The Death-Cap Dancers (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  The church hall had its carpark and only half-a-dozen cars were in it when they arrived. Peggy, at her most gracious, her generous body encased in a small black velvet bolero and a very full flowered skirt topped by a white muslin blouse, was also wearing white stockings and shining black shoes. She asked whether they would like seats on the platform—“you can have four in the middle of the front row”—or whether they would prefer to be in the body of the hall and, receiving an answer, took them on to the small stage.

  The choice had been made by Tamsin, who immediately saw that John Trent was up there. She appropriated the chair next to his at the end of the front row.

  “We thought you had gone home,” she said.

  “No,” he said. “We had to get out of our cabin before ten this morning, so we left soon after breakfast and I took my parents home and came back here, but I’m afraid I can’t stay to the end.”

  “We didn’t think we should see you again.”

  “Oh, these bad pennies, you know. Hullo, isn’t that your clinging vine in the doorway?”

  “Oh, dear, yes. We hoped he had moved on.”

  “It doesn’t look like it, and he is headed this way. He’s got two people with him.”

  Adam, who was coming towards the platform, was waylaid by Peggy. They heard her say: “Sorry, but your ticket doesn’t entitle you to sit up there. This way, please.” The middle-aged couple who had accompanied him were already being directed by the caretaker to the second row down below. Adam shrugged his shoulders and took a seat in the body of the hall as near to the door as he could get, and the couple got up and joined him, but, a few words having been exchanged, they returned to the more central seats in the second row to which they had first been directed, and the bulk of the audience began to come in.

  Like many amateur performances, the show started late, Mick having mislaid a shoe, but by twenty minutes past three the two musicians had taken their places and soon the company was rendering the first of three folk-songs with Pippa at the piano, her flute in its case resting on the chair next to Peggy, who was accompanying on the violin.

  The audience was not a large one, although a certain amount of money had been taken at the door, but the applause was more generous than Giles had expected it to be. The songs went down well, the dances even better, and it was a flushed and happy company which gathered in the dressing-room at the end of the dance in which Mick had been ritually slain and the bloody head carried round in triumph, a considerable alteration to the original version, but one well received by the audience.

  John Trent, among others, missed this grand finale and Adam Penshaw saw even less of the show than John, for he stayed only for the three opening songs and the two folk-dances which followed them. John stayed until four o’clock and then took advantage of his place at the end of the row near the platform steps, which he had chosen so that he could slip away without disturbing anybody, gave Tamsin’s hand a squeeze and made an unobtrusive exit in the middle of three sea-shanties which preceded the hornpipe. The songs were to give Mick time to take off the beard he wore as a morris and sword dancer (different in colour and shape from the one which Pippa so much disliked on herself) and get into the blonde wig, black stockings, and a skirt borrowed from Peggy, ready to dance as a bumbboat woman between Giles and Plum, the two sailors. The choruses were left therefore to the depleted choir consisting of Peter, Ronnie, Willie, and Peggy, with Pippa, also singing, at the piano.

  Under cover of the sea-shanties Tamsin murmured to Hermione, who was seated between her and Isobel, “John asked for my address.”

  “Did you give it to him?”

  “Yes. he said he would write.”

  “Pity he has to go home.”

  As soon as the performance was over and the audience were beginning to leave the hall, the performers, pleased with themselves, remained in the dressing-room while the audience was dispersing. The hall being clear except for the chairs and a certain amount of litter, the caretaker came round to say that the photographer was ready. Giles went out to speak to him and learned that he wanted to take several pictures from which the editor of the local paper would make a selection.

  As the company, including Pippa as the hobby horse, were still in their sword-dance costumes, that group was taken first and was to be followed by the folk-dancers. This involved only four of the company: Giles, Willie, Peggy, and Mick in his impersonation of a girl. The first three had little alteration to make in their costumes, but it was different for Mick.

  “I’ll be a minute or two getting my beard off and myself into the petticoats,” he said. “Tell the chap I’ll be as quick as I can.”

  “Well, while you’re changing, the rest of us can begin clearing the hall. It’s wanted for the Youth Club tonight and the caretaker has to get the floor and the platform swept and the table-tennis trestles and boards out. I promised we would stack up the chairs and move the piano to where he wants it, so we can save a bit of our own time if we start the chores now. The photographer will have to wait,” said Giles.

  This business of changing his clothes took Mick so long, apparently, that when all the chairs were stacked, the platform cleared and the piano moved, he still had not joined the others.

  “He must have stuck too much glue on that beard, or something,” said the photographer, who was becoming restless. “Could one of you go and hurry him up a bit? I’ve got another assignment to cover.”

  “I’ll go,” said Peggy immediately. She darted away before anyone else could offer to go, and banged the heavy door shut behind her. Ten more minutes went by and the photographer said that he proposed to make do with the pictures he had already taken, and promptly removed himself and his camera. Giles, who had bounded towards the dressing-room, returned to find him gone. He had news for his team.

  “Not a sign of either of them,” he said. “Mick must have got changed, because his girl-outfit has gone and his flannels and bells and things are on the floor in the little washroom. I can’t think what has happened.”

  “I can,” said Pippa and Willie in unison. They looked at one another and Willie continued, “She was always after him. I reckon it was a put-up job between them. He is a weak, soft-hearted fellow, so she’s had her own way at last and taken him off with her. She swore to Judy that she would have him all to herself one day, and I think she’s proved herself right.”

  “Well, some girls in one of the forest cabins have offered to take Pippa for the night,” said Giles to the others, “but the rest of us have got to get to the next hostel and that’s forty miles off. Be hanged to those two idiots! They’ll have either the tandem or Peggy’s own bike and one of ours. They must have slipped out by the back door. It was open when I went in.”

  The bicycles had been left in an unlocked shed near the main door of the hall, so the party went out that way. The tandem was gone, but the trailer which held the properties was still there.

  “We’ll have to leave it here for a day or two,” said Giles to the caretaker. “I’ll get it picked up as soon as I can. Willie, you’ll have to put up the saddle on Peggy’s bike and ride that, I’m afraid. It’s no good cursing. Come on, or we shall hardly make the hostel by ten and that’s the deadline.”

  “What’s that on your shoe?” asked Peter. Giles glanced-down and said, “Looks as though I trod on a tube of red greasepaint in the changing-room. Somebody must have dropped it. Come on! Come on! Pippa, you know the way to the forest and they gave you the number of the cabin, didn’t they? Be seeing you!”

  “I want to go with you.”

  “No, no. You be a good girl and go to that forest cabin for the night. They’ll be expecting you. We shall be better on our own. We’re going to scorch. You would never be able to keep up.”

  “Oh, all right.” She mounted her bicycle, waved good-bye and cycled northwards to where Erica was preparing a hot supper for the four young women and the two visitors they expected, for Peggy had also been offered a bed in the cabin.

 
; “I’m sorry for those boys,” Tamsin had said, “but we’re doing our bit, anyway.”

  “Oh, who cares about boys?” retorted Isobel. “They are simply little things which are sent to try us. You’d know, if you had them in school, as I have.”

  “I have them on building-sites, and I’m inclined to agree with you,” said Erica.

  “Fancy John turning up like that!” said Tamsin. “I was awfully glad.”

  “A marriage has been arranged and will shortly take place,” said Hermione. Tamsin picked up a lump of dough from Erica’s pastryboard and flung it at her.

  — 11 —

  BLOOD-CAP

  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 hymnbooks 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 expoliceman 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 half-past 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.