The Death-Cap Dancers (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “I hope she is well wrapped up. It’s a bit chilly sitting about at this time of year.”

  “Oh, yes, she’s got a windcheater and a scarf. She’ll be all right. Hermione is more or less with her.”

  “Only more or less?”

  “I think she said she was going the rounds with Our Walt.”

  “I didn’t intend her to start work again while you three girls were here. Carey has gone to Oxford, too. I want some household things and he’s ordering feed, so I thought he could combine the two. If only he had known, he could have taken Isobel in the car.”

  “Oh, she wanted to walk. Perhaps they will meet and he will bring her back. I think I’ll take a stroll myself and see how Tamsin is getting on.”

  “Are you worried about yourself and the others? What did Aunt Adela tell you? She telephoned me, you know, when she heard from Hermy that you were all coming here to finish your holiday.”

  “She told me that we weren’t safe so long as we stayed in the forest cabin. She said she thought Tamsin was the most vulnerable, Isobel the least, and Hermione in less danger than myself. She told us all not to trust anybody we had met while we were in the forest and, except that I don’t scare easily, she would have had me scared, because, of course, we did get well acquainted with a hefty young man named John Trent, who seemed rather interested in young Tamsin.”

  “Aunt Adela did not name any particular person, though, did she?”

  “Well, yes, she did, but it seems so improbable that he could be a danger to any of us. The only ones who seem to have upset him are a company of folk-dance people. They are the ones he seems to have it in for, not us.”

  “If Aunt Adela said that you four were in danger, she meant it,” said Jenny. “You say that Isobel is not particularly vulnerable, but ought she to have walked into Oxford alone?”

  “You can’t argue with Isobel and she’s very sensible. She’ll be all right once she gets to Headington. That’s the way she was going to take. It’s about five miles, she thought, to get right into the city.”

  At this point, before the conversation could continue, Our Walt’s wife appeared.

  “The poultry be at the door, missus, and want to know what about a fowl for Sunday, loike.”

  “We shall need two, Mrs. Ditch. I’d better see him.” She went out to the back door and Erica followed her plan of going out to see how Tamsin was progressing with her pencil sketches of the pigs.

  She found the youngest member of their party outside Lucifer’s pen. Tamsin looked round and said, “He won’t keep still long enough for me to draw him properly. I think he can smell one of the sows.”

  “He’s not supposed to be able to,” said Hermione, coming up to them. “He probably objects to an alien presence and perhaps he’s got a ‘thing’ about having a picture made of himself. Boars are very primitive, I always think, unlike sows and young pigs, who are very intelligent and good-humoured. Did you ever see a pig smile? They do, you know, and they can say ‘Thank you’ when you feed them. Think of Empress of Blandings when some kind person picked up a potato she’d dislodged and returned it to her trough. Why don’t you let Lucifer settle down a bit and go and sketch Sunspot?”

  “Which is Sunspot?”

  “She is that lovely Gloucester Old Spot over there. She’s only a young gilt and hasn’t farrowed yet. She’s as docile as a pet dog. We are thinking of breeding Gloucesters.”

  “Do you really like pigs, Hermy?” asked Tamsin, accompanying her friend across the rough grass.

  “Love them. They’re clean and they’ve got such a sense of humour. Besides, I was brought up with them.”

  She saw Tamsin settled and watched the first confident strokes of the pencil. Sunspot came to the front of the sizeable wired pen, looked enquiringly at Tamsin and Hermione through the meshes and then went to the wooden gate through which she was sometimes allowed to pass while her domain was mucked out. On these occasions she was kept happy and from straying by the present of a succulent cabbage or some other interesting tit-bit and for some reason she seemed to think that Tamsin’s activities promised something pleasant of this nature. She scrabbled at the woodwork with her little front trotters and made pleading little anticipatory grunts, snorts, and snuffles.

  Tamsin got up from her stool and looked over the four-foot door which was hung between two higher iron posts.

  “I can’t sketch you if you’re going to stay there,” she protested. Hermione laughed and said that she would go and get the pig an apple. Erica volunteered to accompany her and as they made towards the house the pigmen joined them to go in for their mid-morning snack. At the same time as they and the girls disappeared, a young man came out of the woods and walked up a miry but well-marked path which led to a five-barred gate in a wired-up hedge. The gate and hedge marked Carey’s boundaries on that side of the pig-farm.

