The Death-Cap Dancers mb-59

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘Yes, she met with a serious accident. You seem to recognise the description.’

  ‘Oh, good gracious, yes! That’s Tyne, Judy Tyne. She was one of the dancers, you know, only she had a tiff with one of the others and took herself off yesterday morning. She’s stayed here before. They’ve all stayed here before. It’s half-term holiday for them. Some are teachers and some might be students. They do sword-dances and jigs and sing the old-fashioned country songs. I’ve sometimes watched them rehearsing. But how bad is Judy? Is she in hospital?’

  ‘No, not in hospital. You say she had a disagreement with one of the others and took herself off?’

  ‘Yes, but I think the rest of them thought she would come back when she’d cooled down. They were booked in for three nights, you see, so she wouldn’t have anywhere else to sleep. But what has she got to do with this prisoner you’re chasing after?’

  ‘Probably nothing. Now, Mrs Beck, can you tell us something more about the rest of the party? I shall have to see them all if this girl is the one we think, but it would be useful to know your opinion of them first.’

  ‘Has something happened worse than what you’ve said?’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid it has, ma’am. The accident was a fatal one and the evidence suggests that something more than what I call an accident may have taken place, so anything you can tell me will be very helpful. Now, ma’am, just give me a line on the other youngsters.’ He pointed to her entries in her ledger. ‘These will be the biggish party that you’ve also bracketed together, I take it? A very useful procedure on your part, I’m sure. Keeps everything shipshape, eh?’

  ‘That’s right. Well, as you can see, there are nine of them. I can’t tell you a lot about them. We get all kinds, some rough diamonds, some quite cultured, and them all using the hostel because it’s cheap and most of them are young. This lot, the dancers and singers, are the sort that are no trouble at all. I had them last year at this time and I was glad to have them again.’

  ‘You mentioned some kind of disagreement. Did you gather what it was about?’

  ‘No, but I think it was between Judy and another of the girls. Is it Judy who is dead? You mean this convict killed her?’

  ‘We don’t know. When we get the body identified, I shall be able to tell you more. Don’t worry your head at present, ma’am, or begin jumping to conclusions. Just answer the questions, then we shall know where we are. I see that the party booked in on Wednesday.’

  ‘And are allowed three nights, so tonight is their last.’

  ‘Do you know where they are staying after tonight?’

  ‘No, I don’t. All I know is that they are giving a concert at Gledge End tomorrow afternoon, but if Judy has left I don’t see how they will manage. But this girl you’re talking about, oh, it couldn’t be Judy! She can’t have been murdered, not a respectable girl like her.’

  ‘Well, that’s what we’re not too sure about,’ said Ribble, giving up his comforting tone. ‘She seems to have been knocked or dragged off her bicycle, but we can’t talk about murder until we know that she wasn’t hit by a passing car. On the other hand, her injuries don’t really suggest a hit-and-run driver and our knowledge of our bird who is on the run from Hangwood gaol doesn’t suggest that he killed the girl who may not be Judy Tyne anyway. He is a convicted murderer, it’s true, but he is a poisoner and only of his wife, at that, so—’

  ‘Only of his wife? I like that!’ exclaimed Mrs Beck, perking up a little. ‘Are you married, Inspector?’

  ‘Yes. I didn’t mean it quite the way it sounded. I meant that he is most unlikely to murder anybody else, that’s all. What I would like you to do is to sum up these dance people for me. You say they have stayed here before and you see so many youngsters that you must be a pretty good judge of them. You mentioned a quarrel, and that, in case of violent death, is something which ought not to be overlooked.’

  ‘I don’t want my words to get anybody into trouble.’

  ‘Of course not. Personal opinion is only a very rough guide and can’t incriminate anybody. Just fire away. We are very discreet.’

  ‘But the sergeant is going to write down what I say.’

