“Judith”, Appleby said, “is fond of theatre people. She even continues to be fond of them when they take to films. That is how we came to be at the Bullions’ house party.”
“But of course!” Mrs Crisparkle glowed. “Lady Appleby is so at home in the larger world of art.”
“Perhaps the Bullions’ was that. Their concern at that time was certainly with art on the large scale. The film people, it seems, have gone back to enormities. Vast crowds and illimitable vistas are the things to plug on the screen if you want to keep television in its place. And the real trump card is a pitched battle, preferably with a great deal of cavalry, and chain-mail, and improbable-looking tents.”
“I know those tented fields.” Mrs Crisparkle nodded brightly. “Like a counter covered with lamp-shades in an art-and-crafty shop.”
“Quite so. Well, the Bullions were to be starred in a tremendous film called William the Conqueror. And one of its highlights, needless to say, was to be the Battle of Hastings.”
“Ten-sixty-six.” The fine certainty of Mrs Crisparkle’s expression gave way to misgiving. “But were there cavalry at Hastings?”
“I’ve no idea. But there were no end of archers, and in the film their arrows were going to darken the heavens. That’s why archery was all the go at the Bullions during that fatal weekend.”
Mrs Crisparkle was sympathetic. “Those fatal weekends! My dear Sir John, how well I know them.”
But Appleby shook his head. “This,” he said gravely, “was a fatal weekend. It led to murder.
“I doubt whether Mark Bullion or any of his guests was actually going to draw a long-bow in the film. Most of them must have been booked for nobler roles – dashing about on horseback, chiefly, and encouraging their vassals with heroic cries. Nevertheless, everybody was fooling about with bows and arrows at some improvised butts. And that went for the women too. Claire Bullion, as a matter of fact, was uncommonly good – the best even of the scattering of people with whom archery was a regular sport. She spent most of Saturday instructing a handsome chap called Giles Barcroft. You may recall his name. He had left the London stage for Hollywood about five years before, and now he was back in this country with a considerable reputation. He was to play a big part – one of King Harold’s principal nobles, torn between loyalty and his reawakened love for a great Norman lady.”
Mrs Crisparkle nodded intelligently. “The Norman lady being played by Claire Bullion?”
“Precisely. And now I must tell you about the Sunday evening. The Bullions had rather a grand house, which I suppose they had rented – furniture, servants, and all – from some impoverished peer. Half-a-dozen of us were drinking cocktails on a terrace before the west front. Beneath us was a long, narrow sunken garden in what used to be called the Dutch taste, and immediately beyond that was the park – of which, however, we could see no more than a line of rising ground, parallel to our terrace and rather higher, with two magnificent oaks at either end of it. Beyond, there was simply the sunset sky.”
“It sounds rather impressive, Sir John. I get the suggestion of a natural theatre.”
“That describes it very well.” Appleby glanced at Mrs Crisparkle with approval. “We might have been an audience looking across the orchestra-pit of that sunken garden and through the great proscenium-arch constituted by those tremendous oaks. What we were viewing was an empty stage, closed by the vast luminous backcloth of the evening sky.
“What was in fact concealed from us by the line of rising ground that formed our immediate horizon, was that part of the park in which the archery mostly went on. I could hear a couple of my fellow-guests rather maliciously discussing what else might be going on there at that moment. ‘They were fooling round together all yesterday.’ ‘True enough. But it’s my guess they’ve had a glorious row.’ ‘So what, my dear fellow? Before Giles went to the Coast they were always having rows, but everybody knew that that was just by the way.’ ‘I can’t make out what Mark thinks about it – can you? Have another of the poor old chap’s drinks.’
“All this wasn’t exactly obscure – and decidedly it wasn’t edifying. The people concerned were talking the more freely because Bullion himself was securely out of hearing – down in the sunken garden in front of us, in fact, playing the lord of the manor and showing off his roses to some enraptured old woman.
“So much for the setting. In another moment, the thing happened.
“Barcroft’s head and shoulders appeared silhouetted on that horizon – plumb centre, you might say, of that natural stage. He had the motions of a man scrambling up a bank – and indeed the ground did, as I knew, fall away sharply on the other side. Then he was on the ridge, and suddenly raising an arm. I believe we all supposed that he was going to wave to us. But he was raising both arms – flinging them above his head – and at the same moment his knees collapsed under him. With a horrible cry – I can hear it with an effect of terror yet, and I’ve heard some nasty noises in my time – with a single horrible cry, Giles Barcroft tumbled backwards and disappeared.
“We were all stunned – and the next sound was Bullion’s voice calling out hoarsely in the garden. But it wasn’t Barcroft’s name that rang from him. It was his wife’s.
“I believe I jumped pretty smartly from that terrace, and I wasn’t much behind Bullion himself in scrambling up that incline and down on the other side. He was kneeling by Barcroft, who lay on his face, rolled over and over in dust. ‘Giles,’ he was calling out, ‘Giles – my God, what’s happened?’ And then he started back – as well he might. Barcroft was transfixed by an arrow, dead between the shoulder-blades. The feathered shaft had a glint of sunlight on it, and was quivering as if from some last pulsation of the body of the dying man.”
Mrs Crisparkle drew a long breath. “That glint of sunlight. It’s all terribly good theatre still.”
Appleby nodded soberly. “Certainly a veritable coup de théâtre succeeded at once. Claire Bullion appeared in the background – horrified, scared, and carrying a bow. Her husband took one look, jumped to his feet, and in a high, cracked voice denounced her as a murderous fiend. But that wasn’t all. In the silence that followed, Giles Barcroft spoke. It was no more than two whispered words, but they were perfectly clear. ‘I…win,’ he enunciated. Within five seconds he was dead.”
“How very bewildering.” Mrs Crisparkle was round-eyed. “Sir John – whatever did you do?”
Appleby smiled grimly. “I grabbed Bullion.
“It had indeed been a natural theatre, and we had been decidedly invited to watch a play. What Barcroft had won was, of course, a bet – a bet that, returning from his archery, he would put over that death-agony convincingly, and hold the illusion until the entire house-party was weeping round the supposed corpse – that sort of thing. And Bullion had carefully planted himself down there in the garden, thereby giving himself a start that would take him over that bank seconds before anyone else – a sufficient number of seconds to drive that waiting arrow straight to the heart of his play-acting friend. It was a pretty plan for disposing of his wife’s lover – and his wife, as you will have seen, was to have come in for a spot of trouble too.”
“I see – I see!” Mrs Crisparkle’s eyes were now saucers. “But how did you know?”
“Barcroft had done his turn whole-heartedly – rolling, as I have told you, over and over in the dust. But the arrow that was supposed to have occasioned this, was sticking straight out of the body, with its very feathering unruffled. It was a bad slip on Mark Bullion’s part. May I get you a drink?”
And Mrs Crisparkle nodded. “Yes,” she said rather faintly. “I think you may.”