The Death-Cap Dancers

Chapter 11: BLOOD-CAP

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Innocent and ignorant of what had actually happened to Mick and Peggy, and attaching quite the wrong explanation to the wide-open back door which led out of their changing-room, Giles and the others pedalled away like racing cyclists, and as the caretaker had gone out with them to the shed, he had no idea that the back door, which he always kept bolted on the inside to frustrate mischievous boys, had been opened and left open. He saw the party off, and accepted their view that the missing pair had sneaked round to the bicycle shed, taken the tandem and gone off together. He went back by the main door into the hall.

Although the Wild Thyme party had stacked the chairs, moved the piano, cleared the platform and done their best to clear up the litter left by their audience — litter inseparable, apparently, from any place of entertainment, indoors or out, patronised by the British public — he still had his own sweeping and dusting to do, and his table-tennis trestles and boards to set up.

Thankful to see the last of the dancers, he pocketed the tip Giles had given him and went into the changing-room to get his broom and duster. These, with the rest of his cleaning materials, were kept in the deep, commodious cupboard which took up almost half of the wall-space next to the washroom. It was never kept locked. It was thought most unlikely that anyone would want to steal brooms and buckets or the Sunday School hymn-books which were on a high shelf at the back.

The first thing he noticed was the open back door. He went over to close and bolt it, thinking (as Giles had thought) that the runaway couple had used it as their exit. When he reached it, however, he saw a stockinged foot protruding from one of the sooty, sour-looking bushes which formed part of the untended sideway.

He went over to investigate and thought at first that he was looking at a dead body. As he bent over it, however, it gave a faint groan. Then he noticed that it was wearing a heavy flaxen wig which had slipped partly over the face.

‘It’s the young chap that doubled as a girl,’ he thought, for he had watched part of the rehearsal in which no time had been spent on costume-changes. The hall was not on the telephone, but one of the churchwardens lived close at hand. He raced over there to telephone for a doctor and the police. He was himself an ex-policeman and some blood which had seeped into the flaxen wig convinced him that the youth had been attacked.

He made his telephone call and the churchwarden went back with him to the hall and suggested that they should carry Mick into the building.

‘I wouldn’t touch him, sir,’ the caretaker replied, ‘not until the doctor has seen him. Well, until he comes, I’d best get on. It’s Youth Club night.’

Peggy’s body fell forward out of the cupboard as he opened its unlocked door.

The doctor called an ambulance and Mick was taken to hospital. Ribble and Sergeant Nene turned up in time to see the boy carried off and then they turned their attention to the dead girl. The caretaker was allowed to get on with his chores, but was told not to leave until the police had questioned him. Meanwhile the doctor made his report, photographs and fingerprints were taken by the experts Ribble had brought with him and then the caretaker was questioned, although Ribble soon realised that the man could tell him little that was of much help.

Ribble knew him to have been a member of the Force and treated him accordingly.

‘So you didn’t expect to find the back door open,’ he said.

‘That I didn’t, sir. Kids like to play in and out of those bushes, so I never give them the chance to sneak in. I don’t know what’s come over the youngsters nowadays. Don’t seem happy unless they’re wrecking something.’

‘So one of the song-and-dance lot must have opened the door. I see that the bolts are all on the inside as usual.’

‘Must have been one of them, sir, although it seems a bit strange, seeing that they used the room to change their costumes. Perhaps someone knocked and one of the party let him in.’

‘Then that must have been the dead girl. The doctor thinks she was attacked from the front, whereas the boy who’s been taken to hospital was almost certainly set upon from behind, like the girl on the moor. I suppose you don’t know where the rest of the party were making for when they left here?’

‘I know they talked about a Youth Hostel, sir, but I don’t know where. I do know where one of them has gone, though. There was a short interval midway through the show and the young fellow who seems to be the leader asked whether any of the forest cabin people could offer a bed for the night to save the girls a long cycle ride, some of it after dark. A young lady sitting on the platform said her lot could take the two girls, but there were no offers to put up the boys.’

