The Death-Cap Dancers

Chapter 5: BLOODSTAINED BRACKET

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Tamsin, made unusally nervous because of her damaged and now treacherous ankle, said, ‘Do be careful! There are stories of girls being pulled from bikes. This may have happened here. That convict, you know. He may still be about and he may be desperate for money.’

As soon as the other two had left the car Hermione got out too, went round to the driver’s seat and joined Tamsin.

‘Cheer up, ’ she said. ‘If the convict pops out on them from one of the dips they can make a dash for it and I can start up the car in no time. But don’t worry. He’ll be far enough away by now. Is that ankle being a nuisance?’

‘Aches a bit. It makes me feel helpless.’

‘Yes, we shouldn’t have let you walk on it. Keep a lookout on your side and if they begin to run I’ll start the engine.’

‘They’ve picked up the bike.’

‘Yes. The front wheel looks as though it’s buckled.’

‘They’re walking away from us.’ Both girls watched as the older ones, having moved further off, stood with their backs to the car and looked into one of the dips in the moor. Then Erica went forward, while Isobel remained looking downwards. They returned at a sober pace and Hermione relinquished the driver’s seat, but Erica said, ‘I’m all shook up. It’s rather nasty. We’ve got to go to Gledge End and see the police. You drive.’

‘Well, of course you weren’t to know, miss,’ said the Superintendent of Police, ‘but it’s a pity you picked up the bicycle. We may have to depend on the handlebars for an attacker’s dabs. Still, no doubt we can manage. We’ll have to eliminate yours. Which of you picked up the bicycle? Both of you handled it? Of course we shall destroy your prints as soon as we’ve done with them. You need not think they’ll be on permanent record. Staying in one of the forest cabins are you? If I might have the number? Right. Just out for a drive, you say, when one of you spotted the bike. Just so. Thought, when you found the body, that there might have been a hit-and-run motorist? On a lonely moorland road it’s quite possible that’s just what happened. We can’t be sure until we get a full report of the injuries. A nasty experience for you ladies, but I’m bound to say that you have acted in a very public-spirited manner in looking about you and then coming straight to us to report that you found the body.’

‘I rather wish we hadn’t found it,’ said Erica when they were back in the cabin. ‘Her head was an awful mess. I’ve seen some results of accidents on the building sites, but I’ve never seen anything like that. Whoever did it, motorist or whatever, must be in a desperate flap to have dragged the body off the road and tumbled it into that dip. You’d have thought he would have chucked the bike in after it, and I wish to goodness he had. Then none of us would have spotted it and stopped to investigate, and somebody else, later on, would be carrying the can instead of us.’

‘I expect his only idea was to make his getaway before another motorist came along,’ said Tamsin. ‘You think it was a motorist and not the convict, then?’

‘I don’t want to think at all. Yes, I’ll have another cup of tea, please. No, nothing to eat. I couldn’t face it.’

‘Was it very bad?’ said Hermione to Isobel when their door was shut and they were in their bunks that night.

‘I didn’t go close, but Erica is pretty tough and she said it made her feel sick. I saw a lot of blood on the face and clothes, that’s all.’

‘You don’t suppose the police think we bumped her, do you?’

‘Good heavens, no. Why should they?’

‘Well, they might, that’s all.’

‘They wouldn’t be so fatheaded. If we’d done it we should hardly have gone haring off to the police station to report it, should we?’

‘Well, of course we would. Any decent person would.’

‘Yes, but any decent person wouldn’t have hidden the body in that hole. The person who did that wasn’t going to run straight to the police. Look, are you trying to tell me something? Don’t forget I spend my life dealing with cagey adolescents, so speak up.’

‘I’m not an adolescent and I’m not cagey, but there’s something perhaps I ought to tell you before the police spot it. You remember that Erica was a bit shaken and made me drive the car after she had seen the body?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘First to the police station and then here to unload Tamsin and you two before I put the car into the carpark?’

‘Yes, I remember all that. What about it?’

‘Well, on the way to the carpark I had a skid on some wet leaves and hit a tree. Oh, no real damage done, and I’m going to tell Erica that I’m afraid I’ve marked her paint, but it has suddenly come to me that the police might decide to take a look at the car.’

‘And think their own thoughts when they spot the marks? I shouldn’t worry. I’m quite sure the scratches made by a tree-trunk wouldn’t in the least resemble the marks made by the impact of a girl on a bike. Besides, we’ll all back you up. You know that. Anyway, I’m glad you thought of it and told me. It can’t have been very serious, or you would have told the three of us when you got back from the carpark.’

