The Death-Cap Dancers mb-59

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘What time was this, miss?’

  ‘I suppose I left Crossweli soon after three and I pedalled back pretty hard. I was upset at not catching Mick, you see.’

  Ribble had a good deal to think about. As Peggy had lied once, she might be lying again. As for Mick, he claimed to have fallen asleep in the cinema, but what if, with or without Willie’s connivance, he had slipped out when the lights went down, met Peggy by arrangement and that together they had tracked Judy down and murdered her?

  He could see the snags in this theory. It was most unlikely that they would have known what Judy’s plans were when she left the hostel. All the same, she might have confided them to Mick, owing to her special feeling for him. The difficulty was the time factor. The killing had to be done in a lonely part of the countryside and, unless Judy had made a previous assignation with Mick, it would have been simply a matter of luck whether he and his accomplice Peggy came upon Judy in the lonely spot where the body had been found.

  In any case, there were still questions to be asked. Had Judy become so much of a nuisance to Mick that he was prepared to go so far as to kill her? Ribble doubted it. Then there was Willie to consider. Had Mick really fallen asleep in the cinema and had Willie been the one to slip out? But there was no evidence whatever that either of the boys had left the cinema during the performance, and they must have come back to the hostel together because their means of transport was the tandem.

  Ribble abandoned these speculations for another. There was no reason, on the face of it, to suspect either Giles or Plum, but although they could find a witness, the caretaker, to the time they had arrived at the church hall to arrange the seating, there was no proof of the time at which they had left, since they had not handed back the keys, but had put them throught the caretaker’s letterbox. It seemed unlikely that Giles would have been a party to the murder of one of his troupe, particularly just before one of their shows, but anger often over-rides expediency.

  Ribble sighed. It seemed that he could rule out nobody but Mick’s sister Pippa. Even the two who had gone to the swimming pool must remain suspect. He reverted to Mick and Willie. The tandem need not have had two passengers on the journey back from Crosswell. Either of the young men could have pedalled it back (with a wobble or two because of its length) and the other could have come back on the bus. There were bus routes into Long Cove Bay to connect it with other towns and the outlying villages and there could have been an arrangement whereby the boys met at the Long Cove Bay bus terminus in order to come back on the tandem to the hostel as though they had been together all the time.

  Unfortunately, although he felt certain that one or more of the members of Wild Thyme could be held responsible for Judy Tyne’s death, he had not ruled out the possibility that some hit-and-run motorist had knocked her off her bicycle — how else to account for that buckled front wheel? — and, to save himself from being reported by the girl to the police, had decided to finish her off and try to hide the body.

  The last possibility was that the escaped convict, desperate for money and food, had been the murderer. Ribble had almost, but not quite, rejected this theory, but while the man was still at large, no theory could be abandoned completely.

  Mentally Ribble tossed up. Heads the murderer was Willie, for the Yorkshireman did not trust the dark Celt. Willie might have had every incentive to remove one of Mick’s lovers. If he had done so, the girl Peggy might also be in danger. Tails, the murderer was Mick himself. Ribble had the usual masculine distrust of fair-haired, girlish-looking boys, especially when they were under such close protection as that of the saturnine Willie. Ribble sighed again. Peggy herself, as he had already realised, must remain on the list of suspects. She had already lied about her movements and even if she had told the truth now, there were hours of Thursday for which she could provide only the most sketchy of accounts.

  Chapter 10: WILD THYME (2)

  « ^ »

  The rehearsal over, the dancers sat on the rather uncomfortable chairs and put their stockinged feet up while Peggy and Pippa were sent out by Giles to the shops in Gledge End to purchase food and soft drinks for the party. The meal was to be taken in the church hall to save time and conserve energy.

  ‘Take the tandem,’ said Willie handsomely. ‘If you hitch the trailer you can bring back lots of grub and plenty to drink. Your little handlebar baskets won’t hold nearly enough for all of us.’

  ‘Not too much liquid,’ said Giles, the leader. ‘When it’s over we’ll go to the pub, but we don’t want a lot of fizz sloshing about inside us before we dance.’

  The platform in the hall, dignified, when the building was hired, by being called the stage, was on this occasion to be used to seat some of those who had bought the most expensive tickets. On one side of it there was an entrance through a doorway in the back wall to a room in which, on Sundays, a class for the youngest Sunday School children could be held, and when the hall was let on weekdays the room served as a changing-room and had a washroom attached to it. It also contained a very roomy cupboard for the caretaker’s brooms and buckets.

