The Death-Cap Dancers

last item, but what about earlier on?’

‘I think one or two slipped out, but I never notice the audience when I’m playing. You don’t, with a flute, you know. It’s sheer concentration on my part.’

‘Did you recognise anybody in the audience when they first came in?’

‘Oh, yes. Farmer and Mrs Ramsgill came. They brought their lodger with them, but they didn’t all sit together. Perhaps they had not bought the same priced seats. Adam — the boy who has been lodging with them — went up on to the platform first of all, but was soon headed off, so I suppose he took umbrage, as he did when I wouldn’t go out with him. When I looked up from arranging my music I noticed that he had taken an absolutely back seat near the door. I think he is rather a spoilt, sulky boy. He didn’t take it too well at all when I wouldn’t sit on the pillion of his motorbike.’

‘When was this?’

‘Last Thursday when I was visiting the farm.’

‘Ah, yes, everything seems to go back to that Thursday.’

‘You mean because that was when Judy…’

‘Yes, indeed. Well, Miss Marton, I think that is all. I will arrange for you to see your brother as soon as the doctors allow him to have visitors.’

‘We weren’t all that close, but…’

‘Of course you are anxious about him. Oh, there is one other thing. Would you prefer to be lodged separately, away from your companions?’

‘Oh, please, no! I know the police think one of us killed Judy and Peggy, but we didn’t. I’m positively certain we didn’t. There’s a criminal lunatic at large and the police have got to find him before other people get killed.’

‘I sympathise with your point of view, but is it not significant that nobody outside your company seems to have been attacked?’

‘I know it looks bad for us, but have the police found the tandem?’

‘An apt answer to my question and one which goes some way towards proving your point. Could any of your party have been absent long enough from the rest of you to have pedalled it away? Please set aside your prejudices and answer me accurately.’

‘We are all pretty good cyclists and a man, especially, could get quite a long way, even riding the tandem solo, in under five minutes, but then he would have had to walk back to the hall, and I’m sure nobody was absent for as long as that.’

‘Has your group, so far as you know, made any enemies?’

‘Enemies? No. Some gang once tried to rough us up, but Plum is a heavyweight boxer and Willie is a black belt, so nothing came of it, and we never give our shows at night, anyway, and that’s when trouble starts.’

‘Would either Mrs Tyne or Miss Raincliffe have had, perhaps, a jealous lover?’

‘Not so far as I know. Judy was married, of course, but separated. I can’t really imagine anybody fancying Peggy, but, of course, you never know. I think my brother was her last hope, but she didn’t make first base, as the Americans say, with him. The only company Micky wants at present is Willie’s. He admires him very much. They are not gay. It’s hero-worship and when Mick is older he’ll get over it and settle down with a girl, I’m sure. Willie has got a girl, anyway, but he likes Mick and acts as a father to him, and to anybody as weak as Mick it’s real protection. We’re orphans, you see, and Willie manages Mick’s finances for him. Willie teaches economics at a polytechnic and is ever so good with money matters.’

‘The Scottish blood, perhaps?’

‘Oh, Willie is a Highlander, but I believe his mother comes from Peebles. He is a very quiet boy, but the rest of us respect him.’

‘You must forgive my next question, and I shall understand if you refuse to answer it. Is it possible that your brother, in a fit of irritation, could have attacked Miss Raincliffe and then hit himself on the back of the head to make it look as though he himself had been attacked?’

Instead of the indignant denial which might have been assumed, Pippa considered the question.

‘He might have attacked Peggy,’ she said, after a pause. ‘She made herself an awful nuisance to him. I don’t believe he would have hit himself over the head as a cover-up, though, anyway, not so hard as to make himself a hospital case. He is a physical coward and, besides that, Peggy was much heavier and stronger than he. You think Peggy and the murderer met face to face, but Micky would never have risked having a go at her if that was so. He wouldn’t have stood a chance. Oh, no, to fight anybody wasn’t and never will be Micky’s scene.’

‘So what do we make of Miss Pippa Marton?’ asked Dame Beatrice, when Pippa had been released.

‘That she doesn’t think much of baby brother and isn’t all that fond of him,’ Laura replied. ‘As for the rest of what she said, I don’t think she knows who killed the two girls, but she certainly seems to dismiss any suggestion that it could be one of her own lot.’

‘And your own opinion about that?’

‘I can’t express one until we’ve seen the rest of them.’

‘Cautious woman! Would you step to the door which Miss Marton has just closed behind her and ask for Mr Giles Tranmire?’

Giles, conscious of his position as the leader of Wild Thyme, was in a state of mild indignation.

‘Look here, you know,’ he said, ‘by what right are we held here like this? What about the liberty of the subject and all that, you know?“

‘Yes, I do know, and I sympathise,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘The alternative, however, has been pointed out to you. The police are permitted to hold you in custody for forty-eight hours as suspected persons. You would not prefer it to be in a police-cell, would you? Sit down, Mr Tranmire and let us get on with the business. “The sooner it’s over, the sooner to sleep,” as the Reverend Charles Kingsley somewhat optimistically stated. Are you capable of unbiased thinking?’

‘No. If you’re going to ask me which of our lot could have killed those two girls and bashed up young Mick, my answer is that any of us could — I mean, we were all there, so to speak — but none of us did.’

‘You and Mr Redman are one another’s alibi for the first murder, I believe?’

‘Old Plum may look like an all-in wrestler, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

‘I wonder why a fly is chosen for that particular tribute to a person’s gentle nature? No matter. Thank you, Mr Tranmire.’

‘Is that all, then?’

‘Oh, yes. Would you send in Mr Nicolson?’

‘I have given the matter some thought, as is the way of it with me,’ said Willie, when he had seated himself, ‘and my thought is that the tandem is at the root of the mystery.’

‘That is interesting, Mr Nicolson. Would you care to enlarge upon that statement?’

‘I’ll do that. The theft of the tandem was no wanton matter of person or persons concerned with stealing a means of transport. It was calculated to deceive the police into thinking that two persons were involved in the crime.’

‘And from this you deduce?’

‘Ask yourself, woman! At the time when Peggy was killed and wee Micky injured — and if ever I get my hands on whoever did that—!’

‘Yes, at the time when…?’ Dame Beatrice prompted him.

‘Well, now, there were the two of them, away from the rest of the party, leaving six of us in the main hall. The photographer was getting impatient and soon left us, we five men and the lassie. Do you not think it would have been very noticeable if another of us had absented and gone into the changing-room just then?’

‘You are going on the assumption that the attacks on Miss Raincliffe and Mr Marton took place at approximately the same time, are you?’

‘They could only have been minutes apart and I will be prepared to swear, in court or anywhere else, that the six of us were together in the hall while those attacks were taking place.’

‘How long was Miss Raincliffe absent before you all decided that she and Mr Marton had taken the tandem and gone off together?’

Willie shook his head. A matter of minutes, he thought. He added that he, for one, could not bring himself to