‘Two girls? Oh, yes, this dead girl and the other one,’

‘Name of Pippa, sir. She went off on her bicycle one way and the chaps went off in another direction. She wanted to go with them. It was thought, from what I gathered, that the other two had taken the tandem and sloped off together.’

‘Oh, the tandem was missing, was it? Weren’t the bikes locked up, then?’

‘Well, sir, I thought they’d come to no harm. Some of the Youth Club come on bikes and motorbikes, so I always lock the shed door on Youth Club nights, but this afternoon the lock was only pushed together. It’s just an ordinary padlock. I reckon the murderer opened up, pinched the tandem and rode off on it.’

‘I’d better have a look at the shed. If there was only one man involved, somebody in the town must have seen him. Tandem bikes are not all that common, even with two people on them, and a chap riding one on his own would have been noticed, I should think. Of course there may have been two men involved.’

An inspection of the shed yielded nothing of importance. Ribble got his fingerprint expert busy on it, but the lock yielded no prints.

‘Anybody pulling open a lock for the purpose of stealing a bike would know enough to have worn gloves or put a handkerchief over his hand,’ said Sergeant Nene.

‘Of course we don’t know whether it was the murderer. Might have been an ordinary sneak-thief,’ said Ribble, ‘who spotted the bikes being put in and thought he would help himself to one of them. Bikes are valuable items nowadays.’

‘I can tell you one thing, sir,’ said the caretaker. ‘The tandem wasn’t gone until after about halfpast one. The young ladies came and rooted me out just as I finished my dinner (I only live just round the corner and had told them where my house was, just in case they needed anything as I could do for them before the show) and said they wanted to do some shopping for a picnic lunch in the hall. I told them the shed was unlocked and kept an eye open from my front window to watch for them coming back, and when I see them I come back and helped them with their shopping. I put the tandem away, and then I carried the stuff in as they’d bought, them helping me, and then I wheeled the trolley back through the hall for them and put it back in the shed so’s they could load up their gear when the show was over, and that’s how it was, sir.’

‘When did the others miss this boy and girl?’

‘The lad went to change into his frock and wig while the others were clearing the hall. He was gone for some time and the photographer from the local paper was getting cheesed off waiting, so the girl went to hurry the lad up. Then she never came back and the photographer wouldn’t wait any longer. He had already got some pictures and he said he’d make those do. Then the others found the two were gone and so they said they would leave, too, and that’s when they found as the tandem was missing and made it out as the two had gone off on it. Then I went to shut and bolt the back door and spotted the young fellow’s foot sticking out of the bushes. That made me go off to telephone you and the doctor and then I opened up my broom cupboard and out tumbles that poor dead lass and then I see the blood on the floor, as I had not noticed previous.’

‘And the other girl is staying the night in the forest, so she’ll know where the rest of the party have gone. I shall have to see her, so that she can guide me to the others. Did you get the number of the forest cabin?’

‘Yes, sir. I recollect as the young lady who made the offer mentioned cabin number eight.’

‘Oh, good. As it happens, I know the occupants of that cabin, not that they’ll be any too pleased to find me on their doorstep again. I can’t think why you did not see the blood on the floor the minute you went in, though.’

‘The window is very high up, sir, and my eyes were on the open door, which should have been shut, sir.’

Meanwhile, Pippa had covered most of her journey from the hall to the cabin when she picked up a puncture.

‘That’s all I needed!’ she thought, as she pushed the bicycle the last half-mile down the forest track towards the cabins. ‘Still, better here than on the road to the Youth Hostel. What on earth can have come over Mick to go off on the tandem with Peggy? He doesn’t even like her. How did she manage to talk him into it?’

She pondered upon this question as she walked the useless bicycle past the beautiful forest trees, some still green, others in their glowing autumn colours. At any other time she would have delighted in her surroundings, but the puncture, the mysterious flight (as she still thought of it) of Peggy and Mick and the fact that the men in her party had gone off without her, combined to cloud her usually cheerful nature.

Isobel was waiting for her on the verandah.

‘Hullo,’ she said. ‘Only one of you?’

