The Death-Cap Dancers

Chapter 8: MAIDEN PINK

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‘There’s a lot I’ve got to tell you,’ said Pippa.

‘Yes, miss?’

‘You don’t really think one of us killed Judy, do you?’

‘I have to look at all the possibilities, miss.’

‘But what about that convict who escaped?’

‘It wasn’t his kind of murder. He poisoned his wife. He isn’t the violent type. We warned people that he was on the loose, but that was so that we could get information which would lead to us being able to catch him. It wasn’t because we thought he would attack anybody.’

‘Not if he wanted money or food?’

‘Ah, that might be another matter. Now, miss, what did you want to tell me?’

‘Oh, aren’t you going to grill me?’

‘I should soon be in serious trouble if I did that, miss. There is just one question. Will you tell me exactly how you spent Thursday?’

‘Oh, yes, of course.’ Pippa searched his good-tempered, pleasant face, turning large, serious, dark eyes on him. She was very much like Mick, he thought, without being in the least degree pretty. He put her down as being about twenty years old, but in fact she was twenty-six. ‘I left the hostel on foot at just before ten,’ she said, ‘and spent the day with my friends.’

‘Where was this, miss?’

‘At the nearest farm. It belongs to some people called Ramsgill. It’s only about a mile and a half from here, so I didn’t take my bicycle. I thought the walk would do me good.’

‘So you got to the farm before eleven, miss.’

‘Oh, yes. 1 suppose I was there quite by half-past ten.’

‘Were they expecting you?’

‘Not exactly, but — well, no, they were not expecting me. I got to know them earlier on in the year when I was researching folk music. Mr Ramsgill’s father was living with them and I had heard on the grapevine that he knew a local version of Heather on the Moor, so I went along to ask him to sing it to me, which he did. They told me to drop in whenever I was in the neighbourhood, so when the others all had plans for the day and Judy went off in a temper after her row with Peggy, I thought of the farm and walked over there. Of course there were two things I didn’t know, but even if I had known I think I would still have gone.’

‘I can guess one of them, but not the other, and I don’t suppose either of them would have anything to do with my enquiry, would it, miss?’

‘No, of course not, but, for what they are worth, I didn’t know old Mr Ramsgill had died only the month before, and I didn’t know that a lodger had taken his place in the spare bedroom.’

‘Did you meet this lodger, miss?’

‘Oh, yes. He wanted to take me out on the back of his motorcycle, but I explained that it was Mrs Ramsgill I had come to see. When she went out of the room to see about lunch he offered to show me his room, but of course I didn’t let him. I think he thought I was younger and greener than I am. I didn’t take to him much. I sold him a ticket for our show, though. That was before he asked me to go upstairs with him. We just sat and talked until Mrs Ramsgill came back and then he told her he would get his lunch in Long Cove Bay, so she and I had lunch when Mr Ramsgill came in, and I stayed to tea and walked back to the hostel.’

‘So you spent several hours at the farm?’

‘Yes. I didn’t leave until nearly half-past five.’

‘And you did not go out from the farmhouse until you walked back to the hostel?’

‘That’s right. Mrs Ramsgill and I had a good long gossip. I asked her how she came to have a lodger and she said it was only a temporary thing. He had come last Tuesday afternoon and asked to stay for the rest of the week. He said he was on holiday and had put in a night at the hostel. He didn’t like it much and didn’t want to stay any longer, but he wanted to remain in the neighbourhood. Well, she had the spare room and he seemed quiet and was well-spoken, so she took him. She said she missed having somebody else in the house after her father-in-law died, and thought this boy would be company for her, but on Tuesday he hired this motorbike and she saw very little of him. He used to take sandwiches or something else to eat and stayed out all day. On Wednesday night he didn’t come back at all. He told her next day that the motorcycle had broken down and left him stranded in Wayland Forest, where one of the cabin holiday-makers had given him a bed and dried his clothes for him.’

‘And you met him the next day, miss, on Thursday?’

‘Yes.’

