‘Your great-aunt, Miss Lestrange?’ Ribble looked at her in sudden comprehension. ‘Good gracious me! That couldn’t be Dame Beatrice, could it?’
‘Yes, of course it could,’ said Isobel. ‘She is coming here tomorrow to get us out of your clutches. At least, that was the idea, but it hardly seems necessary now.’
‘I will let the Super know and he will want to tell the Chief Constable. We all know Dame Beatrice by repute and it will be an honour to meet her,’ said Ribble.
‘All the same, it looks as though we could have saved her the journey,’ repeated Hermione, ‘since we are now in the clear without her help.’
‘Ah, but I may be very glad of it myself,’ said Ribble, ‘if she will be prepared to assist me. I reckon I can do with a psychiatrist on the job. I’ll call in at the station on my way to the hostel and mention that she is coming down. What time do you expect her, Miss Lestrange?’
‘In the middle of the afternoon, I think. She will have lunch on the way and then come straight here before she goes to her hotel.’
‘Then I’ll come along, too, if I may.’ He turned to Pippa, who had come back into the room. ‘Well, miss, we’ll be off. My car is outside.’
‘Who on earth can be doing these awful things?’ said Tamsin, when the inspector had taken Pippa away. ‘Is it one of the dancers, do you think?’
‘I don’t know who else,’ said Erica. ‘I shall be glad when Monday is over. I’ve got to go to the inquest, as I was the one who actually saw that girl’s body on the moor.’
Chapter 12: YELLOW ARCHANGEL
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‘So what is all the brouhaha?’ enquired Dame Beatrice, who had driven straight to the cabin on Sunday and had arrived at the time of siesta which followed the young women’s Sunday lunch. ‘
‘The floor is yours, Hermy One,’ said Isobel. Hermione told the story of their troubles and told it well.
‘But I think we’ve brought you here on a fool’s errand, great-aunt,’ she concluded. ‘Something else has happened — we don’t know all the details, but it’s pretty bad and it’s something the inspector knows we couldn’t have done. We’ve discussed it, and it seems another one in that folk-dance party has been badly injured and another killed. One of them — one of the girls — ran off to find one of the boys after the show. The other girl was supposed to be staying the night here with us and some of what happened seems to have happened to her brother. He was the boy, she told us, who was thought to have gone off with the girl. She knew all about that before she left the hall. What she didn’t understand, she said — she seems a simple, naive sort of bod — is why he went off in girl’s clothes, but the inspector came and told her what really happened.’
‘I mentioned transvestites,’ said Isobel, ‘but she sounded genuinely convinced when she said there was nothing of that sort about him. He had simply filled in for that girl who was killed so that the show could be presented more or less as they had rehearsed it. She told us that the other girl — Peggy she called her — had had her hooks in the brother for months and they thought she must have persuaded him to run off with her. It seems to have been a sort of Daisy Bell in reverse, because, although they were supposed to have taken the tandem on which brother Mick was usually the back-seat operator with another man in front, Pippa was sure her brother would not have been the instigator of the move, but, of course, it wasn’t like that at all. Anyway, the inspector insisted — it amounted to that — on taking Pippa in his car to join her friends, so she didn’t spend the night here after all, and that’s all we know.’
‘Oh, well,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘you had better get your car and lead mine to the hotel I hope you have booked for me.’
‘We booked you in at the Ewe and Lamb pub in the village. It’s highly spoken of and has four bedrooms only, so we thought you would find it nice and quiet and it only takes about ten minutes in a car from here. Have you had any lunch? They only do snacks at lunch-time but we are told that Sunday dinner there is quite something. This is a holiday place, you see, and lots of the cabin people go there, so it flourishes.’
‘I had lunch on the way up here, so perhaps you would all care to join me for dinner tonight, then.’
‘
‘She looks ethereal,’ said her sister, ‘but she’s the prototype of the human boa-constrictor, and so I warn you.’
‘Oh, come, now’ said Hermione, ‘be fair to the girl. The worst that can be said of her is that, like Bingo Little, she is apt to get a bit rough when in the society of a sandwich.’
‘I’m not sure we ought to be joking,’ said Erica very seriously. ‘Two murders and very nearly a third don’t make me feel exactly lighthearted and I’ve got to attend that inquest tomorrow and speak my piece about finding the body on the moor.’
‘If the police are still conducting an investigation, the inquest will be adjourned as soon as the identity of the corpse has been formally established and the medical evidence given,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Almost nothing will be required of you. If you so desire, I will accompany you. In any case I shall be interested to hear what the doctors have to say.’
Ribble came to the cabin at half past three and was introduced to Dame Beatrice.
‘Our Superintendent has notified the Chief Constable of your arrival, ma’am,’ he said, ‘and they will be glad and honoured to meet you. May we take it that you will be willing, now you are on the spot, to put your great experience at our disposal?’
‘What I have heard from these children,’ replied Dame Beatrice, leering benevolently at the four young women, ‘has aroused my interest, Inspector. I shall be delighted to put in my thumb.’
‘Then, perhaps’ — he, too, looked at the girls — ‘I might have a word in private with you.’
‘We can take any hint which is reinforced with the aid of a sledger-hammer,’ said Isobel. ‘Come along, children. We are being turned out into the snow.’
‘If you ladies are going out, go in a car, keep together all the time, and on no account give anybody, male or female, a lift,’ said Ribble impressively.
He waited until they were out of the cabin and even stood at the french doors to watch their departure towards the carpark, before he turned to Dame Beatrice and said, ‘We can do with your help, ma’am. May I put my own version of the case before you? I expect the young ladies have told you something, but there are features in the case that they don’t yet know about. There is a disordered mind at work. That’s where we should welcome your cooperation. Somebody seems to have got it in for the young people who put on that song-and-dance show at Gledge End. The girl who was killed belonged to them and now one more of them has been murdered. Another is lucky to have escaped death, and this time there is no question of a hit-and-run car.’
‘Then I can take it that you
‘Oh, yes, indeed. Apart from the fact that they could have had no hand in Saturday’s nasty business—’
‘Why not? They attended the performance.’
‘They must have left the premises before the murderer did his job. A whole convoy of the cabin holidaymakers’ cars left the carpark at the end of the show and I have evidence that theirs was among them and was sandwiched in, so to speak. I have witnesses who can swear to the number plates. Needless to say, my chaps have made a very careful check. There is only one direct road from Gledge End to the two-mile drive into the forest to get back to the cabins, and nobody deviated from it.’
‘What about the car which brought up the rear of the procession? Couldn’t that have slipped away without anyone being the wiser?’
‘It was driven by an elderly lady who had a disabled passenger. I can’t see how either of them, or both of them together, could have attacked two strong and healthy young people.’
‘It seems unlikely, I admit.’
‘There is another argument, anyway, regarding the first death, and one which a layman can’t gainsay. The pathologist’s report makes it clear that the girl was not knocked down by a hit-and-run car. Her injuries were only to the back of the head and were caused by repeated blows, probably from a heavy stone. We haven’t found the stone