‘It was dark, so I don’t know what the damage is. It can’t be anything much, because I corrected the skid and really only skimmed the tree.’

‘Tell Erica in the morning and we’ll go down and take a look. Meanwhile, forget it and go to sleep.’

‘What did you two tell them at the police station?’

‘Only what we’ve already told you. The girl was dead. We didn’t touch the body—that is to say, Erica didn’t and I didn’t go down into the dip. We picked up the bicycle to see what the damage was and got a bit of a rocket from the superintendent because we had probably messed up any fingerprints there might be on the handlebars.’

‘That was unfair. You didn’t know at that point that the girl was dead. Was it just an accident, do you think?’

‘I have no idea. Anyway, whether she was knocked off her bike by a car or whether the convict had had a go at her, somebody had dragged her away from the roadside and tried to hide the body, that’s for sure. What’s more, whoever it was must have been in a bit of a flap, or he would have hidden the bike, too. It was a clear giveaway to leave it at the roadside where anybody passing would spot it.’

‘I don’t know so much. Leaving it at the roadside would look as though a car had hit it, so, as the convict wouldn’t have had a car, that would tend to tell in his favour, wouldn’t it?’

‘Then why try to hide the body?’

‘Oh, to make it look as though the car-driver had taken the girl to hospital, I suppose.’

In the far bedroom the subject of conversation was on the same lines. ‘Do the police think the convict did it?’ asked Tamsin.

‘I couldn’t say. The police are like the doctors. They never tell you what they’re thinking if they can possibly help it.’

‘The bicycle being damaged makes it look more like a car accident with a hit-and-run driver, wouldn’t you say?’

‘It doesn’t matter what I say. It is what the police think that counts. Go to sleep. I need to be fresh and bright when I meet them in the morning.’

‘The police?’

‘Who else? Don’t you realise there’s a fair chance they’ll decide I could have been the driver who killed that girl?’

‘But you and Isobel went to them straight away and reported finding the body.’

‘That doesn’t prove it wasn’t my car which killed her.’

That there was considerable substance in this remark was proved in the middle of the next morning. Apart from some necessary shopping which was done at the little shop near the warden’s office, nobody felt inclined for an outing and, after what had been said the night before, nobody was surprised when a detective-inspector and a sergeant turned up, just after the mid-morning coffee and biscuits had been cleared away, and asked for an interview.

Erica, as usual, answered the door.

‘Good morning, miss. Detective-Inspector Ribble and Sergeant Nene. May we come in?’

‘Of course.’

‘Thank you, miss. Just one or two points and then we would like you to accompany us to your carpark. You were the driver, I believe you told the superintendent, miss.’

‘Yes, I was. Won’t you sit down?’

‘Thank you, miss. Would you repeat what you reported yesterday about the route you took?’ Erica repeated the information she had supplied at the police station. ‘So you did not pass through Gledge End on your return?’

‘Only on our outward journey. We went there to locate the church hall where there is to be an entertainment for which we have tickets.’

‘Then you went on to —’ he looked at the sergeant, who turned to his notebook and read aloud.

‘That’s right,’ said Erica, when he had finished.

‘So you were almost home when you saw the bicycle. I suppose it was getting near dusk by that time?’

‘Oh, no, there was plenty of daylight left.’

‘So you hadn’t switched on the car lights?’

‘It wasn’t necessary.’

‘Well, not in your opinion, anyway. I would like you to accompany me to the carpark. You were the driver when the bicycle came into view?’

‘Yes, I drove the whole time until after we found the body. I was shaken up and thought I’d better not drive after that.’

‘I took over,’ said Hermione, ‘and there is something I ought to tell you before you inspect the car.’

‘Oh, yes, miss? What would that be?’

‘I scratched the paint, I think, when the car skidded.’

‘Oh, it skidded, did it?’

‘Yes, on some slippery fallen leaves. I corrected the skid, but I think in doing so I slightly bumped a tree.’

‘You — or somebody else — certainly bumped something, miss. We have already looked at the car.’

‘In that case,’ said Erica, ‘why do you want me to look at it?’

‘The car is marked, miss. Whether by a tree or a bicycle we don’t yet know.’

‘Oh, look here!’ said Isobel. ‘Our car never touched that bicycle!’

Erica returned from the carpark unaccompanied by the police, but she was looking worried.

