before this one, and refused to be parties to the business of burying the cadavers.’
‘How did the village receive their objections?’
‘I never heard of any repercussions. It must have suited somebody’s book to have the ladies opt out and for the zodiac people to take over.’
‘How interesting,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Please go on. I feel that something interesting and important may emerge from what you are telling me.’
‘I don’t think there is any more to say, because that’s about all I know.’
‘Was the late Sir Bathy actually a member of the zodiac society, or did he merely encourage it to carry on its work?’
‘I have no idea. I should think it more than likely he was a member. He was always at the More to Come and that, I suppose, was the zodiac headquarters because that’s where the bones were kept.’
‘You
