The Death-Cap Dancers (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “But what makes the connection in your mind?”

  “Only the presence of a tandem outside the Ewe and Lamb. I think I am being kept under observation.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that. Two women have been killed already.”

  “For a reason which would not apply to me.”

  Several cars passed them when Laura stopped and opened the bonnet. Dame Beatrice, apparently interested only in watching Laura’s tinkering, noted with satisfaction that a tandem, with a man and a girl on it, both pedalling furiously, shot past only about a quarter of a mile from the forest carpark.

  “Come out from there,” she said, “and full speed ahead.” When Laura had parked the car, Dame Beatrice approached a boy who was eating potato crisps.

  “You wouldn’t have seen my nephew and his wife get off a tandem just now?” she said. The boy pointed.

  “They went that way,” he said.

  ‘Thank you. Come, Laura, perhaps we can catch up with them.”

  “Easy,” said the boy. “They weren’t hurrying.”

  Dame Beatrice and Laura turned into one of the forest “rides” and found it bordered and sheltered by a big plantation of larches. Most of the foliage had been shed. Only the fir-cones remained on many of the trees.

  Dame Beatrice stopped and addressed one of them, observing that she regretted her lack of interest in Larix decidua, but assuring the tree that this was only a temporary matter.

  “What we are looking for,” she said, “is a group of Fagus sylvatica or possibly Quercus rober.” She spoke loudly.

  “I doubt whether we shall find beeches in these parts,” said Laura, “but oaks ought to be fairly plentiful. The foresters must have planted hardwood trees as well as the pines and larches.”

  A little further on its downward-sloping way the narrow woodland road came out into a clearing. Standing in the middle of it were a noticeably sturdy young man and a plump young woman. They were looking at a solitary sheep which was standing beside a little, boulder-strewn stream. Dame Beatrice, followed by Laura, walked up to the group.

  “I wonder,” she said, “whether you can help me.”

  “Try us,” said the girl. “Have you lost your way?”

  “No, not our way, but our objective. We are looking for oak trees. We are informed that a variety of the edible fungus allied to the common mushroom, the wood-mushroom, can be found growing beneath them.”

  “That’s right,” said the young man. “Cross the beck and follow the path uphill. We’ll show you the way, if you like. Mind you don’t slip on the stones.”

  Less than fifteen minues brought the party to a noble grove of oaks. Under the trees there appeared to be two species of fungi. Dame Beatrice pointed this out.

  “I wonder which is the species we want? The two kinds look much alike to the untrained eye,” she said.

  “Yes, you want to be careful,” said the man.

  “Personally, you won’t catch me eating any of the nasty things,” said the young woman. “I don’t take any risks of that sort, thank you.”

  “Oh, nonsense, Marion,” said her companion. “You just have to learn to distinguish the edible kind from the rest.” He stooped and picked up an appetising-looking specimen which had a yellowish cap and as he pressed it in his hand it gave out a smell reminiscent of anise. “This is the chap you’ve got to avoid,” he said. “These,” he pointed to a yellowish-green specimen not unlike the other, “are what you’re after.”

  “Really?” said Dame Beatrice. “How deceptive Nature can be. If you had not told me, I should have thought it was the other way round.”

  “Well, it isn’t.” He flung down the squashed mess over which his hand had closed, went down to the beck and, kneeling, washed his hand in the clear, brown, ice-cold water and dried it on his handkerchief. “If you ate any of those,” he said, “you’d be dead in twelve hours, but the other kind are all right. Oh, well—but you haven’t got a basket. How are you going to carry your mushrooms home?”

  Laura unfastened the headscarf she was wearing.

  “This will do,” she said. “Thanks a lot.”

  “Don’t mention it. Well, we’ll be getting along.” The two of them walked on and the grove of oaks was very quiet, for the wind scarcely moved the age-old, mighty boughs. Neither Dame Beatrice nor Laura said a word until they had remained for a few moments looking down at the fungi, and then had crossed the beck. Laura spoke first.

