‘I merely broke eggs to make omelettes, and jolly fine omelettes they’ve turned out to be. But we’ll discuss that later. Meanwhile, pray silence for your chairman. What was the subject under discussion, great-aunt-by-marriage? – or should I be able to guess?’
‘Oh, I expect you can guess. I imagine that, once you knew that Fenella was obliged to remain for the night at Seven Wells, you dogged her footsteps to the best of your ability during her enforced stay in the village.’
‘Only wishing that my ability was even greater, yes, of course I did. I followed her up the road on Mayering Eve to warn her against her ruin at the hands of mafficking yokels, and, having a free day because the school had been given a whole holiday, I jumped out on her as Jack-in-the-Green and found that she was bound for Douston Hall. Incidentally, I subsidised Shurrock to make sure he kept her at the pub that night. Before I could formulate any future plans – not very hopeful ones, anyway, because she had told me she was going to her wedding – you came into the picture and, from then on, all was well. Such is my simple story.’
‘Yes,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Well, now, this is a time for frankness and non-concealment. Please tell me all you know about the late Sir Bathy Bitton-Bittadon, his wives, his son, the zodiac people, the May-Day revels and anything else which it occurs to you may have a place within these contexts.’
‘You say his wives?’ They seated themselves. ‘I don’t know where to begin.’
‘The beginning doesn’t make a bad start,’ said Fenella.
‘Well, of course Lady Bitton-Bittadon is the second wife. She couldn’t have a son as old as Jeremy,’ said Nicholas. ‘The beginning, I suppose, was my appointment as a junior master as St Crispin’s. It was my second job, so I soon knew the ropes and I found the headmaster and most of my colleagues very decent and easy to get along with. In fact, there was, and is, nobody really disagreeable, not even the headmaster’s wife or the boys. I settled in and began to enjoy myself, especially as the senior English master soon took me aside and told me that as the drama had no meaning for him except printed and enclosed within the covers of a book, I was to take over the choice and production of the school play. I chose Macbeth, a favourite, naturally, with the boys, and set myself (just for fun) to read up witchcraft. From that it was a case of gravitation to folklore, I suppose, and I also began to think that something of our very own might give the parents and friends a bit of a rest from Shakespeare and Dekker and so forth, and I sat down to plan it out.
‘We put on a hybrid sort of show with lots of bucolic dances and Elizabethan songs and things, and after it was over I thought I’d try to do the thing properly and form a folk-lore society as an extra-mural activity – all the boys are required to opt for one, and I must say that, with a lively and enterprising staff, they are given plenty of choice and scope….’
‘Where is this getting us?’ asked Fenella.
‘To the signs of the zodiac, I hope,’ said Dame Beatrice.
‘Yes, well, I wish he’d get to the point. We don’t want him rushing back to take prep. before he gets to the interesting part.’
‘I’m coming to it right away,’ said Nicholas. ‘It seemed only civil to acquaint the Old Man with the project, and to my astonishment he was dead against. He began by stalling a bit – I’d already found out that he hated to discourage us, especially the younger men on the staff – so he sold me a load of guff about treading on the senior masters’ corns by enticing boys away from such solemn pursuits as the archaeological society and the musical appreciation group.
‘Of course I said I’d no intention of stealing anybody’s young disciples and would limit my appeal to first-year and second-year boys who were still at the stage of experimenting with different hobbies. Then he came clean. His objection, he said, was that I might annoy Sir Bathy Bitton-Bittadon, the chairman of the governors, who had formed a band of some kind – or, rather, had inherited one from his elder brother. Well, I already knew all about that, of course, as I think I told you.’
‘But the zodiacs aren’t a folklore group,’ objected Fenella.
‘I know they’re not, but apparently the headmaster was mortally afraid of offending Sir Bathy. He couldn’t tell me much about the old boy’s sinister gang, but he said, in a peculiar sort of way, that birthdays came into it, and asked me whether I’d read a thing by M. R. James called Lost Hearts. He left me so fogged that I thought I’d find out more about these zodiac people, and I began by questioning, in a cautious, roundabout kind of way, one or two of the senior English and history chaps who’d been on the staff since the Flood.’
‘And got nowhere,’ said Fenella.
‘Well, I got only part of the way, it’s true, but it was enough to send me sneaking into the village next Mayering Eve and following the crowd to the hill, where I saw what you’ve told me you saw – namely, the bonfire, the wide grave and the skeleton, complete with slaughtered cockerel and the rest of it. After that, I contented myself with my own researches into folklore and with bringing it, here and there, into the school plays.
‘All the same, although I’d been told enough about the zodiacs to realise that they were only a society formed by Sir Bathy’s brother and inherited by Sir B., I couldn’t believe that the brother
