Off With His Head

‘“St Agnes Eve, ach bitter chill it was!”’ she quoted in a faintly Teutonic accent. Occasionally, when fatigued or agitated, she turned her short o’s into long ones and transposed her v’s and w’s.

‘But I see no sign,’ she added to herself, ‘of hare nor owl, nor of any living creature, godamercy.’ She was pleased with this improvisation. Her intimate circle had lately adopted ‘godamercy’ as an amusing expletive.

There arose from behind some nearby bushes a shrill cachinnation and out waddled a gaggle of purposeful geese. They advanced upon her, screaming angrily. She bundled herself into the car, slammed the door almost on their beaks, engaged her bottom gear and ploughed on, watched from the hillside by a pair of bulls. Her face was pale and calm and she hummed the air (from her Playford album) of ‘Sellinger’s Round.’

As the traveller drew near the Victorian house she saw that it was built of the same stone as the ruin that partly encircled it. ‘That is something, at least,’ she thought. She crammed her car up the final icy slope, through the remains of a Norman archway and into a courtyard. There she drew in her breath in a series of gratified little gasps.

The courtyard was a semi-circle bounded by the curve of old battlemented walls and cut off by the new house. It was littered with heaps of rubble and overgrown with weeds. In the centre, puddled in snow, was a rectangular slab supported by two pillars of stone. ‘Eureka!’ cried the traveller.

For luck she groped under her scarves and fingered her special necklace of red silk. Thus fortified, she climbed a flight of steps that led to the front door.

It was immense and had been transferred, she decided with satisfaction, from the ruin. There was no push-button, but a vast bell, demonstrably phoney and set about with cast-iron pixies, was bolted to the wall. She tugged at its chain and it let loose a terrifying rumpus. The geese, which had reappeared at close quarters, threw back their heads, screamed derisively and made for her at a rapid waddle.

With her back to the door she faced them. One or two made unsuccessful attempts to mount and she tried to quell them, collectively, with an imperious glare. Such was the din they raised that she did not hear the door open.

‘You are in trouble!’ said a voice behind her. ‘Nip in, won’t you, while I shut the door. Be off, birds.’

The visitor was grasped, turned about and smartly pulled across the threshold. The door slammed behind her and she found herself face to face with a thin, ginger-haired lady who stared at her in watery surprise.

‘Yes?’ said the lady. ‘Yes, well, I don’t think – and in any case, what weather!’

‘Dame Alice Mardian?’

‘My great-aunt. She’s ninety-four and I don’t think –’

With an important gesture the visitor threw back her cloak, explored an inner pocket and produced a card.

‘This is, of course, a surprise,’ she said. ‘Perhaps I should have written first but I must tell you – frankly, frankly – that I was so transported with curiosity – no, not that, not curiosity – rather with the zest of the hunter, that I could not contain myself. Not for another day, another hour even!’ She checked. Her chin trembled. ‘If you will glance at the card,’ she said. Dimly, the other did so.

‘Mrs Anna Bünz,’ she read.

FRIENDS OF BRITISH FOLKLORE

GUILD OF ANCIENT CUSTOMS

THE HOBBY HORSES

Morisco Croft, Bapple-under-Baccomb, Warwickshire

‘Oh dear!’ said the ginger-haired lady, and added: ‘But in any case, come in, of course.’ She led the way from a hall that was scarcely less cold than the landscape outside into a drawing-room that was, if anything, more so. It was jammed up with objects. Mediocre portraits reached from the ceiling to the floor, tables were smothered in photographs and ornaments, statuettes peered over each other’s shoulders. On a vast hearth dwindled a shamefaced little fire.

‘Do sit down,’ said the ginger-haired lady doubtfully, ‘Mrs – ah – Buns.’

‘Thank you, but excuse me – Bünz. Eü, eü,’ said Mrs Bünz, thrusting out her lips with tutorial emphasis, ‘or if eü is too difficult, Bins or Burns will suffice. But nothing edible!’ She greeted her own joke with the cordial chuckle of an old acquaintance. ‘It’s a German name, of course. My dear late husband and I came over before the war. Now I am saturated, I hope I may say, in the very sap of old England. But,’ Mrs Bünz added, suddenly vibrating the tip of her tongue as if she anticipated some delicious titbit, ‘to our muttons. To our muttons, Miss – ah –’

‘Mardian,’ said Miss Mardian, turning a brickish pink.

‘Ach, that name!’

‘If you wouldn’t mind –’

‘But of course. I come immediately to the point. It is this, Miss Mardian, I have driven three hundred miles to see your great-aunt.’

‘Oh dear! She’s resting, I’m afraid –’

‘You are, of course, familiar with the name of Rekkage.’

‘Well, there was old Lord Rekkage who went off his head.’

‘It cannot be the same.’

‘He’s dead now. Warwickshire family, near Bapple.’

‘It is the same. As to his sanity I feel you must be misinformed. A great benefactor. He founded the Guild of Ancient Customs.’

‘That’s right. And left all his money to some too-extraordinary society.’

‘The Hobby Horses. I see, my dear Miss Mardian, that we have dissimilar interests. Yet,’ said Mrs Bünz, lifting her voluminous chins, ‘I shall plod on. So much at stake. So much.’

I’m afraid,’ said Miss Mardian vaguely, ‘that I can’t offer you tea. The boiler’s burst.’

‘I don’t take it. Pray, Miss Mardian, what are Dame Alice’s interests? Of course, at her wonderfully great age –’

‘Aunt Akky? Well, she likes going to sales. She picked up nearly all the furniture in this room at auctions. Lots of family things were lost when Mardian Place was burnt down. So she built this house out of bits of the old castle and furnished it from sales. She likes doing that, awfully.’

‘Then there is an antiquarian instinct. Ach!’ Mrs Bünz exclaimed excitedly, clapping her hands and losing control of her accent. ‘Ach, sank Gott!’

‘Oh crumbs!’ Miss Mardian cried, raising an admonitory finger. ‘Here is Aunt Akky.’

She got up self-consciously. Mrs Bünz gave a little gasp of anticipation and, settling her cloak portentously, also rose.

The drawing-room door opened to admit Dame Alice Mardian.

Perhaps the shortest way to describe Dame Alice is to say that she resembled Mrs Noah. She had a shapeless, wooden appearance and her face, if it was expressive of anything in particular, looked dimly jolly.

‘What’s all the row?’ she asked, advancing with the inelastic toddle of old age. ‘Hallo! Didn’t know you had friends, Dulcie.’

‘I haven’t,’ said Miss Mardian. She waved her hands. ‘This is Mrs – Mrs –’

‘Bünz,’ said that lady. ‘Mrs Anna Bünz. Dame Alice, I am so inexpressibly overjoyed –’

‘What about? How de do, I’m sure,’ said Dame Alice. She had loose-fitting false teeth which of their own accord chopped off the ends of her words and thickened her sibilants. ‘Don’t see strangers,’ she added. ‘Too old for it. Dulcie ought to’ve told yer.’

‘It seems to be about old Lord Rekkage, Aunt Akky.’

‘Lor’! Loony Rekkage. Hunted with the Quorn till he fell on his head. Like you, Dulcie. Went as straight as the best, but mad. Don’t you ’gree?’ she asked Mrs Bünz, looking at her for the first time.

Mrs Bünz began to speak with desperate rapidity. ‘When he died,’ she gabbled, shutting her eyes, ‘Lord Rekkage assigned to me, as vice-president of the Friends of British Folklore, the task of examining certain papers.’