The Death-Cap Dancers (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Very well. I’ll get Laura to call on her if that will ease your mind.”

  “Well, it all sounds so bizarre. Why should she pick these women up on the moor? It’s so Wuthering Heights of her! Will you really send Laura? I would be rather relieved. Hermione certainly won’t resent her, and I don’t want to seem to be making a fuss.”

  “The excursion will combine very nicely with another assignment which Laura has in prospect. She is going to spend a week with her brother in Scotland. She can call on Hermione, stay the night at the hotel in York which she has already booked—it means going back on her tracks a bit, but she won’t mind that—and from York she will telephone me and I will pass her report on to you.”

  Laura, apprised of the commission, expressed pleasure. She and Dame Beatrice breakfasted early so that Laura could start in good time, and by half-past eight she was on her way northwards. Maps had located the village of Wayland and an enquiry at the post office there, when she reached it, took her to the two-mile drive which led to the reception centre and the warden’s office. Here she was directed to the cabin, for Hermione had mentioned Erica’s name in her telephone message to her mother and Jenny had passed it on to Dame Beatrice. When Laura found the cabin it was half-past five and all the occupants were at home, for Erica and Tamsin had returned from their excursion with John Trent while Hermione and Isobel, content with their morning walk under the guidance of the forester, had remained in the cabin as they had planned to do.

  Erica answered Laura’s knock on the door, but as soon as she heard Laura’s voice Hermione flew out to the vestibule.

  “You’re in time for tea,” she said, when she had embraced her. “What on earth are you doing in these parts?”

  “Thank goodness for a cuppa. I am on my way to Scotland. Dame B. is at home. Your mother told us you were here, so, as it was more or less on my way, I thought I would look you up.”

  Introductions were made, Laura had tea with the party and later from her hotel made her report over the telephone to Dame Beatrice.

  “I’ve had a good journey. Located the log hut. Very civilised and all mod con, tell Jenny. Hermione came to the rescue on the moors because one of the girls had sprained her ankle. There are three of them. One is a teacher, the sprained ankle is a painter of Christmas and birthday cards and pet animals, the oldest one is an accounts clerk to a builder who happens to be her father, and the whole set-up could not be more innocuous and respectable. All they are going to do is drive about the neighbourhood looking at the scenery and visiting places of interest and ‘unspoiled natural beauty,’ as the conservationists put it. They propose also to breathe the fresh (and it is fresh!) moorland air and follow well-trodden tracks through the woods noting the fauna and flora.”

  “I wonder whether a fortnight of such idyllic existence will be too much for Hermione,” said Dame Beatrice. “Will the others make interesting companions?”

  “I think so. Two of the women are in their thirties. One is sardonic and quite bracing, the other (the builder’s daughter) very motherly and kind, and the painter is about Hermione’s age and a bit of a sensitive plant, apart from her ankle, but they seem quite a good lot and very pleasant. So far there don’t seem to be any men involved, although the young one and the motherly one did go out in a neighbour’s car this afternoon to learn the local geography and (I gather) to be given a botany lesson on trees, plants and toadstools from a young fellow who seems knowledgeable in such matters. Anyway, Hermione is in good hands and the woods are glorious. I could wish I were staying in the cabin myself, except that we have the New Forest on our own doorstep. Reassure Jenny. There is nothing to worry about—and those are not famous last words. I hope not, anyway.”

  — 3 —

  LOUSEWORT

  “I’m getting restless and peevish,” said Tamsin after lunch next day. “It’s lovely weather and I want to go out and find something to paint. I can’t walk much because of this damned ankle, but if one of you would take me out on to the moors, I’m sure I could hirple my way well enough to get down to that beck I saw yesterday when Erica and I were out with John.”

  “So long as you go easy you’ll be all right,” said Erica. “That strapping I’ve put on should hold the ankle. Isobel wants to see Long Cove Bay, so I’ll take her in my car if Hermione doesn’t mind taking you in hers.”

  Hermione brought her car round and was relieved to note that Tamsin required very little assistance to get down the steps and cross the five yards of rough grass to the car. In no time they were passing the warden’s office and were out on the trail Hermione had followed with the forester and Tamsin with John Trent.”

  They came out by the Wayland signpost and were soon crossing the moor in the long slant which Hermione had seen ahead of her when she had realised she was lost. That Saturday evening seemed now to be a very long way behind her.

  “There should be a track over to the left just before we get to a bridge,” said Tamsin. “We could turn off there, perhaps. I’m sure there ought to be something good. I want a dip in the moor with the beck going through it.”

  “Right. I’ll go slowly. Tell me when to stop and then I’ll do a scramble and come back and tell you what’s down in the dip. No point in putting that foot to the ground any more often than you need.”

  The little stone bridge came into sight and the moorland track which Tamsin remembered from the day before ran out into a limitless expanse of heather. It was narrow and bumpy and Hermione drove slowly. It led suddenly and steeply downhill and then wound away upwards across a shoulder of the moor before it dipped down again to the beck.

  Tamsin called a halt and said that, if Hermione was prepared to explore, this was a likely spot.