  After the indoor picnic-style lunch the company rested while Pippa practised an obbligato she was to play with an orchestra in a concert in her own town and Giles knit his brows over the afternoon programme and hoped that Mick would be able to cope with the extra rôles assigned to him in place of Judy. The show was to open at three and was to begin with a set of three folk-songs sung by the whole company including the violinist. The plump Peggy was to wear a print dress and a sunbonnet and at Giles’s orders, although against her own wishes, Pippa was to be disguised in a beard and false eyebrows. These were in the property box, but seldom used except for the more bucolic of the folk-songs, when they were worn by Plum. Pippa had done her best to repudiate them, but Giles was adamant.

  ‘As Mick looks so much like you now he is dressed as a girl for the hornpipe and Three Meet and Parson’s Farewell,’ he said, agreement having been reached that Mick would take the girl’s part in these dances, with Peggy as the other girl in Parson’s Farewell, ‘we simply must iron out the resemblance, don’t you see, dear?’

  ‘It’s very unorthodox,’ said Peggy, ‘to have Mick in the hornpipe as a sort of bumboat woman.’

  ‘Well, it makes it more fun,’ said Giles. ‘I still don’t see why a white sweater and your navy shorts, with the sailor cap and your bare feet, wouldn’t do for you, but there you are. You insist on playing your fiddle for it. And Mick, you dance it straight. If you go putting on an ad lib and ogling the two sailors, the audience will know you’re a man, and that may get you a laugh, but it will utterly ruin Three Meet, so no capers, if you please. Save them for the Morris where they belong.’

  ‘In name, if not in nature,’ said Plum.

  ‘I wonder why the things you pickle are also called capers?’ said Peter, who thought the conversation was becoming charged with nervous tension.

  ‘The vegetable kind are named after a Middle English word, caperes,’ said Giles. ‘The movements called capers in a dance are a sort of bowdlerised version of capriole, which I imagine is French.’

  ‘Oh, yes, there’s Peter Warlock’s Capriole Suite. You ought to make up some dances to that music, Giles. I believe the Rambert Ballet used to do that, or so my oldest aunt told me. She saw them at the old Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith,’ said Ronnie, backing up Peter’s effort to calm the party.

  ‘There is another use for the word ‘caper’ which is not so generally known,’ said Willie. ‘There is a Manx proverb which says, “The weather is so foul that not even a caper will venture out.” In this connection a caper was an Irish fisherman from Cape Clear. These chaps had the reputation for venturing out to sea in any weather.’

  ‘Join Wild Thyme and get yourself a liberal education,’ said Giles. ‘Well, I think it’s time we got changed. If I mistake not, our audience will soon be arriving.’

  It had been arranged that the caretaker would be ‘on the door’ to tear the tickets
and that Peggy would show people to their seats as, for her, there would be no costume changes. The caretaker had strict instructions to let no latecomers in during a dance, but to allow them to find their seats (without Peggy’s assistance) if they arrived while nothing but a feast of song was being offered. All the songs were sung in unison as choruses. There were no vocal soloists. In any case, very few late arrivals were anticipated. As Peter put it: ‘We who live north of a line drawn from Stafford to Kings Lynn are jolly well going to see the whole of a performance for which we’ve shelled out our brass.’

  ‘Are you going to act on that tip the forestry warden gave you?’ Peggy enquired of Giles, while the company still kept their seats.

  ‘Worth trying, I think,’ he said. ‘It won’t be much fun pedalling our bikes forty miles to the next Youth Hostel after we’ve done the show, and the last twenty miles will be after dark. If I can get you two girls fixed up for the night it will be something. We chaps must take our chance. I’d like to get Mick a bed near here, as he’s got such an extra load of dancing to do now that we haven’t Judy with us, but that would involve Willie, because of the tandem. Oh, well, we’ll see what the response is from the forest cabins. I know there are one or two empty cabins at this time of year, but I suppose it would be against regulations for the warden to let us have a couple of those for the night, even at a reasonable fee which we could easily afford out of the ticket money.’

  ‘Well, I hope something comes up for us,’ said Peggy, ‘and for you boys, too. A few miles to the forest is a vastly different proposition from forty miles to the next hostel and some of it after dark. It wasn’t even dark when Judy was pulled off her bike.’

  ‘We don’t know that she was pulled off it,’ said Giles, ‘so don’t start all that up again. We’ve got the show to think about. ’ He was feeling his responsibilities acutely. There had been all too little time to rehearse the changes in the programme which had been made necessary by Judy’s absence, and there had even been serious discussion of a suggestion by Pippa that the most spectacular item should be left out altogether. This was their own version of the traditional sword dance called Kirkby Malzeard and titled by Giles, who had imposed a dramatically bloody ending on it, Ritual Slaughter at Kirkby Moorside.