  “Well,” she said, “what did you make of those two?”

  “If such a remark were not tabu in these enlightened days, I should say that they hardly seem to come from the same social stratum.”

  “Yes, but—I mean, the information!”

  “Yes, indeed. I was afraid you were going to spoil the fun.”

  “I definitely would have spoken up if I didn’t know that you’d done your homework, both as a doctor and a criminologist, on the subject of fungi in general and the poisonous kinds in particular. But didn’t you yourself want to contradict him? I mean, if he’s going about telling people to eat that deadly stuff, he’s going to have somebody else’s death on his hands. I take it he is the chap the police are after.”

  “The general description would fit and undoubtedly he hardly wishes us well.”

  “What shall you do about him?”

  “Describe the encounter to Inspector Ribble, but it will lead to nothing until we have proof that this man is the murderer, and, so far, we have no proof of that.”

  “But he’s done his best to ensure that we eat deadly poisonous toadstools.”

  “Yes, he is puffed up with his own conceit, and is becoming reckless. He will soon go too far.”

  — 16 —

  WITCHES’ FINGERS

  “Well, we can both give a pretty accurate description of the chap,” said Laura, “but I suppose Ribble can hardly arrest him on a charge of mistaking a deadly poisonous Amanita for a harmless, delicious Agaricus, can he?”

  “Someone else appears to have done some homework! No, of course he cannot, especially as the two species can be confused quite innocently.”

  “If you are right, what about that girl he had with him? Isn’t she in the most frightful danger?”

  “Up to the present she is in no danger at all.”

  “Just because she doesn’t happen to be one of the dancers?”

  “That is not the reason. Do not tantalise yourself with these speculations. The person I am most anxious about is one of the dancers, however. It is the girl they call Pippa. I also feel concern for the younger Miss Lindsay, but Miss Erica Lyndhurst has been warned. I am thankful that those four young women are getting together again and that my nephew Carey’s farm is a very long way from the murderer’s sphere of activities. Tamsin would be perfectly safe there except for one thing.”

  “Let me guess. Those stolen records, the one from the Youth Hostel and the set from the forest office, contain the home addresses of all the people concerned.”

  “Yes, including that of the murderer. Fortunately Inspector Ribble has listed the hostel addresses in the notes he gave me, so we have that much help.”

  “Will it be sufficient?”

  “Unless the murderer gave a false address. It is quite likely that he did. It is a pity that Hermione’s home address was on record in the files stolen from the forest warden, but, as I say, Stanton St. John is a long way from here.”

  “The murderer wouldn’t know that the girls have gone there.”

  “It may not take him long to find out. He has all their home addresses.”

  “Is Hermione herself in any danger?”

  “All four girls are in some danger, perhaps. That depends upon how far our murderer is prepared to go; but the greatest danger is to Miss Tamsin Lindsay. When I have done what still remains to be done here, I shall make it my business to go to the farm and keep an eye on things.”

  “I don’t see what else can be done here that Ribble can’t do.”

  “W
ell, perhaps not here, exactly. It is very fortunate that I was able to see Mrs. Beck’s register before it was stolen.”

  “I thought you got the dancers’ addresses from Ribble. You didn’t need—”

  “Oh, I like to check my information,” said Dame Beatrice airily. “To add to yours, I will disclose to you all my suspicions and my reasons for them, but, until today’s encounter, I had nothing to go on except applied psychology.”

  “Where is our next assignment?—and with whom?”

  “The inquest on Miss Peggy Raincliffe is to be held at Gledge End tomorrow. I am anxious to hear the medical evidence. After that, I hope to be allowed to talk to young Mr. Marton before we go to Stanton St. John.”

  “Meanwhile, what about this girl Pippa?”

  “She is under police protection and Inspector Ribble has promised me that she will be extremely well-guarded until the murderer is caught. There is nothing more that she can tell us, although I may perhaps go to see her at her home.”

