‘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 thing 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
‘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)
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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.’
