Read Death of a Fool for Free Online

mama into the world. Last time I spoke to her she was about your age and as like as could be. How very nice to see you.”
    They shook hands warmly. Camilla remembered that five years ago when a famous specialist had taken his tactful leave of her mother, she had whispered, “All the same, you couldn’t beat Dr. Otterly up at Mardian.” When she died, they carried her back to Mardian and Dr. Otterly had spoken gently to Camilla and her father.
    She smiled gratefully at him now and his hand tightened for a moment round hers.
    “What a lucky chap you are, Guiser,” said Dr. Otterly, “with a grand-daughter to put a bit of warmth into your Decembers. Wish I could say as much for myself. Are you staying for Christmas, Miss Camilla?”
    “For the winter solstice, anyway,” she said. “I want to see the swords come out.”
    “Aha! So you know all about that.”
    “Mummy told me.”
    “I’ll be bound she did. I didn’t imagine you people nowadays had much time for ritual dancing. Too ‘folksy’ — is that the word? — or ‘artsy-craftsy’ or ‘chi-chi.’ Not?”
    “Ah, no! Not the genuine article like this one,” Camilla protested. “And I’m sort of specially interested because I’m working at a drama school.”
    “Are you, now?”
    Dr. Otterly glanced at the Andersens, but they were involved in a close discussion with Simon Begg. “And what does the Guiser say to
that
?” he asked and winked at Camilla.
    “He’s livid.”
    “Ha! And what do you propose to do about it? Defy him?”
    Camilla said, “Do you know, I honestly didn’t think anybody was left who thought like he does about the theatre. He quite pitched into me. Rather frightening when you come to think of it.”
    “Frightening? Ah!” Dr. Otterly said quickly, “You don’t really mean that. That’s contemporary slang, I daresay. What did you lay to the Guiser?”
    “Well, I didn’t
quite
like,” Camilla confided, “to point out that after all
he
played the lead in a pagan ritual that is probably chock full of improprieties if he only knew it.”
    “No,” agreed Dr. Otterly drily, “I shouldn’t tell him that if I were you. As a matter of fact, he’s a silly old fellow to do it at all at his time of life. Working himself into a fizz and taxing his ticker up to the danger-mark. I’ve told him so, but I might as well speak to the cat. Now, what do
you
hope to do, child? What roles do you dream of playing? Um?”
    “Oh, Shakespeare if I could. If
only
I could.”
    “I wonder. In ten years’ time? Not the giantesses, I fancy. Not the Lady M. nor yet the Serpent of Old Nile. But a Viola, now, or — what do you say to a Cordelia?”
    “Cordelia?” Camilla echoed doubtfully. She didn’t think all that much of Cordelia.
    Dr. Otterly contemplated her with evident amusement and adopted an air of cozy conspiracy.
    “Shall I tell you something? Something that to
me
at least is
immensely
exciting? I believe I have made a really significant discovery —
really
significant — about — you’d never guess — about
Lear
. There now!” cried Dr. Otterly with the infatuated glee of a White Knight. “What do you say to that?”
    “A discovery?”
    “About
King Lear
. And I have been led to it, I may tell you, through playing the fiddle once a year for thirty years at the winter solstice on Sword Wednesday for our Dance of the Five Sons.”
    “Honestly?”
    “As honest as the day. And do you want to know what my discovery is?”
    “Indeed I do.”
    “In a nutshell, this: here, my girl, in our Five Sons is nothing more nor less than a variant of the Basic Theme, Frazer’s theme — the King of the Wood, the Green Man, the Fool, the Old Man Persecuted by His Young — the theme, by Guiser, that reached its full stupendous blossoming in
Lear
. Do you
know
the play?” Dr. Otterly demanded.
    “Pretty well, I think.”
    “Good. Turn it over in your mind when you’ve seen the Five Sons, and if I’m right you’d better treat