  The man stood looking over the gate for some minutes, but as soon as the coast was clear, with Hermione, Erica, and the pigmen out of sight, he climbed over the gate. Tamsin, who was completely absorbed in looking over the top of Sunspot’s gate and trying to cajole that engaging animal into going into the open run, was surprised, but not startled, to hear a shout of “Hi!” She turned to see Adam Penshaw coming towards her. Her first feeling was one of disappointment. She had been hoping for John Trent to come and look them up. She was pretty sure that, when he found she was not in her own home, he would have got the Oxfordshire address from her mother.

  When she recognised Adam her reaction was one of anger. It was intolerable that he was still determined to pester her. She shouted, “Go away! You’re trespassing!”

  He continued to advance, calling out, “Come for a walk in the woods. I want to talk to you!”

  “Go away! You’re being a nuisance,” she called back. He halted.

  “I’m being what?” he shouted.

  “A beastly nuisance! You’re not wanted. Go away!”

  “If you don’t come I’ll let all these pigs out!”

  At this moment Hermione reappeared. She took in the situation in an instant and began to walk towards him. As she did so, he laughed and pushed back the bolt of the pig-pen on which he was leaning. Hermione turned and tore back towards where Tamsin was irresolutely standing.

  “Quick, Tammie,” she yelled. “Get over the door. Sunspot won’t hurt you.” Tamsin accepted this reassurance and took the breathless advice, and Hermione tumbled over Sunspot’s door almost on top of her. Sunspot, who had retired into the centre of her fenced enclosure in rational surprise at receiving this sudden and unexpected influx of visitors, stood regarding the heap of arms and legs before she retired to her covered shed, from the opening to which she poked out an enquiring snout.

  Tamsin began to scramble to her feet, but Hermione pulled her down as a hoarse and terrible screaming broke out.

  “You don’t want to see what’s happening,” she stammered. “He’s let out that devil Lucifer.”

  “No suggestion that Lucifer should be put down,” said Carey, when the inquest on Adam Penshaw was concluded. “The verdict was death by misadventure. There was a notice up beside the gate the lad came in by, and another notice beside the boar’s pen.”

  “You knew Adam was the murderer, didn’t you?” said Hermione to her great-aunt. “How long ago did you know it?”

  “The various encounters you four girls had with him were pointers. After what he thought was a promising beginning, you all rejected him, and not only once. Then Miss Pippa rejected him that day at Ramsgill farm and at the hall he mistook her brother for her and did his best to kill the young man. Subsequently, of course, he learned from the newspapers that he had chosen the wrong victim. In the state of mind in which I judged him to be, it was inevitable that he would attempt to attack Miss Pippa again, but while she was under police protection he realised that this would be far too risky a proceeding. That turned his attention to his other objective, you four. At your first meeting you gave him a lift in your car. He had
tricked you into doing this, his ego was satisfied and you, at that point, were safe.”

  “He shouldn’t have attempted to presume on the acquaintanceship,” said Hermione. “He must have known that Tamsin and I were pretty sick with him for leading us up the garden so as to get a free ride to that Youth Hostel.”

  “His natural conceit led him to take a chance, but after that you rejected him.”

  “And John Trent threw him over our verandah railings,” said Erica. “I wonder he didn’t have a go at John. If it was rejection that upset him, well, nobody could have been more forcibly rejected than that.”

  “Penshaw attacked only the unsuspecting, and even then they had to be weaker than himself,” said Dame Beatrice. “Inspector Ribble would have got a conviction in due course, for Penshaw was becoming reckless. The girl Marion and her possession of the tandem almost clinched the matter. She had no reason to lie to the police on Penshaw’s behalf. Well, I suppose it has been an interesting case, psychologically.”

  “With a horrible ending,” said Tamsin, shuddering at the recollection of Adam Penshaw’s screams.

  “So did Judy Tyne and Peggy Raincliffe have a horrible ending. Don’t forget that,” said Isobel.

  About the Author

  Gladys Mitchell was born in the village of Cowley, Oxford, in April 1901. She was educated at the Rothschild School in Brentford, the Green School in Isleworth, and at Goldsmiths and University Colleges in London. For many years Miss Mitchell taught history and English, swimming, and games. She retired from this work in 1950 but became so bored without the constant stimulus and irritation of teaching that she accepted a post at the Matthew Arnold School in Staines, where she taught English and history, wrote the annual school play, and coached hurdling. She was a member of the Detection Club, the PEN, the Middlesex Education Society, and the British Olympic Association. Her father’s family are Scots, and a Scottish influence has appeared in some of her books.