Death on Allhallowe’en (11 page)

‘Surely that doesn't endear him to any Nonconformists there may be?'

‘I've never heard any complaint. He has them all in fits of laughter.'

‘Dear me. It's going to be embarrassing. And fancy dress, which always makes me wilt. You're not wearing it, are you, John?'

‘Well, I rather thought just a touch. Guy Fawkes, perhaps.'

‘You're getting your dates mixed.'

‘I happen to have the costume from another occasion. Doesn't it occur to you, Carolus, that people
like
to assume a different identity sometimes? They don't want always to be the same.'

‘As long as you don't expect me …'

‘But I
do,
Carolus. I've got your costume all ready for you. You would give such offence to come without it.'

‘Really, John. You expect too much. What is it?'

‘Sherlock Holmes,' said John enthusiastically. ‘The very thing. An Inverness cape and a deerstalker. You'll just slip it on, won't you? Be a good chap.'

‘I'm not a good chap. I suppose, since you ask me, I can't help it. But you might have warned me. Tell me some more about the occasion.'

‘Mavis Horseman is in charge of the eats, though she never
comes to these things herself. She always does them for our functions and very good she is, though everyone contributes. Ebby Smith and his wife are in charge of the hall.'

‘Of course, I'd forgotten Ebby was married.'

‘Yes, a big dumb ox of a woman who works like a navvy. The hall will be beautifully clean—I can promise you that. Then there's the band. I've told you about them. The Sarawaks, they call themselves. They're very good, I'm told. I don't understand pop music myself, but I know our boys are quite famous. They've been on television. George Garries is the leader. They say he ought to be a professional. He's a trumpeter and really does the most extraordinary things with his instrument.'

‘I hope he has forgiven me. The last time I saw him he threatened to blow my brains out.'

‘You must have said something to upset him or his father. There's great loyalty between them. But don't take any notice of that. George is a very good-hearted fellow who would wish no one any harm. I'd like to be able to say the same for his father.'

‘But you can't?'

‘Not after that cross incident.'

‘Of course not. I quite see.'

‘It is surprising about Matchlow, of course, whatever Judith may say. Never in my wildest dreams could I imagine him at a village dance. But I think it's a welcome development.'

‘Let's hope so,' said Carolus less optimistically.

‘I think you'll be surprised at some of the costumes. They really do take trouble—and spend money.'

‘What will Mrs Murrain wear?' asked Carolus impishly.

‘Oh, she'll wear something,' said the Rector confidently.

‘One hopes so.'

John laughed.

‘Carolus, you're cruel.'

‘Boadicea, perhaps. Or Queen Elizabeth.'

‘Something regal, I've no doubt. She has never been before, so I haven't much idea. But it's good of you to come, old
Carolus. I feel when we've got over this we shall be halfway home to peace and quiet in the village.'

Once again Carolus sounded less sanguine.

‘I do hope so, John. What time does it start?'

‘Eight o'clock. I must rush upstairs and change. It ends on the dot of twelve. But you don't need to turn up till nine o'clock or so. I always go early to look after things in the early stages, and generally leave just before the end.'

‘I'll be there before nine,' promised Carolus.

In spite of John Stainer's suggestion that he should not arrive at the dance before nine, Carolus decided to go along earlier. He had not yet seen the Wincott Hall and he wanted to look round it, then to watch arrivals.

He found it out a hundred yards or so on a road leading out of the village to unlit country. There was very little street lighting in Clibburn, one standard in the centre doing duty for all, though the White Horse had lights over the door. The hall stood alone, a rather gloomy building, whose origins as a Nonconformist chapel were plain to see. Long narrow windows down both sides of it were illumined, but the light in them was pale and unwelcoming.

There was a light over the door, however, so that arrivals for the dance were lit for a moment as they entered—somewhat eerily, Carolus thought. The costumes they had chosen were not gay, brightly coloured ones, but seemed to represent rather gloomy subjects, so there was something a little macabre about seeing monks, executioners, witches, judges, pirates, highwaymen, characters from Dickens and the rest as they stepped into the circle of light, then entered.

