‘Must have been one of them, sir, although it seems a bit strange, seeing that they used the room to change their costumes. Perhaps someone knocked and one of the party let him in.’
‘Then that must have been the dead girl. The doctor thinks she was attacked from the front, whereas the boy who’s been taken to hospital was almost certainly set upon from behind, like the girl on the moor. I suppose you don’t know where the rest of the party were making for when they left here?’
‘I know they talked about a Youth Hostel, sir, but I don’t know where. I do know where one of them has gone, though. There was a short interval midway through the show and the young fellow who seems to be the leader asked whether any of the forest cabin people could offer a bed for the night to save the girls a long cycle ride, some of it after dark. A young lady sitting on the platform said her lot could take the two girls, but there were no offers to put up the boys.’
‘Two girls? Oh, yes, this dead girl and the other one,’
‘Name of Pippa, sir. She went off on her bicycle one way and the chaps went off in another direction. She wanted to go with them. It was thought, from what I gathered, that the other two had taken the tandem and sloped off together.’
‘Oh, the tandem was missing, was it? Weren’t the bikes locked up, then?’
‘Well, sir, I thought they’d come to no harm. Some of the Youth Club come on bikes and motorbikes, so I always lock the shed door on Youth Club nights, but this afternoon the lock was only pushed together. It’s just an ordinary padlock. I reckon the murderer opened up, pinched the tandem and rode off on it.’
‘I’d better have a look at the shed. If there was only one man involved, somebody in the town must have seen him. Tandem bikes are not all that common, even with two people on them, and a chap riding one on his own would have been noticed, I should think. Of course there may have been two men involved.’
An inspection of the shed yielded nothing of importance. Ribble got his fingerprint expert busy on it, but the lock yielded no prints.
‘Anybody pulling open a lock for the purpose of stealing a bike would know enough to have worn gloves or put a handkerchief over his hand,’ said Sergeant Nene.
‘Of course we don’t know whether it was the murderer. Might have been an ordinary sneak-thief,’ said Ribble, ‘who spotted the bikes being put in and thought he would help himself to one of them. Bikes are valuable items nowadays.’
‘I can tell you one thing, sir,’ said the caretaker. ‘The tandem wasn’t gone until after about halfpast one. The young ladies came and rooted me out just as I finished my dinner (I only live just round the corner and had told them where my house was, just in case they needed anything as I could do for them before the show) and said they wanted to do some shopping for a picnic lunch in the hall. I told them the shed was unlocked and kept an eye open from my front window to watch for them coming back, and when I see them I come back and helped them with their shopping. I put the tandem away, and then I carried the stuff in as they’d bought, them helping me, and then I wheeled the trolley back through the hall for them and put it back in the shed so’s they could load up their gear when the show was over, and that’s how it was, sir.’
‘When did the others miss this boy and girl?’
‘The lad went to change into his frock and wig while the others were clearing the hall. He was gone for some time and the photographer from the local paper was getting cheesed off waiting, so the girl went to hurry the lad up. Then she never came back and the photographer wouldn’t wait any longer. He had already got some pictures and he said he’d make those do. Then the others found the two were gone and so they said they would leave, too, and that’s when they found as the tandem was missing and made it out as the two had gone off on it. Then I went to shut and bolt the back door and spotted the young fellow’s foot sticking out of the bushes. That made me go off to telephone you and the doctor and then I opened up my broom cupboard and out tumbles that poor dead lass and then I see the blood on the floor, as I had not noticed previous.’
‘And the other girl is staying the night in the forest, so she’ll know where the rest of the party have gone. I shall have to see her, so that she can guide me to the others. Did you get the number of the forest cabin?’
‘Yes, sir. I recollect as the young lady who made the offer mentioned cabin number eight.’
‘Oh, good. As it happens, I know the occupants of that cabin, not that they’ll be any too pleased to find me on their doorstep again. I can’t think why you did not see the blood on the floor the minute you went in, though.’
‘The window is very high up, sir, and my eyes were on the open door, which should have been shut, sir.’
Meanwhile, Pippa had covered most of her journey from the hall to the cabin when she picked up a puncture.
‘That’s all I needed!’ she thought, as she pushed the bicycle the last half-mile down the forest track towards the cabins. ‘Still, better here than on the road to the Youth Hostel. What on earth can have come over Mick to go off on the tandem with Peggy? He doesn’t even like her. How did she manage to talk him into it?’
She pondered upon this question as she walked the useless bicycle past the beautiful forest trees, some still 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.’