Pageant of Murder mb-38 Page 4
“Of course the schools won’t put sand down if he says they mustn’t,” said Laura. “I say, I don’t want to spoil your day, Kitty, love, but I really believe it’s stopped raining, so, doubtless, the show will go on as planned.”
They arrived in good time at the Butts, an extremely wide thoroughfare bordered by Georgian, Regency and Victorian houses. The floats and lorries were not only drawn up in it, but some were already manned by troops of wildly milling schoolchildren whose teachers stood about in the roadway trying to look as though they were not associated with what was going on.
Toc H had also turned up and were coyly wearing overcoats or rainproofs over their Crusader surcoats. They had stacked their swords and helmets out of sight on their lorry and were standing about in groups, obviously bashful at the thought of making a public appearance in fancy dress.
Suddenly there was the sound, as it were, of trumpets, and the town band came into view. There was wild cheering from the youngsters, which was renewed every time another group arrived and another lorry was loaded up. Kitty waited until the tally appeared to be complete, and then came the business of ensuring that each float was in its rightful place in the line. Kitty had been furnished by her nephew with a boldly printed list showing the chronological order of the historical events which were being demonstrated—a list of which both Twigg and Laura had copies, in case the pageant-master lost or mislaid her own.
The lorries were placarded, but the drivers seemed to think that so long as the right group got on to the right lorry, manoeuvring merely to get the chronological order correct was a work of supererogation and a waste of time, temper and petrol. However, at Kitty’s insistence, they gave in, but, just as everything appeared to be in order, Kitty remembered the pony club and, amid a certain amount of blasphemy, all the lorries behind that of Elizabeth I had to go into reverse to leave sufficient space for the riders.
At last the Mayoral car arrived, followed by the cars of the Councillors. Then came the Civil Defence contingent, with tin hats, gas masks, stirrup-pumps and other war-time equipment salvaged from some obscure and insanitary dump in the cellars of the Town Hall. Other floats contained Girl Guides, Boy Scouts, Rovers, Wolf Cubs, Brownies, Rangers, Girls’ Life Brigade, Church Lads, St John Ambulance (with water-bottles and stretchers) and Red Cross (with a Meals on Wheels van). In all their glory, the Fire-Fighting Services (using all three of the fire-engines allotted to the new borough) brought up the rear. There was no military band.
Kitty, her husband and Laura went along and re-checked the various items, the teachers unwillingly climbed on to lorries and settled themselves among their charges, the Boy Scouts set up a bugle concert in opposition to the town band (which immediately abandoned the contest) and Kitty was about to order the procession to move off as she, her husband and Laura prepared to enter Twigg’s car, which was to follow the procession, when Laura suddenly said,
“I say, didn’t you mention something about Queen Victoria and Prince Albert?”
“Oh, they’ve scratched. It’s all right,” said Kitty. “The vicar’s wife didn’t want to do it, so we’ve turned Prince Albert into one of the burghers of Calais. He’s a bit peeved about it, actually. Hullo!—oh, no, it seems to be all right. Henry VIII, Wolsey and the six wives are in position, thank goodness, and so are Elizabeth I and her courtiers. There’s been a bit of a hoo-ha about that—here, I’d better let the thing start, I suppose. Not much of an audience so far, is there?” She regarded the little knot of onlookers with aversion. “You’d think the townspeople would take a bit more interest.”
She blew three shrill blasts on a police whistle—a proceeding for which her husband had insisted she ask permission of the Brayne inspector—and then, as the band, this time ignoring the Scouts, burst once again into blossom, the procession began to move off.
“Go on,” said Laura to Kitty, when they were settled in their car. “Tell me more.”
“Go on with what?”
“The brouhaha about Elizabeth I.”