Carolus walked round the outside of the hall and found that there was an office or vestry at the far end with an entrance of its own, but no other way in except by the main doors. He noticed that over these was a gallery reached by an inside staircase—formerly an organ loft perhaps.

He returned to a point near the entrance from which he
could watch without being noticed. He saw the Murrains arrive on foot dressed as Puritans. She entered with assumed dignity and he drifted in behind her. There had been speculation as to whether the Gunnings would come, but they did so, Gunning appropriately as the village blacksmith and Cicely looking quite at ease as a milkmaid.

He became aware that he himself was being watched by a policeman in uniform who was leaning on his bicycle in the road by the entrance. Rutters, he supposed, correctly as he found later. Presently Rutters came across to him. He was a big man with a somewhat self-important manner.

‘Sherlock Holmes, eh?' He sounded both patronising and hostile. ‘What are you hanging about here for?'

‘I might ask the same question,' said Carolus cheerfully.

‘You might. And I might say it was none of your bloody business. Whereas it
is
mine, when you stand about in the shadow looking at people arriving.'

‘Why?' asked Carolus.

‘Never you mind why. Are you going in to this dance?'

‘Presently.'

‘Well, make up your mind.'

Carolus regretted the days when the village policeman was
called
the village policeman and not either ‘police officer' or ‘bastard' according to who was speaking. When he was a friend to the community, keeping down rustic crime at his own discretion and knowing the folk who depended on him for the maintenance of law and order. This new, arrogant type, backed by arbitrary authority, was a pain in the neck.

He also decided that Rutters was a bit of a bully, and like most bullies unsure of himself. He could probably deflate him with a few sharp words, the names of his superior officers and a hectoring manner of his own. But it wasn't worth while. The man, after all, had a dreary job and the character of Sherlock Holmes, in which Carolus remembered he appeared, could scarcely be a favourite one with the modern police force. He did not move from his place or make any further answer and
after a moment, as he anticipated, Rutters moved away.

Just then Drummer Sloman arrived dressed in the full regalia of a cowboy. He and Rutters were evidently old enemies.

‘Now, young Drummer, you behave yourself tonight. I don't want any trouble with you.'

‘That's okay, Sheriff,' said Drummer good-humouredly. ‘You can call off your posse for tonight.'

‘Want to be funny, eh,' said Rutters angrily.

‘Oh, come on, Charlie,' Drummer said to his brother. Charlie followed him, dressed as a devil. ‘Let the Sheriff cool off.'

They went into the hall, from which could be heard the microphone-magnified voice of Horseman. ‘Take your partners for …' A roar of laughter drowned the rest. But the laughter was good-humoured. Horseman was evidently a popular character here.

Margaret Lark, a somewhat skinny Scheherazade, wheeled in her husband who was not in costume, William Garries in sombrero and cloak, Ebby Smith and his daughter, neither of them in costume, had already gone in, and Carolus was wondering about Xavier Matchlow when he arrived in a car driven by his wife. He wore his plum-coloured velvet smoking-jacket with a black tie and patent-leather shoes, and with his thick long silver hair looked picturesque enough to dispense with further costume. Judith looked charming as an Edwardian with a harem skirt and a large hat.

Carolus decided to enter. He nodded to Rutters as though they were old friends and went into the lighted hall.

The atmosphere here was entirely unexpected. The older people congregated round the bar in apparently friendly and cheerful conversation and the younger ones entirely dominated the proceedings. The members of the band were youngsters and would have appeared to dancers of a previous generation to be a collection of lunatics, and the dancers jerked their heads, waved their arms, waggled their bottoms, swayed and twisted and gesticulated, unrestrained by
propriety or any sense of dignity. They sought the ridiculous, the grotesque, the uninhibited.

It could not be said that they looked happy. They were intent on doing their thing and proceeded with a semi-idiot purposefulness with their strange gyrations, but did not watch one another or expect to be watched. There was no laughter among them and only occasional smiles.