  ‘Nothing but names and addresses. Nothing you tell us can be used in evidence, but it would help me to get a line on these young people. First of all, what about the quarrel which caused Judith Tyne to take herself off? How serious would you say it was?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about it, but I think it must have been on account of one of the boys. Giles is the leader, and a very nice boy and I should think very capable. I don’t think the quarrel was anything to do with him. Then there is Willie. He is Scottish by birth, tall and dark. He might be the brooding type, but I wouldn’t think he bothered much about girls. Probably got a girl of his own back home, anyway. Micky is the youngest and very slight and fair, very like his sister to look at. The others are Ronnie, another nice boy, and then there is Peter. I’m sure Ronnie is much too lazy to bear malice to anybody. I wonder he can even exert himself to dance. He’s always saying how tired he is, but he’s big and healthy enough. Just bone idle when it comes to pulling his weight, but all the others seem to like him, and I must say I’ve got a soft spot for him myself.’

  ‘What about Peter?’ asked Ribble, checking the names in the book.

  ‘I don’t know. He seems very quiet and sort of nondescript, if you know what I mean. Keeps himself to himself. He’s the artistic one and very clever at making things.’

  ‘Could he be a dark horse, do you think?’

  ‘I really couldn’t say. I shouldn’t think he has enough character to be anything very much, but you never know, do you? Look at Doctor Crippen.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Ribble, looking alert. ‘You connect Peter with Doctor Crippen, do you?’

  ‘Good gracious, no! Who ever heard of such a thing? Don’t you put words into my mouth that I never intended!’

  ‘I’m sorry, ma’am. Well, what about the last of the boys?’

  ‘They call him Plum. He’s big-made and very much a man. He could be the oldest of them, as a matter of fact. I’ve nothing to tell you about him except my dog doesn’t like him.’ Upon this, the warden burst into tears. ‘Oh, dear! Oh, dear!’ she sobbed. ‘I knew no good would come of all that fussing over Mick.’

  Ribble waited and then, as she calmed herself, he repeated what she had said, but put it in the form of a question.

  ‘No good would come of all this fussing over Mick?’ he said.

  ‘Yes. There were the three of them, you see. Well, Willie is a boy, so he hardly counted, if you know what I mean, but the other two, Judy and Peggy, they were always going out of their way to treat him as if he was like a delicate piece of china and might get broken if they weren’t extra careful. Not that there was anything I would have called delicate about him. So far as I could see, he may have looked slim and pretty — more like a girl in some ways — but he could dance the legs off the rest of them, I reckon, and from the extras he bought at the hostel shop I don’t think there was anything wrong with his appetite.’

  ‘But the two girls thought him fragile? What about the boys? You mentioned Willie. What about the others?’

  ‘Treated him just like one of themselves and used to joke with him about Judy and Peggy. If you ask me, he liked the fuss the girls made of him. Boys do like having a fuss made of them, don’t they? I suppose it starts with their mothers.’

  ‘To put it clearly, ma’am,’ said Sergeant Nene, ‘were both the girls in love with him?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she replied without hesitation. ‘It was nothing like that. He was so young, you see, compared to the other boys. He was younger than his sister, but so very much like her to look at that you’d think she would get the same treatment, but nobody ever spoilt Pippa. She seemed always a bit apart from the others, I always thought, and wasn’t really very interested in the dancing, but only in the music.’

  ‘Well, thank you for your help, ma’am. There is one more thin
g you can do for us if you will. It will take us a little time to establish the identity of this dead girl unless you will help us. If she isn’t Judy Tyne I shall be glad; if she is, well, we shall have saved a lot of time.’

  ‘She’s Judy. I know it in my bones,’ said the warden, this time looking grim instead of becoming tearful, ‘and if there is anything I can do to help catch whoever killed her I shall do it. It means the mortuary, I suppose. If it is Judy I must tell the others. It would come better than from a stranger.’

  ‘Would you be prepared to make the identification now, Mrs Beck?’ asked Ribble.

  ‘I should have to get back in time to open up.’

  ‘Nothing easier, if we go at once.’

  ‘Does it mean I’ll have to speak at the inquest?’

  ‘Not if it’s the girl we think. We’ll get a more formal identification from her relatives, if she’s got any. Not to worry about the inquest. Shall we go?’

  Mrs Beck nerved herself for the ordeal, but it was over in a matter of seconds. She had no doubt about identifying the dead girl as Judy Tyne.

  ‘Oh, well, she’ll have no more troubles, poor girl,’ she said, ‘but get that villain you must, and then I’ll sleep at night.’