“Oh, that! Yes, well, you see, the drama club wanted to do Elizabeth I and her courtiers, and they wanted the art club to do Edward III and the burghers. Well, the art club said they were jolly well dashed if they were going to be fobbed off with just being in their shirts and all that, considering that the drama club had got Henry VIII and Wolsey and all six wives, and also this show of theirs in the Town Hall this evening. Well, I couldn’t help seeing the art club point of view, so I said to the drama club, “You can’t hog all the fat, you know. Must give somebody else a look in some of the time. Either do Edward III and like it, or I can easily give it to another gang”—although who, Dog, I really couldn’t think!—“and you won’t get Elizabeth I, anyway”, I said. You don’t blame me, Dog, do you? I mean, there are times when you’ve got to be tough, or go to the wall, like they do at Eton.”
“For Pyramus and Thisbe, says the story, did talk through the chink of a wall,” Laura observed.
“Oh, dry up, Dog! You know perfectly well what I mean. Oh, thank goodness, we’re moving at last! I began to think there was a hold-up. You know, Dog, I suppose mathematics or dynamics or economics, or something, could explain it, but I’ve never been able to understand why a line of vehicles, given a yard or so between them, can’t make a synchronised start. I mean, why can’t A and B and C and D, and so on, all get going at the same time? If everybody compared watches so they could all let in the clutch at the same instant, I can’t see—Oh, Lord! Now where do the band think they’re leading us? This isn’t on our route at all!”
“I expect they’ve promised their girl-friends, standing at the front windows or, possibly, at the garden gate, an uninterrupted view of the pageant. I shouldn’t worry. We shall get there in the morning just the same,” said Laura consolingly. Kitty sank back.
“Well,” she said, “there’s nothing for me to stampede about, after all, until that Town Hall do this evening.”
Such proved to be the case. The procession, although wrongly routed by the town band, contrived to get to Squire’s Acre at only a little after the appointed time. It was then addressed by the Mayor and was dismissed in good order and at an hour when the pubs were opening their hospitable doors. The schoolchildren were warned not to be late for the afternoon’s displays, and the rest of the morning passed off without incident.
Colonel and Mrs Batty-Faudrey had elected not to take part in the procession, but would don their costumes for the display of dressage they were to give in the afternoon. Their nephew, Mr Giles Faudrey, did turn up at the Butts, however, and was with difficulty constrained to take his rightful place in the procession. He evinced a strong inclination to ride alongside the lorry which held Henry VIII, the six wives and Cardinal Wolsey, and Kitty had to exercise a nice blend of persuasion and bullying to get him into line. The attraction, she deduced, was the girl who was taking the part of Catherine Howard.
Lunch at The Hat With Feather was unattended by Laura and Twigg, the former because she had not been invited, the latter because he conceived it his duty to look after her and entertain her, although this was not the reason he gave.
“Can’t stand official lunches,” he explained. “Kay’s got to go, and young Julian is also bound to be there, so, between them, they can do all that’s necessary. Let’s go to Richmond. I know a pub where they give you a very respectable meal.”
They got back to Squire’s Acre at three, in time to witness an unrehearsed but popular item. An involuntary contributor to the display of dressage by Colonel Batty-Faudrey, his lady and his nephew, was a small boy on a donkey, with the donkey literally making all the running. As an example of dignity and impudence, the spectacle had a quite delightful side, but the Colonel was not particularly pleased to have his group’s activities, including the donkey, photographed by the local press and recorded by some privately-owned cameras as well, this amid cheering and laugher.
Where the donkey had come from, nobody seemed to know, but there could be no doubt o
f its popularity with the people of Brayne. Mrs Batty-Faudrey was even more incensed than her husband, and commanded her nephew to “get that ridiculous animal out of the way.” Giles Faudrey dismounted and attempted to haul the donkey out of the roped enclosure in which the gymkhana had been held, but the donkey, true to the tradition of its race, dug in its dainty forefeet and refused to budge. Giles gave up the contest and remounted, amid renewed cheering, and, led by Mrs Batty-Faudrey, the dressage abruptly dismissed itself and cantered out of the ring.
“That kid on the donkey is the one who takes the part of Falstaff’s page in The Merry Wives,” Laura remarked to Kitty, as they separated to go their different ways for tea.
CHAPTER FIVE
Doings at Squire’s Acre and the Town Hall
“…with all its tenements, meadows, pasture land, woods, rents, and service.”