  “Surely she’s got some suspicions of who killed the other girls and attacked her brother?”

  “Except for her music, she is an exceptionally imperceptive child, I think.”

  “Well, I’m all agog for information. Who dunnit?”

  Dame Beatrice told her, but added, “There isn’t an atom of proof, of course, that would stand up to lawyers’ arguments.”

  The coroner sat with a full complement of jurors, seven men and four women, and he explained to them that he could accept a majority verdict provided that not more than two of them dissented from it.

  “So nine of you have to be agreed,” he said, stressing his point. “This is not a trial, I would have you remember. It is an enquiry into the cause of death, when and at what place death occurred, and whether the deceased has been formally identified and by whom. You are permitted to ask questions of the witness, but I shall rule out any queries which I deem to be irrelevant or in any way mischievous. You are to find your verdict purely on the evidence that you will hear, putting out of your minds any rumours, gossip, or slander which may have come to your ears.”

  Having done his best to cow them and added the further warning that he had power to override their verdict if he did not agree with it, he opened the proceedings by calling for the identification of the body. This was sworn to by the mother of the deceased, and the medical evidence followed.

  Death had been assured by one heavy blow in the centre of the forehead which had rendered the victim unconscious and which could not have been self-inflicted. It was followed by other assaults after she had fallen down. There were more blows to the back of the head which would have caused death. The weapon had probably been a heavy stone with a rough surface.

  Inspector Ribble was called. He said that he had been asked to go to St. Vortigern’s Church Hall as there had been an accident. When he arrived he was shewn two bodies, one still alive, the other dead.

  “Who telephoned you?” asked the coroner.

  “William Dexter, the caretaker at the church hall. He had also telephoned for a doctor.”

  When the caretaker was called he made as good and as laconic a witness as the inspector had done, having forgotten none of his training as a policeman in the art of giving evidence in court. All the same, his story took some time to tell, as the corner asked for a good many details.

  “You knew nothing of what had happened until you went to your broom-cupboard?”

  “Not a thing, sir.”

  “Did nothing strike you as being out of the ordinary?”

  “Yes, sir. I noticed, soon as I went in, that the back door was wide open.”

  “Was that unusual?”

  “Most unusual, being that it’s always kept bolted on the inside.”

  “Why is that?”

  “We get tramps, sir, and boys up to mischief. There’s a fair bit of waste ground outside that door. There’s trees and bushes.”

  “To whom does it belong?”

  “I reckon it belongs to the hall, sir, but nobody tends it and children use it as a playgound. If I left the back door of the hall unlocked, tramps might use that room as a doss-down or boys could get in and do damage. It’s happened, sir, so I had vicar order the bolts to be put on. The window is too high up to be reached without a ladder, and the little window in the washroom adjoining is too small even for a thin boy to get through, so vicar and me have found the bolts quite adequate.”

  “But not on this occasion.”

  “One of the party as hired the hall opened the door from the inside—must have done, sir. There’s no other way.”

  “Well, as whoever did that is not present . . .”

  “No, he’s in hospital and won’t be available yet for questioning,” said Ribble from his seat.

  “Thank you, Inspector.” The coroner turned again to the witness. “After you had found the deceased’s body . . .”

  “That there body found him, as I understand it,” put in a juryman.

  “Just so. The point is immaterial.”

  “Begging your leave, it ent nothing of sort. Ask him how long that corpse would have stayed in cupboard if he hadn’t happened to go to it for his broom.”

  “Well, Dexter, you may answer the question,” said the coroner.

  “I reckon it would have stayed there till Wednesday, when I should have needed my broom to sweep the hall for the Women’s Institute Keep Fit, them doing some of their exercise laying on the floor. The hall wasn’t let to any outsiders this week, so I could make one sweep-up sufficient.”

  “Sufficient for several days?” asked a woman juror.