  Hermione pulled up. A tiny path went off to the right and before she got very far she could hear the splashing sound of the beck. Soon she could see it not very far below her. It was bubbling over flat boulders and smaller stones and on the further side of it was a low hill with a rounded summit. The foot of the hill was strewn with more boulders and a rough path of varying width ran beside the stream and led on the right to a more distant and higher hill. A narrow stone bridge without copings, possibly a pack-horse bridge, lay across the stream and there was another and a rougher path on the other side of the water.

  Hermione picked out the flattest bit of the path on her own side and went back to the car for the camp stool and folding chair they had put in the boot.

  “You don’t seem to have brought paints and things,” she said on her return, when she had set up the stool and chair.

  “No, I don’t need them. I’m only going to make a sketch and a note of the colours. It’s enough for my kind of work. I can do the painting sitting on the balcony of the cabin.”

  With Hermione’s help she managed the downward slope without too much difficulty and settled herself to her sketching. Hermione sat down and took out her cigarettes. She watched the artist at work for a bit and then said,

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to do a bit of exploring. You’ll be all right, won’t you?”

  “Oh, yes. I’ve got the view I want. I shall need about half an hour.”

  “Good. I shan’t be long.” She followed the path on her side of the beck and was soon mounting steadily. The path twisted and serpentined through dead bracken, grew rougher and then narrower. She stopped and looked back once or twice. Sometimes she could get a sight of Tamsin, sometimes the artist was hidden from view when the path took one of its sharp bends. The hillside was strewn with limestone boulders which looked like grey-fleeced wethers among the brown bracken. As she mounted she could see further hills.

  She was gone for much longer than she had intended. When she returned by the same route—there was no other—it was to find that Tamsin had company, an eventuality she had not bargained for. Standing behind Tamsin and watching her at work was a sturdily-built man, hardly more than a youth, dressed in shorts, a leather jacket, and heavy shoes. He had a rucksack on his shoulder
s and was wearing a rather rakish Tyrolean hat with a little red feather in it.

  Hermione walked up to him.

  “Have you my friend’s permission to stand here and look over her shoulder?” she asked.

  “It’s all right,” said Tamsin without looking up. “He isn’t bothering me and I’ve nearly finished all I can do here.”

  “I could show her some better bits than this,” said the youth. “I live around here and I know the moors pretty well. What would you say to a farm?”

  “A moorland farm?” asked Tamsin.

  “Yes. That is to say, the farm itself is in a valley with pasture for sheep, but the moors rise right behind it, and it’s a really beautiful setting for a picture.”

  “How far is it?” asked Hermione.

  “A dozen miles or so, the way I shall show you. There are one or two bits an artist might like to see on the way. Have you come far?”

  “No. We’ve got a holiday cabin in the Forestry Commission’s woods,” replied Tamsin.

  “Oh, that’s all right, then. When you’ve seen the farm, I can show you a short cut home. All main road, once you come up out of the valley. All you have to do is to look out for a signpost to Gledge End. You can easily find your way from there. By the way, my name is Adam Penshaw.”

  “Tamsin Lindsay and this is Hermione Lestrange.”

  A dozen miles across the moor they came to a village. It was stone-built and almost hidden away among tall trees in their autumn colouring. It had a small, squat-towered church and out beyond it, where the road rose again, was a lonely public house with a thatched entrance-porch and two of its four upstairs windows bricked up.

  “Shouldn’t think they get much custom there,” said Hermione, as they passed it and the car took a winding, uphill road back on to the moor. “It’s very much isolated.”

  “Oh, it’s not all that far from the village,” said the youth. “It used to be the shepherds’ pub when there were more sheep about than there are now.”

  “I think it would make a picture,” said Tamsin. “One day we must have a drink there.”

  The road still rose and around it, in front and on both sides, was the emptiness of the moor. On they went, up and over the hill, and Hermione was about to ask how much further they had to go when the countryside began to change. As they dipped down into the valley, the moor still rose away to the right, but there were some trees on grassy hillocks and when they reached a farm there were sheep and one or two cows grazing the sloping pastures.

  The farm buildings were few. There was the farmhouse itself, red-roofed and with three chimneys. A small barn was behind it and almost adjoining the house on the side furthest from the travellers was a cattle-shed with some of the roof-tiles missing and with the farmyard midden in front of it.

  Hermione stopped the car and Adam leaned forward from the back seat and asked, “Well, what about it, Tamsin? Do you want to get out and make a sketch?”

  “Not now,” she said, “but perhaps another time.”

  “Look here, how much further are you taking us?” asked Hermione. “I’m not a bit keen on driving over moorland roads after dark.”

  “Oh, you’ve seen nothing yet. Just press on a bit.”

  They left the farm behind and the road mounted to the moors again. Hermione began to feel more and more dubious about the route they were taking and when the road made a hairpin bend she was moved to expostulate.

  “Oh, look here!” she said. “You told us it was about twelve miles. We must have done twice that already.”

  “Ah, but you haven’t seen the view I wanted Tamsin to get. We’re almost at the junction with the main road to Gledge End. Pull up here and take a look.”