  Chapter 7: WILD THYME (1)

  « ^ »

  The little band of musicians and dancers who billed themselves under the name of Wild Thyme had been nine in number (as the warden had stated) before the death of the companion who was known to them as Judy. There were the fair-haired Giles, the dark Scot Willie, brawny Plum, the slim, girlish-looking, agile Mick, the artist Peter and the good-natured, easy-going, rather lazy Ronnie. These were the morris dancers. The three girls provided most of the music, but Judy and Peggy teamed up with Giles, Ronnie and Plum for such folk-dances as called for a team of three men and three women, the third girl being impersonated by Mick in print frock and fichu, while Peter took over the violin-playing from Peggy and, if there was a piano available (as more often than not there was) Willie played the accompaniment to Pippa’s flute.

  Judy, the dead girl, had played a small concertina, and in addition to playing the flute and the violin, both Pippa and Peggy could act as accompanists on the piano if they were called upon to do so, and so could others.

  Peter’s artistic talents were of considerable value to the company. He was the male equivalent of wardrobe mistress and in addition to having an eye for colour and the general effect of the costumes, he was particularly successful at designing any ‘props’ which might be needed for the dances and folk-songs which were the main items in the company’s repertoire. Thus, for the final dance, he had made a terrifying outfit for the hobbyhorse based on the wicker-work processional figure called Snap the Dragon, which he had seen in a Norwich museum and adapted to a ferocious-looking design of his own. In addition, and for the end of the dance, which terminated in ritual slaughter, he had made a horrifying bloody head which was triumphantly displayed by the leader as the company performed the last figure of the dance.

  At just after five o’clock on the Friday afternoon of Ribble’s visit to the Youth Hostel, the company, who had been rehearsing in the church hall over at Gledge End for the following day’s performance, came back and were met by Mrs Beck, who, having been returned by Ribble from the mortuary, took Giles, the leader, over to her cottage to break to him the news of Judy’s death.

  ‘And the police will be here again,’ she said, ‘so you had better warn the others. The inspector seems a nice man, but you never know with the police.’

  Giles’ reactions to the news were two-fold. He felt and expressed shock and grief, but on the way back from the cottage to the hostel his mind was already busy with his own concerns. To himself he said, ‘Well, thank goodness it isn’t one of the morris men! We can manage the music, but Mick will have to stand in for Judy and the folk dances will have to be done by us men, unless we leave them out altogether, but, if we do, it’s going to make a big hole in the programme. Perhaps we ought to cancel tomorrow’s show. No, too late for that. We shall have to go through with it somehow.’

  ‘Why did she want you?’ asked Plum, when the company had settled to their meal of baked beans and pork sausages.

  ‘Tell you later,’ said Giles, who found that shock and grief, contrary to popular belief, can put a keen edge on the appetite. ‘We’ll take an hour’s rest after this, just to settle our stomachs, and then we’ve got to go over what we rehearsed this afternoon.’

  ‘Judy really has walked out on us, then?’

  ‘She won’t be coming back, that’s for sure.’ When they had spent the hour lying on their bunks, he called them into the common-room. ‘We have to carry on with tomorrow’s show,’ he said. ‘We’ve sold the tickets and the money has been promised to the Spastics Society. We can’t back out now.’

  ‘Judy said she would rather die than stay with us,’ observed Pippa. ‘It makes you think a bit, doesn’t it? Tempting providence, I mean, and all that.’

  ‘Oh, shut up! ’ said Peggy, knowing that it was the quarrel with her which had precipitated Judy’s departure.

  ‘What we’ve got to think about is that ending to Kirkby Moorside,’ said Plum. ‘That sword dance is one of our high spots and it loses a lot if there’s no victim.’

  ‘Oh, Peggy can do that,’ said Peter. ‘We didn’t rehearse it this afternoon, but she’s only got to run into the circle after we’ve made the knot and then fall down dead when we draw the swords out.’

  ‘I couldn’t get into the costume,’ protested Peggy. ‘I’m taller and bigger than Judy.’

  ‘Then Mickie will have to do it,’ said Plum. ‘He looks lovely in drag and he can do a beautiful death-fall, can’t you, Mick?’

