Off With His Head. Ngaio Marsh

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СКАЧАТЬ you behave yershelf, Ralph.’

      ‘Yes, Aunt Akky.’

      ‘Bring me a whishky and shoda to my room, girl.’

      ‘Yes, Aunt Akky.’

      ‘Damn theshe teeth.’

      Mrs Bünz listened distractedly to the sound of two pairs of retreating feet. All by herself in that monstrous room she made a wide gesture of frustration and despair. A large young man came in.

      ‘Oh, sorry,’ he said. ‘Good evening. I’m afraid something’s happened. I’m afraid Aunt Akky’s in a rage.’

      ‘Alas! Alas!’

      ‘My name’s Ralph Stayne. I’m her nephew. She’s a bit tricky, is Aunt Akky. I suppose being ninety-four, she’s got a sort of right to it.’

      ‘Alas! Alas!’

      ‘I’m most frightfully sorry. If there’s anything one could do?’ offered the young man. ‘Only I might as well tell you I’m pretty heavily in the red myself.’

      ‘You are her nephew?’

      ‘Her great-great-nephew actually. I’m the local parson’s son. Dulcie’s my aunt.’

      ‘My poor young man,’ said Mrs Bünz, but she said it absentmindedly: there was speculation in her eye. ‘You could indeed help me,’ she said. ‘Indeed, indeed, you could. Listen. I will be brief. I have driven here from Bapple-under-Baccomb in Warwickshire. Owing partly to the weather, I must admit, it has taken me two days. I don’t grudge them, no, no, no. But I digress. Mr Stayne, I am a student of the folk dance, both central European and – particularly – English. My little monographs on the Abram Circle Bush and the symbolic tea-pawt have been praised. I am a student, I say, and a performer. I can still cut a pretty caper, Mr Stayne. Ach yes, godamercy.’

      ‘I beg your pardon?’

      ‘Godamercy. It is one of your vivid sixteenth century English ejaculations. My little circle has revived it. For fun,’ Mrs Bünz explained.

      ‘I’m afraid I –’

      ‘This is merely to satisfy you that I may in all humility claim to be something of an expert. My status, Mr Stayne, was indeed of such a degree as to encourage the late Lord Rekkage –’

      ‘Do you mean Loony Rekkage?’

      ‘– to entrust no less than three Saratoga trunkfuls of precious precious family documents to my care. It was one of these documents, examined by myself for the first time the day before yesterday, that has led me to Mardian Castle. I have it with me. You shall see it.’

      Ralph Stayne had begun to look extremely uncomfortable.

      ‘Yes, well now, look here, Mrs –’

      ‘Bünz.’

      ‘Mrs Burns, I’m most awfully sorry but if you’re heading the way I think you are then I’m terribly afraid it’s no go.’

      Mrs Bünz suddenly made a magnificent gesture towards the windows.

      ‘Tell me this,’ she said. ‘Tell me. Out there in the courtyard, mantled in snow and surrounded at the moment by poultry, I can perceive, and with emotion I perceive it, a slighly inclined and rectangular shape. Mr Stayne, is that object the Mardian Stone? The dolmen of the Mardians?’

      ‘Yes,’ said Ralph. ‘That’s right. It is.’

      ‘The document to which I have referred concerns itself with the Mardian Stone. And with the Dance of the Five Sons.’

      ‘Does it, indeed?’

      ‘It suggests, Mr Stayne, that unknown to research, to experts, to folk dancers and to the societies, the so-called Mardian Mawris (the richest immeasurably of all English ritual dance-plays) was being performed annually at the Mardian Stone during the Winter Solstice up to as recently as fifteen years ago.’

      ‘Oh,’ said Ralph.

      ‘And not only that,’ Mrs Bünz whispered excitedly, advancing her face to within twelve inches of his, ‘there seems to be no reason why it should not have survived to this very year, this Winter Solstice, Mr Stayne – this very week. Now, do you answer me? Do you tell me if this is so?’

      Ralph said: ‘I honestly think it would be better if you forgot all about it. Honestly.’

      ‘But you don’t deny?’

      He hesitated, began to speak and checked himself.

      ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I certainly don’t deny that a very short, very simple and not, I’m sure, at all important sort of dance-play is kept up once a year in Mardian. It is. We just happen to have gone on doing it.’

      ‘Ach, blessed Saint Use and Wont.’

      ‘Er – yes. But we have been rather careful not to sort of let it be known because everyone agrees it’d be too ghastly if the artsy-craftsy boys – I’m sure,’ Ralph said, turning scarlet, ‘I don’t mean to be offensive but you know what can happen. Ye olde goings-on all over the village. Charabancs even. My family have all felt awfully strongly about it and so does the Old Guiser.’

      Mrs Bünz pressed her gloved hands to her lips. ‘Did you, did you say “Old Guiser”?’

      ‘Sorry. It’s a sort of nickname. He’s William Andersen, really. The local smith. A perfectly marvellous old boy,’ Ralph said and inexplicably again turned scarlet. ‘They’ve been at the Copse Smithy for centuries, the Andersens,’ he added. ‘As long as we’ve been at Mardian if it comes to that. He feels jolly strongly about it.’

      ‘The Old Man? The Guiser?’ Mrs Bünz murmured. ‘And he’s a smith? And his forefathers perhaps made the hobby horse?’

      Ralph was uncomfortable.

      ‘Well –’ he said and stopped.

      ‘Ach! Then there is a hobby!’

      ‘Look, Mrs Burns, I – I do ask you as a great favour not to talk about this to anyone, or – or write about it. And for the love of Mike not to bring people here. I don’t mind telling you I’m in pretty bad odour with my aunt and old William and, really, if they thought – look, I think I can hear Dulcie coming. Look, may I really beg you –’

      ‘Do not trouble yourself. I am very discreet,’ said Mrs Bünz with a reassuring leer. ‘Tell me, there is a pub in the district, of course? You see I use the word pub. Not inn or tavern. I am not,’ said Mrs Bünz, drawing her hand-woven cloak about her, ‘what you describe as artsy-craftsy.’

      ‘There’s a pub about a mile away. Up the lane to Yowford. The Green Man.’

      ‘The Green Man. A-a-ach! Excellent.’

      ‘You’re not going СКАЧАТЬ