  ‘We can’t do it properly with seven people, even if I do the hobby horse,’ she said, ‘and Peggy can’t dance in it because you say we must have her for the music, but I still can’t see why my flute wouldn’t do. Peggy would do the hobby horse better than I shall.’

  ‘We settled all that,’ said Giles, ‘and I’ve spent a lot of time coaching you.’

  ‘I know, but I’m still nervous about how I shall perform.’

  ‘It isn’t as though you have to dance,’ said Giles. ‘So long as you keep out of the dancers’ way and only make little dashes at the audience and flick the horse’s tail in their faces and cavort about a bit, you’ll do fine. And Peter made the head and the rest of the gear very light because Judy was going to wear it, so you know you can support it all right. We know it’s really a man’s part, but you’ll manage.’

  Pippa began to cry.

  ‘I think it’s in dreadfully bad taste to dance a ritual killing when we know what’s happened to Judy,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, stop beefing!’ said Plum. ‘No need to bring that up.’

  ‘On another matter,’ said Giles, ‘I’ve notified the local press and I expect they’ll take photographs after the show, so nobody is to change out of costume until they’ve done with us.’

  ‘I’m not going to be photographed wearing that awful contraption you call the hobby horse’s head,’ said Pippa, still in tears.

  ‘All right, all right. You’ll still be wearing your beard, so you can take off the head, but be sure you hold it in profile. It’s Peter’s pièce de resistance and I want it to stand out.’

  ‘I don’t want to be photographed in the beard, either.’

  ‘Look, I’ve explained about the beard. You and Mick must be differentiated.’

  ‘But he wears a beard for the Morris and the sword dances.’

  ‘Quite a different beard, and I’ve trimmed yours so that you can find your lips for your flute. What’s the matter with you, Pippa? It isn’t like you to kick up this sort of damn silly fuss.’

  ‘If you want to know, I’m scared. Judy was murdered — you know she was. And if Mick plays the victim he’ll be murdered, too. I don’t want to stay the night in one of the forest cabins, either. It’s not safe. As soon as the show is over I am getting on my bike and going home.’

  The show was scheduled to last for an hour and a half. There were only two items which would not be repeated for an encore. Whether the audience called for encores or not was beside the point, Giles pointed out. The time had to be filled in somehow, or people would not feel they were getting their money’s worth. The exceptions were the four groups of folk-songs (‘they wouldn’t get an encore, anyway — we don’t sing well enough’) and the Ritual Murder dance with which the programme ended.

  ‘We may be offering a rather truncated version of what I originally planned,’ said Giles, ‘but even that would lose all its drama if we repeated it. That bloody head is another masterpiece of Peter’s. We end on that and I don’t expect much applause for any other item. People in these parts only really like vulgar comedians and audience participation in the songs, and they’ll be highly critical of our old-style folk-songs and dances and, of course, they do like a full orchestra which makes plenty of lively noise, not just a violin and a flute with occasional piano accompaniment.’

  ‘Oh, don’t encourage us, whatever you do,’ said Peggy bitterly. ‘As though we don’t already feel inadequate enough!’

  ‘Oh, quite a few of the forest cabin people are coming,’ said Ronnie soothingly. ‘They’ll appreciate us, I’m sure, and we are not repeating any of the songs unless they applaud them quite wildly — and they won’t.’

  ‘We had better get changed,’ said Giles. ‘Good luck, everybody.’

  ‘We shall need it,’ said Peter. The programme opened with three of the songs. All the songs, of which there were a round dozen, were arranged in groups of three and in all of them Judy’s clear soprano was sorely missed, although Peter could manage a passable counter-tenor and Mick what the others called ‘a Hinge-and-Bracket’ voice. Pippa did not sing, her lips being otherwise engaged, but Peggy, at the piano for the songs, had a robust contralto and Plum contributed a resounding bass.

  As the first three songs were to be followed by the folk dances called Three Meet and Parsons Farewell, Mick was able to appear in his girl-rig for the opening choruses, so that he had no need of a costume change for the first two dances. The other men were in the white flannel trousers which they would also wear for the morris and sword dances,but would be without their ribbon-streamer hats and the bells on their legs. While any changes of costume were being made in the little room behind the platform, the two girls were to play the flute and violin solos taking it in turns to accompany one another on the piano, and there would also be a rendering of various sentimental airs known, it was hoped, to most of the audience.

  ‘The tickets are not numbered,’ said Erica, ‘so we had better get there in good time if we want to find a good seat. I’m surprised that a church hall has a stage big enough for dancing.’

  ‘It will probably be staged at floor level,’ said the knowledgeable Isobel. ‘When these sort of people come to give a performance at my school, they use the body of the hall and the kids sit around on all four sides, leaving a big space in the middle. I expect that’s what it will be like this afternoon.’

  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 t
he 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.