Carolus saw Horseman, jerking and circling with the rest. He was dressed as a sailor and the inappropriate uniform made him look bulky and older than his age. When he got up to announce the next dance he did so, as John had predicted, from the lectern left there from the time when the hall had been a chapel. It stood to the left, but a little in the rear of the band, and when Horseman had spoken he gave a peremptory tap on the lectern with a baton as though conducting. The band played up to this by turning to him and pretending to take their time from him. Although this piece of foolery was repeated with every dance it seemed to please Horseman's audience. It was evident that he was regarded as a funny man with a joke for every announcement and roused laughter and cheers. It made Carolus feel uncomfortable.

Carolus joined the group at the bar.

‘I thought young people nowadays had more discernment,' Alice Murrain was saying. ‘How they can stand that bloated idiot making a fool of himself I shall never know.'

Carolus looked at Alice in her Puritan dress and wondered which was more ridiculous, Horseman with the favour he curried from youth, or Alice with her occult pretensions. He felt mischievous.

‘Couldn't you do something about him?' he whispered. ‘Strike him dumb, or something? Just temporarily, of course.'

At first Alice looked as though she would have preferred to use her powers on Carolus, but she gained control of herself and turned away.

‘I had a nice run down to Margate today,' Carolus observed chattily.

Alice Murrain did not answer, and not very long afterwards she and her husband left the hall, apparently in disgust.

Carolus saw that in the group round the bar was a face he had never consciously seen. He had not noticed him entering the hall or at any other time, and decided that this was not strange as he was one of those men who are by nature unnoticeable. Hair and eyes of no particular colour, insignificant features, characterless clothes, he spoke little and in an undistinguished voice. Just now he was talking to Ronald Lark, but neither seemed much interested in their conversation.

Carolus saw Judith across the hall. She had been dancing with one of the young men and looked flushed and vivid in contrast with the stranger.

‘Tell me,' he said, ‘who is that talking to Ronald Lark?'

‘Where? Oh, yes. That's Poley Grant. I told you about him. Some kind of journalist.'

Carolus started to make his way back to the group, but when he reached it the man had left. He did not see him again.

He approached Ronald Lark.

‘Were you talking to a man named Poley Grant?'

‘Was I? I didn't notice,' Lark said and Carolus could well believe him.

The evening wore on to the inevitable denouement of midnight. There was no rowdiness, and only one brief scene between Margaret Lark and Cicely Gunning in which they raised accusing voices and became the centre of attention—though no one seemed able to discover the cause. Their repective husbands were together near the bar at the time and pointedly had a drink together as though to dissociate themselves from their wives' tantrums. Then Horseman announced another dance and all went on as before.

But it was, thought Carolus, a very odd scene, one of the oddest in his memory. The people themselves were odd, the place and the occasion, and there was undoubtedly, in his own mind at least, a sense of tension. He could not have defined it more accurately than a belief that something was going to
happen. Absurd, he told himself. He was being caught up in this village hocus-pocus, and yet he felt that the evening would not end in a commonplace scattering to their homes of such a disparate gathering brought together by such unguessable motives.

There was a tradition in Clibburn, perhaps going back to the time when church and chapel both had been treated with more consideration, that dances of Saturday nights should end before midnight to satisfy the most watchful sabbatarians. This tradition was still respected, and shortly before twelve o'clock Horseman stood behind his lectern and moved his mouth close to the microphone. The last waltz was finished, John Stainer had left the hall, the room was quiet, and the band stood with their instruments poised ready to play the National Anthem.

‘We come,' said Horseman, ‘to the witching hour of midnight At the first stroke of the church clock our revels now are ended and the band will play
God Save the Queen.
' He held his baton in readiness.

Everyone waited for the sound of the chime, but instead came another, the explosion of a number of fire-crackers, which went off in front of the hall. Charlie Sloman was having his practical joke and filled the hall with a nauseating smell and caused shrieks and dismay among the closely packed people there. What was more, it continued for several moments and the stroke of the church clock was inaudible.