  ‘ “Nay, faith, let me not play a woman; I have a beard coming”,’ said the graceful juvenile.

  ‘You were marvellous in the folk dances this afternoon, when there were only the five of us. Never made any muddles,’ said Plum, ‘but then there’s the Irish jig. I must have a partner for that and Mickie can’t do everything.’

  ‘Well, can’t Peggy let the Irish costume out?’ said Ronnie. ‘It doesn’t matter whether the victim in the sword dance is a man or a woman, but the Irish jig needs a man and a girl, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Even if Peggy could adapt the costume, she can’t do the jig,’ said Giles.

  ‘Why not? She knows the steps. We all do.’

  ‘The Irish jig needs a fiddler and she is the only one we’ve got.’

  ‘What’s the matter with the piano in the church hall? It’s in tune.’

  ‘You can’t have a piano accompaniment for the Irish jig,’ said Peggy. ‘It would be most inartistic. Besides, that costume is down to raw edges already. You can’t possibly let it out enough to fit me.’

  ‘So that’s settled,’ said Giles, ‘and good old Mickie will have to save the show. Good on yer, Mick, me old cobber!’ He patted him encouragingly on the back.

  ‘Well,’ said Mick dubiously, ‘I’ll do what I can if the Kirkby Moorside dress and the Irish jig costume fit me, but…’

  ‘We’ll see they do,’ Peter promised him. ‘They’ll be a tiny bit short on you, but you’ve got lovely legs.’

  ‘Will you fit me up with whatever I wear underneath them, Pippa?’

  ‘You shall have my personal slip, pants and built-up bra,’ said Pippa. Nobody had suggested that she should stand in for Judy. ‘She’s a good tootler on the flute,’ as one of the men put it, ‘but, when it comes to the light fantastic, she has two left feet and trips over both of them.’

  ‘Are you certain Judy won’t come back?’ asked Mick. ‘Did she take her hostel membership card back from Ma Beck when she lit out for the wide open spaces?’

  ‘I didn’t think to ask, but it doesn’t matter now.’

  ‘But if she did take back her card she’ll have nowhere to sleep. We’re not booked in at the other hostel until tomorrow night,’ said Pippa.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Giles again. The
others looked at him.

  ‘Well, spill it,’ said Plum. ‘She isn’t coming back. That’s clear. Why isn’t she?’

  ‘Something’s happened to her.’ said Peggy, somewhat hysterically, ‘and it’s my fault! It’s all my fault! She’s met with an accident! She’s in hospital! She’s had an accident and fallen off her bike. She went belting off at such a rate that anything could have happened to her.’

  ‘Yes, it’s happened to her,’ said Giles. ‘She won’t be coming back because she’s dead.’

  Ribble showed up at Mrs Beck’s cottage again at half-past six and asked whether the troupe had been given the news of Judy’s death.

  ‘I told the leader,’ she replied, ‘and he will have told the others by now.’ She took the inspector over to the hostel just as the shocked company was about to begin the rehearsal upon which Giles insisted. Ribble summed them up and made his own announcement. It was received in mixed fashion. Pippa, who had been crying, burst into tears again. Her girlish-looking brother put his arm round her and said nothing. Giles said, ‘O Lord! The police!’ Plum said, ‘If only she’d stayed with us!’ Ronnie found Peter’s hand and squeezed it so hard in his emotion that Peter, with an oath indicative of pain, wrenched the crushed fingers from his neighbour’s grasp and massaged them. He said, ‘She knew about the convict on the moor. There was a notice up.’ Willie agreed, but added, ‘It was a car. Must have been.’ Peggy said, ‘I never meant to quarrel with her,’ and joined in with Pippa’s tears.

  Judging, from these reactions, that Plum and Giles were the least emotionally affected, Ribble decided to interview them first.

  ‘Perhaps, sir,’ he said to Giles, ‘you would accompany me to Mrs Beck’s cottage, where she has placed her sitting-room at my disposal. She will remain with the rest of the party over here. You, sir,’ he addressed Plum, ‘will come across when this gentleman returns. As the matter may turn out to be more serious than a road accident, I shall be obliged if, on your return from the cottage, neither of you discusses what has been said there until I have spoken with every one of your party.’