The Death-Cap Dancers

green, others in their glowing autumn colours. At any other time she would have delighted in her surroundings, but the puncture, the mysterious flight (as she still thought of it) of Peggy and Mick and the fact that the men in her party had gone off without her, combined to cloud her usually cheerful nature.

Isobel was waiting for her on the verandah.

‘Hullo,’ she said. ‘Only one of you?’

‘Yes, and I’ve got a puncture.’

‘Oh, bad luck. Let’s go round to the other door and then you can leave the bike in our little vestibule, where it will be under cover, and we’ll help you mend the puncture if you’ve got the wherewithal in your little saddlebag. That was a first-class show you put on. We enjoyed it very much and so did the man we had with us.’

‘Yes, your party on the platform led all the applause, and it made a lot of difference,’ said Pippa, already feeling more cheerful. ‘People always respond when anybody gives a lead. I’ve always noticed that.’

‘The last item was a regular cliff-hanger. Where did you get that fearful-looking horse’s head and the other one? That nearly turned us green because’ — she had remembered the dead girl they had found on the moor and she changed what she had been about to say — ‘because it looked so realistic.’

‘Peter makes all our props. The hobby-horse thing I wore was his work, too,’ said Pippa, as they wheeled the bicycle round the side of the cabin. ‘He’s an art student and awfully good at all that kind of thing.’

Inside the wooden building Erica was superintending her cooking and supper was soon on the table.

‘I expect you’re hungry after all that exertion,’ she said. ‘We loved the show.’

‘We mostly give it to schools on Saturday mornings,’ said Pippa, ‘but this afternoon’s may be the last one we shall do.’

‘How’s that?’ asked Tamsin.

‘We lost one of our members. That girl on the moor. And now my brother and the other girl have run away together.’

‘Your brother? Which one was he?’

‘He was the sacrificial victim in the last dance and he doubled as a girl in two of the folk-dances and the Irish jig and the hornpipe.’

‘A man of parts indeed!’ said Isobel.

‘Tell us about the elopement. I didn’t think such romantic doings happened nowadays,’ said Erica.

‘I don’t think it was that kind of elopement,’ said Pippa, scraping her plate. ‘Peggy has been pursuing Mick for ages and I simply think she’s got her hooks into him at last.’

‘In other words, Europa has run off with the bull; but I have always thought it was that way round, you know. As I read the story, there was no reason for her to climb on the bull’s back. Simply asking for trouble,’ said Isobel.

‘I expect the other girls dared Europa,’ said Tamsin. ‘Anyway, it’s a Cretan legend, so a bull would have to come into it. Besides, Zeus was good at impersonating animals.’

‘What a resourceful chap Zeus was,’ said Hermione. ‘Now a bull, now a shower of gold, fostered by a goat when he was a baby, turned into a ram to escape the monster Typhon — really, a human chameleon, you might say.’

‘Wonderfully gifted at swallowing his children, too,’ said Isobel. ‘Wish he could teach me how it’s done. A wonderful way to get rid of undesirable brats, and I could name a few, I can tell you!’

‘There speaks the wolf in sheep’s clothing which teachers have to be nowadays,’ said Erica. ‘More pie, anybody?’

It was just as the washing-up was finished that Ribble knocked on the cabin door.

‘Oh, no!’ said Isobel, opening the door in answer to Ribble’s knock. ‘Not you again, Inspector!’

‘I’m afraid so, miss. May I ask whether you’ve got a visitor?’

‘We’re giving supper, bed and breakfast to a girl who was in this afternoon’s folk-song and dance thing at Gledge End.’

‘May I come in, miss? All I want is a word with Miss Pippa Marton.’

Pippa, who had caught her name, got up from the settee as Ribble walked into the lounge.

‘Has one of them had an accident?’ she asked anxiously.

‘Why should you suppose that, miss?’

‘Oh, don’t be an ass!’ said Isobel. ‘One of them was killed only the other day. Can’t you see she has been scared stiff that something else would happen? It was a perfectly reasonable question.’

‘All I want to know,’ said Ribble smoothly, ignoring Isobel’s outburst and speaking to Pippa, ‘is where the rest of your party were making for when they left the church hall.’

‘We are booked in at the Youth Hostel at Lostrigg. Why? Do please tell me what has happened.’

‘There’s been an accident, I’m afraid, miss. I can’t tell you more than that until I know a bit more myself. I think you would be better with your friends, miss, when I break the news to them. I can run you over to the Lostrigg hostel straight away.’

‘I’ve got my bicycle here.’

‘I will arrange for it, miss.’

‘It’s got a punctured tyre.’

‘I daresay one of my men can cope with that.’

‘Did they have an accident with the tandem?’

‘No, miss.’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake tell the poor girl what has happened!’ cried Isobel. ‘You can’t leave it until you get her over to the hostel.’

‘Very good, miss. First, Miss Marton, your brother has been injured, but he’s going to be all right. We’ve got him to hospital and I’ve just been over there. He can’t have visitors just at present, but you shall see him as soon as the doctors allow it. Don’t worry on that score, miss. Lucky for him he was wearing a wig. It probably saved his life.’

‘You mean he was attacked, like poor Judy?’

‘That’s the size of it. Miss Raincliffe, I’m very sorry to say, was not so lucky.’

Pippa, who had remained standing, collapsed on to the settee. Isobel sat down beside her and looked with hostile eyes at the detective-inspector.

‘Dead, like the other one?’ she asked, her arm round Pippa’s shoulders. Ribble inclined his head.

‘Only too much like the other one,’ he said grimly, ‘except that she must have met her attacker face to face. We shall have to hold all your company for a bit, Miss Marton, but I’ll arrange everything.’

Pippa disengaged herself from Isobel. Her colour began to come back.

‘Didn’t they go off on the tandem, then?’ she asked. Ribble shook his head. ‘Were they — oh, so that’s why we couldn’t find them after the show! But why couldn’t we? Where were they?’

‘Still at the hall, miss.’

‘So, if Peggy had not gone rushing off to find out what was keeping Micky—’

‘One of your men might have stood a better chance than she did, yes, miss, but we can’t be certain of that. If you would get your coat on, I think we ought to be going. I want to get to your friends before they go to bed. My car is just outside.’

‘Can’t you leave her here for the night?’ asked the motherly Erica. ‘We’ll look after her.’

‘No, I’d rather go. I must go,’ said Pippa. ‘Thanks all the same,’ she added wanly.

‘I’ll tell you more about things on the way to Lostrigg,’ said Ribble.

When Pippa had gone into the vestibule to put on her coat, Isobel said to him, ‘Well, at least you can’t suspect us any more.’

‘Once the doctors were satisfied that what happened on the moor could not have been a hit-and-run accident, you were all in the clear, miss.’

‘Thanks for nothing! You ought never to have suspected us in the first place!’

‘We have to look at all sides of a question,’ said Ribble mildly.

‘It looks as though we could have saved my great-aunt a journey,’ said Hermione.