‘No. Mrs Ramsgill told me about the way he stayed out all night because it had broken down, but he certainly had it when I visited the farm on Thursday. I saw it there before he rode off on it. He was very hurt when I wouldn’t go with him.’
‘It’s a point of no importance unless he spotted Mrs Tyne, but at what time did he leave the farm on Thursday? You said he did not have the midday meal there.’
‘I should think he went off at about twelve.’
‘He will still be at the farm, then, if he was staying a week. Now, miss, what can you tell me about the quarrel between the two ladies?’
‘Oh, dear! It doesn’t seem very nice to talk about Judy’s quarrels now that she’s dead, does it?’
‘If you could consult her, miss, she might like it to be known who killed her and whether it was by accident or design.’
‘Oh, I hadn’t thought of it like that. Oh, well, I’ll tell you what I can, then. They never did get on, Judy and Peggy. They got across one another almost as soon as Judy joined us. I suppose, being married and running the play-school and all that, she thought herself superior to Peggy, who wasn’t married and taught in a rather tatty little school where she thought her talents were wasted. I asked her once why she didn’t apply for a better job. She said she had an invalid mother who owned the house they lived in and refused to move. She said her brother and his wife had the old lady for a fortnight in the summer and the October half-term week, but wouldn’t take on more than that because she was so cantankerous and upset the children, so Peggy had to cope. It didn’t make her very easy to get on with and she and Judy were always at loggerheads, especially over Mickie. They both wanted to mother him, goodness knows why. He’s my brother, but I got sick of minding him when he was little.’
‘Sisters have a hard time, miss. What was the cause of this last quarrel between the two ladies? The same thing?’
‘I don’t know. Something must have been said and they simply flew at one another — not physically, of course. I believe Peggy made a remark about Judy’s husband and Judy took exception. I don’t think they live together. Judy didn’t talk about him. Once she told me that she ran the play-school because she had no children of her own, but I didn’t like to ask any questions. You don’t, do you? — but perhaps it accounted for her feelings about Mick. She almost tried to adopt him, you know.’
‘Apart from her relationship with Miss Peggy, would you have called her a happy girl?’
‘Well, she wasn’t so much of a girl, you know. She was really very mature and I’m bound to say that she was very bossy. I didn’t much mind, but, of course, Peggy did. I expect her mother bossed her and she resented it and wasn’t going to put up with it from anybody else.’
‘How did the men get on with her?’
‘With Peggy?’
‘No, with Mrs Tyne.’
‘Oh, all right, I think. Except for Mickie, who rather disliked being ordered about and having her take a motherly interest in him — he isn’t interested in women, only in Willie, whom he absolutely adores — Judy wasn’t bossy with the others, and she was very useful as a member of the team. She was awfully good on the concertina and she was a good folk-dancer. Her speciality was Three Meet which she used to do with Giles and Ronnie and she and Peggy used to do a very nice Parsons Farewell with Peter and Plum. Oh, yes, we shall miss her. That’s why we need the rest of this evening to do some more rehearsing. Could you let me go back to the hostel now?’
‘Certainly, miss, if you will just check one or two points with me. You said you went on foot to the farm. I should have thought that, for a distance of a mile and a half each way, it would have been worth using your bike.’
‘I preferred to walk.’
‘I wonder if you see, miss, what my check-up means? Everybody except you seems to have cycled to their distinations yesterday, including Mrs Tyne, although she, poor young lady, never got to wherever she was heading for. Well, now, she may have been struck by a passing car. The chances are that that is what happened; on the other hand, when I get the pathologist’s report, another theory may emerge. Meanwhile I can’t waste time. I must take all possibilities into account and one possibility is that Mrs Tyne was deliberately murdered.’
‘Yes, I realise that. I mean I realise that the police have to go into that sort of thing. I can see what you’re getting at, too. Anybody on a bicycle might have caught up with Judy and killed her. If I didn’t use my machine, the chances are that I couldn’t have caught up with her. But I would never dream of killing anybody, Inspector, really I wouldn’t.’
‘Of course not, miss, but my argument stands as you have stated it. If I find somebody who will swear that your bicycle remained in the hostel shed all day yesterday, then I can wipe you off my slate and very glad I shall be to do so, as much for my own sake as for yours. Did you know that Miss Peggy went to the hairdresser’s?’
‘Yesterday? But she couldn’t have done.’
‘Oh? Why not, miss?’
‘Because she had her hair done on Wednesday, before we biked from the other hostel to this one.’
‘Perhaps she wasn’t satisfied with the result, miss.’
‘Why did you ask me about the hairdresser?’
‘Because Miss Peggy made what I thought was a rather strange statement, but I am not prepared to disclose what it was, just at present. Well, I think that’s all for now. When you go over to the hostel, would you kindly let Mrs Beck know that I have concluded my interviews and that her cottage is at her disposal again?’
He was not quite ready, however, to vacate the cottage. When Mrs Beck came over, he asked whether she could remember the order in which her guests had left and returned to the hostel on the previous day. It was a throwaway question, for he attached no particular importance to her answer. He had asked merely to disguise the real importance of his next query.
She replied that she had no idea of the order in which the party had left and returned. When she went over at ten in the morning to lock up, everybody had gone out, and when she unlocked the hostel door at five in the afternoon, nobody had returned, but must have come in later.
‘The accommodation for the three nights had all been paid for, that being the rule,’ she said, ‘and I held the membership cards until people checked out, which, with this lot, is to be before ten tomorrow morning. There was no reason for me to go over there until the regulation times. ’
‘Do you happen to know whether they all went off on their bicycles yesterday?’
‘All but one. When I had locked up the hostel in the morning I also locked the bicycle shed and there was one bike left in it. The open shed is there for anybody to sit in who comes early before I’ve opened up at five and I don’t mind if sheep stray in there, because it can always be one of the departure chores to clean it out if necessary. The hostellers have to do all the chores, as you probably know. I have to leave that shed open because it’s only three- sided. The bicycle shed is a different matter entirely. Bicycles can be a temptation, so if one is in there I lock the door.’
‘Yes. Did you happen to notice whether it was a gentleman’s or a lady’s model which was left behind?’
‘No, I didn’t notice. Oh, yes, I did, though. It must have belonged to one of the girls because it had a rather fancy shopping-basket on the handlebars.’
‘And nobody could have got at it until you unlocked the shed?’
‘Nobody. If they get back before five they just prop up their cycles against the side of the shed — I’ve got the only key — and then sit in the open shed until I unlock the hostel door.’
Ribble’s day was not yet over. Mildly pleased to think that he could cross the soulful-eyed Pippa off his list, he decided, all the same, to check her story with Mrs Ramsgill at the farm, although he had no doubt that the two accounts would tally. There was also the chance that at that time in the evening the lodger Pippa had mentioned would be in and available for questioning.
There seemed no doubt about Pippa’s innocence. She had come to the farm and departed from it at approximately the times she had stated and within those times she had been in company with the farmer’s wife. Unless she had found some means of transport and unless the farmer’s wife was lying (which, in the circumstances, seemed most unlikely) there was no way in which she could have got to the spot where the body was found and back again to the hostel at a reasonable time. The lodger, Adam Penshaw, could testify to the time of her arrival but not of her departure, so at the hostel he saw Giles again.
‘At what time yesterday did the girl you call Pippa get in?’
Giles looked surprised.