‘The car is marked all right,’ she said. ‘They don’t exactly say they don’t believe me, and it was good of you, Hermy, to speak up the way you did, but I’m afraid I’m for it. That policeman has got it all worked out, I think. He believes we ran down that girl and realised what we’d done — I mean that we’d killed her. He thinks we panicked and tried to hide the body and then thought again and decided to report it. He also thinks we concocted that story Hermy told about the skid just to account for the marks on the car.’

‘Oh, dear, what a mess!’ wailed Tamsin.

‘But, look,’ said Isobel, ‘if the tree made marks on the car, the car must have made marks on the tree. Hermy, you probably know more or less whereabouts you were when you had the skid. The road ought to show some signs of it, and then all we have to do is to find the tree. Besides, surely their forensic experts, or whoever delves into these police things, can spot the difference between marks made by hitting a bike and marks made by bashing into a tree.’

‘I didn’t bash into it. I only sort of skimmed it. There might not be any recognisable marks on the tree at all.’

‘But if the car is marked?’ said Tamsin.

‘That’s the worst of this cheap paint they put on cars nowadays,’ said Isobel. ‘Come on, Hermy. Let’s go and see if we can spot this tree of yours. Mind you watch your step ! There may be a copper behind every bush keeping a suspicious eye on us.’

‘I’ll tell you what else I’m going to do,’ said Hermione, when they were outside the cabin. ‘Do you know what I think? I think the police have some reason for not suspecting that convict.’

‘Picked him up before the girl was killed?’

‘It’s more than likely.’

‘I hadn’t thought of that. If that’s so, then we, and especially poor old Erica, really are in the cart. So what’s your idea?’

‘To go straight to the telephone before we begin looking for trees and skidmarks and call up my great-aunt, only hoping she is free and at home. She will get us out of this mess if anybody can and a good old mess I think it’s going to be.’

‘Your great-aunt? Not Laura Gavin’s boss? Not the great Dame Beatrice?’

‘Yes, of course; and, if she can’t help us, my Uncle Ferdinand will.’

‘Who’s he? What could he do?’

‘He is Sir Ferdinand Lestrange, Q.C. Appearing for the defence is his main line of country. He loves getting people off, whether they’ve done it or not.’

‘I don’t call that ethical.’

‘When did ethics have anything to do with the law?’

‘Be that as it may, how very well connected you are!’

‘We may be glad of it, especially me. I only hope my great-aunt is at home.’

The telephone call was taken by Dame Beatrice herself, for Laura was still in Scotland and not expected back for a day or two. Hermione recognised at once the beautiful voice and said, ‘Oh, darling! Thank goodness it’s you. Great-aunt, I’m in trouble.’

‘What have you done — burnt down the woodland nook of which Laura speaks so highly?’

‘Much worse than that. The police think we knocked a girl cyclist down with our car and not only left her dead, but tried to hide the body.’

‘Dear me! Is there any substance at all in the story?’

‘Of course there isn’t. We’ve never knocked anybody down, let alone killed her. We even went straight to the police and reported finding the body. We should hardly have done that if we were guilty, would we?’

‘Conscience doth make cowards of us all.’

‘That’s what the police think. They think that, after we’d hidden the body, we panicked and went racing off to them to unburden ourselves.’

‘Do they suspect simply because you reported the accident?’

‘We didn’t have any accident. The whole thing was nothing to do with us at all.’

‘But the police must have some good reason for suspecting you.’

‘That’s the worst of it. When I was on my way through the woods to park the car that evening, it skidded and hit a tree.’

‘Misfortunes never come singly. You marked the car, I suppose.’

‘Yes, not much, but of course it’s given the police something to take hold of. Oh, darling, do please come and support us! You couldn’t manage to get here by Monday, could you?’

‘You may expect me on Sunday afternoon. I shall have George to drive me down. Book two rooms at the hotel nearest to where you are staying and when we meet you must tell me the whole story in detail. Did you yourself see the body?’

‘No. The two older ones left Tamsin and me in the car while they went over to look at the bicycle. Then they cast around on the moor in case the girl had wandered off.’

‘Why did they think of that?’

‘Oh, darling, I don’t know. People do wander around when they’ve had a shock, don’t they?’

‘People vary in their reactions. However, I suppose your friends’ intentions were commendable.’

‘She’s coming,’ said Hermione, emerging from the telephone kiosk and addressing Isobel, who was waiting outside. ‘We shall be all right now.’

‘Famous last words ! ’ said Isobel. ‘Come on and let’s see if we can find this tree of yours.’