‘I shall have to look him up. If he was out on the moor on Thursday he may have seen something of Mrs Tyne. You wouldn’t know how he got his motorbike repaired so quickly, I suppose?’

‘No. Mrs Ramsgill told me about the way he stayed out all night because it had broken down, but he certainly had it when I visited the farm on Thursday. I saw it there before he rode off on it. He was very hurt when I wouldn’t go with him.’

‘It’s a point of no importance unless he spotted Mrs Tyne, but at what time did he leave the farm on Thursday? You said he did not have the midday meal there.’

‘I should think he went off at about twelve.’

‘He will still be at the farm, then, if he was staying a week. Now, miss, what can you tell me about the quarrel between the two ladies?’

‘Oh, dear! It doesn’t seem very nice to talk about Judy’s quarrels now that she’s dead, does it?’

‘If you could consult her, miss, she might like it to be known who killed her and whether it was by accident or design.’

‘Oh, I hadn’t thought of it like that. Oh, well, I’ll tell you what I can, then. They never did get on, Judy and Peggy. They got across one another almost as soon as Judy joined us. I suppose, being married and running the play-school and all that, she thought herself superior to Peggy, who wasn’t married and taught in a rather tatty little school where she thought her talents were wasted. I asked her once why she didn’t apply for a better job. She said she had an invalid mother who owned the house they lived in and refused to move. She said her brother and his wife had the old lady for a fortnight in the summer and the October half-term week, but wouldn’t take on more than that because she was so cantankerous and upset the children, so Peggy had to cope. It didn’t make her very easy to get on with and she and Judy were always at loggerheads, especially over Mickie. They both wanted to mother him, goodness knows why. He’s my brother, but I got sick of minding him when he was little.’

‘Sisters have a hard time, miss. What was the cause of this last quarrel between the two ladies? The same thing?’

‘I don’t know. Something must have been said and they simply flew at one another — not physically, of course. I believe Peggy made a remark about Judy’s husband and Judy took exception. I don’t think they live together. Judy didn’t talk about him. Once she told me that she ran the play-school because she had no children of her own, but I didn’t like to ask any questions. You don’t, do you? — but perhaps it accounted for her feelings about Mick. She almost tried to adopt him, you know.’

‘Apart from her relationship with Miss Peggy, would you have called her a happy girl?’

‘Well, she wasn’t so much of a girl, you know. She was really very mature and I’m bound to say that she was very bossy. I didn’t much mind, but, of course, Peggy did. I expect her mother bossed her and she resented it and wasn’t going to put up with it from anybody else.’

‘How did the men get on with her?’

‘With Peggy?’

‘No, with Mrs Tyne.’

‘Oh, all right, I think. Except for Mickie, who rather disliked being ordered about and having her take a motherly interest in him — he isn’t interested in women, only in Willie, whom he absolutely adores — Judy wasn’t bossy with the others, and she was very useful as a member of the team. She was awfully good on the concertina and she was a good folk-dancer. Her speciality was Three Meet which she used to do with Giles and Ronnie and she and Peggy used to do a very nice Parsons Farewell with Peter and Plum. Oh, yes, we shall miss her. That’s why we need the rest of this evening to do some more rehearsing. Could you let me go back to the hostel now?’

‘Certainly, miss, if you will just check one or two points with me. You said you went on foot to the farm. I should have thought that, for a distance of a mile and a half each way, it would have been worth using your bike.’

‘I preferred to walk.’

‘I wonder if you see, miss, what my check-up means? Everybody except you seems to have cycled to their distinations yesterday, including Mrs Tyne, although she, poor young lady, never got to wherever she was heading for. Well, now, she may have been struck by a passing car. The chances are that that is what happened; on the other hand, when I get the pathologist’s report, another theory may emerge. Meanwhile I can’t waste time. I must take all possibilities into account and one possibility is that Mrs Tyne was deliberately murdered.’

