The Death-Cap Dancers

Chapter 9: ACRID LOBELIA

« ^ »

Ribble’s Saturday began with another visit to Mrs Beck’s cottage. So far the only address he had taken down was that of the dead woman, Judy Tyne. As his next port of call was to be the hairdresser visited (according to her account) by Peggy, he needed her surname too, and thought he had better check the rest of the addresses as well.

Mrs Beck went over to the hostel and returned with the cards which the troupe had previously handed in. Although they had not taken their departure, they were not staying another night. Ribble sat down and wrote busily, adding the home addresses to the names of Giles Tranmire, Willie Nicolson, Peter Hutton, Plum (Pelham) Redman, Mick (Michael) Mardon, Ronald Brawby, Peggy (Margaret) Raincliffe and Pippa (Philippa) Mardon, Mick’s sister.

At the hairdresser’s, as he had other calls to make and time was pressing, he produced the evidence of his official standing to an enquiring young person at the appointments desk and asked her to verify that ‘a Miss Raincliffe had booked a hair-do lasting about an hour on last Thursday morning, if you will be so good, miss.’

The girl said that she would have to ask. She went to a tall woman who was doing complicated things involving clips and rollers and murmured to her. Ribble heard her say: ‘He’ll have to wait until I get Mrs, Rollins under the drier.’

Ribble walked over to them.

‘I am investigating a serious accident,’ he said. ‘All I want to know is at what time this customer, Miss Raincliffe, came in here on Thursday and at what time she left. It only means looking her up in your book.’

‘Very well, if that’s all,’ said the tall woman. ‘Nothing to do with a complaint, I hope.’

‘Unless you call death a complaint,’ said Ribble, taking the receptionist back to the desk. ‘Now, miss, if you would kindly turn back to Thursday, Raincliffe is the name I’m looking for.’

‘I’ll check, but I don’t remember it. No, it’s not down in the bookings.’

‘What about Wednesday?’

‘No, not Wednesday neither.’

‘You haven’t turned back to Wednesday, miss.’

The girl flipped back a page in the ledger. A line was drawn diagonally across the sheet.

‘On account we’re closed Wednesday because we’re open all day Saturday,’ she explained.

‘Well, concerning Thursday, is it possible for ladies to get a hair-do without booking beforehand?’

‘If it was only a trim we might be able to fit a person in, or if there was a cancellation, not otherwise.’

‘Do you remember anybody dropping in like that on Thursday?’

‘I’m sure nobody did.’

‘Have you an assistant here named Marcelle?’

‘Marcia, not Marcelle.’

‘Point her out to me, please.’

‘She don’t do hair, she only washes it, not being full-trained. She’s at the far basin. You better wait till she’s done the second shampoo and rinse.’

Ribble had no time for these niceties. He walked over to the hair-washer and said, ‘No need to stop what you’re doing. Did you have a client named Raincliffe at about midday on Thursday?’

The girl suspended operations, but only for a second.

‘Nope,’ she said, and went on with her job.

‘Are you absolutely certain?’

‘Yup.’

‘Is there another assistant with a name something like yours?’

At this point the woman who appeared to be in charge came up to them and said briskly, ‘Mrs Rollins is under the drier. What can I do for you?’ She led the inspector back to the desk.

‘I am trying to trace the movements of a lady named Raincliffe,’ he said in official tones, ‘and the operative day is last Thursday, the time probably between twelve and one. This lady may have come without having made an appointment.’

‘Most unlikely and, last Thursday, quite impossible.’ She drew the appointments book towards her. ‘We were fully booked and there were no cancellations.’

‘You fitted in a trim, perhaps?’

‘We are seldom able to do that, and certainly did not on Thursday.’

‘Are there other ladies’ hairdressers in the town?’

‘There is an establishment in Dale Street, but the class of client who come here would hardly patronise it.’

Ribble thanked her, sought out the ‘establishment in Dale Street’ and drew another blank when he repeated his questions.

‘Only Antoine’s,’ said the receptionist. ‘Not that there is an Antoine, or ever will be. It belongs to the manageress. I suppose she thinks a man’s name, and Frenchified at that, sounds better, but she isn’t above pinching my best assistants when I’ve trained them. The tips are better there, you see, because of all the councillors’ wives. I suppose they get their hair done out of the rates. You never know how many fiddles go on when it’s rate-payers’ money they’re spending. A Miss Raincliffe? We have never had a client of that name.’