« ^ »
Colonel Batty-Faudrey (retired) was not a very happy man. To begin with, the house and estate had been purchased with his wife’s money, and, to go on with, one of her stipulations had been that her nephew was to live with them. Colonel Batty (he had added his wife’s name to that of his own at her instigation when they married) did not like his wife’s nephew, and men, in his opinion, are better judges of other men than are women. In this, he was, no doubt, correct, for, in Kitty’s terms, young Mr Faudrey was a mess, and, in her nephew’s idiom, a pullulating little wen.
However, on the afternoon of the pageant, young Mr Faudrey did not betray these characteristics. He was, in fact, the life and soul of the party. He supervised the setting up of the maypoles, helped to get the schoolboys’ portable apparatus into place, tested the trampoline by performing a most creditable couple of somersaults—“look, boys, no hands!”—on it, and finished up by putting his horse over some four-foot railings—all this, it seemed, to impress a young lady, one of the lesser lights of the drama club, but a nubile wench for all that, albeit she had not been given a part in The Merry Wives. The afternoon remained fine. There were moments of tension, it was true, as when some of the maypole dancers went wrong in reverse, but their teachers, wading waist-deep into the holocaust, soon pushed and prodded the thing to rights, and the primary schools trotted off, amid applause, to be regaled with lemonade and buns in a large marquee which had been set up in the paddock. The bigger boys and girls performed adequately and were similarly rewarded, the town band gave of its best, the Boy Scouts put on an unexpected sing-song, and Colonel Batty-Faudrey went up to his room, when the display of dressage was over, with the purpose of changing out of his Charles II costume. While he was doing so, he happened to look out of the window. Hurriedly he donned white trousers, a black alpaca jacket, his regimental tie and his cricketing boots, and hastened downstairs to his wife who, fancying herself more than a little in Joan of Arc’s cardboard armour and long surcoat, had elected not to change until after tea.
She was seated on the open-air dais from which the notables—including the Mayor, the Mayoress, the Borough Councillors and Kitty—had watched most of the proceedings, so, under cover of a spirited rendering by the Boy Scouts of What Shall We Do With the Drunken Sailor, the Colonel addressed his wife thus:
“What do you know about Giles?”
“Giles?” repeated Mrs Batty-Faudrey. “What should I know about him? Does it matter, anyway?”
“He’s just gone into the woods.”
“Well, no harm in that. He’s probably feeling the heat. It absolutely poured down on the paddock. I gave that little idiot on the donkey a piece of my mind.”
“He has a girl with him.”
“Who has?”
“Giles.”
“Girl? What girl?”
“I don’t know what girl, but she’s wearing very tight trousers and an Ascot hat.”
“Well, you’d better go and disentangle them. It can’t be anybody we’ve invited here. They wouldn’t dress like that.”
“I thought perhaps…”
The Boy Scouts, having hit upon several things to do with the Drunken Sailor, relaxed, and the Batty-Faudrey conversation lapsed until his lady poked the Colonel sharply in the ribs and waved a hand towards the woods. Colonel Batty-Faudrey shook his head, got up, announced firmly to the occupants of the dais that tea was now to be served in the long gallery, and the Boy Scouts struck up The Drummer and the Cook. The dais moved off with a leisurely dignity which disguised its relief at the prospect of a cup of tea and (with any luck) sandwiches, sausage rolls and small, rich cakes, and soon disappeared into the cool interior of the house.
“You miserable coward!” muttered Mrs Batty-Faudrey to her husband. “Just wait and see what I’ll say to Giles when he comes back! We don’t want another—well—incident. But you—you poltroon!”
She was obliged to break off in order to usher her guests upstairs to where, in the long gallery, small tables had been established and maids were in attendance. Half-way through the orgies young Mr Faudrey turned up with the trousered girl in tow, steered her to the vacant seats at the table where sat the Mayor and Mayoress and his uncle and aunt, and introduced her.
“This is Caroline Fisher, Mr Mayor, Madam Mayoress, Aunt and Uncle. Catherine Howard in this morning’s procession, don’t you know.”
