Off With His Head. Ngaio Marsh

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СКАЧАТЬ start. I shall put up at the pub.’

      Ralph, stammering a good deal, said: ‘It sounds the most awful cheek, I know, but I suppose you wouldn’t be terribly kind and – if you are going there – take a note from me to someone who’s staying there. I – I – my car’s broken down and I’m on foot.’

      ‘Give it to me.’

      ‘It’s most frightfully sweet of you.’

      ‘Or I can drive you.’

      ‘Thank you most terribly but if you’d just take the note. I’ve got it on me. I was going to post it.’ Still blushing he took an envelope from his breast-pocket and gave it to her. She stowed it away in a business-like manner.

      ‘And in return,’ she said, ‘you shall tell me one more thing. What do you do in the Dance of the Five Sons? For you are a performer. I feel it.’

      ‘I’m the Betty,’ he muttered.

      ‘A-a-a-ch! The fertility symbol, or in modern parlance –’ She tapped the pocket where she had stowed the letter. ‘The love interest. Isn’t it?’

      Ralph continued to look exquisitely uncomfortable. ‘Here comes Dulcie,’ he said. ‘If you don’t mind I really think it would be better –’

      ‘If I made away with myself. I agree. I thank you, Mr Stayne. Good evening.’

      Ralph saw her to the door, drove off the geese, advised her to pay no attention to the bulls as only one of them ever cut up rough, and watched her churn away through the snow. When he turned back to the house Miss Mardian was waiting for him.

      ‘You’re to go up,’ she said. ‘What have you been doing? She’s furious.’

      II

      Mrs Bünz negotiated the gateway without further molestation from livestock and drove through what was left of the village. In all, it consisted only of a double row of nondescript cottages, a tiny shop, a church of little architectural distinction and a Victorian parsonage: Ralph Stayne’s home, no doubt. Even in its fancy dress of snow it was not a picturesque village. It would, Mrs Bünz reflected, need a lot of pepping-up before it attracted the kind of people Ralph Stayne had talked about. She was glad of this because in her own way, she too was a purist.

      At the far end of the village itself and a little removed from it she came upon a signpost for East Mardian and Yowford and a lane leading off in that direction.

      But where, she asked herself distractedly, was the smithy? She was seething with the zeal of the explorer and with an itching curiosity that Ralph’s unwilling information had exacerbated rather than assuaged. She pulled up and looked about her. No sign of a smithy. She was certain she had not passed one on her way in. Though her interest was academic rather than romantic, she fastened on smithies with the fervour of a runaway bride. But no. All was twilight and desolation. A mixed group of evergreen and deciduous trees, the signpost, the hills and a great blankness of snow. Well, she would inquire at the pub. She was about to move on when she saw simultaneously a column of smoke rise above the trees and a short man, followed by a dismal dog, come round the lane from behind them.

      She leaned out and in a cloud of her own breath shouted: ‘Good evening. Can you be so good as to direct me to the Corpse?’

      The man stared at her. After a long pause he said: ‘Ar?’ The dog sat down and whimpered.

      Mrs Bünz suddenly realized she was dead-tired. She thought: ‘This frustrating day! So! I must now embroil myself with the village natural.’ She repeated her question. ‘Vere,’ she said, speaking very slowly and distinctly, ‘is der corpse?’

      ‘Oo’s corpse?’

      ‘Mr William Andersen’s?’

      ‘Ee’s not a corpse. Not likely. Ee’s my dad.’ Weary though she was she noted the rich local dialect. Aloud, she said: ‘You misunderstand me. I asked you where is the smithy. His smithy. My pronunciation was at fault.’

      ‘Copse Smithy be my dad’s smithy.’

      ‘Precisely. Where is it?’

      ‘My dad don’t rightly fancy wummen.’

      ‘Is that where the smoke is coming from?’

      ‘Ar.’

      ‘Thank you.’

      As she drove away she thought she heard him loudly repeat that his dad didn’t fancy women.

      ‘He’s going to fancy me if I die for it,’ thought Mrs Bünz.

      The lane wound round the copse and there, on the far side, she found that classic, that almost archaic picture – a country blacksmith’s shop in the evening.

      The bellows were in use. A red glow from the forge pulsed on the walls. A horse waited, half in shadow. Gusts of hot iron and seared horn and the sweetish reek of horse-sweat drifted out to mingle with the tang of frost. Somewhere in a dark corner beyond the forge a man with a lantern seemed to be bent over some task. Mrs Bünz’s interest in folklore, for all its odd manifestations, was perceptive and lively. Though now she was punctually visited by the, as it were, off-stage strains of the Harmonious Blacksmith, she also experienced a most welcome quietude of spirit. It was as if all her enthusiasms had become articulate. This was the thing itself, alive and luminous.

      The smith and his mate moved into view. The horseshoe, lunar symbol, floated incandescent in the glowing jaws of the pincers. It was lowered and held on the anvil. Then the hammer swung, the sparks showered, and the harsh bell rang. Three most potent of all charms were at work – fire, iron and the horseshoe.

      Mrs Bünz saw that while his assistant was a sort of vivid enlargement of the man she had met in the lane and so like him that they must be brothers, the smith himself was a surprisingly small man: small and old. This discovery heartened her. With renewed spirit she got out of her car and went to the door of the smithy. The third man, in the background, opened his lantern and blew out the flame. Then, with a quick movement he picked up some piece of old sacking and threw it over his work.

      The smith’s mate glanced up but said nothing. The smith, apparently, did not see her. His branch-like arms, ugly and graphic, continued their thrifty gestures. He glittered with sweat and his hair stuck to his forehead in a white fringe. After perhaps half a dozen blows the young man held up his hand and the other stopped, his chest heaving. They exchanged rôles. The young giant struck easily and with a noble movement that enraptured Mrs Bünz.

      She waited. The shoe was laid to the hoof and the smith in his classic pose crouched over the final task. The man in the background was motionless.

      ‘Dad, you’re wanted,’ the smith’s mate said. The smith glanced at her and made a movement of his head. ‘Yes, ma’am?’ asked the son.

      ‘I come with a message,’ Mrs Bünz began gaily. ‘From Dame Alice Mardian. The boiler at the castle has burst.’

      They were silent. ‘Thank you, then, ma’am,’ the son said at last. He had come towards her but she felt that the movement was designed to keep her out of the smithy. It was СКАЧАТЬ