‘I always go there,’ quoted Ribble to himself, referring to Peggy’s statement regarding Antoine’s. It had been a stupid, witless lie. Obviously Antoine’s had never heard of Peggy Raincliffe and, in any case, the shop was miles and miles from Peggy’s home address. The girl must have had some reason for lying.

Besides, if she had not cycled to the hairdresser’s and back during what must have been the time of Judy Tyne’s death, where had she been, and why did it need to remain a secret?

He drove back to the hostel but, as he had anticipated, by the time he got there the troupe had collected their belongings and their cards and gone. Application to Mrs Beck resulted in the information that, so far as she knew, the dancers and musicians were over at Gledge End for a morning’s rehearsal in the church hall before they gave their afternoon performance at three.

There were other things he could do before he made contact with Peggy Raincliffe. There were the men’s movements to check. He thought at first that it would be of no use to go to the cinema at that time of day, but then he remembered that on Saturday mornings cinemas often opened to project a special programme for children. He expected little to come of his errand. It was most unlikely that the girl in the box-office would have any recollection of selling tickets to Willie and Mick, let alone having noted the times of their arrival and departure; nevertheless, as a conscientious police officer, he felt bound to make the enquiry.

He was right about the children’s matinée, and wrong about the memory of the girl in the box-office. Yes, this was the only cinema in the place. Thursday afternoon? Well, it was only pensioners mostly, wasn’t it? Sure she remembered two young men coming in. Describe them? She couldn’t say as to that. They had come in as soon as the commissionaire opened the doors. First in the queue she reckoned they were. One was sort of tallish and dark and the other, well, really more like a girl until he spoke. Lovely silky blond hair and, well, lots of girls wore trousers and sweaters nowadays, didn’t they?

She had fixed the time of their arrival, but about the time of their departure she was unhelpful. People came and went. Oh, yes, she had to stay on duty, the picture being continuous and people coming in at any old time. If she had been issuing tickets when the young men left she would not have noticed them go out, and, besides that, although there was only one entrance, there were other exits.

‘Have to be. Suppose there was a fire?’ she said impressively. ‘You don’t want panic, do you?’

Ribble tried the commissionaire.

‘My job is to control the queue, if any,’ said that official. ‘Yes, I remember the two young fellows because they went in soon as I opened the doors. See ’em leave? Not as I recollect. I daresay they used one of the other exits. Besides, they might not have exited together. They came together, oh, yes, certainly they did, but that’s not to say they exited together. Young chaps don’t always have the same fish to fry, do ’em? Mind you, when I first seen ’em I thought they was two of a kind, if you take my meaning, so perhaps they did leave together, but I wouldn’t know, would I, being solicitous in my dooty and earning my money non-union, which is to say without benefit of shop steward.’

The idea that, before the end of the programme, the two young men might have separated had already occurred to Ribble. If Mick really had fallen asleep, there could have been nothing to prevent Willie from slipping out. The question was whether he had been able to slip back to wake Mick up and take him and the tandem back to the hostel. The inspector applied again to the box-office.

‘Look,’ said the girl somewhat austerely, ‘are you a debt-collector or something?’

‘I am a police officer. I only want to know whether either of the young men you described asked for re-admission, having left the cinema either by the main entrance or one of the exits early on. He couldn’t get back in again through one of the emergency exits, could he?’

‘If he could, I should be out of a job, because if he could, so could everybody else, couldn’t they?’

‘Ask a silly question! ’ thought Ribble. He thanked the girl and drove to the swimming pool. Here he was no luckier. Thursday, the girl at the guichet reminded him, was early-closing day in the town. What with that, and the schools being on half-term holiday, the pool had been so well patronised that it was impossible for her to remember any particular customers.

‘These would be strangers to you,’ Ribble pointed out,‘ so I thought perhaps you might have noticed them.’ However, she remained firm. The only people she was at all likely to remember, she said, were those who hired towels and that happened very seldom and had not happened on Thursday. As for strangers, what did he expect in a holiday town? There were always strangers coming along for a swim.

‘You would hardly swim in the sea this time of year,’ she reminded him, ‘so, of course, they come here.’

‘In October?’

‘Well, not so much as in the summer, but, like I said, we get a lot of custom. Why not,’ she concluded, ‘when we’ve got a nice clean heated pool so handy, and diving boards and a chute and showers and everything.’