‘Yes, and I’ve got a puncture.’

‘Oh, bad luck. Let’s go round to the other door and then you can leave the bike in our little vestibule, where it will be under cover, and we’ll help you mend the puncture if you’ve got the wherewithal in your little saddlebag. That was a first-class show you put on. We enjoyed it very much and so did the man we had with us.’

‘Yes, your party on the platform led all the applause, and it made a lot of difference,’ said Pippa, already feeling more cheerful. ‘People always respond when anybody gives a lead. I’ve always noticed that.’

‘The last item was a regular cliff-hanger. Where did you get that fearful-looking horse’s head and the other one? That nearly turned us green because’ — she had remembered the dead girl they had found on the moor and she changed what she had been about to say — ‘because it looked so realistic.’

‘Peter makes all our props. The hobby-horse thing I wore was his work, too,’ said Pippa, as they wheeled the bicycle round the side of the cabin. ‘He’s an art student and awfully good at all that kind of thing.’

Inside the wooden building Erica was superintending her cooking and supper was soon on the table.

‘I expect you’re hungry after all that exertion,’ she said. ‘We loved the show.’

‘We mostly give it to schools on Saturday mornings,’ said Pippa, ‘but this afternoon’s may be the last one we shall do.’

‘How’s that?’ asked Tamsin.

‘We lost one of our members. That girl on the moor. And now my brother and the other girl have run away together.’

‘Your brother? Which one was he?’

‘He was the sacrificial victim in the last dance and he doubled as a girl in two of the folk-dances and the Irish jig and the hornpipe.’

‘A man of parts indeed!’ said Isobel.

‘Tell us about the elopement. I didn’t think such romantic doings happened nowadays,’ said Erica.

‘I don’t think it was that kind of elopement,’ said Pippa, scraping her plate. ‘Peggy has been pursuing Mick for ages and I simply think she’s got her hooks into him at last.’

‘In other words, Europa has run off with the bull; but I have always thought it was that way round, you know. As I read the story, there was no reason for her to climb on the bull’s back. Simply asking for trouble,’ said Isobel.

‘I expect the other girls dared Europa,’ said Tamsin. ‘Anyway, it’s a Cretan legend, so a bull would have to come into it. Besides, Zeus was good at impersonating animals.’

‘What a resourceful chap Zeus was,’ said Hermione. ‘Now a bull, now a shower of gold, fostered by a goat when he was a baby, turned into a ram to escape the monster Typhon — really, a human chameleon, you might say.’

‘Wonderfully gifted at swallowing his children, too,’ said Isobel. ‘Wish he could teach me how it’s done. A wonderful way to get rid of undesirable brats, and I could name a few, I can tell you!’

‘There speaks the wolf in sheep’s clothing which teachers have to be nowadays,’ said Erica. ‘More pie, anybody?’

It was just as the washing-up was finished that Ribble knocked on the cabin door.

‘Oh, no!’ said Isobel, opening the door in answer to Ribble’s knock. ‘Not you again, Inspector!’

‘I’m afraid so, miss. May I ask whether you’ve got a visitor?’

‘We’re giving supper, bed and breakfast to a girl who was in this afternoon’s folk-song and dance thing at Gledge End.’

‘May I come in, miss? All I want is a word with Miss Pippa Marton.’

Pippa, who had caught her name, got up from the settee as Ribble walked into the lounge.

‘Has one of them had an accident?’ she asked anxiously.

‘Why should you suppose that, miss?’

‘Oh, don’t be an ass!’ said Isobel. ‘One of them was killed only the other day. Can’t you see she has been scared stiff that something else would happen? It was a perfectly reasonable question.’

‘All I want to know,’ said Ribble smoothly, ignoring Isobel’s outburst and speaking to Pippa, ‘is where the rest of your party were making for when they left the church hall.’

‘We are booked in at the Youth Hostel at Lostrigg. Why? Do please tell me what has happened.’

‘There’s been an accident, I’m afraid, miss. I can’t tell you more than that until I know a bit more myself. I think you would be better with your friends, miss, when I break the news to them. I can run you over to the Lostrigg hostel straight away.’

