He was right about the children’s matinée, and wrong about the memory of the girl in the box-office. Yes, this was the only cinema in the place. Thursday afternoon? Well, it was only pensioners mostly, wasn’t it? Sure she remembered two young men coming in. Describe them? She couldn’t say as to that. They had come in as soon as the commissionaire opened the doors. First in the queue she reckoned they were. One was sort of tallish and dark and the other, well, really more like a girl until he spoke. Lovely silky blond hair and, well, lots of girls wore trousers and sweaters nowadays, didn’t they?
She had fixed the time of their arrival, but about the time of their departure she was unhelpful. People came and went. Oh, yes, she had to stay on duty, the picture being continuous and people coming in at any old time. If she had been issuing tickets when the young men left she would not have noticed them go out, and, besides that, although there was only one entrance, there were other exits.
‘Have to be. Suppose there was a fire?’ she said impressively. ‘You don’t want panic, do you?’
Ribble tried the commissionaire.
‘My job is to control the queue, if any,’ said that official. ‘Yes, I remember the two young fellows because they went in soon as I opened the doors. See ’em leave? Not as I recollect. I daresay they used one of the other exits. Besides, they might not have exited together. They came together, oh, yes, certainly they did, but that’s not to say they exited together. Young chaps don’t always have the same fish to fry, do ’em? Mind you, when I first seen ’em I thought they was two of a kind, if you take my meaning, so perhaps they did leave together, but I wouldn’t know, would I, being solicitous in my dooty and earning my money non-union, which is to say without benefit of shop steward.’
The idea that, before the end of the programme, the two young men might have separated had already occurred to Ribble. If Mick really had fallen asleep, there could have been nothing to prevent Willie from slipping out. The question was whether he had been able to slip back to wake Mick up and take him and the tandem back to the hostel. The inspector applied again to the box-office.
‘Look,’ said the girl somewhat austerely, ‘are you a debt-collector or something?’
‘I am a police officer. I only want to know whether either of the young men you described asked for re-admission, having left the cinema either by the main entrance or one of the exits early on. He couldn’t get back in again through one of the emergency exits, could he?’
‘If he could, I should be out of a job, because if he could, so could everybody else, couldn’t they?’
‘Ask a silly question! ’ thought Ribble. He thanked the girl and drove to the swimming pool. Here he was no luckier. Thursday, the girl at the guichet reminded him, was early-closing day in the town. What with that, and the schools being on half-term holiday, the pool had been so well patronised that it was impossible for her to remember any particular customers.
‘These would be strangers to you,’ Ribble pointed out,‘ so I thought perhaps you might have noticed them.’ However, she remained firm. The only people she was at all likely to remember, she said, were those who hired towels and that happened very seldom and had not happened on Thursday. As for strangers, what did he expect in a holiday town? There were always strangers coming along for a swim.
‘You would hardly swim in the sea this time of year,’ she reminded him, ‘so, of course, they come here.’
‘In October?’
‘Well, not so much as in the summer, but, like I said, we get a lot of custom. Why not,’ she concluded, ‘when we’ve got a nice clean heated pool so handy, and diving boards and a chute and showers and everything.’
Ribble agreed and reflected that blest were they who expected nothing, for they could not be disappointed. He went back to his car and drove to the church hall. Here a man with a wheelbarrow was tidying up the churchyard which was adjacent to the ground on which the hall had been built. Ribble asked where he could find the caretaker of the hall.
‘That’s me,’ said the man, ‘but the churchwardens does the lettings. Their addresses is on the board.’
‘I am a police officer.’
‘We’re fully licensed and the fire regulations is adhered to.’
‘Last Thursday — Thursday of this week — two young fellows came to arrange the chairs for a show which is to be put on in the church hall this afternoon. How would they have got admission to the hall to do that?’
‘Same as any other hirers get in. My name and address is on the notice-board too, and they had the key off of me, having produced their letter which the churchwardens had signed up. Everything was in order, you can bet on it.’
‘So you saw and spoke with them. Are they here now?’
‘I reckon the whole lot’s here. There’s eight of ’em been at it all the time, a fiddle and a penny whistle and sometimes the piano thumping out, and tapping with their sticks and jingling the little bells on their trouser-legs and thudding on the floor with their hopping and jumping and giving a sort of a shout every now and again, you never heard such a racket. I peeped in once or twice and they was always hard at it ’cepting when they knocked off to have an argy-bargy about what somebody was doing wrong. They’re arguing now, I reckon. There don’t seem to be no music nor stamping nor jingling nor nothing. Come on in, if you want to see ’em.’
They found the company resting their legs but not their tongues. A lively discussion was going on.
‘I tell you,’ said Pippa, ‘that my flute is perfectly adequate for the hornpipe. I know we used to have your violin, but that’s beside the point now, because you’re wanted for the dance in Judy’s place.’
‘The flute sounds silly for the hornpipe,’ said Peggy. ‘Failing Judy’s concertina, the fiddle is the only thing. Whoever heard of a hornpipe being danced to the flute?’
‘Well, somebody can play the piano, then,’ said Willie.
‘Oh, no, they can’t’ said Giles. ‘It would be a complete anachronism or worse. Whoever heard of deck-hands dancing to a piano? It would be better to have three men dance the hornpipe and let Peggy fiddle for us, only unfortunately that can’t be done, unless Mick will do it as a girl. The tiny little shorts and middy blouse that Judy used to wear would look ridiculous on anyone else and we simply haven’t got another pair of bell-bottoms for a man to wear.’
‘I can’t get into Judy’s rig, as you know very well,’ snapped Peggy, ‘so, unless Mick will do it, that’s that.’
‘You’ve got navy shorts of your own and I can lend you a white sweater. The audience likes having a girl in the middle. Actually the rather rakish cap is the only thing that really matters, apart from the girl’s legs, and you’ve got very nice legs, Peggy. I’ve often noticed them,’ said Giles.
‘Oh, you have, have you?’
‘Going back to the flute,’ said Pippa, ‘I don’t want to start an argument, but actually the hornpipe wasn’t originally a dance at all. It was a musical instrument, one of the ancestors of the oboe. It was a pipe with holes at the mouth end and a real cow’s horn at the bell-end, so you see a flute would really be much more in keeping than a fiddle, anyway, as I’ve always pointed out.’
‘The sailors always danced to the fiddle. It’s traditional,’ said Peggy. ‘Anyway, I am not going to wear navy shorts and Giles’s white sweater. Besides, the hornpipe is really a solo dance. Think of Wayne Sleep.’