‘Yes, I realise that. I mean I realise that the police have to go into that sort of thing. I can see what you’re getting at, too. Anybody on a bicycle might have caught up with Judy and killed her. If I didn’t use my machine, the chances are that I couldn’t have caught up with her. But I would never dream of killing anybody, Inspector, really I wouldn’t.’

‘Of course not, miss, but my argument stands as you have stated it. If I find somebody who will swear that your bicycle remained in the hostel shed all day yesterday, then I can wipe you off my slate and very glad I shall be to do so, as much for my own sake as for yours. Did you know that Miss Peggy went to the hairdresser’s?’

‘Yesterday? But she couldn’t have done.’

‘Oh? Why not, miss?’

‘Because she had her hair done on Wednesday, before we biked from the other hostel to this one.’

‘Perhaps she wasn’t satisfied with the result, miss.’

‘Why did you ask me about the hairdresser?’

‘Because Miss Peggy made what I thought was a rather strange statement, but I am not prepared to disclose what it was, just at present. Well, I think that’s all for now. When you go over to the hostel, would you kindly let Mrs Beck know that I have concluded my interviews and that her cottage is at her disposal again?’

He was not quite ready, however, to vacate the cottage. When Mrs Beck came over, he asked whether she could remember the order in which her guests had left and returned to the hostel on the previous day. It was a throwaway question, for he attached no particular importance to her answer. He had asked merely to disguise the real importance of his next query.

She replied that she had no idea of the order in which the party had left and returned. When she went over at ten in the morning to lock up, everybody had gone out, and when she unlocked the hostel door at five in the afternoon, nobody had returned, but must have come in later.

‘The accommodation for the three nights had all been paid for, that being the rule,’ she said, ‘and I held the membership cards until people checked out, which, with this lot, is to be before ten tomorrow morning. There was no reason for me to go over there until the regulation times. ’

‘Do you happen to know whether they all went off on their bicycles yesterday?’

‘All but one. When I had locked up the hostel in the morning I also locked the bicycle shed and there was one bike left in it. The open shed is there for anybody to sit in who comes early before I’ve opened up at five and I don’t mind if sheep stray in there, because it can always be one of the departure chores to clean it out if necessary. The hostellers have to do all the chores, as you probably know. I have to leave that shed open because it’s only three-sided. The bicycle shed is a different matter entirely. Bicycles can be a temptation, so if one is in there I lock the door.’

‘Yes. Did you happen to notice whether it was a gentleman’s or a lady’s model which was left behind?’

‘No, I didn’t notice. Oh, yes, I did, though. It must have belonged to one of the girls because it had a rather fancy shopping-basket on the handlebars.’

‘And nobody could have got at it until you unlocked the shed?’

‘Nobody. If they get back before five they just prop up their cycles against the side of the shed — I’ve got the only key — and then sit in the open shed until I unlock the hostel door.’

Ribble’s day was not yet over. Mildly pleased to think that he could cross the soulful-eyed Pippa off his list, he decided, all the same, to check her story with Mrs Ramsgill at the farm, although he had no doubt that the two accounts would tally. There was also the chance that at that time in the evening the lodger Pippa had mentioned would be in and available for questioning.

There seemed no doubt about Pippa’s innocence. She had come to the farm and departed from it at approximately the times she had stated and within those times she had been in company with the farmer’s wife. Unless she had found some means of transport and unless the farmer’s wife was lying (which, in the circumstances, seemed most unlikely) there was no way in which she could have got to the spot where the body was found and back again to the hostel at a reasonable time. The lodger, Adam Penshaw, could testify to the time of her arrival but not of her departure, so at the hostel he saw Giles again.

‘At what time yesterday did the girl you call Pippa get in?’

Giles looked surprised.

‘Pippa?’ he said. ‘Yesterday? I’m afraid I can’t tell you. That’s to say, I don’t remember.’

‘Well, was she in when you yourself got back from Gledge End, sir?’