The Trent’s holiday finished on the Saturday, so while Isobel and Hermione were searching for the marked tree, John Trent came to the cabin on a neighbourly visit, probably the last, he explained.

‘I hope you’ve had no more trouble with that lad,’ he said.

Oh, no, thanks,‘ said Erica, who had answered the door.

‘Good. One wondered, because one spotted a police car here.’

‘Come in and we’ll tell you about it.’

‘I don’t know whether we are at liberty to do that until the police release the story to the press,’ said Tamsin.

‘Oh, it will come out today. The police haven’t told us to keep quiet about it. Besides, that poor girl’s friends will be making enquiries by now,’ Erica said. ‘The fact is we found a girl’s body on the moors when we were out yesterday. The police had to be told, so we went to the police station yesterday and they came this morning to ask us a few more questions.’

‘Good Lord! The girl was not anybody you knew, I hope.’

‘The body? Oh, no. Hermione saw a bicycle through the window of the car and then Isobel and I got out to have a look in case somebody was ill or had had an accident, and a bit further off we found her.’

‘How beastly for you!’

‘Yes, it was. You see, until the police got this idea that we’d run her down with our car, we thought the escaped convict must have done it, although, if so, it seemed odd that the front wheel of the bike was so badly buckled. Still, he must be desperate for money and food and there was no sign of her handbag or anything else she might have had with her. The police asked whether we had ever seen her before, which I thought was rather a silly question. Tamsin thought she might have come from the Youth Hostel at Long Cove Bay, but it was only a suggestion. Considering that the bike was lying in a slanting position with the buckled front wheel pointing away from our car, either she was cycling on the wrong side of the road or she was going towards Long Cove Bay, not away from it.’

‘If she’d been hit by a car, the bike could have been knocked clean across the road, I suppose, so you can’t prove much by the position of the front wheel.’

‘That’s true, so it’s not much use worrying about the bike. They will have got a doctor to look at the body and if he says the girl was knocked down and killed by a car, I expect that’s what happened. The trouble is that they think it was our car.’

They surely don’t think so just because you reported finding the body?’

‘Unfortunately there’s more to it than that,’ said Tamsin. ‘Hermione parked the car after we got back and on the way to the carpark from unloading me here because of my wretched ankle, she had a skid and hit a tree and marked the car. She and my sister are out now, trying to find the tree.’

‘Anything I can do to help?’

‘I don’t think so, thanks,’ said Erica. ‘Do you mind not mentioning any of this to anybody at present?’

‘Trust me.’

‘Well, I hope we can,’ said Tamsin, when he had gone. ‘We don’t want the story to be passed round until we know where we stand, do we?’

The other two came back with mixed tidings. The skidmarks were impossible to find because so many cars had used the road to the carpark that any evidence of the kind which Hermione had hoped for was destroyed. Apart from that, she and Isobel had failed to locate a damaged tree.

‘I thought I remembered pretty well where I had the skid,’ she said, ‘but I was only thinking about the bicycle and you two finding the body, so I may be wrong about where the skid took place, and, of course, there are scores of trees.’

‘We’ll all have another look later on,’ said Isobel. ‘Anyway, Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley is coming on Sunday, so with her at our side the police won’t dare to bully us.’

‘There’s only one trouble about that tree,’ said Erica. ‘Even if you do find it, I can’t see how we can prove that it was Hermione’s skid that marked it. I don’t suppose she’s the only driver to have had her wheels slip sideways on wet leaves.’

After this pessimistic observation, lunch was a somewhat silent meal. At one point Tamsin said, ‘Are you beginning to wish we had never come to this place?’ To this Erica replied with equal pessimism:

‘I bet Hermy begins to wish she had never met us.’

‘Well,’ said the superintendent to Detective-Inspector Ribble, ‘the ball is in your court now, Bob. The medical evidence — and Forensic are dead certain to back it up — is that the girl didn’t receive fatal injuries by being knocked down by a car. She may have been knocked down, but that she was actually killed by repeated blows on the head is the official verdict. Probably struck from behind with a stone first of all, and then, when she tumbled down, there must have been a frenzied attack on her. Somebody wanted to make quite sure she was dead. We may know more about that when we know who she is. One of those four girls suggested she might have come from the Youth Hostel. Anyhow, the murderer made off with her gear, we think. She must have had at least a handbag, but we searched a wide area and found absolutely nothing, so, up to now, we haven’t a clue to her identity.’