Ribble agreed and reflected that blest were they who expected nothing, for they could not be disappointed. He went back to his car and drove to the church hall. Here a man with a wheelbarrow was tidying up the churchyard which was adjacent to the ground on which the hall had been built. Ribble asked where he could find the caretaker of the hall.

‘That’s me,’ said the man, ‘but the churchwardens does the lettings. Their addresses is on the board.’

‘I am a police officer.’

‘We’re fully licensed and the fire regulations is adhered to.’

‘Last Thursday — Thursday of this week — two young fellows came to arrange the chairs for a show which is to be put on in the church hall this afternoon. How would they have got admission to the hall to do that?’

‘Same as any other hirers get in. My name and address is on the notice-board too, and they had the key off of me, having produced their letter which the churchwardens had signed up. Everything was in order, you can bet on it.’

‘So you saw and spoke with them. Are they here now?’

‘I reckon the whole lot’s here. There’s eight of ’em been at it all the time, a fiddle and a penny whistle and sometimes the piano thumping out, and tapping with their sticks and jingling the little bells on their trouser-legs and thudding on the floor with their hopping and jumping and giving a sort of a shout every now and again, you never heard such a racket. I peeped in once or twice and they was always hard at it ’cepting when they knocked off to have an argy-bargy about what somebody was doing wrong. They’re arguing now, I reckon. There don’t seem to be no music nor stamping nor jingling nor nothing. Come on in, if you want to see ’em.’

They found the company resting their legs but not their tongues. A lively discussion was going on.

‘I tell you,’ said Pippa, ‘that my flute is perfectly adequate for the hornpipe. I know we used to have your violin, but that’s beside the point now, because you’re wanted for the dance in Judy’s place.’

‘The flute sounds silly for the hornpipe,’ said Peggy. ‘Failing Judy’s concertina, the fiddle is the only thing. Whoever heard of a hornpipe being danced to the flute?’

‘Well, somebody can play the piano, then,’ said Willie.

‘Oh, no, they can’t’ said Giles. ‘It would be a complete anachronism or worse. Whoever heard of deck-hands dancing to a piano? It would be better to have three men dance the hornpipe and let Peggy fiddle for us, only unfortunately that can’t be done, unless Mick will do it as a girl. The tiny little shorts and middy blouse that Judy used to wear would look ridiculous on anyone else and we simply haven’t got another pair of bell-bottoms for a man to wear.’

‘I can’t get into Judy’s rig, as you know very well,’ snapped Peggy, ‘so, unless Mick will do it, that’s that.’

‘You’ve got navy shorts of your own and I can lend you a white sweater. The audience likes having a girl in the middle. Actually the rather rakish cap is the only thing that really matters, apart from the girl’s legs, and you’ve got very nice legs, Peggy. I’ve often noticed them,’ said Giles.

‘Oh, you have, have you?’

‘Going back to the flute,’ said Pippa, ‘I don’t want to start an argument, but actually the hornpipe wasn’t originally a dance at all. It was a musical instrument, one of the ancestors of the oboe. It was a pipe with holes at the mouth end and a real cow’s horn at the bell-end, so you see a flute would really be much more in keeping than a fiddle, anyway, as I’ve always pointed out.’

‘The sailors always danced to the fiddle. It’s traditional,’ said Peggy. ‘Anyway, I am not going to wear navy shorts and Giles’s white sweater. Besides, the hornpipe is really a solo dance. Think of Wayne Sleep.’

‘All right, all right,’ said Giles, ‘but we haven’t got a Wayne Sleep, so there will be three of us doing the hornpipe as usual. Peggy will play for it and Mick will dance the girl in the middle.’

‘Not in Judy’s shorts he won’t said Mick. ’I’ve got hairy legs. I’m all right in Three Meet because I’m wearing a frock and white stockings, but the hornpipe? Why can’t just the two of you do it?’

At this point, Ribble thought that unless he intervened the argument was likely to go on for some time.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘I shan’t keep you more than a moment. Just checking.’ He turned to the caretaker. ‘Well?’

‘Him and him,’ said the caretaker, pointing to Giles and Plum.

‘Right.’ He looked at the rows of chairs. ‘At what time did they hand back the keys to you?’

‘They never. They dropped them through my letter-box.’

Ribble dismissed him and addressed the company. ‘I am continuing my investigations into the death of Mrs Tyne. Does anybody want to change his story of how he spent Thursday afternoon? I’ve already found one discrepancy,’ he said austerely.

‘I don’t know why you’re looking at me,’ said Peggy.