‘I’ve got my bicycle here.’

‘I will arrange for it, miss.’

‘It’s got a punctured tyre.’

‘I daresay one of my men can cope with that.’

‘Did they have an accident with the tandem?’

‘No, miss.’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake tell the poor girl what has happened!’ cried Isobel. ‘You can’t leave it until you get her over to the hostel.’

‘Very good, miss. First, Miss Marton, your brother has been injured, but he’s going to be all right. We’ve got him to hospital and I’ve just been over there. He can’t have visitors just at present, but you shall see him as soon as the doctors allow it. Don’t worry on that score, miss. Lucky for him he was wearing a wig. It probably saved his life.’

‘You mean he was attacked, like poor Judy?’

‘That’s the size of it. Miss Raincliffe, I’m very sorry to say, was not so lucky.’

Pippa, who had remained standing, collapsed on to the settee. Isobel sat down beside her and looked with hostile eyes at the detective-inspector.

‘Dead, like the other one?’ she asked, her arm round Pippa’s shoulders. Ribble inclined his head.

‘Only too much like the other one,’ he said grimly, ‘except that she must have met her attacker face to face. We shall have to hold all your company for a bit, Miss Marton, but I’ll arrange everything.’

Pippa disengaged herself from Isobel. Her colour began to come back.

‘Didn’t they go off on the tandem, then?’ she asked. Ribble shook his head. ‘Were they — oh, so that’s why we couldn’t find them after the show! But why couldn’t we? Where were they?’

‘Still at the hall, miss.’

‘So, if Peggy had not gone rushing off to find out what was keeping Micky—’

‘One of your men might have stood a better chance than she did, yes, miss, but we can’t be certain of that. If you would get your coat on, I think we ought to be going. I want to get to your friends before they go to bed. My car is just outside.’

‘Can’t you leave her here for the night?’ asked the motherly Erica. ‘We’ll look after her.’

‘No, I’d rather go. I must go,’ said Pippa. ‘Thanks all the same,’ she added wanly.

‘I’ll tell you more about things on the way to Lostrigg,’ said Ribble.

When Pippa had gone into the vestibule to put on her coat, Isobel said to him, ‘Well, at least you can’t suspect us any more.’

‘Once the doctors were satisfied that what happened on the moor could not have been a hit-and-run accident, you were all in the clear, miss.’

‘Thanks for nothing! You ought never to have suspected us in the first place!’

‘We have to look at all sides of a question,’ said Ribble mildly.

‘It looks as though we could have saved my great-aunt a journey,’ said Hermione.

‘Your great-aunt, Miss Lestrange?’ Ribble looked at her in sudden comprehension. ‘Good gracious me! That couldn’t be Dame Beatrice, could it?’

‘Yes, of course it could,’ said Isobel. ‘She is coming here tomorrow to get us out of your clutches. At least, that was the idea, but it hardly seems necessary now.’

‘I will let the Super know and he will want to tell the Chief Constable. We all know Dame Beatrice by repute and it will be an honour to meet her,’ said Ribble.

‘All the same, it looks as though we could have saved her the journey,’ repeated Hermione, ‘since we are now in the clear without her help.’

‘Ah, but I may be very glad of it myself,’ said Ribble, ‘if she will be prepared to assist me. I reckon I can do with a psychiatrist on the job. I’ll call in at the station on my way to the hostel and mention that she is coming down. What time do you expect her, Miss Lestrange?’

‘In the middle of the afternoon, I think. She will have lunch on the way and then come straight here before she goes to her hotel.’

‘Then I’ll come along, too, if I may.’ He turned to Pippa, who had come back into the room. ‘Well, miss, we’ll be off. My car is outside.’

‘Who on earth can be doing these awful things?’ said Tamsin, when the inspector had taken Pippa away. ‘Is it one of the dancers, do you think?’

‘I don’t know who else,’ said Erica. ‘I shall be glad when Monday is over. I’ve got to go to the inquest, as I was the one who actually saw that girl’s body on the moor.’