‘I believe not, but she couldn’t have been much after Plum and me. She was at supper all right. I remember she asked whether we ought to save anything for Judy, in case Judy got over the row she’d had with Peggy and came back. Oh, and she was babbling about some chap she’d met at the farm. I think she spent the day there. We got to know them last year when we were here. Eggs and things, you know.’

‘I suppose she stayed at the farm all the time?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘She mentioned a young chap who was staying there who had a motorbike. Would that be the chap you referred to?’

‘Oh, yes.that’s right. I gather he made a bit of a pass at her and then wanted to take her out riding pillion, but she didn’t fancy him.’

‘So he gave up the idea, did he?’

‘He went off on it, she said, and she saw no more of him.’

‘Do you know anything about Mrs Tyne’s husband, sir?’

Again Giles looked surprised.

‘Only that he died two years ago. I went with Judy to the funeral. They hadn’t lived together for months, but she thought she ought to go.’

Pleased to get rid of one suspect, Ribble went back to the farm.

‘Adam?’ said Mrs Ramsgill. ‘Yes, he’s in. He’s in the parlour. The motorbike? Oh, it kept going wrong, so he took it back to where he hired it and turned it in.’

In the parlour Ribble came to the point without beating about the bush.

‘This motorbike you hired, sir.’

‘What about it?’

‘Where did you go when you went out on it yesterday?’

‘Why do you want to know? If there’s been any trouble about a motorbike, it certainly wasn’t mine.’

‘I would like to know where you went, that’s all, sir.’

‘Oh, I just followed my nose as usual.’

‘Please be more specific, sir.’

‘I did a sort of round trip over the moors.’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Well, that’s all I can tell you. I went into Long Cove Bay and ate my sandwiches outside the Bull there, went inside for a beer and then I took the main road towards Gledge End and turned off it to by-roads and then stooged around.’

‘What was the number of your bike, sir?’

‘Number? Oh, I don’t remember. It was a red and silver affair, a Kotsac, very unreliable.’

‘From whom did you hire it?’

‘That garage in Long Cove Bay just as you enter the town. May I ask what all this is in aid of?’

‘Did you meet anybody while you were out, sir?’

‘Not to say meet anybody. I picked up a girl at the pub and took her on the pillion.’

‘Her name, sir?’

‘Marion was all I got, no surname. If she’s in any trouble I can’t help you. Nothing happened while we were out except that the beastly bike broke down and the garage chap couldn’t see to it immediately, so by the time it was tuned up — there was nothing much wrong — Marion had got sick of waiting and I suppose she went home on the bus. I couldn’t blame her.’

‘Did you pass a girl cyclist on the moor, sir?’

‘No. We passed a couple of hikers, but they were both men. Oh, later on I saw another fellow. He was stooping over a buckled bike. I shouldn’t think it was his own, though. Looked like a lady’s machine to me. The front wheel seemed to have taken a bit of a knock. He was trying to straighten it, I think, but I didn’t stop and I don’t think Marion even noticed.’

‘Where was this, sir?’

‘Good Lord! I don’t know. I was just out for a ride. Oh, half a minute, though. I do know more or less where it was. I had just passed a signpost to Wayland.’

‘Can you describe the man? How was he dressed?’

‘I only saw him as I whizzed by, and only his back view, anyway. I believe I remember a rucksack, but I couldn’t speak to anything else.’

‘You saw a buckled bike, probably a lady’s machine, and this man bending over it. Nothing else?’

‘Nothing else. I mean, there was nobody who looked as though she might have had an accident, otherwise I would have stopped.’

‘I see, sir. Thank you for your help. May I have your home address in case I need to be in touch with you again?’

It was not far from the farm to the Bull and on the way Ribble, who was thorough-going, first pulled up at the garage which Adam Penshaw had mentioned and checked on the hiring of motorcycles. They recognised his description of the young man and showed him the red and silver Kotsac. They kept self-drive cars for the hire of summer visitors to the resort and a couple of motorcycles, ‘although there’s not much call for them, especially at this time of year, Inspector.’