“How amusing!” said the Mayoress, nervously. “Your head tucked underneath your arm, and everything!” (To Mr Perse’s fury, Councillor Topson had carried the day with regard to Anne Boleyn’s well-known eccentricity.)
“That wasn’t me. That was Angela Pettit. She didn’t really want to do it,” said Miss Fisher. “I mean, a girl wants a head on her shoulders, not underneath her arm, when she makes a public appearance, doesn’t she?” She giggled, aware of a hostile atmosphere.
“Jolly sporting of her, anyway,” said Mr Faudrey, pulling out a chair and pushing her on to the seat of it. “Don’t you think so, Aunt Elsie?” He met the hard challenge in his aunt’s steely eyes with an impudent smile. Mrs Batty-Faudrey did not reply. She invited the Mayoress to accept another cup of tea.
Laura had neither expected nor desired a seat on the dais, and Twigg, who, as Kitty’s husband, had been invited to join the V.I.P. contingent, had again elected to escort Laura instead. When the non-V.I.P. section of the spectators streamed off to the paddock for tea, directed thereto by a loudspeaker, he and Laura slunk away to the local park and recreation ground, where they threw at coconuts, played hoop-la, rode on the roundabout, went up in a swing-boat, ate candy-floss and ice-cream and Twigg came away hugging a large, repellent vase, while Laura held two coconuts and a small jar of boiled sweets. They parked the vase among some convenient bushes, gave the coconuts to some small boys, ate the boiled sweets and put the empty jar into a litter bin and then went off in search of tea.
They prowled along Brayne high street, found a lorry-drivers’ cafe, went in and had ham and eggs, very strong tea and some thick, new bread-and-butter.
“That feels better,” said Laura, when they emerged. “I thought the time was past when I would want ham and eggs at half-past five in the afternoon. Wonder how Kitty’s getting on?”
“Perhaps we’d better get back to Squire’s Acre and find out,” said Twigg. “I think I’ll get my car out of that parking space round by the stables before all the Councillors start revving up theirs. Then we can make a clean getaway as soon as Kitty is ready to go.”
Kitty was more than ready to go. They found her seated in the car reading the A.A. book.
“Well, you’re a nice couple, I must say,” she observed. “Where on earth have you been?”
“Studying local conditions,” her husband replied. “Terribly sorry, and all that, but we thought you’d find it a job to tear yourself away. We certainly didn’t expect you yet. How did you manage it?”
“I made the excuse of having to get everything ready for the evening entertainment. I bet it’ll need it, too,” said Kitty.
“How did the afternoon go off, do you think?” asked Laura, as Twigg drove out by the lodge gates.
“The unrehearsed effects, you mean?”
“Yes. Of course, the spectators enjoyed themselves, I suppose.”
“Well, isn’t that the be-all and end-all of a public do?”
“In a way, I suppose it is. All the same, I have a feeling that it’s the last time Colonel Batty-Faudrey lends Squire’s Acre for the benefit of the borough.”
“The donkey sequence brought the house down, though.”
“Yes, Dog, I know it did, but, although the Batty clan carried it off quite well, I can’t feel that, with them, it was a popular item. I mean, it mucked up the dressage properly, didn’t it?”
“Think it was done by accident or by design?”
“Good heavens, Dog! Nobody would have the nerve to bait the Batty-Faudreys! They’re the uncrowned royalty of Brayne.”
“We don’t still live in the age of feudalism, you know.”
“All the same, you don’t (if you’ve got any sense) beard the lion in his den. Oh, no. That kid and his donkey—it was sheer accident, I’m sure. Talk about Sancho Panza!”
“Are you sure you feel all right?” asked Laura, solicitously. “I mean, you’re not suffering from the heat or anything, are you?”
“No, of course not. Why?”
“Well, I mean—Sancho Panza? I didn’t realise you knew such a character existed!”
“Oh, you’re not the only one who knows the name of David Copperfield’s aunt’s lodger. The donkeys, if you remember, and the donkey boys, were always being chased off the green, or whatever it was, and—”