The Death-Cap Dancers

the bonnet and affecting to tinker with the engine? I want to give somebody a chance to catch up with us and pass us.’

‘I should think they would be glad of the chance if I ’m to drive so slowly. I’m consumed with curiosity, needless to say. Are we being pursued by wicked men? Is my wallet safe? — not that there’s very much in it.’

‘There was a tandem parked outside the Ewe and Lamb.’

‘Couldn’t be the tandem, could it? That one must have been jettisoned miles away from here.’

‘One would suppose so, but a means of transport is a means of transport and not (except in gangster films) an amenity which is too readily sacrificed. Besides, what you so rightly distinguish as the tandem is the last thing the police will be expecting to find so near Gledge End, from which it disappeared. A bold bluff pays off more often than not.’

‘But what makes the connection in your mind?’

‘Only the presence of a tandem outside the Ewe and Lamb. I think I am being kept under observation.’

‘I don’t like the sound of that. Two women have been killed already.’

‘For a reason which would not apply to me.’

Several cars passed them when Laura stopped and opened the bonnet. Dame Beatrice, apparently interested only in watching Laura’s tinkering, noted with satisfaction that a tandem, with a man and a girl on it, both pedalling furiously, shot past only about a quarter of a mile from the forest carpark.

‘Come out from there,’ she said, ‘and full speed ahead. ’ When Laura had parked the car, Dame Beatrice approached a boy who was eating potato crisps.

‘You wouldn’t have seen my nephew and his wife get off a tandem just now?’ she said. The boy pointed.

‘They went that way,’ he said.

‘Thank you. Come, Laura, perhaps we can catch up with them.’

‘Easy,’ said the boy. ‘They weren’t hurrying.’

Dame Beatrice and Laura turned into one of the forest ‘rides’ and found it bordered and sheltered by a big plantation of larches. Most of the foliage had been shed. Only the fir-cones remained on many of the trees.

Dame Beatrice stopped and addressed one of them, observing that she regretted her lack of interest in Larix decidua, but assuring the tree that this was only a temporary matter.

‘What we are looking for,’ she said, ‘is a group of Fagus sylvatica or possibly Quercus rober.’ She spoke loudly.

‘I doubt whether we shall find beeches in these parts,’ said Laura, ‘but oaks ought to be fairly plentiful. The foresters must have planted hardwood trees as well as the pines and larches.’

A little further on its downward-sloping way the narrow woodland road came out into a clearing. Standing in the middle of it were a noticeably sturdy young man and a plump young woman. They were looking at a solitary sheep which was standing beside a little, boulder-strewn stream. Dame Beatrice, followed by Laura, walked up to the group.

‘I wonder,’ she said, ‘whether you can help me.’

‘Try us,’ said the girl. ‘Have you lost your way?’

‘No, not our way, but our objective. We are looking for oak trees. We are informed that a variety of the edible fungus allied to the common mushroom, the wood-mushroom, can be found growing beneath them.’

‘That’s right,’ said the young man. ‘Cross the beck and follow the path uphill. We’ll show you the way, if you like. Mind you don’t slip on the stones.’

Less than fifteen minues brought the party to a noble grove of oaks. Under the trees there appeared to be two species of fungi. Dame Beatrice pointed this out.

‘I wonder which is the species we want? The two kinds look much alike to the untrained eye,’ she said.

‘Yes, you want to be careful,’ said the man.

‘Personally, you won’t catch me eating any of the nasty things,’ said the young woman. ‘I don’t take any risks of that sort, thank you.’

‘Oh, nonsense, Marion,’ said her companion. ‘You just have to learn to distinguish the edible kind from the rest.’ He stooped and picked up an appetising-looking specimen which had a yellowish cap and as he pressed it in his hand it gave out a smell reminiscent of anise. ‘This is the chap you’ve got to avoid,’ he said. ‘These,’ he pointed to a yellowish-green specimen not unlike the other, ‘are what you’re after.’

‘Really?’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘How deceptive Nature can be. If you had not told me, I should have thought it was the other way round,’

‘Well, it isn’t.’ He flung down the squashed mess over which his hand had closed, went down to the beck and, kneeling, washed his hand in the clear, brown, ice-cold water and dried it on his handkerchief. ‘If you ate any of those,’ he said, ‘you’d be dead in twelve hours, but the other kind are all right. Oh, well — but you haven’t got a basket. How are you going to carry your mushrooms home?’

Laura unfastened the headscarf she was wearing.

‘This will do,’ she said. ‘Thanks a lot.’

‘Don’t mention it. Well, we’ll be getting along.’ The two of them walked on and the grove of oaks was very quiet, for the wind scarcely moved the age-old, mighty boughs. Neither Dame Beatrice nor Laura said a word until they had remained for a few moments looking down at the fungi, and then had crossed the beck. Laura spoke first.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘what did you make of those two?’

‘If such a remark were not tabu in these enlightened days, I should say that they hardly seem to come from the same social stratum.’

‘Yes, but — I mean, the information!’

‘Yes, indeed. I was afraid you were going to spoil the fun.’

‘I definitely would have spoken up if I didn’t know that you’d done your homework, both as a doctor and a criminologist, on the subject of fungi in general and the poisonous kinds in particular. But didn’t you yourself want to contradict him? I mean, if he’s going about telling people to eat that deadly stuff, he’s going to have somebody else’s death on his hands. I take it he is the chap the police are after.’

‘The general description would fit and undoubtedly he hardly wishes us well.’

‘What shall you do about him?’

‘Describe the encounter to Inspector Ribble, but it will lead to nothing until we have proof that this man is the murderer, and, so far, we have no proof of that.’

‘But he’s done his best to ensure that we eat deadly poisonous toadstools.’

‘Yes, he is puffed up with his own conceit, and is becoming reckless. He will soon go too far.’

Chapter 16: WITCHES’ FINGERS

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‘Well, we can both give a pretty accurate description of the chap,’ said Laura, ‘but I suppose Ribble can hardly arrest him on a charge of mistaking a deadly poisonous Amanita for a harmless, delicious Agaricus, can he?’

‘Someone else appears to have done some homework! No, of course he cannot, especially as the two species can be confused quite innocently.’

‘If you are right, what about that girl he had with him? Isn’t she in the most frightful danger?’

‘Up to the present she is in no danger at all.’

‘Just because she doesn’t happen to be one of the dancers?’

‘That is not the reason. Do not tantalise yourself with these speculations. The person I am most anxious about is one of the dancers, however. It is the girl they call Pippa. I also feel concern for the younger Miss Lindsay, but Miss Erica Lyndhurst has been warned. I am thankful that those four young women are getting together again and that my nephew Carey’s farm is a very long way from the murderer’s sphere of activities. Tamsin would be perfectly safe there except for one thing.’

‘Let me guess. Those stolen records, the one from the Youth Hostel and the set from the forest office, contain the home addresses of all the people concerned.’