‘No, miss? I would be glad to inform you if we could have a word in private.’

‘Oh, I say!’ exclaimed Giles. ‘Our rehearsal, you know.’

Ribble took Peggy out into the vestibule.

‘You lied to me, miss,’ he said flatly.

‘Suppose I did?’

‘It’s a serious matter, miss. I am investigating the circumstances of violent death. For your own sake it would be better to confide in me. You are known to have quarrelled with the deceased.’

‘I don’t like being threatened.’

‘That is not a threat, miss, just a friendly warning.’

‘Well, if you must know, I went to Crosswell.’

‘A good deal of time would have been saved if you had told me that at once, miss.’

‘You didn’t think I would confess to chasing after a boy, did you? Anyway, I didn’t catch up with him — Mick I’m talking about. I knew he had gone off with Willie. I had heard their plans and with Judy out of the way — of course I didn’t know what was happening to her — I went after them, but they can kick that tandem along so fast that they had left the restaurant in Crosswell by the time I got to it, and I didn’t know they had gone to the pictures. I looked round the shops and then cycled back, that’s all.’

‘What time was this, miss?’

‘I suppose I left Crossweli soon after three and I pedalled back pretty hard. I was upset at not catching Mick, you see.’

Ribble had a good deal to think about. As Peggy had lied once, she might be lying again. As for Mick, he claimed to have fallen asleep in the cinema, but what if, with or without Willie’s connivance, he had slipped out when the lights went down, met Peggy by arrangement and that together they had tracked Judy down and murdered her?

He could see the snags in this theory. It was most unlikely that they would have known what Judy’s plans were when she left the hostel. All the same, she might have confided them to Mick, owing to her special feeling for him. The difficulty was the time factor. The killing had to be done in a lonely part of the countryside and, unless Judy had made a previous assignation with Mick, it would have been simply a matter of luck whether he and his accomplice Peggy came upon Judy in the lonely spot where the body had been found.

In any case, there were still questions to be asked. Had Judy become so much of a nuisance to Mick that he was prepared to go so far as to kill her? Ribble doubted it. Then there was Willie to consider. Had Mick really fallen asleep in the cinema and had Willie been the one to slip out? But there was no evidence whatever that either of the boys had left the cinema during the performance, and they must have come back to the hostel together because their means of transport was the tandem.

Ribble abandoned these speculations for another. There was no reason, on the face of it, to suspect either Giles or Plum, but although they could find a witness, the caretaker, to the time they had arrived at the church hall to arrange the seating, there was no proof of the time at which they had left, since they had not handed back the keys, but had put them throught the caretaker’s letterbox. It seemed unlikely that Giles would have been a party to the murder of one of his troupe, particularly just before one of their shows, but anger often over-rides expediency.

Ribble sighed. It seemed that he could rule out nobody but Mick’s sister Pippa. Even the two who had gone to the swimming pool must remain suspect. He reverted to Mick and Willie. The tandem need not have had two passengers on the journey back from Crosswell. Either of the young men could have pedalled it back (with a wobble or two because of its length) and the other could have come back on the bus. There were bus routes into Long Cove Bay to connect it with other towns and the outlying villages and there could have been an arrangement whereby the boys met at the Long Cove Bay bus terminus in order to come back on the tandem to the hostel as though they had been together all the time.

Unfortunately, although he felt certain that one or more of the members of Wild Thyme could be held responsible for Judy Tyne’s death, he had not ruled out the possibility that some hit-and-run motorist had knocked her off her bicycle — how else to account for that buckled front wheel? — and, to save himself from being reported by the girl to the police, had decided to finish her off and try to hide the body.

The last possibility was that the escaped convict, desperate for money and food, had been the murderer. Ribble had almost, but not quite, rejected this theory, but while the man was still at large, no theory could be abandoned completely.

Mentally Ribble tossed up. Heads the murderer was Willie, for the Yorkshireman did not trust the dark Celt. Willie might have had every incentive to remove one of Mick’s lovers. If he had done so, the girl Peggy might also be in danger. Tails, the murderer was Mick himself. Ribble had the usual masculine distrust of fair-haired, girlish-looking boys, especially when they were under such close protection as that of the saturnine Willie. Ribble sighed again. Peggy herself, as he had already realised, must remain on the list of suspects. She had already lied about her movements and even if she had told the truth now, there were hours of Thursday for which she could provide only the most sketchy of accounts.