  “I don’t sweep up after the Saturday Youth Club, the man that runs it being an ex-sergeant who don’t allow smoking nor litter, and, if the hall ent let, there’s no need to sweep up after the Sunday school until the W.I.’s on Wednesday. Then it does again until the Saturday, those being my orders and by arrangement with the churchwardens.”

  “Well, your question seems to have been relevant, after all,” said the coroner to the juror. “Now, Dexter, how did you come to discover the injured man?”

  “When I went to close the back door, sir, thinking it unwise to leave it open, I saw his foot sticking out from under a bush on that bit of waste ground I mentioned. Then I phoned about him and the body.”

  “You seem to have acted very promptly and sensibly all through. Well, I think we have heard enough. The jury may consider their verdict.”

  “Person or persons unknown,” said Ribble to Dame Beatrice, when they had left the court. “Unanimous, too, as it could hardly fail to be. I thought that one or two of them would have liked to ask something more about this boy who’s in hospital. I’m applying again for permission to question him. I’ve seen him, but they wouldn’t let me stay. He doesn’t know yet that the girl is dead. That will have to be broken to him because he will have to give evidence when the inquest is resumed. I hope you will accompany me, ma’am, when I go to see him. What he has to say may help to prove whether your ideas are right. I still have a kind of liking for my own.”

  The meeting with the injured boy took place on that same afternoon. Mick was sitting up and smiled when he saw them.

  “Does this mean I can get out of this place?” he asked. “I’m perfectly all right, you know.”

  “You won’t be here much longer, I’m sure, sir. You know who I am, don’t you?”

  “I haven’t lost my memory. Have you come to grill me again?”

  “Just to put a few questions. This is Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley.”

  “Good Lord! They haven’t told you I’m crazy, have they? Have I been babbling while I was unconscious? You have to get two doctors, don’t you? I know Dame Beatrice is a supremo, but—”

  “Calm yourself,” said Dame Beatrice. “I am not here as a psychiatrist, but as one who is deeply concerned to prove the identity of the person who attacked you and who killed Mrs. Tyne.”

  “And you and Mrs. Tyne are not his only victims,” said Ribbl
e, “so tell us everything you know. First, did you know that Miss Peggy Raincliffe followed you into the changing-room?”

  “Trust her! She would!”

  “Steady on with your strictures, sir. I am afraid she pursued you once too often. The poor young lady is dead . . . Take it easy, sir. I thought you might have guessed.”

  “I had no idea, of course I hadn’t! All I know is that I opened the back door and went outside to get a breath of air. Besides, I thought I heard somebody knock.”

  “This was after you had changed your dance costume at the end of the show?”

  “Yes. The sword-dance team, with me in my whites and that stinking beard, had been photographed, and then they wanted a picture of the other dancers. Well, the other men didn’t have to change because they had kept on most of the morris gear for the last item—it’s a sword dance, as I said—and Peggy didn’t have to change, either, because she played for the last item, she didn’t dance in it, so that only left me. Well, I changed in the washroom and then opened the door and just stepped out into that shrubbery bit, and before I knew anything about it, some frightful lout must have come up behind me and hit me over the head.”

  “And that is really all you remember, sir?”

  “Of course it is. I say, tell me about Peggy, will you?’

  “You were a long time gone, sir, so I understand that she volunteered, in an impetuous manner which forestalled anybody else among your company, to go into the changing-room to hurry you up. We think she must have been a witness to the assault on you.”

  “And this crazy devil turned on her . . .”

  “That is about the size of it, sir. He dared not leave her alive when he knew she had seen him.”

  “But why should the fellow want to attack me?”

  “We think that, once you had changed your clothes for the last photograph, he mistook you for your sister,” said Dame Beatrice.

  “But why should he knock on the door?”

  “Well, sir,” said Ribble, “if Dame Beatrice is right, he must have seen you through the window when you came out of the washroom.”