Ribble took down the registration number of the Kotsac and drove into the town. The Bull was in the middle of its Friday-night revels and the place was full, the dartboard besieged and the pin-tables in full and noisy occupation. Among the customers Ribble recognised some of the party from the Youth Hostel. Apparently they had given up serious rehearsal in favour of conviviality, which did not argue any lasting concern for the dead girl.

The scene was lively and the bar was crowded and very busy. It was hardly the best time to make enquiries, but Ribble wanted to press on. It did not seem to him that he had made much progress so far. Checking the activities of Giles and Plum at the church hall and Peggy’s hairdressing appointment would have to wait until the morning and, in any case, he expected little to come from either. His chief hope was to gain further knowledge of the man who had inspected the buckled bicycle. The girl Marion might have noticed something which had escaped Adam Penshaw. The trouble might be to trace her, which was his reason for going to the pub. Ribble had little doubt that the bicycle had been the property of the dead woman. The turning to Wayland which Adam had mentioned seemed to prove it.

The bar was being attended to by a man and woman. Ribble waited until he could order his beer from the latter. When he received his pint from her he asked whether she knew a girl named Marion.

‘She was in here yesterday between twelve and one with a young fellow named Penshaw,’ he said. ‘Looks about eighteen.’

‘Oh yes? I don’t recollect the name,’ she said. ‘What’s this about Marion? Of course I know her. She’s always in here. Picks up fellows and gets a lot of free drinks that way. I don’t think she picked up your fellow, though. She wouldn’t reckon on a lad of that age having enough money to treat her in the way she was accustomed, and she’s never one to waste her time.’

‘Would you know her address?’

‘Sorry. Any way, I’m wanted.’ A customer at the other end of the bar was becoming insistent. ‘If you want her she’ll be in here tomorrow at her usual time. Hang on! That’s her just coming in. The girl in the cherry-coloured trousers.’

Ribble made his way over. The girl was unaccompanied, he was glad to see. In passing her as she made tracks for the bar, he jostled her and turned with a courteous apology.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘No harm done. You’ve spilt your drink, though.’

‘Not on you, miss, I’m relieved to notice. Perhaps you would do me the honour?’

‘Oh, well, I don’t mind if I do. Help to heal my bruises, won’t it?’

They made their way to the dispensers of refreshment, Ribble this time getting the barman to serve him, and then found a vacant table in a far corner. Conversation of a light-hearted nature followed and then Ribble bought another round of drinks.

‘How did you get on with young Penshaw yesterday?’ he asked. ‘He told me about you and how you went out on the back of his motorbike. Did you have a good time?’

‘Depends what you call a good time. The blessed bike broke down. At least, he said it did.’

‘Oh?’

‘And he had no right to take a girl out and leave her kicking her heels in a rotten little public park in Gledge End while he went off to get the thing fixed. I did think a gentleman would have given a girl some lunch in a hotel and left me in the lounge with some magazines or something. Do you know he was gone for a good hour and a half! And it not being the time of year for a girl to sit out in a public park kicking her heels while a fellow gets a motorbike mended, well, I stayed there the hour and a half, like I said, it not being my way to stand a fellow up, but then I got cold and fed-up and went to the bus stop and got on the bus. I didn’t know how long it might take to get the bike mended, not knowing what had gone wrong with it, and I hadn’t had no proper lunch or me tea, so I reckoned I was justified not waiting about. I come in here last night and midday today thinking I’d see him, but nothing doing. Perhaps he thought I might give him a piece of my mind, keeping a girl hanging about like that, but I’m not that sort and I will say for him that he was good company and proper larky.’

‘So you haven’t seen him again,’ said Ribble. ‘Well, I’ve got to get back. Can I drop you anywhere?’

‘Oh, well, p’raps you can, then, but I’m a respectable girl, you know. Thanks for the drinks; but it’s one kiss on the doorstep and no admission to the old bedsitter.’

Ribble drove her home under her directions and, possibly to her disappointment, offered no kiss on the doorsteps. He now had her address if he needed it, although he did not think she could help him.