Death of a Fool Read Free Page A

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 thickset man, followed by a dismal-looking dog, come round the lane from behind them.
    She leant 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 it 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 lanthorn 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 lanthorn 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