‘If she was on a solitary holiday and was a Youth Hosteller, sir, she may not be missed for days. Chances are she was a schoolteacher, don’t you think, sir?’

‘Why, Bob?’

‘Schools get a week’s half-term holiday round about now, sir. I’ve got three kids, so I know.’

‘Oh, yes, of course. Doesn’t help us until somebody misses her and comes forward. Even if she taught at a local school there would be nobody there except a caretaker and the chances are that she could have come from absolutely anywhere. We shall put out a description, of course, but I think it’s just going to be a question of wait and see. We shall try the Youth Hostel, of course.’

‘Even when we know who she is, sir, we shan’t be much further forward if this was one of those opportunist, unpremeditated jobs, and that’s what it looks like on the face of it, except those sort are usually sex motivated. You seem to have ruled out the chap who absconded a day or two ago. They haven’t picked him up yet and he was in for murder, wasn’t he?’

‘Wife-murder, yes, but he was one of these arsenic operators. This person or these persons who attacked the girl must have gone berserk. It wasn’t in keeping with anything that’s known about the chap from Hangwood.’

‘If a man’s desperate enough, sir, you can’t guarantee what he’ll do.’

‘It’s the bashing he gave her. That doesn’t fit our chap: All he had to do, if it was him, was to knock her unconscious and make off with any food or money she was carrying. If she was attacked from behind she wouldn’t be able to describe him.’

‘Perhaps she put up a fight, sir, and he lost his head.’

‘Against that is the theory that if he struck the first blow from behind her, that was the blow which killed her. Even if it didn’t, it wouldn’t have left her in any condition to put up a fight. I don’t think we can query the medical evidence, you know, and that includes one curious little fact.’

‘You mean we’ve got a clue, sir?’

‘No such luck, I’m afraid, but it’s an odd little circumstance, all the same. The doctors found a mushroom or some kind of toadstool — it hasn’t been identified yet — embedded in the head-wound. Wherever that kind grows, it doesn’t usually grow on the moors among the heather.’

‘Looks as though she was killed in the woods, sir.’

‘But who would have taken the body back to the moor to hide it when it would have been much safer and easier to put it in one of the thickets? It looks less and less like our man, to my mind.’

‘And those young women, sir?’

‘Damned if I know. They do have one of the forest cabins. I think we’ll have to keep tabs on them. Even if they are not guilty, they may know something which they haven’t told us. There must be some explanation of how that fungus came to be embedded in the wound. To go back to our man, though, he may have been fly enough to reason that a buckled bike could have been biffed by a car, and as he can prove he doesn’t possess a car…’

‘That raises a very interesting point, sir. She could have been knocked off her bike by a car and so badly hurt that the driver thought he had better put her out of her misery, as though she was a wounded bird. I agree we should not abandon the car aspect, sir. Those four young women might have the humanitarian urge I suggested and also a good big spanner in the boot.’

‘Far-fetched, Bob, surely! Young women don’t go in for that kind of strong-arm stuff.’

‘Women go in for wrestling and soccer and I believe some even play Rugby League football, sir. They do weight-lifting and run the marathon and put the shot. There’s only professional boxing and throwing the hammer still closed to them in this country. They drive racing-cars and ride horses on equal terms with men—’

‘You sound like a Women’s Libber, Bob.’

‘Not at all, sir. Just painting the picture, that’s all.’

‘I can’t imagine any of those four young women bludgeoning another young woman to death, not even for the reason you suggested. Besides, not many women could face finishing off a wounded bird.’

‘Just as you say, sir. Well, my first job, as I see it, is to do a round of the neighbourhood, including that Youth Hostel just outside Long Cove Bay, to see if anybody knows anything about the dead woman. All the same, sir, I would have thought it more typical of women than of men to have been panicked into trying to hide the body while quite forgetting to hide the bike, and then, in a fresh fit of panic, to rush off to the police and report the death. Don’t you think we ought just to keep those possibilities in mind?’

‘Keep in mind whatever you like, Bob. I suppose anything is possible. There is just one thing. A chap came in and reported the theft of an anorak and a rucksack from that Youth Hostel. I don’t suppose it has any bearing on this case, but it might lead us to this escaper of ours. I would like to clear him out of our way if we can. I don’t believe for a moment that he did this job. It’s quite untypical of his line of country. He’s a poisoner, and a cobbler always sticks to his last.’

‘There is that fungus which was pushed into the head-wound,’ said Ribble. ‘Some toadstools are very poisonous, sir; and he did poison his wife.’