  Hermione drew up at the side of the road. As soon as she had done so, the youth picked up his rucksack, which he had unslung and placed beside him on the back seat, and hopped smartly out of the car.

  “Thanks a lot for the lift,” he said. “I’m staying just over there.” He indicated a large house about two hundred yards away to the left. “Be seeing you.”

  “I don’t think he will!” said Hermione furiously. “I’ve a good mind to get out and heave a rock at him. Of all the nerve! All he wanted was a lift home. Why couldn’t he have said so, instead of leading us this dance? Now what do we do?”

  “Keep straight on and hope he was telling us the truth about the main Gledge End road,” said Tamsin.

  “We must be nearly at the coast!”

  This proved to be the case, and when they reached the town which was signposted Long Cove Bay, there was the turning to Gledge End which the youth had promised.

  “I don’t altogether blame him,” said Tamsin, waiting to make the remark until she deduced that Hermione had simmered down. “I suppose he’d have had to sleep in the heather if he hadn’t met us, and it’s not the best time of year to do that.”

  Hermione snorted and made no attempt at any other reply. All the same, the main road, making some magnificent sweeps around the higher parts of the moor, was broad and well-surfaced and she realised that there was no need to go into Gledge End, for she found a narrow turning to Wayland and it was not quite dark by the time they stopped the car outside the cabin and the other two had come out to help Tamsin up the steps.

  “You’re later than we expected,” said Erica. “We almost thought of sending out a search-party.”

  “We fell among thieves,” said Tamsin. “Well, there was one thief, anyway. He stole our time and our petrol. Wait until Hermione gets back from the carpark and then we’ll tell you all about it.”

  “You ought to have come with us to Long Cove Bay. It’s a delightful fishing-village built in steps and slopes and all queer little corners and nooks and crannies. You’d love it. There must be lots of bits you’d like to sketch.”

  “Thanks. I think we’ve been to it, near enough. I wouldn’t mind going there again, but Hermy One is livid about this wretched youth who hi-jacked us into giving him a lift, so I don’t think I’ll suggest it at present.”

  Hermione returned from the carpark with her equanimity restored. She had encountered John Trent, told him the story and they had laughed about it. She had mentioned the large house for which the youth had been making after he had jumped out of the car and she had described the rest of the locality and the turning on to the main road to Gledge End.

  “John says the house is a Youth Hostel,” she concluded, “and the beastly boy would never have made it if we hadn’t picked him up, so I suppose we did our good deed for the day, however inadvertently. Oh, and John says that it’s worthwhile to take a look at the big notice-board in the reception centre from time to time, especially if the weather turns wet, because there is often some sort of entertainment laid on for the cabin people.”

  “Well, I expect it would only be a sing-song or the local pop group,” said Isobel, “but it might make a change from sitting indoors and listening to the rain on the roof.”

  There was no rain on the following day and plans had just been made for a whole day out, with a pub lunch, when there came a knock at the door. Erica, as usual, was the one to answer it. She came back to say that a boy wanted to know whether he could guide Tamsin to any more beauty spots.

  “I suppose he’s the boy you picked up yesterday,” she added. “Do you want to speak to him?”

  “No, we don’t,” said Hermione, “except to thank him kindly and tell him to clear off.”

  “Sorry,” said Erica, returning to the door, “but all our plans are made. Did they take you in at the Youth Hostel?”

  “Oh, yes. I’d booked, but I got out of the coach at Gledge End when I ought to have stayed in for Long Cove Bay, so it was a real bonus meeting your friends.”

  “Yes, but not for them. Well, thanks for calling, but please don’t bother any more.”

  “I’ve hired a motorbike, so any messages you want run, shopping, errands—”

  “No, thank you. We can manage perfectly well for ourselves.”

&n
bsp; “I wonder how he found out where we were staying?” said Tamsin, when the door was shut.

  “You as good as told him, I expect,” said her sister.

  “But there are over thirty of these cabins. He can hardly have tried every one until he found ours.”

  “I suppose you told him your name. He had only to go to the office and say he had a message for you. Erica booked the cabin, but all our names are in the warden’s book. You can’t stay anywhere incognito unless you’re a member of the criminal classes.”

  “Oh, well, we’ve given him the bird,” said Erica comfortably. “I expect he was surprised to meet me on the doorstep. He probably thought Tamsin and Hermy were here on their own. Ask me and I’d say he’s a poisonous little reptile. You get to spot them when you have to employ a certain amount of casual labour, as we have to do on our building sites when the pressure of work is heavy. Well, which car are we going to use? No sense in taking both as we’re going to stick together today.”

  It was Tamsin who had mapped out the route. As none of the Others minded where they went, she had selected two subjects for her sketches. One of these involved a seascape, so, after a midday snack at a pub in a seaside town about thirty miles from the forest, she and Hermione boarded a pleasure steamer which made the coastal trip to a famous headland while the two older women explored the town.

  Hermione was studying the coast through binoculars when Tamsin said, “Stand by! Here’s that boy Adam again.”

  However, he did not attempt to come up and speak to them and it was with a slight sense of triumph that they reported this to the other two whom they met again on the quay.